Kendra Coupland, a Black yoga teacher based in Vancouver explores burnout and how activists can make their social justice work more sustainable by pacing themselves and being mindful

When our nervous systems are overwhelmed, we do not become more revolutionary. We become reactive. We repeat. We end up harming or recreating the very systems we seek to escape. We burn out. Movements fracture. Regulation is not about sedation nor is it about obedience and discipline. It is certainly not about pretending everything is fine. When I say “regulation” as a meditation teacher what I am referring to is the capacity to stay.

My Tantric practice has widened my capacity for nuance, teaching me how to love fully without falling into self-abnegation or abandoning boundaries. My practice has become my refuge, a place spacious enough to hold my hurt, my rage, and my fierce, sacred love, and all of the mysterious ways that grace arrives to me.

"When we meet Durga, we are not meeting a distant, mythic warrior goddess. We are encountering the force of consciousness that lives within each of us — the part of ourselves that knows how to act with courage without losing compassion, how to stand firm in love even as we face what feels unbearable."

The popular association between each cakra and a color from the ROYGBIV spectrum (red to violet) isn’t found in the original yogic texts. These assignments came much later—popularized by Theosophists in the 19th and 20th centuries and cemented by authors like Anodea Judith in the 1980s.

Kendra Coupland is featured in The Narwhal’s photo essay: ‘Purpose and power’: Meet 10 BIPOC Adventurers Challenging Ideals of Who Belongs i

Committing to a daily yoga practice can be challenging. Here are 6 tips to help you maintain your yoga practice over the long run.

Most classical yoga texts like the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali or the later Hatha yoga manuals were written and transmitted by male practitioners, often ascetics.So it’s not surprising that menstruation was rarely discussed in any text; it simply wasn’t part of their lived reality. Some practitioners may feel compelled to keep up their practice. Others may feel compelled to rest. Yoga asks us to listen to our bodies in real time, and be responsive.

Self-care is a radical act. Self-care is about prioritizing the things we need to not just survive, but thrive, and those things don’t need to cost a ton of money. Here are six free self care practices you can do today.

To make reparations, is to repair or make right a situation in which someone has been harmed, and you have played a role.

What does it mean to be humble? Kendra Coupland, Vancouver yoga teacher, explains.

In order to choose love fully, we must turn from fear, hatred, and from the discomfort of breaking free from a culture based in non-love. In order to choose love we must be willing to sit with everything which makes us turn from love and close down.

Padma mudrā works specifically with the anāhata (heart) cakra. When we practice padma mudrā we make a conscious choice to cultivate a more loving attitude towards others, within the matrix of our own consciousness.

Choosing love means choosing compassion when it would be easier to shut down. It means choosing honesty when it would be easier to perform. It means choosing presence when it would be easier to distract. It also means taking responsibility. I have to check in with myself constantly. There isn’t a finish line where I “arrive” at love and stay there effortlessly. It’s a practice. Sometimes a difficult one. A question I return to, again and again, is simple: Is this an act of