Yoga Enterprise

Denver’s yoga scene faces a reckoning – The Denver Post

“Close your eyes. Imagine walking into a place in Five Points surrounded by all the Black Bodies. How would you feel?”

Ali Duncan is a Denver-based yoga practitioner and spa owner, and when she says those words to white college students, she notices something.

“They all tense up,” Duncan said of the bodies she works with to heal racism. But once the students sit with their discomfort and “postpone it,” she explains, their discomfort begins to make sense to them.

She’s in a unique position to know. Four years ago, Duncan left her decade-long career as the first black woman in the Fort Collins Police Department to found Urban Sanctuary, offering yoga, massage, Reiki, coaching and other healing services in the heart of Denver’s Five Points.

She recalls being “the only black girl” in every yoga class she could find in Denver at the time. When Duncan founded her company, Colorado’s yoga scene was overwhelmingly white and still largely known for corporate-backed studios like CorePower and crispy homegrown chains like Kindness.

But Kindness’s nine locations and a handful of other white-owned yoga studios in Denver closed for good this summer. Zenver, Flex Barre + Yoga, Samadhi Center for Yoga, and Lacuna Juice and Yoga have all announced the permanent closure of their physical spaces due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Suddenly, community members who have felt marginalized by a whitewashed western yoga scene now find themselves in a unique position to step in and lead the way forward.

Black bodies, white surfaces

“If you notice that another race isn’t being treated well, and you’re not using your platform and you’re not saying anything…don’t promote what yoga is,” Duncan said simply. “(Equality) has nothing to do with politics, and it has everything to do with yoga.”

Duncan built Urban Sanctuary in an abandoned pub on Welton Street in 2016, and when it opened “I was just hoping for a black rush. And there wasn’t,” she said.

So she acted on purpose. She designed courses for people of color and she networked in search of diverse students. She slowly spread the word so her community and others could find their way to Urban Sanctuary.

“We have to be specific,” she said of seeking diversity in teaching and practice, “because[people]don’t really connect yoga to the black community.”

Now the studio offers classes that are sex-positive, like Men’s Kundalini Tantra, classes specifically for people of color (see Brown Sugar Yoga), and combines a range of spiritual practices with movements—like Duncan’s own Tarot and Flow.

“Everyone comes to me … because the other yoga studios are so cramped,” Duncan said. She believes that the yoga community as a whole has been overly complacent about issues of race and racism.

“The normal thing was running their business, supporting their business and supporting the white bodies,” Duncan said. “We may not be consciously racist, but if our normalcy is disrupted, people will fight back. If a black body spreads its mat next to yours, and you’ve never had that in your class, there might be a reaction.”

Duncan sees the events of the past month at the intersection between the Black Lives Matter movement and the business community as a breaking point.

Notably, Kindness Yoga has permanently closed all of its Denver studios due to the economic impact of the coronavirus, but also in direct response to public allegations by employees of what they consider to be racist behavior, including performative allies on the part of the company, hollow attempts at activism, tokenization of color teachers and lack of diversity in leadership.

Patrick Harrington, CEO and founder of Kindness, said he was shocked, saddened and confused by what these employees posted on social media using the hashtag #calloutkindness, and claimed he was never raised about issues within Kindness’ culture may be. “Not a single conversation,” he emphasized.

“Obviously we’re going to make mistakes, this is all new to me,” Harrington told the Denver Post. “I am a 47 year old white privileged male. I have used my privilege of offering yoga and meditation spaces in my native city for 20 years and in three days it was completely trashed without even a conversation.”

Now the conversation has started, and Duncan is hoping for more accountability, particularly from white-owned yoga businesses that are evolving.

“It has to flow throughout your organization,” she said.

“Yoga does not take place in a vacuum”

In early July, Davidia Turner sat on a yoga mat at her Denver home, smiling broadly and thanking more than 50 attendees as she watched her Zoom screen fill for a virtual session called Yoga for Witches.

Turner focused that evening on encouraging students to connect with their ancestors—knowing “where we came from,” connecting that knowledge to “the present moment,” and also “all parts of (us) that refuge recapturing I didn’t feel safe,” she reiterated during the hour-long vinyasa.

A few weeks earlier, Turner, who is black, had used her social media platform to call Harrington and Kindness before stepping down from her position as an instructor at the company.

Yoga studios, she said, are some of the places she’s seen the most racism in her work life.

“I kept committing to these white studios because I thought it was the only way to succeed in my chosen career field,” she wrote on Instagram. “But I’m tired of working for others and with others who don’t appreciate my humanity.”

Shortly after leaving Kindness and witnessing its closure, Turner launched a crowdfunding campaign for her own yoga business. She has raised more than $8,700 to “work to bring healing and justice to BIPOC individuals, with a focus on Black Womxn and all individuals who are actively dismantling our culture’s systemic flaws,” she wrote of her mission.

At the same time, Turner’s former Kindness colleague Jordan Smiley is focused on his own Courageous Yoga studio, a “BIPOC and queer-led trauma-informed community in Denver,” he writes on his website. Smiley, who is trans/Indigenous, says he feels compelled to speak out against Kindness alongside Turner and as part of the LGBTQ community.

“Yoga doesn’t happen in a vacuum,” Smiley said in an interview with the Denver Post. “We are still embedded in the cultural context. In the last month, it’s become clear to eyes that haven’t seen that there are oppressive pressures that are truly built into our culture, and the yoga industry is no exception.”

Harrington acknowledged his former employees’ pain in a statement on social media last month.

“I’m writing today to offer my sincere apologies to our BIPOC and LGBTQI+ community,” Harrington wrote on Instagram. “It is clear that our studios were not a safe place for you to offer your teachings. I hear you and I will do better personally.”

He then announced that Kindness, which had grown to 150 teachers across nine studios, would be permanently closing.

Urban Sanctuary’s Duncan witnessed the dismantling of yoga facilities in Denver this summer, and she says she loves seeing her community and others “find their voice and call on businesses.”

When Duncan, Smiley and Turner talk about their own practices, the phrase “No Harm” comes up again and again. It’s a central tenet of yoga and too often ignored in Western practice, says Duncan.

“If white studios started offering anti-racism classes in their studio, I think that would be a big change,” she says. “This is a white problem, it’s not a black problem…”

This summer, while she runs Urban Sanctuary, her husband Marc Neal, another ex-cop, is teaching police officers across the country anti-bias policing, or “heart-and-mind connection.” Duncan sees his career, the current social climate and certainly also her own work as closely linked.

“The mind goes haywire with stories, doesn’t it?” she said.

“You fear for your safety based on a story that’s in your head.” And while the stories in your head are “freaking out” and the body is “already responding,” you “don’t understand that the stories you’re telling about black people bodies have … only stories are”.

So now comes the hard work: “It’s just understanding that and healing that,” Duncan said.

When you go: Urban Sanctuary’s weekly classes, including POC-specific groups, as well as other services are available through the center’s website. Visit Davidia Turner’s site for witch yoga, hatha and more and find Jordan Smiley’s Vinyasa Flow and Yin offerings at Courageousyoga.us.

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