Episode 86: Representation Matters and Making Yoga Inclusive with Donna Noble
Donna Noble
“Yoga is for everybody” and “you can’t tell a yogi by their size or shape”
Donna Noble is a Yoga teacher, wellness intuitive coach , body positive and social justice advocate and is also the Founder of Curvesomeyoga. She is also a certified NLP Master Practitioner. Her mission is to evolve the image of yoga to make it more diverse and inclusive. She creates safe, judgement free spaces where everyBODY will feel welcomed to enjoy the transformational benefits of yoga regardless of their shape, size, gender, ethnicity or ability. Donna has written for and featured in countless digital and print publications: Thrive Global, Elephant Journal, The Metro, The Guardian, Buzz Magazine, HuffPost, Stylist Magazine, Om Yoga and Lifestyle Magazine and on BBC Radio London and Channel 4.
In this episode, we talked about:
Donna read an article in 2014 by a curvy-bodied journalist and was impacted by her words, as yoga is for everybody. She decided to create ‘Curvesome Yoga’
Dianne Bondy and Jessamyn Stanley have been doing body positivity work in the US and Donna realised something similar was needed in the UK
Representation matters
Body positivity was created by black femmes in the 1960s to create a space for when they didn’t feel included. It was a social justice movement, finding for equality for housing and education
Donna first got into yoga with a friend who had seen Madonna’s yoga-sculpted arms in a picture in a magazine. At the time she worked in a corporate environment and was a guinea pig for a work colleague who was training to be a teacher
She happened to have had a diverse introduction to yoga, her first teacher being South Asian and her subsequent teacher was mixed heritage
Yoga helped her to deal with stress from pressure at work and discrimination as a black woman in the workplace. Donna left her corporate career and trained to become a yoga teacher, thinking that she could teach when she retired
She went to America to do a 9-week hot yoga teacher training and ended up staying for 6 months!
Yoga offers community, service, deep connection and helping people to move beyond limits of their minds and bodies
“Yoga is for everybody” and “you can’t tell a yogi by their size or shape”
Creating a space that’s inclusive and non-judgemental, giving students agency of their body. Yoga isn’t just ‘asana’ or postures
Financial accessibility through free content, challenges and free classes. Scholarships and ‘pay-it-forward’
Tokenism and accountability
Being a ‘good ancestor’
Anti-racism work at yoga studios in the UK and US
Using privilege to help others who don’t have a voice or visibility
“If you don’t see colour, you don’t acknowledge my lived experience”
Spiritual bypassing
Inclusivity for older people
The word ‘just’ is ableist, e.g. “just put your right arm up”
“It doesn’t matter how the posture looks, it’s how it makes you feel”
Teachers have a responsibility to demonstrate more accessible postures such as sitting cross-legged or lying in shavasana (corpse pose) so that people can see that it’s for everybody
Being, breathing and resting rather than always doing
The toxicity of the diet industry, impact on mental health and bodyshaming
Slow down in order to feel
Ask yourself how you’re feeling that day. After time, the cultivation of mindbody connection will start
Try to be the slowest person in the room in order to be present and mindful.
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