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24: Racism and Cultural Appropriation in Science
481 Plays2 years ago
Welcome to Episode 24 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel is joined by her friend and colleague, Jesal Parikh. Together, Laurel and Jesal discuss the topics of cultural appropriation, biodiversity, and accessibility. Jesal offers clear examples and anecdotes to help listeners relate to and understand these topics within the context of everyday practice and teaching. She offers simple, actionable tips to yoga teachers to help them bring a greater sensitivity and understanding of these topics directly into their teaching. Laurel and Jesal discuss:
- That cultural appropriation is a form of theft and commodification.
- How cultural appropriation shows up in the yoga community.
- The difference between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation.
- Why cultural context and Yoga’s roots matter when “thinking critically” about Yoga.
- The effect of culture, genetics, and many other environmental factors on our “signature of movement”, or, the way each of us as individuals moves differently.
- How accessibility is different from adaptability when we take into account how social issues (not just biological issues) affect who can and cannot participate in a Yoga class.
- What connects cultural appropriation, biodiversity, and accessibility.
- Science’s tendency to discredit indigenous practices, rename them, and take “scientific” credit for them.
- Tips for teachers who want to honor Yoga’s roots, make space for biodiversity, and make their classes more accessible.
Guest Bio:
Jesal Parikh is an Indian-American yoga teacher, movement educator, podcaster, author and disrupter working on creative solutions for equity in Yoga. She co-hosts the Yoga is Dead podcast and offers movement education through the lens of social justice.
Jesal’s aim is to uplift those who are feeling isolated and marginalized by the yoga industry. Pronouns: she/her/they/them.
Reference links:
Devdutt Pattanaik TED Talk East Vs. West, The Myths That Mystify
Hips Tutorial link: https://movementlogictutorials.com/movement-logic/hips-tutorial/
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Watch the video of this conversation at: www.movementlogictutorials.com/podcast
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Thanks for listening!
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Transcript
Inspiration Behind Movement Logic Tutorials
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, it's Laurel, you know, back in 2017, when I started movement logic with Sarah court, it was in part because I had just recently overcome my persistent hip and SI joint pain.
00:00:13
Speaker
through a combination of interventions, including self massage, strength training, and just moving in different ways. It was that positive outcome that spurred me to want to create tutorials in conjunction with a physical therapist to help teachers like myself who might be experiencing pain themselves.
00:00:32
Speaker
but who are also in service to their students to help them feel better. And so out of that idea came all of the tutorials that you hear us
Introduction to New Tutorial on Hip and SI Joint Pain
00:00:41
Speaker
talking about. But you know what just happened actually is we just launched a brand new tutorial. Jason Parikh, Sarah Cort and I have put together a incredible resource for you all about the hip and SI joint. Now let's be honest, the hip and SI joint get a ton of attention.
00:00:57
Speaker
especially in the yoga world. And why? Well, maybe not for the reasons we would like. A lot of people have hip and SI joint pain. A lot of long time yoga teachers and yoga practitioners suffer from persistent pain in this area. It might be because of something called yoga butt, high hamstring pain, or maybe sciatica, which is kind of a radiating nerve pain. Maybe it's just a generalized pain around the SI joint. Then, of course, there is the hypermobile practitioner.
00:01:26
Speaker
who may have initially been drawn to the practice because their bodies bent easily to the whims and the will of the asanas, but for whom those large ranges of motion, those repetitive movements over time have caused them to also suffer some
00:01:41
Speaker
persistent pain and maybe we can all relate to just a general feeling of tightness in and around the hips and maybe even a tightness that just no matter what we do, it just doesn't seem to go away.
Course Content on Hip Joint Movement and Injuries
00:01:53
Speaker
In any case, a lot of the time that pain is a symptom having to do with really just not moving within a variety or not challenging the areas of our hips, the tissues of our hips enough. In some cases, it's really just not understanding how pain works in the body
00:02:10
Speaker
or perhaps how movement impacts our body and influences our pain. Well, this is why I'm so excited to tell you about the hip and SI joint tutorial because that's what this four hour course is all about. It's about the hip joint and how it moves. It's about the structural variation that every single individual has
00:02:33
Speaker
in terms of the way their hips are shaped and how that influences how they can move. It's about the way that injuries happen as well as how we experience pain in these areas and then of course a whole lot about how movement can be a solution to these obstacles. Specific obstacles like SI joint pain or sciatica or yoga butt. Additionally, we take a critical look at how a lot of yoga instruction unfortunately tends to take a one size
00:03:03
Speaker
fits all approach and to even leave out and alienate whole groups of people such as people in bigger bodies or trans folks. So if you're interested in learning a whole bunch about the hip and SI joint and getting a treasure trove of ideas of ways
00:03:20
Speaker
to help yourself or your students feel better in this area, then make sure you check out the hip and SI joint tutorial before the cart closes. We don't actually know when we're opening the cart
Mission of the Movement Logic Podcast
00:03:31
Speaker
again. So head on over to our website, www.movementlogictutorials.com or just click the link in the show notes and check it out.
00:03:42
Speaker
Welcome to the Movement Logic podcast with yoga teacher and strength coach Laurel Beaversdorf and physical therapist, Dr. Sarah Court. With over 30 years combined experience in the yoga, movement and physical therapy worlds, we believe in strong opinions loosely held, which means we're not hyping outdated movement concepts. Instead, we're here with up to date and cutting edge tools, evidence and ideas to help you as a mover and a teacher.
00:04:21
Speaker
Welcome to Episode 24 of the Movement Logic Podcast.
Introduction to Jaisal Parikh and Yoga is Dead Podcast
00:04:24
Speaker
I'm Laurel Beaverstorff, and I'm here with a very special guest, Jaisal Parikh. Jaisal is a yoga teacher, movement educator, podcaster, author, and disruptor working on creative solutions for equity in yoga.
00:04:40
Speaker
I first learned of Jaisal from her smash hit podcast, Yoga is Dead, which was a sensation that took the yoga community by storm. And I eagerly anticipated every single episode before they were released and listened to several of them multiple times, namely white women killed yoga and was it 200 hours? Yeah, that was the last one. Yeah, those two.
00:05:10
Speaker
Um, but they're all excellent. I highly encourage you to, to listen. Jason is one of the co-hosts of the yoga is dead podcast along with the agile.
Jaisal's Journey to Movement Science Education
00:05:20
Speaker
And, um, she knows who killed yoga and she tells you about it. So check that out. Jason is also co-creator of the movement logic neck tutorial and our forthcoming movement logic hip and SI joint tutorial. So thank you so much for joining me today, Jason.
00:05:39
Speaker
I'm so excited to be here. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got started educating yoga teachers about the body and also about the topics of cultural appropriation, biodiversity, which may be a new term to people. Also, maybe cultural appropriation is as well. We'll talk about what those words mean and as well, accessibility.
00:06:02
Speaker
Yeah, sure. Before I tell you about how I started educating on movement, let me tell you about why I started learning about movement education for myself. And that's because when I first started teaching yoga, I was teaching to people in older bodies and many of them had been doing
00:06:19
Speaker
yoga, you know, throughout their whole lives, some of them had maybe done yoga in their 20s and were returning back to it in their 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond. And what I note, oh, and I also have private clients. So I was like working with people specifically that had injuries or didn't feel like they could go to studios and really get the experience they wanted.
00:06:38
Speaker
So what I noticed was that what I came with as a teacher, the tools that had been given as a teacher just weren't sufficient, that I wasn't able to teach them in a way that felt like I was actually getting through and that it was working in their body and that they were getting something valuable out of the class. And so I sought out education for myself because I really needed it and I wanted to be able to feel successful, right? I wanted to be able to feel confident as a teacher. And I think a lot of new teachers go through that.
00:07:06
Speaker
So my route to feeling confident was, oh, let me get some more education around the science of movement. I did a whole bunch of different trainings around that, and I did a whole bunch of self-study after that, too, and I continued to learn. And so it really started with this idea of accessibility and adaptability of yoga to the person in front of you, to the individual in front of you.
00:07:28
Speaker
And so I started teaching it because as a modern yoga teacher, I was sending out newsletters and all that stuff, and I was sharing with my community the things that I was learning. And one of the teacher trainings that I had taken needed a substitute fill-in teacher. Their teacher, who was my teacher in that training, I'll just name her Erin Moon, was my teacher.
00:07:51
Speaker
Erin had moved to the west coast and I was in New York City. The training was in New York City and Erin wasn't able to fly back as often anymore and teach. So they kind of needed somebody to cover some of Erin's hours. And so I got to sit in on Erin's lessons like for a training, learn from her, absorb her from her. And then I got to jump in and start teaching. So that was like an exciting moment for me.
00:08:15
Speaker
Awesome, awesome and I think so many can relate to starting off and feeling like you just lack the skills and the tools to be able to truly help the individuals in front of you. You started teaching yoga and you started teaching teachers and you then moved
00:08:37
Speaker
I don't want to say beyond, but you moved a little deeper into educating students, teachers, teacher trainers, for example, me, on the topics of cultural appropriation, biodiversity,
00:08:55
Speaker
and accessibility. Can we talk about what these words mean first so we can all kind of start from a place of agreed upon definitions?
Understanding Cultural Appropriation in Yoga
00:09:05
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And so can we start with what is cultural appropriation? And maybe we'll talk about how you have moved into educating people on that through your podcast and through
00:09:17
Speaker
your teacher training offerings as well. Yeah, cultural appropriation is this really big concept to be honest, but to kind of narrow down for like this audience, right, a podcast listener, I'll say that it has to do with power dynamics. So it has to do with cultural exchange that's happening, but under uneven power dynamics. So where the exchange is actually theft.
00:09:39
Speaker
where things are taken out of context by a more powerful culture, right? And in this case, we're talking, I'm not going to just going to say it, we're talking about white supremacy, right? So under the global standard of white supremacy, because of colonization, we had this experience in South Asia, where several European countries, including the British, who are kind of the last ones standing, came into the culture and decided what the rules were going to be.
00:10:04
Speaker
you know, under their regime. And then once they left, they continue to determine. So the West and like white folks continue to determine what is good about the culture, what is bad about the culture, what's worthy, what's not worthy. And at the same time, they are not valuing the actual people, right? The people are disposable, but certain assets are seen as valuable and commodifiable.
00:10:26
Speaker
And so a lot of what cultural appropriation has to do with also is commodification and capitalism, like turmeric lattes, right? We're okay with turmeric lattes. We want the turmeric, we want the asset from the culture and the like spice, but we don't really care about the farmers and what happens to them and the policy around what's happening to them today.
00:10:45
Speaker
So that's kind of a great example. We love to adopt it. Starbucks has these things like golden milk lattes and all these things. We're selling it. Everybody knows what it is, but most people probably don't know that it comes from the South Asian region, that the farmers in the South Asian region are growing it under very difficult circumstances, both as all farmers experience, but also politically as well. So that's kind of like the crux of cultural appropriation, if that makes sense.
00:11:10
Speaker
Yeah, it does. I would love to hear how does cultural appropriation show up in the yoga community? What does that? It's rampant, right? Yeah. And at the minimum, we can say that even just like the yoga practices themselves being commodified, again, without any consideration as to like the history of who had to struggle to keep these practices alive for us. So under the British Raj in India,
00:11:38
Speaker
yoga practices were banned and so people were quite literally under threat of death for practicing yoga and so we have to kind of consider that when we are like flippantly taking some of the practices and then renaming them or claiming that we're the founder of them or claiming that like oh this little piece of scientific evidence now makes it good as before it was bad and so we just have to keep that in mind that like people were have quite literally struggled
00:12:04
Speaker
to keep these practices alive for us. And here we are flat out selling them without any consideration as to those people and like, remuneration for those people either. I've heard the term appreciation. And in honoring yoga and honoring yoga's roots, Susanna Barkataki,
00:12:26
Speaker
is another leader, thought leader in this realm. What are some ways in which as white Western teachers, practitioners of yoga, we can honor rather than appropriate yoga? Can you give just a couple of examples to kind of contextualize this idea of cultural appropriation versus cultural appreciation?
00:12:48
Speaker
I'll say the two aren't mutually exclusive. I think to some level appropriation is going to happen, but there is a way of maybe going about it better. Appreciating is like trying to go about it in a better way. Just starting to get to know the roots of the practice is a very broad, but
00:13:10
Speaker
underlooked way of starting to honor the practice. Like, what are all the lineages? I just wrote a book with Dejil for yoga's dad called the matriarchs of yoga. And one of the things we worked really hard to include was all of these different people from different paths and lineages and not just defining yoga as an anger practice or a vinyasa practice.
00:13:29
Speaker
because that's not all of yoga. Yoga is like this big, huge thing that's not monolithic. So just even kind of understanding that there are different lineages, different paths, different ideas, different philosophies, you know, there's dualism and nondualism, there's Buddhists and Jain and there's non, there's secular and Hindu, like all of that. It's diverse. Right. It's so diverse. All of that falls under the umbrella of yoga. So just starting to get that understanding, learning from indigenous
00:13:55
Speaker
like there's a value that is brought when there's cultural context. And when you take things out of cultural context, I personally believe you not only like create a little bit of confusion, but you can also create a little bit of danger because you don't really fully understand the context in which certain things apply or don't apply or like where it's okay to start thinking critically because you don't really understand the context of like the landscape, if that makes sense.
00:14:22
Speaker
It's hard to know who to question if you're like, oh, this, you know, in that culture, a lot of people say this, like, oh, in Indian culture, you're supposed to revere the guru unquestioningly. And as a South Asian person, like, I don't think that, I wasn't brought up like that. To me, a guru is just a teacher. And there are different kinds of gurus. So just even knowing, like, if you read about that, like, there are different kinds of gurus outlined in the text. Right. This is a really interesting idea I'm having, which is that critical thinking is not critical thinking when it's done out of context.
00:14:50
Speaker
When the thing that you're thinking about, you've taken out of context to then critically pick apart. I'll add a resource because I think this is like a really telling one. There's this great educator, David Patnaik. He writes about like religion and philosophy. And he did a TED talk. He does it in English. So he did a TED talk on applying cultural principles to business. I'll have to find the exact name and you can drop it. But towards the end of it, or even in the middle, he talks about the difference between the Western outlook and the South Asian outlook.
00:15:18
Speaker
And one of the things he like specifically mentions is how in Western ideology we aspire to conquer the world. He talks about Alexander the Great being like the ideal. So like planting your flag on the mountain. We believe you only live one life and you got to conquer it.
00:15:33
Speaker
Versus in South Asia, there's this predominant, culturally predominant idea that we live many lives and you have to live the same life over and over and over and over again until you learn the lessons that you are meant to learn. And so it's not about conquering the world, it's about conquering self.
00:15:50
Speaker
Right? Very cool. That's like a very different outlook and undertone and that infuses everything that we do. It certainly does. Yeah, it certainly does. Thank you so much. That was an excellent example. And thank you for sharing, you know, just a little bit of background about what cultural appropriation means in the context of this conversation specifically. And I'm hearing themes of diversity
00:16:14
Speaker
For example, like in showing appreciation for the cultural practices of yoga, we must recognize first and foremost that the way in which we've learned about yoga and practice yoga is one small tiny little sliver that has probably also been, if our teachers are white and Western, been taken out of context. So this is very important. Thank you. The next term is biodiversity in the context in
Biological Diversity in Yoga Practice
00:16:39
Speaker
which you teach it. What does biodiversity mean?
00:16:42
Speaker
Biodiversity is the idea that actually, as humans, we're not robots of a factory line, that we are each actually all individually very different, that each of us has genetic variation. You know, one example that I've been given through my life is if you're out in a field and you see all this grass, every plate of grass is different.
00:17:01
Speaker
It's shaped differently, it's different heights, slightly different colors of color variations, right? Like all these differences in every blade of grass or the idea of like no two snowflakes are like. When we look at models of skeletons or model images of the human body, we get this impression that actually we're all the same, but the reality is we're actually each very different, subtly different, but we are different.
00:17:25
Speaker
And so in the context of yoga, we have to remember that yoga is very much a subjective practice. It's all about your subjective experience. It's not about some objective scientific outcome. So what's true for you, Laurel, is true for you, even if it's not true for me.
00:17:44
Speaker
And so when we teach, we have to keep that in mind. We're teaching this thing that's all about individuality and we are very individual. So science is great, but science in a sense has a limitation in yoga in that science is about statistics. What's going to be great for the majority? What works most of the time?
00:18:02
Speaker
for most people. And outliers kind of don't matter in science. We're not talking about the outliers. In yoga, if you're an outlier, well, that's your experience and that's valid. Right. Yes, absolutely. And when I think of biodiversity and this idea that our biological tissues are diverse, I think first and foremost about the hip.
00:18:24
Speaker
because I've actually had to learn a lot about my own hip and how I actually might be a bit of an outlier with regards to the way my bones are shaped. And this might explain why I have, for example, so little external rotation available, but so much internal rotation available and how it's just been so frustrating over the years to hear practice and all is coming with regards to postures like lotus and things like that, where I was like, there's no chance
00:18:51
Speaker
in HE double hockey sticks that I'm ever going to be able to get into lotus pose and I've given up on it and that was so freeing to like know that like you know honoring your individuality and then like you know just a silly example is like we're all told oh we have 206 bones well some people don't have 206 bones some people have 208 some people have 210 some people have 204 like it's just we're all different
00:19:15
Speaker
We're all different. And then we're all different biologically. We're also all different psychologically, right? Nature and nurture, we all have different genetics as you brought up, but also different environmental factors and different life experiences have led us to hold different beliefs, to think in different ways. And this is another way in which when we're teaching, for example, we're dealing with diversity and then also socially, right?
00:19:42
Speaker
culturally, we're diverse. And so it makes me think of how important it is as teachers and also how tempting it is. It's like attempting to do this and it's important not to do this, which is to project our own experiences, our own beliefs and preferences onto our students. You know, as you just mentioned, yoga is a subjective experience and so is all experience, right?
00:20:08
Speaker
literally all experience is subjective and so taking into account at least for me what I don't know about the people in front of me which is literally almost everything including the shape of their hip joints.
00:20:23
Speaker
Right. And I mean, just moving like I love that you're talking about nervous system too, because it's one of the things I love to teach. But I started co-teaching with my former teacher, Erin Moon. And one of the things we totally focus on in the beginning of everything we teach is nervous system. And we teach this concept called signature of movement. And so signature movement can actually be likened to a physical signature. We think about how people sign their names and everybody signs their name differently.
00:20:49
Speaker
Nobody signs their name in exactly the same way. And it's because we're talking about how that translates into the movement of the hand. And so things like things that you wouldn't consider affect your movement do. For example, genetics, right? Or culture, like you mentioned, right? Like how people are taught to hold their pencil or pen. Like if you go country to country, like people are taught differently how to hold their pen or pencil.
00:21:13
Speaker
Culturally, so that's going to affect how you move, right? And I think that's true in other movement settings, too. We just kind of forget. We just kind of think that culture doesn't play a role in the way we move. But in fact, it does. Yeah, there's also this idea, especially in the yoga world, I don't know if you've encountered this, that to do a pose correctly, optimally, however you want to say the right way safely,
00:21:40
Speaker
safely. Yeah, that's a big one. We're looking for this uniformity of joint angles, body geometry, the knee has to be exactly here, the pelvis has to be exactly here. And how this concept of biodiversity throws a big wrench in that belief, because how could it be that we should all look the same way, let alone have the same experience or the same preferences,
00:22:07
Speaker
when we are on every level all unique. I mean, I agree. I know you do. We're preaching to each other's choir. Okay. Last question. What is accessibility in the context of how you educate in the context of this conversation?
Addressing Accessibility in Yoga
00:22:25
Speaker
What are we talking about when we say accessibility?
00:22:28
Speaker
Yeah, I love that you asked this because somebody I follow, a teacher I respect and who I've taken classes with, changed my mind on how I define this. So this is kind of like very recently sinking in like in the last two weeks, I'll say. Cool. So my friend Arun Dutti Vaith Mungalkar did this post on how accessibility is different than adaptability, which I loved. I love like the clarifying language. So adaptability, meaning like we're taking the poses and adapting them to the individual in front of us based on their needs and the experience that they're having.
00:22:58
Speaker
which is so important. And I think it falls under and is related to the greater conversation around accessibility, which is the idea that social issues actually prevent people from having a positive or even neutral experience with the yoga practices.
00:23:14
Speaker
So when we think about like social issues, it could be disability, it could be race, it could be class, it could be caste, it could be so many, it could be religion, right? Religious supremacy, things like that. So there are real world social issues that actually can prevent people from accessing the practices of yoga or feeling safe accessing the practices of yoga or having doing them themselves, especially in a group setting.
00:23:40
Speaker
And within that, we have to consider that some of our ideology around these social constructs actually affects then how we insist people show up, like whether we choose to adapt or not adapt. So when we're saying alignment, one of the big issues with alignment as a tool is that we've taken it and it means today there's only one right way to do it.
00:24:04
Speaker
And if somebody is coming into our practice with all of these variations, like we're talking about, again, it could be physical disability, it could be mental disability, it could be racialized trauma, it could be the fact that they can't even get into the class because they can't pay for it, right? All of these different experiences. And then we're saying, oh yeah, and you should do this pose this one way and you should have the right experience doing this pose. That feels incredibly oppressive.
00:24:32
Speaker
That is a very helpful distinction and I have wondered about this idea of adaptability and its relationship to accessibility and I think I thought that it was kind of the same thing but actually accessibility seems to be this actually much bigger topic that doesn't just include
00:24:53
Speaker
props, right, and making the physical experience of the individual more accessible. But it takes into account all of the external factors that go into that person feeling like a class is physically inaccessible, but also psychologically, and maybe in terms of like, safety in groups.
00:25:22
Speaker
inaccessible. So societally inaccessible, but when we're talking about society, we're talking about groupthink and whether or not maybe an individual feels safe in a group that thinks a certain way. Yeah. I mean, and beyond that, like,
00:25:38
Speaker
We can even talk about language, like what languages things are made available in. We can think about like ASL as a language. Is our yoga practices really being offered in ASL? I don't know. I'm not part of that community, but I would imagine that they're very underserved in that way. Yes, absolutely. I would say almost entirely underserved, unless it's a specific class for people who have experienced hearing loss. So next question.
00:26:08
Speaker
You educate on a lot of seemingly different topics, but actually I'm noticing that there are some through lines. Yeah, absolutely. Like cultural appropriation is not an entirely separate topic from biodiversity because in both cases we're considering diversity. In the case of cultural appropriation, perhaps as white Westerners who are practicing yoga, we must consider first the roots of yoga.
00:26:37
Speaker
and how they come from a very specific, different place from where we may have originally learned it. But then when we go deeper to understand those roots, we have to understand that yoga is not a monolith. We cannot essentialize it and say that it is one thing. It is as diverse as we know ourselves to be, right? We know that people within our groups
00:26:57
Speaker
are so diverse. I know that all of my friends, for example, are such diverse individuals. But I think it's a tendency, maybe a logical fallacy, to assume that someone else who you don't know very well or some other place that you don't know very well or some other race of people that you don't know very well are all kind of the same. And this is maybe one of the most damaging assumptions that fuels white supremacy, which is that the other has been made
00:27:23
Speaker
simple and therefore we already understand it. And I think this is potentially at the root of what we're trying to bust through with cultural appropriations, first and foremost, recognizing that, hey, this has an origin and a context and we should want to know about it to honor the roots of this practice that's so important to us and that's so helpful to us. And then at the same time also that this is a very diverse and multi, what's the word,
00:27:48
Speaker
Multicultural, multifaceted, multilingual history. We are so different. I will say, first of all, a lot of people don't even like the term South Asian because they're like, don't group me in with Pakistanis and vice versa. There's tension in these men. Let's just establish that. Not everyone gets along.
00:28:11
Speaker
And then within that, I'll take myself for an example. So my family hails from the state of Gujarat, even though a lot of my family has stayed in Bombay or Mumbai now for a long, long time. But amongst Gujaratis, you would think, oh, all Gujaratis are the same. No, we are not. Family to family, we are different. And never is that more evident than when you're at a wedding. You know what I mean?
00:28:37
Speaker
People are like, oh, marry your own kind. Sometimes I'm like, it might be easier not to because you get into the nitty gritty of like, well, our family does these traditions and our family does those traditions. So we are very like, we are very different is what I'm trying to say.
00:28:51
Speaker
And I think it's not just important to know that because it's about honoring yoga, but it really also for the individual teachers, like I don't think you really fully realize that you're teaching until you start to realize like what all these factions are. Where do these things come from? What ideology or principle, like bigger philosophies do these sit within? Because you might be accidentally adopting something that you don't actually fully agree with.
00:29:18
Speaker
Or you might be putting yourself in a bad situation because you don't really understand like maybe this is like a right wing ideology. Maybe this is a left wing ideology and you don't agree with those things but like you don't actually really know where it comes from. So you kind of have to be very curious about those things just to make sure that you are actually teaching what is in line with what you believe in your experiences.
00:29:43
Speaker
Yeah, critical thinking isn't just being able to make rational statements about things. It's actually understanding the history and context in which discussion is even existing and taking place. And when you're ignorant, people can manipulate you. When you're ignorant, people can take advantage of you.
00:30:03
Speaker
I think a lot of what we see, not all of it, but I think like a good chunk of what we see in terms of people being abused or manipulated is the abuser and manipulators are really counting on their victims being ignorant and keeping them ignorant, right? That's like part of the MO of what abusers do, but if we can educate ourselves, we give ourselves a leg up at least.
00:30:26
Speaker
Not saying like you'll never be manipulated or abused, but you give yourself a leg up. You'll be able to spot the potentially misleading and false claims. You have a better chance. Let's put it that way. That sometimes also tend to be very popular. Or maybe a better chance of recognizing it sooner as it's happening so you can get out quicker. Right. Like it's not I'm not trying to say like, oh, victims are responsible for their own manipulation. But at the same time, like you don't want to be walking into this world completely ignorant.
00:30:56
Speaker
thinking like because I think a lot of teachers do I did I know when I came into the space I had blinders on I was like everybody in yoga just wants to like work towards world peace and happiness right like and then you get into this industry and you're like oh there's some really awful awful people in this industry and you talk so much about lots of those stories and anecdotes in in the podcast that you that you did with
00:31:20
Speaker
But I feel like, oh, I could have saved myself some heartache if I had opened my eyes a little sooner, you know? And it's never too late either, right? It's never too late to go back and start to investigate the stories that you're telling or that you told and unpack them, which, again, you did so beautifully on the podcast. Right. Thank you.
00:31:40
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm seeing this through line of diversity within the topic of cultural appropriation, as well as within the topic of biodiversity, right? But then also within the topic of accessibility in that there are many ways that something can be accessible and inaccessible.
00:32:04
Speaker
And we should understand not just the physical ways, but we should start to investigate as teachers who hold space for people's bodies to be together and move, which is an incredibly vulnerable act and one in which we really want to foster.
00:32:20
Speaker
this feeling of possibly togetherness and positivity, that the way that we do that has to take into account where many people might be coming from and how those places that they're coming from are going to be different. Maybe just as a given, we can just assume that everyone is diverse and different.
00:32:38
Speaker
So, here is a question that I don't think I gave you ahead of time, but I'm starting to wonder about, which is, yes, Jason knew that we were going to talk about these topics of cultural appropriation, accessibility, and biodiversity, but my question is, given that so much of
Approaching Yoga with Curiosity and Humility
00:32:56
Speaker
how we need to show up or how we should maybe work to show up as teachers requires us to first understand that we don't know because everyone is so diverse. It almost feels like we're starting from this knowledge of not having knowledge or we're starting from this place that the point of departure is a point of question rather than a point of I have the answer and I now know how to proceed. How do you recommend
00:33:25
Speaker
new teachers or maybe teachers who just feel like they want to get a better handle on how to create spaces that appreciate rather than appropriate, spaces that honor biodiversity and or spaces that are accessible. How do we show up?
00:33:43
Speaker
What are some maybe guiding attitudes to adopt and practice some guiding practices to adopt? And obviously, you don't have to provide an exhaustive list, maybe like your top suggestion or three. Yeah, I mean, I think right off the bat, because folks are listening to this, I know that you're already interested in being curious and learning.
00:34:04
Speaker
I think part of this just means that you need it, that like we, I include myself in this, we need to expand our horizon on what we are learning and studying. To your point, they're not unrelated, that all of these topics are actually very related. So understanding accessibility and within that, even understanding cultural appropriation,
00:34:23
Speaker
is not unrelated to really respecting people as individuals and cultivating love and compassion for individuals so that we can show up with love and compassion as teachers, right? So that's like one big thing, but I think like tactically from a teacher point of view. So love and compassion.
00:34:41
Speaker
Right. But like all of this is about like, it really is. I know it doesn't seem as lovey-dovey as like, oh, you know, practice is all in all is coming, but it is really let's examine the dark side that we don't know that we're like shunning away from or ignorant to so that actually we can get through it and get to a place of love and compassion.
00:35:00
Speaker
That really is what it is about. Sometimes it feels ugly or it feels like, oh, negative, but it's not. It's like, okay, let's acknowledge the problem and address it and think critically and move through it and then we'll all be happier. And facing that, I think, is an act of love and compassion because it's fueled by curiosity
00:35:20
Speaker
to understand, to understand something on a deeper level. Exactly. So I think that's like a broad strokes thing. But tactically, I'll say just using invitational language, I invite you to move your right arm up towards your towards the ceiling.
00:35:37
Speaker
Right? Like letting people know that it's an invitation and not like a, you must do this. Even in the beginning of class, just saying like everything we're doing today is optional. Everything we're doing today is invitational. I mean, obviously having like props available, if that's an option, but letting people know that they can just opt out and not assuming what their rest.
00:35:57
Speaker
position is going to be like, I think teachers are taught this script like downward dog is arresting post. If any teacher really examines that they themselves will be like, I don't know why we say this, but you know, I certainly did. I had a lot of moments of confusion of total cognitive dissonance when I was
00:36:14
Speaker
Early on learning to teach you know both within the teacher trainings but also just in the classroom actually being a new teacher of like why am I why am I saying this but experiencing something else as a student like I'm supposed to be feeling like
00:36:30
Speaker
this pose is relaxing but actually i feel really agitated or i'm supposed to feel like i can take a deep breath in this seated posture but actually i feel like my breath is stuck in my throat because my hip hurts and all of these claims that i was hearing made by the teacher that were supposedly universal just didn't
00:36:49
Speaker
resonate with me and so then I put it on myself as like there must be something wrong with me, that I can't get this. I must be a bad student or I'm inflexible or I'm just not you know advanced enough or whatever it was and then as a teacher kind of a similar thing would happen where something would come out of my mouth and I would see something totally different and go like, is it me? Is it them?
00:37:12
Speaker
Why is this not working? Because I have this idea that this is just the best way to do it. It's the way that you'll get people to understand. We all did that. We all mimicked and we all like we're talking these things that really didn't make a lot of sense to us. So I think you're right. Like the reaction for a lot of folks is to go, there must be something wrong with me. And I think even from like a tactical point of view is to have a shift and say, actually, there's nothing wrong with me.
00:37:41
Speaker
There is nothing wrong with me. And if it doesn't work for me, it's not working for other people. How can I do this better? And or there's nothing wrong with me, but the process is incomplete, right? There there's something that I haven't potentially been given enough time to experience or this is, you know, new and therefore that is what's kind of fueling my experience or
00:38:04
Speaker
This really literally isn't right for me, and I need to do something else. But it's still going to be rooted in the idea that we are not somehow good enough, or we're somehow wrong, and the practice doesn't fit us. Because if you're having that experience, chances are other people are too, and they're wondering the same thing. Yeah. After teaching for a while, I became much less interested in fancy poses.
00:38:25
Speaker
and in acts of physical prowess in the practice and much more curious about the body and about the stories and about the processes of the body and how classes could kind of bring out those discoveries in terms of like, oh, you know, let's discover your hip joint. Let's discover your shoulder. Let's discover your spine. Let's discover your breath. And it became much more process oriented. And I think that when
00:38:53
Speaker
And my teaching shifted toward becoming more process oriented. My practice shifted toward becoming more process oriented. So it kind of shifted away from what it looked like toward what it felt like. And the questions rather than the answers, I found that the onus was lifted off of me to be good enough. The outcome was no longer attached to my self worth. The outcome was just another step in the process. Like, oh, this is where I am here. And oh, what happens if I do this or this?
00:39:19
Speaker
And whether or not we got into the peak pose or I got into the peak pose or whatever was was just like not even important anymore.
Using Invitational Language in Yoga
00:39:26
Speaker
So the idea of being invitational could potentially and tell me tell me what you think about this could potentially also be like an invitation into the process into each individual's process as a
00:39:39
Speaker
a process of inquiry, an adventure. What you just described, I'm like, yeah. When you start to become invitational, you stop seeing things as right or wrong or one way to do it or it doesn't work. I think you do naturally start to ask questions and you ask questions of your students and you hope that they answer it for themselves. And even again, I was going to say like tactically off of that,
00:40:03
Speaker
we can start to treat classes more like workshops. And I know that doesn't work in every single setting. Take from it what you will, but one of the things I really started doing was literally stopping and asking questions like, how did that go? Did everyone understand what I was asking you to feel in your body? First of all, did you feel it? Okay, if not, it's cool.
00:40:26
Speaker
did you even kind of get what we're going we're going with this like and you know what's funny is like back in the moment you know yeah i i started actually talking to my students and wanting them to answer me and i was like no this is not a rhetorical question like shake your head yes or no i really want i really want to know and and as and when i start when i started actually looking for like honestly like authentically like wanting to know what their experience was i would get
00:40:52
Speaker
different types of answers that weren't always just like, I got it, it was great, I loved it. And I became more and more curious myself as the teacher, as to like the diversity of experiences that my students started to feel more comfortable actually sharing with me because I think what I was coming off of me was that actually I am genuinely curious in your experience, I am genuinely curious in the diversity of experiences that may be
00:41:19
Speaker
happening in this room and I don't actually expect you to pat me on the back. I want to know like because I'm learning right alongside you right in this moment. We're not that different right now. And I think like not only does it take the onus off of us to have all the answers, but if we then can very
00:41:37
Speaker
clearly claim our spot as a guide that we are here to guide a an experience but the experience is yours as the student and so you tell me what the experience is and I can continue to guide and your experience is not right or wrong and if I'm trying to guide you towards a specific experience and it's not happening well then I get feedback to know to try something different right that what I've been trying
00:42:00
Speaker
It didn't work. And it doesn't have to be in this class. Like maybe it's a series or maybe you teach this class regularly. Well, you can go back and say, well, I know that was confusing last week. Let's try it again. I've got some new ideas. Yes. Yes. And I'm not saying you have to do this after every single pose because obviously that would be like difficult to do, manage or never have a blow. But I think like, especially as a set up in the class.
00:42:26
Speaker
teach one thing, one skill, teach it very well, focus in on it, and then get the feedback before you get into it, do the exploration before you get into it, and then if you wanna set up a flow, fine. The flip side of that is we can't be so worried about everything else then. We can't be like, oh, well, the skill was plank pose and like pushing and then get caught up because Warrior II didn't look perfect for quote unquote perfect for every student, right? Like I think the reality is
00:42:53
Speaker
And a tactical thing is to kind of let go because bodies are smart. Yeah. Like I think that's the other piece of this. Like bodies are intelligent. They are doing the best they can with what they've got in the moment. And so when we're trying to override every single piece of intelligence the body is presenting, we're not doing our students favors.
00:43:15
Speaker
Yeah, we're not smarter than our students' bodies. Right. So like, if we're like, if we're focusing on a skill and then, you know, other things, quote unquote, look out of whack and we don't have time to really break that down, then let it go. Because the body is doing the best it can. As long as the person's not in pain or experiencing like warning signals, right? In which we can often see like their facial expression.
00:43:37
Speaker
If they're breathing in a very tense or rapid way, those are signals that something might be wrong. But if nothing feels wrong, they're gonna fall over or anything, leave them be, it's fine. And that goes into our ideas around how injury and safety, that's probably a whole conversation I'm sure you had with somebody else.
00:43:56
Speaker
Well, no, I mean, it relates very much to the work that you're doing with us in creating courses for movement logic.
Intersections of Culture, Biodiversity, and Accessibility in Yoga
00:44:05
Speaker
And I guess this brings me to my last question that I wanted to ask you, which is,
00:44:11
Speaker
What is the intersection between cultural appropriation, biodiversity, accessibility, and your work as a teacher educator about the body, which you are doing explicitly with the movement logic tutorials? If you don't mind, I'd love to just reflect back based on our conversation thus far, like what I feel like might be one intersection.
00:44:34
Speaker
which is that when we create safe spaces for people to work with their
00:44:42
Speaker
own individual biology or their own unique bodies. One of the things that we're hopefully doing is creating a space in which those people feel safe enough to make the best decisions for themselves. So we use invitational language that conveys choice.
00:45:07
Speaker
And so maybe safety is less about specifics and it's less about joint angles and specific poses to do or not do, and much more about our attitude toward the people in front of us, toward the intelligence, the innate intelligence of their bodies. And how does that relate to cultural appropriation? I mean, I think I can see very clearly how it relates to accessibility and very clearly how it relates to biodiversity. But how does this attitude
00:45:37
Speaker
of invitational language this attitude of acceptance this attitude of really humility maybe as teachers relate to cultural appropriation well i think it takes into account many of the
00:45:50
Speaker
what I've learned about the practice of yoga with regards to discernment, with regards to ahimsa, discernment being viveka, and also satya, truthfulness. How can we honor yoga's philosophical roots by showing up in these ways? I think that we make space for truth.
00:46:12
Speaker
We make space for students to honor their own stories, their own truths, their own experiences, which are true for them. We practice non-harming or protection by creating a space in which people feel empowered to allow their own body's intelligence to maybe be the boss of what happens in that class, not us, the teacher, and then discernment.
00:46:37
Speaker
and making space for curiosity to go, what am I feeling right now? Is this okay? Do I want to do this differently? What happens if I do this instead of this? And not necessarily always in a way that like protects the body from injury, but also just as an expression of curiosity. And maybe I'd go as far to say joy, joy for the body that we've been blessed to have a life to live in, joy for the experience, essential experience of that body and movement.
00:47:04
Speaker
the positively reinforcing facts of taking care of ourselves so that we feel better, so that we continue to take care of ourselves. In other words, this has been a very enriching conversation for me, but I'd love to hear what, what, Jaycely, you, you've been working with us for a while. We love working with you and we think your work is so important.
00:47:20
Speaker
Would you say there is kind of this intersection between these areas that you specialize in and then your work with MovementLogic? I'm genuinely curious. Yeah, 100%. Yes. Yes. Okay. And there are so many things I could say, but I'll try to boil it down to just a few.
00:47:36
Speaker
And one of them, like we talked about, I think all of these three areas that you mentioned are really about us as teachers or people who curate experiences, whether like you're a studio owner or business owner. It's about examining our biases that we come in with, our assumptions that we come in with and how those assumptions either include people or exclude people or oppress people or are loving and compassionate.
00:48:02
Speaker
Right. So I don't I think cultural appropriation is a piece of that. I think biodiversity is a piece of that. I think accessibility and adaptability. That's all about like you as a teacher. What are the illusions? What are the Maya that you are coming in with? Blind spots. I think blind spots.
00:48:16
Speaker
right? Yeah, that you don't even see and that you don't even recognize that you're either pushing or pulling people away from you and the practices and what the practices themselves have to offer. Very cool. I think that's one big piece. I would be remiss if I didn't say that within the scientific community, there's a huge butting of heads with the idea of cultural appropriation because in the scientific community, I think this is a cultural thing within science, right?
00:48:43
Speaker
There is this tendency to discredit indigenous people and their practices unless they have gone through the wringer of scientific verification. And then the scientific community, what they do is they make that thing distinct. They'll say, oh, no, but we discovered it. We found it.
00:49:00
Speaker
And don't acknowledge that actually the basis of most scientific discoveries come from indigenous practices. Like even if we think about drugs, like drugs come from plant medicine that worked and then people have studied it and distilled it and now we create drugs out of it. So I think the same is true of other practices and it's happening more and more within yoga spaces. We see like breath practices being studied and then renamed and then there's now a founder.
00:49:28
Speaker
Right? Can you give an example? I mean, you don't have to name names. Yeah, well, no, there's like, if you think of Nadi Shodana, which is alternate nostril breathing, it has been named cardiac coherent breathing.
00:49:41
Speaker
So now when you go back and you look for scientific evidence of proof that Nadi showed them now works, you won't find it. You'll find cardiac coherence breathing works. Interesting. Do you see what I'm saying? So that now like there's a Western founder or it's based in like Western brilliance, not an indigenous brilliance.
00:50:04
Speaker
right, that has existed for thousands of years. Or when we talk about meditation, one of the biggest names that comes up is mindfulness and Jon Kabat-Zinn. And Jon Kabat-Zinn taught Buddhist meditation. He learned directly from Buddhist teachers and renamed it purposefully because he wanted to make it appeal to Westerners. This is well-documented, right? He in fact made a conscious decision to rename it.
00:50:28
Speaker
But when we talk about what's scientifically proven, it is Jon Kabat-Zinn's mindfulness that has been scientifically studied. So he gets the credit, right? So you're basically not good enough of a meditation teacher if you go to the East and you study with these Buddhist masters and you learn that same meditation technique. You're only good enough if you're certified by Jon Kabat-Zinn's organization because that is medically relevant and valuable.
00:50:55
Speaker
Thank you for painting that picture very clearly and I think that that now makes much more sense what you're saying about the culture of science and the way that science appropriates in a sense and the gates that are created through science and those who are gatekeeping. Thank you for sharing that. One other piece of cultural appropriation that sometimes gets missed and
00:51:25
Speaker
you know, I'm forgetting which my lovely colleague said this, but basically they said it's racism by another name. So we can't separate it from this idea of racism. So it is an impression. It is like, again, our biases coming in to this space. So we really need to like sit back and think, well, if we don't want to be racist, we need to really think about cultural appropriation as a piece of that too. And for, oh, you asked about the tutorials and how this all relates. Oh, yeah, yeah.
00:51:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think all of it relates. First of all, like what I love about the tutorials is that it is
00:51:58
Speaker
about individual exploration, right? We're giving like very general ideas that are somehow still specific, right? Like for the neck tutorial, what I loved is we talked about the neck directly and gave exercises for the neck directly. But we also talked about this holistic viewpoint of how the neck relates to the jaw, how the neck relates to the breath, how the, and right. And the pelvic floor, right? How the neck relates to walking, how the, so all these different parts of the body are working in tandem.
00:52:27
Speaker
And so we're saying, hey, you could be experiencing neck pain or neck issues and there might not be one solution because you kind of have to figure out if there is a specific reason you're experiencing it or maybe some generalized, a few generalized reasons. You can talk about some pain science and how pain isn't just rooted in the tissues. It's also rooted in the nervous system and our experiences and the trauma that we have and all of those things.
00:52:54
Speaker
I think that very much speaks to bio-individuality. I think that also starts to talk to accessibility, right? If you're experiencing neck pain, it could be because there have been some crazy stuff going on in the world right now. Maybe you're experiencing neck pain right now because we've just had like four shootings in the last 10 days. Yeah. Yep.
00:53:18
Speaker
Thank you so much for sharing the connection between these important topics, maybe some of the guiding mindsets and practices that we can start to adopt and take on to avoid cultural appropriation, to honor biodiversity, to make our offerings more accessible, and to actually help our students
00:53:43
Speaker
feel better in their bodies through, yes, a deeper understanding of the body, but then everything else that goes into making someone who they are leading to, you know, them having the experience that they're having in their body. So my last question before we end to actually, I'll ask the first one, what are you really excited about
Personal Reflections and Summer Excitement
00:54:06
Speaker
right now? And it can be anything.
00:54:09
Speaker
Anything you want to share? What am I really excited about? Oh my, what a good question. I'm excited for the summer. You're in New York. I'm in Alabama. It's already summertime here. So I'm like, we're finally getting some summer sun and I'm very excited to be like outside. And I, it's usually me who walks the dog most days. So I'm like, happy enough to bundle up. I could just throw on flip flops and like, it's so much easier, right? So I'm definitely excited for the weather.
00:54:36
Speaker
And, you know, I have been trying to take some more rest and some, like, more time off. So I'm really excited to, like, try and slow down a little bit where I can. I feel like I would say that and then things pick up. So I'm looking forward to trying to, like, live real real life, like not just online. Right. Real life. In person life. In person life.
00:55:04
Speaker
There's life online and then there's life in person. It turns out they're very different. They're very different lives. We joke, we like for two years, like we just went hard and we're like, when did all those people that were making sourdough bread, like we didn't get the memo that you're supposed to like take time off work and learn how to garden and make bread. All those people making sourdough bread. I know, I know. It's time for me to take my sourdough moment.
00:55:30
Speaker
You need a starter. You need some, what is it, yeast? I'm not sure. How do you make bread? I'm growing peppers and tomatoes and basil. And that's my version of sourdough bread. And I've been watching your bird video. Oh, yes. And the birds, they're growing themselves. I'm just watching.
00:55:49
Speaker
They're prolific, those house finches. All right, and finally, where can people find you and learn from you? Yeah, the best place to reach me is on Instagram. It's where I'm the most active and up-to-date. Cool. So my handle is at yogawalla, yoga, and then W-A-L-L-A. And then I do have a website. It's not as up-to-date, for sure, but it's yogawallainyc.com. Awesome, awesome. Can I ask, where does Walla come from?
00:56:19
Speaker
Yeah. Wala in Hindi is like a term that refers to someone that like does something. It's very general, but it can also mean specifically someone that sells something. Right. It doesn't, it doesn't have to be sell. It could just be like, this is like what I do, but it could sell. So, you know, if the, in India, like vegetables in, at least in my language are called bhaji in Hindi. So like the people selling vegetables on the street are called the bhaji wala.
00:56:48
Speaker
the people that like sell chai or call the chai wallas. Got it. Cool. You know, I'm glad I asked because I've often wondered about that. Yeah. And I don't I personally didn't love like I didn't want to call myself Yogi or Yogini to me that there's like a reverence and like a
00:57:03
Speaker
there's like a deeper level of commitment in that, like taking vows and like joining a specific lineage and like renouncing parts of your home life. And I didn't feel like that to me. It didn't feel right to me. So I was like, you know, what works? And I was like, well, it works. That's cool. That's cool. Thank you. You're welcome.
00:57:26
Speaker
Alright, and also I will add that Jaycil has partnered with us again for another tutorial. It is the Movement Logic hip and SI joint tutorial, so you may want to get on our mailing list so you be sure to hear about it. Alright, I feel like this has just been
00:57:47
Speaker
a wonderful and enriching and educational conversation for me and I hope you enjoyed it as well. Jason, thank you so much for joining. I know to you listeners that you can check out our show notes for some of the references that Jason mentioned and links to those references. You can also visit the Movement Logic website
00:58:07
Speaker
www.movementlogictutorials.com where you can get on our mailing list to be in the know about sales on our tutorials. You can also watch the video version of this episode. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us on the movement logic podcast. It helps us enormously. If you did like this episode, please subscribe.
00:58:24
Speaker
rate and review it in iTunes. We would be super appreciative of you if you would do that. And join us again next week for more movement logic and more of our loosely held opinions, strong muscles or strong opinions loosely held. Thank you so much.