Race and Yoga

Yoga in the West, specifically in the United States, is often a deeply exclusionary space. While the practice of āsana, or posture with steady breathing, can be performed anywhere, the ability to engage in a full medicinal yoga practice may be unattainable for some practitioners, Black women in particular, due to how white normativity is bolstered in the US yoga industry. Contributing to the emergent literature that asks if the benefits of physical activity are universally shared by all people, this article discusses the historical and social contexts that influenced the whitening and gendering of US yoga and utilizes a Black feminist perspective to theorize how historically and contemporarily Black women have employed yoga as a critical survival strategy. This qualitative study specifically charts how Black women have and continue to employ yoga to navigate and resist white normativity and violence inside and outside the yoga studio.