The Taboo of Black Hips in Yoga

This blog can also be watched as a video essay here

African hip undulations are an object of taboo in yoga, is the argument I put forward here. They are strangely absent (unless strongly modified or brokered by white bodies) from the myriad of ways that yoga has developed in the west. Modern yoga has managed to integrate practices as varied as laughter yoga - designed to induce infectious laughter for therapeutic purposes, aerial yoga - suspending you from the ceiling in a silk hammock, and doga, yes that’s yoga for the wellness of dogs. Strangely, there has been no yoga spin offs from the immense spiritual, emotional and physical benefits that African pelvic rhythms bring to wellbeing.

In Black Bodies, White Gazes, Yancey (2008) describes how the objectification of the Black body creates Black invisibility and hypervisibility as a means of erasing the humanity of the Black body. Despite being largely invisible in yoga, African pelvic rhythms are ever present in the hyper-sexualised, ‘gyrating’, ‘booty shaking’ bodies of Black Women and Black Men plastered all over the media. The media is an agent of socialization that has the power to influence our beliefs and behaviours throughout our lives. The media and popular culture also shape how we think about and treat ourselves and others (see Johnson 2015). When the rhythmic Black body comes into view through the white gaze, it is presented as somewhat enticing, depraved, and let’s face it - quite out of control and animalistic.

Strangely but not surprisingly, these judgments are set aside in the white body, which is licensed to elevate primitive hip movements: In tantra, the white body’s vibrating hips are credited with bringing about Kundalini energy rising; In yoga therapy, hip circles are credited with soothing joint pain, back pain, abdominal issues, pelvic problems and much, much more. But where is the acknowledgment of the therapeutic and spiritual contribution of African hip rhythms?

Of course, these free flowing pelvic rhythms are a powerful channelling of prana or life force, that are directly connected to the activation of the chakras. The subtle energy centres of the chakras align in African rhythmic movement to support our basic and higher functioning. The undulating hips energises the sacral chakra, which In yoga speak is the revered portal to sensuality, adventure and creativity. Represented by the element of water and the free flow of life, the sacral chakra energy connects us to our well-being and full self expression. The free hip rhythms, often supported with a wide gait and rooting vibrations, connects us to the element of earth and the grounding energy of the root chakra. The wisdom of these movements is so needed by Black peoples to invite that sense of safety, identity, belonging and being at home, not only in our body but also in this world. These forbidden rhythms also connect us to solar plexus energy, which unlocks confidence and the vibrant energy of transformation. Yet none of these healing attributes are respected in Black bodies inscribed with promiscuity and danger by anti-black racism that deems our pelvic rhythms to be seductively sinful and maybe just a little bit too free.

The powerful pulsating and shaking vibrating movements of Kundalini dance, focuses on freeing the hips and torso so your whole body becomes a portal of divine energy. The movements are a yoga hijack of African dance patterns. However, unlike Kundalini dance, the latter are not credited with awakening our higher life force of kundalini energy - trapped like a coiled serpent at the base of the spine. Nope, the African wellspring of the undulating movement that confers sublime consciousness to the white body, is seen as an aberration of sacred movement that is out of control and pathologically entertaining in the Black body. This has historically justified the control and abuse of the Black body. Yancey (2008) writes, that in an effort to control the Black body, it has been “Lynched, castrated, raped, branded, mutilated, whipped, socially sequestered, profiled, harassed, policed, disproportionately arrested and incarcerated, the Black body has endured a history of more than symbolic white violence”. Is it any wonder even Black yoga teachers often have these African rhythms on lock down in their body.

Traditional African dance is often expressed collectively, showing the values and stories of the community and demonstrating a deep understanding of transition and aliveness of the body. They reveal intricate expressions of polyrhythmic layering, using elaborate isolations and simultaneous rhythm with torso, hips arms, legs, and head in sublime unity with powerful harmony and also show polycentrism where free movement is  initiated from any part of the body and  yet interwoven seamlessly to the whole.

The seamless weaving of interconnected movement is the music that the cells of our fascia come out to dance to. Fascia has become the buzzword in rehabilitation & yoga therapy recognising that all our muscles, bones organs, nerves - in fact every cell in our body is intertwined through a complex web of fibrous tissues that lubricates and meshes our body together like an invisible gel suit of  sensation. This means that all movement involves the body responding as a network of connective tissue. The wholeness and connection of our fascia means that the polyrhythmic and polycentric movements characteristic of African rhythms helps keep our fascia lubricated flexible, and responsive. Rhythmic movement can  support the health of  our entire cellular system. Including our thoughts, emotions and brain.

So why hasn’t yoga welcomed Black hips as they are? And why is yoga therapy so linear and stiff? I would say it is because the legacy of anti-black racism creates fear of the Black body and it’s movements as ‘Other’. Research shows that when our brains categorise someone as Other, we also make them less human giving them animalistic qualities that racks up our fear response. What place does a free moving Black body have in a bio-spiritual practice evolving in the white supremacist west? I’d say none. Black hips are rendered as an object lacking in the humanity afforded to white personhood which justifies taking them out of respectable view, even by Black yoga teachers.

To be seen as respectable, our rhythms have to be first sanitised, rebranded and separated from Black bodies that have too much - hip, buttocks, weight, or sass to fit into a linear yoga practice. When we look upon ourselves with white supremacist ideals, we may never truly feel like our Black bodies or movements really belong. We may not look anything like the thin, bendy white yoga body coveted in the west. We may not bend, stretch or move in the same ways. There is a marked absence of African rhythmic movements and also the Black bodies that come with them, in ‘respectable’ yoga practices. Black yoga instructors may shy away from using African movements (never credited in trainings) for fear of being branded and undermined by the negative associations to them. Tragically, we may internalise the shaming of our body and believe, like many of my Black students have said: ‘we can’t do yoga’. We may also feel guilty pleasure from the freedom, storytelling and humanity that our non-compliant body’s are capable of expressing. Linda Martin Alcoff  notes “In post-slavery culture, whiteness remains the measure of man, that is, of humanity”.

Unapologetically Black yoga welcomes the sovereignty and diverse expression of movement of Black peoples from the African diaspora, whilst recognising that we can’t all ‘twerk’ or want to even if we can. We recognise the complex legacy of African rhythms as a symbol of defiance and freedom that could never be erased. We would argue they have are a threat to white sensibilities precisely because they have been a symbol of our joy, our power and our body’s sacred wisdom to be moved with the force of prana grounded deeply within us. Maya Angelou recognised this phenomena when she asks in her poem, Still I Rise - ‘does  my sexiness  upset you when I  dance like I’ve got diamonds at the meeting of my thighs’. Harnessing the incredible healing power and resistance of African hip movements - that so often upsets and entices the white gaze, I would argue, is an antidote to the racial trauma that tries to contain the Black body by building a home for itself, in its image, inside of our tissues.

In the words of Lucille Clifton in her poem homage to our hips ‘these hips are big hips, they need space to move around in’. Happily our hips are still sprawling out everywhere and taking  up space with  irreverence  - with ancestral rhythms that simply don’t know how to apologise. 

Although it may be uncomfortable to do so, beginning to understand the anti-black racism in yoga -which racializes the Black body as other, helps us to see the process of inclusion and exclusion in action. We may continue to internalise and inflict wounds in ourselves and others by deciding what is and what is not a therapeutic or spiritual practice based on ideals of white supremacy that propagates its own image and ways of moving through our bodies. This has been the evolution of western yoga. In Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon writes about the coloniser’s violence being “atmospheric” and inescapable by the colonised population. Here White supremacy becomes the oxygen we are forced to breathe in yoga.