Ernst Haeckel, Tafel_06
I went down to the protests over the police killing of George Floyd a few times this past week here in Denver. One thing I saw last Friday, around 8 or 9pm:
A row of protestors walking slowly in the street towards the police with their hands up chanting “hands up, don’t shoot." The police responded by throwing tear gas canisters and firing rounds of rubber bullets at the crowd. People screamed and ran away. The police then marched down the street, and others of them drove down the street with what looked like as many as 10 officers hanging off each police vehicle. I have to say it felt militaristic. Just one example of police responding with a lot of force to unarmed protesters acting peacefully in a given moment. (I'm aware the protests weren't always peaceful. By the time this incident occurred, the state capitol building was already covered in anarchist symbols and the words "fuck the police.")
Like most Americans I spent a good deal of time this week thinking about militarization in general, and the militarization of the police force.
Denver, along with 40 cities across the U.S., had a curfew imposed. First it was last weekend on Saturday and Sunday and then on Monday it was swiftly extended throughout the whole week, finally ending this morning (Friday). A pretty big deal. The curfews are. Hundreds of people were arrested this week in Denver for curfew violations, the punishment for which includes jail time and a fine of up to $1,000.
The first night of the curfew I sat on my porch and saw a police vehicle cruising up and down my street (I live about one mile from the state capitol). No megaphone shouting, but it went by several times and its presence was definitely felt. I mean in the way of like, damn the police are out here on this residential street about to tell people out strolling with their dogs that they need to get inside.
You might have seen this video from Minneapolis on Saturday night, of police on foot walking through the street and shouting at people to get inside, eventually firing rubber bullets at people standing on their porch. In case not, watch it:
This past winter I interviewed Ali Duncan, an energy healer and yoga teacher who runs a wellness studio here in Denver. Duncan was formerly a cop, and she is a Black woman. She’s fully into the “woo-woo,” for those who need/appreciate that shorthand.
In spiritual / "woo-woo" circles in the U.S. in particular there is the whole concept of "spiritual bypassing." People think they're rising above but they're actually just avoiding. Sometimes its like, "I'm keeping my frequency high so I am not engaging with that." But the truth of the situation is more like, no what's happening is you're white and rich and you just want to stay in a bubble. Like Siddhartha before he became the Buddha.
One of my favorite things Marianne Williamson said during her campaign for president was, "Good luck with your green juice when they're gutting the Clean Water Act, gutting the Clean Air Act." Lmao.
Think what you will about Marianne but one thing she did was provide an example of how people on the spiritual path can engage with some of these issues of real suffering in our country through the spiritual lens. She was the only candidate who supported reparations for African Americans, and she did so because she said it was a necessary amends towards healing the damage done. The same way people in AA (also a spiritual program) must make tangible amends for their wrongs, not just apologize with words.
Anyway, back in December after interviewing Duncan I produced a short article, mostly focused on her yoga classes, for 5280 Magazine. But she and I talked about a lot more, including police killings of Black men, and how she thinks about policing in general, and what her transition from the force to becoming a yoga teacher and energy healer was like. Here is the conversation:
Your last career was as a police officer.
Right. I was the first [and to this date have been the only] Black female cop in Fort Collins.
Tell me about the transition from being a cop to being an energy worker and yoga teacher.
There was a lady who worked in records and she did massage and reiki. We instantly hit it off. She gave me a massage. The stuff that she was telling me and pulling from me…I was blown away.
I say that reiki was my gateway drug. [Laughs.] After that I did a crazy deep dive. I got my Level One and Level Two Reiki. I just started practicing to let it build, and to get out of my head with all the stories, like, ‘You’re not doing anything. Nothing’s happening.’ And all my guilt because of how I was raised—strict Christian. ‘It’s not biblical.’
I got into emotional clearing and understanding that emotions get stuck in the body, and that you can clear them. So I learned how to clear them, and I started adding that with my reiki.
How does that process work? Emotional clearing?
So when you have a trapped emotion it vibrates like a tuning fork and everything around that emotion starts to take on that frequency, and that’s when the manifestations happen, such as pain or disease or whatever manifests in the body. When you start to clear out the trapped emotions then that frequency, that vibration, goes away. That provides an environment for the organ, the tissue, the bone, the joint, whatever, to heal itself. ‘Cause it can’t heal when there’s that constant bzzz of anger or frustration.
Okay. So you studied all this while you were still on the police force. When did you decide to quit and get into energy work full time?
In 2011 I went to India, and I got my yoga teacher training. That was a huge frequency shift. Just insane. I felt at home, so comfortable there. ‘I never want to leave. I never want it to stop.’ It was so good.
That was the whole change. When I got back I quit my job. It just didn’t fit anymore. I felt so uncomfortable. [Previously] I loved doing what I was doing, but I got back and it was hard.
What was hard about police work, after you retuned from India?
Being the only Black female cop in Fort Collins was a huge thing. I was born and raised there. My dad was the second Black male in Fort Collins. We were the only Black kids in school. It was very…it was interesting times.
[As an officer] I loved just being part of the community and doing it differently. I did a lot of talks about being a minority. Because my mom’s Hispanic and part Indian, my dad’s Black. We grew up super poor in an abusive home, so that was why I went to the high schools—to be like, I was there, I get it, and I’m here now. And I did a lot of victim advocating and talks because I was assaulted when I was 19.
It was just good. I [became a cop] for probably the complete opposite reason that everybody else gets into it. I wasn’t a fan of the action. I wasn’t first on a hot call. I was just like…I’m good. [Laughs]. But I loved the community connection.
Then, when I got back from India, even though I was doing the same thing it wasn’t a deep connection. I just felt like I was so disconnected. There wasn’t any passion about talking about my past, sharing my story, none of that. I was just being pulled to do so much more, with a deeper connection.
In India ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ in Hindi is namaste. They look at you in your eyes. It’s not like here where it’s just a quick, ‘hey, how’s it going?’ or just avoidance. There, [you said namaste to] everybody you pass. It was just constant. You said namaste hundreds of times. Namaste. Namaste. Namaste. Everybody was so kind. And that deep connection was the hardest for me to leave and then to come back here.
Here, not just with our shallow connection as strangers but with how people related to the police. That added on another layer of just so much separation.
Upon returning from India what did you notice about how people related to the police here in the U.S.?
It just rang hollow, the interactions with people. How people interacted with me. Even if it was kind, or even if it was fear-based, because they didn’t wanna get in trouble. There was nothing. I got to the point where I didn’t want to counsel anymore.
I would spend so much time on calls counseling and explaining. When I got back from India, the container of doing it as a police officer just felt contradictory. It just didn’t feel good. Everything has a morphic field. Policing has a morphic field, and it’s strong. So when you have this other experience and you’re vibing with that and you try to fit that into the policing morphic field, it’s hard. I was just repulsing it away, even though that’s what I had to do everyday.
I realized I would much rather be teaching yoga or doing my [energy clearing] sessions full time, connecting with people that way.
Looking back, how did your experience on the police force contribute to the person you are today?
Because of how we were raised and just how society and my little society viewed us as being Black, I was a pushover. I didn’t stand up for myself. I didn’t raise my voice. I got bullied, just horrible stuff. I know that going into law enforcement, that was the time that I feel that I needed to get my voice, I needed to step into my power. Not power over people, but just power within myself.
I look at my transformation, who I was then and at the end of my career, at the end I had no problem going off on people or saying ‘no.’ I know that had to happen to heal so much stuff and just clear it out and get me to a place where I could run energy and counsel and coach people.
The whole thing with being a police officer was that there’s no one else to call. Like, on calls. There is no one else. You’re it. When you show up you’re just like, ‘oh shit, I’m it.’
That's interesting. Yeah, with so many situations in life the only person you can call is the police. Police are the end of the line.
Right. You're it. Just being faced with those challenges, you have to dig from somewhere that even your training won’t cover. That was huge for me because my dad was abusive so just cowering, going inward, that was my norm. That was all I had known. And then to not be able to do that. That was hard because my first reaction was, ‘oh fuck—run!’ Or curl up in a ball. Don’t engage at all.
The great thing for me that worked all the time—every single time. I never had to mace anybody, I never had to strike anybody, I never had to fight anybody, shoot anybody—was I would play small, but yet with authority. For instance, if somebody was upset and they would be trying to egg me on, I would just be like, ‘Oh my gosh, no. You are so big. You could totally kick my ass. Are you kidding me? I would never fight you.’ I would just play to their strengths, which was, yeah, they’re fucking huge. And they’d be like, ‘Yeah, that’s right.’ So I would just de-escalate. And I’d just be like, ‘Well, talk to me. Why are you so mad? What’s going on?’
Most of the males that would show up on the scene, oh, they would fight. ‘Let’s go!’ I’d be like, ‘Oh my gosh. You don’t need to fight.’ So silly. ‘Why are you fighting?’ So I would play small but in a different way. ‘Cause there’s no way. There’s no way. I remember one guy was on PCP and it took eight of us to physically hold him down. That wasn’t my thing. There were a few times when I was a little shocked and just like, ‘shit, what do I do?’
I feel like some female officers—well, officers of either gender but—would use a gun in those instances. The times when obviously you can’t overpower somebody.
Yeah. We had awesome training. And we would train all the time. We had de-escalation tools. If someone’s coming at you, you train to step off the tracks, step out of the way, pull them through. bend their arm. We did verbal, it was called verbal judo. How to talk to people. We were taught, you have tools. You have mace. Batons to strike ‘em. And, of course, your gun is the very last, last option. Some agencies have none of that. And it’s like, ‘oh, you just shoot them.’
Wow. Some agencies don’t have de-escalation training at all?
At all. So then what do you…? I couldn’t imagine. Like, I would have shot so many people. We were so lucky. Our training was like two or three times a month we were doing firearms, physical combat—hand-to-hand, we did the verbal judo. We got so much training. So much training. Whereas a lot of departments train like once every five months. Very limited.
OK so hearing that I’m like, is de-escalation training just kinda the answer, in a lot of ways, for the crisis of police brutality? I mean, what do you attribute that to?
Oh my gosh, it’s fear. I truly don’t believe it’s race. It’s not a race thing. It’s fear. It’s because you see someone who’s different than you who’s acting different than you would act and so then you just go straight to fear.
All these officers, they have no confidence. They have no skills on how to de-escalate. They have like, nothing. And it is ego.
In a lot of these cases people are getting shot running away, but then [the officers] are getting off saying, ‘I was in fear for my life.’ How are you in fear for your life when he’s running away? It makes no sense but cops are getting off with that defense. It’s not even a defense. When someone’s in the car and they’re not listening, and you’re trying to stick your hands and arms in the car and then you say, ‘I’m in fear for my safety,’ it’s like, why would you have half your body in someone’s car?
It’s just so easy—‘I was in fear for my life.’ It’s like, no you were just in fear. Because you’ve already created a story in your head that there’s a gun, when there’s no gun. That they’re gonna do something crazy.
We were taught respond to what you know. Shoot at what you know. Not what you think. A lot of these were like, ‘I thought he had a gun so I shot him.’ You thought he had a gun. He didn’t have a gun. You can’t—there’s no ‘I thought’s.’ It’s just amazing that officers are getting off. Acquitted. From like, ‘I thought.’
Do you think the reason these officers are getting off in courts a lot of the times is related to race?
That’s a hard one because that one Black officer shot that yoga teacher, right? So there was something that happened, [police] just pulled up on the scene, and she comes charging at them. And they’re sitting in the car. They have no idea. And so he shoots her. So that makes more sense to me. If someone’s coming at me and there’s already been a shooting and I can say, ‘I was in fear for my safety so I shot her.’ He got, I think he got life. And he’s Black. And so other police officers that got off, I mean they were shooting people running away, crazy shit. And they were all white. So I mean, yeah, that one is a hard one. It makes no sense to me. At all.
If there were shots fired and you pull up on the scene and someone’s charging at you, that would make more sense to me to be like, ‘ooh, that’s a threat.’ But she was white, and she was female. So then in most people’s minds like, she was white and a female so how could she be a threat? If it was a Black male running toward them, then for most people it would be like, ‘oh no I shot him because I was in fear for my safety.’ You already have a perceived notion of, ‘ok, are they violent? Are they talking loud?’ And then you start to create that story. It’s race-based in a way of, ‘I don’t understand your culture. You’re different. I don’t know what you’re gonna do.’
We have so many biases that we may not even know of that just pop up. It’s so easy for people to say, ‘I’m not a bigot. I don’t have a bias.’ No. Everybody does. So figure out what yours is and work with it. Just work with it. Figure out a way to shift it. For us that was, just react to what you know. Not what you think. Not what you can fantasize.
The brain can be so convincing. Fear is such a strong thing. It’s so strong.
What do you think is the most damaging of all the emotions?
Oh I think it’s fear. Everything that has a low vibrating frequency stems from fear. Embarrassment, anger—it’s all fear-based. And then when you add people’s stories and prejudices on top of fear, that’s why people do some fucked up shit.
It’s nuts. And all of it is just based off of a story. We attach stories to everything and we don’t react to what’s happening, we usually react to the story we’ve attached to the thing that is happening.
There truly should be no fear. Even if a bear was chasing you the fear comes from, ‘It’s gonna catch me. It’s gonna hurt me. It’s gonna bite me. It’s gonna scratch me. It’s gonna kill me.’ Right? That’s a story. But if you just say, ‘A bear’s chasing me,’ there’s no fear.
The body responds to whatever’s going on in the mind. You can have your mind trained to be like, ‘alright let’s think clearly.’ But if you have it trained with cloudy shit, prejudices, all that, that’s gonna be hard at times when just the ‘oh shit’ factor kicks in. It’s gonna be hard to maneuver through all the prejudices and stuff to get to the facts.
Do you have a sense of, in general, what kind of healing people, Americans in particular, are needing today? Is there a collective need?
Yes. I feel we’re so disconnected. So, just finding any type of reconnection through touch and also being seen, being witnessed. I think that’s where in the West just we’ve fucked ourselves up from just disconnecting through touch.
With other cultures—indigenous tribes still do this today—they circle. If someone’s hurt, someone’s in pain, someone has had what, to them, would be a traumatic experience, everybody witnesses it, and takes it on. Just that energy of circle. And now we just have, take a pill. Or do one-on-one therapy, which I’m not saying is bad, but we don’t see each other. We try to stuff it down, we try to hide it, put on—‘this is what I’m supposed to be.’ So the type of healing that I feel is lacking is just that, is touch and connection.
[Sometimes I do] Tantra workshops where there is connecting, eye gazing, all that uncomfortable shit. People will just start crying because they feel like somebody heard them, or witnessed them, and they don’t have to stuff it down. I think that’s the most powerful type of healing. I think that’s where all the anger is coming from. People feel like they’re not being seen.
There’s a difference between being witnessed and seen versus your trauma being supported.
Tell me more about that.
So your trauma is being supported if you were assaulted and then you go to a group and they’re man bashing or they’re like, ‘that was horrible, that was this’—instead of just you know, share it, get it out, and just supporting that person. Not having a story about what happened because the minute you have a story about what happened you’re adding energy to that thing. Instead of, ‘how can we support you moving forward?’ Or, ‘you are seen.’ Just the whole supporting, ‘oh, poor you.’ For me that’s doing the opposite of what healing is. It’s supporting the fact that you’re a victim.
What do you think about raising awareness around certain injustices, and the act of speaking out?
When you put it out there you’re being heard. It may not be how you want to be heard, but you’re being heard. And that’s the thing. You can’t control how people respond or hear you. You’re just being heard. That’s the healing of it.
I think it’s beautiful people get to say, ‘this is what happened.’ And then that’s it. That’s it.