Yoga and Social Justice

The yoga tradition is rich in generations of historical precedent in which the practice involved finding an inner strength to stand up against injustice, oppression, and humanity’s suffering. Two seminal yogic texts, The Baghavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras, take opposite approaches and land us in the same place. The Gita invites us to expand our consciousness so that we may rightly align our actions with our unique and personal responsibility. The Sutras invite us to take specific actions so that we may expand our consciousness and uproot the causes of suffering. Either way, the result has us getting out of a separate-self mindset, and taking intentional steps to see more now than we have in the past, and to mend more than we thought we could.

As we navigate the difficult path of wellness at its intersection with the need for bringing social justice to the fore of our civic responsibilities, we share these resources, in service and in peace:

A Reading List

  • STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram Kendi

  • HOW TO BE AN ANTI-RACIST by Ibram Kendi

  • SO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT RACE by Ijeoma Oluo

  • ME AND WHITE SUPREMACY by Layla F. Saad

  • JUST MERCY by Bryan Stevenson

  • FATAL INVENTION: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century by Dorothy Roberts

  • WEST INDIAN IMMIGRANTS: A Black Success Story? by Suzanne Model

  • THE CONDEMNATION OF BLACKNESS: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America by Khalil Gibran Muhammad

  • THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD by Zora Neale Hurston

  • THE NEGRO ARTIST AND THE RACIAL MOUNTAIN by Langston Hughes

  • INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison

  • THE BLUEST EYE by Toni Morrison

  • THE BLACKER THE BERRY by Wallace Thurman

  • THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X by Malcom X and Alex Haley

  • DYING OF WHITENESS: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland by Jonathan M. Metzl

  • LOCKING UP OUR OWN: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman Jr.

  • BLACK MARXISM: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition by Cedric J. Robinson

  • WAITING ’TIL THE MIDNIGHT HOUR: A Narrative History of Black Power in America by Peniel E. Joseph

  • HOW WE GET FREE: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

  • WELL-READ BLACK GIRL: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves edited by Glory Edim

  • REDEFINING REALNESS: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More by Janet Mock

  • SISTER OUTSIDER: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde

  • RADICAL DHARMA: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation by Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams, Lama Rod Owens, Jasmine Syedullah


A Donations List


An Article List


A Podcast List


Videos, Documentaries, TV Series, and Other Reources


A Social Media Account List