Queering and Cripping the "Yoga Body"

Queering and Cripping the "Yoga Body" deconstructs the power relations and dominant discourses that shape the image of a healthy, natural, gendered body performing a postural yoga practice. This book examines empirical yoga research, yoga-related media, and yoga teacher training materials to critique how yoga becomes a manageable, predictable intervention that individuals can and should undertake in order to create healthy, manageable, non-burdensome bodies. It argues that when yoga is positioned as a natural intervention, discourses of morality and purity become intertwined with those of measurability, responsibility, control, health, and gender. It also considers the author's own embodied experience, as well as those of other queer and disabled yoga teachers and practitioners, and how such experiences can open up possibilities for the teaching and practice of yoga. Queering and Cripping the "Yoga Body" will be of interest to graduate students and researchers studying embodiment, health and mindfulness practices, poststructuralism, queer theory, or disability studies, as well as researchers, teachers, and practitioners of yoga.

Laura Shears has an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership from Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, USA and is a yoga teacher and practitioner.

1. Introduction and Theoretical Framework Part I: Yoga Practice 2. Yoga as a Measurable, Medical Intervention: How Yoga Effectiveness Research Contributes to a Discourse of Productive, Manageable Bodies 3. Yoga as a Healthy, Natural Intervention: How Yoga Effectiveness Research Contributes to a Discourse of Moral, Independent Bodies 4. The Yoga Practice as Functional Movement: How Yoga-Related Media Contributes to the Developing Subjectivities of Yoga Practitioners Part II: Yoga Teaching 5. Yoga Teachers as Self-Monitoring Bodies: How Relations of Power Surrounding Yoga Alliance Contribute to the Developing Subjectivities of Yoga Teachers 6. Yoga Teachers as Strong, Docile Bodies: How Discourses Surrounding Yoga Teacher Training Programs Shape the Subjectivities of Yoga Teachers Part III: Yoga, Embodiment, and Resistance 7. Yoga as an Act of Resistance: Thinking with the Queer and Disabled Body 8. Yoga as Union: Tentative Integrations Appendix: Post-Qualitative Inquiry