A Social Justice Project: The Reclamation the Yogini
Tamil-Nadu Yogini
“The identification of the human woman with the Universal Goddess is most explicit in tantric theology- yet the very existence of female masters, lineage holders and tantric adepts, although referred to repeated by tantric texts, is still doubted by some…Here there is no quarter given to feminist spiritual yearnings, or for women mystics to seek to follow the “liberating footsteps of the ancient yogini who dared to think themselves divine.” Rita DasGupta Sherma
Women’s history month is nearly here and it’s a good time as any to remember the spiritual foremothers of yoga — the Tantric yoginis. After all we rarely give them much thought. Their erasure from history is an injustice that lies silent at the very heart of contemporary yoga — and one with far reaching implications today. Because without questioning a history of yoga written by men, solely for men, can yoga ever be an equitable, socially just practice?
Now lets be clear, I’m not referring to yoginis as a celestial beings or goddesses of the chakras, — but as real women who practiced and taught yoga for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Medieval Tantric texts abound with references to the gurus and adepts who were revered transmitters and even originators of tantric doctrine. So why do we know so little of them today?
As a female yoga practitioner I’m deeply interested in these yoginis and I’m frustrated that yoga scholarship does little to enlighten us about their historical reality — aside from regurgitating tired old misogynic references that they were witches, harlots, sexual “consorts” or the demonic devourers of human flesh and children.
Eleventh-century yogini sculpture from Uttar Pradesh, India,
Giti Thadani’s book Mobius Trip documents her search for historical evidence of the yogini in India and claims there are hundred of Tantric texts and yogini statues which still lie collecting dust “hidden in vaults in museums and universities” And she cites many examples of written texts “where the feminine of the original Sanskrit has been translated as masculine.
While much conventional scholarship tells us that Tantric yoginis were exploited for ritual purposes, religious scholar Miranda Shaw has unearthed a very different history, one in which yoginis were were powerful gurus once held “in awe, reverence and obeisance”. Shaw reminds us that these Tantrikas did not see themselves as helpful attendees in the male enlightenment process, but as religious aspirants in their own right. The presence of female Buddha’s like the “beautiful, passionate and untamed”Vajrayogini in Tantric iconography and literature demonstrated that women could attain Buddha-hood in her present lifetime, in her present female body.
I believe the yogini’s erasure from history by centuries of patriarchal control over written texts has a great deal to do with why issues of misogyny, racism and privilege continue to trouble us in yoga today. Because who were these women — really? What did they teach? Why was it so dangerous? And why aren’t questions like these being asked more often?
Could it be that women’s bodies and their functions remain just as troublesome to us today as they were for ascetic sages? Maybe, if you consider the research put forward by ‘alternative’ historians such as Vicki Noble, Monica Sjoo, and Uma Dinsmore Tuli who contend yoginis were practicing a very different kind of yoga than we are familiar with today. They claim Tantric yoginis were the “power-holders” and inheritors of an widespread shamanic female-centred yoga practice dating to the 7th millennium B.C.E. (For more information on this click here). Their assertions that this early yoga was rooted in an earlier matriarchal culture that saw the female body not as defiled but divine — are mostly ignored by the yoga community.
Yakshi. Sunga 2nd-1st century BCE.
These scholar’s many books cite evidence found in rock and temple art, oral history and early Tantric texts, suggesting that the yoginis were the first to channel Kundalini Shakti through their biological powers, their life-giving sexuality, their power to bleed and give birth, through ecstatic rituals of trance, dance and body posture. Their claims that these yoginis laid the foundations for Tantra yoga and Hatha Yoga, with its emphasis on body posture, chakras, mantras, meditations, mudras and the concept of raising kundalini are dismissed by many as the “romantic fantasies” of goddess addled feminists.
But what is in dispute is not whether yogini and these teachings actually existed. The issue at stake is that their interpretations of this female-centred yoga are essentialist — meaning that by celebrating the biological power of the female body, they glorify the idea of gendered difference, an idea that feminists have been working to eradicate for the past hundred years.
One example of this is Uma Dinsmore Tuli, whose book Yoni Shakti: A Woman’s Guide to Power and Freedom through Yoga and Tantra examines the practices of yogini in Tantra. She urges women to reconnect to their “cunt power” through the practice of a yoga that “honours and respects femininity, womb cycles and the deep cyclical wisdom of women’s cycles”. Feminist critics charge this notion of a yoni (vagina ) as being integral to early yoga practice only reinforces the notion of gender stereotypes which have been oppressing women and other marginal groups for centuries.
Yoni Shakti -Image source unknown
But whether we want to accept it or not, there is plenty of textual evidence that Tantra saw something “essential “ about women’s bodies. For example the tantric texts cited here tell us that the yogini’s inherent biological powers of birth, menstruation and sexuality, were the very source of her siddhis (yogic or occult powers).”…As Shakti incarnate, her physiological functions and fluids are envisioned as the material manifestation of the power of the Goddess… The shakti’s yoni is analogized to the ‘great yoni” (matrix of the universe) and her menstrual blood is a sacred substance”.. “In the Shri Shankara it is said: The first menses appearing in a woman who has lost her virginity is Svayambhu blood -the substance causing the granting of any desire.”
And in a society where nearly all our biological functions from menstruation to breast feeding are still considered taboo, I think these teachings are well, pretty progressive. And lets remember too, that it was these very ideas, as author Moncia Sjoo contends, that became so deeply threatening to the ascetic Brahmanic priesthoods who saw the body, and especially women’s bodies as evil.
Violating strict class and caste structures, their practices were seen as “transgressions” and they not only wanted the yogini gone — they wanted her yogic powers for themselves. And so in the original act of cultural appropriation, what was once an embodied ritual practice and ecstatic encounter with the divine feminine, became a new ascetic knowledge reserved for a male spiritual elite — and it changed the nature of what we call yoga forever.
Whether you accept Sjoo’s interpretation or not, does acknowledging that there may have been a female-centred yoga which revered the sacred powers of the women’s body really threaten to send women’s rights back to the dark ages? Or in a culture where violence against women is rampant — does it help to revive them?
The Yoni Tantra is a classic of Tantric literature and it states quite clearly that every woman is a manifestation of the Goddess. “No man may raise his hand, strike or threaten a woman. When she is naked, men must kneel and worship her as the Goddess. She has equal rights with men on all levels. Miranda Shaw in her book Passionate Enlightenment:Women in Tantric Buddhism documents how the great female buddha Vajrayogini announces in the Candamaharosana tantra “Wherever in the world a female body is seen, That should be recognized as my holy body”.”
Does this reinforce the dangerous idea that “biology is destiny’ — or does it promise a tide of ‘body positivity’ in its wake? Because without acknowledging the biological realities of women’s bodies can yoga ever be a truly effective female practice? And without confronting the profoundly anti-woman, anti-body bias that permeates historical yoga — can we truly provide “safe spaces” for practice today?
While contemporary yoga scholarship seems intent on ignoring the essentialist theories of alternative scholars, it offers precious little on who these Tantric yogini’s actually were, what they believed and the role they played in yoga history. So is it any wonder we accept the common myth that women did not practice yoga until the past century?
But if we include, as Tantric scholar Ramesh Bjonnes suggests, “the female mystics who meditate, sing devotional songs, practice solitude, fasting, and other spiritual austerities, then there have been thousands, if not millions, of such yogini practitioners and gurus throughout the ages.”
Ancient Mothers (Sapta Matrikas), Tanjavore, Tamil Nadu
It may well be that the yogini and her history raise many uncomfortable questions. But does that justify her erasure from yoga history? Could limiting our search for the historical roots of yoga within “acceptable” narratives only serve to perpetuate the misogynic ideologies that demonized the yogini in the first place?
Whatever the answer — l think it vital that we begin asking this question. So this women’s history month let’s remember that there is a whole history of yoga that awaits exploration. And while it may be politically incorrect to say so, one in which women’s bodies were holy and revered. Maybe it’s time we started paying attention.
