Narrative Healing from Spiritual Abuse: How Telling Your Personal Story Creates Systemic Change
Publication information:
Herrington, Sarah. 2023. “Narrative Healing from Spiritual Abuse: How Telling Your Personal Story Creates Systemic Change.” in Uses and Abuses of Power in Alternative Spiritualities. Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Abstract
Presenter bio: Sarah Herrington (she/her), MFA, is a writer, professor and advocate for safe spaces in yoga and meditation communities. Her writing on yoga, ethics and power abuse in contemporary yoga and meditation spaces has appeared in the New York Times, Yoga Journal, LA Yoga magazine and she's been interviewed on yoga and ethics by NPR and CNN. Her personal narrative writing on spiritual abuse inside contemporary Western meditation communities has appeared in the Revealer, with related personal essays in Poets and Writers Magazine, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. She is the author of four books on yoga and a current agented project exploring spiritual abuse inside contemporary American yoga and meditation communities. It asks the question: how do you heal when it was the path of healing that hurt you?
Sarah holds MFAs from New York University, where she was a Goldwater Fellow in Creative Nonfiction, Lesley University, and a BA from NYU. For several years she helped establish the first Master of Arts in Yoga Studies in North America at Loyola Marymount University where she continues to teach on the faculty of the Yoga, Mindfulness and Social Change curriculum and she has taught yoga in schools. She is a practitioner and teacher of yoga and Vipassana meditation. She currently teaches writing at Fordham University and Mindful Writing Workshops privately. Her students have, in turn, shared their stories of healing in the New York Times and other outlets. She is based in Brooklyn.
Presenter affiliation: Fordham University, Loyola Marymount University, New York University
Sarah holds MFAs from New York University, where she was a Goldwater Fellow in Creative Nonfiction, Lesley University, and a BA from NYU. For several years she helped establish the first Master of Arts in Yoga Studies in North America at Loyola Marymount University where she continues to teach on the faculty of the Yoga, Mindfulness and Social Change curriculum and she has taught yoga in schools. She is a practitioner and teacher of yoga and Vipassana meditation. She currently teaches writing at Fordham University and Mindful Writing Workshops privately. Her students have, in turn, shared their stories of healing in the New York Times and other outlets. She is based in Brooklyn.
Presenter affiliation: Fordham University, Loyola Marymount University, New York University