Profile:
Dr. Laura Shears, a May 2022 graduate of the Doctoral Program, has written a book about experiences as a yoga practitioner, teacher trainee, and instructor. The book, Queering and Cripping the “Yoga Body” will be published by Routledge and is scheduled to release on March 22, 2024.
Book Summary:
Queering and Cripping the “Yoga Body” deconstructs the power relations and dominant discourses that shape the image of a healthy, natural, gendered body performing a postural yoga practice.
This book examines empirical yoga research, yoga-related media, and yoga teacher training materials to critique how yoga becomes a manageable, predictable intervention that individuals can and should undertake in order to create healthy, manageable, non-burdensome bodies. It argues that when yoga is positioned as a natural intervention, discourses of morality and purity become intertwined with those of measurability, responsibility, control, health, and gender. It also considers the author’s own embodied experience, as well as those of other queer and disabled yoga teachers and practitioners, and how such experiences can open up possibilities for the teaching and practice of yoga.
How have your Doctoral Studies been useful since Graduation?
My time in the doctoral program has had a profound impact on the way I approach my writing and research. Through my dissertation process, I had the opportunity to deeply engage in work that I am proud to continue after graduation. And I did so in an incredibly supportive environment, where I made personal and professional connections that have continued to be meaningful to me as I've moved forward. This program has shaped the way that I engage and show up as a queer and disabled writer and educator.
