Decolonising Yoga with Dr Sheena Sood
Cancelled
6 May 2023 •
14:30 - 18:30
Description
Nourish Yoga Training – in collaboration with Sheena Shining – invites you to a Decolonizing Yoga workshop with scholar and practitioner, Dr. Sheena Sood.
Much of yoga’s history has been influenced by processes of western colonialism and cultural appropriation. However, not just by Europeans and Americans: much of this history is also marred by South Asian class, caste, and Hindu supremacist hierarchies. To fully understand how coloniality, white supremacy, and structural oppression show up in our practice, consumption, and circulation of yoga, it is important that we recognize yoga’s oppressive layers and liberatory potential; and in engaging conversations that claim to “Decolonize Yoga,” that we refuse to settle for revisionist narratives that situate yoga in a romanticized Indian past and proposals to merely insert more brown faces in yoga’s spaces.
Instead, we might challenge ourselves to consider contemporary examples of yoga’s weaponization by law-enforcement, military, and corporate industries, and far-right governments, and ethnonationalist vigilante groups. This workshop invites us into this challenge by replacing a framework of identity politics with a framework of anti-oppression in our analysis of “Decolonizing Yoga.”
By using a range of embodied, postural, and meditative practices and educational strategies, Sheena’s “Decolonizing Yoga” workshop gives practitioners of all backgrounds concrete language, examples, strategies, and ancestral homework to complicate and deepen their understanding of a challenging topic. To the students who bring a sense of openness, humility, and willingness to detach themselves from feeling a sense of ownership and entitlement toward yoga, this workshop promises to move YOU and our communities closer to spiritual enlightenment and liberation.
This workshop is open to interested students, yoga teachers and trainees.
Pricing
We believe in the importance and value of this workshop, and would like to offer a scaled pricing system, which enables attendees to pay which tier feels most appropriate for them. Please note there are NO further discounts available (i.e. no student discounts, etc).
Community Price £35
Standard Price £45
Supporter Price £55
About the facilitator
Short Bio:
Sheena Sood, PhD (she/her) is a Philadelphia-based activist, educator, sociologist, and healing justice visionary of South Asian descent. She is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Delaware Valley University in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
Sheena has studied yoga at Kailash Tribal School of Yoga in McLeodganj, India (YTT-200hr, AYTTC-500hr). Her current research project, Omwashing Yoga: Weaponized Spirituality in India, Israel, and the US, investigates the growing incorporation of yoga and mindfulness by far-right law enforcement, military, and vigilante groups.
Envisioning a futuristic yoga that centers collective freedom by centering all humanity, living beings, and Mother Earth, Sheena curates “Decolonizing Yoga” workshops through frameworks that recognize yoga’s oppressive layers and liberatory potential. Sheena is the Creative Director and Founder of Yoga Warrior Tales, an adventure-based yoga program that teaches children mindfulness and yoga skills through educational and interactive social justice narratives. Learn more at www.sheenashining.com.
Long Bio:
Sheena Sood, PhD (she/her) is a Philadelphia-based activist, educator, sociologist, and healing justice visionary of South Asian descent and U.S. southern roots. She holds a teaching position as an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Delaware Valley University in Doylestown, PA.
Sheena has studied yoga, Ayurvedic Kundalini Massage therapy, Reiki, and sound healing traditions at Kailash Tribal School of Yoga and Holistic Healing in Mcleodganj, India (YTT - 200hr, AYTTC - 500hr). She enjoys teaching gentle vinyasa or hatha practices infused with embodied liberatory philosophy.
Sheena is the Creative Director and Founder of Yoga Warrior Tales, an adventure- based yoga program that teaches children mindfulness and yoga skills through educational and interactive social justice narratives.
As a sociologist, Sheena studies the politics and weaponization of yoga. Her current research project, Omwashing Yoga: Weaponized Spirituality in India, Israel and the US, investigates the growing incorporation of yoga and mindfulness by far-right law enforcement, military, government, and vigilante groups in three nations: India, Israel, and the U.S. Specifically, Sheena is concerned with how imperial, colonial, and caste supremacist governments and groups use yoga to advance religious supremacist and
ethnonationalist agendas.
Sheena works to curate healing justice offerings and “Decolonizing Yoga” workshops through frameworks that recognize yoga’s oppressive layers and its liberatory potential; she envisions a futuristic yoga that centers collective freedom and embodies political action by centering humanity, all living beings, and Mother Earth. Sheena is grateful to
call Philly home and to be in relationship with healers, artists, cultural workers, and grassroots groups that work to abolish the carceral state and free all political prisoners.
