As we head into spring and summer the inevitable slew of wellness and yoga festivals start to jostle for our support and attention. Personally I started to turn down working at these and attending as my awareness grew to how they didn’t use their position for positive change and instead of employing a wealth and diversity of presenters they sadly still were predominantly young white women – not to mention the fact most festivals unethically do not even pay you to work…
I was recommended a book called White Utopias which isn’t an easy or quick read but is good for addressing our blinkers and bias. It further highlights these wellness festivals as being problematically predominantly white in line up and audiences and how they create deep exclusion. They have contradictory race relations where an artificial, engrossing environment is created for people to connect over their desire to find themselves, have personal growth and new experiences with like minded people – in other words, a created, intoxicating white utopia.
We are surrounded by cultural appropriation in yoga and see it in the plethora of goddess events and sister circles all taken from indigenous tribes, groups and ancient ritual that isn’t rooted in Woolton, Widnes or Walthamstow. Plant medicines and gurus, shamanism and palo santo, a never ending cloaking of ourselves in faux spirituality. Are we so lost, so desperate to belong that we need this stolen religion, belief and ritual? Are we even going to acknowledge the damage of appropriating other cultures for exoticism and entertainment? And from a yoga perspective, isn’t the very heart of the practice learning to accept and be with ourselves not constantly seek distractions and satisfactions outside of ourselves?
Let’s make this the year to take action and make change by simply not promoting or attending events that cherry pick from deeply significant cultural and ancestral origins. It’s a start.
