Jivana Heyman 09:50:23
Hi everyone, its Jivana I just want to come on for a moment and thank our sponsor offering tree. They're an all in one easy to use community back business that saves you time, energy and money as a Yoga teacher. Offering tree allows you to create a website in less than 30 minutes. Plus you get a discount to accessible Yoga. Just go to offering tree.com backslash accessible Yoga to get your discount today. Okay, here's our episode.
Anjali Rao 09:50:53
Welcome to the love of Yoga podcast. I'm your host, Anjali Rao. This podcast explores the teachings of Yoga for self and collective transformation. We dive into how spirituality and philosophy can ignite social change. I share conversations with folks who are on the front lines of justice and liberatory movements, thought leaders, change makers, and healers.
Hello, everyone, welcome to the love Yoga podcast. I'm your host, Anjali Rao. March is noted as the Women's History Month. And in honor of that observance, I wanted to share some insight into women gender, and Yoga history. This is a huge topic, the history of Yoga goes back to 3500 to 4000 years. So I will go into a few specific questions. But before that, I wanted to share my own personal story of how I got interested in this topic. It started with an Instagram post from a very popular and well respected Yoga teacher who said that it was the West that democratized Yoga in some way by making it okay for women to practice. In other words, superstitions and traditions kept ancient women from practicing Yoga. And until the 20th century, he said, Yoga was mainly practiced and taught by men. Now that made me think Is that true? Was it the West that liberated women from practicing and teaching Yoga? Are there women and non-binary practitioners and teachers in Yoga history? And if they're a part of Yoga history, why don't we know of them? And if they're not a part of Yoga history, why not? There are four big reasons why we have not heard of many ancient Yogi's or Shikaras ancient femme non-binary Women in Yoga history. And I would like to unpack what these four are, and also share some highlights of each Yoga history period as it relates to gender. The first being patriarchy, patriarchy operating as a part of the caste system. Second, legitimacy for the written word. Third, a colonized rendering of history. Fourth productiveness of Yoga as asana. Let's look at the first one. Patriarchy in a land when goddess worship is traced back more than 5000 years, and even to this day, is worshipped with great reverence Bhakti Where are the women? The femme in the lineages and traditions of Yoga? This is a big question. In order to look at this big question, we also need to come to a shared understanding that Yoga is not only Asana, but also multi dimensional systems of knowledge and explorations in the nature of consciousness, liberation and transcendence. This question will lead hours to get into the complexities of gender because a gender as a social construct exists on a spectrum be the expansiveness of the teachings of Yoga itself. Because Yoga of the Upanishads Vedanta is very different from the Yoga of the Tantra, Buddhist, Jaina, and the hatha traditions, which is different from the Yoga of Patanjali. I thought it will be useful to share why women and gender expansive folks and teachers are not as well known or regarded as influential as their cis men counterparts. So let's look at the first reason. Patriarchy as a system, patriarchy sets in as migrant nomadic groups settle into land ownership, agriculture and cultivation of crops. The pervasiveness of patriarchy was and continues to be the most important and almost invisible factor that shapes all the realms and in all social cultural action I'll make spiritual dimensions 3500 years ago, the Vedic people, the people who compose the Vedas, the earliest compositions of Yoga, bring in early Vedic Sanskrit and establish the Varna Jothi system or more known as the caste system, a social stratification of people based on occupation, class and clan, which progressively becomes more rigid. For more on the caste system and its manifestations, please refer to my two previous conversations with them we already saw them more recent that Rajan and Prachi Patankar. During the Vedic period, the Brahmins the scholars or the priests conduct sacrificial rituals yagna was the women were born into the Brahmin Vida are necessary to be a part of the rituals, but it is the husbands or fathers who are the primary tradition and lineage holders. Even though some of the hymns in the Rigveda the most ancient VEDA have been attributed to Brahma, Denise, and Rishi cars are sages, such as Gargi Maitri Lopamudra, who are referred as learned sages in their own right. Their mentions are footnotes notable mentions buried in the magnum opus of the Vedas. They are in relationship to the men as wives or daughters of sages. They're not the focus of the texts. In the Vedas are references and allusions made to Queer identities the deities for example, Agni, the deity of fire is sometimes portrayed as having a relationship with Soma, a deity of the moon. It is during this time that Sanskrit emerges as the language of the elite few and that means the Brahmins, the scholars are the priests and SHA three as the Warriors. The local or the vernacular languages remains a part of oral traditions, often matrilineal and or matriarchal in origin. They are not written down, and thus not accorded legitimacy does the vast majority of these rural traditions are dismissed as folklore. More research is being done now and needs to be amplified. So this goes back to the second reason why we don't know as many ancient women in Yoga history, because legitimacy or credibility is attributed to the written word, which is the domain of the cis-het Brahman man until the 20th century. Now, this is a vast simply simplification of a complex time, wherever many clashes between cars for dominance, but since we are talking about gender and Yoga history, the brahminical patriarchy that emerges during this time, which is later elaborated in the Dharma shastras, such as the minor Dharma shastra, or what is popularly known as the Manusmriti remains in Yoga, as descendants and students of Brahman gurus become influential 1000s of years later. Simultaneously, during this period, there were also more democratic, less aesthetic traditions of the adivasis from the diverse and unique tribes that are rural in origin, rather than in the urban centers. Now, these less ascetic, more democratic more earth based traditions, Goddess worshipping traditions, later coalesce as Tantra. In these traditions, and lineages, Shakti, the divine feminine is revered. Women were teachers in these traditions and practiced freely. Hi,
Jivana Heyman 09:59:20
everyone, I just want to pop in here really quick and remind you about our sponsor Offering Tree. As Yoga teachers, we'reour own business managers, website, designers and producers, it's a lot. And offering tree offers an all in one platform that makes it easy to succeed while we're doing all the things. And I just like to say that through this partnership with the love of Yoga podcast offering tree has shown that it's committed to supporting accessibility and equity in the Yoga world. Offering tree is a public benefit corporation and they're driven by a mission of wellness accessibility, which we share with them that accessible Yoga. As an offering tree user, you'll get to join a supportive educational community. And you'll also get free webinars with top experts in wellness and entrepreneurship. And of course, you get a discount. So go to offering tree.com backslash accessible Yoga to learn more, and to get your discount. Okay, let's go back to the episode.
Anjali Rao 10:00:19
Around the 10th century onwards, the Yoga knees of tantra Under Shaivite traditions made their awe inspiring appearance literally awe and sometimes even fright, for they were said to have sent these supernatural powers of flight of seeing future and the past of shape shifting and morphing from one form to the other. They rejected societal norms, they were considered healers. They were powerful and dangerous. They both protected and destroyed, and even today have temples dedicated to them in India, like the chow set yogini temple, but during the so called Classical period of Yoga, when the sutras were composed by Patanjali but tangerines Yoga Sutras, the Brahmin and the Koreas woman's position was predominantly Maya to the men in her life, her spiritual and intellectual life was connected to her expressions of chastity, loyalty and values of self sacrifice and devotion to the husband. The term potty Rita is often used to depict a steadfast devotion to her husband. However, in the shamanic traditions of the time, texts and monuments from the first to the second century CE, point to some agency with women, some were prominent landowners and Oopah Jes, or female religious teachers. Still, during this time, most women did not openly lead in spiritual matters. It's imperative to note that the primary audience for the Sutras, the most widely used texts for students of Yoga were young boys, and one has to keep this context in mind as we study them. Most translations are by men, furthering the patriarchal lien of our understanding of philosophy. This is also not to say that the hegemony of brahminical patriarchy was not or is not challenged. They were uprising throughout the long and complicated 3500 years of Yoga, or folks who denounce the dominant dominance of caste and gender. For example, the Bhakti traditions and lineages are a great example of disrupting hierarchies, with art with music with dance and sculpture that persist and thrive today. Many of them like a Kamala Devi spoken words are watching us or nearby us budgets are moving reminders of people who defied the shackles of gender relationships. In the Puranas, and the great epics, Ramayana and the Mahabharata, gender is explored more elaborately cast is explored more elaborately in this are stories of the men as queens who challenge and defy kings and went to war. Like take a of the Ramayana. There are kings who become pregnant, a prince transforms into a trance femme dance teacher brand nila, in the Mahabharata, she candy is a trance mask warrior in the Pandava army who helps to defeat the indefatigable Bheeshma. Women in these stories are complex. They are lovers and Vives, sages and seekers, goddesses and CO designs of every shade of every varied, lived experiences. These stories are Chronicles that are all encompassing of the spectrum of gender. But they're all embedded in narrations composed and translated by men mostly. Even so, it is time it is worth our time to study the Mahabharata. For instance, strum seven several authors and from regional perspectives. In the 15th century onwards, in the Hatha Yoga corpus, such as the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, and Ameritas D, for example, the practices were meant for male Yogi as a reference to specific body parts and alignments. In some of the verses, women are referred to as impediments and distractions for the serious yogi. Women travel and file should be avoided, especially for a brigade beginner practitioner, says SWAT Marama, the one who composed the Hatha Yoga Pradipika. Remember, Hatha Yoga traditions were actually ascetic traditions. And it is deeply ironic that most of the folks today practice some of the hatha Yoga practices are mostly than in the third reason, going back to a reason of why we don't know enough or many ancient femme, gender expansive, and women practitioners is because of the colonial narratives of Indian history, our insight into the past stem from multiple sources, historians source from archaeological remains literary and textual references art from a particular period. And more recently, we also have scientific knowledge with the development of technology for genetic extractions from fossils. Our knowledge about the past comes thus from what remains, what is preserved. What is emphasized as important by historians and their own worldviews. The colonial narratives of Indic history divided the periods into categories of religions, that is, they said, First was the Hindu period, then the Muslim period, and then the colonial period. Now, these vast generalizations overlooked the heterogeneity of belief systems and traditions that did not fall into these broad categories. The colonial renditions of Indian history were told and retold and are still used by many in the nationalistic factions. Today, more on this some other time. The fourth reason is productiveness of Yoga, as asana and capitalism, going back to my personal story of the popular to Yoga teacher, who said that it was the West that democratized and liberated women to practice Yoga. He was referring to Asana, there is no reference or rather very few references to women practicing Asana. He's right, to a certain extent, because I counter this. If we go into the temples of India, we see so many sculptures of women of dancers have upset us. Celestial femme beings, yuck, she's who are in dance poses that are very similar to Yoga asana, dance and Yoga asana come from the same roots, which is again, a whole another podcast episode for another time. Now, we all know that Yoga is not asna only and that the story is far more complex. So to summarize, why we should highlight ancient women, Femme and gender expansive folks in Yoga history. We should also understand and hold the tension that the very real presence of patriarchy of the past continues to be in the present. Hope you have enjoyed listening to this episode shedding about gender and Yoga history. I would so love to know your thoughts and responses. Please share with me and stay curious. Thank you so much for listening.
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai
