#4-002: Black Yogi on Fire - How to Free Yourself with Christopher “Yogi Rev” Simms

This week, we're super excited to share our latest chat on the Mother Tree Network with the one and only Christopher Sims, or as we like to call him, Yogi Rev. He's an awesome mix of a fiery Baptist minister and a serene yoga teacher. Trust us, you're gonna love his vibe!

What’s Inside This Episode:

• Standing for Justice: Yogi Rev and I dive into what it really means to stand for racial justice and human rights, with some cool insights inspired by Dr. King.
  
• Mind-Body Connection: Ever wondered how those yoga poses could change your life? Yogi Rev breaks it down, showing us the magic of connecting body, heart, and insight.
  
• Gentle Yet Deep: Forget easy. Gentle means discovering deeper layers—whether in yoga or life. Yogi Rev shares how this approach helps us grow in self-love and understanding.
  
• Sharing Your Gift: Got a talent or passion? Yogi Rev challenges all 8 billion of us to find and share what makes us tick. Dedicate just an hour a week and see where it takes you!

With the spring equinox just around the corner, I invite you to our master class and soul journey to help your dreams sprout and thrive. It’s all about creating a solid, loving foundation for whatever you’re building.

Sign up for the Spring Equinox Master Class.  Fertilize the soil of your being first! 🌿

You can find out more about Yogi at his website: https://www.inkwellyoga.com/

TRANSCRIPT:

 [00:00:00] So we're here for an intimate conversation and exploration with Christopher Yogi Rev. Sims. I met Yogi Rev. When I was on the beach at Martha's Vineyard during Black August, which is a time when a lot of Black people descend on Martha's Vineyard, which is normally a very New England, not so Black kind of space.

 And there we are, we get on the beach.

Just what I want you to do is just take a moment to imagine 100 Black people on the beach. All different colors, ages, body shapes. And a few people of other ethnicities thrown in.

And after that first experience, I was like, we got to come here every day. We're back. We're coming back every day. And I think after the second or third time, I went up to Yogi Reva and said, Would you like to have lunch? Could we invite you to our house for lunch or dinner or [00:01:00] anything? And, he was very kind, a little aloof, but eventually accepted an invitation to lunch.

And and so that's what began an exchange. So Yogi Rev, welcome, thank you for being willing to be in this exploratory conversation with me and us about racial justice, about human emancipation.

Thank you, Dr. Kemp. You are one of the most generous and kind people I've met. Ever.

Yogi Rev, one of the things why I was I'm so moved. Is because my meditations have been telling me that we need to go through the body, go through the body to get to the heart to then drop into the insight rather than go from the mind and think things through and have little arguments back and forth with ourselves or other people.

 The type of yoga that I teach comes out of the Himalayan [00:02:00] tradition.

It's called Hatha yoga and many times persons will say of Hatha yoga. He holds the poses too long. And what I like to say, we take our time getting into the pose. And then allowing the pose to get into us. And my objective in teaching yoga is hopefully that it not be just a style of life, but a way of life in that increasing the size of the mat, where we are in poses and postures and holding them, getting into them, becoming them.

Sometimes it's difficult, but if we can learn to [00:03:00] breathe there, we can learn to breathe in difficult places off of the mat. The many of us in the West, we Came to yoga for by and large, the physical reasons, even the corporate reasons. The Lululemon reasons. We've come to the mat. I plead guilty in that I was doing tight.

No, I didn't come so I could get Lululemon pants. No I plead. Yes, Christina. I plead guilty in the sense that I came to yoga because of a right hamstring issue. I wanted to get it stretched so I could continue my journey. In tai chi, which I was taken at the time but when I came to yoga and I took [00:04:00] my first yoga class at the end, that class becomes what's known as Shavasana, the final pose, the corpse pose.

In that pose, laying there, I felt something that I had never felt before, and I later discovered what I had felt was me. I felt my body, in a way, I had never felt it before, and dare I say, for the first time. We don't pay a lot of attention to our body beyond prepping it or cleaning it or whatever until if you get a bite, a sting, a fall, a scrape you're there.

You're there. You're all there. It hurts. It, it bothers me or [00:05:00] whatever's going on. You dial in. What I discovered with yoga early was my body as it was and the journey. began there with it. The studying of it, just to throw out the words for the purpose of this discussion. There is asana.

There is that means poses. That means that's the posture word that is suggestive on every pose. If you're standing in Tree poles in Sanskrit. It's Tata. Tadasana. All of the words end in asana. Now that word, asana, through its etymology back through Sanskrit and all of the ancient writings, means [00:06:00] to sit.

But it is not just chair sitting. The sitting was suggestive of stillness. So that. Incorporated into the understanding of holding the pose is finding stillness in the position, wherever you are, and then translating or transferring that into your existence off the mat, or in or on a larger mat of your existence.

 Wonder if other people on this call are feeling it. Like when you talk, I feel something you know how they say I feel you pointing towards something and and I think we say this in racial justice from the heart, we say you can't give what you don't have, and I feel like there's a space from which you come that [00:07:00] is underneath the words.

The words are just pointing us towards something. So I just wanted to say that out loud. I feel to me, that is the fundamental thing is where you're coming from, and the words are just helping us to ride with you, or to get on your bus. And you, there are things that you say when you are, leading us through asanas.

One of them is I'm with you, girl, maybe you could just say a little bit about that and maybe how that also applies to life.

Off the mat, wonderful question as I'm preparing myself for all of the following questions to be wonderful. I'm being with you that comes out of the first lesson that I teach beginners yoga. The first lesson is to be present. [00:08:00] That's the first lesson of yoga. To be where you are at that moment.

And I like to say often that We are all headed toward the perfect asana, and by and large, we are experiencing the perfectness of it today in our body, whether your knees are bent, or whether your heels are down, whether your back is bowed, convex or concave at the wrong places, whether a wrist is an impingement.

At that moment, sometimes there's a person struggling and I want them to know that they are not alone in that struggle. I [00:09:00] am with you now in your struggle. I am with you where you are. We're here together now.

Whether your down dog is perfect or whether your down dog needs Lots of work, but it is the perfect one for your body. And I am with you in it right now. And so I'll say that to an individual that they not feel. Not just so they not feel, but they not feel alone. I can't get that. That's why when I teach, it is not mine to teach from models.

It is mine to discipline myself. For better cues because all of our bodies [00:10:00] are different. All of our journeys are different. All of our pains are different. And if you are seeing what's considered perfect, you may think I can never get there because this impingement I'll never lose. I've always had this problem with my hip or I hurt this leg so long ago.

Hey, and by the way, I came to yoga over 20 years ago with the bad hamstring. Guess what? Still bad.

Sometimes the thing that pulls us in. It's just the thing to get us there. It's actually not the main thing at all. It's just, it's yeah. So beautiful. Yeah, the solidarity. I am with you. I am with you. I see you. And I love what you said. That did remind me. You're right. I've never seen you do a single pose.

 . We function in a very mirroring way. [00:11:00] over against an inner development and inner trust. And this is a word that is important to my journey and liberating was how I've lived comparatively over against the authentic nature. That is me.

Okay. Now, okay. Now let's go deeper on that one. So living comparatively over and against your authentic self, say some more about that. Two different ways of looking at yourself or being with yourself.

Are you who you've been made to be? Authentically, or are you the product of a developmental process, whether it's [00:12:00] by family, by culture, by ethnicity. Who are you? A few years ago, a young lady asked me she said to me what

do you do when you are not Yeah. Yeah. Teaching yoga on the beach because she's saying she figured I wasn't there all year and I was very hesitant she's about 21 years old, and I thought about it.

How to answer that question as truthfully as I could. I says, don't take this the wrong way, but I mean it exactly the way I'm about to say it. And I said to her, whatever I want to. And she says I want to do that. It's okay, you won't be able to do. This is [00:13:00] what I said to her, what you want to do until you do what you are supposed to do.

My point. To her was doing what you're supposed to do by those giving you instructions of going along is filled with lessons. When I was a young kid, my father was working on the brakes of the car and he had me to get a wrench or something. I couldn't find the right wrench that he wanted. And he got it and came back to the car and was fixing the brakes.

And he says you better learn how to do this or it's gonna cost you and I made up in my mind right then and there. I'm gonna have to make some money because I ain't gonna ever figure out how to [00:14:00] do this. He was giving me some of the supposed to do. But there were some things that I wanted to do.

I wanted to go in the house that, that cold December evening while he was out there working on the car. My hands was cold, and I'd rather be in the house instead of holding the light so he can see. But I was supposed to be there, if for no other reason to tell you all about it, because I sure didn't learn how to fix no brakes.

supposed to do. So what I wanted to do was always becoming, I wanted to fly, and I'm still working on it. Levitate, I'm still working on it. There are a number of things that I want to do. And I'm trusting that I've learned well enough of the supposed [00:15:00] to do to go forward.

And so we can get caught, Dr Kemp We can get caught up in what we're supposed to do and miss our entire lives living the supposed to do without ever Fully embarking upon what we want to do, which I hope for all of us is the thing we've been created to do.

Okay. Now I know some people on this call are knowing why I have insisted on the name Yogi Rev, but I'll keep moving forward. You say gentle is not easy in your gentle yoga class. And I feel like there's something about that also transfers to life. Gentle does not mean easy. So can you [00:16:00] say what is gentle then?

And why should we be gentle? Gentle affords one an opportunity to go deeper than the instruction is given in that.

For example, if I have you to sit, you can just sit. But if you are secure in your sitting and not having to make Any further adjustments, you can then go to the breath while sitting, or you can begin to sense other parts in a deeper way while sitting. For example, If I say to you, inhale and exhale, [00:17:00] I still have students and we have conversations after through email who talk about you're still saying inhale into your hand.

I, when I inhale my neighbor naval goes in. And when I exhale, my belly comes out. Now, this is gentle, but it can become intense when you're trying to work on that. It can become like A difficult thing to do. And once you get the operation of inhale filling, feeling the expanse of the abdomen, I'll say release the pelvic floor.

If you're still working on getting your buttocks, that's just enough gentle for you right there. But I can go deeper with others by saying, [00:18:00] Release the pelvic floor upon inhalation and fill the pelvic bowl, and as you exhale into the belly, draw up the pelvic floor, finding a deeper pose. In the gentle class.

So gentle is relative. Yes. I was, I think one of the reasons why it struck me is because in, facial justice from the heart, we talk about being gentle with ourselves. So it is about being with what is there being present, being with the breath and not trying to force something that Not trying to force something.

Amen. Yeah. And so when we think about racial bias, we think about internalized white supremacy, things that just saying the words cause little pieces of my body to go clench, tension rises. [00:19:00] And so if we're being gentle with it we want to be able to see iT.

without trying to kill it or without trying to stamp it out. We want to be with it in a gentle way. And what I hear you saying is go deeper. And when you gentle, you can do one thing like you can sit. And as you get that together, then you can go a little deeper level and you can get your pelvic.

Bold, then you can go a little deeper level, that's just what I'm hearing when I'm thinking about transferring it, for what's happening over here.

Because poses come and go. Wrists hurt, neck hurt, belly ache, back hurt. That can happen any day of the week. And you cannot do the asana. But in my class, the first thing we do is be present. Let us begin [00:20:00] gathering ourselves to this place, to this space, and be here now. Yes. . Lesson two. Let us begin observing our breath, inhaling and exhaling through the nose.

Is your breath smooth or is it choppy? Is your breath deep or is it shallow? Let's find it being smooth, even deep, without noise, without Paul. Now sit there and breathe. For the next hour. Would you consider that gentle? Yeah. I consider it simple. But it might not be gentle. I wouldn't consider it easy.

Let me put it like that. That's that's the point, of where, and [00:21:00] of what yoga is. Yes. Here's something else I've noticed about you.

There we were at the beach doing what we're doing. We're I'm totally. Totally out of shape. Do what we're doing. And what I hear you saying is you're wonderful. You're beautiful. You're looking good.

And I've been thinking about this like in the world of racial justice, I'm affirming ourselves and affirming other people like I've been thinking about. So in racial justice in the heart, we practice acknowledging ourselves. So we acknowledge ourselves. I acknowledge myself for, rising and being here.

I acknowledge myself for having the courage to ask you to have lunch with us. Acknowledge ourselves. I know many things you could acknowledge yourselves from. So that's just part of the journey to self love in some ways and self compassion. It's just by [00:22:00] acknowledging yourself and checking in.

 And I'm going to make this a little more risky by saying that one of the things that I've been thinking about when teaching racial justice with white people is where are The shout outs, like you're beautiful.

You're looking good. I'll tell one more story because I'm kidding at this in a circular way. I was at a white privilege Institute, big conference in Philadelphia. It was my first time there. The audience was primarily white. Which I think makes sense for what that conference was about and black woman famous on YouTube Renee Meyer came out and she said to, as she came onto the stage, she said, everybody was clapping.

And she said, look at you. You're so beautiful. And there was such an awkwardness in the audience. And what I felt was. [00:23:00] This primarily white group of people feeling no, not us. We're, we're sucky white people, honestly, I'm just being straightforward. That's for real. And I was thinking to myself what about this?

 I've grown tired of

The race conversation. It's exhausting. It is distracting to the fullness of human potential. How many people, how many generations of people have been wasted with this distraction of race?[00:24:00]

A bunch.

The issue is not just to fix that distraction. The issue is about what do we want to be as humans.

There is this gentleman that speaks he's a Analyst of on one of the TV shows, a professor at Princeton, he talks about America and it's soon constitutional crises. And his words that I appreciate are. We have to choose, in America, what we want to be. Whether it's [00:25:00] going to be what we were, there is that, a great again notion, or what was working that's not working, that we have to figure out how to make work again.

Do I want what someone else have? This is that comparative piece, which will, in some ways, create a guilt in me. Maybe, if I'm living. In a way of comparativeness,

and I'm exhausted, I've put in time. I was I did an internship at the King Center the year [00:26:00] that with Mrs. King, the year that Martin's Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I didn't know him personally. It's became a national holiday. I was there a junior year of college. I was there and I worked there then.

So I put in the time I was raised almost not with the intent, but by the example and what was before me, meaning the struggle that we constantly are in as a people, and it just seems so silly. And we're so taken in by. Yet. I'm grateful for all that has been done, but I'm tired of content. What more needs to be written to communities of faith than the letter from a Birmingham jail?

What? Don't you get there? [00:27:00] What more needs to be written by a James Baldwin about the struggle of it? It doesn't matter if you are anything but white, how you are not white. How long does this same silliness, how long will it continue to distract? Us from one reality that we are all of one blood

and I'll close with when I got to this point of exhaustion and don't be fooled to think my exhaustion doesn't have me thinking, reading, following all that continues to be. But when that young man went into the church in South Carolina. And shot those people [00:28:00] and was taken out to McDonald's and got something to eat before to jail.

I was done. I had nothing more to say. For me it became, for me, the people of that race had to make a decision about who they were gonna be. What more do you want me to do? How far do you want me to march? I'm exhausted. I have nothing more to say other than what Dr King says. Let me Quote him from his book.

Where do we go from here? Chaos or community. He said, we've inherited a great house, a world house in which we must learn to live together. Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Protestant and Catholic, [00:29:00] Muslim and Hindu, a family unduly separated by culture, interest, and ideas, who, because we can never again live apart, must somehow learn to live together in peace, unquote.

Now, his piece was probably the piece that we have all embraced, which was the opposite of chaos. But I have come to this place now in my life where I say, any piece that has an opposite is not sustainable. Woo!

 The racial justice from the heart, my dear sister, it is, you're working from the perfect place. You're working from the perfect place. Just work from the perfect place and go forward. But if you are If [00:30:00] being equal means an equal opportunity to exploit, really,

I'm just saying if, if I don't want the equal right to exploit you as you have exploited me. I'm ready to go past that. Let's

I speak for me.

 You have other potential you want to explore. Yes. Dr. Kemp, we all have other potential to explore. We're all pieces. In this one puzzle, we're all gifted

where all of us, [00:31:00] all of us, everybody has a gift and I'm excited about everybody's gift. 

Every all 8 billion of us. If we've reached that number, I just heard somebody say it. I was fascinated by it. All 8 billion of us. We're only hungry because we choose not to feed each other.

We're not hungry on this planet because there's not enough.

We're hungry because we choose to not feed.

Yes. Okay. I rest my case. Yogi rev. Okay. So moving for it. I want us to transition to something you said to me because our time is coming. We're wrapping up time. But [00:32:00] you said to me a challenge. And you said you just now you said all 8 billion of us have a gift.

 I think we all have a gift, all 8 billion of us. And it's important to all of us. There's nothing better than really being able to find your gift. And what is your gift? Your gift is that thing you'll do whether you're paid or not. Just thinking you're just excited about.

Your gift. And so what I came to this concept of is take one hour a week when you find your talent or your gift.

One hour of the same day, of , the same hour, two o'clock on Tuesdays. Take that And give your gift for one hour for six [00:33:00] weeks.

That's it. That's all.

Okay. So what I love about this is that Yogi Rev has given a job to 8 billion people and it starts with this call. Just think about your gift. Just maybe don't spend too long thinking about, Oh, is this my gift? Is this my, we can spend a lot of time like that.

But just, maybe take a week and then plunge, take a plunge. And I'm going to do it. I'm first. I'm going to take a plunge. So if you are willing to take a plunge with me, send me an email and let me know what you're going to do or just that you want to take the plunge.

Peace and love. Bye bye everybody. . Namaste.