Aug 13, 2020
We practice yoga to heal. We practice yoga to make ourselves
stronger - physically, mentally, and spiritually. I know that I
first came to the yoga mat in search of something that would make
me a better person. So it can be very hard for a yoga student to
process the all-too-true reality that yoga is not the perfect path
we intend it to be.
We practice yoga to be resilient, to be enlightened, and to be
kinder to ourselves and to others - yet we don’t always see those
same practices in the larger yoga community.
The lack of diversity that I am seeing in the Ashtanga yoga
community is a blatant example of the cognitive dissonance each
yoga student experiences between their practice and the world we
live in off of the mat. Yoga guru Wambui Njuguna-Räisänenin joins
me on this episode of The Yoga Inspiration Podcast to explain more
of what this cognitive dissonance looks and feels like.
Wambui found Ashtanga yoga at a low point in her life, and the
practice turned out to be exactly what she needed to heal herself
and her past. But there are still parts of her that she had to keep
hidden. Key experiences that are unique to black women and other
POC yoga students that they cannot share with the yoga community as
a whole.
We discuss the issues of abuse and discrimination we are
seeing in the Ashtanga community and why it’s causing many yoga
students to question the yoga practice. Unfortunately, when you
don’t see people that look like you in your yoga classes, it’s hard
to find the kind of support you need. It can be even harder to
approach a yoga teacher or come back to a second class when you
don’t see yourself in the community.
When did Ashtanga yoga, a practice that is so beneficial,
become so oppressive in the same breath?
These are the types of questions we need to be asking
ourselves and one another. Wambui is fearless in the way she speaks
and the questions she asks, and I’m excited to bring that energy to
my podcast.
Wambui wants each yoga student to ask themselves - who am I
learning from? What is the social location of this person? What is
the socio-cultural location of the community that these people
belong to? Simply being aware of your space in the yoga community
can help you start the conversation and keep the conversation going
for as long as we need to make a significant change. Right now,
there is no space for POC in the yoga community, and it’s our job
as yoga students and yoga teachers to engage with this fact and be
critical about it.
“If we talked about it enough, it wouldn’t keep coming up,”
Wambui says, so start talking about it. Pay attention and take what
you learn on your yoga mat into the real world. Because it’s time
to start fixing the structural level of this system that allows the
yoga community to exist within this cognitive
dissonance.
What are some of the lessons you’ve learned on your spiritual
path? Please share some of what you’ve learned with me and my
listeners. Send me an email at
info@kinoyoga.comand tell me - what
does yoga mean to you? You could be invited to guest spot on The
Yoga Inspiration Podcast with Kino MacGregor!
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