Downward Dog and Dominant Paradigms: Are We Really The Change We Want To See?

 

As an activist and someone dedicated to working towards social change, I came to yoga as a stressed out cultural organizer and anti-violence program director.  I have always been physically active while involved in political organizing. I developed self-defense curricula that had roots in traditional marital arts and progressive feminist liberation theory.  It was important for me to integrate a critical social justice framework into the various parts of my life.  I brought it into how I developed and facilitated self defense classes. It informed how I negotiated boundaries with friends, family and co-workers. So, it made sense to me that I would think about how anti-oppression and yoga intersect, how they support each other, and even where they might oppose each other.

 

I have practiced yoga on and off for over twenty years and have been a more serious and dedicated yogini for the past five years with a daily yoga and meditation practice. I believe strongly in the transformative practice of mindfulness that is at the root of both yoga and meditation.  The ideals, philosophies, principles, and practices of yoga and meditation can transform individuals, communities and institutions.  These same qualities can help us engage in movement building and be a powerful force for social change.  Social change and liberation is not, however, what is happening in most yoga classes.

 

As a place where people are seeking liberation and enlightenment, it’s important to include critical conversations around access, power, privilege, and oppression. In most yoga studios, there is not an intentional or articulated link being made between what individuals or yoga communities are studying and practicing and social justice.  Individual students, teachers and studios may do this work on their own, and, indeed, some are with brilliant skill and success, but as a community of practitioners, we are not having this dialogue.

 

When I ask people how their yoga practice helps them create social change, interrupt sexism or dismantle systemic and institutional oppression, I am often met with a blank stare or a pat response along the lines of “Yoga helps me as an individual, which is part of changing the world,” or “My time on the mat is about me and my body.” These are not bad or incorrect responses in and of themselves.  It’s fantastic that yoga helps people stay committed to human rights and social change work. Our ability to stay committed matters tremendously when burn out and secondary trauma drain our most dedicated folks. These types of responses, however, reflect an individual approach to social issues which can, if left unchecked, actually uphold dominant cultural values.

When asked how yoga links up to social justice, for example, another fellow yogi suggested that oppression was simply ideology and that enlightenment allows you to see through or beyond oppression, ergo seeking enlightenment by practicing yoga and meditation is in and of itself moving beyond oppression.  This perspective ignores the historical, cultural and institutional legacy of oppression and supposes that we can somehow disengage from it (once we are enlightened enough to see it). This perspective also reflects the culture of privilege that pervades most yoga studios.1 Yoga is still an exclusive practice, accessible to mostly white middle class people. “This lack of cultural diversity is one of the pressing issues of North American yoga,” says Tawanna Kane; ". . . if the yoga community fails to reach out to people of color, or the poor, or the physically challenged,” continues Kane, “yoga could become simply another expensive pastime of the privileged.”2

 

There can be a “love sees no color” mindset in many yoga communities. This mindset is rooted in an ideal of equality and multiculturalism that can actually uphold racism and white supremacy by ignoring its systemic and historical nature.  If we celebrate difference without understanding the role power plays, we risk inadvertently supporting systems of oppression.  A workplace can celebrate the diversity of their community while not addressing how institutional racism or sexism play out in who gets hired, fired, promoted, or salary and compensation decisions, for example.  We are not all equally different in our relationship to systems of oppression.

 

I do not mean to speak badly of yogis and yoginis.  I am one of the many white yoginis, after all, and most of us practice yoga to become better people.  We appreciate that yoga helps up participate in our relationships with more humanity, respect and dignity. There is a true and deep desire to “do good” in most yoga practices. But unchecked, white people’s idea of “doing good” can actually involve doing harm.  Privilege allows you to be unaware of things that other people see very clearly.  Privilege allows us access to things we don’t even think about in terms of access, like rest and relaxation.  Privilege means being able to say, “Yes the personal is political, but right now I get ‘time off.’”  As a white woman, I don’t have to worry about being the only white person in a work environment, social gathering or yoga class. 

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