Find Joy and Healing Through Connection
How can we heal and find joy in times of isolation, grief, sadness, and fear? Michelle Cassandra Johnson shares spiritual teachings drawn from the Bhagavad Gita, mindfulness practices and rituals to show how to build community, summon support, connect with nature, and thrive.
Michelle Cassandra Johnson is an author, activist, spiritual teacher and practitioner, racial equity consultant and trainer, and intuitive healer. Michelle teaches workshops and immersions and leads retreats and transformative experiences nationwide. As a dismantling racism educator, she has worked with many different organizations for over two decades. Michelle has written several books including the one we are discussing We Heal Together: Rituals and Practice for Building Community and Connection. She also has a podcast, Finding Refuge.
Website: MichelleCJohnson.com
Social Media: @SkillinAction
#kriyayoga, #yoga, #BhagavadGita, #community, #connection, #oneness
THE YOGA HOUR TEAM COMMENTS: It was such a pleasure listening to Michelle Cassandra Johnson share about her new book, We Heal Together: Rituals and Practices for Building Community and Connection. I was inspired by her ideas about how to reconnect with others and bring community into our life after the isolation of the pandemic and the collective grief that we experience because of global events and pain from personal experiences. I appreciated how she shared that studying the Bhagavad Gita has informed her understanding of our Oneness with each other and all of life. Acknowledging the deep connection between the individual and the collective, she encourages us to build community for healing. She shared how ritual is an important tool to heal together. She gives us great examples of rituals that we already do such as holidays, family cookouts, but also shares specific rituals for healing that help us connect to our wholeness so that we are aware that we are loved and not alone.
DR. TRUJILLO’S COMMENTS: I enjoyed speaking with Michelle Cassandra Johnson about the power of healing within our communities, as it is a natural outgrowth of the Oneness that is at the heart of yoga philosophy. As she pointed out, we belong to each other, so thinking of ourselves as separate from the One is an error in perception. She writes: “we are not broken…While many things need to be repaired in our world, we are not broken. We are whole, and part of our work toward collective liberation is remembering our collective wholeness and that we are interconnected with every other living being and the planet.” I find this very inspiring.