Focus on Women in Yoga

Focusing on women when planning the content of a Yoga class isn't about being exclusionary. Every Yoga class should have some connection to positive empowerment. Every Yoga teacher, male and female  can consider how the class will be supportive of women when creating the class content. 

Yoga Teacher Sarah Lowenstein, Feminist and woman's advocate

Yoga has become a place of empowerment for women that has not excluded men from joining, just ask the devoted male students in any Yoga class. They wouldn't keep coming if they didn't feel welcome, even as the typical content of a Yoga class seems to appeal to women four times as often.

When planning a Yoga class, any Yoga teacher, male or female, needs to see to it that the content of the class does continue to support women. Why?

• To begin, women make up about 80 percent of Yoga students, so one must be mindful to support the needs of those who support the teacher by attending his or her class.

   

Yogini and professional Yoga Teacher Paula Val Alstine is a feminist who supports positive empowerment of all

• Teachers are empowering others, and at a time when women have been denied access to many avenues of empowerment, the Yoga studio is a place and an opportunity to support the positive, peaceful empowerment of women. 

• Women are becoming empowered in ever greater numbers, so continuing to keep this crucial avenue open for them, and among the many reasons, these specific ones:

1. Yoga is going to help older women who are less connected to the younger feminist and social feminism to find their place as women in empowered roles. 
2. Middle-age women who have empowered themselves can continue to develop themselves in an empowered female roles.
3. Young women can solidify their own roles as empowered women as they enter adulthood and become the female mentors of the future.
4. Girls can begin their transformation to being women who are fully empowered as females themselves and to be receptive to mentoring by empowered female adult role models who are practicing Yoga. 

We are at a point where we could easily have our first female president soon, and should plan accordingly for the idea of female empowerment to transform, exponentially, into a mainstream ideal that will allow us to embrace positive empowerment for all and will allow us to differentiate between the need for being strong and able to defend ourselves vs. domination to to deny our own weaknesses.

As a male feminist, I believe Yoga is the right path for everyone, female and male. I welcome everyone in my classes and see Yoga as an avenue of positive transformation. I am honored to support this important avenue of empowerment for women.

Shanti Om!