1. Yoke | Jessamyn Stanley
My Yoga of Self-Acceptance
You can buy my favourite book of 2021 here.
Friends,
Let me start by saying that I ABSOLUTELY LOVE YOGA. I live, breathe, eat, sleep and die for yoga but every time I go to a yoga class in Europe, it reminds me of this tweet:
A lot of skinny, white women cloaked in alo yoga or lululemon and ohm’ing like crazy (I guess as a way of washing away years of colonial guilt 🤷🏼♀️) I digress. In almost 14 years at my current yoga studio in London I have never been taught by a yoga teacher from India (um, where yoga was born?!) So this book, written by a Black, queer teacher, calling out all the white supremacist nonsense associated with Western yoga, is an absolute delight.
Some key paragraphs I’ve highlighted as I read:
“White people absolutely hate being reminded of race. When Black people address race, even though we talk about it all the time with each other, it always seems to piss white people off. White supremacy lives in all of us and it’s a controlling force of Western yoga, allowing destination yoga retreats and yoga mat cleansers to dominate mainstream yoga conversations while casting aside racism as an inappropriate and problematic topic.
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Capitalism makes you cling to the belief that you’re fundamentally unworthy and the right product is out there, somewhere, to bring about evolution. It makes you hungry for something other than what’s happening inside yourself.
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A yogi should always keep this in mind. Teaching yoga is not like teaching history or geometry. Teachers must impart a life force - a little current - into others. How can they do this if they are weak, if they have rundown, discharged batteries? So keep your batteries full of energy” (Satchidananda, 130)
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Follow Jessamyn on instagram here; her yoga channel here; this wonderful article about her in bricks magazine is well worth a read.
I’ve just ordered her first book which I’ll no doubt love & share right here in a few months.