Our Founder, Ghylian Bell was featured on mindful.org’s 12 Powerful Women of the Mindfulness Movement. Check out what they had to say!
Reclaim Community as Integral and Diverse
Ghylian Bell
Founder, Urban Yoga Foundation
When Ghylian Bell talks about mindfulness, she can’t help but talk about interconnectedness. She remembers how hard her elders worked. “Understanding the hard life they had, that was carried in their bodies but not in their spirit, was another vehicle of mindfulness for me. It just blows my mind to recall the kind of love and commitment to family and to work they had, even carrying those bodies that had kind of fallen apart.”
“I got you, I see you, I see you bleeding, I see you open, I acknowledge you, I’m holding you, and now I’m going to get up and take care of you.”
Bell started Urban Yoga Foundation in 2007, naming it intentionally. “The urban environment to me is multifaceted and multicultural. And yoga is union. With our practice we’re bringing back the union of multifaceted, multilayered, multicultural communities—it’s an opportunity to reclaim our community as integral, diverse. Because people are feeling it. They are either going to feel included, or they are going to feel excluded by the nature of how we step in.”
Bell also sees an opportunity for healing, if we’re willing to acknowledge our pain. “When a child falls and that booboo is raw and bleeding, the first thing that kid does is grab that knee and hold it, probably puts their head and face down near it to kiss it. There is comfort in the holding, there’s acknowledgment in the rawness, there’s direct connection to the pain. When a parent says: ‘Oh get up, you didn’t hurt yourself,’ that child can say: ‘But I did, and I get to see my knee, and say I got you, I see you, I see you bleeding, I see you open, I acknowledge you, I’m holding you, and now I’m going to get up and take care of you.’ And then I can walk, and then I can run, and then I can keep going.”