by Saeeda Hafiz

The day I understood that I was a spiritual being who had selected the body of an African American woman to have this experience in this life at this time, I was deeply empowered to participate in the healing process of my present lifetime trauma and my intergenerational trauma.

 This revelation started when I began practicing a holistic yogic lifestyle.

 It was January 1990. I was periodically adding whole-food dishes to my diet and ready to incorporate something called yoga to my routine. I had always wanted to try yoga in college. I didn’t really know what it was, but I was curious; it seemed peaceful.

The yoga class I signed up for started at 9:00 a.m. on a Sunday. The very first position was a resting pose called Savasana. I lay on my back, legs apart, breathing. We did leg lifts to warm up, followed by a series of standing poses. Quickly, I noticed that I was the only one who could not hold the yoga poses for the instructed length of time.

I stared at my crestfallen face in the studio mirror and watched myself struggle, lose my balance, and have to release a pose before everyone else.

I felt weak while everyone else seemed fine. I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed it earlier but looking around the room, I realized I was the only African-American student in class, and everyone was either double or triple my age. I was pretty sure I didn’t belong.

“Watch me first,” the instructor said, interrupting my daydream. She held both arms straight out in front of her, and began to lower, bending her knees. She looked like a human chair. “We will use the Chair Pose to transition into our next asana.” We all followed her lead, listening to our knees crack on the way down. With our arms out in front, balancing on our tippy toes, we all looked like a row of chairs. The ball of my foot and my toes started to hurt from the pressure. I was happy when she said, “Place your hands on the floor and extend your legs, one at a time, and sit L-shaped.” Again, we followed her lead. I felt my toes tingling.

“Inhale, lift your arms out to the side and then up. Next, exhale. Extend your arms toward your toes and hold your hands anywhere along your legs. Go to a point of a stretch, not strain. This is the Forward Bend pose.”

Wow. I was touching my toes. This stretch felt good. I felt good. Finally, a pose I could rest in. I wasn’t coughing or struggling. I kept on breathing and holding. For the first time since I was a kid, I was enjoying myself as my body and breath opened up. But, most of all, folding forward released something that allowed me to relax, and to surrender.

“You’ll be teaching this one day,” I heard a voice say. I lifted my head slightly and looked around. No one was speaking to me. In fact, no one was talking at all. Then I heard it again. “You’ll be teaching this one day, and get closer to your grandfather.” I stayed in the pose. My head was down and I didn’t dare move. My breathing was slow, but many thoughts raced across my mind. “Am I going crazy? Do I have schizophrenia? Mental illness might run in my family, too. What’s happening to me?”

Weeks later, I followed the instructions from the audible voice telling me, “… get closer to your grandfather.” It was a bit confusing because I had every reason to want to keep a casual distance from my grandfather.

My first step in developing a relationship with my grandfather was to visit him every few weeks, if not every weekend. During this time, I would catch myself thinking, what am I supposed to learn by getting closer to my grandfather? This is still the man who beat Grandma. Isn’t it? When visiting him, I couldn’t help but think back to the day he evicted us from our home due to a disagreement between him and my mother.

This was always on my mind when I visited Grandad, but it didn’t stop me from creating a new relationship with him.

His house was like a time capsule. We sat in his 10’ by 10’ living room and listened to the Pirates playing the Dodgers on his transistor radio. Then he would tell me the story about why he supported the Dodgers over the Pirates. I never grew tired of my black history moments with him. The house still had a Dodgers’ Jackie Robinson souvenir button hanging from a poster of Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, and Bobby Kennedy.

One weekend, I asked him more questions about his childhood. He explained to me how he moved from McCormick, South Carolina, to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He and his older brother George jumped on different boxcars to make their way north. But what he said next sounded as if it was out of a Mark Twain novel: George was accused of murdering a white man, but he didn’t do it, so we had to leave. He explained how they were going to kill George if they didn’t get out of town fast. His voice faded as he mumbled, We were only teenagers.

When I listened to my grandfather, I was part his granddaughter and part historian understanding the bigger plight of the African American in the United States. When we sat and just talked about his life, I was not mad, but understanding. I understood that we were all victims of victims.

Processing the plight of a black person in America, and having been practicing yoga for about eight months, there was only one place where I could fully trust life. It was at the end of a Hatha Yoga class, in the relaxation pose called Savasana. I didn’t have to be anything to anyone. I just was.

At the same time, I was both everything and nothing at all. I expanded outside of myself while simultaneously disappearing altogether. I was free. And every time I entered a class drenched from life, past and present, I would leave class feeling free because I just experienced a space where the truth of who I was could live without the intergenerational family shame. Every time I would leave class knowing that I was a spirit who has chosen to incarnate into this world as a black woman and role model of how to heal and love this life.

Please join me for a workshop on healing intergenerational trauma with yoga on Saturday, May 15 from 11:00am-1pm PDT. Click HERE for details and registration.

Saeeda Hafiz is a yoga teacher and wellness expert with certifications from the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centers and the Natural Gourmet Institute. As a holistic health educator with the San Francisco Unified School District, she focuses on sharing her 30+ years of knowledge in physical and mental wellness with diverse groups. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. saeedahafiz.com