Whose arm, whose leg, whose yoga?

On seeing people, pain and privilege in yoga

Bodies move in context, we cannot separate our bodies from the world and the environments we live in. Involvement in the outer world will affect our inner experiences. We are influenced by the rhythms, pace, words, actions, aggressions of other people and the systems around us.

Our systems are a product of our history. Given the ghosts of our past; our histories of violence and separation, we find ourselves inheritors of systems of oppression and privilege that stem from colonialism and slavery. As Peggy McIntosh writes in her work "unpacking the invisible knapsack of white privilege", these systems are not taught to us and are not easy to see, but they do influence us.

As yoga teachers and therapists, when we invite someone to raise an arm or a leg, we need to be thinking about whose arm and whose leg? What personal memories, difficulties or experiences are there for that person in this part of their body? We can ask ourselves, how it has been for this person, of this gender, of this race, to raise his/her arm, to reach out, to have been touched or hurt by another arm. We might ask ourselves how is it for this individual to MOVE and be MOVED in this world.

Yoga can be a haven and respite from every day microaggressions; the slights, put downs, jokes (that masquerade as insults), the lack of validation, the isolation and the traumatic stress that puts you in a constant state of fight or flight or freeze. Yoga restores wholeness and connection, dampening down the accumulations of distressing affect in the body/mind.

With the increasing commodification of yoga: celebrities, luxury products, fantasy retreats and fashionable clothing and studios, I worry that yoga is not reaching  those who need it, that it is becoming privileged and conveys a message to persons from marginalised communities “ you are not welcome or entitled to this yoga class or space”. 

I am also concerned about our general lack of commitment as yoga teachers and professionals to talk about oppression's inside of our classes and studios and even between us as we vie for power and control over the way that yoga is defined and practiced. Conversations are happening, yet defensiveness and insular thinking still prevents an honest exploration of how we wield our position and power.

The anonymity of large classes, the non relational demeanour, shortened class times are all harmful developments in yoga that stop us from working with and seeing real people.  We can begin the push back against these developments and dedicate time and energy in our teaching for feeling others, listening more, giving time for check in’s in class, for people to raise their voice, express their needs and get a response. Building relationship is essential, it breaks the isolation and dissonance between mind and body that oppression creates.  

 I have been criticised for bringing up issues of privilege and power because it amplifies negativity and reduces people down to their ‘vital statics’. A response that I often get is to “leave the politics out of yoga”,  “I work with just people”, “I do dot put people in categories” or “we just need to do our yoga practice ".  It is interesting to me, how closely this sentiment echoes the narrative of our colonial past, the refusal of the coloniser to see difference positively; the colour, the identity and the culture of the people they were extracting wealth and resources from. Pain and suffering was  also not acknowledged, the colonised became the ‘other’, the wretched because of their own innate disposition, not because of social-economic- cultural oppression (for more information see the work of Franz Fanon).  This belief system still informs how we refuse to give body symptoms a rightful context, instead attributing their existence to some inbuilt default in one’s biology or race. 

Since we are grappling with issues of cultural appropriation in yoga, I think it is essential that we acknowledge just how much of our past still shapes the way we see the world, it is part of our socialisation and education. We are taught not to see connections or context. 

 No amount of AUMS, statues of Ganesha or “keep calm and carry on” yoga mats is going to free us from our conditioning. Our task is to un- learn the dynamics that manipulate, objectify and silence people. We need to use our power responsibly and acknowledge that we do impact others through our cues or choice of words, use of gaze, our touch, adjustments and organisation of space.

Diversity should not scare us, differences are liberating.  When difference is denied, we come under social pressures to conform, we become fearful and generate fear.  If we can be brave enough to admit how as a society we use difference to disadvantage, then we can open our eyes to the dynamics of oppression and think clearly about its relevance to yoga and our teaching. As yoga professionals,   if we do not acknowledge privilege, then we really lack empathy and we do not see the pain of others.  How then are we really helping? What are our motivations and who is this yoga practice REALLY benefiting? 

                    Decolonising Yoga

                          Agni, agency and the space for dialogue

I have a request for the UK yoga community to decolonise itself. With the current state of flux and shift in our governing bodies, chaos brings opportunity for change. Differences of opinion are healthy; conflict is inevitable and necessary for growth. It is not conflict that becomes the issue but how we deal with it. There is no way that strong willed passionate yoga teachers are going to avoid getting into conflict with each other. We can enter conflict with openness, care enough to go into it and learn something from it. ‘Being nice’ maintains a status quo; it is the antithesis of authentic engagement. I feel like it is a very fertile moment to build a temenos, a holding space for ourselves as practioners to dialogue, reflect and think more deeply about how we have got to this point.

This is what I mean by decolonisation, entering into Kairos time to pause, to stop. Instead of going forwards, we can retract a little and settle in, just like a backward bend; we turn back on ourselves to reflect on our reality. The colonial ideology, bases itself on Chronos, getting things done in fear that there will never be enough. It intrinsically dissociates the personal from the political, building a sense of private interiority that is disconnected from historical and cultural context. To decolonise, as Audre Lorde says:

“Is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house, they will never enable us to bring about genuine change”

As yoga teachers and therapists, we really do have powerful tools to bring about change but are we using them?
I would like to give a little background about myself. I am of Indian descent with Hindu and Muslim family. I am also of European heritage. 6 years ago, I was commissioned by the BWY to carry out a research based inquiry, to identify over a 12 week period, the barriers to BAME women entering into yoga. What I came to realise on writing up my findings, was that by undertaking this type of research, by looking for problems, identifying features, I was in effect pathologising my own community. I was trapped in an oppressive collusion, re- traumatising myself and others. Once I realised this, I felt anger and returned back to the evaluation day confused and annoyed. A more pertinent and necessary question I felt we really needed to ask was who is holding power in yoga, what narratives, norms and structures exist within yoga groups and organizations that create barriers to inclusion. The decolonising endeavour is to raise the gaze and challenge power dynamics.

Today I am writing from Wales, a country that has experienced its own colonisation. Last year, I became involved in a grass roots movement in Cardiff to address representation issues in the arts sector with the understanding that we need to decolonise not diversify. Our discussions focused on power; who is holding and wielding it, and how this might mirror general dynamics of privilege in our society. Decolonisation requires some back tracking and some awareness about colonialism. Colonial norms and epistemologies are deeply embedded in our socialisation and determine the ways that we see, organise and relate to the world. Let me a give a little background

Colonialism is the policy and practice of acquiring political control over another country, occupying it and exploiting it economically. Colonialisation is act of domination, your body, land or culture cannot be your own. From an Ayurvedic understanding anything that invades directly into the cells, severs Agni. Since colonisation is essentially an act of transgression, it ruptures boundaries and agni. To have any kind of agency, we need agni. Agni is the force of intelligence within each cell, each tissue, and every system within the body. Ultimately, it is the discernment of agni that determines which substances, energies and patterns enter within us; our cells, tissues, our minds and hearts. Agni is the gatekeeper; it maintains our cellular memory in our DNA.
Agni, as a sacred fire within, promotes determination and decision making. In colonised states, there is no flame of discernment, no flame for memory or mean making.

Memmi writes, “cultures under attack lose the ability to discern which elements should be revised or questioned. They become static, immobilised. Cut off from memory and awareness”

A frozen immobilised agni creates high vata and wired survival responses. 

Decolonising yoga would require us to unfreeze and bring yoga out of its survival responses, to make it less defensive, less prescriptive and supportive of individual and collective agni and agency.

A particular area that I feel could benefit from a decolonising detox, are our yoga pedagogies and curriculum. As yoga professionals we rely on texts books and hegemonic knowledge systems that privilege the mind and intellect. 
Pedagogies that are process orientated support body process, giving a less reductionist understanding of the body. Process orientated pedagogies are closer to traditional Indian ontology and epistemologies. Adopting these teaching methods would increase more participation from people of South Asian origin.

Neo liberal and globalising dynamics are such that traditional ontology’s are being lost. Indian epistemology and axiologies are built on cultural attachments and bonds, formed to people, the earth, to the environment. Knowledge is received and transmitted through the senses, the body and into the heart. Ayurvedic pulse reader’s sense, wise women know, wise uncles tease, musicians and dancers recite poetry and pearls of wisdom steeped in paradox and myth.

In my own teacher training experience, the teaching methods were very flat, didactic, monological and highly cognitive, appealing to reason. As a group, we had to know everything, get everything explained. Deep down I was missing the intimate talks and stories that my father would share with me as a child. This lineage based transmission can happen in families, with loved ones, in temples, in grave yards, on the pavements, in the kitchen. A wise elder by virtue of his/her personal experience and lived experiences shares knowledge, you sit in his/her aura of wisdom and digest through the senses. Knowledge becomes as a perfume, diffusing gently all around, arousing you, stimulating your senses, settling on to your skin.

By contrast academics studying South Asian philosophy or history from an embodied distance, maintain a penetrating voyeuristic lens, peeling away at layers, leaving a bare, exposed nothingness. In the process of omitting their own positionality and personal gains, knowledge making becomes objectifying or romanticising. It was for me, a pretty gruelling process going through a yoga teacher training,having your own dismembered culture taught back to you with such proprietorship.

Bell hooks: 
“There is no need to hear your voice, when I can talk about you better than you can speak about yourself. No need to hear your voice. I want to know your story and then I will tell it to you in a new way. Tell it back to you in such a way that it has become mine, my own. Re writing you, I write myself anew I am still author, authority. I am still the colonizer the speaking subject and you are now the centre of my talk”

I am curious about ways that we can support and respect Yogic, Ayurvedic, Indian Indigenous ways of knowing by committing to a deeper personal process; evolving our own spiritual and psychological maturity and development. I am also curious about how we can take on more social responsibility; how we can consider the impact of cultural appropriation, and the webs of the Yoga industrial complex. How can we facilitate communities of colour and particularly South Asian communities to utilise yoga for their own healing. How might we get real and honest about how we use yoga for what aim and whose benefit, while sincerely acknowledging one’s own ancestral wounds and stories.
Decolonising yoga, is to essentially build a temenos, to re kindle agni and dialogue. A vision I have to delve deeper into ethics, to talk about the icky and uncomfortable; to get brave and real so that the yoga that we teach and practice can benefit more people and promote real agency and transformation.

Writen by Sophia Ansari. 
21/05/2018
For more info about courses, CPD and Decolonising Yoga visit:
www.beingwithdifference.co.uk

Bell Hooks (1990) Marginality as a site or resistance
Audre Lorde (2018) The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House (Penguin Modern)
Albert Memmi (2016) The Colonizer and the Colonized.