Mind Your Mindfulness
There’s something intimate and warm about sweating next to strangers, breathing in unity, affirming the connection between breath and body, body and breath. Yoga offers this experience through classes that exist to build a bridge between the mind and body. For some, it’s a spiritual practice allowing one to reach a higher sense of self — for others, it’s a physical practice to twist out the toxins burrowed under the skin. And when we’re all on our mats, breathing, dripping, warm, pushing to balance a second longer, inching forward a breath deeper, we are supposed to “be equal.” Sound familiar? Kind of like the American Dream — the melting pot of USA Unity?
As with this ideal, we know majority of the time it rings false. At the end of a class, you open your eyes from Shavasna, your rebirth, to find yourself surround by similar body types where kale and kombucha aren’t luxuries but normalcies, along with skin colors that hue on the lighter side. The irony within this stems from the core of yoga, to take away this privilege and sink into the “true self,” but in America — majority of yoga students are white, middle class and beyond. And writing this doesn’t exempt me from the problem. I work at a yoga studio that feels like a beautiful community radiating warm energy; I like to think the studio and I spread the love, making people feel welcome. However, when I look around my mat, the diversity is limited. And I’m not the only one who has noticed this.
For years, people have been asking ‘why is yoga so white?’ When did the American cultural code of what a “yogi” is or isn’t come to fruition? And why are some challenging this code now?
It begins when white Americans appropriated yoga from India, a pattern of colonialization that refuses to die. Before Americans dug their capitalistic claws into yoga, the term “yoga” appeared in the 1500s within an ancient Indian Script, Vedas, where Vedic priests and devout holy men conducted scarifies in certain poses — believed to be the precursors to yoga poses. Fast forward to 3 BCE, the word “yoga” was common in Hindu, Jain and Buddhist writings — tied to spiritual or meditative practices known as calmness or insight. It took an even more spiritual turn during the 5th century, when the lexicon diverged into “yogi” and “yoga”. A “yogi” acted supernaturally, entering bodies to expand their consciousness — poetically reminding me of an empath.
Then, from 500–1500 AD, this spiritual pathway developed into different schools with Tantra yoga, a practice where participants would have sex with low caste women they believed were physical embodiments of goddesses. There was Hatha yoga, considered “psychophysical yoga” that included breathing, postures and mediation — similar to what we consider “traditional” yoga today. It didn’t reach the U.S. until the 1890s when a Hindu Monk, Swami Vivekananda, toured the US and Europe to spread knowledge about yoga among intellectuals.
Suddenly, 90 years later in America, yoga transcends beyond the spiritual community to the medical community. Several studies have been conducted, from Harvard Health to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, on yoga’s physical benefits: reducing blood pressure, depression, anxiety, and improving cardiac function, muscle strength and circulation — to name a few. By 2014, there’s “International Yoga Day” — a day that one boldly claimed, “If every 8-year-old in the world practiced yoga, it will eliminate violence from the world within one generation.”
But, seamlessly translating this sacred history of a culture hundreds and thousands of miles away was hard to do. Of course, we had to Americanize it, capitalize it. The once supernatural term “yogi” is plastered on plastic water bottles, some classes ranging anywhere from $22 to $45 a class. “Namaste” became another trendy word in our lexicon to print on crop tops.
Yet, despite its American makeover, yoga still holds the health benefits that are now verified by multiple medical and academic studies.
Access to this health practice is denied to ones who don’t have the socioeconomic means, the ones who don’t feel it accessible in their world, their culture — i.e. the ones who are unable to sling privilege on their shoulder like a new yoga mat.
Yoga is considered a “complementary alternative medicine”, meaning it can be used to help alleviate and manage certain ailments like anxiety, depression, high blood pressure etc. Just as our current healthcare system provides a barrier for underprivileged populations to fully access medicine, most yoga studios emulate this structure. In fact, the CDC even confirms this:
A study on CAM (complementary and alternative medicine) in 2007, found 38% of adults and 12% of children use CAM. It proved that the use is greater among women who are educated. Focusing on adults, if we break down that 38% of people, 50.3% are American Indian/Alaska Native, 43.1% are white, 39.9% are Asian, 25.5% are Black and 23.7% are Hispanic (National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health).
Although this study examined the 10 most used CAMs, the ones most related to yoga include the 12.7% who participated in deep breathing, 9.4% in meditation, and 6.1% who used yoga.
These numbers translate into an unwelcome space for the 12.7%, and the populations who are not even recognized in this study: people with a disability and non-binary identifying folk.
But the stats that have been helixed like strands of DNA in the American ideals of yoga, are slowly, but powerfully unraveling because of people like Dianne Bondy. She created her own online studio featuring free videos that specialize in yoga for diverse communities. Bondy didn’t stop there. She refused to wait to see diversity in mainstream yoga and created the Yoga and Body Image Coalition — using public images that challenge what yoga looks like and who is practicing. She’s fed up, and for a good reason:
Another barrier-breaker is Kendra Dibinga in D.C, who created a studio out of a health crisis in her community. In her Washington District, residents are two times more likely to die from coronary heart disease, six times more likely to die from diabetes-related complications and two times more likely to die from stroke compared to their white counterparts, according to a report released by Georgetown University. She sees yoga as CAM “hanging the inner-workings of your body so that you can be more healthy and can get off that blood pressure medication and improve your numbers as it related to diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease.”
She’s also intentional about welcoming students of all shapes, sizes, and levels — people who’ve always wanted to try yoga but never did “because they felt like they didn’t fit in because of what mainstream America was pushing as a yogi or a yoga body,” she says. “During those 90 minutes of hot yoga, everybody struggles… When you realize, you are not perfect, then those superiority and inferiority complexes break down. You’re changing how you perceive yourself and how you relate to others.”
This practice of breaking down complexes benefits all populations, specifically for the mainstream white students who may have not been aware of their lacking inclusivity. Another teacher breaking barriers in yoga, Sariane Leighas, went through similar experiences as a black yoga student. Like Dibinga, she decided to break down the psychological and social barriers, and even the economic ones as well. Sariane Leighas issues had many complex layers beyond race. “I encountered issues that went beyond race — including body type, privilege, class, and familial circumstances,” she said.
Leighas decided to make her classes donation-based, offering them at parks, libraries, churches, recreation centers, and other places.
While Dibinga and Leighas include marginalized populations into mainstream notions of yoga, others attract these communities by altering the practice; a different approach to accessibility with classes such as “Trap Yoga.”
Although some studios have special classes like Core Power’s Drake music-themed yoga sculpt class during Drake’s birthday — a trap yoga class is entirely different. Brandon Copeland taught his first trap yoga class for a friend’s birthday, playing popular Southern playlist while flowing. He then created a studio catered toward the black community, Khepera Wellness, to reject assimilation into the overwhelmingly white yoga communities in the D.C. area.
“There’s a reason that it’s trap yoga — because black people understand exactly what that means,” Copeland states. This studio is designed for people who are genuinely a part of the black community, it goes deeper than white students who listen to trap music on the radio. However, they don’t turn down white students. “We want you to come — we are just unapologetic about our support of the black community and black people.”
In addition to trap yoga classes, Khepera Wellness offers a “Power House” and “Black Girl Magic” class that include affirmations during practice and discussions about black women’s issues afterward.
Another yoga instructor experimenting with Trap Yoga is Trap Yoga Bae who I had the pleasure of watching practice at a wellness event in New York City. Britteny Floyd-Mayo created her “Trap Tribe” to bridge the gap between the cultural relevance and to introduce those who feel ostracized from the typical Yogi experience. Her classes are based off traditional Vinyasa-style flow and backed by the heavy bass and hypnotic rhythm of her DJ’s skills, paired with #ratchetaffirmations. Britteny, from Oakland California, downward-facing –twerk-dogs away the stereotypes of sound, poses and dress in yoga. She incorporates physically shooting her goals after a warrior three pose, making her look even more like a warrior. Although untraditional, she still has the traditional expertise — with a certification from Rishikesh, India.
Yet, alternative studios and classes are not the only way diverse communities are finally gaining access to yoga, organizations such as Liberation Prison Yoga brings yoga to incarcerated individuals because “mindfulness practices like yoga form part of a holistic approach to changing ingrained behavior patterns resulting from trauma.”
Liberation Prison Yoga is on a mission to train instructors within the prison system and educate the public about trauma-conscious yoga. The stressors from pre-trial, prison and re-entry to society can be traumatic leading to feelings of violence and anger; Liberation Prison Yoga has seen how yoga and mindfulness help ease the strenuous journey.
Although yoga is flowing into a more egalitarian and accessible practice, there’s still work that can and must be done:
Be conscious of the issue — you’ve read this, now there’s no going back… check.
Educate yourself more: what inclusive studios are around me, what online resources can I share, how can I play a part in making this health benefit accessible to the people in my community that may not know about it or feel welcome? What about the people outside of my community?
Take action.
Ah, finally, breathe in the inclusive community that you have been forging towards — feel the health benefits and warmth around you.
Mind Your Mindfulness
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