Recent raceandyoga items

Disrupting Monoliths: Yogi Haider's Localization of Yoga in Pakistan

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Yogi Haider, a contemporary yoga teacher from Phalia, Punjab, now based in Islamabad, offers a compelling example of what teaching yoga in Pakistan entails. Despite the shared cultural heritage between India and Pakistan, post-Partition tensions have made yoga a controversial practice in Pakistan. This study explores how Yogi Haider’s individual narrative challenges stereotypical portrayals of Pakistan and reveals yoga’s often overlooked presence in the country. It provides an alternative perspective that situates yoga within Pakistan’s cultural, religious, and political landscape, countering its exclusive association with Hindu and Indian identity. This paper argues that Yogi Haider strategically uses social media to display how he localizes his teachings by incorporating poetry, spatial markers, and historical elements. In doing so, he challenges both Pakistan’s global image and India’s sole claim to yoga. His work highlights how yoga in Pakistan is under-represented in academic...

Returning to Fitra: Teaching Yogic Mindfulness to Children through Meddy Teddy

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Returning to Fitra: Teaching Yogic Mindfulness to Children through Meddy Teddy

Introduction: Yoga in Global Muslim Contexts: Cultural Representations and Spiritual Practices

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction: Yoga in Global Muslim Contexts: Cultural Representations and Spiritual Practices

Yoga in Gaza: A Conversation Featuring Hadeel Al-Gharbawi of Al-Jawad Camp

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Yoga in Gaza: A Conversation Featuring Hadeel Al-Gharbawi of Al-Jawad Camp

“Women’s Empowerment Through Yoga”: A Reflection on How Muslim American Women Build Spaces of Healing

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“Women’s Empowerment Through Yoga”: A Reflection on How Muslim American Women Build Spaces of Healing

From the Ivory Tower to the Citrus Grove: A Yoga Journey

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

From the Ivory Tower to the Citrus Grove: A Yoga Journey

“Giving You the Best of What God has Given You”: The Use of Yoga among Members of the Nation of Islam

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article provides a critical discourse analysis of interviews, speeches, social media posts, and writings produced by members of the Nation of Islam to explore how they define, describe, and use yoga in their holistic medicine practices. I argue that for Black women members of the Nation of Islam, yoga is a tool used to resist white supremacy.

Muslims use yoga to reclaim their health and create new Islamicized bodies by prioritizing self-health, self-care, and physical and spiritual fitness. Furthermore, I argue that Nation of Islam members’ embrace of yoga is a result of the organization’s unique religio-racial identity which defines them as Asiatic Blacks and part of a broader pan-Asian decolonial movement. My research contributes to the growing focus on Black Muslim women’s knowledge production and creative agency.

The Other Woman Does Yoga: A Personal Reflection on Growing Up with Yoga in Pakistan

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Other Woman Does Yoga: A Personal Reflection on Growing Up with Yoga in Pakistan

Breath and Belief: Yoga, Islam, and the Moral Politics of Wellness in Lamu, Kenya

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

On the Swahili Island of Lamu, Kenya, global wellness discourses intersect with long-standing Islamic traditions of bodily care, ritual purification, and spiritual discipline. This article examines the introduction of yoga as both a development intervention and a spiritual offering in a historically Sufi Muslim community. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork during the Lamu Yoga Festival and beyond, I analyze how yoga is promoted, practiced, and reinterpreted through the intersecting lenses of gender, race, and religion. While yoga is often framed by organizers as a path to empowerment and stress relief, some local participants engage with it selectively, drawing instead on Islamic practices such as wudhu, salah, and dhikr as embodied techniques of healing and divine presence. Through attention to everyday encounters – in classrooms, on beaches, and in mosques – I trace both the appeal and ambivalence of yoga’s arrival in Lamu. In exploring these frictions, I theorize Islamic...

Contested Poses: Reflections on Yoga, Secular Muslim Identity, and Belonging Across Borders

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Contested Poses: Reflections on Yoga, Secular Muslim Identity, and Belonging Across Borders

Race and Yoga: A Grassroots and Feminist Publication

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Race and Yoga: A Grassroots and Feminist Publication

The Trouble with Wellness

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Trouble with Wellness

China, Internationalized Higher Education, and an Integral Approach: Inclusive Practice through the Creation and Implementation of a Staff Yoga Program

Mon, 3 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

China, Internationalized Higher Education, and an Integral Approach: Inclusive Practice through the Creation and Implementation of a Staff Yoga Program

Weaving Threads of Collective Liberation: Intercultural Wisdom Among Indigenous and South Asian Women in the Indigenous Yoga Collective

Mon, 3 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This article explores the transformative journey of the Indigenous Yoga Collective (IYC) as a case study integrating a decolonial healing praxis through yoga with Indigenous and South Asian women. The IYC emerged from the First Nations Women’s Yoga Initiative (FNWYI), an 80-hour trauma-informed yoga training designed to foster community connection, cultural reclamation, and collective healing for First Nations peoples. Rooted in a culturally responsive framework, the IYC addresses the shared traumas of colonial oppression while promoting the reconnection of body, mind, spirit, and land. The IYC exemplifies individual and collective healing while fostering cross-cultural solidarity. By centering South Asian voices and Indigenous traditions, the collective provides a model for decolonial wellness frameworks that resist cultural commodification and build reciprocal relationships. Moving forward, the IYC seeks to deepen its impact by co-creating inclusive, accessible programs that...

Decolonizing Yoga Through an Intersectional Analysis in the Indian Diaspora: A South African Story

Sat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Decolonizing Yoga Through an Intersectional Analysis in the Indian Diaspora: A South African Story

Reigniting Race and Yoga: An Open Issue “in the Wake” of Ongoing Crises

Sun, 31 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Reigniting Race and Yoga: An Open Issue “in the Wake” of Ongoing Crises

Book Review: Freedom Inside? Yoga and Meditation in the Carceral State

Tue, 5 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Book Review: Freedom Inside? Yoga and Meditation in the Carceral State

Queer and Trans Yoga: Practices of Utopia in Hostile Times

Mon, 15 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This article theorizes queer and trans yoga as a practice of queer utopia and embodied resistance to systems of subordination at a time of increased attacks on queer and trans life, rights, and freedom. While there is a growing robust literature that critiques the racialized gendered and colonialist formations of yoga in the West, little attention beyond a few mainstream and scholarly monographs explore queer and trans yoga. This research contributes to this gap in developing an account of queer and trans yoga through autoethnography and testimony. It particularly emphasizes the potentials for cultivating pleasure in individual and collective terms through queer and trans yoga.

Book Review: Practicing Yoga as Resistance: Voices of Color in Search of Freedom

Mon, 1 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Book Review: Practicing Yoga as Resistance: Voices of Color in Search of Freedom

Rediscovering Citta: Vignettes on Violence and Healing in Life and Commercial Yoga Spaces

Sun, 30 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Rediscovering Citta: Vignettes on Violence and Healing in Life and Commercial Yoga Spaces

“Roll Out My Mat and Take Up Space”: A Study of Black Women’s Resistance to Yoga’s White Normativity

Fri, 14 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Yoga in the West, specifically in the United States, is often a deeply exclusionary space. While the practice of āsana , or posture with steady breathing, can be performed anywhere, the ability to engage in a full medicinal yoga practice may be unattainable for some practitioners, Black women in particular, due to how white normativity is bolstered in the US yoga industry. Contributing to the emergent literature that asks if the benefits of physical activity are universally shared by all people, this article discusses the historical and social contexts that influenced the whitening and gendering of US yoga and utilizes a Black feminist perspective to theorize how historically and contemporarily Black women have employed yoga as a critical survival strategy. This qualitative study specifically charts how Black women have and continue to employ yoga to navigate and resist white normativity and violence inside and outside...

"You are Your Best Thing": The Barriers and Benefits of Yoga for Black Women

Sun, 1 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

African American women face emotional stress and chronic health issues such as heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. This has become even more salient during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are a multitude of factors that contribute to this psychosocial stress and negative health outcomes including systemic oppression and barriers to physical activity. Exercise has been identified as an adaptive coping strategy for Black women to reduce psychological distress and negative health outcomes. This article will explore yoga as an adaptive intervention. Issues that impact Black women, Black women and physical activity, the benefits and barriers of yoga, and access for Black women will also be addressed. This article is aimed at two primary groups: 1) Black women who experience emotional stress and/or who have been diagnosed with or are at risk of conditions such as obesity, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes that negatively impact their overall health and, 2) healthcare providers...

Book Review: Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies

Sun, 1 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Book Review: Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies

How the Yoga Community Made Me, Then Tried to Break Me

Wed, 29 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

How the Yoga Community Made Me, Then Tried to Break Me

Yoga During COVID-19: Perpetual Pandemics

Fri, 24 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Yoga During COVID-19: Perpetual Pandemics

Book Review: Post-Lineage Yoga: From Guru to #MeToo

Tue, 31 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Book Review: Post-Lineage Yoga: From Guru to #MeToo

Embodied Justice in Yoga for People of Color Sangha

Fri, 7 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Embodied Justice in Yoga for People of Color Sangha

Mothering and Self-Care While Black in the Age of COVID

Fri, 26 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This article examines the experiences of Black mothers during the COVID-19 pandemic through a lens of self-care. As a group of people particularly impacted by persistent gender inequality, the economic and health disparities laid bare by the pandemic, as well as the structural racism that underscores these inequities, Black mothers’ self-care emerges as an important topic of conversation as women everywhere confront the challenges of parenting, running households, and attending to their own well-being. Communicated through a collection of short case studies, this piece presents a broad range of narratives that demonstrate the way Black mothers engage the practice of yoga to attend to their needs and the needs of their families. Presented with statistical and analytical context, this piece demonstrates the ways yoga supports Black mothers and how it falls short.

The Tale of the Fat, Beautiful, Black Butterfly: My COVID-19 Chrysalis and the Disruptive Potential of Cultivating Yoga Practices Emerging from Black Feminist Thought

Fri, 19 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Tale of the Fat, Beautiful, Black Butterfly: My COVID-19 Chrysalis and the Disruptive Potential of Cultivating Yoga Practices Emerging from Black Feminist Thought

Desis on the Mat: Building BIPOC Community During Two Pandemics

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Desis on the Mat: Building BIPOC Community During Two Pandemics

Introduction: South Asian Voices on Yoga

Tue, 5 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Lakshmi Nair and Arushi Singh offer a summary of the personal narratives and peer reviewed essays by South Asian writers featured in this issue within the context of the events of 2020.

Towards a Critical Embodiment of Decolonizing Yoga

Thu, 16 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Towards a Critical Embodiment of Decolonizing Yoga

Choreographing Tolerance: Narendra Modi, Hindu Nationalism, and International Yoga Day

Sun, 16 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This essay considers the significance of Narendra Modi’s yoga agenda against the backdrop of increasingly violent right-wing Hindu nationalist policies and interventions under his administration. One of Modi’s first official acts after being elected Prime Minister of India in 2014 was to urge the United Nations member states to declare June 21st International Yoga Day. In his speech, he argued that yoga has the capacity to unite both the self and the world. Though Modi espouses unity through yoga, he has arguably been one of the most divisive Indian leaders in recent memory. How do we reconcile the contradiction between “Modi the yogi” who proposes to unify the country and “Modi the Hindu nationalist” who has been actively responsible for dividing it along sectarian lines? What is the function of International Yoga Day within the broader context of Modi’s anti-Muslim politics, both past and present? Why has yoga, in particular, become a central tenet of Modi’s Hindu nationalist...

Travelers, Translators, and Spiritual Mothers: Yoga, Gender, and Colonial Histories

Sat, 15 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Analyzing the work of women traveling to India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this essay explores the intersections of gender, race, and colonial history and connects them to contemporary cultures of yoga. It suggests that analyzing gender in colonial contexts provides a way to understand the dynamics of yoga cultures more fully, and to place them within a historical and cultural frame. As a mind-body practice that was initially becoming consumed by Western audiences and by women in the late nineteenth century and that continues to be a potent and popular practice globally, yoga in its various forms and representations can reflect how the dynamics of colonialism endure and are culturally sustained.

Decolonizing Yoga: Restoring My Seat of Consciousness

Sat, 15 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Decolonizing Yoga: Restoring My Seat of Consciousness

How Prince Taught Me Yoga

Fri, 14 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

How Prince Taught Me Yoga

Yogic Ruptures: Changing Spaces

Sun, 29 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Yogic Ruptures: Changing Spaces

When Even Spirit Has No Place to Call Home: Cultural Appropriation, Microagressions, and Structural Racism in the Yoga Workplace

Sun, 18 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

When Even Spirit Has No Place to Call Home: Cultural Appropriation, Microagressions, and Structural Racism in the Yoga Workplace

Healing Community Breath by Breath: A Conversation with Kerrie Trahan

Mon, 12 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Kerrie Trahan is the founder of Yoganic Flow and Yoga House Detroit. In addition, Trahan holds a Masters of Education in Community Health. In this conversation with Rebecca Kinney, Yoga House Detroit board member and associate professor of American and Ethnic Studies, Trahan, reflects on how her experiences as a black woman and born and raised Detroiter informs her approach to breath, community, and yoga.

Be Still, Be Present: Black Girl Yoga and Digital Counter Spaces

Thu, 28 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Controlling images of Black womanhood and the exclusivity of mainstream wellness spaces complicate Black women’s relationship to yoga. The purpose of this study is to explore how a popular Instagram page, Black Girl Yoga, engages Black women with the spiritual practice. A combined Visual Discourse Analysis (VDA) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) revealed that BGY engages Black women with yoga by a) constructing a culture of inclusivity, b) affirming the individuality of Black women, c) intertextualizing African American cultural discourse and yogic principles, d) decentering Black women’s oppression, and e) creating continuity with physical yoga counter spaces. Implications for theory and praxis are discussed.

Transforming Space? Spatial Implications of Yoga in Prisons and Other Carceral Sites

Tue, 15 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Yoga programs have taken root, and in some cases flourished, in correctional institutions across the globe, yet few scholars have examined this phenomenon from critical theoretical and qualitative perspectives. The goals of this paper are to explicitly link scholarly discussions of yoga in prisons with theoretical developments in criminology, sociology, and human geography; and to use these diverse perspectives to develop a theoretical understanding of the possibilities and limits of yoga as a transformative spatial practice in carceral settings. Drawing on qualitative data collected on prison yoga, primarily in Canada, this paper considers three lines of theoretical inquiry. Firstly, it examines yoga classes as an “institutional display” that facilitates social interaction between prisoners and community members, yet also serves administrative interests. Secondly, it considers the possibilities for yoga spaces to enable forms of emotional expression that may not be permitted...

Decolonizing Yoga? and (Un)settling Social Justice

Mon, 24 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Decolonizing Yoga? and (Un)settling Social Justice

Yoga Brings You Back to Who You Are: A Conversation Featuring Haley Laughter

Tue, 5 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Yoga Brings You Back to Who You Are: A Conversation Featuring Haley Laughter

Yoga, Social Justice, and Healing the Wounds of Violence in Colombia

Mon, 29 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Yoga, Social Justice, and Healing the Wounds of Violence in Colombia

I Do Practice Yoga! Controlling Images and Recovering the Black Female Body in ‘Skinny White Girl’ Yoga Culture

Mon, 1 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Black women’s health and fitness practices remain under-theorized in Public Health, the Social Sciences, and Women’s and Gender Studies. This paper positions the controversy over the XO Jane 2014 post “It Happened to Me: There Are No Black People In My Yoga Classes and I’m Suddenly Uncomfortable With It” by Jen Caron, a white woman, within a broader analytical context. It raises and answers two questions: How did Black women, especially yogis – teachers and students – respond to this post? And, what can their responses tell us about the nature of negative ‘controlling images’ in shaping participants’ experiences of yoga and navigating yoga culture? To answer these questions I draw on comments posted on XO Jane’s website in response to Caron’s post, the blog posts from six African American female bloggers, as well as comments to their posts for a qualitative content analysis. Drawing on Black feminist analysis, I...

Cultivating a Yogic Theology of Collective Healing: A Yogini's Journey Disrupting White Supremacy, Hindu Fundamentalism, and Casteism

Mon, 1 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Cultivating a Yogic Theology of Collective Healing: A Yogini's Journey Disrupting White Supremacy, Hindu Fundamentalism, and Casteism

Sassin' Through Sadhana

Thu, 28 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Sassin' Through Sadhana

Black Women Are Undeniable

Wed, 27 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Black Women Are Undeniable

Black Girl Yoga

Sun, 26 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Black Girl Yoga

naMeste: The Light in Me Remembers the Light in Me

Sun, 29 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

naMeste: The Light in Me Remembers the Light in Me

Linda Wellness Warrior: Three Wednesdays

Sat, 7 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Linda Wellness Warrior: Three Wednesdays

Coming Home

Mon, 25 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Coming Home

God, Nature, and Yoga as Somewhere in Between

Mon, 25 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

God, Nature, and Yoga as Somewhere in Between

Healing to My Soul

Thu, 7 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Healing to My Soul

Sacred Crossroads: A Yoga Journey

Mon, 4 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Sacred Crossroads: A Yoga Journey

Rethinking Yoga: Meditations on the Work We Do

Fri, 23 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Rethinking Yoga: Meditations on the Work We Do

Book Review: Yoga, the Body, and Embodied Social Change: An Intersectional Feminist Analysis

Sun, 27 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Book Review: Yoga, the Body, and Embodied Social Change: An Intersectional Feminist Analysis

Yoga and the Metaphysics of Racial Capital

Fri, 1 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The professionalization of yoga teacher-training at Kripalu Center, a yoga facility named after Swami Kripalu, not only displaces the forms of spiritual quest from which the Center emerged. It also makes its yoga culture vulnerable to the circulation and consumption of racial fetishes, or racially inscribed images that distract from, or magically veil altogether, the endemic complications and histories of racial capitalism. Kripalu Center installs professionalization procedures – including the standardization of curriculum and assessment to legitimate teachers for competition in an expanding yoga market – that make it complicit with the transmission of racial fetishes. Ultimately, professionalization becomes one vector of a larger complex I call the metaphysic of racial capital , or an underlying narrative of capitalist production plotted by various forms of racial fetishes that ensure capital’s continuous regeneration.

Flexible Indian Labor: Yoga, Information Technology Migration, and U.S. Technoculture

Fri, 1 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

In today’s United States, yoga seems to provide a popular antidote to the increasing demands of technology. But, this essay contends, the practice also plays an important part in a larger cultural logic whereby labor from India nourishes a seemingly endless appetite for technological innovation in the United States. This essay shows how imaginative representations of yoga in the autobiography of the Indian guru Paramahansa Yogananda helped to create fantasies that could alleviate U.S. anxieties about technological development. The essay then exposes an inverted mirror of this cultural logic in the representation of information technology migrants from India, whose experiences of grey market exploitation in the United States show the nation’s reliance on a disavowed Indian labor source. This essay contends that both the Indian yogi and the Indian technology migrant can be read as U.S. technology workers. This labor has become important both to the U.S. body politic and to the...

Eating the Other Yogi: Kathryn Budig, the Yoga Industrial Complex, and the Appropriation of Body Positivity

Fri, 1 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This paper discusses the appropriation of body positivity discourse by Kathryn Budig and the yoga industry. During the appropriation process, the political nature of the movement is decontextualized and erased through adoption of individualized messages of body acceptance that largely ignore bodily differences by participation in ideologies of body-blindness. Despite the best of intentions and positive, heartfelt messages of body acceptance, Budig’s developing role as the face of body positivity continues overrepresentation of the “ideal yoga body” in mainstream yoga culture and contributes to restricted systems of meaning regarding (a) who is an “authentic” yogi and (b) what the practice of yoga looks like that continue to marginalize “Other” yogis who face the burden of new industry demands that you #loveyourbody (as long as it is white, thin, acrobatic, female, heterosexual, and so on). By downplaying the importance of the systemic critique of dominant yoga culture to focus...

Book Review: Selling Yoga: From Counterculture to Pop Culture

Fri, 1 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Book Review: Selling Yoga: From Counterculture to Pop Culture