Critical Yoga Studies: Using Yoga as a Jump Off Point to Talk Black & Brown Relations

The Critical Yoga Studies podcast uses yoga as a lens to provide space for Black and brown women and folks in yoga to lift up our growing edges, talk race with heart and compassion, and explore ways of being in greater solidarity with one another - and have fun. Fun is healing, and healing is key. The CYS podcast centers dialogue between Black and “Indian” yoga practitioners grappling with race relations and decolonizing wellness. Host Dr. Roopa Bala Singh is incoming faculty in Legal Studies and Civic Engagement at California State University, Monterey Bay. Roopa has been organizing around yoga, race, and culture since 2013 when she launched the first public panel discussions featuring South Asian diasporic voices and teachers in yoga speaking out about racial, cultural, and commodification related tensions in U.S. industrialized yoga. Ultimately, the Critical Yoga Studies (CYS) podcast conversation centers dialogue on sustainability, wellness, and yoga between “Indian,” brown, and African diasporas. Each episode will include an interview or conversation with a Black, African diasporic, or South Asian diasporic wellness and justice practitioner, artist, or scholar. The Critical Yoga Studies podcast is multidisciplinary, in that it (1) shows that Black and brown folks can talk politics, and heartache and HAVE FUN; (2) it encourages embodied movement and breath through guided meditations and asana movement practice; (3) it offers investigative research and cutting edge, satirical and engaging reporting on the industrialization of yoga at intersections of racialized, gendered, neoliberal and colonial tensions.

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