Weaponized Vulnerability and the Search for Authenticity in Modern Yoga Communities
Publication information:
Tillman, Patricia. 2023. “Weaponized Vulnerability and the Search for Authenticity in Modern Yoga Communities.” in Uses and Abuses of Power in Alternative Spiritualities. Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Abstract
Abstract: In modern yoga and spiritual communities, the need for connection and authenticity often causes students to be peer-pressured into what this paper will call “weaponized vulnerability.” “Weaponized vulnerability” is personal sharing from participants at workshops, retreats, and yoga teacher trainings, which was squeezed out of them by communal pressures, or by displays of disingenuous and performative vulnerability from the leaders at these trainings. As well as examining weaponized vulnerability, its origins, and ties to larger patterns of capitalist and Western cooptation of spiritual traditions, this paper will examine older models of spiritual mentorship, in search of a more balanced paradigm.
Presenter bio: Patricia Tillman holds a PhD in History from the Catholic University of America, and is currently an adjunct professor at University of Maryland-Global Campus. Her research and writing focus on the tensions between head-learning and heart-learning, skepticism and belief, and tradition and modernity, as well as comparisons between Western and Eastern spiritualities.
Presenter affiliation: University of Maryland, Global Campus
Presenter bio: Patricia Tillman holds a PhD in History from the Catholic University of America, and is currently an adjunct professor at University of Maryland-Global Campus. Her research and writing focus on the tensions between head-learning and heart-learning, skepticism and belief, and tradition and modernity, as well as comparisons between Western and Eastern spiritualities.
Presenter affiliation: University of Maryland, Global Campus