A Yoga Manifesto

 I want a dyke yoga teacher. I want a black yoga teacher I want a trans yoga teacher. I want a fat yoga teacher. I want an old yoga teacher. I want a yoga teacher who doesn’t have a guru, but has been to therapy. I want a yoga teacher who has committed civil disobedience, a yoga teacher who doesn’t separate yoga and social justice, but blends the two unapologetically. I want a yoga teacher that values critical thinking and is willing to change their opinion when presented with new information. I want a yoga teacher that values function over aesthetic. I want a yoga teacher who is learning to decolonize yoga. A yoga teacher that doesn’t rail against calls to stop cultural appropriation. I want a yoga teacher who is not an Instagram star, who doesn’t judge yoga selfies, who doesn’t post too many yoga selfies. I want a yoga teacher who’s as warm, kind and authentic outside of the yoga studio as they are inside of it. I want a yoga teacher that practices yoga off their mat. I want a yoga teacher whose brand isn't #loveandlight24/7. I want a yoga teacher that doesn’t call herself a free-spirit-gypsy. I want a yoga teacher who has burned out and then found their way back to yoga - charting their own way. I want a yoga teacher who doesn’t offer yoga as the solution and cure to every ailment; that realizes it’s an incomplete practice with faults like everything else in life. A yoga teacher who isn’t afraid to say fuck it – whatever it is, fuck it. I want a yoga teacher who knows yoga is for every. body. I want a yoga teacher that doesn't play gatekeeper declaring what is and is not yoga. I want a yoga teacher that understands why I want all these things.

- Trisha Durham. (Inspired by Zoe Leonard’s I want a president).