Over the summer, I was about 20 days into the Breathe Together Yoga’s 84-day challenge. Not even a quarter of the way there, I would have thought. But, having done one of these challenges before, I knew that the external milestone is nothing in comparison to the inner journey. 

I took Alyssa Prettyman’s class during the day time. In recognition of the ongoing racial injustice, we were all trying to both absorb and take action. I was frozen in absorption. She asked us to meditate, for eight minutes and 43 seconds, the amount of time the police had a knee pressed on George Floyd’s throat. Alyssa challenged us with this meditation, to use these eight minutes and 43 seconds to hold hope.

The realization of just how long eight minutes and 43 seconds is was excruciating. It was hard to sit with. Tears strolled down my face. Anxiety hit me. My heart beat faster. I wanted to get up. I felt the pain of that want. To have the choice to get up and walk away from the discomfort is privilege. I am a very brown-skinned girl, and I’ve been embarrassed by my own immense privilege. Hope didn’t hit me this day.

It hit me a week later. My employer launched a new mentorship program working with youth. I wanted to apply to it, but I had so many things to do that day – emails flying, Slack messages pinging me at work, kids tapping me on the shoulder at home, text messages popping in on my phone. I remembered: eight minutes and 43 seconds of hope. I took a few deep breaths. Put everything else aside and started the application. It took less than 10 minutes. As I started writing, I realized that this hope, this thought, this action was more important than anything anyone else needed from me at the moment. The world faded away as I focused, submitted, and changed – not because of the outcome of the application but the ability to reprioritize this action over everything else. 

It’s usually not on the mat where you see the shift. I knew that shift was not a temporary shift. It was day one of looking at my service to my company’s diversity and inclusion efforts much broader, with higher importance and value. Those shifts are permanent. When you feel them, you are changed.