Episode 5: Creating Braver Yoga Spaces With Tejal Patel

Written By Harpinder Mann

In a sea of exclusionary yoga studios, we’re wondering: what cultivates an environment that feels true to yoga’s goals of collective liberation and peace? Harpinder Kaur Mann is in conversation with Tejal Patel, founder of Tejal Yoga, on this episode of the Liberating Yoga Podcast. Together, they discuss the importance of yoga spaces that prioritize community, cultural humility, accountability, and justice.

WHAT WE COVER IN THIS EPISODE:

  • Yoga as avenues for exploring and embodying a more peaceful life

  • How today’s landscape of inaccessible, exclusionary, and individualistic “yoga” spaces undermines the path’s true goal of collective liberation

  • Why yoga is a practice of holding temporary discomfort, getting curious, and doing the work of investigating our social positionality

  • The importance of people-focused and justice-driven wellness spaces

  • How teachers and business owners can create braver yoga and holistic health communities

Access this episode’s transcript here

ABOUT tejal

My name is Tejal (she/they). I’m a first-generation Indian American yoga teacher, writer, podcaster, and community organizer. I advocate for yoga through a social justice lens and educate and empower individuals and groups around the world to do the same. 

I accomplish this vision through the Tejal Yoga online studio, a revolutionary all South Asian teacher-led yoga community focused on social justice actions and authentic, culturally-rooted spiritual practices, the abcdyogi global community led by South Asian yoga and mindfulness teachers, and the Yoga is Dead Podcast, offering education through podcast, e-book, and webinar trainings.

Learn more about me here.

connect with harpinder:

connect with tejal:

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Pre-order Liberating Yoga: From Appropriation to HealinG by harpinder kaur mann today!

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.

Harpinder Mann
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Episode 4: Embodying Yogic Activism with Reggie Hubbard