Show Notes
In this episode, Jivana sits down with Sally SJ Brown, author of the newly released book The Diversity Gap in UK Yoga: Outsider Perspectives, which examines barriers to yoga access and ways the yoga community can address exclusion. Sally shares how the book draws from interviews with 17 people from marginalized groups in northern UK cities, her PhD research, and her experience as a community yoga teacher. Together, Jivana and Sally examine why good intentions are not enough and what it would actually take to make yoga accessible to the people who need it most.
In the second part of the episode, Jivana and co-host Deanna Michalopoulos reflect on why academic research like Sally's matters and dig into her three-part framework for understanding barriers to yoga access: practical (cost, location), perceptual (not seeing yourself in yoga culture), and cultural (systemic issues including racism, ableism, homophobia, and fatphobia). They also explore the harder conversation about white saviorism, who gets to be the teacher, and how Accessible Yoga itself began as an effort to train people from within marginalized communities rather than send outsiders in to fix the problem.
Topics include:
How social prescribing in the UK makes accessibility a medical and policy issue
What critical theory and "outsider perspectives" means in an academic framework
How yoga's culture of positivity actively discourages the honest self-reflection needed to address exclusion
The complexity of cultural appropriation
The limits of trying to make existing studios accessible versus taking yoga directly into communities
Sally's next research phase: building an academic "theory of change" from existing examples of best practice in accessible and diverse yoga
Check out:
Sally's book The Diversity Gap in UK Yoga: Outsider Perspectives
Article by Sally in The Independent: NHS patients are being socially prescribed yoga – but not everyone will benefit
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Connect with Sally:
I am a researcher, writer and yoga teacher with a focus on equity and inclusion, health and wellbeing and marginalised populations. I live and work in the city of Leeds in northern England. I’m an accessible and community yoga teacher. I’ve been teaching for nine years and I run a non-profit Leeds Community Yoga working with under-represented groups in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. I’m also a university researcher in health and sociology working in wellness, disability and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI). I completed my PhD doctorate in 2025 looking at yoga access and inclusion in the UK. Before that I spent over 20 years in communications in government and the NHS, and in journalism. I was diagnosed autistic 14 years ago.
www.sallysjbrown.com | leedscommunityyoga.com | @sally_sj_brown (IG) | linktr.ee/sallysjbrown
Connect with Jivana:
Check out Jivana’s books, Accessible Yoga, Yoga Revolution, and The Teacher’s Guide to Accessible Yoga, and get more information about Accessible Yoga at accessibleyoga.org
www.jivanaheyman.com | @jivanaheyman | facebook.com/jivanaheyman
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