Join Dr. Sheena Sood for this virtual “decolonizing yoga” workshop that invites yoga teachers and practitioners to contemplate how coloniality, Hindu and white supremacy, casteism, and structural oppression show up in our practice, consumption, and circulation of yoga; and it also encourages us to consider how we can build and sustain a yoga practice that invests in the healing, justice, and liberation of oppressed communities.
The first half of the workshop interrogates the colonial history of yoga by naming its connection to white supremacy and global capitalism; as well as its embedded ties to Brahmanical casteism and Hindu nationalism. Learning about how these colonial layers operate in mainstream yogic spaces and popular culture allows teachers and practitioners to acknowledge the pervasive influence that these popular approaches maintain in our philosophical and practical understanding of yoga and spirituality.
The second half of the workshop offers practitioners and teachers an opportunity to consider if/how yoga can be reimagined toward an ethics of liberatory praxis. The process of “reimagining” challenges us to transform the spiritual tradition of yoga not into a glorified relic from the past, but rather into a praxis that affirms and embodies the resistance struggles, humanity, freedom and healing of oppressed peoples and that challenges us to consider how, where, and with whom we engage and share this sacred practice.
To those who are willing to dive into an uncomfortable but necessary dialogue that sharpens/cultivates our growing edge, “Decolonizing Yoga” offers us a framework that moves us beyond surface-level critiques of cultural appropriation toward a more honest engagement of the ways that all yogis, including people of color, perpetuate oppressive class, race, religious fundamentalism, and casteism in our yogic practices.
What Yoga Teachers and Practitioners will take away from this workshop:
This workshop will move practitioners toward embodied liberation by applying the framework of anti-oppression to understanding yoga’s historical roots and its contemporary manifestations;
The workshop offers practitioners a critical decolonial lens to interrogate current examples of yoga’s weaponization by authoritarian and oppressive institutions;
It encourages practitioners to root the struggle to decolonize yoga in an ethics and politics of social justice and collective liberation rather than a flattened expression of representation/identity politics.
Investment:
$60 | Access Pricing - for those where cost may be a barrier
$85 | Studio Pricing
Sheena Sood, PhD (she/her) is a Philadelphia-based activist, educator, sociologist, and healing justice visionary of South Asian descent and southern roots. Sheena has studied yoga, Ayurvedic Kundalini Massage therapy, Reiki, and sound healing traditions at Kailash Tribal School of Yoga and Holistic Healing in Mcleodganj, India (YTT - 200hr, AYTTC - 500hr). Sheena enjoys teaching gentle vinyasa or hatha practices infused with embodied liberatory philosophy. Recently, she launched Yoga Warrior Tales, an adventure-based mindfulness program for kids.
Currently, Sheena serves as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Muhlenberg College in the Sociology and Anthropology department, where she teaches introductory and advanced courses on Social Movements and the Sociology of Yoga. Her current research project Omwashing Yoga: Weaponized Spirituality in India, Israel and the US scrutinizes the application of yoga and mindfulness around the globe, particularly by far-right governments who use yoga to advance their colonial and ethnonationalist agendas. Rather than propagate narratives that glorify yoga’s ancient past, Sheena works to curate healing justice offerings through frameworks that recognize yoga’s oppressive layers and its liberatory potential; she envisions a futuristic yoga that centers collective freedom and embodies political action by centering humanity, all living beings, and Mother Earth.
Sheena is grateful to call Philly home and to be in relationship with healers, artists, cultural workers, and grassroots groups that work to abolish the carceral state and free all political prisoners. Visit www.sheenashining.com to learn more about her passions and values and to connect for a deeper yoga experience!