I am a feminist, sociologist, yoga practitioner, social justice activist, perpetual student, and artist. Currently I work as an Assistant Professor in Sociology at California State University, East Bay, with an emphasis in cultural sociology, complex organizations, and social movements.
There are days it seems like the whole world is on fire.
California certainly was. In 2020, over four million acres burned in my home state in over 9,000 fires, killing 31 people, destroying around 10,000 structures, and displacing more than 50,000 people (LA Times 2020). Five of the top six largest fires ever to burn in California burned in 2020 (ABC7 News 2020). Colonial land practices focusing on suppressing fires (Norgaard and Worl 2019) have collided with climate change (ScienceDaily 2020), contributing to growing fire seasons. Nearby states like Oregon and Colorado, were also hit hard with historic blazes, at times leaving the entire west coast shrouded in smoke stretching hundreds of miles. There were days of orange haze that made it feel like we were no longer on Planet Earth, but Mars. Maybe Mars once looked like our planet does now… Maybe someday our children’s children’s children will not even remember blue skies.
California experienced some of the world’s worst air quality last summer (Ho 2020), and Stanford researchers have estimated between 1,000 – 3,000 more Californians died that otherwise would not have due to the prolonged smoke exposure exacerbating preexisting conditions (Rogers 2020). All of these extreme weather conditions are of course more risky given we remain in the middle of a pandemic (Montrose 2020) that has already killed over 550,000 people in the USA as of this writing (CDC).
It’s hard to keep track of when the sensation of burning began, but one thing is certain, 2020 was a lot to manage and process. As I write this, the United States is still navigating the aftermath of a historic election to oppose rising fascism, experiencing a global pandemic, an economic depression that has increased existing poverty, hunger, and income inequality, as well as the ongoing and growing impacts of climate change. In many ways, the world and it’s workings have never felt more uncertain or more precarious. So many folks are hanging on by a thread. Perhaps Joseph Heller was right, and “insanity is contagious” (Catch-22). I remain convinced that anyone less than a little mad in these times is the insane one.
Yet, these moments of turmoil open us up to the potential transmutation of our society and ways of life. This pandemic has highlighted that our old way of living was not and is not sustainable for the planet or for ourselves. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. What is our obligation to create alternative futures? In what follows, I discuss how 2020 was a year characterized by cultural trauma and how ritual practices can help us better navigate collapse, crisis, and connection.
Cultural Trauma Amid 2020
For many, this year has been characterized by trauma, deeply distressing and disturbing experiences. Most people think of trauma as being caused by one-time, contained, violent, and potentially life-threatening incidents–war, sexual violence, physical assault, a car crash. These things are indeed traumatic, though trauma can be caused by a variety of experiences, including systemic forms of oppression like poverty (e.g., Mani et al. 2013), dangerous living conditions (e.g., Gapen et al. 2011), and racial discrimination (e.g., Dr. Joy DeGruy‘s work on post traumatic slave disorder).
Everyone experiences trauma at some point in our lives, because life is not endless and our awareness and ability to navigate intense events fluctuates and shifts across our lives. One thing is always certain–at some point this mortal coil shifts, death comes for us or others or our non-human kin, the cycle spirals onward. The question is not if we will experience trauma, it’s how we process and hold the trauma we go through.
This pandemic, while impacting different demographic groups unequally, has transformed entire industries and social structures overnight, including education, food systems, arts, and entertainment, often in ways that heighten risk and precarity. As we have tried to make sense of the magnitude and nature of the virus, many social interactions and family dynamics have changed. Prior routines have been disrupted. Food scarcity is growing. Employment experiences for many have been transformed as undervalued workers have suddenly become “essential” yet remain under-compensated and under-protected, as yet others have found jobs of many years disappearing, and those of us lucky enough to be able to move our work online are navigating a new, even more technologically dependent lifestyle. We continue to grapple with rising political tension in our nation (and globally) and growing far-right, fascist violence. If anything, political polarization is a sign that we are deeply struggling over the interpretation and meaning of the events of 2020. Our collective memory of what the United States of America was, what it is, of what it could be has been rattled by the hundreds of thousands of ghosts of those we have lost.
Most of us experience traumatic events in relative solitude and isolation, as part of our lives and those few who are witness to or embroiled in the event(s) with us. But when trauma is shared en masse, it changes. Shared trauma can heighten the impacts, deepening the emotional intensity and affecting multiple layers of society from more individual level family functioning to community and national infrastructures. Because stressors in these circumstances are compounded, often trauma is as well. This can contribute to loss spirals, when people in already impoverished environments face resource losses that spawn even more losses.
The ongoing crises and emotional turmoil we have been experiencing this year are a form of cultural trauma. According to Onwuachi-Willig (2016), “Cultural traumas are socially mediated processes that occur when groups endure horrific events that forever change their consciousness and identity…. These traumas arise out of shocks to the routine or the taken for granted” (see also Alexander et al. 2004). Woods (2019:2) argues that cultural trauma consists of a series of events that contribute to the breakdown of a group’s meaning-system, including patterns of norms, beliefs, ideologies, and knowledge. In this sense, cultural traumas don’t just disrupt social structures for the larger group (in the vein of collective trauma), but also tend to undermine and/or overwhelm essential ingredients of our culture, our shared values, our shared understandings of the world and our place(s) in it.
Many have been surprised to find that life continues to just go on despite the pandemic. Yet according to Indi Samarajiva (2020), this is the essence of the experience of collapse, which they argue is already here:
“The real question is, who are you? I mean, you’re reading this. You have the leisure to ponder American collapse like it’s even a question. The people really experiencing it already know. So I’m telling you, as someone who’s been there, in similar shoes to yours; this is it. America has already collapsed. What you’re feeling is exactly how it feels. It’s Saturday and you’re thinking about food while the world is on fire. This is normal. This is life during collapse… Collapse does not mean you’re personally dying right now. It means y’all are dying right now. Death is sometimes close, sometimes far away, but always there. Usually for someone else, but someday, randomly, for you… Collapse is just a series of ordinary days in between extraordinary bullshit, most of it happening to someone else. That’s all it is…. The pain doesn’t go away, it just becomes a furniture of bones, in a thousand thousand homes.”
Circumstances are sometimes beyond our control. We might not be able to avoid all trauma, yet we can control our reactions to traumatic events. We can lessen the impacts. It is possible to turn the tide and create moments of potential and transformation amid the turmoil. In fact, it is essential to recognize that even in the most difficult of times, life continues. How do we find ways to cultivate joy amid the struggle?
Sometimes we rely on what is called surge capacity, or “a collection of adaptive systems—mental and physical—that humans draw on for short-term survival in acutely stressful situations, such as natural disasters” (Haelle 2020). However, when dire circumstances drag on it can be necessary to adopt different styles of coping to promote more long term resilience. According to Kai Cheng, a Canadian social worker and activist, when society itself is the source of trauma, complete healing is impossible because the violence of everyday life is ongoing. Rather than simply relearning how to perceive safety by regulating the mind, the triggers, raw emotions, and unease felt by those experiencing oppression “are in fact skills that have kept us alive.” The goal of healing is not to prepare the body and our minds to return to some general safety of society (that is in actuality unsafe). Rather, we must prepare for struggle together, “training for better survival and the ability to experience joy in the midst of great danger” (Cheng 2020).
Research on resiliency in families who have experienced collective violence gives us a starting point for a path forward. Given the disruption to routines caused by traumatic circumstances, Shelley Wadsworth (2010) argues that it is especially important to maintain organizational patterns and family rituals even if these are delayed or altered to fit new circumstances. As many of us have witnessed this year amid social isolation, it’s also key to maintain caring relationships with others. Find ways to create and sustain shared beliefs and values rooted in hope for a more positive future.
It is also essential that we work not just at the individual level, but at the community level to provide mutual aid and social supports for each other to heal together. For example, in Ostertag and Ortiz’s (2013) study of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, individuals engaged in cultural repair by producing culturally affirming counter-narratives through social media and organizing physically collective actions to rebuild as a community. As the union saying goes, it’s all of us or none of us.
Ritual Practice in End Times
So what is the routine, the organizational pattern we are creating? How are we adapting to our unprecedented circumstances? Every day, we engage in and create ritual practices, performances of actions with a set sequence that reflect a specific intention. Sometimes these are the mundane, earthly rituals. As the poet Joy Harjo has said, “The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live. / The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.” Sometimes our rituals take on deep spiritual meaning, perhaps including our yogic practice.
I know I am not the only one who has found it hard to create consistency in these times. Trauma disrupts routines, making it more challenging to develop and maintain new rhythms, to maintain our ritual practices.
Yet, ritual practices are essential amid this pandemic as a means of building resilience and connecting us to divine wisdom. Performing a set or sequence of actions with intention allows us to symbolically focus and process the emotional experiences we are grappling with. Whatever the form, rituals help us make sense of our social world, alleviate anxiety, even communicate and bond with others. This is the essence and purpose of rituals: to activate our emotions, to reaffirm and redefine what values and identities are most important to us as individuals and as a social group. Rituals sacralize certain people, spaces, or activities and have profound potential to promote healing, protection, and restoration. Yet, they can also reify habitual patterns that can do ourselves great harm, or that can harm others.
What are the ritual practices we are cultivating, especially in these difficult times?
Our daily lives are full of rituals, including personal ones as well as other traditions we carry with us from our ancestors and our backgrounds. While times of crisis impact all ritual practice, these moments also create possibilities for us to reconnect to forgotten routines and patterns, to forge new connections.
I have always found it interesting to look to our apocalyptic imaginings–what stories of apocalypse do we create, and what type of narratives do they present us with on how to survive in end times? Yet, many popular apocalypse shows and narratives feature lead characters who are white and the stories mainstream capitalism offers us often replicate individualist and heteronormative narratives and values. Representations of apocalypse are often deeply gendered and show the salvation of humans as being tied to toxic masculinity, violence, or raw physical strength.
Yet if anything, this year has illustrated the central importance of carework and ritual practices that have historically been labeled feminine and/or associated with people of color. Many indigenous responses to crisis have illustrated that it’s only through building diverse coalitions and mutual aid networks in our communities that we can create resilient communities, resilient families, and resilient ecosystems. It’s only through cooperation that we will be able to access survival.
It is vital that we honor and acknowledge indigenous forms of wisdom as we consider how we can heal from this year, how we can create new and better futures. Although many people have noted that the struggles of 2020 are unprecedented, apocalyptic conditions are something oppressed people have navigated for centuries. According to Kelly Rose Pflug-Back (2020):
“Targeted violence, political suppression, and attacks upon culture and identity figure prominently in the fears of mainstream survivalists. But those fears are, essentially, a fear that white people will someday have to live in the same conditions they’ve subjected colonized peoples to for centuries. Likewise, survivalists talk about the moment that SHTF (shit hits the fan, in prepper lingo) being marked by ‘a breakdown in law and order.’ In this scenario, police and government operations grind to a halt. However, in Canada those entities have never protected queer, Black, and Indigenous people, and they actually work to dispossess and surveil marginalized people. It all begs the question: the end of whose world? And what new worlds might be possible after the breakdown of this one?”
It’s not a coincidence so many people, including myself, have found solace in food rituals as healing practice during this pandemic. For many, revitalizing these forms of everyday ritual practice have been a profound source of healing not just for our individual selves, but has also potentially become a means of supporting those in our families and communities.
For example, Danielle Prohom Olson (2017), a witch and feminist, has observed that “once upon a time all food was wild” and that “no aspect of food production was left untouched by magical ritual.” According to Olson, “seeking balance with nature means more than just reviving practical skills and living sustainably, it means ritually acknowledging and thanking the earth for her life-giving gifts.” In other words, it is a practice of ritualistic devotion to the relations of life (and death) that we are embedded within. Food practices are an important avenue into rewilding, reconnecting the nature, and a site of decolonizing action (for more academic work in this vein, see Pena et al. 2017, Salmon 2012).
Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass, recently wrote an article about harvesting serviceberries and the ethic of reciprocity that allows us to create alternative, gift economies (Kimmerer 2021). It’s worth a deep read. In the piece she discusses how acknowledging that plants are gifts changes our relationship to the natural world from one of commodification/consumption to an understanding of reciprocity and gift exchange. Our response to the gift of serviceberries is one of gratitude,
“the thread that connects us in a deep relationship, simultaneously physical and spiritual, as our bodies are fed and spirits nourished by the sense of belonging, which is the most vital of foods. Gratitude creates a sense of abundance, the knowing that you have what you need. In that climate of sufficiency, our hunger for more abates and we take only what we need, in respect for the generosity of the giver. If our first response is gratitude, then our second is reciprocity: to give a gift in return…. Gratitude and reciprocity are the currency of a gift economy, and they have the remarkable property of multiplying with every exchange, their energy concentrating as they pass from hand to hand, a truly renewable resource… To name the world as gift is to feel one’s membership in the web of reciprocity. It makes you happy—and it makes you accountable. Conceiving of something as a gift changes your relationship to it in a profound way… you are responsible for it, and your gratitude has motive force in the world. You’re likely to take much better care of the gift… Mistreating a gift has emotional and ethical gravity as well as ecological resonance… A gift economy nurtures the community bonds which enhance mutual well-being; the economic unit is “we” rather than “I,” as all flourishing is mutual.”
During this pandemic I began baking sourdough bread. I have gardened, and have continued to brew kombucha. Living foods like these take consistent care, symbiotic relationship, and tap us into larger cycles of life, to more nonhuman understandings of time, to the biologic rhythms of our bodies on this earth. It is a gift of gratitude. By tapping into these ritual practices we are able to heal our hearts and create more sustainable relationships in our lives and our society.
Especially in crisis, it is easy to simply react and replicate forms of harm, to replicate cycles of violence or trauma. Cultivating healing ritual practices in our lives can help us be better prepared to manage emotional and visceral turmoil, to be resilient amid chaos, to navigate new and unexpected challenges. Preparing for apocalypse, ending violence, starts with the internal work that enables us to avoid perpetuating injustice or harm in our personal lives and in our communities. By doing so, we can be a force in the world, creating and participating in better systems.
Perhaps the World Ends Here
By Joy Harjo from The Woman Who Fell From the Sky (1994)
The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.
We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.
It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.
Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.
This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.
Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.
Toward Intentional Endings
Memes have become something of a ritual practice in 2020, a way to connect and cope with the times. Shortly after the shut-downs began for COVID-19, a musician friend of mine shared a meme of a band playing on a sinking ship. The image haunts me now and again, a year later.
When the Titanic sunk in 1912, there were eight musicians on board. All of them died–they were not rich and traveled as second class passengers during the voyage. The nature of the job meant they were young and as far as I know only one had a fiance (and unborn child) he left behind. There was no room in the precious lifeboats for these men. Yet as the ship sank around them, they did not panic. They might not have had a choice in dying, but they chose how they died. They played music until they could play no longer.
Scene from the movie Titanic (1997), depicting the eight musicians of the ship who played as the ship sank.
What can their lives and deaths reveal to us about ritual practice amid chaos? Amid crisis? Amid apocalypse? Scholar-activist Sean Parsons argues that “we need to look to horror—the most nihilistic and pessimistic genre—to imagine what survivalism will look like in the Cthulhuscene… The world might be doomed, but that does not mean that there is no joy and meaning to be found as the world burns.” When we begin from a place of acknowledgement of our cultural trauma, it changes how we organize to heal. It changes how we live amid crisis. Or at least it has the potential to.
What are the ritual practices we are cultivating, and can we think critically and deeply about what we are devoting ourselves to?
How do we want to go out? (Because someday, inevitably, death will come for all of us.)
How can we navigate these storms with grace, with love, honoring life, seeking justice?
What will we make amid crisis?
At the turn of the new year, the rains finally came. That first evening I awoke to the sound of it, the smell of it, and going outside I was reminded again of the magic of this world. By now, in Spring, the ash from the fires has washed clean from the forest leaves. I imagine the nutrients returning to the soil, to the tree roots deep, deep in the ground.
We may be dealing with profound loss, but these times allow us to reflect on the way our systems of living, our lifestyles, our governments, were already unsustainable. What we had before was already broken. We cannot recreate what we were, or how we were. We must find a path to an alternative future. We must grow something new.
When I first got into graduate school, I was warned that degree programs were designed to break you down and build you back up again in the University’s own image, in what we might call normative ways. Graduate school is ultimately a ritual transformation, a rite of passage and initiation, marking a person’s transition from one status to another. The question is–what is graduate school transforming us into?
The past year has been one of intense change for me and my family. I am happy to report that I finally finished my Ph.D. in Sociology in Fall 2018 (the one year anniversary since I filed will be December 21!). For those interested in my research, my dissertation is now available on ProQuest. With that said, I’d encourage folks who want to read my work on yoga to wait a bit longer. ProQuest can be expensive depending on what library access you have and I am planning on submitting a book manuscript draft to academic presses soon. There are some important post/colonial elements I had to cut for the dissertation that will be included in the book that I think are worth waiting for.
The other big news I have to share is that at the same time that I was finishing my dissertation, I went on the job market (for the second year). Somehow the stars aligned because I landed a tenure-track position as an Assistant Professor specializing in Popular Culture at California State University East Bay. So this Fall 2020 I started my new job and my partner, my dogs, and I moved to the Bay Area.
I have been meaning to write a post about this huge milestone and transition for a long time. To be honest, the draft of this blog has been sitting, collecting dust, for many months. The whole process of finishing my degree and job hunting was difficult and draining, making it hard to come back to. With that said, it has also been an exciting and joyous time. As the wheel turns and we are nearing the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, I want to share some reflections on graduate school and academia.
This post isn’t part of the trend of “quit lit” that has become pervasive in higher education, since I’m not leaving the field. It is, however, a critical reflection on my own experiences as a graduate student and now new Assistant Professor. In this sense, it’s a response to historian Erin Bartram’s powerful piece “The Sublimated Grief of the Left Behind,” where she challenges “academics — especially those who have landed coveted tenure-track positions — [to] take a minute to think of the all their colleagues who have been ‘lost’ along the way” (as quoted in Flaherty 2018). According to Bartram, “those left behind, or, as we usually think of them, those who ‘succeeded’, don’t often write about what it means to lose friends and colleagues,” allowing academia to avoid grappling with the loss and grief of seeing so many of our peers quit working in higher education.
As one of those rare folks who managed to land a tenure track job, it’s been a strange and complex experience to process the change occurring in my own life–especially since I still have close ties to so many friends who are amazing scholars currently navigating the job market or who have been pushed out of academia over the past few years. I also want to strongly resist language that paints this as their “choice” to leave, given it’s overwhelmingly due to structural and cultural norms that rely on pushing out a large percentage of graduate students after exploiting them as cheap adjunct labor or funneling them into precarious lecturing positions.
After accepting my new position at CSUEB, I struggled with “survivor’s guilt” for months, ironically feeling imposter syndrome more intensely after finishing my degree and landing “the dream job.” I don’t know if it’s possible to ever fully overcome those feelings of being an imposter or somehow being undeserving of my new position. I also don’t know if completely overcoming those feelings is something to strive for, since that vulnerability and anxiety can be an important source of empathy and humility.
After reflecting on my graduate school and job hunt experiences, there are a number of things I wish I had realized sooner in my graduate studies. I have written them down here as a means of processing my own thoughts and with the hope that this exploration is helpful for others.
Graduate School As Colonizing Technology
“Making ‘good’ citizens was as much about excluding or subordinating certain kinds of people as it was about including, regenerating, and reshaping others…. Schools forged disparate paths to citizenship… that frequently precipitated and overlapped with constructions of race and nationality. In this sense, schools within the bounded national space often served as domestic colonial institutions, espoused narratives that projected American power onto other foreign and domestic geographies and populations, and created distinctive paths to citizenship that many native-born and indeed many naturalized whites hoped would strengthen the boundaries of race and nation…. Rather than treat colonialism as a process tangential to or apart from public schooling in the US, it needs to be understood as a central ideological, narrative, and organizational force in schools.” (Clif Stratton, Education for Empire pg. 3,7)
For most of my time as a student, I didn’t think critically about schools, their origins, their purpose, and the inequality built into educational institutions. I was aware that schools were characterized by inequality, but it wasn’t until I got into higher education and the University of California system that I began to learn substantially more about how deep and pervasive it is–it’s worth noting a lot of what I learned was actually through activists fighting tuition hikes. This experience undoubtedly reflects my own privilege within educational institutions, but I also think it relates to the way schools are often hailed in the media as a great equalizer, as a source of meritocratic value and as an “objective” and normal part of life for most children (up through high school) and many young adults in the US today (for college).
During my time as a graduate student, lecturer, and now tenure-track faculty member, I’ve learned more about the inequities, conflicts, and politics of higher education than I’ve honestly ever wanted to know. And the more I’ve learned, the more I’m convinced that there are a whole mess of problems within academia and the graduate school system that are rarely discussed or brought to light.
This is old news, of course, so I’m not trying to claim this is some sort of insight of my own. My views on education systems have been informed by radical activism such as the Third World Liberation Front strikes and recent struggles around the adoption of Ethnic Studies curriculum, as well as scholarly research in critical race theory, Marxist traditions, feminist research on professions, and post/colonial work on the origins of educational institutions and (forced) cultural assimilation of indigenous people. I consider these various sources to be part of a “critical university studies,” which includes recent books like The Imperial University (2014), Decolonizing the University (2018), and la paperson’s (2017) A Third University Is Possible (you can also check out the Radical History Review’s online micro-syllabus).
We are often encouraged to gloss over the more unsavory aspects of graduate school when talking to prospective students or the general public in an attempt to lend our profession more legitimacy and prestige, and ultimately to give more (positive) purpose to our own lives and experiences. But it’s essential to recognize how the University operates to police and contain difference and what this means for graduate students, particularly those most marginalized and/or targeted within education systems. Because let’s face it, graduate school is hard. It’s designed to be. And I wish more people talked about it and warned potential new students about the difficulties they may face while pursuing a graduate degree, particularly if you are an activist-scholar. How else can we give consent to enter into graduate programs unless we aren adequately informed about the nature of University systems or the experiences we are likely to face as students?
According to la paperson (2017:2), colonialism consists of a set of “technologies of alienation, separation, [and] conversion of land into property and of people into targets of subjection.” By doing so, the process remakes not only territories but also views indigenous and marginalized bodies (and minds) as natural resources to be exploited. Resulting in radical social and cultural ruptures, technologies of colonialism are designed to create and maintain new patterns of relationships with the spiritual, with the world, with temporalities, with language, with social divisions, and within the psyches of all involved (Fanon 1963; Memmi 1967).
University systems are one such colonial technology. Most American universities are built on unceded indigenous territories and were designed to educate a particular type of student: young, rich, white men. These men’s educational journeys were meant to produce a particular type of citizen, one who believed in projects of empire as well as the inherent good of the nation state and who could pursue their studies largely because of the continued unpaid domestic and care labor of women. The modern University is, unfortunately, still largely predicated on this model of an ideal student who does not have to work, does not have care obligations, and whose studies contribute to nation-building activities.
University spaces (especially graduate programs) are meant to transform students into “valuable” and “productive” members of society and often perpetuate particular social and cultural paradigms rooted in existing systems of inequality. Some programs are more creative, innovative, or critical than others depending on the field of study. But generally, the purpose of schools is to socialize students into ideological belief systems in ways that serve the interests of a white settler colonial state. In doing so, schools alienate, separate, and sort students according to a host of variables, treating them like exploitable resources. Historically, individuals from marginalized groups who entered into University spaces were generally included in so far as they adopt the Eurocentric and patriarchal norms of such institutions, in so far as such bodies could be made legible and liable to such institutions (see, for example, Carter Woodson’s 1933 foundational work The Mis-Education of the Negro).
Graduate school, especially Ph.D. programs, can heighten these forces of control and socialization given such programs are professional entry points into University careers. Graduate programs are often designed to be intense experiences and are characterized by overwork as well as high rates of stress, anxiety and depression among students (especially among the social sciences/humanities). Drop out rates in Ph.D. programs are ridiculously high, often estimated to be around 50%. The academic job market, where such grad students are theoretically meant to move on to full-time, tenure-track positions, is so competitive and emotionally intense it’s often described as a “nightmare” and has even been compared to a drug gang. The program is literally designed to break us down and build us back up again, in the University’s image.
Part of the resocialization that is forced upon us in graduate school is made possible by the way such programs isolate students. Ph.D. programs rely on students traveling to new areas, often geographically isolating them from their local communities. Specialization in programs is designed to compartmentalize us into fields, and often discourages interdisciplinary work given the structure of program milestones. In this sense, programs often seek to divide and classify and separate us, even as they teach us “appropriate” ways to go about data gathering and analysis designed to promote “objectivity,” a goal that has been heavily critiqued among feminist scholars (particularly through standpoint theory and feminist science and technology studies). Programs, especially R-1 programs, and the publishing industry in academia often end up suppressing radical thought and critical voices, discouraging public sociology that has too much of an “activist” bent.
For example, let’s look more closely at the career pathway of faculty into academia. Ph.D. programs often necessitate moving away from local communities, not to mention the inequity built into applications, which can be incredibly expensive and prohibitive for students traditionally marginalized from educational systems (especially those who are poor, people of color, disabled, or sexual or gender minorities).
The more presitigious the institution, the more likely the students at that school have moved to attend. This can make it more difficult for students to form long-lasting connections to local issues, and the heightened pressure on students who want to land jobs at prestigious schools can also make it challenging to find time for alternative types of work or more creative or critical research. To achieve tenure track positions, you have to be willing to uproot yourself and move again, perhaps multiple times, in ways that are disruptive and prevent establishing strong community roots. Does this always happen? No, of course not. Department and administrative politics will influence how receptive a school is to local candidates. But the higher up you go toward R-1 schools, the more competitive and the more unlikely they can be to hiring local applicants (from what I’ve seen).
Since Universities are a colonizing technology, it can be difficult to resist the resocializing impacts of such graduate programs. They are designed to isolate us, disconnect us from local struggles, and ensure the exclusivity and legitimacy of higher education is maintained.
With all this said, I recognize that there can be immense benefits of education (more to come on this), so University systems are inherently contradictory and complex. However, I think it’s important to acknowledge that University spaces reflect unequal power relationships rooted in incredibly racist, colonist, and classist histories (as well as religiously biased!) and are invested in their continued replication. As such, they can be toxic and harmful spaces for many people. This is often heightened in Ph.D. programs given the way that academic professions rely on such spaces to sustain themselves across time, not just in terms of producing new faculty candidates but in maintaining a system of precarious adjuncts who take on a large proportion of teaching responsibilities at educational institutions.
As a result, to survive, let alone thrive in such programs while maintaining a revolutionary ethic takes strategy and support, and sometimes a lot of luck or unfortunately a lot of privilege.
But… Universities Can Be Liberatory Too
Although Universities are often a colonizing technology, they are also complex and can paradoxically be a source of liberation even as such institutions coerce and control. As scholar Michel Foucault has observed, “Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power.” In other words, resistance arises from within power structures and often exists in ongoing relation to such structures.
Historically, many colonial Universities became sites of anti-colonial activism and anti-racist revolution. In South Asia, colleges started by the British government to educate the native populous and prepare them for work within the British Empire became key sites of resistance, particularly during the Indian Independence Movements of the early 1900s. In North America later in the 20th century, the Third World Liberation Front strikes were led by students hoping to change the California State University system. During the Civil Rights era college students were crucial actors in so many campaigns, helping develop and popularize tactics like sit-ins and teach-ins or engaging in voting rights efforts like Freedom Summer. Many Native American leaders involved in the occupation of Alcatraz island in 1969 were also brought together through university experiences, including several student leaders at UC Berkeley. (Ironically, many American revolutionaries also were radicalized through colonial universities prior to declaring independence from Britain way back in the 1700s as well.)
Many of these radical groups were explicit about their beliefs that education is a key tool for liberation (ala Paulo Freire), and prioritized the creation of alternative systems of schooling. So the TWLF contributed to the founding of Ethnic Studies, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) formed Freedom Schools as part of their larger campaign to ensure greater voting rights for people of color, and members of the American Indian Movement formed Survival Schools that contributed to the global movement for indigenous decolonization (Davis 2013).
As much as graduate programs can be a colonizing force, they can also be liberatory spaces. This is particularly true when graduate students get involved in revolutionary forms of activism, including labor organizing. Their experiences struggling within and against dominant structures of power often serve to radicalize students, and their studies provide them with skills they can turn against institutions of power in creative and strategic ways, thereby building strategically coordinated points of resistance. Despite the difficulties of graduate school, or perhaps because of them, I definitely experienced this type of radicalization during my own graduate program. In many ways I feel like I learned more from activist work during school than from formal classes, although both experiences existed simultaneously and in relation to each other.
School in general, and graduate school in particular, is a rite of passage, a ritual tranformation. But it’s not a simple linear transformation–it’s transcorporeal. According to Stacy Alaimo (2018), “Trans-corporeality means that all creatures, as embodied beings, are intermeshed with the dynamic, material world, which crosses through them, transforms them, and is transformed by them.” Graduate school makes everything feel like it shifts. You feel it in your body (e.g., depression), it transforms your worldview, and it changes your relationships to the world around you, including your relationships with your family or your environment, in a multiplicity of ways, some good and some bad. It can be harmful for one’s health. It disrupts you, but that disruption can create space for liberation. Graduate school is never just one thing, just as you are never just one thing. In this sense, the question becomes not how we abolish such power structures entirely, but rather “what forms of power do we want to live with and which forms do we wish to limit or prevent?” (Thorpe 2012) How do we make University spaces work for us, and how do we minimize the negative and harmful aspects of such spaces?
These contradictory elements, the University as a space of oppression and potential liberation, reflect both the risks and the power inherent in graduate degree programs. After my own experiences surviving graduate school, I feel like the challenge is to learn to live within that paradox, recognizing the social injustice at the root of University education systems and using that as motivation to advocate for changes to create more just and equitable communities.
Crafting Support Networks as Resistant Praxis
The colonizing nature of schools seeks to divide us, isolate us, and make us feel like we have no power compared to those above us in the hiearchy. The idea of “prestige” and “professionalism” is often used as a gatekeeping mechanism. But school systems also bring together like-minded people who can provide structural supports for liberatory organizing work in the form of working groups of scholars, student organizations like graduate student associations, and especially unions.
We are always stronger together, and navigating the pitfalls of graduate school is easier if you can find a support network to rely on. Some of us are privileged enough to have existing networks of family or friends, but graduate school also expands our networks exponentially and cultivating relationships with like minded people you meet in your programs can be crucial social capital.
Navigating graduate school without being seduced by the powers that be and losing connection to liberatory politics on the ground also requires having folks who can hold you accountable. Academia encourages us to make our ideas understandable only to a select few, to use big words and fancy terms to sound professional and signal our belonging to an elite group. Losing our ability to connect to regular people and breakdown social issues in ways anyone can understand effectively deters dissent and intersectional organizing work. Having diverse support networks can prevent you from feeling isolated and can make it easier to survive and challenge the various struggles that we face during graduate programs.
What you learn in graduate school only matters so much as it is connected and embedded in the web of relationships with our human peers, other-human kin, and ecosystems. Do not let yourself become isolated. Whatever you learn only matters in the context of the world we are situated within.
Make connections, particularly with other graduate students and especially across disciplines. Don’t be afraid to reach out to faculty at other Universities. Retain and develop connections with folks outside of academic spaces.
Recognize that not all folks want to or can go on to a tenure track faculty job. Grieve and rage as you need to given the difficult job market. Consider the power of possibility–what calls to you? What are you willing to do? What options do you have? For sociology folks especially, we have many routes for employment outside of academia, and all the more power to you if you can recognize that navigating the toxicity and power dynamics of academia might not be for you. Coming to acknowledge what we don’t want to be a part of is just as important as discovering what spaces and networks we do want to be a part of. Think about your ultimate goals (plural) and try and see how you can form connections with people involved in those areas while you are a student. Use graduate school to build the web of relationships that can help you work toward a better, more liberatory, socially just future.
Navigating the Paradoxes of Conferences
Of all the experiences during graduate school, conferences are perhaps the academic activity I am most conflicted about. It took me a long time to attend a professional association meeting, largely because this was an area that I lacked any mentorship on (alas, an all too common problem graduate students tackle, good mentorship is hard to come by). By now, I’ve attending some national ones as well as some smaller local professional meetings. In some ways, I wish I had discovered conferences sooner. In other ways, I never want to attend another conference again. I think my own conflict about conferences stems from the fact that, just like all of academia, professional meetings can be oppressive yet also potentially liberating experiences.
Conferences can be very expensive, making it difficult for students and adjunct faculty to attend, thereby replicating larger systems of inequality across academia. More prestigious universities often provide more funds for tenure track faculty to attend conferences, which also means there are inequities between R-1 and teaching oriented institutions in terms of who can go and who has funds to pay for memberships in professional organizations. Conference attendance can also significantly contribute to climate change, something I wish folks talked about more. Bigger conferences are typically more beuracratic and hierarchical in structure (here’s to you, Weber). They are also more likely to be invested in notions of professionalism, which I personally found very daunting to navigate as a graduate student. However, my experiences at more local and feminist-oriented conferences has generally been more casual, supportive, and positive.
I think as a graduate student, if you are interested in seeking a tenure-track job and have access to funding support for travel costs I would encourage folks to go to conferences, particularly local ones. Sometimes you’ll have more funding for travel as a graduate student than you will as a lecturer, for example, and with the job market being as challenging as it is right now it can be helpful to at least attend while you have access to some institutional support. I went to bigger conferences later on during graduate school as I went on the job market, but I wish I had gone earlier when some had come through my local region, just to get a feel of them as an attendee. They can be overwhelming, anxiety producing spaces. They can also generate many ideas or be good places to network. Costs, though, can be a huge barrier–it’s messed up, but real. Smaller conferences can be less pretentious and more creative spaces, where you can make stronger and more personal ties to academics in your region. They are also less expensive. If you are a student or in a precarious employment situation, many professional organizations also provide travel grants which can be a small help and are worth pursuing if you qualify.
I learned to think of conferences as opportunities to get creative, where I can write or present on projects that are not necessarily part of my dissertation work. Conference calls or other calls for papers often draw on specific theoretical approaches or topical areas, including those you might not typically consider in relation to your own work. Exploring how conference themes or CFPs relate to your interests can help you approach topics in new ways, or give you ideas for new projects. With that said, conference calls can also constrain approaches to topics, too. But in general, they allow you to explore other areas and work on side projects without the constant oversight of your advisors. This gives you more creative freedom to explore what you are interested in as well as how you like to write and research.
Conferences are always a blur, and it’s important to manage your time and energy–you cannot go to everything, nor should you try, so prioritize your time and don’t feel poorly if you need to take a break. Attending sessions at conferences can help you learn about ongoing work or new methods and areas of research you aren’t as familiar with. If you approach the conference with a critical lens, it can also help you learn more about what gaps exist, what work is not being done or at least is not visibly being promoted in professional organizations. For example, when I was at the American Sociological Association meeting in Montreal a few years ago, there was literally ONE session dealing with colonialism. One. And it was run by the Canadian Sociological Association. That is extremely telling about what scholarship ASA prioritizes, or more accurately, deprioritizes.
Conferences can also be an opportunity to collaborate with others, and to form new connections. I like to reach out to academics I know beforehand to see if they will be attending and try and say hi while people are there, even if only briefly. I recommend following up with folks you meet directly after the conference is over, before you forget to. Social media can also allow new connections to continue to develop even if you aren’t geographically close.
In general there are SO many academic associations out there that do regular meetings and conferences, it’s worth doing some digging to get a sense of what ones you are most interested in attending. One resource I wish I had known about sooner is HNet (Humanities and Social Sciences Online), an online network system for academics where folks can access discussion boards but also CFP announcements from various journals and conferences.
Recognize that conferences, as with most academic spaces, are part of the colonial education system. They are often very surreal spaces to be enmeshed in, and have their own politics and drama. Graduate school does not necessarily make you a kinder, more compassionate, more ethical human being. Learning does not necessarily translate into having a strong moral compass. The nature of professions means that those people who most adhere to the colonial values of the system often rise to the top. Working within the system can be important, but is only possible when we maintain a critical, humble, and inquisitive compassion to the web of relationships around us.
Importance of Creative Writing & Reading Spaces
A sad truth of graduate school is that experiences in academia can make you hate writing. Many of the forces of academia are designed to teach you how to engage in a particular type of writing, especially styles that will get approval from organizations or people who are granted legitimacy. Before graduate school I used to write for fun, for emotional release, for creative imagination. It’s easy to lose sight of writing for pleasure, for joy, or for resistance when writing becomes work that has to meet the approval of numerous people on your committees.
I found it very important to develop room for creative writing, like blogging, private journals, poetry, or fiction, which can make writing more than a chore or task. It’s not something I engage in all the time, but writing for yourself allows you to find your own voice. It makes it easier to maintain the clear perception needed for critical self-awareness that allows us to navigate the colonial education system without uncritically reproducing its oppressive nature. To paraphrase Toni Morrison, write what you want to read. Finding a space to share this type of creativity that won’t be high stakes can also be particularly freeing, where the people who are reading your work can’t force you to change it (unlike, for example, writing work done for one’s degree that has to be approved by committee members for you to graduate).
My blog actually started as one of those spaces–I wanted to explore ideas, practice and play with writing without having to worry about oversight. It’s been a rewarding experience. Though one thing to note about social media in particular (e.g., blogs) is that it’s also a weird time-capsule. Although you can of course always go back to things to change old posts, I haven’t. I think it’s good to be reminded of the journey I have gone through and while I don’t necessarily agree with everything I once shared, I think it’s good accountability to keep it all up as a sort of archive of my own transformation throughout my time in academia.
I also think one of the most rewarding things I ever did was pursue what might be called “creative reading” space, particularly with scholarly work. It can be hard just to keep up with the reading material assigned in graduate classes, so adding additional reading on top of this can be difficult. But I found that it was by branching outside of what was assigned in courses that I really found out what I was interested in and what areas of work I wanted to contribute to. I also realized there was so much more amazing and radical scholarship out there than I had previously been exposed to, and I felt more empowered to do that type of work and felt less isolated during that pursuit. Don’t get me wrong, I also was exposed to amazing scholarship through my classes, too, but there’s something different about discovering new areas of research for yourself.
Things like academic article searches for fun on topics that interest you help you find out what type of scholarship exists, mapping scholarly communities. Google the scholars you like, or scholars you don’t know about–who are they? What’s their background and politic? Do they have any filmed talks? Use “related readings” algorithms on sites to your advantage to find new work. Skim things. Read abstracts. Save readings you are interested in (within intensive folder systems if you are like me, and remember, back that stuff up!).
One of the best things I ever did was sign up for table of content alerts for journals I was interested in. You can usually do this easily with at least some journals through the library system, where you sign up for alerts when a new issue comes out. You will likely discover interesting articles that help you think about your research, yourself, and our world. We have rare access to a lot of information as students or academic workers that is typically kept behind outrageous pay walls. Don’t miss that opportunity. I also love sharing things with folks I know when I see something I think they would like.
Reading for fun allows you to learn more about methods and teaching pedagogy. This likely only applies to folks who really want to stay in academia beyond graduate school, but I don’t think I was alone in feeling frustrated by inadequate training in methods in graduate school. Continuing to read scholarship directly about methods or teaching pedagogies can inform your own research and change the way you design your classroom spaces. For example, I was recently at a conference where a session organizer had never heard of photovoice methods before. This was a tenure track faculty member who had never even heard of participatory action research methods. And to be honest… at that session I was reminded I hadn’t heard about it in graduate school either. I found out about photovoice and PAR through my own digging into feminist theory. I haven’t used any of these methods yet in my own research, but if I had known about them sooner, I might have been able to and I hope to someday create a project that does.
Remember… It’s Meaning/Less
In closing, the final reflection and take away I have from my time in graduate school is the hope that as an Assistant Professor, I remember that obtaining my Ph.D. is ultimately meaningless. Allow me to explain.
In some ways having the degree is a huge, meaningful, and important milestone and accomplishment that is worth celebrating. It is a rite of passage. But despite the degree having so much meaning, after everything I have been through and seen and learned about academia, I truly believe that my degree is also completely meaningless. So many amazing scholars are pushed out of academia. We are constantly losing folks. This is often due to circumstances beyond our control, in ways that are unpredictable and tied to privilege and power relationships. All it takes is one medical emergency, one breakdown, one year of lost funding, one abusive advisor, or the list goes on, to completely derail a talented and amazing individual from finishing their degree. Yes, I finished. But that 50% drop out rate means that my finishing is basically a coin tossed in a bucket. I got lucky. I had privilege.
So where does that leave me? Where does all this leave all of us in academia? Graduate school teaches you a little about a lot of things, and a lot about very few things. If I have learned anything, it’s that I know nothing. Most of the knowledge produced in academia is not from academics–it’s from the people we study, the organizations we do ethnographies on, the data we analyze. And that all exists out there in the regular world. Just because academia legitimates particular forms of knowledge, doesn’t mean that it’s the only source of truth or wisdom. A lot of academic work has historically been rooted in projects of Empire, and a lot of academic work still is.
I think it’s vital to stay humble. I look forward to continuing to learn and grow as I enter into my role as a tenure track faculty, but always a student.
Many of you know I am working on my dissertation in sociology, which explores neocolonization of yoga in the last fifty years, with an eye for the rise of the yoga industry. This has, alas, been one of the reasons my blog has been quiet in the last few months. I’ve been redirecting my energy into finishing a complete draft of this research, finishing graduate school (expected June 2018), going on the job market, and engaging in a slew of other activism and union organizing work outside of yoga spaces. This blog post is just a brief research update for those interested, alongside access to the slideshows from two recent talks I’ve given in the academic world on some portions of my research in case they are of interest to readers.
I am happy to report I am nearing the end of my graduate school journey. Now in my seventh year, I am ABD (all but dissertation) and writing frantically in the next month and a half to finish a complete draft of what will become my book manuscript. At that point, my committee will be reviewing it during Winter quarter, and then I’ll be engaging in revisions during Spring when if all goes smoothly I will pass and get my doctoral degree. This project will at that point be revised into the proposed book manuscript and sent to academic publishers in Fall 2018, and then hopefully turned into a book. During the last six months I presented on my research at the Association for the Sociology of Religion and the California Sociology Association conferences, and while I (alas!) didn’t video the talks, I thought I’d share the slideshows with you to give you a peek on some of the things I’ve been working on.
“Professionalization, Authenticity, and Neocolonialism in Yoga.”
Association for the Sociology of Religion, August 2017 (Montreal, Canada)
This particular presentation explores work from my third chapter. How is the “authentic” yoga body institutionalized through the development of a professional certification system for yoga teachers? In what ways does the professionalization project within yoga legitimize embodied boundaries, privileging certain embodiments and marginalizing “Othered” yogis? As teacher training programs became more prominent in the 1980s, yoga producers worked to create a system of self-regulation that would promote and retain professional legitimacy. Culminating in the creation of the Yoga Alliance (YA) in 1997, despite controversy this registry remains the dominant credentialing system in the USA. The professionalization project in yoga was influenced by the white and middle-class American habitus of YA founders as well as the historical development of the yoga studio, which delineated the “job” of a yoga teacher and promoted an understanding of yoga-as-asana through the emphasis of group fitness classes. Certification requirements subsequently institutionalized by the YA relied heavily on colonial, Westernized factory models of yogic education that standardized knowledge, monopolized competence, and regulated entrants. The resulting certification programs filtered personnel, adhered to inaccessible program structures and costs, and often encouraged exclusionary marketing and recruitment, reinforcing institutionalized ideals of the “authentic” yoga body as white, affluent, female, thin, young, and able-bodied. In this way teacher training programs serve as near-total institutions, filtering out deviant constructions of yoga as well as “Othered” yogis at various stages in the professionalization process and socializing new teachers into the field in ways that create and maintain embodied boundaries. Thus, the professionalization project can be understood as an exercise of symbolic violence, where the construction of the “authentic” yoga body is legitimated and institutionalized in ways that reproduce inaccessibility, exclusion, and inequality in yoga even while concealing the power relations that are the basis of its force as seemingly natural, “authentic” expressions of the practice and identity of a yogi.
“Movement Co-optation: Bodyblindness, tokenization, & reputation repair in the Yoga Industrial Complex”
California Sociological Association, November 2017 (Sacramento, CA)
This presentation explores work from my sixth chapter. Analyzing the case of industry co-optation of the body positivity movement within yoga, I demonstrate the way body-blind strategies of reputation repair are utilized by dominant actors to maintain power structures. In response to scandals, individuals and organizations in the yoga industrial complex co-opt movement discourse and promote tokenized teachers who do not adhere to dominant constructions of the “authentic” yoga body. This combination of strategies generates the appearance of diverse representation and progressive change in the industry. However, during the co-optation process the political nature of movement discourse is decontextualized or erased through adoption of individualized messages of body acceptance that largely ignore bodily difference, instead reflecting an ideology of body-blindness. Because body-blind approaches rarely result in substantive changes to widespread industry practices or structures, systemic causes which contribute to the internalization of negative body image and inequality within the field endure even as the industry is further legitimized by appearing receptive to social justice concerns. The industry continues marginalizing Othered yogis who now face burdens of additional demands to #loveyourbody and to be #bodypositive in a field that makes it structurally difficult to do so. By downplaying the importance of the movement’s systemic critique of cultural production in the industry to focus only on individual-level solutions of body acceptance, the yoga industrial complex contributes to the marginalization and “eating” of the Other yogi while simultaneously profiting both financially and ideologically from an individualized and depoliticized co-optation of the body positivity movement.
Enjoy yogis, and per the usual standards, be sure to cite if sharing since this is all my original research.
“The educator has the duty of not being neutral.” ―Paulo Freire
Today I am sharing the Films for Liberation Open Syllabus project with you. This site is based on a seminar I designed and taught in Spring 2017 which utilizes documentary films to explore contemporary social justice concerns.
Topics focus on issues pertinent in our post-Trump moment, which has been characterized by emboldened white supremacy, anti-abortion, anti-environment, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-disabled, settler-colonialist, and Islamophobic rhetoric and policies. Because of my own geographic location, the course does focus predominantly on social justice concerns in the United States. However, many of the trends covered are globally relevant. Discussion on each topic is framed in relation to recent attacks on voting rights, growing corporate power, and trends toward kelpotractic systems of governance. Given my background, the course utilizes a sociological approach to investigate: What are some of the pressing social justice issues in our current political and social moment? How can we stay more informed to better combat injustice, oppression, and the creep of neo-fascism?
In the classroom, we held post-film discussions with guest speakers each week after a screening. Online, unfortunately this experience isn’t easily re-createable. Instead, I’ve written a brief recap of some of the topics we discussed in relation to the chosen film each day we held our classes. Students were also provided weekly resource lists on each topic they can use to engage in their own self-study (svadhyaya) beyond the scope of the course. The lists contain lists of videos, resource hubs, overviews, relevant organizations, and articles/books of interest. I have included these lists here as well for online viewers to use and share.
Interested parties can, even individually, use this syllabus to guide their own exploration of social justice through film. You can find the the course below. For each “week”, you can: (1) view the recommended film (some are freely available, unfortunately others may need to be rented), (2) read the associated breakdown, (3) check out specific recommended reads, and (4) explore the provided resource list as desired to learn more about contemporary social justice concerns today.
Today I’m sharing a project I’ve been working on for a few weeks: a feminist resource list. I had originally planned to release this list with my latest blog entry, coauthored with Joanna Johnson of Red Moon Yoga: “The Misogynist On The Mat: Patriarchy, Yoga, & You.” That blog post was a response to a recent incident in the yoga world, where well-known yoga teacher and teacher trainer Eric Shaw published a misogynist, sexist, and disgusting anti-feminist rant.
Shaw’s rant was so disconnected from the truth of what is and what has been, it was frankly impossible to dissect all the things that were wrong in it. Had Shaw actually wanted to understand reality or feminism rather than cater to his emotionally hurt ego, he over the years he could have found a myriad of feminist work that would have refuted his flawed viewpoints. I doubt he will seek out such resources (though here’s hoping he will).
Frankly, Shaw is not someone I would ever waste my time trying to educate. It’s clear he’s not interested in moving beyond his own turmoil.
But there are other people out there who are interested in learning more about feminism, about themselves, and about our world. There are people out there hoping to become better people. There are people out there hoping to uncover and practice satya (truthfulness), and who are willing to engage in some profound Self-Realization.
I have compiled this list for you.
The fact is, even though feminism is gaining prominence in today’s world most people don’t actually know much about feminism, engage with feminists in their everyday lives, or know how to find out more information if they wanted to. It’s not always easy to track down sources, to know what is foundational work in both academia and activist circles, and to learn more about the history of women’s rights, women’s liberation, and intersectional feminism.
Even though it’s likely most people have feminists in their social networks, they might not be consciously aware of this since not everyone who is a feminist openly, consistently identifies as one. Sadly, feminism today is often still stigmatized, and many people (especially white people) selectively disclose their feminist identity only when it is relatively safe to do so. Feminism has in many ways become cool only in-so-far as one’s practice of feminism is surface level and non-confrontational, while deep discussions or political action in the name of feminism are still highly conflict-ridden and controversial. The sad truth is that identifying openly as a feminist can sometimes damage one’s relationships or careers.
Given the wide breadth of feminist work out there today and the many decades (centuries, really) of activism and research feminists have been engaged in, it can sometimes be difficult to know where to start. Even those who are feminists may only be familiar with specialized areas within the movement, because thanks to the sea of information we can sometimes end up isolated from broader dialogue (and heated debates within the movement don’t always help either).
The reality is that unless someone is lucky enough to know a self-identified feminist or has been able to study gender, sexuality, and women’s studies at the university level, many people simply don’t know how to begin learning more about feminism or about the wide variety of feminist work being done. In some ways, there is simply too much information out there. We have google at the tips of our fingers, but unless we know what to search for, the quality of the information we have access to can be skewed, buried in the sea that is the internet today. And of course, let’s acknowledge there is a clear class divide in who has access to university spaces or the internet. It’s vital that feminism become rooted in class solidarity and efforts to overcome the digital divide and the often-times inaccessibility of academic feminism.
Even today, much of our popular culture perpetuates inaccurate and problematic stereotypes of feminism and feminists (or straight up lies). When something is discredited, it’s harder for people to take it seriously. Especially in our current political climate, it’s important for feminists to help combat this by helping to direct and build our own communities of knowledge and of feminist educators. In other words, it is vital for feminists to openly and consistently identify as feminists, to work toward documenting the work movement members are engaged in, to build networks of solidarity and knowledge production, and to participate in codifying such knowledge as explicitly part of the feminist movement.
I made this list to help work toward these goals, and to also make the process of sifting through a sea of information easier for all those interested in learning more about feminism, regardless of whether you are completely new to the movement or a long-time feminist hoping to deepen one’s knowledge. Given my own positionality, this list does lean more heavily toward academic feminist work, but I have made an effort to include a wide variety of sources and more accessible resources throughout. My hope is people who are interested in learning about feminism or deepening their understanding can do so more readily with this resource. I hope it also serves as a resource for fellow educators.
This is the list I wish I had years ago, when I was just beginning to learn what feminism actually meant, the history of the movement, and why it is so vital to continue feminist work today. It is a list I am offering you today, with a prayer to all future feminists.
I speak as those seeds, who from darkness became the weeds that tear out concrete, that break down walls, the retake public spaces.
I speak as those silenced generations, lost to time, lost to power:
You are not lost to the deepest part of ourselves, that longs for connection, that longs for the wisdom of the one who survives against all odds, the one who (nevertheless) persists.
I speak as those embattled, enraged beings who are sick of the (illusion of the) cage, who are fighting to be free:
Your struggle is not in vain.
For all those who have been disappeared, who have been targeted, who have been harassed, and who have been abused;
For those who have yet to find themselves in the historical oppression patriarchy teaches us to inscribe in all our bodies, in all our minds, in all our hearts:
We will seek you out.
We will be the mirror that allows you to see and free yourself.
For those who would undermine the colonization of their self, for those who would deconstruct the map of power we are subject to;
For those who seek to be better, to leave a legacy of equity for our future selves, for our future planet:
You do not do so alone.
We will be the waves at your back, crying for justice, crashing at the bars set to contain us.
I speak as those who fear for themselves, who fear for each other;
as those who are angry, fed-up, and frustrated;
I speak as those who fear the future coming for us like the whisper of death and the haunting of subjugation, seemingly inescapable:
Do not lose hope.
Remember, the chains that bind us also bind us together.
The chains that bind us give us the very weapon we need to break the cycle.
May we find each other in our resilience, in our strength, in our resistance.
May we recognize that “unity” does not mean sameness, and that “to unify” does not mean to lose what makes us uniquely powerful.
May we recognize imperialist, white supremacist, settler-colonial patriarchy is the enemy of all of us, but also the unifying thread that makes this fight our fight, our struggle.
May we support each other, honor each other, and challenge each other to admit to our failures, flaws, and complicity.
May we support each other, honor each other, and challenge each other to seek out the path with heart even though it may be the tangled labyrinth of our darkest dreams.
Go forth, future feminists, and together let us uncover the bones of justice, the archaeology of equity.
Go forth, future feminists, and be your ancestors’ wildest dreams.
Don’t see something you feel should be on the feminist resource list? Post the reference below in the comments, and in the near future I’ll update the list and post a revised version.
The latest scandal in the US yoga world: it turns out well-known yoga teacher and teacher trainer, Eric Shaw, is actually a deep-seated, unapologetic misogynist and sexist. This revelation is turning heads among practitioners and teachers, especially in the post-Trump moment where we have a growing culture of cruelty, a slew of domestic abusers in our highest offices, a crack-down on women’s rights, and rising right-wing nationalism and white supremacy not just in the USAbutglobally. Although Shaw is US-based, the escalation of neo-fascism is worldwide; the issues raised here will therefore have their own particular country-specific manifestations, relevant to the worldwide yoga community.
Today we will be writing about misogyny, sexism, and patriarchy in yoga, and the ways we are all complicit in these systems.
The Hateful Rant (aka Misogynist Tears!)
On Thursday, February 16th, Eric Shaw posted a note to facebook titled “Masculinism 101: A Response to the Feminist Recoding of History” (to read his original post, go here, but be aware: triggerwarning). Yoga Dork has already covered the incident, noting they “believe that you should know if your yoga teacher is a raving misogynist.” We completely and wholeheartedly agree.
We’re not going to rehash all the hateful, spiteful, and untrue things he has to say about women, women’s history and accomplishments, and women’s oppression. This blog is not about a point by point rebuttal, because all his points have been well-researched and debunked by feminist scholars over the decades. With that said, we do think it’s helpful to get the gist of his rhetoric.
Shaw begins his epic rant with the words “How about this vision? Women have been cowards.” He goes on to claim they “sucked the wealth and life-blood out of men to enjoy their baby-making efforts while men went out and did the real work in the world.” He asks: “We’re to trust that the gender that has been passive, supplicant—arguably ‘parasitical,’ to quote Simone de Beauvoir—is overnight competent, self-possessed and unyielding enough in composure to handle the pressures of public responsibilities?” (Feel like projectile vomiting yet? And also, way to adhere to a gender essentialist argument and a lack of recognition of gender fluidity, Shaw.) Apparently, Shaw contends, “we could just as easily demonize women for being a kind of succubus. For dodging their social responsibility and hiding behind a veil of too-moral dignity to dirty their hands with the affairs of the world. We could say women were cowards for hiding in the home and not successfully challenging men to take up their fair share of public responsibilities.” (Whoa there. Way to victim blame those oppressed for the acts of oppressors subjugating them?)
Shaw’s post oversimplifies and completely misinterprets history in pretty much every way possible, focusing on the vantage point of those who have historically (at least!) been oppressors and abusers with absolutely no nuance (which is super ironic considering his one and only academic working paper on abuse during BKS Iyengar’s childhood). His post makes it clear that he doesn’t know a thing about women’s historical accomplishments or the way patriarchal systems often erase such feats, symbolically annihilating herstory and taking sole credit for accomplishments only made possible because of the work of women. Eric is clearly another brick in the wall of our education system, who ate up patriarchy in our schools and now regurgitates it at will.
According to Eric’s position, there are no people of color anywhere in (cue dramatic music:) all of time. This means every time he says “women” or “men”, he is only referring to white folks and their experiences. So to be clear, not only is this rant an epic, extreme example of misogyny, patriarchy, and sexism at work but it is also deeply embedded in white supremacist culture and educational experiences that whitewash and enforce a Eurocentric focus in historical retellings. We can add to the list of Eric’s flawed thinking: it is racist, because this type of language and hate speech is also directly supporting racism, “a system of advantage based on race” (Wellman 1977).
According to his Facebook info, as an undergraduate Shaw attended Willamette University from 1979-1981 where he studied Art, Biology, and “Intellectual History” (note: this isn’t actually a major?). Later on, he studied yet more Art in Santa Cruz (art has historically been an incredibly white, patriarchal, andmisogynisticsystem, so no surprises there). He then got an MA in Religious Studies from the United Theological Seminary in 1995 (including studies in “Church History”), an MA in Special Education in 2000 (ye gods, really? with those misogynist views?), and finally an MA in Yoga History and Philosophy at the CA Institute of Integral Studies in 2011. His bio shows he began teaching yoga in 2006 at UCSF Medical Center (we can assume to patients), and has taught at several renowned studios including YogaWorks from 2009-2010, Yoga Tree from 2011-2015, and most recently at the Dallas Yoga Center (although apparently he was fired after his diatribe–good on them!).
In other words, Eric Shaw has never actually studied history in an academic setting outside religious or spiritual contexts. More telling, as far as his biographical information out there indicates he has also never taken a single course in feminist theory, women’s studies, or gender studies (and from his tirade, it’s clear he hasn’t read such scholars/activists on his own either, or if he has he clearly hasn’t understood them). Despite his lack of study in these areas, in typical entitled, white, male fashion Eric Shaw believes that he should be able to mansplain women’s history and feminism to women and long-time, actual feminists who have been studying, researching, and living this work for decades. Because: patriarchy. And white supremacy.
The irony is that his whole argument is pretty much “patriarchy sucks for men, too,” which is an argument that has already been made by feminists for literally decades, and what’s even more ironic is that feminist work on this very topic is much more nuanced, accurate, and articulate (aka, way better than Shaw is capable of, despite his claims of male superiority). He incorrectly puts the blame for men’s pain on those victimized by patriarchy (women and feminists) rather than understanding that it is patriarchy that ultimately causes the suffering of the men he is so concerned about, not feminism. Frankly, Shaw’s entire take on feminism, gender relations, and history is so completely off track that, as Yoga Dork notes, it “reads very Onion-y” and at first seemed satirical to commenters, many of who “couldn’t believe” a yogi and well-known teacher could harbor such hateful, spiteful, and dangerous views.
And, let’s be real here, these types of views are dangerous. This isn’t some “opinion” to be debated. As long-time activist Teo Drake said in one of his comments, “What Eric Shaw put out into the world wasn’t an opinion to be disagreed with. It was violent rhetoric. There’s a big difference between being imperfect (as each of us is) and crossing over into abuse.” So we need to understand Shaw’s post is an example of violent rhetoric designed to dehumanize, demean, and target an entire class of people with violence, harassment, and assault, and which then attempts to legitimize such harm by claiming victims “deserved” to be abused (completely creepy, and complete BS).
Misogyny is a undeniable motivator for men committing violent crime (fact: men are the perpetrators of most violent crime). For example, according to research on intimate partner violence in the USA, men “with a history of committing domestic violence are five times more likely to subsequently murder an intimate partner” (Aalai 2016). Research also reveals “nearly 60% of all mass shootings (defined by the killing of four or more victims) have roots in domestic violence” (Fairweather 2017). And it doesn’t stop there. “‘When you are trying to predict violent recidivism, you tend to find that domestic violence is one of the strongest predictors,’ said Zachary Hamilton, who studies risk assessment as director of the Washington State Institute for Criminal Justice. He cited an analysis of criminal offenders in Washington State, which found that a felony domestic violence conviction was the single greatest predictor of future violent crime” (Jeltsen 2016). In other words, misogyny is often the canary in the coalmine for other forms of violence, and one of the root ideologies violent offenders adhere to.
This type of misogynist rhetoric is also one of the ways online communities of Neo-Nazis and the “alt-right” prey on and recruit men to their cause (how’s that going for you, Shaw?). In the article “How the alt-right’s sexism lures men into white supremacy” Romano notes that “the gateway drug that led [members] to join the alt-right in the first place wasn’t racist rhetoric but rather sexism: extreme misogyny evolving from male bonding gone haywire.” All of this is why white nationalist organizations, which are predicated not just on an adherence to white supremacy but also deeply held misogyny, queerphobia/transphobia, anti-Semitism, anti-immigrant sentiment, and Islamophobia, are growing much faster than other terrorist organizations and are considered more dangerous than other terrorist groups in the USA today.
There is a reason the most recent rise of “alt-right” white supremacist groups has been linked, not to racial politics, but to Gamergate, the misogynist attack on feminists critiquing the video gaming industry that occurred in 2014. As Lees notes, “The similarities between Gamergate and the far-right online movement, the ‘alt-right’, are huge, startling and in no way a coincidence… Its most notable achievement was harassing a large number of progressive figures–mostly women–to the point where they felt unsafe or considered leaving the industry… this hate was powerfully amplified… leading to death threats, rape threats, and the public leaking of personal information.” This article fails to mention misogynists also engaged in bomb threats as well as rape threats against these women’s children, leading some to develop PTSD symptoms or to retire for their and their family’s safety and well-being. (So, if people would like to ignore the realities of violent misogyny and continue to bury their heads in the sand, go ahead and continue practicing avidya, ignorance, and keep up with the arguments that Shaw’s views are somehow “a valid opinion.”)
Misogyny kills. Misogyny maims. Misogyny traumatizes, harrasses, and assaults. And Eric Shaw, raging and unapologetic misogynist that he is, is deeply complicit in this system of oppression and violence.
But it must be a mental breakdown–not so fast!
Those appalled by the hate apparent in Eric Shaw’s post, the blatant misogyny, sexism, and lack of respect for women generally, have been quick to claim that he must be having some sort of mental breakdown–that he must be mentally ill, or that he must be going through some deep inner turmoil. That he is really a “good person” who is just not well. Take, for example, comments like these: “what he has written sounds like a mental health crisis,” “Eric, are you ok?”, “this must be a sick joke, or he has had some psychotic break.” In the days following the initial post, every Facebook thread that we read included some well-meaning, but sadly politically ignorant yoga practitioner exhorting us to “have compassion” for Shaw (never mind that the assumption a practice of yoga equates to compassion, that “yoga = compassion,” is a recent and perhaps even false conflation of what yoga is, rooted in capitalist and new age appropriations of the practice).
The claim that those who engage in hateful speech and violent behavior toward others only do so because they are unwell is based on a Christian understanding of a good-evil dichotomy, where people are considered either “good people” or “bad people”. This type of thinking has infiltrated yoga as the practice moved to the West, so it’s no surprise that many people reading Eric’s post are struck by the paradox and dichotomy–is he a “good person,” as some people have personally known him to be, or is he “bad?” And if he is “good,” then it is assumed he must be mentally ill, have had a psychotic breakdown, or be otherwise “out of his mind” to also, simultaneously, be a raging, dangerous misogynist. But real life just doesn’t work this way.
Sociologists and psychologists have long researched the way seemingly ordinary, “good people” can engage in horrific acts of violence and oppression. The term “banality of evil” is not referring just to the way evil is part of our everyday lives (in other words, that evil is banal). It also refers to the fact that most people who engage in evil acts are in fact ordinary, boring, “good people.” (See, for example, Milgram’s shock experiments or Zimbardo’s The Lucifer Effect.) So we need to be clear that someone can be a “good person” in certain areas of their life and still do atrocious acts (and can do so even with the best of intentions). Eric Shaw could indeed be a “good man and a good friend” to some people as some did claim in their comments and still who hold dangerous and harmful views about women that manifest in harmful ways towards others. One does not preclude the other, and ultimately, Shaw needs to be accountable for all his actions, especially those that are damaging, and perhaps most particularly when bigotry is conflated with yoga.
The problem with the argument that misogynists are just mentally ill is that it serves to medicalize abusive behavior, rather than recognizing that perpetrators are often perfectly “sane” by any psychological measure and yet still hold abhorrent views. As Baxter (2017) notes, “Every time we willingly blur the line between raging arsehole and mentally ill person, we do two very dangerous things: we increase stigma surrounding real psychiatric conditions, and we excuse people for their terrible behaviour on the basis that they had to have been ‘out of their minds’ to think or act that way… It’s also easy to see how we then stop holding people account for abuse, for cruelty, for prejudice and xenophobia.”
Rather than further stigmatizing mental illness, we need to recognize that seemingly “good people” can in other areas of their lives do great evil. We need to be able to call this type of behavior what it is, without medicalizing it: systematic oppression, abuse, and a profound disrespect. Sure, Eric Shaw could probably use some serious psycho-analysis and therapy from a licensed professional, although he’s not likely to seek that out given he seems to believe he is completely in the right. But as of right now, all comments, conversations, and posts indicate that he is indeed perfectly sane, if completely despicable.
In other words, let’s call a spade a spade. Eric Shaw is not mentally ill. He has repeatedly claimed he “is okay,” despite the completely ridiculous concerns of commenters. He doesn’t want help and he doesn’t believe he needs it. He has openly admitted to being sexist, and has essentially said he’s cool with that. He is utterly unapologetic about his diatribe of disgusting hate, claiming in typical entitled white male fashion that he feels “disrespected” by the justifiably angry responses he has received. He has repeatedly, again, and again claimed he stands by everything he said, no matter how incorrect, no matter how damaging/harmful, and no matter how simplistic. This is not someone open to dialogue. This is not someone open to learning. This is not someone willing to engage in healing or willing to admit they were wrong.
His hateful, misogynist views do not make him mentally ill, they make him dangerous. These views make him complicit in the continued oppression of women everywhere. These views make him potentially abusive to his own clients, friends, and family. And these views make him disrespectful, completely uncaring, and disturbingly unconcerned about the harm his words have and do cause others.
It’s also disturbing that there seems to be a great deal of commenters focused on emotional concern for Eric Shaw, his feelings, and his health, rather than concern for those traumatized and targeted by his hate and spite. Many commenters have sent “love and healing” toward him. Others have reached out to make sure he “is okay.” The incessant worrying from commenters about his well-being refocuses attention and care back on someone who is propagating, supporting, and spreading abuse and oppression. In other words, it serves to refocus attention and emotional care work back on the abuser, rather than focusing on supporting those victimized and harmed by this type of abusive language. In this way, despite undoubted good intentions, everyone whose main concern is for Eric is actually upholding the systems of oppression that obscure the lives of victims and reward the deeds of abusers.
Attempting to tone police those most affected and harmed by this type of violent rhetoric while also refocusing attention back toward our abusers does nothing to combat hate, and inevitably actually supports, condones, and excuses the abusive behavior. Tone policing is a silencing tactic, and is one of the ways systems of oppression are reproduced and protected. It’s also a classic symptom of victim blaming, which argues that the justified anger victims feel toward those who abuse them is in fact the reason why they are being abused. In reality, abuse is a conscious choice made by the abuser. Resistance to oppression is not the same as oppression, and one never has to be kind to their abuser. We should never ask people to express love for their abuser in order to have their concerns heard. Ultimately, by engaging in tone policing and victim-blaming, society allows abusers to perpetrate violence while avoiding accountability for their actions. People have a right to be angry about this type of dangerous, hateful speech. This type of misogyny is what leads to policies that target women’s rights. It is what leads to violence against women that is a deep and powerful part of patriarchal systems of oppression designed to keep women “in their place.”
The way to stop abuse is not to say “stop” more nicely. It’s to say “no more!” as fiercely as necessary. The way we stop oppression is by supporting those who are victims of abuse (rather than supporting the abuser as if they are the one being harmed and the one we should be immediately concerned about). It’s ensuring those engaging in abuse will be held accountable for their actions and choices. And yes, this might include informing their employers so they can take appropriate action to reprimand or distance themselves from a dangerous person. It might include boycotting any of the products, services, or trainings a dangerous person sells. Hell, sometimes, it might even entail protesting against an organization that is colluding in covering up inappropriate behavior.
Then it’s an isolated incident–not so fast!
While it’s tempting to argue that Eric Shaw is just a “bad apple” in a sea of otherwise wonderful yoga people, the reality is much more complex. Commenters on his post have actually indicated Eric Shaw’s rant was not some isolated, out-of-the-blue incident.
Two yogis recounted how: “I was treated to a live version in my kitchen one time, much to my great discomfort. I remember us having to agree to disagree. It was a charged discussion and I felt little leeway in the ferocity of your opinions. The tone of your original post is so hateful toward women and being a woman I am, frankly, revolted [by] the perspective you claim to be ‘investigating,’ but which actually seems pretty entrenched.” Many indicated they had misgivings about him, feeling strongly that something was “off” or that he “gave [them] the creeps.” One commenter noted how “He did one workshop at my studio on ‘women in yoga.’ The students afterwards told me it was the worst workshop they have ever attended and that he wasn’t very bright and the content was low level… I’ve always felt he was a creep but like all of us, we want to give people the benefit of the doubt.” Another individual recalled how “[Eric] taught yoga philosophy in my yoga teacher training five years ago. You shared your misogynist opinions with a group of mostly women and we were quick to speak out against you. I’ve seen a young woman walk out on your class because you wouldn’t allow her to move freely.” Yet another recounted Shaw’s comments on the size of a student’s breasts (too small for him to consider dating her, apparently).
One individual reported how they “sat through several of [Eric’s] workshops over the years trying to honor your scholarship while simultaneously recognizing microagressions against me personally and all other strong woman in the audience who dared question you.” Still others noted, “He taught at my yoga teacher training and was late both days… I also got a weird vibe from him and I’m pretty sure he was kicked out of Yoga Tree Berkeley (rumors).” Another commenter recalls how, “I met Eric Shaw at the Anusara grand gathering years ago. He seemed like he idolized John Friend. In hindsight, this seems all very telling. Something didn’t feel right then either.” Another indicated that “Eric Shaw, who advertises himself as a yoga teacher, has made racist comments on Facebook before.” One yoga instructor, who once had Shaw as their student, recounted: “Frankly you were one of the most self absorbed yoga students I ever had (I’ve known Eric for well over a decade)… Reports I have had from people I trust also peg you as quite the misogynist, and womanizer (yes I know you’ve been pretty fucking slimy with people I know).”
Eric Shaw’s disturbing and dangerous views went relatively unnoticed in the yoga world for a long time, even though he was teaching primarily women. This is despite the fact others had raised concerns about him in the past, and that he publically wrote a very similar hateful rant in 2013 that was published by Elephant Journal titled “Feminism Sucks.” In other words, his most recent invective was a long-time coming, a long-time felt, and frankly, a long-time known. But, his career wasn’t ruined in 2013 when this type of violent rhetoric was first published. Concerns simply didn’t gain traction and visibility in yoga, where it was all pretty much tolerated and buried–until now, in the broader context of the post-Trump, post-Brexit moment when this type of hate makes women, whose rights are already under unprecedented attacks, that much more fed up (and that much more capable of sharing their anger and disgust through social media).
Because Eric seemed like such a “good person” in other areas of his life, people found it profoundly hard to believe that he was also very much a hateful misogynist. It is also likely that the brushing off of any concerns was in part because those who were concerned were primarily women, and as we know in patriarchal systems the concerns of women are often downplayed, ignored, or excused as “overreactions” or “hysteria”. (Which, by the way, feminists have studied the deeply disturbing history of as a catch-all psychological diagnosis called “female hysteria”, often used to target and punish women acting “out of line” in the 19th and 20th centuries.)
Eric Shaw’s post is an obvious and blatant example of misogyny at work, making it easy to recognize and almost comical in its hate, disconnection, and ignorance. But the reality is that misogyny is often far more subtle, harder to recognize, harder to combat, and harder to uproot. The impacts of patriarchy live and breathe in our culture, in our yoga communities, and in ourselves in ways that are often extremely difficult to recognize, let alone resist. In other words, Eric Shaw is not just a “bad apple” in an otherwise pristine, perfect, and “conscious” or “woke” yoga community. The type of misogyny that Eric Shaw spouts is the extreme manifestation of underlying, persistent issues with patriarchy and sexism in the world at large – and within yoga. “The truth is that there is no such thing as a lone misogynist – they are created by our culture, and by communities that tell them their hatred is both commonplace and justified” (Valenti 2014). Eric Shaw’s post is, in this sense, the canary in the coal mine.
Misogyny–especially the more common subtle forms of misogyny, patriarchy, and sexism–functions in part through our own complicity in tolerating, excusing, and condoning such attitudes and behavior. We must not excuse Eric Shaw as one bad apple in a world of seemingly good ones. Misogyny affects and infects all of us and the spaces we move and act within, and it takes active, deliberate, and continual work to uproot. It takes a profoundly deep and committed practice of yoga to engage in the type of uncovering and Truth-seeking required of us to uproot these biases, to recognize the subtle ways our practice is infected with oppression as well as the way we ourselves are complicit in such systems (especially those of us who are privileged enough to actively benefit from such systems). This is work it seems Shaw is unwilling or unable to do.
The easier, more comfortable, and more common thing to do in response to Eric Shaw’s post is to claim that it is simply an isolated incident, that it “doesn’t happen in my circles,” or that it’s not something prominent in the yoga world at large. But doing so would be a mistake. We want to believe that yogis and yoga communities are better than this type of hateful and violent rhetoric, that yoga somehow magically roots out this ignorance and hate, that if we just practice “all is coming.” But this is a romantic expectation that denies the realities of the way deeper practices of yoga have been compromised by settler-colonial appropriation of the practice and have always been deeply rooted in patriarchal systems. This type of approach only serves to trivialize misogyny as the isolated purview of seemingly disturbed individuals, rather than allowing us to understand this type of incident as a symptom of a larger issue in the practice of yoga and in our culture at large. It fails to place this incident in the context of patriarchy, “a system of social structures in which men dominate, oppress, and exploit women” and LGBTQ+ individuals, in ways that harm all sexes and genders (Walby 1990). Misogyny and patriarchy are deeply embedded in most social settings, and to deny the possibility it is part of all our yoga communities, and even a part of ourselves, is ignorant and naive. The question is not “what if?”, it is “in what form?”
Take, for example, this story from one commenter on Eric Shaw’s post:
“Through my close involvement with a spiritually based supportive group some years back, I came to see that misogyny was alive, well, and kicking, albeit in an underground, deeply unconscious way. A known predator (male) was preying on vulnerable young women as they joined the group; countless women had complained about this, but the men banded together, denied any wrongdoing, trivialised the women’s concerns, accused them/us of hysteria. I was baffled, many of these kind, intelligent men were friends of mine [for] several years; I couldn’t understand what was happening. Anyway, long story short, I gradually realised that these ‘new men’ were still carrying the wounds and warped messages from their forefathers, their families of origin, and from society, but that intellectually, they’d seen and accepted that sexism existed and that women suffered greatly–but their deeply felt anger, rage, etc. had just gone underground, only to emerge by leaking out into everyday interactions as described above.”
Although it didn’t get the audience it warranted when published, we can look more closely at Eric Shaw’s 2013 piece titled “Feminism Sucks” to investigate the way institutions often excuse and enable misogyny. This was work that was given a platform by Elephant Journal, known for publishing other controversial clickbait like the recent article by a so-called “yogi” titled “Why I Voted for Trump.” With the increased traffic to Shaw’s 2013 article in the last few days, Elephant Journal has since deleted the offensive piece (which, thanks to internet archives will never be completely gone).
While at a basic level we commend EJ for removing the piece, let’s delve deeper into how and why they did so. Was it because they finally realized “this is a really hateful and violent thing to provide a platform for, and we don’t want to support that so let’s delete it?” Unfortunately, this is not the case. It was because they were likely getting so many complaints from women triggered by and concerned about them providing a platform for this type of hate and the inappropriateness of the article. They were forced to take it down before they were dragged into the scandalsurrounding Eric Shaw (four years too late, EJ!). In other words, it was a business decision, not a moral decision. The moral decision would have been to never publish such a piece in the first place. They also haven’t openly admitted why the article was problematic, or why they deleted it, or even taken an explicit stance against the views Shaw expressed in that article which was available on their site for four years (nor did they do so originally in an editor’s note at the beginning of the article, as they did for the Trump piece linked to above).
So even EJ removing the post was a decision that is flawed–{*poof*} it’s just gone! (Get back to the “edgy” articles about neo-tantra, readers!) But Shaw’s other writings? They are all still supported on EJ’s site along with an author page touting Shaw’s credentials (but lacking any disclosure informing primarily female students and readers to the fact that Shaw is also a raging misogynist). So now when people look Shaw up online at EJ they will not actually be able to see what his detestable and dangerous views are. In essence, EJ has completely erased any evidence of Shaw’s hate while continuing to support him as a contributing author, serving to further enable him. Oh, the subtle and insidious ways misogyny works!
Or take the American wing of the Yoga Alliance, for instance, who had this post brought to their attention and were asked to forward their formal statement to Shaw so that it could be more widely shared amongst the worldwide yoga community (note: this is not the same as actively unearthing ethical infraction; because of their lack of regulatory ability the onus is on YA members to inform upon each other). Their response:
“All grievances are private to Yoga Alliance. We do not share that information. Yoga Alliance supports having the public make informed choices when selecting a yoga instructor or a yoga teacher training program, including based on whether a teacher’s or school’s philosophy is aligned with the that of the student. Yoga Alliance Registry’s social credentialing system is designed to allow the public to see feedback from past trainees before enrolling in a training program. Yoga Alliance also encourages prospective yoga students to review other available information when selecting a yoga teacher.”
In other words, despite their belief that they are supporting “having the public make informed choices,” Yoga Alliance is doing nothing to actually inform the public and potential students (most of whom will likely be female) about Shaw’s potentially dangerous views, serving to further enable him and condone his behavior. Does your brain hurt yet?
We can see more subtle forms of misogyny and systems of patriarchy at work in the way people have tried to excuse Shaw’s behavior as some sort of mental breakdown or illness. We can see it in the way yogis, including women, empathized more with the perpetrator of hateful discourse than with those affected by it (even if it was harming themselves; but then again, that’s not such a surprise since patriarchy teaches women to put others and especially men first, to love thy oppressor, and to forgive instead of oppose). We can see misogyny and systems of patriarchy at work when we look at the way yogis, after confirming that “yes he was perfectly fine yet also totally cool with being a sexist pig,” still refused to cut ties with him and decided to remain his friend despite his hateful views, in essence tolerating his actions. These people likely have the privilege to ignore any potential harm done because it doesn’t/won’t affect them directly.
See the full public post from Ekabhumi Charles Ellik here.
Let’s also not forget that while the majority of people on Shaw’s post were rightfully, justifiably disgusted with the drivel he wrote, there were also others who agreed with him and who were amenable to his ideas. In other words, Eric Shaw is not alone. This was not just other men (though it largely was). It was also (white) women, which isn’t really a surprise when we consider that feminist theory has long indicated women internalize and often participate in their own oppression, especially if they themselves may benefit from white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Shaw might be an extreme version, but there are many others out there who support his view, who are part of yoga communities, and who also perpetuate systems of oppression.
But, surely Shaw’s yoga career is over–not so fast!
Despite optimistic statements arguing Shaw’s post was “career suicide”, it’s best we be realistic about the ways patriarchy works to hide, bury, erase, condone, and tolerate those perpetrating misogynist hate and violence. Even in the yoga community–indeed, especially in the yoga community–we can see this type of process at work over and over again, where scandals involving teachers engaging in abuse often do not result in their expulsion from yoga spaces or teaching roles. Is this completely messed up? Totally. But does it happen anyway? Yes, all the time.
Historically, there have been numerous “gurus” who have abused students, taken advantage of students, or been otherwise engaged in scandalous activities who have continued to have careers in the yoga world.
Take, for example, Pierre Bernard (originally Perry Arnold Baker) in the early 1900s, who was involved in numerous sex scandals after he created a group called the Tantrik Order. It was alleged that Bernard required participants to engage in “sacramental sexual intercourse” in order to join. In 1909, two teenage girls alleged he had sexually taken advantage of them and charged him with kidnapping, which led to his serving time in jail. But was this the end of his career? No. “Bernard eventually regrouped and founded successful yoga schools in New York City and Nyack, N.Y., where he entertained lavishly, raised a herd of elephants, and taught yoga to the cream of high society” (Love 2012). Not only that, but ““at the time of his death in 1955 Pierre Bernard was a bank president, an officer in Nyack on the local Chamber of Commerce, the head of a large real estate holding company and a member of more than twenty societies, including the British and American Philological Societies, the Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Asiatic Society” (Yoga Dork 2010).
Other prominent “gurus” who have been embroiled in scandals and yet still have gone on to have successful careers include Bhagwan Shree Rajnees, more commonly known as Osho. Rajnees was implicated in a number of serious crimes in addition to sex scandals, including a bioterror attack, an assassination plot to murder a US Attorney, tax evasion, immigration fraud, prostitution, drug-running, drug use, and exploitation of workers. When he was deported, twenty-one countries denied him entry. He ultimately returned to India and his Pune ashram (now one of India’s main tourist attractions) and is still a celebrated figure in many New Age circles today. In fact, his prestige only grew after his death in 1990.
Or take Swami Satchidananda, who rose to prominence after opening the Woodstock Music Festival in the 1960s and was the founder of Integral Yoga institutes across the country. Over the years at leastnine women have accused him of sexual abuse, although this didn’t halt “invitations for over fifty years from around the world to speak about the way to peace.” Oh the irony! (You can see his organization’s glowing biography which includes absolutely no record of any charges against him here.)
John Friend, the founder of Anusara yoga, went through what has since been dubbed “Anusaragate” in 2012 when he faced claims of financial mismanagement and a prominent sex scandal, explicit photos and all. Although he reportedly was “left estranged from much of the yoga world, banished from the empire he’d created,” was his career over? No. After a mere year off, he began teaching at a studio in Denver (where “he was welcomed”) and ended up creating/appropriating/adding the Friend branding “magic” to a new style of yoga with (female) teacher Desi Springer, called Sridaiva or Global Bowstring. A mere five years ago, yoga practitioners were optimistically calling Friend out on his numerous ethical infractions and announcing his career was in tatters. Apparently we have short memories, as “his” new style is enthusiastically investigated by both new and long-term yoga practitioners, and the intricacies of the style’s biomechanics dissected in online forums.
Or take the recent Jivamukti scandal, which entailed “allegations of sexual assault and battery against yoga teacher ‘Lady’ Ruth Lauer-Manenti, brought by Holly Faurot, her student at Jivamukti Yoga School in New York City. The suit names Jivamukti founders Sharon Gannon and David Life, as well as studio director Carlos Menjivar, as co-defendants for covering up and condoning Lauer-Manenti’s alleged actions.” (Remski 2016a). Was that the end of any of these people’s careers? No. “Ruth Lauer-Manenti has exited stage right for teaching gigs in Berlin and Switzerland. Sharon Gannon and David Life have exited stage left for retreats in Costa Rica, upstate New York, and then Moscow in the fall” (Remski 2016b). Others commenting on the Jivamukti scandal, such as prominent teacher Leslie Kaminoff (who is well-known for his conservative outlook) “instantly contributed to victim-blaming culture, which enables abuse, and silences those who would speak up.” Despite this, Kaminoff continues to attract large (predominantly female) audiences. The entire incident clearly indicates the ways the yoga world and patriarchal systems in general often work to bury, silence, or excuse harmful actions or violent rhetoric, a process explored by Remski in his last post on the Jivamukti scandal, titled “Silence and Silencing at Jivamukti Yoga and Beyond.”
Look, we believe in second chances. In some of these cases, like Friend’s, there was consent in illicit affairs (if not honesty or truthfulness), so it’s important to note that not all of these scandals involved cases of abuse, harassment, or assault. But the fact is these individuals (mostly men), who made conscious choices embroiling them in disturbing and at times abusive scandals, did not experience “career suicide.” This is a sign that those engaging in abusive and harmful behavior are quite often propped up by patriarchal systems, even, or perhaps especially, in yoga, as their discretions and abuse are consistently downplayed, buried, tolerated, and excused by those surrounding them. Indeed, if we want further evidence of this trend in our broader world we need look no further than the White House, which is now host to a man who was elected President of the USA despite being caught on tape bragging about sexually assaulting women, or his close ties with child sex trafficking networks, or being accused of sexual harassment and assault by over twenty women (including charges that he raped a 13-year old, which were dropped after the victim received a slew of death threats from Trump supporters).
So we need to stop saying Eric Shaw will somehow face “career suicide” after revealing his long-time, deeply-held beliefs of sexism and misogyny, gender essentialism, and indications of racism to boot. Though we wish it were the case, unfortunately, it’s simply not a given. Do we hope Shaw will get the help he needs to overcome his clear biases and to change? Of course. But given the many years Shaw has been engaged in this type of rhetoric, that is not likely to happen, and all the coddling, excusing, and “dialogue” in the world likely won’t do anything to change his mind, no matter how “nicely” we reach out to him. This is a person who has been eating up men’s rights dogma for decades, even while he has never actually reached out to study feminism itself (and that’s one severely lopsided “dialogue” if ever we saw one).
Be Scofield, who is ironically the founder of Decolonizing Yoga, would “love to stay in dialogue” with Eric Shaw regarding men’s rights dogma? The comment does reveal more about how long Shaw has held such views, and how lopsided his study has been.
Ultimately, to ensure that his career in yoga is actually ended those of us (who are justifiably disturbed by the potential for Shaw to continue teaching predominantly female audiences) will need to stand against him, repeatedly, often, and loudly. It will take denouncing him in our communities and informing others who are considering hiring him in the future about his hateful views. It will take all of us continuing to educate ourselves and our communities on the dangers of such violent rhetoric, the realities of women’s history, and on what feminism actually means and entails.
Where do we go from here?
Happily, most of the comments on Shaw’s post were from people, especially women, who found this type of violent rhetoric unacceptable and disturbing. Here’s a shout-out to all you empowered, amazing people who stood up to combat and denounce hate–you are inspiring. But we would like to encourage all of us to think critically about how we may be condoning, protecting, and potentially even encouraging this type of misogyny in our communities, and how this links to how we teach the practice of yoga.
How do we break out of the cage of patriarchy, so people of all sexes and genders are able to fully heal? What are we really teaching when we teach yoga, and is there a way to teach yoga as a radical act of social justice? Can we teach yoga in ways that is informed by and rooted in intersectional feminism? What would that look like? How can we promote a spiritually engaged activism in our yoga communities to better combat this type of hate and violence?
Many people are deeply resistant to notions that yoga might be a force for social change or that yoga is political. Even in these Trump/Brexit times, we are often still enmeshed in ideals of yoga that posit the practices as timeless, transcendent, pristine objects rather than the cultural artefacts and tools that they are. This is not to deny the potential power of yoga to support, empower and perhaps even transform a life. But how it transforms us, what it transforms us into and what kind of communities we create as part of that process is up for debate.
We all have an abiding need for be seen and held; to feel part of something greater than ourselves. Perhaps more than ever before, we might have a need for a de-politicised, neutral space, where we can go to forget our worries and concerns in these troubled times. And it might therefore suit us to view our yoga classes and communities as politically neutral and existing as an alternative to politics. But we also need to recognize that our innate need for community and for simple companionship means that we might also be willing to overlook red flags and subtle signs that could in fact allow us to recognize that the implicit (and almost always unspoken) biases of our particular chosen group do not actually align with values that we personally hold dear. It might mean we are willing to overlook behavior that prevents us from accessing the deeper, ethical practices of yoga to overcome samskara, imprints or impressions left in the deep recesses of the mind by experience (which for all of us is experience rooted in systems of white supremacy, settler-colonialism, and capitalist patriarchy). It might mean we compromise our ethics in ways that make us complicit and which enable abuse and violence to continue.
This overlooking becomes particularly problematic when aligned with the rhetoric of self-care that much of modern yoga culture espouses. (Not to mention that this focus on self-care might not be in line with traditional teachings, but rather an example of yoga culture taking on the dominant values of the society it is embedded within). What do we as practitioners do when something a teacher or prominent member of a community says feels “off” to us? How do we make sense of the dissonance? Most of us, particularly women, are very well-schooled to prioritise social harmony and cohesion over our own internal wellness and wholeness. If we are yoga teachers ourselves, can we say that what we transmit from this space of internalised violence is truly yoga?
As teachers, our careers can be dependent on our reputation, networks and connections, and perhaps we sometimes feel we simply cannot afford to turn down the patronage of a powerful teacher (even if they are known to be abusive, hateful, or someone who engages in victim blaming; or if we suspect that is the case). In such circumstances, we may very well collude with power structures we consider ourselves morally opposed to. In fact, female practitioners might do this most of all. This becomes even more complicated when we consider the material conditions of women working within the yoga industry. Let’s be clear here that this is a world in which employment is increasingly scarce, underpaid, and rarely sustainable past the glory days of Instagram-friendly “health” and desirable bendiness. Rampant self-promotion is necessary and resources (for example students or studio space) are competed for fiercely. In this uncertain industry, it is the working lives of women that bear the brunt. Maternity leave is as likely to be the end of your teaching slot at a studio as it is the beginning of a new chapter of a woman’s relationship with her body. So can we blame female teachers for looking anywhere we can for security?
Misogyny does not always manifest as brutally or obviously as we might think. In our experiences as yoga practitioners, we have seen many apparently innocent incidents which are in fact examples of deeply buried sexism. A great many of the things we take for granted or that are normalised within a yoga class are symptoms of this and other forms of bigotry.
Consider, for instance, how acceptable it is for female practitioners to let their teacher know that they are menstruating, which for all women who do menstruate (whether they know it or not) has an effect on energy levels, joint liability, and emotional states. If this aspect of female embodiment is accepted, how is it made space for within the class? Is an alternative to, say, inversions actually offered? Is that done with a sense that this is not somehow lesser than the “real” work of the class, which is going on somewhere else in some non-bleeding body? What does this do to us as female practitioners? What does it say to us about what it is to have an female body, about yoga? Who loses here, and who gains? How does this play into pre-existing hierarchies of power and of who is given voice?
Let’s take some other common examples of female experiences in yoga. How is pregnancy accommodated? There are many good reasons to attend pregnancy-specific yoga classes–but isn’t there something ironic in the rhetoric of “start where you are” and “yoga is for everybody” that peppers every class if this entirely normal facet of human experience is not accepted by the usual structure of what we are practicing together? What about miscarriage, an experience that one in five to six of known pregnancies ends in, which causes an estimated one in five women who go through it anxiety levels on a par with people who attend psychiatric outpatient services? What about menopause, which every woman who menstruates goes through? These are largely hidden areas of female experience, and perhaps we obscure them further and even complicate our ability to go through them without medicalising or pathologizing them if they cannot be accommodated within yoga.
Once we start looking at these questions, it is difficult to see a yoga class as quite as female-friendly as we might want to think. Is this evidence of deeply-ingrained sexism? Not necessarily–though we, the authors of this article, would argue that it is. At the very least, we might want to re-think our cherished notion of yoga as a non-political space. And we might also want to investigate, at the level of our own practice, how we make sense of the messages we receive from our teachers about what a female body is (and is not), and the way these messages often support essentialist, hetero-patriarchal understandings of a gender binary.
Perhaps we could focus on how it actually feels, somatically, to receive messages both coded and/or explicit, that our body is “less” or “different” than a seemingly “neutral” male one, and how we then pass these messages on to others. As people who are schooled in the rhetoric of “listening to the body”, can we pay subtle attention to what happens to us when we receive disturbing messages from our teachers? What do we do with that dissonance? Do we project it outward onto others, or do we turn it inward? We need to work at this micro-level, as well as at the macro-level, in order to begin to root ot this and other forms of bigotry.
Other practical efforts we can make to combat sexism, misogyny, and patriarchy in yoga:
At the micro-level, how can we better recognize the way misogyny has become rooted in our preconceptions and understandings of the world? One way to do this is by paying careful attention to our language, with an aim to create more equitable and inclusive social spaces in our everyday lives through a conscious effort to use gender-neutral language. For example, it’s easy to lose count of the times people will use the gendered phrase “you guys” when referring to a group of people, even if every single one of the people in the group is female (or take the use of “man,” “he” as all people, or out in California the use of “dude”). This type of language is what feminist author Kate Swift discusses in her book Words and Women, where “so-called ‘generic’ senses of the word [man] were subconsciously contaminated by the male sense of the word. The result: women were getting lost in our language” (Bodine 1996). Of course this also means those who identify as gender-queer are lost in our language, too.
When you see a problem, speak up. (And alas, be prepared for push back.) Can’t speak up because it could put you or your job at risk? Perhaps drop an anonymous note to staff with some articles helping educate the studio/teacher on the topic at hand. Seek out other allies who can engage in that conversation with you, or have a friend speak for you anonymously if they are comfortable doing so. Also, consider keeping a written record of incidents and dialogues you have had about such incidents to document any concerns.
Do your homework on the teachers you are taking classes from. Let’s avoid supporting those who don’t actually walk the walk with any of our money, time, or energy. Find out something disturbing? Let the organization hosting the event know, and consider informing people who might otherwise attend (note: informing others can take many forms from private conversations to public demonstrations).
Are you a studio owner?
Consider having a process for anonymous feedback so those who may not feel comfortable disclosing their experiences can do so safely.
Ensure teachers are properly trained on appropriate conduct, including maintaining professional boundaries with their students–especially when these relationships may be charged with gender, race/ethnicity, and other power dynamics. Have clear policies on how to deal with difficult or disturbing situations that hopefully never come up, but realistically might (like this incident with Eric Shaw demonstrates). This includes having policies and training for all staff (including teachers) on reporting, filing, and addressing disturbing incidents, including those involving hate speech, sexual harassment, or discrimination.
Have a list of emergency contacts somewhere handy in case emergency situations arise, including mental health services and numbers for local emergency centers. (Sometimes it may also be useful to have this information in a format that can be passed out to others.) Here’s hoping it’s never needed.
Consider offering classes that can serve as safe spaces of healing for all people, especially marginalized groups. This might entail offering classes or spaces that serve marginalized communities or which can address specific needs for certain groups (things like curvy yoga, classes for people of color, and yes, this might also entail yoga classes for men). Recognize this work is not a marketing gimmick (looking at you Broga!), but rather about building inclusive, empowered, and supported community spaces. The way you teach might need to change to truly serve the community you create (for example, Brandon Copeland’s studio in Washington D.C.).
Considering offering classes that help fundraise for important causes. These type of events can help build community, establishing connections with local organizations and networks. They can also support those in need, or help raise awareness on important issues. (For example, yoga classes to benefit Planned Parenthood or something like Yoga Refuge’s fundraiser supporting survivors of the Bay Area Ghost Ship Fire.)
Consider hosting workshops and trainings for staff (and maybe even students) on important topics, including: combatting sexual assault and harassment, trauma informed yoga, anti-racist education, creating spaces that are queer and trans friendly, the impacts of gentrification (which yoga studios are often deeply embroiled in), the nature of privilege, and other forms of anti-oppression education, including feminist education. There are often many local activists and community groups that do these types of trainings you can reach out to.
Do you run a teacher training?
Revisit the point above about doing your homework on the teacher trainers you are hiring. Also revisit the point directly above this about types of workshops or trainings that might be important to discuss during a TT.
Consider the way your curriculum, including book choices, also monetarily supports and legitimates certain instructors. Is it possible to represent a more diverse range of authors in your curriculum (are all the authors of curriculum students read from just one group, such as white people or men)? Can you work in training on trauma sensitivity?
Have other practical suggestions for us all? Add them in the comments below.
Let’s all work together to create spaces where we can heal in safety and work towards a more socially just and equitable world. Onward and forward!
Co-Contributor: Joanna Johnson has been a yoga practitioner since the 90s, has had a daily practice for fifteen years, and has been teaching for seventeen. She is particularly interested in the myriad experiences of female embodiment. She teaches women’s yoga in a beautiful barn in the English woodland, where her teaching is increasingly inflected with the felt realities of being a householder in intimate contact with the Earth. Her Facebook page is Red Moon Yoga, and she blogs at www.whisperingbodies.wordpress.com.
I’m sure like many of you, these last few days (weeks… months… __fill in the blank?__…) have been filled with trying to process the events unfolding in this country, not to mention the ripple effects these events have on the broader world.
Today I want to tackle the increasing importance of practicing satya in the form of radical Truth. Given our current political climate, it is even more imperative that we center our practices on the ethical prescriptions of the yamas. But what exactly does it mean to practice satya, or truthfulness, the restraint from falsehood, the resistance to distortions of one’s reality rooted in ignorance?
The Trumped Up Age
This week was, of course, the inauguration of Trump to the presidency. As I sit here writing this, #DayFour has already seen:
So pretty much it’s been a shit-show. Why list it all? Because frankly, it’s important to remember that this is not normal. Also, experts in authoritarianism recommend keeping a regular list of things changing around you, because as we can see it can be overwhelming to keep track of. Literally, it’s been almost impossible to keep up with the slew of horrible and disturbing news.
Trump and his team have been waging a war on the media, a war on facts, a war on reality in attempts to discredit even the most obvious and verifiable information. This war has also been focused on overloading us with so much at once that it becomes nearly impossible to catch everything, to resist the myriad of ways his administration and the Republicans in the House and Senate are attempting to rollback our civil rights and undermine our democracy. According to journalist Ezra Klein:
The spat over crowd size is a low-stakes, semi-comic dispute, but the groundwork is being laid for much more consequential debates over what is, and isn’t, true. Delegitimizing the institutions that might report inconvenient or damaging facts about the president is strategic for an administration that has made a slew of impossible promises and takes office amid a cloud of ethics concerns and potential scandals. It also gives the new administration a convenient scapegoat for their continued struggles with public opinion, and their potential future struggles with reality… It’s not difficult to imagine the Trump administration disputing bad jobs numbers in the future, or claiming their Obamacare replacement covers everyone when it actually throws millions off insurance.
What happens when our government becomes an untrustworthy and unreliable source of information, when it is our government that lies to us? Social psychologists have found that when faced with falsehoods, especially a torrential downpour of them, commitment to the truth becomes monumentally more difficult.
Our brains are particularly ill-equipped to deal with lies when they come not singly but in a constant stream, and Trump, we know, lies constantly… When we are overwhelmed with false, or potentially false, statements, our brains pretty quickly become so overworked that we stop trying to sift through everything. It’s called cognitive load—our limited cognitive resources are overburdened. It doesn’t matter how implausible the statements are; throw out enough of them, and people will inevitably absorb some. Eventually, without quite realizing it, our brains just give up trying to figure out what is true.
But Trump goes a step further. If he has a particular untruth he wants to propagate—not just an undifferentiated barrage—he simply states it, over and over. As it turns out, sheer repetition of the same lie can eventually mark it as true in our heads. It’s an effect known as illusory truth… Repetition of any kind—even to refute the statement in question—only serves to solidify it…
When false information is specifically political in nature, part of our political identity, it becomes almost impossible to correct lies… In the face of a seeming assault on their identity, they didn’t change their minds to conform with the truth: Instead, amazingly, they doubled down on the exact views that were explained to be wrong. (Konnikova 2017)
It’s important to remember that facts do exist. But it’s also important to recognize that in the Trumped up age, authorities like our government are actively working to undermine our abilities to determine fact from fiction. These attempts make it harder for us to sift through the slew of misinformation being promoted by what have in the past seemed to be legitimate sources.
In this day and age, we all must come together to commit more fully to a radical understanding of what the truth means, and what it means to be truthful. In this day and age, we all must come together to support the development of a yogic culture of radical truth tellers.
Satya: Radical Truth in Opposition to Radical Lies
In yogic philosophy, satya is commonly interpreted as truthfulness or the restraint from falsehood, with many teachers promoting the idea of truthfulness in thought, word, and deed. But what exactly does this mean in practice?
In the yoga world today, we often misunderstand satya to mean “honesty.” This implies satya entails remaining “true” to our self in ways that allow us to honestly share our personal opinions, and to feel justified in doing so with comments like “I’m simply being ‘true’ to who I am” (oh, the ego is strong!). Thus, satya becomes misinterpreted as saying your “truth,” as you see it, in your words; acting out your “truth,” as you see it, in your actions; and thinking your “truth,” as you believe it, in your mind.
This is often encouraged by the way yoga has become tied to an individualized, capitalistic understanding of the self in the West. In this misunderstanding, satya becomes the act of remaining “true” to an assumed underlying, unique “authentic self” we are encouraged to discover and express through buying things. Thus, satya is misinterpreted as something completely relative, as unique to each person. It becomes individualized as being “true” to one’s ego-self in our thoughts, words, and deeds rather than understanding satya as a commitment and dedication to the uncovering of deep Truth in our self and our life.
This shallow interpretation of satya as honesty isn’t so much about uncovering, understanding, or spreading Truth, but is instead about feeling justified in our personal interpretations, regardless of their flaws or inaccuracies (oh, the ego is strong!). Rather than becoming Truth tellers, we are encouraged to become tellers of our own personal, radical “truths,” regardless of whether or not our personal opinions are actually grounded in fact, regardless of whether or not our personal opinions are actually based on an understanding of the realities that surround us.
Look, I’m all about honesty. It’s a wonderful thing. I encourage everyone to be honest as part of their practice of satya. But let’s get honest here–honesty is not always the same thing as being Truthful. (And to be really honest, this misunderstanding of satya also ignores yogic philosophy regarding the nature of the True self, purusha, and the realities of avidya, ignorance, which lead us astray from understanding the Truth of our self and the world.)
I believe that to truly practice satya, we need to recognize that there is something to Truth beyond just honesty. We need to recognize that adhering to Truth demands more of us than an accurate, honest reflection of our own ignorance. It demands a commitment to understand reality, a commitment to uncover facts, and a commitment to radically express them.
The fact of the matter is, in this Trumped up age the Truth is often unpleasant, uncomfortable, and complex. The yoga industry often avoids this reality, this Truth, because when you are trying to sell something to a mass audience it’s easier to use a quick gimmick and a surface level understanding of satya than to really challenge our students and our selves. It’s easier to promote a false representation of the “truth” as simple, because it’s easier to sell simplicity. We are comfortable with simple things; complex things tend to scare us. Complex things make us uncomfortable. So instead, it’s easier, and more lucrative, to encourage a fantasy understanding of the world as simple, a world where happiness is achievable (if you can just pay enough, or just consume enough), a world where we are encouraged to remain in the bubbles we surround ourselves with that make us feel safe and comfortable, but which are not really True.
In this Trumped up age, I think it’s important we understand satya as a radical commitment to the Truth that surrounds us, even if it is unpleasant, dangerous, or risky to express. We must become radical Truth tellers, not simply tellers of our personal, radical “truths.”
Reinterpreting satya as a commitment to radical Truth implies a responsibility to combat falsehoods, to speak out in support of what we know to be fact. It implies a responsibility to act with honesty and integrity in the face of lies in ways that don’t just serve our ego, but serve those most affected by the realities of our unequal world. It implies a responsibility to utilize Truth to mitigate harm being caused, in accordance with ahimsa and in ways that actively, radically encourage others we encounter to do the same.
It means not being complacent to the harm perpetrated by the systems we are a part of by remaining silent in the face of injustice. A radical practice of satya must promote radical Truth focused on social justice, equity, and inclusivity, and continue to seek the complex reality beneath the charade of simple falsehoods.
Perhaps most importantly, we must recognize that we cannot do this alone. The myriad of falsehoods we face is simply too much for one person to bear the cognitive burden. We must band together, form coalitions, and support organizations and independent news agencies that are committed to promoting the Truth, to preserving fact, and to engaging in investigative journalism. We must form networks of trustworthy, reliable, radical Truth tellers. To combat ignorance and promote radical Truth in the face of radical lies, we must continue to resist together. We must continue to organize, together. We must continue to utilize social media to network with others committed to Truth, and we must continue on-the-ground community organizing to create strong local governments and support systems that value a truthful understanding of reality as it is, not as we want it to be.
We must continue to speak out, even when it is uncomfortable to do so, even when it is potentially dangerous to do so. We must resist efforts to be silenced, and we must be willing to take on the burden of radical Truth-telling despite the risk.
Despite all the horrible, depressing, anxiety-producing news lately, I have been encouraged and inspired by those who are committed to sharing radical Truth, who insist on working towards a better future, a future that values facts and is willing to face the unpleasant realities of our world so that we may solve them. Radical truth is a creative endeavor, and I want to leave you with some of those creators and artists who have begun the brave process of speaking out and calling up. I think it is important for us to all begin to utilize the tools at our disposal to educate, to advocate, to agitate for a better world.
Seek radical Truth. And in the words of a friend of mine, “Stay radical. Stay woke AF.”
After much deliberation, I have decided to transition my website and blog to incorporate more of my sociological expertise in addition to my work on yoga. I originally started this blog to write about about my exploration of yoga, whether than be my own personal practice, philosophy, yoga culture or lifestyle. However, in the last couple years I’ve begun to realize that my yoga practice has become intimately intertwined with my sociological work, work as an anti-oppression educator, and as an activist. I have realized I cannot truly delve deeply into yoga without opening doors to discuss other things, and other aspects of my life and work as well.
As such, I have created a new general website as an educator that you can find through my blog’s new header menu or directly at http://amaralmiller.wixsite.com/educator. I have also renamed my blog “The Sociological Yogi” to allow for a broader focus to the posts I make in the future. The domain name for my blog has also changed to reflect this, and is now https://amaramillerblog.wordpress.com/.
Thank you to everyone who has been part of this journey, and who found my work on the original page “All Things Yoga” and was drawn to my writing. Do not fear, my blog will continue to grapple with yoga, yoga culture, and the yoga industry. But I will also begin to integrate my other work in sociology, anti-oppression education, and activism as I desire. I hope you will all continue to join me in the exploration of this continual process of becoming.
Much love to you all out there.
“Go forth, and set the world on fire.” ~St. Ignatius Loyola
I recently published a blog post on Yoga Dork, one of the top yoga blogs. It was such an honor, especially because I got to write about something I am extremely passionate about, diverse representation in the yoga world. Specifically, the post is about how the yoga industry co-opts and appropriates body positive discourse in ways that continue to be problematic and supportive of unequal, oppressive systems. What follows is an excerpt from the entire piece. To read it in full, please visit this link to the post on Yoga Dork!
Is it possible for companies like Yoga Journal to be body positive when they are built on a for-profit, corporate model that has a legal obligation to sell the practice? Especially when they often sell yoga as an elite luxury good available only to a few?…
Yoga Journal and Continuing Co-optation of Body Positivity
Yoga Journal’s co-optation and appropriation of body positivity has continued this month as they revisit attempts to address claims of their lack of diverse representation and of size shaming. However, perhaps unexpectedly, their latest approach to solve these problems continues to be problematic. In a similar vein to other prominent yoga companies like CodyApp they have been promoting larger, curvy yogis like Jessamyn Stanley (who is also a person of color, and a teacher through CodyApp along with Dana Falsetti, another Instagram curvy yoga sensation).
I commend the magazine and companies like CodyApp for their efforts to increase diverse representation, and I love that yogis like Jessamyn and Dana are making representation in yoga more diverse. We need to acknowledge how great it is that some individuals like Jessamyn and Dana are finally being represented. If you haven’t yet, check out the amazing work they are doing, and send them some love for trying to make some change in a world that actively tries to resist changing.
But how exactly are these diverse yogis represented? Why these yogis? And how much representation are we really talking about? The problem is that the industry rarely engages in broader structural changes to address concerns and tends to tokenize members of marginalized groups for the industry’s own uses.
Tokenism
For those who don’t know, tokenism is the practice of making only a perfunctory or symbolic effort to do a particular thing, especially when one recruits a small number of people from underrepresented groups in order to give the appearance of sexual or racial equality within a workforce. In essence, Yoga Journal gains legitimacy and acclaim for their efforts to represent greater diversity even while their organizational practices continue to be unequal and their portrayal of the practice inaccessible. In other words, the industry profits from maintaining the same systems that generate inequity in yoga, but because they tokenize a small number of specific diverse contributors, the company gains ethical legitimacy even while nothing substantive really changes. All talk, no walk.
I believe (I hope) attempts like this are driven by a genuine desire of those involved in these companies to do better in terms of diversifying representation. However, despite the best of intentions, they still completely miss the mark in important ways in their implementation of their chosen “solutions.”
Social Distance
This is in large part because companies like Yoga Journal are socially distant from those most affected by their practices. They typically draw from an applicant pool that is demographically narrow, both in terms of reflecting a demographic of yoga practitioners in the USA that is predominantly white, middle-class, and female but also because the company’s past scandals mean yogis who are diverse are less likely to be interested in working with them in the first place. So the staff at these agencies, by the very nature of their hiring practices and their applicant pool, is similarly very homogenous and lacking diversity. We also know because of network segregation that most people associate with those who are similar to them in both background and beliefs, so perhaps it is not surprise that the experiences, stories, concerns, and bodies of white, middle-class women are overrepresented in the magazine (plus, that’s their target market, and when you want to make money, then caring about equity and diversity are chump change, right?).
Management and sociological research in labor/work has shown that a more diverse workplace leads to better creative thinking and more creative results. Not to mention diverse workplaces broaden the network of contacts available to an organization, so they can better represent diverse viewpoints (which, let’s face it, are still pretty much non-existent within companies like Yoga Journal as well as in their products, including the magazine, website, and events). Companies with more diversity also make better decisions and are less prone to group-think. Research on television has also found that shows with a more diverse writing staff often produce more diverse and more realistic content that results in above average returns. So Yoga Journal, maybe you should get on creating a more diverse workplace if you really care about more diverse representation? Or, let’s face it, if you want to improve your bottom line because the results are in and diversitysells.
Unequal Power
Characterized by an unequal power dynamic, Yoga Journal and companies like CodyApp include diversity on their terms only. And their terms are steep.
There is always an unequal power dynamic in their choice of diverse models and contributors like Jessamyn Stanley or Dana Falsetti. For example, these individuals have had to generate their own fandom and following to even be noticed by the likes of companies such as Yoga Journal or CodyApp. It wasn’t until they were Instagram stars in their own right that they were able to obtain industry opportunities with companies hoping to gain followers by latching on to something already trending. In other words, such companies capitalize on the unpaid labor of these women, and the fame that these yogis had to create all on their own, while facing obstacles of sizeism (and for someone like Jessamyn, racism) within yoga, along with more isms I’m sure, isms that are often supported by and at times generated by the very yoga companies like Yoga Journal and CodyApp that now benefit from affiliation with these Instagram stars. Irony, much? So there is unequal power in the relationship between these types of companies and these women they are hiring to help make the companies seem like they are increasing diverse representation.
Yoga Journal and companies like CodyApp also only include diversity on their own terms by focusing on maintaining a particular representation of yoga that is inaccessible and largely unattainable to the average practitioner: namely, these Instagram celebs fit the acrobatic image of the practice companies like Yoga Journal want to promote, in ways that body positive activist organizations like the YBIC are actively seeking to disrupt. Perhaps most importantly, they prefer non-political teachers who don’t rock the boat. If a teacher is political, if only at times (cue: Jessamyn Stanley or even Dana Falsetti to some degree) the industry will try to minimize, downplay, or erase any political messages.
Rather than working with politically active yogis working to promote diversity in yoga, they prefer working with other celebrities like Kathryn Budig, or more recently, a small number of Instagram self-made celebrities—tokenized, young, diverse teachers such as Jessamyn Stanley who can do biomechanically complex, flashy asana or postures. When a curvy yoga body is the one doing such difficult postures it makes for the sensational, surprising, wow-factor that sells big and can inspire their readers to just try harder (and spend more) to reach physical goals. But this coverage is still generating an exclusive and ableist understanding of the practice of yoga as predominantly just complex asana. It presents the yoga body as one that must do complex postures, even if it is larger. So even while it increases diversity in representation in some ways, it symbolically erases the diversity of the yogic experience for practitioners by focusing only on a few celebrity teachers in ways that perpetuate unrealistic, asana-focused understandings of the practice and the yoga body.
For example, the first of a series of recent posts on Yoga Journal’s website featuring Jessamyn Stanley is all about “Tight Hips? You Need Jessamyn Stanley’s Hanumanasana Prep.” It claims, “Monkey Pose can be accessible to everyone” (an argument that, by the way, could be potentially dangerous as it has been questioned by recent research on biomechanics) and “features North Carolina-based teacher, body-positive advocate, and Instagram star Jessamyn Stanley breaking down the pose to help out tight hips.” The post then cycles through a series of asanas with an image of Jessamyn in each pose, including warrior II, reverse warrior II, triangle, one-legged down dog, two versions of crescent lunge, half splits, and full splits. None of the images feature demonstrate with props (although the text provides an “option” for blocks). Is it truly accessible to everyone?
Appropriation of Body Positivity
The other two articles featuring Jessamyn Stanley, including a version of one slated to come out in the November issue of the magazine, blatantly appropriate from the YBIC. One, announcing an excerpt from Jessamyn’s new book Every Body Yoga utilizes the phrase, “yoga is for all” claiming “That’s the message yoga teacher and body-positive advocate Jessamyn Stanley spreads to her students and 233K Instagram followers.” The problem? It’s the message self-proclaimed fat and black YBIC board member Dianne Bondy has been using for years as part of her #yogaforall movement that centers of generating more inclusivity in the practice for all practitioners, “regardless of their shape, size, ethnicity, or level of ability.” It’s the name of an online Yoga For All Training Dianne Bondy and her partner Amber Karnes (both body positive activists) run for teachers on how to make yoga classes more accessible for everyone. And it’s a phrase used to describe inclusive classes in Bondy’s online website Yogasteya.com, “dedicated to celebrating students of all shapes, sizes and ethnicities” whose “motto is ‘No Yogi Left Behind.’” However, Yoga Journal, of course, mentions none of this.
The final Yoga Journal article, “How Jessamyn Stanley is Erasing Yoga Stereotypes” claims “This North Carolina–based teacher and Instagram star is changing the perception of what a yogi looks like.” They fail to mention that this language is co-opted directly from an ongoing campaign by the YBIC to change representation in the practice by disrupting #whatayogilookslike. The magazine fails to even mention the campaign, despite the fact that since Yoga Journal’s largely staged Practice of Leadership panels, the only time they have featured the coalition publicly was over a year ago when they ran one online article featuring several images that YBIC produced and provided for them as part of the activist group’s #whatayogilookslike campaign and media series (along with a number of other magazines, so it’s not like Yoga Journal was going out on a limb with their coverage). So despite largely ignoring the YBIC and avoiding engaging in dialogue with activists since that token inclusion, the magazine has appropriated a number of their slogans and campaigns without giving them credit or even acknowledging the organization and their work.
According to the YBIC, the #whatayogilookslike campaign was originally created by the YBIC to showcase the faces and stories of people not usually represented in the pages of major yoga publications or covers (like Yoga Journal) and included a participatory social media campaign that actively sought to disrupt the dominant, stereotypical imagery of the yoga industry to provide real, diverse yogis to share the diversity of their practices. The YBIC also created a media series initially intended to be utilized as “a full cover image with a group if diverse yogis representing all the facets of human diversity that exist, the kind that pulls out to reveal a double cover… I envisioned something powerful and bold that not only represented diversity but also strayed away from the ‘yogalebrity’ covers in which you have one featured ‘star.’ I think it’s crucial that we celebrate our communities, not idolize individuals (as if these individuals have not been bolstered by their communities). Furthermore, it was a vision that sought to move beyond tokenizing one person. Like, hey, ‘here’s a person of color.’ Check. Or, hey, ‘here’s a curvy yogi.’ Check.” (Emphasis added, see Klein’s interview here). But as Klein reports:
“The initial cover idea has never happened. The idea was pitched to 3 major yoga publications, including Yoga Journal. Every single one of them turned it down. Frankly, I was shocked Yoga Journal didn’t jump on the opportunity since they were at the beginning of re-branding and the pitch followed the panel discussion by a month wherein Yoga Journal said they were committed to making big changes. Instead, their rebrand was rolled out with their “body issue” and Kathryn Budig on the cover.
Dianne Bondy and I approached them again earlier this year. Maybe the idea was ahead of its time, I thought. I figured that after last summer’s cover of Runner’s Magazine featuring Erica Schenk and the rapid rise of the body positivity movement, they’d be ready to feature some size diversity. But, not only that, I assumed they’d be prepared to go the distance by not only featuring a larger-bodied yogi but yogis that represent the full range of human diversity with the group cover photo idea I’d pitched 18 months earlier.
Their reply was a flat-out ‘no’ with a note about how they’d be happy to cover the movement in the pages of their magazine, something that was never addressed again when I replied with a “sure, how would you like to cover it?” Dianne and I never heard from them again.”
The appropriation of the YBIC and body positivity by Yoga Journal is especially ironic given that in a personal facebook post Jessamyn Stanley acknowledged the influence the YBIC and Dianne Bondy had on her own practice, in essence demonstrating Melanie Klein’s observation that even ‘yogalebrities’ are bolstered by their communities. Stanley even drew attention to the fact Yoga Journal ignored both Diane and the YBIC in their article:
“So I’m in the November issue of Yoga Journal and I feel really weird about it. Don’t get me wrong, my inner yoga nerd is a few steps beyond excited. But sometimes I feel like I receive credit where credit ISN’T necessarily due. For instance, the YJ article is headlined with something to the effect of “Jessamyn is changing what a yogi looks like.” But that theme, ‘#whatayogilookslike’? It’s actually a whole media campaign by the Yoga and Body Image Coalition, not me. If I’m being honest, I don’t think I ever really set out to challenge any stereotypes- I just wanted to document my asana practice and become part of a larger community of yoga practitioners outside of my tiny home yoga bubble. In fact, I never would’ve taken a single asana photo had I not been inspired by pictures of Big Gal Yoga& Dianne Bondy Yoga on Tumblr. It’s not that I’m not thrilled to be recognized by our industry’s standard, but I think there are other people in our yoga community who need to be acknowledged for smashing stereotypes, maybe even more than yours truly. I just think the community of body pos yoga is way more robust than just a fat hermit with an exhibitionist streak who turned her instagram into a yoga confessional.”
This incident reflects the ways Yoga Journal includes diversity only on their own terms in that how the content is included always reflects their constraints on the type of content they are most interested in curating: extreme asana, and no politics since it doesn’t sell and is controversial. They decide the format they want: short inspirational fluff articles often written by their own staff, rather than giving a platform for diverse teachers or educators. Recall how their most recent articles are about Jessamyn Stanley, not written by her (which would have given Jessamyn a platform and helped amplify the voices of underrepresented yogis, a route that would have been a better choice if they truly cared about increasing diversity and diverse representation). Yoga Journal also uses the framing they want, even if this means appropriating body positivity and continuing to tokenize marginalized yogis. On their own terms, indeed.
In appropriating the discourse and messages of the body positivity movement, but without engaging in any larger structural changes in their organizational practices or composition, companies like Yoga Journal present a distinctly watered down version of body positivity that depoliticizes and decontextualizes the media and industry critique inherent in the movement. Yoga Journal focuses only on an individualized form of body acceptance in ways that continue to send mixed representations about the importance of diversity.
No Real Changes?
For example, each of the three articles featuring Jessamyn Stanley advertises Stanley’s upcoming “love-your-body workshop” at YJ LIVE Florida. But her inclusion in Yoga Journal’s conference has not made an ounce of difference in the actual marketing practices Yoga Journal uses to draw in (their predominantly homogeneous) audiences. All of their ads for YJ LIVE Florida feature thin, white, female models (all blonde, stereotypically enough).
While Jessamyn Stanley may be included in the November 2016 issue of Yoga Journal, she’s definitely not included on the cover, which features teacher Liz Arch who largely fits the stereotypical yoga body and practice and has, perhaps no surprise, been featured in SELF and on the covers of numerous magazines previously. Jessamyn is the “teacher spotlight,” yet the table of contents doesn’t even display her image, which is featured all of once in the entire issue on the single page story they wrote about her.
In their TOC, rather than feature Jessamyn the magazine instead opted to include photos of a close up on a (white) woman’s hands and stomach, a picture of a bowl of food (for their “Eat Well” section), and a picture of (ironically, a brown) dog on a yoga mat for the section Jessamyn’s feature is included in. The picture of the dog is in connection with a one-page feature titled “In Focus” about “animals sharing their favorite yoga poses” and is mostly just images of different critters on yoga mats (which apparently is more important to YJ that spotlighting a diverse teacher promoting body positivity). So in their table of contents Yoga Journal prioritized sharing images from a one-page article on animals “doing yoga” over an image of Jessamyn Stanley breaking yoga stereotypes in all her controversial, fat black femme glory. But I guess, dogs over diversity?
Ultimately, Yoga Journal includes images of diversity that are still largely inaccessible, focusing on complex asana rather than more accessible postures or a more diverse understanding of the practice. They still overrepresent the stereotypical body, including more diverse bodies as inspirational, but not regularly featured, content. They often tokenize a small number of diverse teachers, perpetuating a yoga celebrity model rather than actively, radically challenging homogeneity within the practice and industry. Instead of truly listening to the concerns of body positive activists or providing activists and marginalized yogis space to tell their own stories, or to build community, or to educate on important (political?) issues, they portray a highly controlled and distinctly apolitical retelling of body positivity that co-opts the movement for the benefit of the company, on the company’s own terms.
So where do we go from here?
How do we create and contribute to a body positivity movement that promotes radical change, without allowing the movement to be co-opted and appropriated by “big yoga business?” How do we do so in ways that still work with companies to bring about structural-level changes that promote broader diversity and accessibility in the industry and practice?
I’m not sure of the answers, but perhaps the first step is to engage in the practice of allyship. We need to truly listen to the concerns of those diverse voices involved in generating creative solutions to these problems, especially those traditionally marginalized in the practice or industry as well as those social justice, body-positive activists who have been engaging in this type of work for many years. And Yoga Journal and other companies, stop dominating the conversation and co-opting the movement, please.
Want to read the entire post, including the historical background on Yoga Journal’s past scandals and failures to engage with body positivity? Check it out here and also support Yoga Dork, one of the best blogs on yoga out there.
“Over time, it became clear to me that there’s a problem with the question ‘What can I do.’ The problem is the word ‘I.’ By ourselves, there’s not much we can do… The right question is ‘What can we do to make a difference?’ Because if individual action can’t alter the momentum of global warming, movements may still do the trick. Movements are how people organize themselves to gain power—enough power, in this case, to perhaps overcome the financial might of the fossil fuel industry… Movements are what take 5 or 10 percent of people and make them decisive—because in a world where apathy rules, five or ten percent is an enormous number.” ~Bill McKibben (“The Question I Get Asked the Most“)
I recently saw a new post by Carol Horton, the second in a series on Yoga International called “Re-imagining Yoga: Holistic Wellness, Social Connection, and Spiritual Revitalization.” In the most recent post on Spirituality & Social Justice, she describes what she called the experience and rise of what she terms “socially engaged spirituality.” I’ve been sitting with her words for several days now thinking about this “re-imagining” of the practice, and for a number of reasons it just hasn’t been sitting well with me. I want to talk about why.
Horton introduces the experience of “socially engaged spirituality” by sharing a story of her youth when, in the first grade, her class was brought into a gymnasium to hold hands and sing together a freedom anthem of the civil rights movement, “We Shall Overcome.” It’s a lovely tale, and one she argues embodies the hopeful, spiritual possibility she feels may be developing in some yoga circles, particularly in the yoga service field, described as “people who have launched successful organizations dedicated to teaching yoga in prisons, supporting recovery from addiction, and so on.”
I agree that the growing awareness in yoga circles of social justice concerns is promising. It is wonderful to see so many people “seeking to deepen their practice by engaging more deliberately with the world—rather than escaping, renouncing, or transcending it.” As she mentions, “to see this happening on the scale that it is today… is unprecedented.” This is something to be hopeful about, and I am happy this conversation and service work is growing. As McKibben notes, “It’s the right question or almost: It implies an eagerness to act and action is what we need.”
But while I applaud those engaging in yoga service I also feel that service work in yoga is something we need to be critical of, for a number of reasons. As I have written about before, there are often problematic elements to the organizational structures of groups involved in the yoga service field (often through no fault of their own). The nature of the industry is often not set up to support more radical approaches than what Horton I think appropriately calls a “socially engaged spirituality,” as the model of the industry is often based on a form of charity work driven by white middle-class communities, in ways that are rooted in the colonialist history of philanthropy within the construction of the United States, rather than more radical, overtly political models.
I do want to acknowledge there are groups of socially engaged spiritual yogis out there doing political, activist work and engaging in social justice beyond the mat. You do exist, and I commend you. Just to clarify, this post isn’t about these people, who I think are creative and bold individuals (those of you doing this type of work know that you can often be treated with disdain or virulent sanctioning by those in the yoga world who find this work “unyogic” and “judgemental” because of the political bent). More importantly, I think it’s important to recognize that while many yogis want to believe they are socially engaged in radical ways, these people are rare in the yoga world, even in the yoga service world, in part because mainstream yoga often promotes a more individualized, complacent positivity that is constructed as at odds with political engagement.
This post addresses the majority of service work in yoga that is not overtly political, that is not seeking to engage in collaborative movement building and organizing both within but also outside yoga circles, and which often uses a “socially engaged spirituality” to justify their own personal commitment to social justice without engaging in actions that are radical enough to promote more effective and widespread change beyond the individual level. To those folks, please listen, and I hope you take this post as a plea to think deeper about what social justice means and why spiritually informed social engagement demands an active, political, and collaborative approach.
The Dangers of a “Socially Engaged Spirituality”
What exactly does it mean to have a “socially engaged spirituality”? Who does it serve? What type of social engagement does it enable? Why is yoga service becoming more popular, and can we problematize this sociohistorical context?
Horton’s construction of a “socially engaged spirituality” is one that is deeply personal, and as such is very focused on the “I” question: “what can I do?” rather than the question “what can we do?” And this is particularly interesting given that the civil rights movement she cites in her original story of her six year old self holding hands and singing “We Shall Overcome” was driven by a powerful religious tradition and social network; in other words, it was a movement based on the question of what we could do, not what I could do. Churches and church networks were central in the success and spread of the civil rights movement. The movement Horton so romantically recalls in her post ultimately was one that (while diverse and sometimes conflicted) was able to come together in unity and purpose to accomplish great change, and it did so through loosely coordinated efforts on the part of movement organizers/organizations, which included on the ground activism, not just unifying sing-a-longs–though these are of course nice too. When we focus on a personal form of “socially engaged spirituality,” we can miss the potential for unified resistance, for unified transformation that the civil rights movement embodied.
My worry in the type of approach Horton uses in the re-imagining of yoga is that even while expanding a personal spirituality to include social engagement, because the nature of this engagement is not clear it’s incredibly easy to fall into the trap of ego, self-service, and privilege in application. Meaning: when our spirituality is socially engaged only on our own terms, and in ways that are geared toward meeting the needs of the one doing the service rather than the populations that service addresses, and without broader political understandings and engagement in unified social movements or activism, ultimately the transformative potential of service work is significantly lessened and, potentially, even utterly destroyed. Sometimes, service work (if done in ways that aren’t rooted in deep understanding) can actually lead to the supporting of systems of the very oppression such service advertises to fight or solve. As Uma Dinsmore Tuli has said, “Yoga is a toolkit for liberation often used in the service of oppression.”
The danger of reproducing inequality in service work isn’t necessarily a surprise when we consider who is often involved in these types of service organizations. As most people know, yoga practitioners in the USA and Western countries are often a narrow demographic group: predominantly middle- to upper-class, highly educated, and majority white. In other words, many people getting involved in these projects are privileged, and may not have first hand experience or even adequate educational knowledge to understand the types of work they are engaging in. In my own research I have heard of numerous cases where the people running these organizations know very little about the populations they are serving, and don’t have adequate training to safely and effectively serve those most at-risk (here’s one example for you). Yogis are not required to receive even basic diversity training in their certification programs. This can often lead to forms of service that are not coming from a place of knowledge, that are not actually beneficial to the communities served in the long-run, but often just bolsters the legitimacy of those engaging in the service work and teaching the classes, and props up an unsustainable and harmful system in need of drastic reform.
The tendency in the West is to individualize service work. It becomes something an individual does, or an individual organization, perhaps (as I have said before), an excuse to mitigate personal feelings of guilt for those with privilege, as a way of easing our own self-doubt and insecurities, and as a way of healing ourselves rather than a means of truly serving other people. This is largely because yoga, and yoga philosophy, is interpreted by Westerners through our capitalist, individualist, and neoliberal ideologies in ways that appropriate the ethically guided spiritual practice of yoga out of context of the profound understanding that comes through absorption with the object of our focus and meditation. It becomes a project one either succeeds or fails at independently, in relative isolation. But in isolation, we have significantly less power.
The growing trend of yoga service also often only involves the teaching of asana/postural yoga classes to at risk-populations. Don’t get me wrong, there is definitely value gained by these populations through these types of class offerings! But the idea that a postural yoga class or two can somehow solve larger systemic problems is flawed logic. It is essentially a stop-gap measure; it does not cure the underlying illness, despite lessening the impact of the symptoms of disease (somewhat). Instead of listening to what the populations we serve actually need, we listen to ourselves and serve them in ways we believe (or want to believe) are beneficial. We volunteer in prisons, rather than fighting and advocating for a better system that won’t imprison so many people in the first place. We provide asana classes to poor youth (often of color), rather than addressing the underlying issues of poverty, segregation, crime, unequal education, and limited job opportunities they often deal with. Instead of engaging in advocacy, activism, and movement organizing, we engage in attempting to promote personal self-care within a system that is slowly killing us. We become complacent, and complicit, rather than resistant.
In this way yoga service can often take the form of a white savior complex, a trend where whites increasingly use service work (and charitable giving) as a means to justify and validate their own unwarranted privilege, thereby reinforcing it, rather than actually performing service in the interests and according to the needs of the ones they serve to disrupt unequal and intersectional systems of oppression/privilege. Thus, the white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening. As Cole says, “there is much more to doing good work than ‘making a difference.’ There is the principle of first do no harm [ahimsa!]. There is the idea that those who are being helped ought to be consulted over the matters that concern them.”
All agree that in the last five years, there has been an exponential expansion of this sort of work, particularly in the U.S. Interest in integrating yoga practices into major public institutions, as well as in fields such as education, criminal justice, public health, social work, and psychotherapy is vastly higher than it’s ever been before. All evidence suggests that the growth of socially engaged yoga will continue to snowball in coming years. (Carol Horton, “Re-imagining Yoga, Part 2: Spirituality and Social Justice”)
One of the reasons there has been such an exponential expansion of this sort of service work is that the yoga industry has been pumping out new teachers in recent years, and one of the ways these teachers are often encouraged to gain experience is by engaging in “service work,” aka, teaching free classes so they can further their career goals. It seems radical, and progressive, and yogic (seva!), but often in reality free classes are just as much about serving the needs of the teacher as they are about serving the needs of their students, and in many ways are more focused on the needs of the teacher as they don’t always even engage in dialogue with the populations they serve. I have heard countless teachers encourage new students to teach for free, to do charity work and classes as a means of gaining experience (with the implication that the end goal is primarily to, upon gaining more experience, teach to a wealthier clientele who can afford to pay).
The growth in yoga service work has also been enabled by the continuing defunding and gutting of social welfare systems in the USA, combined with a stagnating middle class, unlivable minimum wage, and growing job insecurity that means this type of charity work in some ways becomes a means of supplementing the growing scarcity of government funded programs and support networks that leave so many populations at risk. The problem with this is that charity work is often unable to adequately fill these gaps, and as we know historically and even today of charity work, there are often disparities within aide or required stipulations on who is able to gain access to such aide that can be problematic. (For an excellent exploration of why doing “good work” doesn’t always mean we are “good people”, see this post from Michael Lee via the Huff Post.)
And finally, this is exacerbated by the fact that many teachers are limited by the expectations of their professions to present an overly positive (cult of positivity, anyone?) outlook, which typically means that political discussions are considered “unyogic.” People who engage in critical discussions and political activism in the yoga world are often seen as “focusing too much on the negative.” This limits the type of engagement yoga service workers can sometimes practice, provided they want to be seen as “authentically” yogic and to retain or grow a following within the yoga world more broadly. This is something more yoga teachers need to be willing, and able, to push back against, because ultimately a deep understanding of the world and our locations in it per a yogic practice intent on uncovering bias and living ethically requires a recognition that the personal is inherently political, and that there is no yogically sound way to engage in a “socially engaged spirituality” without also being political.
Re-Imagining Yoga: “Spiritually Engaged Activism”
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
If we truly want to engage in re-imaging the intersections of spirituality and social justice we have to take our spiritual understanding of the practice beyond a potentially self-focused “socially engaged spirituality” and instead begin to form a collective movement for “spiritually engaged activism,” where spirituality guides, informs, and even necessitates the development of a unified, intersectional movement predicated on a spiritual understanding of ethics and morality.
We need to begin thinking about how we can unify spiritually in ways that create social engagement that is inherently radical, political, and intersectional. We need to think about how we can strategize beyond just the individual level, beyond individualism, to develop a sense of collectivity and unity even as we acknowledge difference. We need to stop modeling ourselves on the current models of white charity predicated in histories of the “white man’s burden” and colonial missionizing narratives. Instead I think we should consider how we can decolonize service work, gaining inspiration from the radical potential of groups like, for example, the black panther movement, which fed millions of children through their free breakfast program while raising awareness on the racial inequalities of food scarcity in the USA.
We need to think about how we can model ourselves on movements like the ongoing indigenous resistance to climate change, environmental racism, and corporate power that seeks to ground their resistance in spiritual traditions and experiences shared by hundreds of indigenous tribal peoples across the Americas.
These types of movements are rooted in a deep spirituality and social engagement with the world as it is (not as we would like or romanticize it to be). These movements don’t just close us off from connection, or prescribe an individual level of healing that never quite heals us completely; they open us up to building communities of activists, allies, and protectors that can provide mutual support and connection. They allow us to heal at the communal level, to heal in ways that get to the root of our insecurities and trauma both as oppressors and as oppressed peoples, because ultimately in systems of oppression, everyone suffers. The spiritually engaged activism these groups engage in is just that: action, organizing, and resistance that goes beyond treating symptoms of a larger disease and instead seek to overcome and cure the actual illness.
Perhaps, rather than solely focusing on the individual healing we can gain from a “socially engaged spirituality,” we can ask: How do we use a yogically informed spirituality to engage in intersectional movement building and support systems? How can we cultivate an intersectional, “spiritually engaged activism” rooted in yogic philosophy and practice? And how can we achieve this together? Is the model for yoga service currently gaining popularity simply not enough, and how can we radicalize it and decolonize it to be more effective in promoting industry and government changes that ensure greater equity and social justice for everyone?
See the full public post from Ekabhumi Charles Ellik 
Be Scofield, who is ironically the founder of 
The Sociological Yogi 