How to Speak Up in Difficult Moments
lionsroar.comHow to Speak Up in Difficult MomentsA Buddhist practitioner recounts standing with interfaith clergy outside an LA detention center during ICE actions, speaking unprepared to riot-geared LAPD officers about the fear he sensed in them. He traces how the Eightfold Path, particularly Wise Speech and sila, helped him move past lifelong co✦ Read ad free and get the full MichaelFilter · $5.50Part of the MichaelFilter
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Unlock the full reading · $5.50 →A Buddhist practitioner recounts standing with interfaith clergy outside an LA detention center during ICE actions, speaking unprepared to riot-geared LAPD officers about the fear he sensed in them. He traces how the Eightfold Path, particularly Wise Speech and sila, helped him move past lifelong conditioning to stay silent and avoid conflict. The piece argues that ethical action requires not just refraining from harm but actively speaking up, grounded in compassion.
Teaching:
• Frame yamas (satya, ahimsa) the way the author frames sila: not rules to memorize but a lived operating system that shows up in cueing and conflict
• Use the somatic-response angle in class: when a student meets a difficult posture, the work is sitting with the fear response, not bypassing it
• Coach students that practice builds the capacity to say what needs to be said, on and off the mat, including with teachers and authority figures
• Offer a class theme on 'finding where your feet are' as a reactivity circuit-breaker during charged moments
Writing seeds:
• Essay: Wise Speech for yoga teachers, on when to correct, when to stay quiet, and when politeness becomes harm
• Post: 'I'm not dead, so I'm not done' as a counter to spiritual-completion narratives in modern Ashtanga culture
• Shala Daily entry on the trapeze-net metaphor: practice as the foundation you fall onto when old conditioning drops away
• Essay connecting dukkha as 'inability to be with what is' to the chair-pose moment when students negotiate with reality
Idea map:
• Systems literacy parallel: the Eightfold Path as an interoperable stack where one factor reinforces the others, like the tristana
• Embodiment thread: noticing fear waves in the room mirrors MJH's work on proprioception and shared nervous-system fields in the shala
• Practice as method: ethical action is rehearsed daily, not improvised in crisis, which is the same case he makes for asana
• Attention training: the author's ability to feel others' fear is a downstream product of contemplative attention, MJH's recurring theme
Source: https://www.lionsroar.com/how-to-speak-up-in-difficult-moments/
Teaching:
• Frame yamas (satya, ahimsa) the way the author frames sila: not rules to memorize but a lived operating system that shows up in cueing and conflict
• Use the somatic-response angle in class: when a student meets a difficult posture, the work is sitting with the fear response, not bypassing it
• Coach students that practice builds the capacity to say what needs to be said, on and off the mat, including with teachers and authority figures
• Offer a class theme on 'finding where your feet are' as a reactivity circuit-breaker during charged moments
Writing seeds:
• Essay: Wise Speech for yoga teachers, on when to correct, when to stay quiet, and when politeness becomes harm
• Post: 'I'm not dead, so I'm not done' as a counter to spiritual-completion narratives in modern Ashtanga culture
• Shala Daily entry on the trapeze-net metaphor: practice as the foundation you fall onto when old conditioning drops away
• Essay connecting dukkha as 'inability to be with what is' to the chair-pose moment when students negotiate with reality
Idea map:
• Systems literacy parallel: the Eightfold Path as an interoperable stack where one factor reinforces the others, like the tristana
• Embodiment thread: noticing fear waves in the room mirrors MJH's work on proprioception and shared nervous-system fields in the shala
• Practice as method: ethical action is rehearsed daily, not improvised in crisis, which is the same case he makes for asana
• Attention training: the author's ability to feel others' fear is a downstream product of contemplative attention, MJH's recurring theme
Source: https://www.lionsroar.com/how-to-speak-up-in-difficult-moments/
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