Q: Why were you nervous about blackness being accepted in the yoga community?
A: The thing about a yoga studio is, it's not like a hospital where everybody who comes in has to be treated despite prejudice. Yoga studios are communities, and for me the greatest parallel that I've found for yoga studios in our community is the barbershop or the black church. It’s like a place where you know that there's an investment specifically catered to helping you. We don't have a lot of those spaces and I think that with yoga being this popular in the white community, it makes it easy for them to create spaces that are not as inclusive. Those things show up, not only within the advertisements but you also see that people who do go into the spaces verify that that’s what it is. You feel it, it becomes tangible. The disconnect from people — the exclusion is tangible.
Even when you come in, people look at you. The same people that would be standing next to you in a Starbucks and wouldn't pay any attention to you, but as soon as you walk into the space you're looked at differently. I think that came from accessibility, the way that people that they shape it here [America.] A lot of people like to attribute things to yoga that it does not call for always. They want you to think that you need to listen to like ocean sounds, and wear all white, or be vegan in order to really do yoga or to be a part of what's called “the lifestyle.” That lifestyle is really not reflective of what the practice is about. The practice is: You can be on death row, you can be an old grandma, as long as you're breathing and joined the practice in order to meditate, you should be healed. It's not really about a lot of the things I think that we, instinctively or purposely, advertise about yoga. Even the word “yoga” doesn't lend itself to a definition.
Until someone comes in and creates spaces that are specifically focused on black people or people of color, they won't necessarily feel and experience the community to the fullest extent. Of course I've been in studios that are white and I don't feel that all of them are trying to ostracize me. It's like going to white churches or restaurants, some people are cool but there are a lot of places where people aren't — that's the status quo.
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coli nikkas
