Letting Our Empathy Be Held: Yoga, Hunger, and Small Next Steps
This week, in response to Trump’s request, the U.S. Supreme Court extended a temporary stay blocking a lower-court order that would have required the government to make full November SNAP payments. The first stay was issued November 7; this extension keeps millions of families in limbo about food.
I keep finding myself carrying this news in my body. I have the privilege of knowing my own kids are fed, but when I read about it, my chest tightens and my stomach drops. Neuroscience has language for this: our nervous systems are wired to feel with each other.
Our Social Brain and Hunger
Brain regions involved in our own pain and stress also light up when we imagine someone else’s. Our “social brain” doesn’t clearly distinguish between my child’s hunger and someone else’s child’s hunger; the same neural circuits that process threat and distress activate either way.
Even when we’re not consciously aware of it, this can show up as more irritability, less patience, and a shorter fuse with the people around us—because our system is already carrying extra load. In that sense, the nervous system is registering danger, disconnection, and threat to the larger human “we.”
How Yoga Helps Me Stay in Relationship With My Empathy
For me, yoga is one way of staying in relationship with that truth instead of numbing out. I can notice the quickened breath, the clenched jaw, the way my shoulders creep toward my ears. In practice, I get to pause, feel those responses, and gently remind my body: You’re allowed to care—and you’re not the only one.
This is where īśvara-praṇidhāna comes in for me—not as a demand to “accept” injustice, but as a way of letting my empathy be held by something bigger than my individual nervous system.
One Small Concrete Step
Given this very human, very wired-in ache for others, I ask myself: What is one concrete way I can participate in care?
One of my answers is to support local food organizations. It doesn’t replace policy work or structural change, but it does mean that someone’s nervous system—somewhere in this web of connection—gets a slightly easier day.
Boulder-Area Food Organizations to Support
• Community Food Share
Regional backbone for Boulder & Broomfield; your dollar now stretches to about $6 of groceries.
→ Donate to Community Food Share
• Harvest of Hope Pantry
Boulder-based, “all are welcome”; roughly $8 of food per donated dollar.
→ Donate to Harvest of Hope Pantry
• EFAA – Emergency Family Assistance Association
Direct help for families, elders, and disabled neighbors.
→ Donate to EFAA
• Boulder Food Rescue
Bike-powered fresh produce to low-income sites; approximately $10 of groceries per $1.
→ Donate to Boulder Food Rescue
• Sister Carmen Community Center
East County coverage—Lafayette, Louisville, Superior, Erie; active food-bank and donation hours.
→ Donate to Sister Carmen Community Center
If Donating Isn’t Possible
If donating isn’t possible right now, your empathy is not wasted or “less yogic.” The same nervous system that hurts for other people is also the one you’re invited to tend with breath, movement, and rest.
That, too, is yoga: staying in touch with a heart that feels beyond its own walls, and letting that tenderness guide whatever next small step is truly available.
