Episode # 130:Integrating Social Justice in the Yoga Practices with Tejal Patel

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In today's episode I sit down with Tejal Patel (she/they)  a first-generation Indian American yoga teacher, writer, podcaster, and community organizer. Tejal’s aim is to educate and empower individuals and groups around the world to practice yoga holistically and through a social justice equity lens.

We explore: 

  • Tejal's background Story & beginning Yoga Teacher training in 2012

  • Seeking community through South Asian Teachers

  • Practicing Yoga through a lens of advocacy, belonging and equity

  • Integrating Social Justice into the Yoga Practices

  • Understanding the barriers to the yoga practice for people

  • Exploring accessible and pricing 

  • Integrating authencity and capitalism 

  • How to find a balance with keeping integrity in the practices and making a living

  • Using strategic planning and flexibility to forecast what is possible and the power in exploring your numbers 

  • Inviting in the idea of Mutual Aid for people that have more to give

  • Exploring the overwhelm that can come from bringing social justice into the yoga practices 

  • Inviting in the uncomfortable and owning your own self awareness

  • Finding a process system when you feel like you have done enough and how to find resources to move yourself forward 

  • Starting to broaden your scope and expand your perspective

  • The power in continuing to try, learn and grow

  • “Both” and “and” can exist together  - expanding your network of receiving information 

  • Asking the question of what you think the practice of yoga is?

  • Exploring where you get information and if diversity exists

  • Untapped power of connecting and being a connector to increase our sense of belonging 

Tejal can be found decolonizing wellness with the revolutionary Tejal Yoga Online, a primarily South Asian teacher-led yoga space, with the abcdyogi interactive community, an online hub for healing and learning, and through the Yoga is Dead podcast, e-book, and signature cultural appropriation training.

Amanda Strojny