Queering and Cripping the “Yoga Body”

Teaching, Practice, and Embodiment

Laura Shears

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Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Routledge
30 July 2025

Humanities; Cultural studies; Gender studies, gender groups; Sociology; Sports & outdoor recreation

Queering and Cripping the “Yoga Body” deconstructs the power relations and dominant discourses that shape the image of a healthy, natural, gendered body performing a postural yoga practice.

This book examines empirical yoga research, yoga-related media, and yoga teacher training materials to critique how yoga becomes a manageable, predictable intervention that individuals can and should undertake in order to create healthy, manageable, non-burdensome bodies. It argues that when yoga is positioned as a natural intervention, discourses of morality and purity become intertwined with those of measurability, responsibility, control, health, and gender. It also considers the author’s own embodied experience, as well as those of other queer and disabled yoga teachers and practitioners, and how such experiences can open up possibilities for the teaching and practice of yoga.

Queering and Cripping the “Yoga Body” will be of interest to graduate students and researchers studying embodiment, health and mindfulness practices, poststructuralism, queer theory, or disability studies, as well as researchers, teachers, and practitioners of yoga.

By: Laura Shears
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781032505466
ISBN 10: 103250546X
Pages: 130
Publication Date: 30 July 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Laura Shears has an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership from Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, USA and is a yoga teacher and practitioner.

Reviews for Queering and Cripping the “Yoga Body”: Teaching, Practice, and Embodiment

""Foregrounding their own positionality as a yoga practitioner and instructor, Shears fluidly moves in, around, and with complex theories of embodiment and power to think differently about current (and dominant) yoga educational programming, discourse, and practice. The work is bold, rigorous, deeply reflective, and beautifully written. More than an academic debate, this book is for anyone who wants to trouble the normalizing practices that narrowly define specific subjectivities in relation to those teaching and practicing yoga."" Dr. Alecia Jackson, Professor, Appalachian State University, USA