The fight against systemic racism in Britain has found a new battleground: yoga rooms and a lack of diversity and inclusion in the ranks of patrons and teachers. This was announced with conviction on Guardianin an article titled “Skinny, bendy and blonde”: women of color challenge racism in UK yoga, ie «’Skinny, lithe and blonde’: women of color challenge racism in yoga in the UK». While the subtitle explains: “Despite its roots in India, the sector lacks diversity and women denounce the wall of silence on the lack of inclusiveness of yoga rooms”.
Black women unwelcome in yoga classes
The article begins with the shocking story of Sue Forde, an Englishwoman of African descent who returns to practicing yoga after closures due to Covid. “When Sue Forde returned to yoga in a gym this year, for the first time since the start of the pandemic, it was with a sense of trepidation. Because it meant that she, once again, would be the only black woman in the room. “My body has been referred to as ‘an African body,'” said Forde, who resides in Hackney, east London. “Recently, in one class, this discussion came up that black women have a greater tendency to tilt the pelvis. I thought, ‘Oh, please don’t say these things in a yoga room.’ “”
The counter-offensive, informs the newspaper close to the Labor Party, however, has already started: «Forde is part of a growing number of black or ethnic minority yoga teachers and practitioners who are challenging racism in British yoga organizations. (…) Last fall, Forde was one of several members of the famous Iyengar Yoga center in Maida Vale (Iymv) who raised concerns about racism in the facility. In a meeting last September to discuss equality and diversity at the institute, there was talk of “women of color who had visited the Iymv once or twice and did not return because they felt unwelcome and uncomfortable”. Forde, who hasn’t returned to the center since then, also said the group “wasn’t reflecting the diversity you see on the street”.
The blaming of non-white bodies
There are at least three fronts on which racism in yoga must be fought: that of the creeping blame of non-white bodies, that of the cultural appropriation of yoga by whites, and that of the under-representation of racial and ethnic minorities in the UK. On the first front, shocking complaints are piling up: “Many have claimed to have experienced inappropriate touching (in reality the question of how and when a yoga teacher can touch a student’s body is universal and has nothing to do with race and color – ed) and comments on their bodies and hair in class, as well as crude racial stereotypes, such as that Indians are “naturally flexible”, and to have found ignorance of the sacred texts of yoga, including the Bhagavad Gita “.
“Colonialism and racism in yoga”
Stacie Graham, a yoga teacher who founded OYA Retreats, a company that organizes group yoga classes and wellness retreats exclusively for women of color, has long denounced colonialism and racism in yoga. The Guardian explains: “In Yoga As Resistance, which Graham wrote as a guide to making yoga more inclusive, the instructor noted that representations of the practice on social media are dominated by images of white women who are” very thin, lithe. and blondes “.
Graham, who has conducted anti-racism seminars at yoga centers including Triyoga, said that whenever he asked gym directors why patrons did not reflect the ethnic diversity of ‘local area, their responses were often based on inaccurate racial stereotypes “about what those people like to do”. Together with three other black yoga teachers, Graham started Radical Darshan, an anti-racist teacher training course in London. It illustrates the damaging impact of British colonialism on India and how this led to modern Western-style yoga, which focuses on exercise rather than spirituality. ‘
A loop from which it is difficult to get out
There is no doubt that in the West yoga has become an industry that has nothing to do with spirituality, for the material and non-spiritual profit of those who teach it and those who set up centers and gyms: yoga and pilates together in the UK is a £ 900 million a year (€ 1 billion 48 million) business. And it is equally true that the visitors, according to the latest studies, are represented almost entirely by Caucasian women: according to a report by the British Medical Journal published at the beginning of 2020, 91 percent of users are white, 87 percent are made up of women and 71 per cent are university graduates.
Faced with these statistics, the managers fight their chest contrite. Dorothy Hosein, managing director of the British Wheel of Yoga (the oldest coordinating body of yoga groups in the UK – ed) said that the training body has recently set up a working group on equality, diversity and inclusion to discuss how to change the culture of the organization.
Hosein admitted that the new board of the organization, which is elected every year, was made up entirely of whites: “We have no diversity in our demographics and there is a lot of work to do.” Alan Reynolds, manager of Iyengar Yoga London, acknowledges that people of color are underrepresented in classes. He adds, however, that the institute has several teachers of color and has recently formed a diversity advisory group to try to understand how it could become more inclusive. Finding the solution will be quite complicated: white women are over-represented in yoga classes because black women don’t attend them; black women don’t hang out with them because there are too many white women. It does not come out …