Yoga Rising by Melanie C. Klein

Author:Melanie C. Klein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: yoga;body image;yoga & body image;self help;self-help;melanie klein;yoga rising;yoga for empowerment;empowerment;CVR05162017;CVR05222017;CVR11012017
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD.
Published: 2017-11-15T16:35:22+00:00

The Last Straw: Yoga Racism

While romanticization of our culture might seem preferable to outright bigotry and ignorance, I feel a lump in my throat chakra when I hear white folks singing the praises of Rama, a Hindu God who is said to be an avatar of Vishnu, one of the trinity of Hindu patriarchal deities and is the hero of the epic Ramayana. Do I bring up that Desi (South Asian) feminists revile Rama for his treatment of his wife Sita (though She Herself is an avatar of the Goddess Lakshmi) and risk getting flooded with those pitying looks that I get when I wear a bindi (the mark worn traditionally by Hindu women on the third eye chakra point) … hip on white women, but a marker of patriarchal oppression on me? Do I bring up the Dravidian nationalist theory that the Ramayana is a narrative of Aryan colonization of the Dravidian South in which the Dravidians are rendered as monkeys and demons?

I can hear the whoosh of air going over people’s heads. Do I mention that of all the millions of Hindu gods, Rama is the most beloved icon of Hindu nationalists, who are a dangerously Islamophobic, patriarchal, fascist group who wield considerable political power in India today. Rama is to today’s India as Trump’s/Pence’s Jesus is to today’s America, an unforgiving icon of intolerance and misogyny. When in modern India, Hindu fundamentalists are actively appropriating yoga, yoking it to the most oppressive and intolerant aspects of Indian culture, it does South Asians no favors when Western yogis unwittingly glorify their narrative. Do I mention that Bhakti yoga was actually a medieval spiritual rebellion against the oppressive hierarchies of casteism and patriarchal power and not a rave party? For me, as a South Asian feminist yogabhyasi, to be able to come to a place of true authenticity in my relationship to yoga, it’s essential for me to examine all the historical complexities and to attempt to untangle the deeply interwoven threads of patriarchy and casteism. But when everything about yoga is mystified, potentially negative aspects are rendered invisible or, worse, made sacrosanct.

What finally made me want to give up on yoga teaching for good was when being the only person of color at a fund raiser ironically for yoga in “urban” schools, I became an “invisible” witness to culturally insensitive stereotyping of black people, couched in feel-good “yoga-speak.” That was the last straw. I decided I just couldn’t be a part of YogaLand anymore. I felt battered by this egoistic yoga that was like beauty standards … externally defined by a capitalist, patriarchal, racist framework that leaves everyone—even the skinny white women it puts up on a pedestal—out in the spiritual cold.

But as dharma would have it, that is when I was offered an opportunity to teach a yoga class for Women of Color.

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