The Yoga Manifesto

How did an ancient spiritual practice become the preserve of the privileged?

Nadia Gilani has been practising yoga as a participant and teacher for over twenty-five years. Yoga has saved her life and seen her through many highs and lows; it has been a faith, a discipline, and a friend, and she believes wholeheartedly in its radical potential. However, over her years in the wellness industry, Nadia has noticed not only yoga's rising popularity, but also how its modern incarnation no longer serves people of colour, working class people, or many other groups who originally pioneered its creation.

Combining her own memories of how the practice has helped her with an account of its history and transformation in the modern west, Nadia creates a love letter to yoga and a passionate critique of the billion-dollar industry whose cost and inaccessibility has shut out many of those it should be helping. By turns poignant, funny, and shocking, The Yoga Manifesto excavates where the industry has gone wrong, and what can be done to save the practice from its own success.

About the Author

Nadia Gilani is a writer and yoga teacher. She first discovered yoga after her mum took her to a class in the 1990s – over twenty years ago. She has been practising ever since. Nadia has extensive experience of working with people with different bodies and from all walks of life, from complete beginners to those who are more experienced, teenagers to the over-seventies, refugees and asylum seekers to domestic violence victims, people living with mental illness and those in recovery from substance misuse. Nadia is deeply committed to making yoga inclusive. Her teaching approach is contemporary, non-dogmatic and explorative, while maintaining a deep respect for the ancient Indian practice. Nadia’s working background is in news journalism and communications, which she did for a decade before teaching yoga and meditation. The Yoga Manifesto is her first book.