Ashtanga Intersections: Racism as a Spiritual Obstacle

From spiritual bypass, to cultural appropriation and settler colonialism, to whiteness and white supremacy, awareness of the ways our industry participates in interconnected systems of oppression increases every day. With this awareness comes a deep responsibility to learn, unlearn, and engage in our work with accountability. The onus of responsibility to dismantle interconnected systems of oppression, with racism as a core system, lies not only ‘out there’ in the world of law, politics, and governance, but within each and every one of us.

In an industry that offers so many tools that can be used to mindfully address injustice, yet frequently avoids facing and discussing these issues directly, we are challenged to ask ourselves difficult questions. Can we, for example, continue to think we’ll attain moksha, or liberation in this lifetime, if we continue to engage in these practices without understanding how our approach is bound up in whiteness, white supremacy, and settler colonialism? As Kristen Trudo has posed, what happens when we approach racism as a spiritual obstacle? How might we relate to it differently?