YONI SHAKTI: THE MOVEMENT

Eradicate abuse of women in yoga
Reclaim yoga as a tool for planetary healing and justice.

Photo thanks to Leticia Valverdes

I am proud to support Uma Dinsmore-Tuli and her team in their work to eradicate abuse of women in yoga. Please find below more information about The Movement including helpful resources for allies and survivors.

The Campaign

Imagine a world where all women and girls are free from shame, oppression and abuse, able to live in resonance with the power of their natural rhythmic cycles and in connection with their inner wisdom.

We want a world where everybody’s sisters and daughters are safe to pursue their spiritual journeys of reconnection free from abuse. With your help and the help of a global network of millions of yoginis and yogis, we want to help all women to be aware of how to ensure their safety and sovereignty within the often oppressive and disempowering orthodoxy of yoga environments, and to give women the courage to speak out. We intend to dismantle harmful structures and beliefs that create conditions for the abuse of power in yoga teacher-student dynamics.

This is the central message of Yoni Shakti: A Woman's Guide to Yoga and Freedom through Yoga and Tantra and and we're pledging all the funds raised from the launch of the revised and updated edition, available here first, to this movement and public awareness and education campaign.

To make this happen we need to spread the word, to educate yoga practitioners, teachers, teacher trainers and studio owners around the globe. We need your help to do that.

The fundraiser for Yoni Shakti The Movement ended in June 2020 raising an incredible £32,000 in order to fund this public awareness campaign.

Background

Yoni Shakti: A Woman’s Guide to Power and Freedom through Yoga and Tantra was published in 2014. A key section of the first edition was removed prior to printing because author Uma Dinsmore-Tuli’s hard-hitting description of the contemporary Yoga Industrial Complex as a ‘stinking palace floating on a lagoon filled with corpses and shit’ was considered too offensive to publish at that time.

Sadly, Uma’s censored prediction in that first edition has now been recognised widely to be the truth. The past few years have seen innumerable revelations and investigations of sexual, financial, physical and emotional abuses committed by teachers under the guise of ‘yoga’. There is now hardly a single ashram, school or yoga institution that has not been exposed to be harbouring these harms. The abusive power dynamics common to many individual yoga teachers and gurus have also been reported by brave women who have spoken up, and Uma Dinsmore-Tuli, like lots of other women in yoga, has now heard too many of these stories to keep quiet any longer. She is now fully committed to sharing the evidence presented to her, including the names of teachers and places that she wouldn’t want anybody’s sisters or daughters to go to. Her intention with this campaign is to educate yoga practitioners, teachers and yoga teacher trainers worldwide to call out existing harm and to prevent future abuses of power.

The uncensored and revised new edition of Yoni Shakti includes a practical checklist of warning signals to protect women in yoga, and a new Warning Prologue sharing a number of powerful statements in verse and prose. It also presents a comprehensive list of organisations and individuals that have harmed women and girls under the guise of the spiritual teachings of yoga. Yoni Shakti Updated and Uncensored is available online from May 2020.

Photo thanks to Leticia Valverdes