“What are the ethical implications of yoga being used by these racially oppressive, colonial forces and being used to help people who are agents of that oppression feel better and decompress and destress?”
I am honored to introduce you to this week’s guest, Sheena Sood, PhD, an Assistant Professor of Sociology, activist, yoga practitioner, and healing justice visionary. Sheena is on the editorial board of Race & Yoga Journal; is a co-founder of Yogis for Palestine – and the founder of Yoga Warrior Tales. Her research is focused on what she calls Omwashing; the weaponization of yoga by far-right imperialist forces and military and policing institutions.
Sheena Sood, PhD (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Delaware Valley University; and a Philly-based activist, yoga practitioner, and healing justice visionary. Sheena earned her basic and advanced yoga certifications at Kailash Tribal School in McLeodganj, India Her research “Omwashing Yoga: Weaponized Spirituality in India, Israel, and the US,” examines how the far-right uses yoga to advance ethnonational, colonial, and supremacist agendas. Her work has appeared in Jadaliyya, Race & Yoga Journal, Al Jazeera, and Colorlines.
As her research and writings explore the Brahmanical caste supremacist, ethnonational and colonial layers of yoga and its weaponization by far-right ethnostates, Sheena’s offerings harness yoga’s potential for collective liberation. While curating offerings, such as her Decolonizing Yoga workshops, Sheena works to help participants recognize yoga’s oppressive and its liberatory potential; and uses yoga as a medium for politicized healing. Sheena serves on the editorial board of Race & Yoga Journal; is a co-founder of Yogis for Palestine – a collective of yoga teachers and students, who strive to embody our practice by politicizing yoga toward action for Palestinian freedom and liberation; and is also the founder of Yoga Warrior Tales, an educational program that uses interactive, adventure-based narratives to teach kids yoga and mindfulness through a social justice lens.
Sheena gives incredible insight and uncomfortable facts to direct our attention, contemplation and action towards the “deeply unfree world” that we all participate in.
We dig into the important topic and difficult reality of the oppressive systems in power along with the responsibility yoga practitioners have to examine and question them if we sincerely wish to shift the collective towards liberation and embodied freedom for all.
Some of the many thoughtful points we touch on;
Chapter 1: 5:27 Pointing back to where yoga and politics began for Sheena; her Grandmother and the Art of Living Foundation – Enlightened or complicit?
“Yoga is about our inner connected humanity”
Chapter 2: 14:36 “It’s exhausting to think of all the suffering and brutality in the world. How can this be a container for us to resource ourselves?”
“The weaponization of yoga is how people might use yoga as a tool for oppression or harmful agenda”
Chapter 3: 23:47 Important consideration for when yoga is being used for spiritual bybass or escapism; particularly by someone who’s done harm and participated in oppression.
“More important when we think about decolonizing yoga, is connecting yoga to an ethics of anti-imperialism where people are interrogating how yoga is being used as a military weapon by soldiers and governments”
Chapter 4: 38:09 Sheena explains how “Yoga is there to face the suffering of the world”, not to play victim or bypass and the work we all have to do. Plus The reach for hope, Mariame Kaba’s quote “Hope is a Discipline” and Yogis for Palestine
Chapter 5: 2:47 Transformation and evolutionary change is possible but “Yoga philosophy is tainted.”
References:
- I referenced some of Sheenas published work and highly recommend reading more from her HERE
- Aljazeera Article; ‘Om-washing’: Why Modi’s yoga day pose is deceptive
- Undrowned Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Connect with Sheena:
- Sheena’s Instagram HERE
- Yoga Warrior Tales Instagram (for your kids!) HERE
- Yogis for Palestine Instagram HERE
- Sign up for Sheenas newsletter HERE
- Yoga Warrior Tales Program HERE
Watch our unedited conversation on YouTube ⬇️
Thanks for listening!
In Oneness,
Bobbi
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