Critical Yoga Studies began as a Race and Yoga Working Group at University of California-Berkeley in 2011. This group was looking to bring together our yoga practices and scholarly work in critical ethnic studies. As scholars and women of color who practice and teach yoga, we experienced and/or witnessed alienation based on race, gender, class, sexuality, ability, and age, assumptions about our bodies and/or cultural (mis)appropriation. We also felt that we were not alone in these observations. While many yoga teachers, including ourselves, are committed to creating inclusive environments for their students, there was a dearth of research that addressed yoga with awareness of structural oppression and their intersections. Mainstream publications and teacher trainings frequently do not examine these issues, and in our opinion, often perpetuate exclusive ideas in the yoga community. 

What began as a working group turned into two conferences and a journal titled Race and Yoga, which started publishing in 2016. A full history of Race and Yoga can be found in our first introduction, "Rethinking Yoga: Meditations of the Work We Do", written by co-founding editors Sabrina Strings and Tria Blu Wakpa.

The journal’s name change to Critical Yoga Studies in 2026 reflects the development of critical yoga studies over the last decade and the wide range of approaches and topics that the field encompasses.