YA - CE Workshop | Yoga and Society (USYACE2502B)
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YA - CE Workshop | Yoga and Society (USYACE2502B) Closed Captioning/ Transcript Disclaimer Closed captioning and/or transcription is being provided solely for the convenience of our viewers. Yoga Alliance does not review for accuracy any information that appears in a closed caption or transcript. Yoga Alliance makes no representations or warranties, and expressly disclaims any responsibility or liability with respect to, any errors or omissions in, or the accuracy, reliability, timeliness or completeness of, any information that appears in a closed caption or transcript. Saturday Bishop sing Californiaa Singh sing sing Christa Kuberry Christa Kuberrystanding by. Testing testing testing testing a live captioner is standing by. >> KIM WEEKS: Hi. My name is Kim Weeks, and I'm with Kim Weeks Well for the Yoga Alliance and going on two years now, bringing the science and research on yoga to life. And I have to tell you that we've had a lot of sessions. Hi, how are you? How many -- 60? 50? We've done a lot. Not into the triple digits yet, but we're getting there. And we have done so many sessions, but I have to say, I don't know that I have waited for any other one with as much anticipation as I have for this one today, as we bring to you Dr. Jennifer Webb. Good afternoon, Jennifer. How are you doing today? >> DR. JENNIFER WEBB: I'm doing wonderful, and it's an honor and a privilege to be here with you today. So grateful for the opportunity. >> KIM WEEKS: And we feel so much namaste, back to you. So as many as you are, Dr. Jennifer Webb is an associate professor in the department of psychological science and health psychology PhD program at UNC Charlotte. She got her undergraduate at cognitive neuroscience at Harvard and has gone on to do -- at USC in California. You have done so much study! And Jennifer is going to tell us even more about her career and all the research that she does do. The reason we're so excited to have her today is because, especially, Black History Month, to bring the scientific and research on yoga for life, the lack of diversity, the inequities that exist in the yoga practice today, there are so many things I want to say about it, but I'm going to going to moderate and flow to many questions as you for Jennifer. And Dr. Sat Bir, as many of you know, I've been working with so closely to bring, in COVID, these webinars to you so we can all come together as a community and basically double down on yoga and double- down on it as a practice, and a hygiene, as Dr. Sat Bir likes to say, hygiene during the week or whatever. But the fact of the matter is, we are having a conversation of incredible privilege, and the privilege that I've had, I've worked with Dr. Sat Bir and Jennifer and all of us here are to acknowledge that all of them figure out how we can share it. Figure out how we can bring yoga to everyone. There's no one who shouldn't be doing yoga. No one who can't do yoga. So today in anatomy week at Yoga Alliance Week, this is an anatomy of science, of yoga itself. How it is that we can look at it with very clear eyes, with the training that we have had over all of these years, many of us having done, you know, the -- truth, but -- acknowledge that the social injustice of the privileged classes doing yoga around the world really is a form, as I like to say, of social injustice and harming. I don't mean to start on a low note, but I'm so glad you're here. We are so excited to have us, and it's such a privilege to have you share what you know. So for housekeeping for everybody, as you all know, logging in and logging on, the Q&A box is all for you. It has an upvoting feature, so when you ask your questions during the session, I'll be watching and looking. But please, also vote, as upvoted questions get asked more quickly because I see them faster. And in terms of the presentation, they will be talking for a few minutes to lay out the landscape that then Dr. Webb will wind up discussing further. On March 9th, Dr. Sat Bir I will be back in this format talking about it more, but Dr. Webb is laying it out, and Jennifer it tell us what she studies and what she knows. YA - CE Workshop | Yoga and Society (USYACE2502B) So we're look at some hard truths today. I hope it's influential for you. I've been teaching yoga for 20 years and have every label that the Yoga Alliance offers, including running my own yoga school, and I think for all of us when I say we come with a lot of humility and understanding, there's so much left we have to learn. So I'm going to go dark and can't wait for our wonderful presenters to go first. >> DR. SAT BIR SINGH KHALSA: Thank you, Kim, and a warm welcome to Dr. Webb. It's going to be a great session. I want to share a few slides to set the stage for Dr. Webb's presentation, and I want to go through some of the demographics of yoga, we'll be going on a deeper dive on March 9th, but I want to show a few statistics that we know about. This shows the most recent US survey which is the U.S. Government survey and looked at integrated medicine but yoga practice. What you can see in terms of gender on the left-hand side, 19.8% of women are practicing but only 8.6% of men are practicing yoga. This is something we know about, the gender disparity has been around for quite a while. When we look at race and look at whites and non-Hispanic and Blacks, we see this focus on race with the prevalence of yoga practitioners. And finally, the third thing I looked at and you can take a look at the full paper here, the link is down at the bottom, it's dominated by people who are younger, page 18 to 44, and the numbers drop off as you get to older ages. So clearly, there's disparity in terms of age, race, and gender, and there are others and I'll be showing those on March 9th, things like education, income, et cetera. Let's talk about race and gender because that will be the focus today. I did a deep dive through a number of surveys that have been done historically, and all the links for these are located down here. These are the links that the surveys were done, looking at female practitioners. Now, there's a good deal of variance here because they're done differently every year, but what we're looking at is the three-quarters, roughly, of the yoga practitioners is really women. And if you look more closely at the most rigorous ly done, this NHIS health survey in 2002, 2012, and 2017, you can see perhaps, gender disparities is dropping a little bit. But that remains to be seen. When we look at race and ethnicity, there's fewer surveys that look at the race and ethnicity breakdown. Some of them have looked at looking at the whites as opposed to the complete ethnic and racial background. What you can see from the NHIS survey is this basically strong disparity that it's dominated by whites. What you can suggest here, perhaps, looking a little bit more closely, isolation that, there's a little bit of an increase. This is not much, over 15 years, a 2% increase in Blacks and 1% in Hispanics over a five-year period but still 75% whites. How different is this from the national demographic? Let's take a look at that. This is race, ethnicity across 1997 to 2017 when this graph ends, so when this ends, whites are 61% of the proposition and we're sitting at well over 70 for yoga practitioners. How different is this from the national demographic? Let's take a look at that. This is race, ethnicity across 1997 to 2017 when this graph ends, so when this ends, whites are 61% of the proposition and we're sitting at well over 70 for yoga practitioners. When we look at Latino, 18%, Page 2 of 11 Downloaded on: 01 Mar 2021 8:03 AM YA - CE Workshop | Yoga and Society (USYACE2502B) but Blacks, nowhere near 12%. So predominantly white, female, younger, higher socioeconomic status. Now, this has been recognized as the yoga community, a good sign, much of society is starting to recognize this, as is the yoga community. So when I did a simple search for yoga and disparity, there was some evidence that yoga groups are starting to address this. This was an article written in yoga International by Dianne Bondy and the quote from that, I've learned that Black folks, other people of color, people with disabilities and people with nonbinary genders around always welcomed in yoga spaces. Yoga and other spiritual practices seem to be endeavors reserved for wealthy, white, cis gender folks, even though yoga is meant to reflect all aspects of an individual and all aspects of the life itself.