These days, it can feel an awful lot like the ground beneath us (and our democracy) is cracking.
Threats to human rights, the planet, and the future we dream of howl like wolves outside the door.
And the pace of information is relentless. Designed to exhaust us, make us feel helpless, and keep us from fighting back.
But we are not powerless.
We can resist. We can take care of ourselves and each other. We can remember our shared humanity. And we can keep our eyes on a future worth fighting for.
I had intended to have a section of the February edition of Resourcing the Revolution dedicated to resources I’ve gathered over the past couple of weeks. But the amount of hopeful writing, sobering revelations, and actionable guides got… well… a little out of hand.
So, instead, this post is a living repository of voices — writers, thinkers, and revolutionaries — offering wisdom, strategy, and perspective.
I’ll keep updating the list of resources as I find more (which I’m sure will happen often).
Let’s start with the mid-month missive I wrote for newsletter subscribers at the beginning of February:
There are times along our journey when we stop and think… What. The. Actual. Fuck.
The past four weeks have seen a torrent of change. Like the crashing of a thousand waves, all at once. Hardly time to take a breath, much less gather yourself before the next one comes crashing down.
And (I believe) this is all on purpose.
The magnitude of change happening in front of our eyes has been designed to overwhelm us. To cause us to withdraw. To stick our heads in the sand. To fear. To spiral in anxiety. To sow division and chaos.
With a firehose of information headed our way every minute of every day, and from every possible direction, it’s important to choose our sources of information carefully (as well as how much you allow into your sphere).
Remember, we can’t do anything if we get so overwhelmed that we shut down. Pay attention, but in ways you can manage long-term. Burned out and in shock… that’s not going to inspire anyone else to join the fight.
As Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, “Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”
When choosing your news sources, look for both factuality in reporting and tendencies toward bias. (And follow the money; who is profiting from you believing what they’re “selling”?
There are two big names in understanding media bias:
There are several places I check regularly, as well as some of the writers I’ve included in the list below:
WTF Just Happened Today calls itself Political News for Normal People. It’s a breakdown of just that: what happened, links to news sources, and “notables” if you want to dig deeper.
Letters from an American is a Substack written by Heather Cox Richardson, a professor of American History. I’ve been told that mostly progressives have been sharing her work, but I personally don’t see much bias.
The Alt National Park Service page on Facebook. I’ve been following them since 2016, and now that things have gone seriously sideways, they have been a line on what’s really happening inside certain US Government agencies.
We (the People) Dissent is a bulletin board, a collection of information and announcements on upcoming protests, boycotts, call campaigns, and strikes. Their pledge — to keep it simple and provide a variety of ways to engage.
Here’s an interesting take about what’s flawed in the mainstream American media’s coverage of this new administration:
“I’ve long believed that the American media would be more clear-eyed about the rise and return of [47] if it was happening overseas in a foreign country, where we’re used to foreign correspondents writing with more incisive authority.“
And before we get into the heady section of this post, a thread of good news (for Democracy).
Now let’s get into the four other categories of resources, starting with resistance.
Defy and Resist
We analyzed the literature of protest and spoke to a range of people, including foreign dissidents and opposition leaders, movement strategists, domestic activists, and scholars of nonviolent movements. We asked them for their advice, in the nascent weeks of [this] Administration, for those who want to oppose these dramatic changes but harbor considerable fear for their jobs, their freedom, their way of life, or all three.
There are some proven lessons, operational and spiritual, to be learned from those who have challenged repressive regimes—a provisional guide for finding courage in [47]’s age of authoritarian fear.”
Right now, in 2025, everything feels chaotic. Disorganized. Like there are a million things to do, There are protests, petitions, news articles, social media rants—we are calling, sending postcards, emailing representatives but nothing is actually moving the needle. Worse than that, no clear leaders, no singular force is pulling us all together. It’s all a swirl of sound and fury that that signify nothing. Or so it seems.
Take heart—this isn’t a sign of failure, it’s a sign of where we are in the process. We’re still in the early stage of this movement, and at the start, every social movement feels like this—scattered, frustrating, impossible.
But here’s the thing: momentum is building. And it might help to see how.”
This is the entire point of Operation Flooding The Zone. As these new elites syphon funds to their own late-stage collapse coffers, they need us – the masses – to be tied up in distracted, overwhelmed knots. They need us to miss the *actually substantial* orchestrations amid the scatter-gun Shit. And they need us to give up, tune out, disassociate and to go…consume.”
It may feel like a lot of our Democratic legislators are being quiet and not doing much. But AOC has some words for you:
If you’re looking for some great databases of the ongoing resistance (as well as some other useful resources) here’s a thread on Bluesky of where to start:
Jason Kottke has a writeup of a few other writers talking about “The Information Overwhelm,” a tactic often referred to as flooding the zone with shit:
Let’s be clear: the narrative that Americans are sitting idly by, doing nothing in the face of injustice, is a lie. The government and corporate media have a vested interest in making you believe that protests aren’t happening, that mobilization isn’t occurring, that we have all simply accepted the state of things. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. […] The fact that you don’t see it on mainstream news isn’t proof of inaction—it’s proof of suppression.
Corporate media, social platforms, and government entities suppress footage, de-rank protest videos, and minimize coverage of demonstrations. They want to make it seem like resistance is futile, like no one is fighting back. This is psychological warfare. If you believe that you are alone, you are less likely to take action. If the world believes Americans are complacent, they are less likely to stand in solidarity with us. This is a deliberate tactic to make us feel isolated and powerless.
History has shown us that when the people rise, change is inevitable.“
The fascists like to call people who care about others ‘snowflakes,’ but I know that you know what happens when enough snowflakes come together. Creating a storm, becoming an avalanche, these things are not easy. Like JFK said, you do it because it is hard. Become a snowflake, join with others, and relentlessly resist.”
If the U.S. ever found itself in a situation where an invading force—or, say, a homegrown authoritarian regime—managed to get its hands on the government, what would we do? If every federal agency, every institution that keeps this country running, suddenly fell under hostile control, what would resistance look like? France already gave us the playbook. Let’s take some notes.”
Our enemy is apathy, cynicism, and fatalism; the pernicious, authoritarian-friendly belief that we are merely victims of world events rather than active participants in a global struggle for freedom and justice. Every time one of us—a family member, a community organizer, a representative, a senator—takes a step forward in this fight, a thousand pairs of eyes watch and learn. Courage is contagious.”
My definition of defiance is ‘to act according to your true values when there is pressure to do so otherwise.’ We say integrity, benevolence, and compassion are important, yet we don’t always act like they are. We can be compliant in ways that impinge on those values. We want to consider: Does the situation go against our values? That’s the key question. If it does, if it’s something that you would not feel comfortable with, then that is the moment to defy.”
“Perhaps the most effective tool in responding to misogyny is the strategic question. These questions serve a dual purpose: they shift the conversational power dynamic and force reflection from the person making inappropriate comments.”
Democracy is in grave peril, but it is not dead. Fascists depend on convincing us to give our power away and fall in line, that the fight is over and we lost. And while we must be clear-eyed about the threat, we must not do the fascists’ work for them by giving them powers they do not have.”
People are doing things. You will meet those people when you start doing things. […]
There is no magical way out. We are reaping what has been sown by many, many years of inattention to the eroding foundations of our democracy and we must face it.”
At the end of the day, when the dust settles, the actions that good people take or don’t take determine the outcome. While that may not seem reassuring or comforting, it’s powerful stuff. There is still time to steer the future in the right direction.
You are the future and you can create a just, equitable world if you are willing to do your part – and that is the only reassurance I can give you.”
Here’s how to be really annoying, according to the CIA:
A declassified World War II-era government guide to “simple sabotage” is currently one of the most popular open source books on the internet. The book, called ‘Simple Sabotage Field Manual,’ was declassified in 2008 by the CIA and ‘describes ways to train normal people to be purposefully annoying telephone operators, dysfunctional train conductors, befuddling middle managers, blundering factory workers, unruly movie theater patrons, and so on. In other words, teaching people to do their jobs badly.'”
Will Americans recognize what is happening, or will they be sufficiently distracted, pacified, or misled by their billionaire overlords into inaction. Social-media platforms have one purpose, which is to keep people attached to their devices. It does not matter to them if what they are showing people is real or factual; what matters is that no one stops scrolling.
The goal is to keep Americans in that cage. The purpose of this cage is to make companies a profit, but we are now entering an era when the government is pressuring them to keep Americans docile, obedient, controlled, and, in some cases, hopeless, ‘spinning on an endless hamster wheel of reactive anger,’ as the journalist Janus Rose put it.”
Only two institutions stop leaders like these, the military and the people. […] These are foreign to American political instincts. We have never needed to dig for this tool. But that is about to change. We need to greatly expand our resistance toolkit, and quickly, before [47] dismantles everything our 248-year experiment in multiracial democracy has built.”
No group of people is entirely to blame for what’s happening, and no group of people is totally without responsibility for what’s happening. But every group, and every individual, has a part to play in making things better now. […] Starting with the Founders and moving through all the chapters of American history, the souls of all the greats who have been among us are calling out to us now: You’re on. Don’t fuck this up.”
I wrote this for people who, like me, have spent much of the past few weeks hoping that somebody else would do something bolder in this political movement. We are downtrodden because we’re full of rage and heartbreak, but the polls tell us that our neighbors don’t share those feelings. We realize we’re seeing something that so many aren’t, but we’re not sure how to bridge the gap. We have wished (appropriately) for bravery from our media, from elected Democrats, from public officials in general. However fair those wishes are, they come with a risk: that we miss the opportunity to be the lonely voice for justice in our own community, the person who makes it a little easier for a second and third and fourth lonely voice to start perking up by our side.”
Along with the 5 Calls App I mentioned in the linked Mid-Month Missive, there are also other call scripts floating around.
Here’s one that will help you contact your representatives and senators and tell them to vote against ANY government funding bill until the administrative coup is ended.
Take Care of You (and Yours)
Back in the good ‘ole days when I was no stranger to marching and civil disobedience, I wrote the following guide to self-care for activists:
Let’s face it: being involved in days of large-scale action doesn’t exactly lend itself to an environment that is beneficial or conducive to self care. In fact, it’s often exactly the opposite. Long days, most often outdoors, with a stressful lead up… that often end up with us crashing afterward. We push ourselves so hard getting to the finish line that our bodies often collapse right after, leading to sickness and general exhaustion.
But what if there was a way to alleviate some of this stress, and make our participation in days of action a little bit easier on our bodies, and a little bit more fun in the process?”
We are very clearly in a lot of emergencies right now. They demand action. But action demands thought and thoughtfulness: who are we, what are our values, our goals, our allies, our possibilities, and our powers? What can we learn from those who’ve faced similar crises, what’s distinct about this one, and what equipment is at hand? […] Sometimes even in an emergency, or rather especially in an emergency, meditation as gathering ourselves and deepening our understanding is exactly what we need to do.”
The changes of this time require of us our grief, for all things must change and should rightly be mourned. It might even be that the grief is what opens us, what rouses us from our slumber into a charged state. In mourning we can also begin to incorporate into our waking awareness the truth that our reality is but a segment or aspect of a much greater reality, a reality that is always speaking to us in a language that our bodies can understand, for it is a felt experience. And if we do not give the paradigm of the day authority over our own experience, and allow the Mystery to blossom within us, something wild happens.
The world that is now crowning in our collective Imaginal realm, the world that will become in this next age, the Age of Repair, this world can begin to take root in the here and the now. We can begin the work of bringing it forth.”
Dr. Stephen Porges, who developed Polyvagal Theory, explains that when we’re in a chronic state of fight-or-flight, we start seeing everything as a threat — even things that aren’t. Our bodies stop distinguishing between an actual crisis and a perceived one. We can’t think straight. We make impulsive choices. We either shut down completely or live in a constant state of simmering panic. And yet, despite everything, we have to keep moving. We have to find a way to stay present, to stay engaged, to stay here.”
Hatred and outrage make me sick. They steals my creativity. They exhaust me which is part of the ruling party’s plan — grind me down so I feel powerless and give up. Hatred erodes everything I hold sacred. It changes me into someone I don’t want to be. […] Join me in refusing to let hate corrode our hearts. To warp our brains with fear, fear that others try to profit off. Let’s refuse to reduce ourselves to being less than human, and everybody else as well.”
This can mean not trying to go full tilt at a speed that was comfortable for your younger self — or maybe just your ideal self. This means being very realistic about where your body is and where your creative practice is. This means literally slowing down […] and also slowing down our expectations.”
I’m not sticking my head in the sand, but I have increased somatic practices to mitigate the dysregulation that’s been creeping in. I can’t afford to let my health suffer more than it is and I don’t want to be driven to paralysis or overwhelmed by fear and anxiety, which will lead to degrading my sense of hope that a better world is possible.
There are small, simple things that we can do repeatedly everyday to help build capacity within our body’s nervous systems. I say this while also acknowledging that some people are dealing with more than others on physical, practical, and material levels, and that no bodies are built for this. What I’m offering is something small and accessible to all that can help to resist the deregulation we are being made to feel.”
Five Ways to Create a Calming Political Environment: Resisting authoritarianism requires endurance, but most people opposing [this administration] aren’t doing enough to protect their own resilience. While we can’t manage everything, we can be intentional about the factors that shape our emotional resilience. In doing so, we won’t just feel better—we’ll build a stronger, more effective movement.”
What do we know about fear? The first predictable characteristic is that fear always begets more fear. First, what you fear can easily be associated with other similar but different things. If you are afraid of the dynamics of one conspiracy theory you can easily fall prey to others until that is your reality, everything is going to kill you. If you know this you can easily set traps for people and make them more and more afraid and the more they are afraid the more you can control their behavior.
Second, that it is catching from others like a virus. This is the motive behind mob behavior. Notice that every one of them is afraid of annihilation one way or another. That is always lurking behind the human experience. The cure for the fear of annihilation is to finally get annihilated and find out that it didn’t hurt, it didn’t actually work, and that you are perfectly fine without the burden of an ego that is constantly threatening you. This is where the Taoist sage laughs long and hard.
Fear then is not necessary to human survival at all. What is necessary is to be mindful, discerning, and prudent in the situation.”
I had behaved exactly as they expected a leftie intellectual to behave, thus missing an opportunity to invite any new or even exciting ways of thinking about issues they already engage with. Rather than surprising them, I had confirmed everything they thought they already knew. I had done everyone at the table a disservice—me, a journalist who has made it her job to have difficult conversations. […]
We are all going to be confronted with incredibly difficult conversations with people we disagree with to such an extent their existence feels like a threat to our safety—and in many cases it is. Aside from casting a vote, we can do nothing … to address the systemic inequalities that generated such a vast ideological divide beside how we choose to have these conversations.
And converse we must. Remember the wisdom of David Graeber who said the moment we think we cannot talk to another human being is the moment we have decided they are no longer human. Language makes us human; we enact violence on that we consider to be less than.”
Listen. It’s gonna be a weird bad day. It’s just the first of the weird bad days.
And if we’re being honest, it’s not even the first of them, it’s just another in a long line of weird bad days where the weird part and the bad part are spiking simultaneously, like an outbreak of a particular kind of illness. It’s not just turbulence on a flight, it’s a turbulent flight, from start to finish, snout to tail.
But we can get through it, we can land the plane.
This country is a mess, it’s always been a mess, always will be a mess, but it’s our mess. We’re with it, in it, and have often helped to make it, and that’s not defeatist, that’s not apathetic, it’s just realist to see that we’re a fucking goofy nation that has stumbled and staggered up and down some big hills and into some mucky fucking ditches. Just try to remember we need to climb the hills to see the beautiful views, you know? And first we gotta get up and out of the damn ditch. Beyond that? I think at the end of the day the people we’re with, that we surround ourselves with — that matters.”
Thing is, it just doesn’t work like that. People individually are messy and we’re not pebbles on a train track able to derail the entire train just be existing as a pebble. Things are fucking shitty out there and it’s okay to feel like they’re impossibly, overwhelmingly shitty and it’s further okay to say how things feel impossibly, overwhelmingly shitty. You don’t need to correct someone’s feelings, because feelings aren’t facts.”
If the ruling class has learned anything from history, it is that as long as they can divide the poor, they will stay rich. They pit rural workers against urban workers, white against Black against Latino, women against men, immigrants against native-born, all while they consolidate wealth and power at historic levels. Both major parties in the US are doing this, and the only winners are the wealthy elites.”
What I’m writing about here is the hazy idea of collapse. It’s come into my intellectual consciousness (and algorithm) slowly over the last few years, and more intensely recently. But before that was a feeling that came much earlier, and it’s one that may sound very familiar to you.
It’s a nagging sense that has hung over modern life since 2020, or 2016, or 2008, or 2001 — pick your start date — that things are not working anymore. And that waiting for them to get better after the next Most Important Election of Our Lives, or another war to end, or a new economic recovery cycle doesn’t seem to be having the desired effects. […]
Seeing the world change so quickly in such a short amount of time in 2020 jolted something awake in me. Collapse, though I may not have called it that at the time, felt breathtakingly close. It no longer made sense to me to pursue the same version of success I had up to that point. Even though I was covering the travel industry critically and aggressively, the entire premise of friction-free, carbon-intensive travel started to feel like a relic. No matter where I worked or who published my work, I wasn’t sure I would ever be allowed to fully articulate what I believed the problem was.
The good news is that the work of doing this is not some kind of grim disaster preparedness. It can actually be very joyful. Indeed in writing about connection, care and how to build a village over the last year, I realized I’ve been writing about collapse already.
So what does that look like? It’s worth pointing out that in Bendell’s definition I shared above, he does not say collapse is the end to sustenance, shelter, security, pleasure, identity, and meaning — just that it’s an end to our “normal modes” of acquiring all those things.
So start thinking today about how you can attain some of those things elsewhere, from non-monetary or transactional means.
Indeed if you lean into collapse awareness, you might be surprised how those small steps I listed above start to expand and morph. How you suddenly have more energy to engage in the kinds of things you didn’t before — even the incrementalist politics of There. How you care about different things. How it feels much lighter than you expected.”
SNARF stands for Stakes/Novelty/Anger/Retention/Fear. SNARF is the kind of content that evolves when a platform asks an AI to maximize usage. Content creators need to please the AI algorithms or they become irrelevant. Millions of creators make SNARF content to stay in the feed and earn a living.
We are all familiar with this kind of content, especially those of us who are chronically online. Content creators exaggerate stakes to make their content urgent and existential. They manufacture novelty and spin their content as unprecedented and unique. They manipulate anger to drive engagement via outrage. They hack retention by withholding information and promising a payoff at the end of a video. And they provoke fear to make people focus with urgency on their content. Every piece of content faces ruthless Darwinian competition so only SNARF has the ability to be successful, even if it is inaccurate, hateful, fake, ethically dubious, and intellectually suspect. […]
Unlike the platforms, we care about internet content and know that it moves culture and the world forward. We have an opportunity to fight back against SNARF and bring some joy and fun back to the internet.”
A biocentric philosophy places all life at the same level as human life. This philosophy recognizes that we are all equal, all deserving of a place to live, to eat, to have shelter, and an ecosystem in which to thrive. Ecocentrism zooms out a bit and says the entire ecosystem is equal to the human biosphere and the ecosystem as a whole has a right to sovereignty and life.
While these shouldn’t be radical ideas, because we also depend on that same ecosystem to survive, they really are quite radical.”
I’ll leave you with a take about Senator Cory Booker’s historic filibuster from March 31 to April 1st from Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
“The point of Senator Booker’s filibuster is to be INSPIRED by this man to go find YOUR ROLE, not to wait for them to go save us now.”
The point of Senator Booker's filibuster is to be INSPIRED by this man to go find YOUR ROLE, not to wait for them to go save us now. That is not this assignment.Thread of places to go to get started. More coming out of LiST this Thursday.
As we’re becoming increasingly aware by the day, the fight for democracy, justice, and a livable future isn’t a sprint — it’s a marathon.
And the fact that you’re here, seeking knowledge, building resilience, and finding ways to take action, proves something powerful:
You haven’t given up. We haven’t given up. And we’re not alone.
This repository will keep growing, just like our collective power. Keep coming back when you need guidance, strength, or a reminder that resistance is not futile — it’s necessary.
Take what you need. Share what resonates. And most importantly, keep moving forward.
(If you haven’t seen the comic, go take a look. It’s beautifully done.)
I felt resistance around the idea. It grated — how can a human claim to never be happy? Isn’t that one of the built-in experiences that comes along with these bodies and minds?
The way Matthew sees it, there is no middle ground. You’re either happy or unhappy.
Happiness is a permanent state. Once achieved, “you get to sit atop your giant pile of happy forever.”
I think part of why I had a hard time with his explanation is because I see a looser definition of the word — I see an entire spectrum of emotion where happy and unhappy are just points along the graph.
And maybe that’s what he’s actually getting at.
Matthew says that the definition of happy doesn’t work. “It’s a monochromatic word used to describe a rich, painful spectrum of human feeling.”
What I do agree with is this: the way we use and define words has a massive influence on us.
Language is a gray area
Even with all its complexity, human language is often not cut out for describing things that you feel or experience on more than a physical level.
And yet we so often get caught up in the idea that we have to strive to be “happy” or “content”.
I have a hard time with certain words.
“Content” is one of them. To me, the word indicates settling, allowing ourselves – or pretending – to be okay with a situation that is less than ideal.
“Busy” is another. I cannot stand this word, and what it has come to mean. It’s an indicator that our lives are full of stuff we’d rather not be doing, or that other people are making us do. That there’s no time for the important things. That time is slipping away, out of our control.
How can you be more cognizant of the words that you use, and the story that those words are telling about your life?
How yoga can help
Yoga and meditation both help you ride the waves of life.
You don’t struggle to avoid the lows.
And you don’t scratch and claw and bite to stay up in the highs.
Instead, you do your best to go with the flow. To shake off the bad times, and to enjoy the good ones while they’re here.
You allow yourself to be totally in the moment, experiencing every bit of the emotional spectrum — but not allowing yourself to become attached to or defined by those emotions.
Unraveling the human experience
So maybe Matthew is right.
Maybe we should all do things that are meaningful, even if they don’t make us happy.
Because isn’t that what this whole human experience is about?
Experiencing it?
You experience life from within the lens of your life.
And I have a different experience because my internal landscape and life story are different.
And that’s a beautiful thing.
How can you be more present to the experiences that life brings your way? And do you have words that you feel are limiting by their very definition? Let me know in the comments!
Whether to write it. How to write it. What to write.
It’s tough out there. We live in this beautiful, amazing, vibrant world, that’s sometimes full of grief, sorrow, rage, and unspeakable tragedy.
And when tragedy strikes, in whatever form, sometimes it’s hard to know how to respond.
Sometimes it’s hard to find any words that can even begin to express the depth of what’s in our hearts.
The media fans the flames by focusing attention on the biggest, baddest, boldest — there’s something to be said about the power we give something negative when we focus so much of our energy on it.
I’m not saying that we should bury our heads in the sand, or that it’s wrong to feel whatever emotions we happen to be dealing with.
So during weeks (months, years) like this, I choose to fully feel the sadness in my heart, in my gut…
But I also choose love.
Love, for the amazing diversity of life in our universe.
Love, for our global human family.
Love. Full stop.
I end every yoga class that I teach with this, from the Integral Yoga tradition:
May the entire universe be filled with peace, and joy. Love, and light.”
How can we expect to create a balanced, sustainable world for ourselves and future generations if those of us who are creating change are doing so in an unsustainable, imbalanced way?
Fellow change maker,
Our time has come.
For too long we have stood by, mired in the fight, watching as the world heaved in chaos around us. With each passing day we dug in deeper, clenched our teeth and put that much more of ourselves into the effort. As time passed, we found that the struggle was starting to wear on us, to create cracks in our strength, and we considered giving up. And we woke again the next morning with the enormity of our task weighing on us: “If not me, who? If not now, when?” We braced ourselves, took a deep breath, and shouldered our burden anew. We reassured ourselves with the thought that we were making a difference, laying ourselves on the line, giving ourselves up for the greater good.
Because, really. Our fight is important. Imperative, even. The future rests in our hands, and we have this moment, this fleeting opportunity to turn things around, to be the change we wish to see in the world. What could be more important? We are but one small piece of a grander vision and if we have to sacrifice ourselves to make the world a better place, that seems to be a worthy way to have spent this life…
Right?
But sometimes we get this flash of an idea, this glimmer that maybe things don’t have to be this way, maybe we don’t need to be martyrs for the cause. We hear a voice that raises the question: what if? We start imagining the possibilities, but then our old ways of thinking win out again, and our imagining turns to what will be possible after we win this fight, what could be, if only this one last step could be completed, this last set of conditions could be reached. If only. And we think – maybe we’ll get there one day, but not yet.
And again I say to you, fellow change maker: our time has come.
What if there is a better way to create the change we wish to see in the world, and what if it’s possible right now? What if we can step outside the current system and create a new possibility, a new paradigm?
I believe that the best way for us to bring positive change into the world is to create it within ourselves.
I don’t have all the answers, but we each have to start somewhere. I invite you to come along on this journey with me, where we can begin to discover a new way of bringing our positive change to the world by first cultivating it in ourselves. Together, we can find a simpler and more sustainable path to creating positive impact.
Gone are the days of us flinging ourselves upon the pyre of our cause, flaming brightly for but a moment before we are reduced to ash, used and burnt out, unable to continue on our path. What if, rather than burning out, we were able to create a sustainable path to change? Instead of the current revolving door model of change making (where on one end, fresh faced and energetic young dreamers come in the door and systematically turn into the jaded, burned out souls who come out the other side), what if we were able to create an ever-growing ocean of balanced, energized and empowered change makers?
My goal for the Rebel Yogi community is to reach out into the world, empowering thousands of world changers to improve their lives through yoga, while also creating a sustainable life balance as they make their lasting mark on the world.
This is the future that I see, the possibility that I believe in – and I can’t do it alone. I believe that, with yoga, we can change the world – and I see the possibility that we can create together by bringing the Rebel Yogi way of life to changemakers all over the world. Thank you for your company along the path, as we create this journey together. The community starts with you and our shared journey as we learn how to increase our impact in the world while decreasing the impact on ourselves, and then share those stories with each other.
I started working on the manifesto for Rebel Yogi back in February.
Yes, it has taken me almost seven months to finally give myself the kick in the ass I needed to get it finalized and out into the world. To be honest, I kept falling into the “all or nothing trap,” thinking that it had to be perfect before I could put it out into the world. Long story short, it’s been a struggle to ship.
Along with the manifesto, I have included the invitation that some of you may recognize from the funding campaign that I ran back in the spring. It felt fitting to share the words with you again, since the manifesto goes hand in hand with the invitation to join the Rebel Yogi revolution.
And, please share the manifesto far and wide. Our time has come!
A grand adventure starts in just under four weeks.
Three weeks and four days, to be exact. Not that I’m counting.
On Sunday, April 13th I will start my basic yoga teacher training at Satchidananda Ashram-Yogaville in Buckingham, VA. This training will be one of the first major steps along the path to bringing Rebel Yogi to life. This has been a project a lifetime in the making, and I wanted to give you, my earliest readers, an idea of what’s to come.
For the next few weeks, I will be writing here, sharing the origin story of Rebel Yogi – a peek behind the curtain, to where and how it all began. This story is only in the opening chapters, and the journey will be curated, laid open for all to see, to share and to join in the expedition.
During my time at the Ashram, I will do my best to share a weekly update here on the blog and any small daily musings on social media; that being said, the schedule is incredibly full, and time will tell how much “free time” I will actually have to sit and write! Don’t worry – anything that I don’t post up during that month will see the light as I’m able.
My daily schedule from April 13 until May 11:
AM
6:00 Meditation
7:00 Hatha Yoga
8:30 Breakfast
9:30-11:30 Morning Program (in classroom)
PM
12-12:30 Meditation at LOTUS shrine
12:45 Lunch
1:30-2:00 Free time
2:00-3:00 Study
3:00-6:00 Afternoon Program (in classroom)
6:00-6:30 Meditation or restorative yoga
6:30 Dinner
7:30-9:00 Evening Program (in classroom)
10:00 Lights out – Silence until after morning Hatha Yoga class
The eventual goal for the Rebel Yogi community is to reach out into the world, empowering thousands of world changers to improve their lives through yoga, while also creating a sustainable life balance as they make their lasting mark on the world – basically, learning how we can save the world without burning out in the process.
I’ve watched too many friends and colleagues burn fast and bright, only to flame out young, drained and unable to continue their amazing, world changing work – something has to give!
One step, one foot in front of the other – I’m glad that you’re along for the journey. Let’s get to work, fellow change maker!
It’s been about a week and a half since I arrived back on the east coast, and I have some confessions to make.
Being at WDS was such an intense, joyful and fast-paced experience that when I got home, I suffered from a bit of a crash. And when I say “a bit” I mean that I pretty much fell apart for a while. I lost the motivation to do much of anything – everything back home felt washed out, devoid of the crackle of energy and adventure that had pervaded my previous two weeks. I imagine it’s why adrenaline junkies keep going out and doing intensely crazy things; once you experience the high, the rest of life kind of pales in comparison.
I came back to dead plants, unpaid bills, searing temperatures, a mountain of unread email… looking at the relative monotony of everyday life, all I wanted to do was curl up under the covers and cry. Why couldn’t the rest of the world be as phenomenal as those few days? During that crash, I lost my appreciation for those things I have been cultivating so carefully over the past couple of years. I forgot about my accomplishments, I couldn’t see the future in the projects I had in the works – I was wrecked.
From hearing the stories of other folks who were out in Portland this year, I get the impression I wasn’t alone. There were lots of great stories from the people who had taken the momentum gained during that weekend and flown out of the gate, grasping life by the reins and bending it to their perfectly planned will. And then, there were the rest of us. We ranged from those who were so inspired by the weekend and the people, but had literally not a clue on which direction they were headed next, to those who had been on paths, but had been momentarily sucked into rough seas, spun about and spit back out, left unsure of what came next (or if the current path was actually the right one).
Last year, I moved to Asheville, NC not long after WDS. This wasn’t some grand plan spun during a moment of inspiration at the conference – I had been planning the move since the spring. I think the enormity of that move was enough to give me something to focus on when I got back; it felt like I had a definite direction. I didn’t have a real plan, per se, just the idea that I needed to give myself the opportunity for a fresh start, a leaping off point for the adventures that lay ahead.
This year, I specifically didn’t have many plans past the conference, because I figured that I would come out of the weekend with some new spark, potentially some new direction.
So here I was, a year later, adrift in the sea of possibilities that lay ahead. And, instead of being super excited about this life I have created – the business that I have been running for just over two years, the local and national organizations I’m involved with, the amazing friends and family who love and support me, the fuzzy dog who was so excited to see me when I got back – I crashed. Hard.
I won’t go into the gory details about how I pulled myself out of my funk, but let’s just say that it involved copious amounts of tissue and a few of the special people in my life. (Moving on…)
To the other people who feel similarly adrift after WDS, I can only say that you are not alone. I don’t know the answer to how we each find our ideal path, but I imagine that it will be different for each of us. I have come to realize that it’s not about the knowing – certainty is nice and all, but I think that it’s the journey of discovery that ends up being the important part of our lives.
So much of my life over the past several years has been about learning and growing, living passionately, and figuring it out along the way. I may never be completely comfortable with not having the complete picture, but I do know that being able to see every day of the rest of my life is NOT what I’m interested in. I’m learning to love the adventure. So, for now, I’m settling back into the everyday. My dreams are still as big as ever, and I’m figuring out how to make them come true, one day at a time. I hope that you are doing the same.
It’s been about a week and a half since I arrived back on the east coast, and I have some confessions to make.