A Queer Dharma Chat and Flow
WITH JACOBY BALLARD
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About: A Queer Dharma Chat and Flow With Jacoby Ballard In this workshop, A Queer Dharma author Jacoby Ballard will begin by leading us through an asana practice featuring the radical practice of lovingkindness, and participants will be invited to experience A Queer Dharma from the inside out. What armor must you set down to truly invite all beings into your heart? What kind of self love must you do in order to be exactly you in this world, given any projections or stereotypes placed onto people that hold pieces of your identity? And can we lean into the teaching that "hatred does not cease by hatred, but by love alone", meeting oppression with "soul force" as MLK Jr said in his Christmas Sermon on Peace, refusing to participate in retributive dehumanization, but rather loving difficult people into their goodness? After the asana experience, we will take a body break and then Jacoby will read from his book, which is divided into two parts: A Queer Dharma that explores the Brahma Viharas and accompanied teachings on anger, letting go, and forgiveness, and Queering Yoga, which puts forward critiques of mainstream yoga spaces and ways to manifest a truly collectively liberatory yoga practice and yoga community. About Jacoby Ballard: Jacoby Ballard is a social justice educator and yoga teacher on Shoshone, Ute, Paiute and Goshute land now known as Salt Lake City, Utah. He leads workshops and trainings around the country on diversity, equity, and inclusion. As a yoga teacher with 24 years of experience, he leads workshops, retreats, segments in teacher trainings, teaches at conferences, and has been an artist-in-residence on dozens of college campuses. In 2008, Jacoby co-founded Third Root Community Health Center in Brooklyn, to work at the nexus of healing and social justice. Since 2006, Jacoby has taught Queer and Trans Yoga, a space for queer folks to unfurl and cultivate resilience and received Yoga Journal's Game Changer Award in 2014 and Good Karma Award in 2016. Receiving prenatal yoga training in 2021, Jacoby now offers a Queer & Trans Centered Prenatal Yoga online and LGBT inclusion workshops in prenatal yoga teacher trainings so that queer families can be anticipated and supported in their process. Jacoby has taught in schools, hospitals, non profit and business offices, a maximum security prison, a recovery center, a cancer center, LGBT centers, gyms, a veteran’s center, and yoga studios. He is the author of A Queer Dharma: Yoga and Meditation for Liberation, released in 2022, a critical love letter to teachings and practitioners of yoga and Buddhism, and serves on the board of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. More at www.jacobyballard.net |
