Susanna Barkataki
OPEN DEMOCRACY - 13 July 2015
As an Indian woman living in the US I’ve often felt uncomfortable in
many yoga spaces. At times, such as when I take a $25.00 yoga class by a
well-known teacher who wants to “expose us to the culture by chanting
Om to start class“ and her studio hangs the Om symbol in the wrong
direction, my culture is being stripped of its meaning and sold back to
me in forms that feel humiliating at best and dehumanizing at worst.
It
took me going to India to really connect with the roots I was seeking
on the mat in yoga studios. As I walked the streets of Shimla’s
legendary markets I learned that Indians had been forbidden to tread the
main thoroughfares.
It was here that I started to apprehend the
true meaning of colonization. Did you know that Yoga and Ayurveda were
banned in India under British rule and colonization?
The practices
millions of Westerners now turn to for alternative health and wellness
therapies were intentionally eradicated from parts of India to the point
that lineages were broken and thousand-year old traditions lost.
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