Bala Singh's guest appearances

Bala Singh

ArTivism Interview Series 

Critical Yoga Studies with Roopa Bala Singh: Race + Liberation + "Yoga"

Karen Rose

Rajni Perera

Lumumba Bandele

Jill Louise Busby

Bree Simran

Roopa Bala Singh

Kara Brooks

Stephanie Yvette Evans

OwlTail

Welcome to Episode 10 of the Critical Yoga Studies podcast. The workshop conversation here was originally titled: Online Yoga Pedagogy: Technical and Cultural Competency. In it, I sketch out best practices for online yoga teaching. I apply guiding principles from Paolo Friere's Pedagogy of the Oppressed to online yoga instruction. I also integrate long term forecasts for the crises and phases of online higher education. Christa Kubery, Vice President of YA Standards, introduces me. In this episode, I continue to focus on online education, specifically online offerings of yoga. The conversation here is based on a Yoga Alliance Continuing Education (CE) Workshop featuring Roopa Bala Singh, originally recorded via live Zoom (4/9/20) with hundreds of participants who self identify as yoga studio owners, yoga teachers, and yoga students. This is very much the beginning of this conversation. There is need to thoughtfully consider practices in teaching online yoga education, being a student learning yoga online, and governing online yoga education. As ever, there are many levels to the conversation. Key takeaways:Co-learning: How do you integrate co-learning into your online yoga offering so that students have a chance to teach one another, hear one another, learn from one another, see one another, or experience learning together as co-teachers?Transparency: How do you make your practice more transparent as an online yoga instructor? How do you share about who you are, how you came to this practice, why you do it? Can you make space to discuss how yoga is governed and how that affects the offering itself?Accountability: How are you making sure that folks are doing all the hours that they've signed up for? And how do you do that without surveilling or gathering data that might eventually be used inappropriately and non-consensually? Intervening in binaries: Yoga is generally about challenging binaries, about finding the in between, the balance in an era of widening extremes. In a yoga offering online, how do you challenge the binary of "teacher" and students? It's a dynamic that has been long identified by people like Paulo Freire who wrote that students aren't just there to be empty vessels to be filled, but instead co-teachers in the space. And, the  "student body" of a yoga class always includes the teacher themselves. We will all, always, be students of yoga. In this episode, I give an introductory grounding exercise and then we get right into it. The music offering today is an "om." I've avoided doing so till now, lol. The use of "om" in industrial yoga is problematic, layered. But, my own experience with "om" is that is something I heard in my mother's voice, practiced by my grandmothers, great grandmothers. And so I practice "om" from a place of familiarity, of habit, and family. Enjoy. Please let me know if you have any questions, or how you may have put this to use. 

Welcome to Episode 10 of the Critical Yoga Studies podcast. The workshop conversation here was originally titled: Online Yoga Pedagogy: Technical and Cultural Competency. In it, I sketch out best practices for online yoga teaching. I apply guiding principles from Paolo Friere's Pedagogy of the Oppressed to online yoga instruction. I also integrate long term forecasts for the crises and phases of online higher education. Christa Kubery, Vice President of YA Standards, introduces me. In this episode, I continue to focus on online education, specifically online offerings of yoga. The conversation here is based on a Yoga Alliance Continuing Education (CE) Workshop featuring Roopa Bala Singh, originally recorded via live Zoom (4/9/20) with hundreds of participants who self identify as yoga studio owners, yoga teachers, and yoga students.  This is very much the beginning of this conversation. There is need to thoughtfully consider practices in teaching online yoga education, being a student learning yoga online, and governing online yoga education. As ever, there are many levels to the conversation.  Key takeaways:<ol><li>Co-learning: How do you integrate co-learning into your online yoga offering so that students have a chance to teach one another, hear one another, learn from one another, see one another, or experience learning together as co-teachers?</li><li>Transparency: How do you make your practice more transparent as an online yoga instructor? How do you share about who you are, how you came to this practice, why you do it? Can you make space to discuss how yoga is governed and how that affects the offering itself?</li><li>Accountability: How are you making sure that folks are doing all the hours that they've signed up for? And how do you do that without surveilling or gathering data that might eventually be used inappropriately and non-consensually? </li><li>Intervening in binaries: Yoga is generally about challenging binaries, about finding the in between, the balance in an era of widening extremes. In a yoga offering online, how do you challenge the binary of "teacher" and students? It's a dynamic that has been long identified by people like Paulo Freire who wrote that students aren't just there to be empty vessels to be filled, but instead co-teachers in the space. And, the  "student body" of a yoga class always includes the teacher themselves. We will all, always, be students of yoga. </li></ol>In this episode, I give an introductory grounding exercise and then we get right into it.  The music offering today is an "om." I've avoided doing so till now, lol. The use of "om" in industrial yoga is problematic, layered. But, my own experience with "om" is that is something I heard in my mother's voice, practiced by my grandmothers, great grandmothers. And so I practice "om" from a place of familiarity, of habit, and family.  Enjoy. Please let me know if you have any questions, or how you may have put this to use.

EP 10: Online Yoga Education, Best Practices & Cultural Competency, Yoga Alliance and Roopa Bala Singh

In this episode with the brother Lumumba Bandele, we discuss tactics. This is a beautiful dialectic on tactical considerations. We address the questions: (1) What defines this moment of global uprising, what are the peaks and the valleys we see unfolding for now and for the future? (Answer: All 50 states? BLM went from radical to performative. Unimaginable shifts in policy. And troubling but telling signs that the U.S. nation-state wants people to advocate for change in chaos and danger.) (2) What are the pluses and minuses of a tunnel vision focus on the United States and the social change that needs to happen in this colonial center? (Answer: We must address the privileges and responsibilities that come with being U.S. residents. Global solidarity takes action and is a requirement for any hope of lasting change in these terrible imbalances of power.)(3) Black citizenship?(Answer: Every generation consists of events that highlight the fallacy of Black citizenship. Just as the physical statues are being felled, so too must our mistaken visions of citizenship and investment in being of this country in certain mythological ways that keep us complacent, complicit.)(4) How do you define: abolition?(Answer: I am an aspiring abolitionist. I am learning. There are lots of new terms used to describe the associated ideas of abolitionist principles, but the concepts were tried and true under segregation.)(5) We talk about fireworks and the use of pyrotechnics in Black and brown core locales in America's largest cities - NY, Philly, LA and more. 

In this episode with the brother Lumumba Bandele, we discuss tactics. This is a beautiful dialectic on tactical considerations. We address the questions:  (1) What defines this moment of global uprising, what are the peaks and the valleys we see unfolding for now and for the future? <ul><li>(Answer: All 50 states? BLM went from radical to performative. Unimaginable shifts in policy. And troubling but telling signs that the U.S. nation-state wants people to advocate for change in chaos and danger.) </li></ul>(2) What are the pluses and minuses of a tunnel vision focus on the United States and the social change that needs to happen in this colonial center? <ul><li>(Answer: We must address the privileges and responsibilities that come with being U.S. residents. Global solidarity takes action and is a requirement for any hope of lasting change in these terrible imbalances of power.)</li></ul>(3) Black citizenship?<ul><li>(Answer: Every generation consists of events that highlight the fallacy of Black citizenship. Just as the physical statues are being felled, so too must our mistaken visions of citizenship and investment in being of this country in certain mythological ways that keep us complacent, complicit.)</li></ul>(4) How do you define: abolition?<ul><li>(Answer: I am an aspiring abolitionist. I am learning. There are lots of new terms used to describe the associated ideas of abolitionist principles, but the concepts were tried and true under segregation.)</li></ul>(5) We talk about fireworks and the use of pyrotechnics in Black and brown core locales in America's largest cities - NY, Philly, LA and more.

EP 7: Lumumba Bandele, Movement 4 Black Lives National Strategies & Planning Director , discusses tactics with Roopa Bala Singh.

"This was so enlightening, I loved every minute of it." - BreeThis redemptive episode on yoga and Black and Indian relations features host, Roopa Bala Singh, and guest Bree Simran Darby (@blindiangirl on ig/@BreeDarby2 on twitter).  Roopa writes, "In this episode we talk truth, SPREAD LOVE THE BK WAY. We get political, intimate, we talk about mothering and daughtering, and our mentors, and lack thereof - we talk love and hate. As all the warring escalates, this conversation reminds me that we are powerful."In this episode, Roopa Bala Singh speaks with Bree Simran Darby - an influencer &amp; agitator with many tools in her millennial tool kit. We recorded this episode on the day Trump left his warlording state visit to Modi in India. This sisterly conversation, recorded on audio and video, was incredibly redemptive that day. Bree is a born and raised Brooklynite, who grew up attending Park Slope schools and is in university at St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights, NYC. She is a skilled registered nurse in training, senior in university. "Blindian" is a popular term for people who are mixed, Black and Indian/desi ("dhay-see"). There are other terms "dougla," and "colored" that do not roll off the tounge without thick political history. Bree and Roopa Bala speak about race war, and Indian anti-Blackness as also a form of self-hate. They talk coloniality, histories of pitting Black and Brown against one another, and futures of mending this terrible cut amongst our African and Indian lineages and diasporas. Bree is a classically trained Bharatnatyam dancer, YUNG millennial scholar, and social media influencer/agitator. Her recent thread on anti-Blackness addressed to desi peoples including her family has several thousand engagements. Roopa Bala spoke with her about this thread, and more. 

"This was so enlightening, I loved every minute of it." - Bree This redemptive episode on yoga and Black and Indian relations features host, Roopa Bala Singh, and guest Bree Simran Darby (@blindiangirl on ig/@BreeDarby2 on twitter).  Roopa writes, "In this episode we talk truth, SPREAD LOVE THE BK WAY. We get political, intimate, we talk about mothering and daughtering, and our mentors, and lack thereof - we talk love and hate. As all the warring escalates, this conversation reminds me that we are powerful." In this episode, Roopa Bala Singh speaks with Bree Simran Darby - an influencer &amp; agitator with many tools in her millennial tool kit. We recorded this episode on the day Trump left his warlording state visit to Modi in India. This sisterly conversation, recorded on audio and video, was incredibly redemptive that day.  Bree is a born and raised Brooklynite, who grew up attending Park Slope schools and is in university at St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights, NYC. She is a skilled registered nurse in training, senior in university. "Blindian" is a popular term for people who are mixed, Black and Indian/desi ("dhay-see"). There are other terms "dougla," and "colored" that do not roll off the tounge without thick political history. Bree and Roopa Bala speak about race war, and Indian anti-Blackness as also a form of self-hate. They talk coloniality, histories of pitting Black and Brown against one another, and futures of mending this terrible cut amongst our African and Indian lineages and diasporas. Bree is a classically trained Bharatnatyam dancer, YUNG millennial scholar, and social media influencer/agitator. Her recent thread on anti-Blackness addressed to desi peoples including her family has several thousand engagements. Roopa Bala spoke with her about this thread, and more.