Is the British Wheel of Yoga a Safe Space for People of Colour?

In 2017, a black teacher training student on a British Wheel of Yoga course said to me: “BWY – that stands for British White Yoga, right?” She had a glint in her eye and was no doubt partly winding me up because I was Chair of the organisation at the time. However, her comment conveyed an uncomfortable truth about her perception of BWY.

Seven years later, has anything changed?

When I was Chair of the British Wheel of Yoga between 2016 and 2018, one of the most rewarding things I did was connect with Dr Stacie CC Graham and Jaz Mullings Lambert. I turned to these leading black yoga teachers to try to understand why BWY was predominantly white and had so few Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic members, teachers, and teacher trainers.

I was elected Chair of BWY, promising renewal based on diversity, inclusion, and standards. One of my first actions was to commission an analysis of the composition of the membership. These figures in June 2016 showed that BWY had just 0.5% of members who identified as Black/African/Caribbean/Black British – six times lower than what would be expected based on the composition of the UK population at the time. Asian/Asian British membership was not much better at 2.8%, compared with 6.9% in the population as a whole. Given that yoga’s cultural heritage originates in the Indian subcontinent, this 60% under-representation was startling and disappointing.

On the basis of this analysis, the British Wheel of Yoga’s National Executive Committee (NEC) that I led began initiatives to try to redress this balance. We immediately began to feature Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic BWY members and yoga teachers in BWY’s magazine. And we created new ambassador roles within BWY.

    

We also introduced £500 bursaries to encourage Black, Asian, and minority ethnic people to choose to train to become a yoga teacher with BWY.  This scheme was a failure. We only managed to award two bursaries. People of colour were not applying to train with BWY because the organisation was disconnected from Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic communities. In hindsight, I see how naive we were to hope that people of colour would engage with BWY when we had never engaged with their communities.

Stacie and Jaz confirmed my gut feeling that BWY would only make progress on redressing its shocking under-representation of people of colour in the organisation if we were pro-active in correcting the imbalance and reached into the under-served communities. So was born the first-ever British Wheel of Yoga Women of Colour teacher training course, with me, Stacie, and Jaz as co-tutors. Between September 2017 and October 2019, 18 women of colour completed the BWYQ Level 4 Certificate in Teaching Yoga course. It was an incredible teaching and learning experience for me because I heard first-hand about the experiences of people of colour in Britain; the structural racism, white privilege, unconscious bias, and daily micro-aggressions.

I also learned much from my incredibly talented co-tutors. Early on, Stacie – in the kindest possible way – pointed out that the majority of my course materials featured images of white people doing yoga. I was shamed by my own unconscious bias and realised that if someone like me who has spent a lifetime fighting discrimination can make so crass an error, there is still a long way for many of us to journey.

In order to make the course affordable, Stacie, Jaz, and myself decided to set the training fees at £500 – about one quarter of the usual cost.

The course caused quite a stir. A stream of people visited to see how we were running this pioneering yoga teacher training, which had women from a wide range of backgrounds and faiths, including Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian and those with no religion. One Muslim course member would quietly take herself off to a corner of the studio to pray at designated times.

But no one from BWY ever came to visit the course. In fact, one or two senior BWY Diploma Course Tutors questioned the need for the course. One asked me if I had considered that the reason for the under-representation of certain groups in BWY might be because “they are not interested in doing yoga”. Not only is this a nonsensical statement (as yoga is for everyone) but note the use of the word “they”, which conveys an “us (white) and them” (minorities) mentality. Another comment asked whether the co-tutors had been chosen for their expertise or because “they fall into a certain category”. Questioning the competency of people of colour in leadership positions is all too common, with the associated insinuation that decisions to appoint may not be based on merit.

Teaching on the course was shared between the three tutors. However, as the registered BWY Diploma Course Tutor (DCT) for the Women of Colour course, I was in charge of completing the assessment forms to evidence student learning for what is an Ofqual-regulated Level 4 (foundation degree) course. Stacie and Jaz did parallel assessments and I fed back to them. This was part of our shared vision to train my co-tutors over the two years so that they could become DCTs themselves and run the next course(s) without me. Despite two years of mentoring on the assessment requirements, and gaining the experience and knowledge required to deliver a teacher training course, BWY would not take any of this learning into account and insisted that if Stacie and Jaz wanted to become DCTs they would have to pay the full fees (around £4,000) for DCT training and start again from scratch.

I was mortified by this unbending (and educationally backward) position and felt I had let them down. It is no surprise after this snub that neither became DCTs and the Women of Colour course would prove to be a one-off. BWY thereby missed an opportunity to diversify its community of DCTs and have role models and tutors who could inspire future generations of people of colour to join BWY.

What transpired after the course is entirely predictable. Almost all the women of colour who were trained have left the British Wheel of Yoga. Stacie, being the super-talented person that she is, has soared. She has built on her work through OYAretreats.com where she facilitates residentials to bring healing and wellbeing to black women, and has since become a nationally and internationally respected leader in racial justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion in yoga – speaking at international events, advising yoga organisations, and writing the book: Yoga as Resistance. Jaz has continued to accumulate a huge range of qualifications and experience and is a popular and charismatic yoga teacher in London, alongside having a busy working life.

Breaking down habitual patterns of behaviour and thinking that perpetuate white privilege and unconscious bias.

Initiatives like the Women of Colour course, BWY Ambassadors, celebrating the successes of people of colour in BWY’s magazine, Spectrum, and the bursaries were all positive actions to try to make a difference and redress BWY’s failure to engage or connect with Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic communities across Britain. Positive action is part of the necessary steps to roll-back decades (if not centuries) of disadvantage and discrimination and colonial mindsets. It is not positive discrimination (illegal) but acts to break down habitual patterns of behaviour and thinking that perpetuate white privilege and unconscious bias.

These initiatives were only a start. At the time that I stepped down from Chair of BWY, myself and the Vice Chair had proposed a restructuring of governance at BWY by creating three appointed roles on the ruling National Executive Committee: Treasurer, Legal Adviser, and Youth Representative. This would have been an opportunity to bring new Trustees onto the board, broaden expertise, and improve decision making. As this change involved revisions to the constitution and articles of association of BWY, we ran out of time to put this proposal before members at an Annual General Meeting before my period as Chair ended. The proposals were never taken forward.

There was also some self-interest involved here as well. We had been told that with BWY's current governance structure and absence of diversity on the NEC, BWY would have little chance of securing grant funding from bodies like Sport England.

Where are we now?

I haven’t been a member of BWY since September 2022. However, I note as an outsider looking in that there is not a single person of colour among the trustees on the National Executive Committee, nor among the people employed as staff at BWY. I note the very many interactions I have with friends and colleagues who are people of colour who say they have left and/or given up hope that the organisation can change. And many of them say this as well: The British Wheel of Yoga is not a safe space for people of colour.

That is not to say that BWY is overtly racist, or that members hold overtly discriminatory views. My experience over 20 years of membership is that they do not, and most BWY members are warm, generous, and compassionate people. However, the failure to address the continuing under-representation of people of colour in BWY members, teachers, Foundation Course Tutors, and Diploma Course Tutors means that the organisation has sat on its heels and not taken meaningful action to counter its structural racism and unconscious bias, which requires persistent positive actions over a sustained period of time.

I do not presume to speak on behalf of people of colour. Instead, I identify with and support their struggle for justice and the dismantling of white privilege. It is clear that, except in very few areas of the country, a person of colour attending a BWY event will not be entering a space where they see themselves and their community reflected. As the student teacher observed, it feels instead like entering a domain of British White Yoga.

It is important to understand the concept of “safe space” as defined from the work of Professor Stephen Porges. His ideas strongly influence the treatment of trauma and healing interventions, including yoga. When a space feels unsafe, it doesn’t necessarily mean that an existential threat exists. Rather, a person has a feeling of unease, of not feeling included or part of a group. At the physiological level they may be in a low-level fight or flight stress response – the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system. A place of safety means a full sense of being accepted, understood, and valued, enabling a person to fully relax. Only in this parasympathetic state can we feel truly safe and experience the full richness of social interaction and co-regulation. For people of colour, this is not experienced when engaging with substantial parts of BWY. 

I hope it is not too late for BWY to seize the initiative and do this necessary work to become representative of multi-cultural and multi-racial modern Britain.  Everything that BWY and other yoga teacher training schools need to address is set out in Stacie’s excellent book, Yoga as Resistance by Dr Stacie CC Graham (Watkins; 2022). She set out the issues of cultural appropriation, curriculum content, representative composition of teaching staff, monitoring trainees, and running a business model that is equitable and affordable. The BWY Women of Colour course is a case study featured in the book.

Stacie also sets out a compelling argument for a Global Industry Charter that yoga schools, studios, and organisations could adopt based around 4 core principles – the Rs of Respect, Relatedness, Repair, and Reintegration. It is essential to read the book in full, but I give a taste of what it contains here.

• Respect is about honouring the yoga tradition and its roots in the sub-continent of India. And recognising that yoga has been shaped and reshaped over millennia, and was, in part, a response to British colonial rule.
• Relatedness indicates the connectedness of all those practicing yoga wherever they are, and the common ancestry we share.
• Repair acknowledges the harm caused to yoga by those who have turned it into a commodity, dumbing it down to a fitness or exercise regime, and appropriating it along neo-liberal economic lines for profit, damaging the planet in the process. Great harm and injustice has been done to those of South Asian heritage as a result.
• Reintegration demands a change of approach to a sustainable and equitable future that cares for the Earth as a shared space for all communities.

Stacie then sets out the 6 key actions that organisations like the British Wheel of Yoga need to take to show commitment to a more equitable and sustainable future: -

1.      Educate yourselves about the roots of Yoga.

2.      Measure, measure, measure. Both in terms of equity, inclusion, and the impact on the planet.

3.      Embrace courageous conversations to challenge deep-rooted assumptions, biases, and prejudices.

4.      Commit to Zero – both net zero and zero tolerance of bullying and harassment.

5.      Embed equity and sustainability into your strategy. These must not be tokenistic but instead be embedded in key performance indicators for the organisation and staff.

6.      Take action that centres the global majority. Centuries of colonialisation, exploitation and injustice have left a legacy of overt and subtle violence and discrimination against indigenous nations and people of colour who continue to suffer disproportionately across most socio-economic measures.

The case for a global industry charter for yoga is strong and I hope Stacie is successful in achieving adoption of the principles and practices she has so clearly set out. Not only is this the right thing to do, it is also a matter of organisational survival for bodies like the British Wheel of Yoga. Ignore this agenda at your peril, or watch membership and teacher training continue to decline, and a once-proud organisation sink into irrelevance and obscurity.

Courageous conversations work, as does direct pressure. So, here is my call to action, whether you are a BWY member or not: -

·         Email the Chair of the British Wheel of Yoga chair@bwy.org.uk and demand change.

·         BWY must diversify the composition of BWY Trustees serving on the ruling National Executive Committee.

·         BWY must diversify the composition of its staff.

·         BWY should honestly reflect on how the organisation has arrived at its current state, and seek to dismantle white privilege and unconscious bias.

·         BWY should bring forward equitable programmes to engage and involve people of colour at all levels of the organisation, including teacher training and foundation course training.

Thank you.

Paul Fox

February 2024