TF05: Looking Within: Understanding Power and Privilege in the Spaces You Hold

Speaker bio: Melissa Shah, MPH, RYT-500, C-IAYT

As yoga professionals, it is our responsibility to be aware of disparities experienced in wellness and healthcare spaces. This session will guide attendees to reflect on their own positionality as well as the power and privilege they carry in the spaces they hold. For example, wellness facilities may employ exclusionary tactics that either knowingly or unknowingly create barriers that prevent people of color and other marginalized folks from accessing them. Yoga therapy programs in the West also have room to grow in preparing trainees to apply yoga therapy in the context of a culture rooted in systemic oppression.

Understanding our own power and privilege as yoga therapists can have a profoundly positive effect on the populations we support—and help us to better understand how to apply yoga therapy tools in a culturally responsive manner. This session draws on resources such as Fariha Róisín’s book Who Is Wellness For? and Dr. Gail Parker’s work on ethnic and race-based stress and trauma.

Through yoga philosophy concepts from the Yoga Sutras as well as yoga practice and individual reflection, we will also explore how we can show up in both individual and group therapeutic settings in ways that are rooted in equity, clarity, and collective liberation. Pranayama, meditation, and journaling will facilitate an examination of identities and how they influence our perception of the world.

Learning objectives:

1. Understand how to facilitate individual and group therapeutic settings with respect for equity and collective liberation.
2. Analyze the privilege and power held by yoga therapists and practitioners through self-reflection and identity mapping.
3. Apply yoga philosophy concepts to explore the complexities of identity in contemporary society.

Your purchase gives you access to the recorded session listed below (audio/slides)—plus .5 CE credit.