In addition to whitewashed imagery, the wellness world embraces certain mantras that can do more harm than good.
“With all of these shootings, police brutality, when you're telling me to clear my mind, I can’t do that. I feel like that's not taken into consideration when I've been in white yoga and meditation spaces,” said Sevon Blake, a Black 29-year-old baker in Queens, New York. “And then it’s just… bam bam bam do this pose, do that pose. There’s no real connection or acknowledgement.”
Jesal Parikh and Tejal Patel created a podcast called "Yoga Is Dead" where they discuss privilege, race, cultural appropriation and more issues in the yoga and wellness worlds.It’s part of what Tejal Patel and Jesal Parikh call “spiritual bypassing.” The two Indian-American yoga instructors expose the yoga industry’s exclusionary practices in their podcast “” and also teach classes in New York City specifically addressing the needs of BIPOC participants.
Industries from tech to media have been grappling with their role in benefitting from and promoting systematic racism, but now the corporate gatekeepers in the wellness industry are having these conversations, too.
MakeIt I’m a gay rights and African American spokes person, but nobody listens to me because I’m a straight white man. It’s frustrating.
MakeIt 1)they're selling a product designed to help people achieve a goal and must display an example of the ultimate goal-non obesity 2) if they display mostly whites it may be because most American women are white-mass marketing 3) who actually aspires or would pay to look like that
MakeIt “Wellness”
MakeIt Being obese makes you prone to dying of Covid 😎
MakeIt 🐄
MakeIt Don't you mean the individuals with cervixes.