Storming the bastille with poetry & healing the AutoImmune Republic
Intention
As an Ashtanga yoga teacher and an aspirant of nonviolence, ahimsa, I write from a place of inquiry not accusation. My reflection is rooted in the question: How can we shift toward more peaceful ways of being? That means being willing to look directly at the forces that obstruct peace, including our most uncomfortable ones.
In Celebration of Bastille Day
On July 14th, 1789, the people of Paris stormed the Bastille, a royal fortress-prison that had become a symbol of absolute monarchy, secrecy, and oppression.
Though only seven prisoners were freed, the gesture resounded across the world: a people had risen to claim liberty and to challenge the divine right of kings. It was one of the most symbolic acts in the history of revolution and it helped birth the idea of modern democracy.
So today, we celebrate that spark:
the courage to challenge tyranny
the power of collective will
and the hope that people can govern themselves
But we also want to hold space for the full story.
The same revolution that brought forth the Declaration of the Rights of Man would soon devolve into a Reign of Terror where thousands were executed in the name of virtue and liberty.
The Ironic Thread: Democracy as Terror
What many don’t realize, or remember, is that terror was not just a byproduct of the French Revolution. It was an intentional strategy.
Maximilien Robespierre, a lawyer turned leader in the French Revolution, the so-called Incorruptible, famously argued that terror is the justice that flows from virtue. In 1793, as France dissolved into chaos and paranoia, Robespierre joined the Committee of Public Safety, a small executive body granted near-dictatorial powers to “save the Republic.” He argued that the survival of liberty required the destruction of its enemies. This logic would become the justification for the Reign of Terror.
Robespierre believed in virtue through justice, and justice, to him, included swift executions of anyone who betrayed or questioned the revolution. No one was above suspicion. Moderates. Clergy. Former allies. Even fellow revolutionaries were sent to the guillotine.
The result was thousands of deaths and ordinary citizens swept up into suspicion. The French Revolution reminds us of how quickly violence can become systemic. What begins as a noble uprising can, within months, become a machinery of suspicion, blood, and fear.
And it raises questions we still haven’t fully answered.
When does the use of violence justify itself (if ever) and when does it undermine the very principles its claiming to uphold?
Autoimmune Politics: When the Body Turns on Itself
I can’t help but see a parallel between 18th-century France and the United States today.
It’s as if we are a body in autoimmune crisis.
Like in Multiple Sclerosis, the system meant to protect itself, the immune system, or in this case, Democracy itself, becomes so hyper-vigilant, so afraid, so inflamed, that it attacks the very tissues it’s meant to defend.
We become polarized, paralyzed, unable to communicate across synapses.
The signal is lost. The body eats its own nerves.
The language of patriotism is used to justify persecution. The language of justice is used to justify cruelty. The desire for safety mutates into surveillance, suppression, and self-destruction.
This is the same logic that fueled the Reign of Terror, “We must destroy what we fear. Even if it’s part of ourselves.”
One Body, One Breath
But here’s the yogic reminder: We are one body.
Our systems are not separate. The harm done to one part eventually echoes through all others. This is not metaphor. It’s reality.
The health of a democracy, like the health of a body, depends on coherence, trust, communication, and restoration.
Not endless reaction. Not fear dressed up as virtue.
We can learn from the French Revolution that:
Violence spreads fast.
Fear feeds itself.
And once the guillotine is built, it has a momentum of its own.
But we can also learn this:
The fever can break.
The system can remember itself.
The flame of justice doesn't have to consume its own ideals if we make sure it is contained enough to remain a source of illumination.
Storming the Bastille with Poetry
We are still surrounded by bastilles, the structures that imprison us in silence, shame, suspicion, and separation. We may not see their towers, but we know their names:
The bastille of white supremacy
The bastille of patriarchy
The bastille of censorship disguised as virtue
The bastille of medical violence and abandonment
The bastille of inner exile, the parts of ourselves we’ve disowned
These are not just metaphors. These are the cells we live in, until we don’t.
So let us storm them with awareness, with presence, with the knowledge of interbeing.
Not a guillotine, but a gaze. Not terror, but truth.
If the French Revolution teaches us how quickly a fight for freedom can descend into terror, then poetry and yoga teach us how to return to freedom instead.
Return to the body.
Return to the breath.
Return to a kind of inner republic where all parts, even the unwelcome ones, have a voice.
Embodied Writing
The real revolution is to stay human in a system that is programmed to destroy humanity. To stay whole in a society of fragmentation. My book Unholy, Holy, Whole is a revolutionary offering.
It dares to speak from longing, confusion, memory, sensuality, and the sacred ache of being human. It was written, like the French Revolution itself, in the shadow of old systems collapsing. But instead of reacting with fear, I turned toward language and the courage of artistic expression.
I have faith in the sacred pulse of poetry and the intelligence of our creative impulse.
Yoga and poetry, yoga as poetry, is a practice of liberation not through domination but through deep, embodied attention.
Let us dare to participate in a revolution that doesn’t require purification but integration.
Get your copy of my book Unholy, Holy, Whole today and let’s storm the bastilles of our lives with poetry!
Note: this post was written in dialogue with ChatGPT (AI).
