A Sigh of Relief: Teaching a BIPOC Yoga Class

As a person of color in America, I am habituated to doing an unconscious audit of each room I enter. How many Black and brown faces do I see? How many people who look like me, an Asian? I habitually read the room to gauge my level of probable safety in that setting.

All too often I am The Only One: the only person of color, and/or the only Asian person. This happens in many settings, and alerts me to be on guard, and to expect microaggressions. How much I am on guard may depend on the degree of familiarity with the others present, whether there are strong, consistent allies present or not, the reason for our gathering, etc.

BIPOC often end up The Only One, or vastly outnumbered in Iyengar Yoga classrooms. The BIPOC who do show up are often the ones who have assimilated into white dominant culture, whether by choice, by necessity, or by default. I have routinely experienced racial aggression in these settings, both from members of the white dominant culture, and sometimes by BIPOC who may feel pressured to conform or remain silent.

The nature of racial aggressions, whether micro or macro, is such that the casual observer may notice nothing out of step. But those of us who have heard or observed these things many, many times are extra sensitized and on high alert. Here are some examples of racial or other aggressions from Iyengar Yoga classrooms:

• A white teacher touches or strokes the hair of a Black student without invitation or consent.
  

• A white teacher displays “fawning” or tokenizing tendencies toward students coming from underrepresented communities, giving undue attention and compliments. 
  

• During class, we hear two presumably Black people in a heated exchange outside. One white student offers to call the police.
  

• A white teacher repeatedly corrects a Black student’s buttock actions, implying that their body is not “good” or “right.”
  

• White students feel free to frequently interject, ask questions, and centralize themselves and their experiences.
  

• When George Floyd is murdered, your teacher says nothing about it at all. When a student asks for their counsel about it, they give a bland, canned response, indicating they had not prepared any kind of thoughtful response, despite their status as respected spiritual leaders in the community.
  

• Teachers hold colleagues, students, apprentices, and mentees to expectations based on access to expendable funds, childcare, transportation, and other factors that may not be realistic.
  

• When you point out such examples to organizational leadership they respond with incredulity and denial.
  

For all these reasons, a BIPOC class may be welcomed by many practitioners. It’s one place where folks of color can be that much more relaxed. Already, āsana requires us to do difficult things that may be quite uncomfortable, new, or make us feel vulnerable and awkward. Already we may feel we have had to be polite, well-spoken, and obedient in white dominant culture. When we remove as many of the potential barriers as we can, we can be more present, with more ease.

I have been teaching BIPOC-only classes with great joy since the mid-2000s. Here are some things I’ve learned.

• Excellent āsana instruction is not enough. Students who choose a BIPOC class often seek other kinds of support, guidance, and a sense of community from the teacher and other students.
  

• Take a few minutes to help students down-regulate their nervous systems when they arrive. BIPOC have greater exposure to potential harm on a day-to-day basis than their white counterparts. It may take some time in Supta Baddha Koṇāsana, Supta Swastikāsana, or Supta Vīrāsana to finally relax.
  

• Allow for some chitchat in the first 5-10 minutes. Take time for introductions and check-ins if the class is small enough. White supremacy emphasizes timeliness and productivity. An anti-racist yoga space understands that productivity cannot necessarily be quantified, and that there are many ways to be productive.
  

• Consider incorporating a land acknowledgement at the beginning of class, to help students contextualize themselves in the karmic interweaving of our larger time and place. If we are not native to our land, we arrived as captives, refugees, or settlers. Whatever brought us to this place, we hope to evolve into right relationship with the people and spirits of the land. Take your time to develop your own ways and words of acknowledging the land. I like to tie it into the invocation to Patañjali, and talk about the lineage of teachings.*
  

• Take time to explain why you are choosing certain poses, sequences, and set-ups, and what they have to do with being BIPOC. For instance, in Supta Baddha Koṇāsana, you could talk about how we often feel we need to protect or defend ourselves because of the racism we encounter or anticipate, and how expanding the heart/lung region and groins is an opportunity to let down our defenses and nurture ourselves. When practicing arm balances, you could discuss how empowered we feel when we can bear weight on our hands, as a reminder of our inner fortitude.
  

• Put less emphasis on textbook execution of the poses, and more on the physical, emotional, and mental impact. Help students by offering individualized instructions (otherwise known as “corrections”) to promote well-being rather than correctness. For example, teach them how to straighten the front leg in Trikoṇāsana so that they can access the full length of the spine and protect the knee from hyperextension.
  

• Feel free to reference current events, and how they relate to the practice of yoga. Connect the personal practice to collective liberation. For instance, we’ve discussed the current Covid-19 crisis in India, and talked about the reluctance of wealthy nations to share vaccines and technology, which is connected to the history of colonization. We’ve also discussed how our teachers are in India, and how much we all owe BKS Iyengar and his family, and when we do not give back to them in some form, that is appropriation.
  

• Feel free to share poetry, music, prayers, quotes, and other sources of inspiration, and invite students to do the same.
  

• Offer a flexible payment structure as an alternative to the capitalist habits which undergird systemic racism. Our economy has been built on exploitation of BIPOC. Allowing students to determine what they can pay through a sliding scale model teaches them how to practice financial sovereignty. Students take responsibility for both their own learning and their desire to support BIPOC teachers. Seek sponsors for the BIPOC class to lessen the financial burden—reparations!
  

• Offer more opportunities to build BIPOC Iyengar Yoga community, such as book discussion groups, celebrations, potlucks, panel discussions, etc. They can be low-key, and community-led, so responsibility is shared. For instance, a member of our community asked to start a donation-based BIPOC reading group for Resmaa Menakem’s My Grandmother’s Hands. Since we already practice Iyengar Yoga as a form of “cultural somatics,” we gladly welcomed this offer.
  

• Ask your white colleagues to do parallel anti-racist work among themselves. At Iyengar Yoga Detroit Collective, white teachers and students formed Ahimsa in Action, which meets twice a month to do anti-racist work together, and support each other in dismantling generations of white supremacy. Iyengar Yoga provides the perfect backdrop for this work, because we already have a common vocabulary, ethical philosophical foundation, and a somatic practice.
  

Every participant releases a big sigh when they enter a BIPOC-only space. We feel less guarded, and more welcome. Hopefully, we extend that sense of ease into other parts of our lives, so that we can help our society and culture evolve toward the beloved, equitable community we all seek.

*Here is a sample land acknowledgement and invocation to Patañjali, but each person will do it differently, and vary it each time:
As you feel the earth beneath you, acknowledge the beings of this land, human and non-human, past, present, and future. Here in ______, we honor the ________ people. Whatever brought us to this land, we commit to coming into right relationship with this land, its spirits, and its people. We also commit ourselves to coming into right relationship with the lineage of yoga, passed on through generations, as we acknowledge our teachers, and chant the invocation to sage Patañjali.

More reading:
Yellow, Black, Brown, and Beautiful  

It is Time