Welcome to Module One
Understanding Identities, Communication Styles, and Bodily Responses
In this module, we will examine our identity and positionality and apply them to the context of intersectionality. We will also dive into the ways that our bodies respond to our own perceived level of safety based on our positionality and social context.
Through the Vedic systems of Yoga and Ayurveda, we are invited to consider our human body as a complex technology, comprised of many systems, layers, and energies. Most of us are walking around with little to no understanding of how our bodies actually work! Sure, we might think we do. Maybe we know basic anatomy or how the nervous system works, but understanding the physical 3rd Dimensional nature of the body is just the very tip of beginning to interface with our bodies as advanced technological systems. In doing so, we will also be able to understand our body’s reactions to experiencing privilege, oppression, conflict, fear, and harm.
IDENTITY
Our identity is based off of fixed traits that are usually present from birth, such as skin color, and more fluid traits that can change over time, such as class. Some bodies experience more privilege or oppression than the next depending on the social context and who we are in proximity to. Intersectionality helps us to understand why our experience of privilege or oppression will shift and mold to our social contexts.
POSITIONALITY
Much of our identities are comprised of things that we cannot change about ourselves, for example, the color of our skin, gender, or mobility needs. These unchangeable aspects of ourselves lead to various degrees of privilege and oppression. However, some of the pieces of our identities require us to make a choice to embody them. Our political identity, invisible disabilities, and religious identity are a few examples. The totality of our identities, and the degree to which we embody them, informs our positionality and how we are perceived by others.
INTERSECTIONALITY
Originally coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, intersectionality offers a way of understanding how each of our individual identities overlap with and inform each other, especially marginalized identities and our relative access to social power.
THE DOSHAS
Through the lens of Ayurvedic Doshas (air, water, earth, fire, ether), we can begin to understand ourselves elementally.
A basic premise of Ayurveda is that like increases like, and opposites balance. So, if we have more Vata (Air) in our constitution, it is likely that fast-paced scenarios, high stress environments, and instability will increase a Vata imbalance, leading to overwhelm, anxiety, self-doubt, and worry. As humans we tend to personalize these situations: “Why can’t I stay clear and grounded? Why can’t I handle this situation like they can?” But when we pan out to understand ourselves elementally and vibrationally, there is nothing personal about it! It’s simply how our constitutional makeup incorporates these energies or waveforms. When we can accept that we are not separate from nature, we are nature, we can open up to more acceptance of ourselves just as we are, and we can work with our natures instead of against them through punishment or repression. We don’t ask a rose bush to be a Birch tree, that would be absurd!
FEAR RESPONSES
Sometimes called “trauma responses,” these autonomic reactions were developed to help create a feeling of safety in our bodies in uncertain situations starting at a young age. In order to move into higher consciousness, we want to rewire these responses so that we can move into our awareness body.
There are four types of fear responses, the 4 “Fs”: Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn. We need to first identify which one of these responses is our predominant state of reaction before we can rewire our responses in a more conscious way.
