6 Ways to Avoid Ableism in Yoga Classes

Yoga in the West has moved away from a traditional focus on spiritual enlightenment and instead become mostly concerned with two interconnected elements: physical ability and physical “healing.” Unfortunately, these two elements directly feed into the medical model of disability, in which people with disabilities, chronic illnesses, larger bodies or whose bodies are perceived as different, older, or “other” are seen as inferior and needing to be fixed.

Modern yoga culture has elevated a particular body type that has certain physical abilities as better than other bodies. And this idea pretty much defines the term “ableism,” which the nonprofit Access Living describes as “the discrimination of and social prejudice against people with disabilities based on the belief that typical abilities are superior.”

What Is Ableism?

Ableism, like other forms of white supremacy, is so ingrained in us that it can be hard to see the way it has affected our thinking and belief systems. In anti-racism training, we learn that it can be almost impossible to see the ways we’ve been enculturated, just like it’s hard for a fish to see the water in which it’s swimming. We have to consciously increase our self-awareness to even begin to notice these habitual ways of thinking.

One year at the Accessible Yoga Conference in St. Louis, Missouri, I attended a workshop led by Ryan McGraw, a yoga teacher who has cerebral palsy and is a disability rights advocate. I remember McGraw succinctly explaining the difference between the medical model of disability and the cultural model, and how much yoga has focused on the medical model.

The medical model, he explained, perceives people with disabilities as needing to be fixed or needing to be cured. The cultural model perceives disability as an important, potentially beneficial aspect to someone’s personality and background, much like being left-handed or red-headed. It’s based on an idea of embracing difference rather than hiding or disdaining it.

6 Ways to Reduce Ableism in Your Yoga Classes

Yoga is about increasing our self-awareness, and the foundational teaching of self-reflection (svadhyaya) is a key component to the practice. Below are ways to address ableism in yoga, but first you might take a moment to explore your personal relationship to the idea of ableism. Consider these questions:

• If someone has a disability, does that mean they need to be fixed or changed?
• Does the ability to practice physically challenging yoga sequences mean a person is “advanced” at yoga?
• If someone has an illness or injury, or as they get older and less mobile, do they become “less advanced” at yoga?

The following are suggestions for yoga teachers who are interested in reducing ableism in their teaching. Students can also be on the lookout for these common non-inclusive habits and can consider raising concerns with their yoga teachers to help make classes more accessible.

1. Consider Identity

Allow people with disabilities to choose how they want to be identified in terms of what words to use and whether they want to discuss their disability with you. Within disability culture there are many people who are reclaiming the word “disabled,” just like the LGBTQ+ community has reclaimed the word “queer.” There is a lot of discussion and differing opinions regarding identify-first language (disabled person) versus person-first language (person with a disability). But ultimately, what a person is called is entirely up to them.

2. Use Invitational Language Instead of Command Language

Try to use language that invites people to explore their own ability and limitations. For example, when cueing Cobra Pose (Bhujangasana), a common command version of those same cues is, “Lengthen your neck, extend your chin, and raise your head.” But you could use invitational language to say, “Lengthen your neck and pause here, noticing how you feel, or you may want to extend your chin and begin to raise your head…” Command language implies that there are right and wrong ways to move the body. Invitational language such as this gives people agency over their own bodies and their own practice.

3. Avoid Using the Word “Advanced”

The goal of yoga is finding peace, reducing suffering, and increasing self-awareness. Physically “advanced” postures can help us learn about our minds, but what feels simple for one person can be challenging for another. Using hierarchical language when teaching yoga can take away from the opportunity for inner exploration. Also, focusing on “peak” poses incorrectly positions some poses as better than others, when it’s your experience in any pose that really matters.

4. Use “Variation” or “Version” Instead of “Modification” When Adapting Poses

Notice the tendency to focus on a “classic version” of a pose and how the way we subtly or overtly  imply that a variation is less than or not as good through our teaching and cueing. If yoga is really for everyone, then we need to move away from the idea that some forms of practice are less worthy or are modifications of the “real” thing.

5. Avoid the Word “Just”

Adding “just” before a cue can make it sound as though you’re diminishing the challenge of an action, such as cueing the alternative to “just reach down to the mat”. It’s actually a game I play in my head–noticing my tendency to say “just” and then adjusting to say something more like “take care of yourself.”

6. Don’t Project Your Experience

People have extremely diverse experiences of the same situation, so we need to be careful not to project our personal experiences onto others. For example, you might consider a few minutes of silent meditation relaxing. But for neuro-diverse folks in your class, it might feel stressful. Instead of saying “This will be relaxing” or “Wasn’t that calming,” allow people to have space for their own experience. Or consider offering more open-ended benefits, such as “This may be relaxing.”

This article has been updated. Originally published August 19, 2020.