Yoga, the Body, and Embodied Social Change is the first collection to gather together prominent scholars on yoga and the body. Using an intersectional lens, the essays examine yoga in the United States as a complex cultural phenomenon that reveals racial, economic, gendered, and sexual politics of the body. From discussions of the stereotypical yoga body to analyses of pivotal court cases,Yoga, the Body, and Embodied Social Change examines the sociopolitical tensions of contemporary yoga.

Because so many yogic spaces reflect the oppressive nature of many other public spheres, the essays in this collection also examine what needs to change in order for yoga to truly live up to its liberatory potential, from the blogosphere around Black womens health to the creation of queer and trans yoga classes to the healing potential of yoga for people living with chronic illness or trauma.

While many of these conversations are emerging in the broader public sphere, few have made their way into academic scholarship. This book changes all that. The essays in this anthology interrogate yoga as it is portrayed in the media, yoga spaces, and yoga as it is integrated in education, the law, and concepts of health to examine who is included and who is excluded from yoga in the West. The result is a thoughtful analysis of the possibilities and the limitations of yoga for feminist social transformation.

Beth Berila is professor of ethnic and womens studies at St. Cloud State University.

Melanie Klein is an associate professor of sociology and womens studies at Santa Monica College.

Chelsea Jackson Roberts is founder and director of yoga, literature, and art at Spelman College.

Introduction: Beth Berila, Whats the Link Between Feminism and Yoga?

Section 1: Chelsea Jackson Roberts, Inclusion/Exclusion in Yoga Spaces

Ch 1 Marcelle M. Haddix, In a Field of the Color Purple: Inviting Yoga Spaces for Black Womens Bodies
Ch 2 Jillian Ford, Im Feelin It.: Embodied Spiritual Activism as a Vehicle for Queer Black Liberation
Ch 3 Enoch H. Page, The Gender, Race, and Class Barriers Enclosing Yoga as a White Public
Space
Ch 4 Roopa Kaushik-Brown, Towards Yoga as Property
Ch 5 Kerrie Kauer, Yoga, Culture and Neoliberal Embodiment of Health
Ch 6 Carol Horton, Yoga is Not Dodgeball: Mind-Body Integration and Progressive Education

Section 2: Melanie Klein, The Intersection of Yoga, Body Image and Standards of Beauty

Ch 7 Diana York Blaine, Mainstream Representations of Yoga: Capitalism, Consumerism, and Control of the Female Body
Ch 8 Jennifer Musial, Work Off that Holiday Meal Ladies!: Body Vigilance and Orthorexia in Yoga Spaces
Ch 9 Sarah Schrank, Naked Yoga and the Sexualization of Asana
Ch 10 Maria Velazquez, Reblog If You Feel Me: Love, Blackness, and Digital Wellness
Ch 11 Kimberly Dark, Fat Pedagogy in the Yoga Class

Section 3: Beth Berila, Yoga as Individual and Collective Liberation

Ch 12 Thalia González and Lauren Eckstrom, From Practice toPraxis: Mindful Lawyering for Social Change
Ch 13 Punam Mehta, Embodiment Through purusha and prakrti: Feminist Yoga as a Revolution from Within
Ch 14 Steffany Moonaz, Yoga and Disability
Ch 15 Beth S. Catlett and Mary Bunn, Yoga as Embodied Feminist Praxis: Healing and Community-Based Responses to Violence
Ch 16 Ariane Balizet and Whitney Myers, Yoga, Postfeminism, and the Future
Ch 17 Jacoby Ballard and Karishma Kripalani, Queering Yoga: An Ethic of Social Justice

Conclusion: Chelsea Jackson Roberts and Melanie Klein, (Un)Learning Oppression Through Yoga: The Way Forward