Yoga for Feminists: What IS it?
Yoga for Feminists Summer 2022 is open for registration! This limited summer yoga series explores the intersections of feminism, activism, and spiritual practice with supportive community. To register, visit https://app.namastream.com/motherbloom/product/48729/about.
What is Yoga for Feminists?
It’s a hand-woven tapestry of fierce feminist action and a mind-body-spirit connection based on the sacred feminine.
But let’s rewind.
Feminism First
graphic of two women with different shades of skin doing yoga together
Traditionally, feminism is understood as a movement for gender equality; it is a position that holds that women are equal to men and should be treated accordingly.
There are many different types of feminist theory: Liberal Feminism, Postmodern Feminism, and Radical Feminism, to name a few. They all have their leaders and their priorities, but share some fundamental core concepts, including:
Gender expectations are different for all gender expressions.
Our (patriarchal) society values men higher than women through sexism.
Feminism seeks to end sexist oppression.
In her classic text, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, scholar and activist bell hooks expands the definition of feminism and declares that feminism is a position in which:
“one that does not simply fight for the equality of women and men (of the same class) but of a movement that fights to end sexist oppression and exploitation without neglecting other forms of oppression such as racism, classism, imperialism and others. Each of these forms of oppression are interrelated and inseparably connected to each other through interlocking webs of oppression.” (emphasis mine)
When I refer to feminism or feminist theories, I am holding hooks’s definition in mind: We are moving beyond simply fighting for gender equality so that we can fight ALL forms of oppression. There is not one kind of oppression that is worse, more harmful, more omnipresent, etc. They are inextricably linked and must all be overcome if we are to see justice and equality.
Feminist Yoga: A contradiction?
graphic of plus sized woman doing yoga body positivity
At first glance, it doesn’t seem like the two have much to do with each other. Yoga, especially Western yoga, seems primarily focused on consumerism and body shaming. Some yoga magazines promote expensive clothing, yoga props, and accessories while simultaneously idealizing a beauty standard that says only thin, white, flexible, clear-skinned, white-teethed people are suited for yoga. Kelly Diels, a feminist marketing consultant, names this tactic the Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand, which first defines what a woman must be in order to be socially acceptable, and second uses this archetype in marketing to construct a place in the hierarchy above other women.
But yoga is first and foremost a spiritual practice. (Although yoga as it is practiced in the West has strayed from its historically spiritual roots.) Yoga practitioners are often engaged in deep spiritual work.
As with many other spiritual or religious practices, yoga practitioners sometimes use their spiritual practice as an excuse to remove themselves from painful and oppressive social issues, dismissing them as too worldly for their notice. This is classic spiritual bypassing - more on that topic later!
In 2017, anti-racist author and educator Layla F. Saad wrote an impassioned letter to spiritual white women that calls out the problem with doing this deep spiritual work with themselves and clients, but ignoring the larger social issues:
“I’ve seen it perpetuated by white women who believe that the best thing they can do is just focus on being a good and loving person, and serving their (largely white) audience and sending love and light instead of actually speaking up.” (http://laylafsaad.com/poetry-prose/white-women-white-supremacy-1)
This creates a tension between between our ideas of what yoga is and what feminist activism must be. AnaLouise Keating names the seeming contradiction: “Although the word ‘spiritual’ implies an other-worldly, inward-looking perspective that invites escape from and at times even denial of social injustices, the word ‘activism’ implies outward-directed interaction with the material world - the very world that spirituality seems to deny or downplay.” (53-54). It hardly seems like these two worldviews would have anything in common.
Yoga and Feminism
In yoga, there is a term ahimsa, which translates to non-violence. Ahimsa is so important that it serves as the very core of yoga philosophy, and informs all of a yogi's actions. This value of non-violence is intimately connected with the idea of causing no harm, especially to fellow human beings, including women.
Through ahimsa and other tenets of yoga, we can see how a deep, thoughtful practice of yoga can inform and support someone’s intention to end all forms of oppression, otherwise known as feminism. We can call this practice spiritual activism. When we are engaging in yoga from a feminist lens, or applying spiritual principles for our fight for justice, we are practicing spiritual activism.
graphic of woman doing yoga headstand prep
Spiritual Activism
For most of my life, I identified as neither spiritual nor an activist.
The idea of spirituality was tied up in my relationship to religion, which carried some pretty negative connotations from my childhood growing up in Salt Lake City, UT as the only non-Mormon on the street.
And activism to me meant marching in the streets, carrying signs while screaming defiantly at police, and I was always too scared to participate in anything like that. Neither of my parents was religious or even particularly spiritual, and they certainly weren’t activists. My mom was a nurse and my dad worked for the state of Utah, and they were just too busy trying to make ends meet and raise two kids.
My understanding of spiritual activism is fluid, so by naming it today, I make no claims that this is now my rigid, inflexible, unchanging view of the world. (It’s quite possible I’ll have an entirely different understanding of spiritual activism next month.)
But for now I will start with the definition as laid out by AnaLouise Keating, who is a professor of Multicultural and Women’s Studies, and offer my reflections. In her essay, “‘I'm a Citizen of the Universe’: Gloria Anzaldua’s Spiritual Activism As Catalyst for Social Change,” Keating writes, “spiritual activism is spirituality for social change, spirituality that posits a relational worldview and uses this holistic worldview to transform one’s self and one’s worlds.” (AnaLouise Keating, 54) By understanding the three different elements of her spiritual activism, we can better understand how to embody them.
Spirituality for social change
Spirituality for social change starts with an understanding and acceptance that there is even a need for social change. Anyone who has been paying attention for the last few years would attest to the fact that we are in desperate need of social change. So the question remains: How can we use spirituality to address the need for change?
We can open our eyes and hearts to recognize that there is a larger connection between the material human experience and an otherworldly, spiritual, Self-with-a-capital-S existence, and use our spiritual practice to address the material human existence.
We can adopt a relational worldview, naming our relationship to a subject while keeping our own ideologies in mind. This is where we uncover unconscious bias.
We can use a holistic worldview to transform ourselves and our world.
The very act of wrestling with the contradictions of spirituality, activism, and feminism is the first step to engaging in this work.
Yoga for Feminists is a limited summer yoga series that explores the intersections of feminism, activism, and spiritual practice. To register, visit https://app.namastream.com/motherbloom/product/48729/about.