You’ve probably heard of sportswashing and greenwashing, but what about ‘yogawashing’? India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi stands accused of using yoga to distract from the alleged crimes of his right-wing nationalist government.
In recent years, a growing number of yoga practitioners have begun connecting their practice to global struggles for justice. Among them is Sheena Sood, who co-founded Yogis for Palestine, an initiative that brings together teachers, students, and communities across the world in solidarity with Palestinians. Through collective healing, fundraising, and political education, Yogis for Palestine challenges the idea that yoga can or should exist outside of politics. In this conversation, Sheena speaks about duty, resistance, and the power of yoga as a tool for liberation.
—Excerpt from the magazine
Read the issues of our digital magazine featuring authentic yoga practices, social justice insights, and tools for conscious teachers and practitioners.
In this episode of the Equitable Wellness Podcast, Sheena Sood, PhD — activist scholar, yoga teacher, and co-founder of Yogis for Palestine — unpacks the shadow side of yoga, from its roots in war propaganda to its modern-day appropriation by states and militaries. We discuss Omwashing, a term she coined, and explore how to reclaim yoga for justice, ethics, and collective healing.
—The Equitable Wellness Podcast
Explore equitable practices in holistic health and healing arts: how spas, retreat centers, holistic practitioners, and luxury services incorporate collective liberation. This podcast is perfect for business owners, artists, personal brands, coaches, and service providers destined to find one another in solidarity for justice and healing as one.
Join us as we speak to Sheena Sood PhD about decolonizing yoga and how yoga has been used in violent institutions.
—World Pulse Podcast
Our goal is to increase the accessibility of international relations to students and listeners. To bring understanding and education on topics without listeners needing IR or formal education prerequisites. We hope that our guests can bring an educational and unique perspective in a creative space.
How can something like yoga, that is meant to be peaceful and focused on meditation and breath, be weaponized? How has it been co-opted by the far-right, colonizer projects, and Zionists? How does this show up in our yoga spaces and what can we do to address it? Dr. Sheena Sood shares her insights.
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Sheena shares her perspective on the situation in Palestine and the reactions in the yoga world after October 7. She explains why this response of “om-washing” is not unexpected, and how we as yoga practitioners, teachers, and studios can counter harmful narratives to support Palestine. Sheena also has some words of encouragement and motivation for those of us doing the work and feeling exhausted, so be sure to tune in for some powerful insights.
Sheena gives incredible insight and uncomfortable facts to direct our attention, contemplation and action towards the “deeply unfree world” that we all participate in.
We dig into the important topic and difficult reality of the oppressive systems in power along with the responsibility yoga practitioners have to examine and question them if we sincerely wish to shift the collective towards liberation and embodied freedom for all.
—A Curious Yogi Podcast
I’m a curious yogi who went from a depressed addict to living in the Himalayas of India. From fashion stylist to charity founder and from cattle ranchers daughter to happy vegan. Anything is possible!
This lecture was recorded for the SOAS Centre of Yoga Studies on the 3rd of May, 2023. Watch on YouTube here.
Omwashing Yoga: The Far-Right’s Weaponization of Spirituality Toward Ethnonationalism by Dr. Sheena Sood
We often hear about yoga’s deployment in corporate settings, educational institutions, and elitist networks. However, in recent years, we have also witnessed a global uptick of yoga’s deployment by far-right governments and political institutions.
Omwashing Yoga: The Far-Right’s Weaponization of Spirituality Toward Ethnonationalism brings a critical lens to the use of yoga by far-right political forces. To make sense of how yoga and mindfulness programs are routinely deployed by government and authoritarian leaders in police academies, detention facilities, prisons, militaries, and law enforcement programs, I use a critical feminist and decolonial lens, as well as a combination of archival research, content analysis, and autoethnography as a yoga teacher, to explore how Indian, Israeli, and US state institutions co-opt Asian spiritual traditions to advance their cultural and political agendas. Peeling back the sociological, historical, and political roots and consequences of the decision to militarize yoga in these contexts, I examine the ethical stakes, political purposing, and consumption of yoga amidst its widespread notions of purity, peace, and positive health. By using yoga to sanitize their reputation, I argue that far-right regimes are allied in a practice of omwashing, or in using yoga as an imperial, colonial and ethnonationalist tool to divert the public gaze from their supremacist agendas.
This research illuminates how the depiction of yoga as a “peaceful” practice that can be deployed to help soldiers combat “stress” and cultivate “calmness” serves to promote the dangerous practice of “spiritual bypassing” and legitimize state-sanctioned violence against the marginalized “other.” By using yoga to sanitize their reputation, these far-right regimes are allied in a practice of omwashing, or in using yogic culture as a colonial and ethnonationalist tool that diverts the public gaze from their supremacist agendas.
Bibliography
May 2023. “Omwashing Yoga: Weaponizing Spirituality Toward Ethnonationalism,” SOAS University of London Centre of Yoga Studies, London, England.
Rawlf interviews yoga teacher and independent scholar Sheena Sood about ways to decolonize yoga, embody community-based yoga, and Sheena’s critique of the militarization of yoga and her support for political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal and the MOVE organization in Philadelphia.
—No Quarter Buffalo Podcast
No Quarter is an anti-fascist podcast created in so-called Buffalo, NY: anti-racist, anti-colonial, feminist, revolutionary, leftist, and egalitarian.
In our interview this week, Matthew speaks with sociologist Sheena Sood about the hubris of Hindu nationalism as its yoga-boosting ministers show their pious ineptitude, telling their gasping citizens to stop being crybabies and consider drinking holy cow urine against COVID.
What about when other supposed zealots show their sell-out colors?
—Conspirituality Podcast
Conspirituality is a study of converging right-wing conspiracy theories and faux-progressive wellness utopianism.
