I'm a white yoga teacher. Am I a fraud?

Within the past two years notable voices in the yoga world have risen to highlight and put a call to action to address cultural appropriation, spiritual bypassing, and the numerous communities of people who were left behind in the lululemon model of western yoga.

Aside from having long ago sworn off lululemon, from street view I’m very much the epitome of the white yoga girl image challenged as an imposter.

Imposter syndrome is a construct of a white male dominated society. It says you aren’t good enough because you aren’t us. It says you are a fraud. It says no matter how hard you try you will not succeed.

Yikes. The moment spoke directly to my insecure self. Maybe I am the imposter I feared. How could I possibly represent yoga, a tradition and wisdom from India? I am not that. I wanted to crawl into a shame hole, shed my yoga self, and emerge as something different.

But what? And why?

I first connected with yoga in my early 20s. The asanas (postures) became a gateway to accepting myself. In yoga spaces I explored movement, meditation, philosophy, history, and how to be a good human. This was where I was meant to be. Yoga accepted me. From that I built a career, first stepping into the seat of the teacher in 2005.

But looking back I think I’ve always been a yogi. I’ve always found discipline in movement and peace in stillness. I’ve always had a fire in my belly to speak truth to power. It just looked different. It looked like thousands of practice hours in pink leotards and ballet slippers. It looked like squirreling away in my bedroom closet to be in a small, quiet space. It looked like standing up to my teachers when I didn’t see multiple sides represented and walking out of Sunday school when I didn’t feel the union.

At first, I put yoga on a pedestal and tried to emulate everything I saw from my teachers. I grasped to find my voice. I was the master of fake it until you make it. Put into another context that was straight up cultural appropriation and spiritual bypassing. I tried on Indian cultural traditions I didn’t know enough about and couldn’t genuinely do justice. I see the error.

2010 yoga girl me would likely have been canceled in 2020. And 2020 yoga girl me had some work to do down in that foxhole to evolve. And for sure, the caution tape will always read work in progress.

But waking up in 2022 I feel a distinct shift from call out to call in culture. I’m on board for this. The call-in culture isn’t telling me to go away, but it’s challenging me to get more clear, more vulnerable, and more authentic in the seat of the teacher. It’s checking me to share the mic and notice as much who is not in the room with who is.

I am always a student and seeker first and I am continuing to evolve and deepen my roots via the teachings of yoga. I’ll continue to get some things right and some things wrong, but I am shedding the imposter syndrome. I own who I am and what I offer.

I offer yoga classes based in asana. I use both Sanskrit and English to teach the qualities, alignment, and attributes of the postures. I weave throughout class the implicit lessons of the yoga sutras and mindfulness via western patterns and language. I feel comfortable and confident in this place. I have deep reverence and admiration for other pieces of the yoga tradition, enough to know there is someone better suited to teach those slices.

I close classes with a single chant of Aum, a bow, and a community parting of namaste. I have dived into whether to continue these aspects and currently landed on yes. These pieces are my prayer of appreciation, not appropriation. Our parting words of namaste are meant to greet the next open door.

I take care to explain the purpose, meaning and interpretations of the teachings that have been passed to me through texts and from my teachers. This is how I honor my yoga lineage. My lineage includes teachers of mostly western origin. My teacher’s teachers are mostly of South Asian Indian origin. This is our history. I am a second (and sometimes third) generation western yogi. I have teachers I continue to hold in high regard. I also have past teachers and teacher’s teachers that were abusive.

This is all a part of my lineage. I grew out of the Texas culture I was raised in and became more myself within the yoga culture. Yoga is the tradition I chose and I’m honored to share it. All is flawed and yet real and ever evolving.