About Money, Pricing and Race

You only have to look at me to know I am of White European descent. My mostly English ancestors go back at least several hundred years. I grew up steeped in the idea of the “normalcy” of who I was in the culture I was a part of. 

We have this idea in this country that if you just work hard enough you will succeed and are deserving of that success.  My whole life I have worked hard and I see very clearly that I have not worked hard enough to deserve all the gifts that have come to me from my ancestors.  I’m not saying here that I should have worked harder.  Not at all. Definitely, not at all. That is another problem but I’ll save that for another day.  I’m saying that beyond payment for all that work, I have received inheritances and privileges that go far beyond anything I did or am doing.  My parents were able to leave me some money when they died. I got enough money from my grandmother at one point that I could put a small down payment on a house and continued being a yoga teacher in the 1970s. That first house I bought only cost $19,000, but without her help I couldn’t have afforded even that. And I got to be a homeowner in my 20s and begin to build a financial legacy for my own kids.

I have long thought about what my role is in this culture of ours that simmers in structural (and all too often personal) racism. I’ve educated myself in the inequities and been trained by gracious colleagues. I have donated to change-making organizations and have been active in some as well. As a studio owner, I was able to offer many scholarships to diverse populations and I feel good about that. Those beautiful folks are now out in their own communities, offering the beauty and skills that Yoga, UZIT and Reiki have to offer.

I have wanted to do something more substantive to make at last a small difference in the effects of structural racism. As I have sat with this I realized that one of the simplest and in some ways the fairest way for me to deal with this is to just offer anything I’m teaching for free to People of Color and to Native Americans who might want to take classes or trainings with me. Linda Oshins, my co-teacher in Reiki has agreed to this policy, as had the owner of Radiant Yoga, Aimee Pruitt. There may be some limits to the number of people we can take in any given program (sign up early!) but otherwise all are welcome. There will be no questions about whether or not you are deserving of a scholarship because this is not a scholarship.  It’s just a new price structure. If you want this new price for anything I’m teaching, let me know and I’ll get you put into class.  Simple as that. If you want to pay something you can but I am not asking or expecting that.