The Book of Hope
Hello my friends & Happy New Year!
I hope that you had a lovely holiday with friends and family and now are ready to return to our regularly scheduled programming...yoga!
Early in December I was gifted The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams. It's an interview between them from early 2020 and it focused on Jane's story and world events. As the interview got underway, the pandemic intervened and added another layer of interest to the story.
The question that the book tries to answer is:
In a world that seems so troubled, how do we hold on to hope?
I've been considering this question for the past few weeks. The national and international news hasn't been great and it is so easy to take a deep dive into despair. I really don't want to go there.
So what can I learn about hope from Jane Goodall?
Jane acknowledges all of the environmental, economic, and resource inequities in the world. Those issues can overwhelm all of us. But she believes that we can hold on to hope with our intellect, our indomitable spirit, our resilience, and the power of our young people. She knows that the work is hard and the journey daunting, but it can be accomplished.
“Hope does not deny all the difficulty and all the danger that exists, but it is not stopped by them. There is a lot of darkness, but our actions create the light.
It is important to take action and realize that we can make a difference, and this will encourage others to take action, and then we realize we are not alone and our cumulative actions truly make an even greater difference. That is how we spread the light. And this, of course, makes us all ever more hopeful.”
Yes, we must cultivate hope.
And how will that translate into our yoga practice over the next few weeks? Our practice this week will focus on physical strength. We've got to be strong to change the world! As always, we will develop our resilience. We will connect to our higher selves and work to shine our own light.
Please join me.
Love & hope,
Nina G