06/19/2020
I graduated from my first Yoga Teacher Training 5 years ago this month and that, along with this revolution and being in a new town where I know very few people (during a pandemic) has put me in a deep space of reflection lately. So today, I want to share a few thoughts on the white centeredness of the wellness community.
I’ve said more times than I can count over the last 5 years that I can’t remember the last time I was consistently around this many white people (as I found in my yoga communities. And I don’t mean I didn’t interact with white people before or that I don’t like connecting with people who are white. I mean I rarely found myself in ALL white communities as an adult until I started practicing/teaching yoga). I love my friends, I love my teachers, I love my students but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t often uncomfortable with and disappointed in the lack of diversity and BIPOC representation in the yoga/wellness world.
In realizing this I understand that the need to voice these things is stronger than ever. I can’t be an ally if I can’t be honest and right now this honesty is uncomfortable. The yogic path requires that we uphold a high moral and responsibility in the world by practicing principles of Ahimsa (non-violence), Satya (truthfulness), Asteya (non-stealing) etc. As yoga practitioners we walk a path to enlightenment and liberation but no one ever said that in order to find deep peace, we had to ignore the harsh realities of social and systemic justice in our world.
My role as a white woman in the yoga/wellness industry means that I uphold a deep responsibility right now as a forever student, as a dedicated teacher and an committed ally to the black community. It means that I have to ensure that my actions are not a temporary sprinkle of the moment to share on social media but a long term rooted commitment to ensure that BIPOC have a safe space to breathe, move and feel empowered in any space I hold, join or support in any way. If you are also a white woman in the yoga/wellness world, I implore you to do the work to ensure that you are creating a better, more inclusive future.
This means asking tough questions and being willing to take action when the answers are less than flattering. White women, we have a responsibility to do more.
When you look around your yoga/wellness community what does it look like? Is it sprinkled with all ethnicities and backgrounds or is it all white? If you answered all or mostly white, it often means you/your community, whether consciously or subconsciously, are hosting an environment that doesn’t feel inviting or safe for BIPOC to enter. Be honest, as a woman if you only saw a studio that only had males participating - would you feel like that studio held a space for you? I wouldn’t. The same applies with race.
We can’t just start saying that we want our spaces to be inclusive and that we support diversity and expect BI POC to magically feel welcomed into our space, much less WANT to show up there. It takes being accountable to the reality that the wellness industry has been built off of cultural appropriation and racist structures while profiting off of and centering whiteness. We have a responsibility to dismantle these structures and amplify BIPOC voices in the process.
As white yoga teachers/students, without honoring the roots of yoga and doing the work to ensure we are holding a truly safe, empowering space for BI POC in our yoga communities, we are just appropriating culture and taking advantage of a system that is already set up to our advantage. I'm not saying you are implicitly racist but if you are white in the wellness industry, you are benefiting from racism. Learning this is uncomfortable but it doesn't make you a bad person. Knowing this and ignoring it means that you are not upholding the ethical, moral and spiritual principles that you preach are so valuable.
If you are like me and don’t like that you have contributed to this system, I invite you to join me in doing the work. Not only in learning the depths of how our systems are rooted in white supremacy (in particular in the wellness world), but also in actively working on breaking this cycle so that our wellness world is more than claiming inclusivity and diversity - so that it is a space of true empowerment, liberation and wellness (not only for white people of means). And it can’t be wellness for all until Black Lives Matter. Yoga means union and one of the goals of this practice is liberation. Our work begins on the mat and it flows into the real world, this includes not batting a blind eye to social justice in order to "keep the peace" and it all starts with(in) me and with(in you).
