Towards a Critical Embodiment of Decolonizing Yoga

Abstract

As a South Asian (or Desi) American yoga practitioner and descendant from an upper-caste Hindu-Punjabi family, I have witnessed the simultaneous erasure and commodified appropriation of my ancestral spiritual traditions by European and US-based settler colonial, white supremacist cultures. In an effort to reclaim healing practices for personal and community healing, I have sought guidance in decolonizing my ancestors' spiritual traditions. However, this journey has not been a one-way voyage of merely seeing my ancestors as perpetual victims of colonial misappropriation. It has also meant seeing my ancestors as perpetrators of oppressive harm and awakening to the realization that in order for these healing traditions to be purposed toward embodied freedom for all of humanity and Mother Earth, they must be wholly decolonized from the interlocking logics of settler colonialism, racialized slavery and Orientalism (Smith 2012), as well as from the structures that uphold Hindutva and Brahmanical supremacist ideologies. To attain true spiritual enlightenment as a yogi, I see it as my dharma (or duty) to: contemplate the contradicting narratives of the colonizer and colonized that are yoked within my ancestry; correct the misrepresentation of Desis as eternal victims of colonial brutality; and, purpose my spiritual practice toward politicized action against state and structural violence.