In a country where around 151,000 people are deaf and hard-of-hearing due to loss of hearing or by birth, one would think that the necessary resources are available for them. Sadly, here in Puerto Rico, the resources are not as abundant as they should be. There aren’t even official studies and statistics that focus on the deaf community, leaving the numbers in the air. Even though resources, such as sign language interpreters and video-communications technology do exist, sometimes they are not efficient and hard to reach for communities in several sectors of the island.
This topic is very close to my heart because my parents are deaf. I was raised in the deaf community of the metro area, probably the biggest one in Puerto Rico. Since I was child, I’ve been a witness of all the hardships my parents and their friends had to overcome and endure, but at the same time I saw the multiple talents they have. They are just like everyone else, only that they communicate through gestures and their hands. Their struggle for finding a place where they can belong shifts from slightly doable to almost unbearable, causing a lot of emotional, physical, economical, and mental distress for the community. A lot of my parents’ friends suffer from anxiety, depression, or other illnesses that derive from those. After many years of obstacles, activism for equal rights and resources, and waiting, I decided that we had to try something different.
I was reading an article one day about the many benefits of yoga, such as stress relief, exercise, better breathing, and regulated heart and blood pressure, and I thought it would be nice for my parents to take a class. Thankfully, a yoga studio in Condado called Ashtanga Yoga Puerto Rico, was nice enough to give my parents and their friends a beginner’s class along with a sign language interpreter. After several weeks of planning, around 20 deaf people attended the class, along with several students that are learning sign language. The yoga instructor, along with an apprentice who is partially deaf, taught us a different style of yoga called mysore.
This style consists of students memorizing a sequence of yoga and coming to class to do that sequence, without actually being led by an instructor. The class is completely silent, everyone focuses on their own practice, and the instructor helps each person individually without speaking. We thought that technique was perfect because it didn’t require them to struggle and try to understand what the instructor is saying. They could focus on their own abilities without having to depend on many instructions.
It may sound simple to many people, but for me, this is a story of victory. Being in a space where deaf people were able to take control of themselves, to focus on their breathing and their thoughts, to see the strength they didn’t even know they had, and to enjoy something that is popular yet accessible to them meant a lot to us. They felt included in society. We might not have realized that if no one provided the opportunity. If a simple, short yoga class in a studio on a regular day gave them something else to believe in, imagine what other things they can discover if that realization was easier to find.
This is why it’s important to recognize those who have a diverse functionality as people who are just as deserving to have rights and resources as you and me. They’re humans too… humans who are capable to do wonders, humans who are capable of changing the world. They’ve fought for too long, now it’s our turn to listen, through our ears and our hands.
**Props to Ashtanga Yoga Puerto Rico for providing such a beautiful class and to Natasha Pérez for designing the promotional flyer for the event.