For all its supposed zen benefits and promise to connect practitioners with their inner Buddhas, yoga remains, for the most part, targeted toward already-sculpted women with the cash to burn on pricey classes. In addition to being one of the most privileged forms of fitness, it's also one of the whitest, at least in this country: One woman was so surprised by the presence of a black person in her yoga class she was forced to pen an entire confessional about her feelings for XOJane.
I thought about how even though yoga comes from thousands of years of south Asian tradition, it’s been shamelessly co-opted by Western culture as a sport for skinny, rich white women... I realized with horror that despite the all-inclusivity preached by the studio, despite the purported blindness to socioeconomic status, despite the sizeable population of regular Asian students, black students were few and far between. And in the large and constantly rotating roster of instructors, I could only ever remember two being black.
As a long-practicing yogi, the author mused at length at what she could have done "to help." The Internet's response to the article was swift and gleefully derisive, but apparently, it did get some wheels turning. Earlier this week, we received an email from a tipster alerting us to a class offered at Shambhala Yoga and Dance Center in Prospect Heights: "Brown Sugar: Yoga for Folks of Color with Calia" it said. "This will be a sweet, fun-filled, open level practice for brown folks. Come lift each other up through movement, breath, and meditation as we practice in a supportive community."
The tipster who sent the email was not amused. "Apparently, segregated yoga is a hot new thing in Brooklyn? The FUCK?" she wrote.
But teacher Calia Marshall tells us her decision to create the class wasn't necessarily a response to the XOJane piece, though she does acknowledge it may have played a role subconsciously. The only aspect of the class that sets it apart from the studio's other offerings, she said, is that it is specifically directed at people of color.
"The people showing up are mostly white—that says to me there's an accessibility issue, a barrier there," said Marshall, who herself identifies as a "person of color" and has been teaching yoga for 12 years. Asked whether she's worried that offering a class for a particular racial group smacks of segregation, she insisted that the point is not to exclude anyone, but to make a special effort to include others beyond the the stereotypical WASP.
"It's up to each of us as individuals to be able to self-identify—if someone self-identifies as a person of color, they're welcome to be in that space," she said. "Every class we have is open to everyone. This one was created to open a doorway for some new people to show up."
Marshall asserts that yoga has a marketing problem, and that minorities might feel unwelcome attending a class so obviously targeted at wealthy white women.
"Yoga classes are really expensive and not accessible to working class or low income folks," Marshall says. "I've been in this community for a long time; I don’t see myself reflected in the community very often."
Still, Sunday's class doesn't solve the problem of socioeconomic inequality: The session, which will run from 3 to 4:30, will cost $16. As for marketing, Marshall said she's hung some flyers around the neighborhood, as well as included the information in the studio's email newsletter. The class will be a one-off, but she hopes to hold more in the future. Ideally, she said, she wants to spread the message that yoga isn't just for one group, but for everyone.
"People are going to leave the class knowing that yoga is a practice for them as well," she said.
