22. Yoga is more than the body, with Anjali Rao The Weeks Well

Anjali Rao, president of the Accessible Yoga Association, thinks of herself as a supporter and co-creator, someone who is focused on exploring the histories (plural) in yoga and the stories of people who’ve been obscured through religion, caste, capitalism, cisgenderness, and patriarchy. She wants to highlight these stories within the narrow confines of what many people think of as yoga practice, where there are major gaps in who can access yoga. 

Anjali thinks of Accessible Yoga’s role as one to create and expand on the definition of what "accessible" means at all. The organization wants to be disruptive and to go deeply into what they hope to influence as the un-commodification of yoga. Here we talk more about out her vision for Accessible Yoga and where she wants to take it in the context of all these changes in our definitions of yoga. 

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Terms:

1. Bhagavad Gita: a Hindu scripture that is part of the Mahabharata

2. Upanishads: the most recent part of the Vedas

3. Vedas: the most ancient Hindu scriptures

4. Arjuna: the hero of the Bhagavad Gita 

5. Parampara: passing on of knowledge from a teacher to student 

6. Dukha: suffering, pain, or unhappiness

7. Bhakti yoga: a spiritual practice within Hinduism focused on loving devotion towards a personal deity

8. Tantra yoga: a type of yoga that utilizes many different techniques, including mantra meditation, pranayama (breath control), etc. 

9. Mahabharata: one of the major Sanskrit epics of ancient India in Hinduism 

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References:

1. Anjali Rao

2. Accessible Yoga Association

3. The Love of Yoga podcast

4. Sat Bir Singh Khalsa

5. Adrienne Maree Brown

6. Amber Karnes 

7. Practicing Well Introduction 

8. The Trauma of Caste, by Thenmozhi Soundararajan 

9. Resmaa Menakem

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Episode credits:

Original music by Kim's band Governess.

Produced by Alyssa Yeroshefsky and Kim Weeks.

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