good evening welcome to alameda county giving back program it's so the wonderful program that we have this evening with my co host lacy and i'm sandra johnson welcome this was born and nine hundred eighty eight so i was a student at tufts university and cambridge medford and i was very angry at that time in my life i was at a very what i felt very racist university so i didn't really know how to deal with the racism that was coming at me and so i was acting out i was fighting i was going head to head with professors and so really bad time out the fire was coming out of my nose and so she knew i was about to do something and so she said young man come to my office so i went to her office and so as i walked in the door she asked me have you ever thought about going to africa and so this someone i had a great respect for and so the question startled me and i was like what did you what do you say she said have you ever thought about going to africa means really just acknowledging it in love and shifting your consciousness and so that started in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight and when i was there and experiencing love for my brothers and sisters i realize about your start so i was born in stamford connecticut i was raised a foster child i spent all of six months of my real mother i just met my real father like four years ago  born in connecticut and spent time in mississippi my first four years in mississippi then i came back up north and became a foster child so i grew up a foster child in stamford connecticut i was always ambitious always did my work i was mischievous but i always did my work and the beautiful thing about my foster child experience was the person that raised me mary c harris me she rest in peace she was an illiterat but she was no nonsense and she was all about getting your lesson because she wasn't able to get her unless she would have yeah she was all about business and so you know working with the kids you know kids i have that and i don't know it was just so simple his approach in regard to my body and my practice it was like the way he spoke about it it was it was my need to practice that and so it's a part of my waking ritual and i've incorporated a lot of the things that me shares with us with the children that i meet of time educating the children so ahead their brains but not so much their minds or their hearts it is so you know what i mean because your brain is just the board computer and it's really not even that smart your brain to believe whatever you tell it if you tell your brain you stupid your brain believes that you are stupid if you tell your brain you're genius no one is greater or smarter than you your brain oh can you be quite the you know we always we so we get up we turn on the radio turn on the t v get some background noise but for me my waking ritual is that first hour of waking is quiet i don't i don't like noise little you listen to the music this in my head that i woke up with and i think yoga is one of those things that everyone can do that's why it's so cool when you say if you practice like i'm a doctor or something you know to me this like yeah so if you want your body to be flexible if you want to benefit from a healthy body then you have to practice using your body stretching and you know if you never been over touch your toes three years now when you decide to try to mind that it's not that easy you know but if you're doing it every day if not better it's like these young gone back to business because we become accustomed to those things and i think what anthony teaches are the things that we think are simple but actually require concentration in order to get them right still and i said i'm going to go outside the class and i'm gonna try and it was quiet but everything that was going through my head was i couldn't clear it couldn't get cleft i can't clear my head you know what i'm saying and i've just noticed when i when the young men came out i asked them i said how many of you were able to clear your head like he ask you to just be peaceful you know and they say i tr everyone you have like sixty thousand thoughts come through your mind in one day in the person that practices the yoga or the like anything else if you go to the gym or workout you know you get stronger and so is having the techniques to understand to just be able to watch the thoughts and not be carried away by the thought of giving yourself we call a mantra so our mind something that you think about even just a simple breathing and then you know your mind is going to race and then you just come back to you focus only on your breathing and so as you start to do that you start to close that gap you can actually stay focused on your breath it takes time but you you have to do that to survive this person never saw the inside of a hospital so i knew right then that just listen to this man and so for me what i'm aiming at a my life is like ok i can be one hundred five and be like that don't ask questions you know the answer to all your questions to sit in breathe and find that god space in you because it knows everything and so sitting with this man for two and i have years with them for months would not get angry so he was actually seals and i was talking about but it was something that i was doing and i kept some of the you know what you can say what you want but i'm going to hold this love for you right here so say and they started ok i want to go home and give them a chance and then they wanted to come more and more and what some of them came everybody else i'm like oh if he's going i need to check this out and it was really interesting and hard you drew them in i out of my time well what they realize is that they had other journeys ahead of them and they needed to know how to relax they were getting ready to do some serious time they needed the tool you were trying to get them to get through this journey and it was amazing how many people started wanting to come if you were going to come ok is he coming ok i want to come out when he's there trying to listen and get everything that you were teaching them and hold on thing all of the people of south africa in the world but it was because he was continuing to travel and continue to be free even though the body language body is fair in h mandela factor so you didn't use it as a powerful lesson for the kids like you're here physically but where are you mentally healthy that's that's what the yoga is all about so the yoga means union when the mind the body in the spirit par together so you don't have all this create enough just pure love pure consciousness so when you you can be here physically but my mind could be some place i'm angry to your mind someplace else but if we get to that present moment there is no anger there is no jealousy there is no hate and you know there's a real factor in some of our special young african american young men is that they have not experience what real love is or what is it what like that i'm going to go with this is so we got to the place we're going to just brothers just sitting around talking hold their heads and so over time i mean i opened up and saw the yoga is me being able to let go of my preconceived notions my peers my phobia get that unconditional love that were coming at me and so that's what that's what the yoga began i said brothers have got to to experience this in scene because over here you know we just are three people died yesterday here in oakland so we just ended the night and i was some of the kids in the juvenile house like think about this i think about where you are right now how far away from the source we are in terms of loving right and that that is the crux of the younger they need to get back to that as a child my father would kiss my brothers  floor here and i thought that was so special and i was asked my husband about that he said i just can't do it once i'm comfortable with that but i thought that was so special to get to that and my sisters and i held hands and walked down the street  so a lot of mothers and fathers are teaching their children skills to help them survive in the urban jungle so that you know you clear statement ye not use those lessons to they're going to need those lessons as well but there is going to have to be something installed in the child as they're growing up so that they do understand how to code switch yes from five eight three seven five thousand for all of you i just i think that we have put love out there and let's hope that all of you out there felt what we have here and what empowerment is doing for our children in juvenile and in other agencies you do go out your side and if they need to call you the number we were given please call we  and we'd like to say anything but as you have a website you know if you are interested in having the one eighty degree program come to your school and teach your children social emotional learning you can go to our website