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My first experience with yoga took place at my grandmother’s house after I was five years old. Sitting across from her on the dining table, half-awake because the Kolkata sun began to warm the day, I watched as Dimma pressed one nostril closed along with her delicate, wrinkled hand while sending puffs of air out the opposite nostril. Then she switched from her right nostril to her left and back again.
When she excused herself to do her morning puja, the sound of her prayers floated down the steps and enveloped me in serenity. Within the evening, we stood on her rooftop as she walked backward along the length of the terrace and explained how the exercise increases balance. Before eating her dinner, she fed some rotis to the crows that landed on the railings of her house.
Although my Dimma has likely never done a Downward Dog, she practices yoga on a regular basis. Her morning respiration is her pranayama, her puja is her mantra, backward walking is her asana, and feeding crows is her karma. Growing up, this was what I understood yoga to be—a holistic practice passed down through my ancestors in India to assist us create an excellent life.
Over time, I read ancient Indian texts. I developed a meditation practice. I took my first vinyasa class while in highschool in Recent Jersey. I hung out with my breath, body, and mind as a every day practice. And I started to dream of doing my yoga teacher training (YTT) in India.
Visions of YTT within the mountains of Dharamsala or the jungles of Kerala consumed my waking hours. I desired to root myself in traditional wisdom after which spread it far and wide. I grew an increasing number of determined to make this dream a reality, and because the months passed, I spent my weekends researching trainings, comparing flight prices, and dealing extra hours to get monetary savings for tuition.
After which, with one email, all the things modified.
“Congratulations!” it read. “You’ve been chosen as a recipient for CorePower Teacher Training!”
For a moment, I used to be confused. Then it got here back to me. Months earlier, I had seen an commercial outside a CorePower Yoga studio in Manhattan promoting a BIPOC scholarship, which provides full or partial funding to aspiring yoga teachers of color to finish their YTT. I had filled out the appliance and submitted it with none expectation that I’d hear back.
And now here I used to be with a suggestion to do my yoga teacher training totally free—right on my doorstep.
What CorePower’s BIPOC Scholarship Meant to Me
I enrolled immediately. Although I used to be overcome with gratitude, I also felt a twinge of shame and a way of betrayal. I knew the YTT experience I’d have at CorePower can be very different from the one I had all the time imagined for myself. As an alternative of delving into the yogic wisdom I had been so lucky to inherit, I felt like I used to be going to learn the right way to teach a workout class disguised as yoga.
I had never taken a category at CorePower due to $38 price tag for one drop-in class, but I had imagined it to be a room of rich white women wearing Lululemon attempting to prepare for swimsuit season. It was a far cry from my grandmother’s pujas and mantras. Before even starting my YTT, I felt misplaced.
I reminded myself that was the very reason I used to be there. I wanted to vary the landscape of yoga within the west to be more diverse, inclusive, and authentic. So I placed on my game face and counted down the times until the first-class of YTT.
My Initial Impressions
On a Tuesday evening in March, I cycled all the way down to the Tribeca studio where my teacher training can be held for the subsequent nine weeks. Excitement, nerves, and skepticism mingled in my body as I walked up the steps to satisfy my instructors and classmates. As I had assumed, my fellow trainees were mostly women, mostly white, and mostly in expensive athleisure wear. But despite the fact that they looked as if it would fit my stereotypes of outward appearances, the energy within the room was welcoming and sort.
After introducing ourselves, we gathered in a circle for a grounding meditation led by an instructor. As she spoke, I felt my nerves melt away and the strain in my jaws and eyebrows release. Until she said, “These are the words from the Hindu language…”
My state of tranquility shattered and I felt as if someone had elbowed me within the gut. There is no such thing as a such thing as a “Hindu language.” How could someone chargeable for training yoga teachers say that? Hinduism is a faith. Many Hindus speak Hindi.
As I sat in Lotus Pose, my eyes closed in an outward state of calm but my thoughts engaged in an inward frenzy of irritation, I reminded myself that everybody makes mistakes and it was probably only a slip. I willed myself to remain positive, forgive, and move on.
Then we each shared our sankalpas, or intentions and reasons, for being at a teacher training. In my notebook, I wrote down that I desired to make yoga accessible and inclusive, partly by becoming for others the South Asian yoga teacher that I had never seen in yoga studios while growing up. I left with a renewed sense of purpose.
The following few weeks flew by. My body and mind grew stronger from attending vinyasa classes daily. At our training sessions, I used to be continuously impressed by the depth of my instructors’ knowledge about asana, anatomy, philosophy, and Sanskrit. We discussed making each pose as accessible as possible, using inclusive language, and prioritizing consent before conducting hands-on assists. My very own practice gained rather more depth, and I started doing what was best for my body relatively than what looked probably the most difficult.
Yoga became much more pleasurable and grounding for me than it had ever been.
What Was Left Unsaid
Our instructors never shied away from conversations about diversity and equity within the yoga space. They discussed strategies we could use to acknowledge to our students that CorePower classes are very different from traditional Indian yoga. One instructor suggested clarifying at first of each class that it is a posture practice. One other instructor mentioned not chanting “om” or displaying statues of deities if, as a teacher, you don’t fully understand their significance.
We also had insightful discussions on cultural appropriation, the usage of “namaste,” and the hypocrisy of fads like goat yoga and drunk yoga. I practiced rewiring my brain to say “your whole fingers” as a substitute of “all 10 of your fingers” and “reach toward your toes” as a substitute of “touch your toes” to create a welcoming space for each single person. Due to the emphasis on equity within the yoga space, I felt rather more prepared to guide my future students through a practice.
Still, there was much left unsaid. We learned some Sanskrit, but not quite a bit. The Bhagavad Gita and the Sutras were mentioned, but we never read them. We learned that Savasana is crucial to a yoga class, although we never discussed meditation in-depth. We talked concerning the idea of reparations to India, although we never spoke of colonization. And we acknowledged the necessity for South Asian teachers and educators within the yoga space, yet I didn’t have a single South Asian teacher through the 50 in-person classes I attended to finish my YTT.
I don’t blame my instructors. Fairly, I attribute the problems to the minimized version of yoga that’s the establishment outside of India and the company models that espouse this version. This version of yoga focuses totally on asana and pranayama, but there are six more limbs within the eight limbs of yoga—yama (restraints), niyama (duties), pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses), dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation), and samadhi (enlightenment). This practice of turning inward was at the foundation of Dimma’s yoga, but I used to be hard-pressed to search out this emphasis on a better meaning in yoga spaces within the US.
Why Continued BIPOC Scholarships Are Needed
CorePower established its BIPOC scholarships in June of 2020. So far, it has awarded some 2,000 scholarships to applicants who might otherwise discover a $3,000 YTT to be out of the query.
“Yoga on this country will not be diverse,” says Tamarah Saif, the senior vice chairman of human resources at CorePower. “Being the most important yoga company within the US, we have now a responsibility to vary that.”
CorePower has set a goal of accelerating representation of BIPOC yoga instructors to 45% by 2026. Having more yoga teachers of color, in keeping with Saif, creates a ripple effect. “More employees [of color] might come, but [also] more students may feel like ‘Okay, I can come to this class, because someone is more like me on this space,’” Saif explains.
What Could Be Done In a different way in YTTs
As I worked through my teacher training, I stumbled across two South Asian yoga teachers online whose work became a guiding light throughout my journey. Although I had never met them in person, their books and blog posts brought me comfort through our shared culture and mutual understanding.
Recently, I asked them to contemplate how YTTs outside of India could include more traditional Indian knowledge.
Yoga advocate and teacher Susanna Barkataki grew up in England and the USA. She remembers being attacked due to her appearance and her traditional Indian clothing. But she would see white yoga teachers wearing bindis and kurtas and being praised as avant-garde.
The identical exact thing, Barkataki realized, happened with yoga. The pujas, mantras, and other rituals that she inherited have been commercialized and sold for a hefty price. Meanwhile, her elders within the UK and US would say, “Beta (child), I can’t go to a yoga class. I don’t belong there.”
In response, Barkataki wrote a blog post titled “How To Decolonize Your Yoga Practice.” In it, she encourages studios and teachers to amplify South Asian voices in yoga spaces nonetheless possible, including examining traditional texts by South Asian commentators in teacher training or svadhyaya, or self study. Also, by hiring more South Asian yoga teacher training instructors through platforms like abcd yogi.
Barkataki estimates that fewer than one percent of yoga teachers within the US are South Asian. This will not be only ironic. It’s an amazing loss for the yoga community that South Asian teachers aren’t given the platform to share the immense cultural knowledge they may need inherited.
When London-based South Asian yoga teacher Kallie Schut recognized the gaps within the YTT that she took in the UK, she created her own to fill those spaces. Thus, Radical Darshan was born. The 300-hour training walks students through the history of colonization in India, the impact of British rule on yoga, and the present mission of decolonizing contemporary yoga and our own minds by recognizing and eliminating racialized biases in our considering.
The course also addresses grief and healing, trauma-informed practices, ritual and ceremonial practices, and meditation as a path to liberation. These ideas are sometimes relegated to short lectures or excluded altogether in lots of teacher trainings within the West, including the CorePower YTT I took.
Schut reminds us that approaching justice in yoga with care includes considering critically about hierarchies of caste, color, and religion. For instance, sending money to India as a reparation might be well-intentioned but is especially symbolic and potentially harmful. Donating money to groups with Hindu nationalist or Islamophobic ideologies goes against the principles of yoga, however it could be the most blatant option for somebody who will not be informed.
South Asian teachers can, Schut says, bring a level of cultural awareness and understanding that has been passed down through generations to their teaching. However it’s not all the time that straightforward. She jogs my memory that we must also decolonize our minds, each out and in of the studio. None of us are exempt from continuing to learn concerning the ways colonialism and racism are present simply because of our identity. Nor should we stop working to eliminate those biases in every class that we teach.
Where I Go From Here
Recently, my chosen intention during yoga class has been gratitude. Gratitude for CorePower’s BIPOC scholarship that made my YTT possible. Gratitude for the various individuals who surely fought to instate this system. And gratitude for the undeniable fact that the landscape of yoga within the US is shifting.
As I complete my final YTT requirements and prepare to audition and teach yoga at CorePower and beyond, Schut’s and Barkataki’s words and work fill within the gaps of my training. Their support and advice keep me grounded, not only in my breath and my body but within the legacy of yoga that’s in my blood.
At any time when I feel lost, I return to the sound of my grandmother’s mantras and the considered her giving food to the crows, and I remember the principle of ishvara pranidhana, the knowing that we’re a part of something much greater than ourselves.
About Our Contributor
Trisha Mukherjee is a print and audio journalist based in Recent York City. Her work focuses on global human rights, travel, and adventure. Find more at www.trishawrites.com.