Breaking Down Barriers

Join us for our Yoga Equity Workshop: Breaking Down Barriers, Feb. 10, 11 a.m.–12:30 p.m. PST; 1–2:30 p.m. CST; 2–4:30 p.m. EST.

Every time we take a class, study, or step onto our yoga mat to practice, we renew our connection to the wisdom of yoga and to our lineage. This connection supports and calls us to engage skillfully with our world to recognize our lives as the field of practice.

We have begun the skillful work needed to promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in our Iyengar Yoga Community. This work is internal to us and external to us. Its impact ripples out into the wider communities to which we are connected.

Please join us for a special workshop led by Aaron Johnson of Holistic Resistance, “Breaking Down Barriers,” on Feb. 10, 11 a.m.–12:30 p.m. PST; 1–2:30 p.m. CST; 2–4:30 p.m. EST.

We are excited to have Aaron back for a deeper investigation of the topics he presented at the IYNAUS convention in San Diego.

Let’s learn how to create a safe and inclusive environment. Dismantling oppression in the yoga community is a sensitive matter and a life-saving practice. We will work together to build an accessible plan to find our edges around race and how to show up for People of the Global Majority who are targeted by oppression. During the workshop, we will explore various topics, including understanding your individual positionality profile and your positionality within the community. We will also discuss how to embody anti-racism.

This workshop will have a limited number of participants. Preference will be given to those who will attend and participate.  Participants are asked to fill out a short application to secure a spot.

Application form

We welcome your thoughts, suggestions, and help!  Please email equitychair@iynaus.org.

About Aaron Johnson and Holistic Resistance

Aaron Johnson (he/him) is an earth builder, teacher of closeness, and activist. He graduated from the California Institute of the Arts in 2007 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. He has made a lifelong commitment to use his skills to end racism. In addition to using intimacy and closeness to blackness as a primary means to that end, the tools he frequently uses are speaking, teaching, singing, photography, filmmaking, and minimalism. Aaron leads a mentoring program called Turn It Up Now that focuses on elevating youth’s power, talent, love, and work ethic. He believes that deep connection is one of the most powerful tools to dismantle racism.

As co-founder of both Holistic Resistance and Grief to Action, Aaron takes the time to hold the stories of black people around homophobia, transphobia, internalized racism, and those that are Chronically UnderTouched.

Because oppression is a part of historical and present American culture, the long-term impact of those trauma stories should be acknowledged and held as a map for our collective healing. Aaron Johnson practices and invites various methods of moving through these stories, such as the communal listening ear, sound healing, meditation, and closeness to the earth. Read more at www.holisticresistance.com.

Holistic Resistance has been working with the Iyengar community through Adeline Yoga since 2017, providing staff training and support for Adeline’s entire community. In 2023, Aaron did an incredible workshop at the IYNAUS convention in San Diego, CA.