Sex trafficking is unarguably the shadow side of humanity. It is so gruesome and so disgusting that 2-3 million children and women are enslaved for sex that it is difficult to utter the words “human trafficking”, watch the documentary exposés such as ”The Day My God Died“, or feel into the depths of despair that survivors have faced. Yet, I feel that it is our privilege and our responsibility as yoga practitioners to recognize ourselves in even the darkest of situations, and therefore to find our way into them, rather than avoid or escape them.
Let me explain. Seva is sometimes said to mean “selfless service”, but after engaging in the Seva challenge for Off the Mat, Into the World and having the privilege to be of service both to my community in Dallas by co-creating One Love and to a community of townships in South Africa, I can only truthfully acknowledge that although my conscious motivations were selfless, the outcome was instead an exchange of empathy, of recognition, and of love. Through seva, I got served. To engage in giving to another human being is also to receive, and when we are open, we receive big.
We practice yoga so that our body parts can feel connected to one another, and then so that our breath can feel connected to our body, and then so that our mind can feel connected to our breath, and then we learn that our hearts are also connected to our minds and to our bodies and suddenly, after months or years of practice, it finally begins to occur to us that this yoga is not at all about the pose we are or are not able to attain physically, it is about the alignment of our mind with our heart, the alignment of our intention with our action, the alignment of what we think and feel with what we do and say. Yoga is about integrity. For me, that has meant being willing to use my yoga practice as a way of excavating the parts of myself that have not been or are not in alignment…the shadow: dark parts of myself that would be much easier to turn away from or deny were I not committed to finding them. Excavation turns ugly, fast. Using yoga to see within caused me to see that I can be self-centered, dogmatic, unforgiving, judgmental, cowardly, and secretive, amongst other shameful qualities that I would never want to acknowledge to myself nor to anyone else. Yoga practice is a way of linking up all of the parts of me so that I can choose my actions with ahimsa, with non-harm to myself or to others. The more I know about myself through the willingness to see inside, the more likely I am to be able to become the loving, gentle, patient, kind, generous woman that I strive to be. It is through bringing the dark into the light and dousing it with grace that allows me to love, and to experience love. What a journey, and what a privilege.
So, how does this yoga relate to sex trafficking in India, and why should we participate in the empowerment of survivors of enslavement? To me, yoga is not only about connecting to ourselves, bringing the dark shadow of our own psyches into the light so that we can be more loving, it is about connecting to the world around us in a way that acknowledges that we are mere reflections of the world. We are the survivors of sex trafficking, and we are the pimps of sex trafficking. We each have every capacity within us, and just because so many of us have had the privilege and the karma to have avoided being put into the circumstances of having to live out one of those roles in this lifetime, we each have felt overpowered, victimized, betrayed, beaten down, exploited, and ashamed, and we each have felt seductive, enraged, selfish, separate, fearful, and insecure. Because we have the capacity to feel the ways the abused and the abusers might feel, we also have the capacity to have empathy. This allows us, as yogis, the unique privilege of being able to reach into the despair of the situation of sex trafficking where others would necessarily turn away from it out of fear, out of overwhelm, out of disgust. How can we abandon parts of ourselves, either within ourselves or outside of us, if we are connected?
I am choosing to go serve in India to empower these survivors and to educate and reform these perpetrators because I am them. I see myself in them, as them, and I therefore love them, want the best for them, and want for their freedom as much as my own. It is my sincere hope that you will join me in my efforts, that you will join me in using your experiences on the yoga mat as a way to find out who you really are and how you truly feel and begin to sense that you are made up of unconditional love and have within you an abundance of possibility. I pray that each of you will engage in a journey of self acceptance that allows you to witness the unseeable, unbearable, unacceptable aspects of yourselves with grace and with empathy, and that you can therefore allow yourselves to bear witness to the most horrifying, petrifying, inhumane aspects of our culture and walk toward those situations with open hearts, with whole hearted empathy, and with courage.
For me, I needed direction as to how to do so. Off the Mat, Into the World provided me with a road map by offering the Seva Challenge, and it is my hope that One Love Dallas 108 offers you the same opportunity: a chance to take your yoga off the mat, out of the pose, into your heart, and back into the world that is a mere reflection of your own soul. Please consider joining with me in coming together, within yourself, around you in community, and between you and survivors here and in other parts of the world. I am so grateful to have the privilege to be on the side of the conversations about why to serve, and how to be served. I hope you will recognize yourselves in my story, and that you will be willing to reach into the scary places internally and externally so that we can all, together, experience freedom. We are one spirit, one heartbeat, one love. Join me on 4/28/2012 to celebrate freedom, to give love, and to receive from one another the joy of being in community and in service.
Melody Moore, Ph.D. Clinical Psychologist, yogini, Seva Challenger, One Love Dallas Co-Founder
We know that fundraising can be challenging. For some of us it is very hard to ask people for money. What we have to remember is that we are really giving people an opportunity to help. People that know and love you, want to help you. Those same people probably want to help the world, too– especially if given a nice easy opportunity. (like donating online and then getting a tax receipt)
Another thing to think about is gathering funds in small increments. Don’t think about the big number or let it hinder you. Asking 5 co-workers for their coffee money for the week , $10-$15-$20 each could equal up to $100. I mean, you buy cookie dough and wrapping paper from their kids, right. 
Don’t be afraid to ask. That is part of the challenge of the experience. And when you come to the event to practice, you’ll know you raised like $200, and all of the people around you raised a lot of money, too, and what y’all are doing together is creating a world of good…and that is going to feel amazing!!
To help get you over your first hurdle, here is a sample letter that you can use and customize for yourself and email it out to your co-workers, friends, and family:
Dear Friends and Family,
As you know, I have been practicing yoga for some time, and I have decided to practice some karma yoga and step onto my mat to reach out of my community. I am participating in an event called One Love, which is a charity fundraiser for Off the Mat, Into the World’s Global Seva Challenge.
Off the Mat, Into the World’s mission is to use the power of yoga to inspire conscious, sustainable activism and ignite grassroots social change. The Global Seva Challenge (Seva- selfless service) is a yearly project that provokes critical thinking about global issues and raises significant funds to support communities in crisis. This year the Global Seva Challenge will be focused on meeting critical needs and creating long term, sustainable solutions in rural Haiti. The focus of the mission is not just relief efforts from the devastating earthquake, but creating clean water sources and sustainable income (jobs!).
The One Love event on June 11 is like a yoga-thon, and I am going to do 108 sun-salutations that morning, and I need sponsors to raise a minimum of $108. So my question to you today is: would you take me out for a cup of coffee? Would you buy us both a cup of coffee? Would you instead give me that $10.80 so that we can both buy a water-filtration system to support a whole community in clean water?
Donating online is easy. Here is the link to donate, and it shows you the three easy steps.http://onelovedallas.org/donate When you click to donate by credit card, it will take you to Off the Mat’s secure site. You should be able to have both pages open at the same time, so that you can look at the “three easy steps” and apply them along with your donation amount and cc information.
Thank you so much for your willingness to support me in any way you can. We are making a difference, and also remember that the energy of abundance is reciprocal!
Many thanks,
Amazing yoga student
