Michelle Cassandra Johnson – författare

An essential manual for yoga teachers and students to create a trauma-sensitive practice that benefits and supports all.People are turning to yoga for its stress-reducing practice and transformative philosophy. But for those who have a trauma history, the practice can be triggering. The Essential Guide to Trauma Sensitive Yoga offers an inclusive approach to yoga for teachers and students of all ages and abilities, especially those who have experienced trauma. Some of the themes covered include:How do the impacts of trauma show up in yoga spacesSuggested language for shifting power to the practitionerHow to create an environment conducive to healingHow to practice or teach poses in a way that includes allAnd much more This book is beautifully illustrated with 260 photos of poses and sequences, modeled by trauma survivors who share stories of how yoga helps them heal. Land works with people of all ages, from young children to seniors, who are coping with a range of traumas including physical, emotional and sexual abuse, homelessness, genocide, and incarceration. She is a passionate advocate for making the benefits of yoga and mindfulness available to all.

Transform your yoga practice into a force for creating social change with this concise, eloquent manual of social justice tools and skills.  Skill in Action asks you to explore the deeply transformational practice of yoga as a way to become an agent of social change and work toward a just world. Through yoga practices and philosophy, this book explores liberation for ourselves and others, while asking us to engage in our own agency—whether that manifests as activism, volunteer work, or changing our relationships with others and ourselves. To provide a strong foundation to begin this work, Michelle Cassandra Johnson clearly defines power and privilege, oppression, liberation, and suffering, and invites you to make changes in your life that promote equality and freedom for all. This revised and expanded edition offers journaling practices and prompts in each chapter; includes more material on how power and privilege inform the yoga industry; explains how to integrate justice into teaching the eight limbs of yoga; and offers ways to support people as they move through their resistance and discomfort in the face of injustice. This edition also offers a fuller look at how the yamas and niyamas—the ethical precepts of yoga—can be studied in order to create a more just world, and it offers more support for yoga teachers seeking to radicalize their yoga.

Dissolve hurtful patterns and emotional hardship through the five yogic points of suffering, or kleshas.Includes powerful and practical meditations, mantras, asanas, reflection questions, and more, to reduce our suffering—and the suffering of others.We all get stuck in hurtful patterns that continue to create more suffering in our lives. In yoga philosophy, these patterns are known as the five kleshas. In this wise, practical guide, Michelle Cassandra Johnson offers us a path toward developing a deeper understanding of them and how they hijack us emotionally.The five kleshas are: ignorance (avidya); overidentification with ego (asmita); attachment to desire or pleasure (raga); aversion or avoidance (dvesha); and fear of death or letting go (abhinivesha). Each one leads us to create tendencies and karma that move us away from realizing and remembering our true nature and seeing ourselves as separate from one another and the planet. In yogic terms, this perpetuates a constant cycle of pain for us all.Readers will learn to:  • deepen their connection with self and others;  • look at their relationship and attachment to pleasure and aversion to discomfort;  • notice more fully how their actions affect others;  • meet each moment as it arises and ride the waves of life as they come;  • and much moreJohnson offers us a way to find a sense of clarity, groundedness, and equanimity within ourselves by working through the kleshas one-by-one using asana, pranayama, mudra, mantra, reflection questions, and meditation.

We’ve all heard the refrain to save the bees, but what if the bees can save us?Beloved equity educators, authors, and beekeepers Michelle Cassandra Johnson and Amy Burtaine invite us to contemplate this question deeply. By looking at bees as teachers, the authors draw us into an examination of our relationship with each other and the world at large. Honeybees illustrate communal interdependence, attunement to nature, coexistence with darkness, and so much more - lessons worthy of emulating within our own human world.In times marked by turmoil and uncertainty, honeybees offer a powerful example of how to turn toward each other, to deeply commit to creating conditions for survival of all beings, and to build a future where all can thrive. As Michelle and Amy write, “We won’t survive unless we remember our interconnectedness to all beings and change our ways of being - how we are to ourselves, one another, and the planet.”Weaving their expertise in nature-based shamanistic practices, beekeeping, Buddhism, and spirituality, the authors guide us through stories, meditations, reflection questions, and nature-based practices to help us bring the wisdom of the hive to our own lives and bodies. With each chapter, we learn more about the life of a honeybee, our own life, and our relationship to the collective as a part of an ever-changing ecosystem.