In a 59-second clip from Episode 14 of Coco's Sanctuary, "Yoga for Collective Liberation," the teacher Itzel Hayward takes up an objection she hears often: that in organizing and activist spaces, there isn't time for healing or wellness practices, because so much direct work needs doing on the ground. Her answer is a teaching she received secondhand and clearly loves for its bite. It turns the logic of the excuse inside out: the busier you are, the longer the practice should be.
Hayward says she cannot recall the name of the teacher who offered it, so the line travels without attribution. As she recounts it, the instruction runs: you should meditate for 30 minutes every day, and if you don't have time to meditate for 30 minutes, you should meditate for an hour. Hayward laughs as she tells it, and she is careful to say she doesn't mean to be flip. Her interviewer responds, "That's awesome," and Hayward closes by saying she loves the quote, twice.
What makes the line work is its structure. The excuse of no time is not argued against; it is answered by reversal. Scarcity becomes a reason to deepen the practice rather than drop it. For people doing frontline work, where exhaustion is a constant companion, that reframing treats rest and inner work as part of the capacity sustained action requires, rather than a luxury sitting outside it. That reading is ours, not something Hayward spells out in the clip, but it is the logic that makes the joke land.
This clip is a fragment, and it is best understood as one moment in a longer conversation. The full episode, "Yoga for Collective Liberation" with Itzel Hayward, is available on YouTube or Spotify, according to the channel's note. Readers who want Hayward's wider thinking on yoga and collective liberation should begin with the complete episode rather than this excerpt.
