With systemic racism and oppression at the forefront of discussion, I am continuing to educate myself, reflect, and am now taking the next steps. The first of many steps I’ll be taking starts with no longer using the term Namaslay.
As part of the learning process about racism and my own white privilege, I’m continually asking myself where I have played a role in upholding systemic oppression. I’ve realized that the term Namaslay, derived from India’s Namaste and the LGBTQ Black and Latinx communities, is cultural appropriation.
For anyone scratching their heads and thinking, “But you didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” I’ve learned that intent doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t mean to offend anyone. It was still offensive because I am a white passing person using terms from communities to which I do not belong for my own gain.
I take responsibility for the cultural appropriation of Namaslay in my business and branding, and I am deeply sorry.
I apologize that it took this long to understand that using Namaslay was cultural appropriation. Over the course of the last two or so years, I’ve had a few people reach out and urge me to consider that Namaslay was cultural appropriation, and I am ashamed to admit that I justified the name without taking the time to educate myself, because I thought that 1) intent mattered, and 2) I understood it to be a very grey area. Wasn’t this whole country just a melting pot of cultures?, I rationalized. I now understand I was wrong. I apologize for taking this long to understand where I went wrong, and I apologize to the people who initially reached out, for not starting my education then.
In reading So You Want to Talk About Race, I began to develop a better understanding of the meaning of cultural appropriation. I wanted to continue my education, so I booked multiple one to one consulting calls with experts from different races, professions and backgrounds to talk further about cultural appropriation. I also took an Affirmative Action workshop by Lattice Hudson and an Anti-Racism for Wellness Professionals course by Chrissy King. I wanted to learn and truly understand, so that I could do better moving forward.
The overwhelming majority of people I spoke with affirmed that using Namaslay was cultural appropriation, and a minority of the people I spoke with did not feel this was cultural appropriation. The more I learn about cultural appropriation, the more it seems that’s how it can go - Some people will be offended, and some people from the cultures one has appropriated from will not. And at the end of the day, as author Ijeoma Oluo says in So You Want to Talk About Race, you can do whatever is legal, but you are the one who has to go to bed at night feeling good about what you’re doing. The more I learned, the more I felt I was in the wrong. Here are the steps I am taking:
My book. I have spoken with Victory Belt Publishing, the publishing house responsible for printing my book Namaslay. While I feel the content of the book is a great resource for those interested in a high level overview of yoga, a closer look at asana, and those looking for inspiration (it is also my memoir, about my struggle with Lyme Disease, depression and anxiety), I believe the title needs to be changed. The publishing house explained to me that changing the title and printing books with a new title is a cost they were not willing to incur and offered to simply not reprint any more books after the inventory sells out. While I am disappointed they are not willing to make a sacrifice for the right thing to do, I am taking this option. The book Namaslay will not be reprinted after inventory sells out. Until it is sold out, 20% of my personal royalties will be donated to The Trevor Project and Goonj, equally. The Trevor Project provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer & questioning (LGBTQ) young people under 25. Goonj is based in India and focuses on the dignity of their recipients as they work to uplift disadvantaged communities in India. They are currently doing a lot right now for COVID relief, and they also support natural disaster relief, infrastructure, access to water, education, menstrual health information (not available to many menstruating girls in India), environment and sanitation. This is the first of many forms of giving moving forward. (UPDATE: 12.31.20 - below is proof of donation.)
Teacher Trainings. The teacher training we run will be changed from Namaslay Yoga Teacher Training to a yet-to-be-determined name, but in the interim we are using YBC Yoga Teacher Training. We are grateful and excited to be partnering with Margo Francois to work with us to expand our curriculum to include diversity and inclusion in the yoga teaching world, and she will be a part of our teacher training staff moving forward. As an aside, if you are a yoga studio owner, or run yoga teacher trainings and are looking for additional education and workshop offerings, Margo will be launching an extremely comprehensive online course on anti-racism in the yoga world in the coming months, so I encourage you to follow her so you don’t miss it.
Merchandise. Namaslay merchandise will no longer be sold. We are exploring options for fabric donation.
Yoga and Fitness Studio. The yoga and fitness studio I opened last year will be changed from Namaslay Studios to a yet-to-be-determined name. This name change will take place by December 1, 2020. The reason why it isn’t happening sooner is because I want to be intentional about the name change, and I don’t think it should be rushed. It will also take some time to get the logistics of the website, signage, and paperwork done. A part of me hesitated on the name change, for two reasons. One, it is going to be costly, and I risk going out of business, since my business is already financially suffering due to COVID. Two, I fear that changing the name looks like I am erasing my mistake rather than owning up to it. In the end, I have decided that the potential dissolve of the business is a risk I am willing to take (and I acknowledge the white privilege in that statement). Second, giving back and doing better will be a much more integral part of what this business does moving forward and I’m looking forward to sharing those initiatives soon. Hopefully the action and effort will prove that although the name of the commercial space will change, I will not be wiping my hands and forgetting about cultural appropriation as I move forward.
Teaching. The next piece, for me, was trying to decide if I should even continue to teach yoga. Since we live in a capitalist society, I do need to earn money, but in learning about cultural appropriation, it was challenging to wrap my head around how teaching yoga as a white passing person was okay. I thought back to my own yoga teaching education, originally with Mark Ansari, a man of Indian descent and a direct student of Pattabhi Jois. I had really done my research and wanted to learn from someone who really knew their stuff, and Mark Ansari fit the bill. I trained in Ashtanga yoga, for my 200hr training. My additional 300hr education was on the more subtle aspects of yoga, and was done at Asheville Yoga Center, with a variety of teachers, mostly white, although a few People of Color, and I remember one specifically from India who spoke about yoga in the west. She essentially told us that true yoga is not done at a studio or online, but that what we are doing in a western studio is yoga-like, and since it is mostly just asana (yoga poses), it is only one piece of true yoga. She basically said that if you’re introducing people to some aspect of it, then that is still a good thing, especially if they take the initiative to deepen their own yoga education, although we have to be cognizant of the fact that it’s not true yoga, and that should be explained to the student.
When I think about how my teaching has evolved, I know that I am intentionally anatomy-based when I teach. What I mean by this is that the students I see often have very typically western lifestyles (obviously, since I teach in the west). Nearly all of my students sit for long periods of time at a desk, and therefore many suffer from back pain, under active gluteal and hamstring muscles, under active core muscles, shortened front body muscles, and lengthened upper back and rotator cuff muscles. My sequencing tends to activate the under active muscles that people are dealing with, and lengthen the shortened muscles, often resulting in better postural alignment, movement patterns, and decreased tension so they feel physically better in their bodies. The majority of the people I see also often have high stress lifestyles, so in addition to sequencing for their physical bodies, I also focus on pranayama (breath control), and stress management through weaving in messaging throughout the class that stems from the Patanjali’s Eight Limbs., although I acknowledge that I don’t always explain the roots of these practices and themed messages.
The teacher trainings I run aim to make asana class more inclusive - we offer high level modules on yoga for amputees, yoga for people with generalized anxiety, yoga for seniors, yoga for pregnancy, yoga for athletes, and more. This is all so far from the traditional Ashtanga I learned that in thinking about it, I felt like maybe once again I was culturally appropriating by changing the study of asana. Even though it was well intentioned, after all - I just wanted to make western yoga classes more accessible to people, we know now that intention doesn’t matter when it comes to cultural appropriation.
In my consultations with various people speaking about cultural appropriation, it came up that you have to ask yourself: Who are you harming and who are you helping?
In thinking about this over the last month, I shared a bit about this on my Stories, and had a number of responses saying how much the instruction I offered had been physically or mentally helpful to them. As far as who I was harming, I have been seeing online that a number of people do not feel white and white passing people should be teaching yoga.
After much consideration, I feel the way I teach is helping more than it is hurting, but I can do better. I have decided that I will continue to teach, and continue to sequence the way I do, because I think the anatomical sequence design is very helpful to those who take class with me. The teacher training modules on accessibility will remain the same, because I think they serve an impactful purpose of making western group yoga asana classes more accessible. However, I acknowledge that I need to do a better job about giving credit to the roots of my yoga study. Honoring those roots include more integration of Sanskrit names for poses, talking more about the yogic philosophy I weave into classes, and underscoring the connection of that messaging to life off the mat, to help my students understand that yoga asana is just one small piece to a broader, more comprehensive set of disciplines that define yoga.
I know that not everyone is going to be happy with these decisions. Some people may feel what I am doing is not enough, and others may feel like it didn’t need to be done in the first place. I’m still learning, so I know I will make mistakes as I continue, but I feel it’s important to show up and mess up, rather than to not show up at all. After much thought, education and discussion, these feel like the right first steps. My education, self-reflection and desire to do better for a more just world doesn’t end here.
