A 12-hour online PodCourse with Siân Hawthorne, Senior Lecturer at SOAS University of London.

This PodCourse is the first in a series entitled, The Margins of Modern Yoga taught by Siân Hawthorne, Senior Lecturer at SOAS University of London. This PodCourse is 100% pre-recorded and the course material can be accessed at anytime, from anywhere. This PodCourse focuses specifically on ‘Yoga as Transformative Practice‘ and is divided into three modules:

Module 1: Biopower, Normativity, and Whiteness

Module 2: Normativity, Gender, and Abjection in Modern Yoga

Module 3: Selling Spirituality: Yoga in an age of Neoliberalism.

Each module includes:

• A 1-hour pre-recorded lecture.
• 3 hours of self-guided study material.
• A 15-minute virtual quiz to test comprehension of all the material in this module.

This programme will take place on the YSO website (the online study platform within SOAS University of London). By submitting payment for this PodCourse, your application will be processed by SOAS University of London administration. Access details will be sent to you once enrolment administration is complete.

A Certificate of Completion will be provided to those that successfully pass all of the assessment material in the PodCourse. 

PodCourse Description

Modern yoga as practiced in the West is an embodied practice that claims to improve physical and mental wellbeing, often connected to spiritual transformation. However much it is both experienced and marketed as a tool for individual empowerment and transformation, however much claims circulate that “yoga is for everybody”, Modern Yoga’s idealisations of the yoga body, and the demographics of its participants and teachers, establish a set of norms that may be exclusionary and alienating to communities who are unlikely or unable to conform to these idealisations.

This PodCourse will examine through a variety of theoretical lenses how body norms function in terms of race, gender and disability to exclude and include certain populations. We will think through how to challenge the body norms of Modern Yoga so that those placed at the margins can make true the claim that “yoga is for everyone”. We will be particularly concerned to ask questions about cultural appropriation, racism, and ableism and to try to offer some answers to how Yoga can be a force for social and political transformation and justice when the margins are centred.

Learning Outcomes

The learning outcomes anticipated for this course are:

• Understand the ways in which Modern Yoga establishes body norms that may be exclusionary.
• Come to understand the arguments concerned with cultural appropriation in the context of Yoga and why these matter.
• Understand the connections between concepts of race, gender and disability in relation to norms.
• Challenge discriminatory practices that prevent access and engagement with Yoga.
• Recognise Yoga as a tool for social and political transformation.