Episode 7: Tantric Yoga & The Power of Holding Multiple Truths with Kendra Coupland
You are divine. What might it look like to embody this truth, while being deeply aware of how oppressive systems impact us in a very real way based on our multi-faceted human identities? Harpinder Kaur Mann is in conversation with Kendra Coupland, Yoga Grandmaster, Mindfulness Coach, and Artist on this episode of the Liberating Yoga Podcast. They explore the importance of discomfort, harmful patterns in mainstream yoga spaces, and how tantric philosophy can lead us toward collective liberation.
WHAT WE COVER IN THIS EPISODE:
What it means to know yourself as inseparable from divinity through the philosophy and multitude of practices that encompass yoga
Why yoga and spirituality are not solely about “feeling good”
How many modern yoga spaces capitalize on folks’ trauma and suffering for personal profit
The ways whiteness influences fatphobia, toxic fitness culture, and the delusion that we are able to control our own health
Yoga teachers’ responsibility to meet students within their current realities and unmet basic needs
How a tantric yoga lens can help us expand awareness and hold multiple truths at the same time
Yoga as a pathway to disrupting systems of oppression
ABOUT KENDRA COUPLAND:
Kendra Coupland (she/her) is a meditation teacher, yoga grandmaster and multi-disciplinary artist of mixed Caribbean and Romani-Hungarian heritage. As a survivor of violence, Kendra brings a compassionate, trauma-informed, and intersectional framework to her practice. Her work strives to create safer spaces for people who experience marginalization to practice self-liberation, and she is whole-heartedly dedicated to building communities of loving kindness and care.
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Website: kendracoupland.com
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Yoga teacher Harpinder Kaur Mann shows American yoga practitioners a path to reclaim yoga from appropriation and recenter the practice where it belongs.
In Liberating Yoga, yoga teacher Harpinder Kaur Mann draws from her own perspective as a Sikh-Punjabi woman who was alienated by the way yoga is practiced in the United States, but found her way toward reclaiming the spiritual practice for herself. Mann demonstrates that moving away from appropriated forms of yoga and back to yoga's roots is the only true path to healing--both for yoga practitioners who desire to engage responsibly in the practice with cultural appreciation and, especially, for marginalized yogis who wish to reconnect with ancestral spiritual practices and reclaim their full identity.