CASA Pitzer | Community and Healing Justice: Equanimity and Activism | November 10th, 2021

CASA Pitzer | Community and Healing Justice : Equanimity and Activism with Jacoby Ballard

Our activism is urgent. Black and brown lives are being taken by police, families separated, refugees being turned away from wealthy countries, climate change impacting our world. And, if we act from a place of reaction, fear, or anguish, our activism is limited. It can seem counterintuitive, but understanding the teachings of equanimity (through a yogic and Buddhist lens but present in many other practices), and engaging practices around equanimity allows our activism to come from wisdom, love, and insight. It allows us to pursue justice for the long haul without our hearts or our bodies breaking, and to be imaginative, creative, and visionary in that pursuit.

Drawn from Jacoby Ballard’s forthcoming book, A Queer Dharma: Yoga and Meditations for Liberation, this talk invites our activism to be sustainable, unwavering, and holistic a best-selling book.


Jacoby Ballard is a social justice educator and yoga teacher in Salt Lake City, Utah. He leads workshops and trainings around the country on diversity, equity, and inclusion. As a yoga teacher with 20 years of experience, he leads workshops, retreats, teacher trainings, teaches at conferences, and runs the Resonance mentorship program for certified yoga teachers to find their niche and calling. In 2008, Jacoby co-founded Third Root Community Health Center in Brooklyn, to work at the nexus of healing and social justice. Since 2006, Jacoby has taught Queer and Trans Yoga, a space for queer folks to unfurl and cultivate resilience and received Yoga Journal’s Game Changer Award in 2014 and Good Karma Award in 2016. Jacoby has taught in schools, hospitals, non profit and business offices, a maximum security prison, a recovery center, a cancer center, LGBT centers, gyms, a veteran’s center, and yoga studios. His first book, A Queer Dharma: Yoga and Meditations for Liberation comes out November 23. Jacoby’s offerings can be found at jacobyballard.net and by his name on social media.

This event was sponsored by Pitzer's Racial Justice Initiative