From the Mat to the Picket Line: Practicing Solidarity

📍 Why May Day Still Matters

I grew up just outside of Detroit—a place where almost everyone I knew belonged to a union. My neighbors, my friends’ parents, my own family. There was a shared understanding that dignity, fair wages, and safer working conditions didn’t just happen. They were fought for, together.

Over the years, I’ve had the honor of belonging to three different unions. And while no union is perfect, the truth is simple: without collective action, most of us would be standing alone against systems built to grind us down.

May Day isn’t just a day to celebrate workers. It’s a day to remember how much blood, sweat, and solidarity it took—and still takes—to carve out basic rights. It’s a day to honor the people who sat down, walked out, stood up, and refused to be disposable.

And it's a day to ask ourselves: How are we carrying that torch forward now?

🪷 On the Mat: Solidarity is a Practice

We’re often taught that yoga is an individual pursuit—personal strength, personal flexibility, personal peace.

But when we practice accessible yoga, we invite different bodies, different needs, and different ways of being into the room; we practice collectively.

We practice in solidarity. We hold space for each other. We honor difference without hierarchy. We recognize that one person’s flow might be another’s stillness, and both are equally valid, equally powerful.

In accessible yoga spaces, we learn to ask:
Who is here?
Who isn’t?
What barriers are still standing?
What needs to change so that more of us can breathe here?

This awareness isn't a detour from yoga—it’s the heart of it. It’s Karma Yoga in motion: the practice of showing up, not just for ourselves, but for each other, knowing that liberating this space for more people is the right thing to do.

On the mat, it looks like offering variations without policing or hierarchy. It looks like resting when we need to, not because we've earned it, but because we are allowed to be whole. It looks like practicing alongside each other, even when our shapes, abilities, and needs are different. It looks like remembering that the point was never to perform sameness but to move toward connection.

And off the mat? It looks like collective bargaining. It looks like fighting for fair wages and safe workplaces. It looks like standing against violence and genocide. It looks like showing up for each other, even when the struggle isn't directly ours.

Because no one’s liberation is separate. 

And every time we practice holding space for each other—on the mat or in the streets—we’re practicing for the world we want to live in.

🔍 Macro Lens: Our Rights Were Fought For—and Still Are

There’s a reason May Day exists. And it’s not because those in power woke up generous.

On May 4, 1886, workers in Chicago organized a peaceful rally at Haymarket Square to demand an eight-hour workday. A bomb was thrown, gunfire followed, and chaos erupted. Several workers and police officers were killed. In the aftermath, union leaders were scapegoated and sentenced to death, despite a lack of evidence. The Haymarket Affair became a global symbol of the fight for workers' rights and of the brutality faced by those who dare to demand better.

Every right workers have today—the eight-hour day, weekends, workplace safety, collective bargaining—was wrestled from the grip of systems built to exploit.

And it’s still under attack.

Under the Trump administration, sweeping executive orders were signed to gut union rights for federal workers, stripping away collective bargaining, gutting protections, and making it easier to fire workers without due process. It was a deliberate attempt to dismantle what generations of organizing had built.

But workers fought back. And the courts blocked those executive orders. A hard-won, imperfect, but vital victory.

The erosion of worker rights doesn’t happen all at once. It happens little by little. And every resistance matters.

When politicians strip bargaining rights, when corporations bust unions, when media celebrates the "grind," it’s all designed to keep us tired, isolated, and disposable.

But solidarity teaches us otherwise. Our bodies are not machines. Our lives are not raw materials. Our labor deserves respect—and so do we.

So this May Day—and every day—we remember: The attacks haven’t stopped. But neither have we. Every contract fought for. Every strike walked. Every union formed. Every worker who says, “enough.” Every time we stand up and stand together, we are building a better, more equitable future.

It’s solidarity. It’s continuing the fight for our siblings at Haymarket Square.

Meditation Offering: Breathing for Dignity and Solidarity

As we honor the fight for workers' rights this May Day, we remember: Rest is not retreat. Rest is part of the resistance. This practice is an offering to every breath that keeps us going.

If it feels accessible, we might find a comfortable seat or a place to rest. We can allow our bodies to be supported in whatever way feels nourishing today.

Perhaps we notice the inhale moving through the nose, and the exhale softening through the mouth.

Maybe we take another breath, feeling it as a quiet offering to ourselves. And as we exhale, perhaps we allow the body to soften a little more.

As we breathe, we might repeat silently or in a whisper:
I am more than my labor. My worth is not tied to my productivity.
My rest is an act of resistance.

There’s nothing to fix or achieve here. Only breathing and being.

With each inhale, we might honor our bodies' quiet work every moment—breathing, living, holding. And with each exhale, we might release the story that we must do more to deserve ease.

Together, we remember:
I honor the labor of those who came before me. I honor my own labor, seen and unseen. I honor my right to rest.

We might linger here for a few more breaths—no urgency, no agenda. When it feels right, we can gently bring our awareness back, carrying these truths with us.

Find an audio download of this meditation on Patreon.

🪷 This Week’s Practice: Still Fighting, Still Breathing: Flow & Restore

This week’s practice is about honoring the breath that carries us through struggle, grief, and resistance—and the body that carries that breath. We’ll begin with a gentle flow to reconnect breath and movement, releasing some of the static that builds when we’re carrying too much. Then we’ll ease into fully supported restorative postures to offer the nervous system spaciousness to soften, digest, and remember itself.

No performance. No "earning" your rest. Just breathing. Moving. Being.

Suggested props:
2 large pillows or 1 bolster/couch cushion
2 small pillows or yoga blocks
2 blankets or towels
Optional: an eye pillow or scarf for covering the eyes, cozy layers, extra cushions for support.

We can practice on the mat, in a chair, or on our bed. This practice welcomes you exactly as you are—wired, tired, grieving, raging, hopeful, numb. All bodies and all states welcome.

👉https://youtube.com/live/YBeqC49smEk?feature=share

And Finally….

May we move together with fierceness and tenderness, on the mat and in the streets.
In rest and resistance,
Shannon