ABSTRACT

Bringing together a diverse chorus of voices and experiences in the pursuit of collective bodily, emotional, and spiritual liberation, Practicing Yoga as Resistance examines yoga as it is experienced across the Western cultural landscape through an intersectional, feminist lens.

Naming the systems of oppression that permeate our lived experiences, this collection and its contributors shine a light on the ways yoga practice is intertwined with these systems while offering insight into how people challenge and creatively subvert, mitigate, and reframe them through their efforts.

From the disciplines of yoga studies, embodiment studies, women’s and gender studies, performance studies, educational studies, social sciences, and social justice, the self-identified women, queer, BIPOC, and White allies represented in this book present an interdisciplinary tapestry of scholarship that serves to add depth to a growing assemblage of yoga literature for the 21st century.

part I|24 pages

Invitations

chapter Chapter 1|14 pages

Essential questions for inner and outer liberation

ByCara Hagan

chapter Chapter 2|8 pages

Towards a White spiritual antiracism

ByJardana Peacock

part II|176 pages

Yoga, Self, and Community

chapter Chapter 3|11 pages

Embodied radical healing through the collective

A Black Lotus autoethnography
ByDominique A. Malebranche

chapter Chapter 4|11 pages

Reclaiming spaces, reshaping practices

Yoga for building community and nurturing families of color
ByAmy Argenal, Monisha Bajaj

chapter Chapter 5|17 pages

The city of radical love

A Philly story of oppression, resistance, and healing
BySheena Sood, Mari Morales-Williams

chapter Chapter 6|16 pages

Body science of survivorship

Mapping the neurological impacts of interlocking systems of oppression and co-designing equitable solutions through movement and breath
ByMorgan Vanderpool

chapter Chapter 7|27 pages

Pedagogy of movement

Yoga in migrant projects from a race and class perspective
ByFirdose Moonda

chapter Chapter 8|9 pages

White hygiene, White womanhood, and wellness in the United States

ByRumya S. Putcha

chapter Chapter 9|15 pages

Incomplete

Impeding the settler colonial project through Yoga for Black Lives
ByStephanie D. Hicks

chapter Chapter 10|24 pages

Hozho Yoga

Indigenous movements illuminating human and more-than-human interconnections
ByTria Blu Wakpa

chapter Chapter 11|18 pages

Yoga asana and the performance of gender in American exercise

ByCara Hagan

chapter Chapter 12|26 pages

Embodying liminality through yoga

An autoethnography exploring the spaces between
BySanaz Yaghmai

part III|104 pages

Yoga in Educational Spaces

chapter Chapter 13|16 pages

Yoga, engaged pedagogy, and the process of becoming

Explorations of a socially just yoga intervention
ByKimberly Nao

chapter Chapter 14|19 pages

White teachers, Brown yoga

Teacher candidates learning yoga
ByErin Adams, Sohyun An, Jillian Ford, Sanjuana Rodriguez

chapter Chapter 15|17 pages

Trials and transformations

Ruminations of a community college yoga teacher
ByShyamala Moorty

chapter Chapter 16|18 pages

Situating girls of color in K–12 yoga research

Reflections and results from studying an after school yoga program for at-risk youth
ByMichele Tracy Berger

chapter Chapter 17|18 pages

Yoga and arts

Positive disruptors in the school to prison pipeline
BySuzana Plaisant McCalley

chapter Chapter 18|14 pages

Tending communities

Yoga as an integrative, collaborative, and transformative practice
ByNarin Hassan