What does a yoga teacher look like to you? Are they a particular size, gender, ethnicity or skin colour? When I rediscovered yoga 10 years ago in gyms, studios and through social media, I, for one, know that I didn’t see my culture represented.
My family are from the hill stations in North India, by the foothills of the Himalayas, and I was raised in the Hindu tradition in which chanting in Sanskrit and spinning up Ayurvedic concoctions were everyday rituals. This was the yoga I knew.
One of the reasons I haven’t seen my people represented in the world of yoga is because it mostly still is so far removed from its origins, and its truth. For context, yoga was made illegal by the British in its homeland of India during the former's colonial rule, from 1858-1947. In recent decades, the Western world has become obsessed with yoga asana (physical postures, one element of the Eastern practice), with many of its other elements, such as yoga's ethical framework, mostly set aside. (It only takes a speedy YouTube search for 'yoga classes' to see that the dominant yoga personalities in 2021 are white, and the classes are movement focussed, with little mention of the mind-body-soul connection.)
A decade ago, when I started to re-connect with the practice, something didn’t sit right when I heard teachers chanting and nonchalantly mispronouncing mantras – the same mantras that my Grandma would beautifully sing with me, as a child.
This feeling was a deep one of exclusion from my own heritage. I desperately wanted to learn from someone who represented me, who could show that desis could lead, publically, on the rituals that are so ingrained in our upbringings, and so interlaced with our souls. So, I decided to try to do something about it, and trained to teach, myself. As an Indian yoga teacher, I strive to share the richness of the practices entwined with my culture and to uplift other teachers with whom I share this heritage.
To that end, I have pulled together a list of brilliant London-based, South Asian yoga teachers. Read the stories below, follow this lot on social media and, perhaps, book in for an IRL or Zoom class.