Social Justice and Yoga: Preventing Burnout

Human beings are not designed to absorb reality shifts at internet speed.

There is a kind of urgency that comes with caring about social justice. Once you start seeing things more clearly, it can feel impossible to slow down. You want to read everything. Understand everything. Fix everything. Right now.

And in a lot of ways that urgency makes sense. When harm becomes visible, it’s hard to accept patience.

But I’ve been thinking about how we actually take in new ideas and new realities. Especially ideas that challenge the way we were taught to see the world. Sometimes it feels like we are trying to eat a whole Christmas dinner during a 15-minute work break.

Not just a plate of food. The whole meal. A full roasted turkey. Stuffing. Potatoes. Vegetables. Cabbage rolls. Gravy. Pie. All of it.

Even if you were really hungry, it would be too much. Not just to eat, but to digest. And that’s the part we don’t talk about enough.

Learning about injustice isn’t just learning information. It’s not like memorizing a list of facts. When someone really starts to understand things like racism, colonialism, patriarchy, or economic injustice, it often shakes the foundations of how they understood the world. Those ideas don’t just sit in the mind. They move through your emotions, your relationships, your sense of identity, your memories of how you were raised.

That kind of change takes time to integrate.

Right now we live inside a constant stream of information. Articles, videos, threads, posts, podcasts, call-outs, hot takes, historical context, breaking news. All of it arriving at once. Every day there is another thing we are supposed to know, respond to, and have the correct position on immediately.

It can start to feel like if you are not processing it all fast enough, you are failing morally.

But human beings are not designed to absorb reality shifts at internet speed.

When a person encounters an idea that really challenges them, something complicated happens inside. There can be defensiveness. Confusion. Shame. Curiosity. Resistance. Grief. Sometimes all at the same time.

Those reactions are not always signs that someone refuses to learn. Sometimes they are just signs that the mind is trying to reorganize itself.

Integration moves slower than information.

We can download new facts quickly. But understanding what those facts mean for how we live, how we speak, how we relate to other people— that takes longer.

Movements for justice absolutely need urgency. Without it, nothing changes. That said, people also need space to metabolize what they are learning—to sit with discomfort. To notice where their old assumptions were. To slowly build a new way of seeing.

If we demand that everyone swallow the whole Christmas dinner of social awareness in fifteen minutes, a lot of people will choke. Others will shut down. Some will pretend they finished the meal even though they barely tasted it.

Real change is more like digestion than consumption. You take something in. You sit with it. Your body works on it. Slowly, it becomes part of you. And once it becomes part of you, you don’t have to force it anymore. It changes how you move through the world.

Part of what makes a Christmas dinner so special is that no one is rushing. There is time. People linger at the table. Conversations wander, laughter spills over, someone tells a story they’ve told every year and everyone still listens. The meal is shared, held by the whole group. And when the food is passed around, you choose what goes on your plate. A little of this, more of that, maybe you skip something entirely. Afterward no one expects you to jump up and run back to work. There is space to sit, to talk, to walk around the block, to slowly digest what you’ve taken in. Maybe learning and integrating new ways of seeing the world needs to look a little more like that too.

And even before everyone gathers around the table, there is all the work that made the meal possible in the first place. A Christmas dinner doesn’t just appear. Someone planned it. Someone shopped. Someone spent hours chopping, stirring, roasting, mixing, and baking (let’s face it Christmas is largely woman-powered).

Even before that, there were farmers raising turkeys, growing potatoes, harvesting vegetables. Bakers, truck drivers, grocery workers, all part of the long chain that brings food from the farm to the table. The meal carries the time and labor of many hands.

Maybe learning and change are like that too. The insights we share didn’t appear out of nowhere. They come from years of organizing, studying, storytelling, and lived experience. There is preparation behind every “new” idea we encounter. Just like the meal, it’s something that has been slowly prepared long before it reaches our plate. If we want to metabolize what we are taking in we have to actually give ourselves time and space to digest and absorb it, and ultimately assimilate that knowledge into our being so that our actions match our knowing.

---

An Offer, From My Heart to Yours:

If learning and unlearning are more like a shared meal than a speed-eating contest, then the container matters. We need time to prepare the meal. We need time between bites. We need conversation. We need space to notice what is landing and what isn’t. We need room to sit with discomfort without being rushed past it.

I’ve decided to offer a six week program as a starting off point to do exactly this. The intention behind this six-week container is not to overwhelm anyone with more information. There is already more than enough information in the world. Instead, the hope is to create a place where we can slow down. Where we can give ourselves a little bit of room to digest everything we’ve been taking in.

The meditation practices in this series are short, simple and accessible, designed for people who consider themselves “bad at meditation”. Each session includes guided 30 minute meditation, a short contemplation, and reflective prompts to help participants metabolize and integrate their own experience.

The contemplative practices in this series are inspired by the nondual philosophies of Kashmir Shaivism. In this tradition, the word Pratyabhijñā (prat-yuh-bhi-jnyah) means “to know again”, and refers to the recognition of our own awareness as something already present and fundamental. Rather than trying to achieve a special state, this practice invites us to notice what is already here: the field of awareness in which all thoughts, emotions, and sensations arise. Participants can expect a supportive and inclusive environment where personal exploration is encouraged.

No prior background in meditation or philosophy is required.

Classes will be held online each Friday at 6:30PM from April 3rd to May 8th, and will include guided meditation, teachings, and time for self-reflection.

Real perspective changes rarely happen in a single conversation or a single article. They happen slowly, through reflection, dialogue, and the quiet work of integration.

This six-week space is meant to make room for that kind of change. If you are interested you can register over at:

To Know Myself Again Meditation Series

Save 20% with the coupon code “substack” at the checkout.