Yoga

In her research, Anya Foxen focuses on the intersection of South Asian yogic and tantric traditions and Western esotericism and metaphysical spiritualities.

Our primary stress comes from living in shame and fear, often resulting from misidentification with the image/objective world, and often with the past traumas and experiences where we were forced to react to ordinary situations in survival mode.  

In many religious environments around the world, being gay, gender-bending, or otherwise queer is considered a surefire recipe for eternal damnation.

These traditions, which seem to indicate a fluid and mutable approach to gender identities—often rooted in the idea that gender can be exchanged or, ultimately, transcended, are of increasing interest to queer practitioners seeking to examine religious traditions that embody the performative nature of gender.

My forthcoming considerations may be seen as situated in a tradition of apologetics, if we understand something different by that word.

Some dimensions of safety which yoga can provide include grounding, boundary-making, and internal core support.

Most of modern yoga is done with the Advaitic intention of oneness, even if its practitioners don’t know it! And though the boundaries have become so blurry over time that we accept the integration of these two systems without even questioning it, it is important to realize what a huge leap it originally was to incorporate dualistic yoga into the non-dualistic system of Advaita.

Shreena Gandhi is a part of the Religious Studies Department at Michigan State University, where is primarily teaches classes on religion and race in the Americas.