Engaging Contradictions: Yoga as a Site of and Response to Trauma

This interdisciplinary roundtable will delve into the complex intersection of trauma, healing, and social justice within the global yoga community. Drawing on their research in India, Israel, and Kenya, our invited panelists will critically examine the role of non-profit yoga organizations and yoga tourism as both sites of trauma and tools for recovery. Building on previous scholarship that complicates the popular understanding of yoga as practice for peace and well-being, the panelists will explore how yoga can address various forms of trauma, including sexual abuse, domestic violence, combat trauma, and political violence, while at the same time, replicating or re-enforcing larger structures of oppression. As practitioners and teachers, the panelists will also engage in reflexive conversation about their own experiences and processes of reckoning with the ugly sides of yoga, and why and how this work and teaching remains valuable.