Tag Archives: defend

02.29.12 To Protect and Defend…

Posted by Hope Wabuke in After Yoga and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How one learns/is trained to to do this…

The actions and behaviors one does to, protect…

Who is allowed to engage in them.

How the masculine energy protects…how  the world is set up in accordance with that concept of aggression, control and domination, the use of a certain kind of power structure.

How the feminine energy protects, so differently, concerned with something else altogether…

What you must do, if you are  a child alone to protect self, if you are woman alone to protect self…What you must do, if you are of color or otherwise othered, to protect self.

How society does not have space for this–you, your surival–if what you need is not in line with majority beliefs and prejudices…

Who then, is considered a person, with the right to “Life, liberty, and happiness?”

Who then, is not?

What this says about who a person is, who we are as a culture…What this says about who and what we value, how we treat each other. What this says about our suvival as  a species.

Why this is so important.

02.03.12 What is a parent?

Posted by Hope Wabuke in After Yoga and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

What is a parent?

Whether he chooses to serve his own egos and desires…or the best interests of the child.

The necessity to teach, raise, love, support, nurture, and defend that child. Always.

How, if you do not take care of her…what are you teaching her? How will she know to take care of herself?

How will she know she needs to take care of herself–that this is something right and positive to aspire to?

How will she know what it means to take care of herself? How will she know the steps to do so?

How will she know to see when someone is truly wishing to take care of her? To value her?

How will she know to see through, know when these words are just hypocritical doublespeak and lying?

How will she know to expect to be respected, valued…To be taken care of. How will she know to demand this…to not accept anything less–if this is not the message that you are giving her at all…you, the one who is supposed to value, love, and take care of her, always…

How will she relate to and fare in the world…where everyone else is only looking out for their best interests–never hers’?

How this is even so much more important for girls because the world is so much more dangerous for us than for boys…all the watching male eyes and hands wanting our bodies, minds, our energies–anything at all that they can use for their own pleasure and take for their desiring without reciprocity, without taking care of…

her.

At all.

If she does not know this.

Especially when it comes to this shifting into womanhood, the sexual awakening…

How this is complicated even further through culture and identity…how in this, the world of American white men and dating in this country women are not truly valued…there is only the expendible nature of using and losing each woman in line with another and the next, her value and energy drained as he jumps to the next younger, more attractive model. How throughout my life these American white men have pursued me only wanting sex, thinking it is their right…As I became more accomplished in my career, how this has translated into thinking they can use me for my mind the same way and I will accept being used, not valued, or respected. That I will take their disrepect and abuse and, like little Oliver, sweetly say “Yes, please, thank you. Can I have some more?” How they become so angry and feel cheated when I stand up for myself, when I do not let anyone use or abuse me. When I look after my best interests. When I take care of myself.

How I still struggle, still fall, sometimes, under the press of their rapacious, toxic actions because I am not strong enough to always be aware and defend myself, alone; to always be on edged guard here. Too much to do, alone. While trying to grow, be present; be open and live.

The necessity of parents, of family. To protect. To defend. To love, support, value. To take care of themselves. So they can take care of you.  So they can teach you how to take care of yourself.

How this becomes so important if you are a woman of color. How, to these American white men, to America in general I have learned, because of the still-pregnant presence of the legacy of slavery, the color of our skin means we  not have to be valued or taken care of  at all…how, when I think about the future sons and daughters I will have I become overwhelmingly scared, overwhelmingly determined to position my life and take care of them so they do not have to engage with these energies, so they know how to protect and defend themselves, just in case…

How this does not exist in my culture, or any other culture, really, where a child does not have to worry about fear of strangers; if lost, she just asks anyone, in line with another and the next, unafraid of harm, knowing only love, only family in the tribal community…how beginning to understand these concepts in fictional form became the subject of my last book, Girls Raised by Men.  How, living in this country, there is something here at which I must look closer still, apparently. To live love, unafraid…unaffected by all this ugliness of others…

The necessity of family, of parents. To advise and protect. Defend and value. Respect and support. Love and nurture. The necessity of parents to be parents, to live, to grow, to take responsibility and take care of their family. Your most precious treasure. No matter what.

Otherwise, who will?

 

 

01.22.12 Feeling/Holdings/Reactions

Posted by Hope Wabuke in After Yoga and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Last year, around this time, I was hit and dragged by a taxi in New York City a couple of blocks, and spent most of 2011 in hospitals and recovering. At the time, I felt the right side of my body–from hip to through back, should neck, face–twist and collapse, compress and tense and spasm. 

I used to do vinyasa and more athletic styles of yoga, but only recently have I begun to move from physical therapy to viniyoga, as I recover.  Slowly, I begin to feel parts of my body wake, begin to move into alignment, begin to balance and heal.

Today’s class made me think about my neck, about the release of pressure when lowering chin and realizing the release along that line of taxi hit-and-drag injury…how any anxiety or fear now seems directed along that line, the most recent and severe example in my life of fear and anxiety…how, in yoga class today, when feeling a very toxic and dangerous energy rise up within the man practicing to the right beside me…being present next to that, his heavy pulling energy, pulling me, pulling my spirit, to align with his destruction…feeling the right side of my body begin to turn inward, twisting along that line, recoiling from the dangerous energy in instinct, to protect…my whole being very aware of the twisting and pain along that side of injury…how for so long this is why I resisted practicing yoga in class setting even though I knew I needed to learn more: the danger of toxic energies, the necessity to protect and defend myself from that.

Thoughts moving to where that tension first became present in my life, when young and a girl becoming a woman, unused to the new watching and desiring eyes of men…the fear of being seen…because when I am seen people have always had very strong reactions to me and the energy of others is often very strong and toxic…how part of my nature is to feel, intensely, to retain constant presence and access to close connection to feeling and sensing…to care for others, to love, to discern, to create….

But then what to do with the press of this feeling of the weight of others…when benign or helpful I am alright but toxic energy is more damaging for me than most…meditating on how you don’t have to hold this energy from others, how to create a shield from toxic energy…the necessity to protect and defend yourself…where this need comes from…but what to do when you can’t?

How do you protect and defend yourself?