Hippo (White Ally) Workshop
Originally designed for white-identified yoga teachers, this immersive body-focused workshop is for any white identified human who aspires to engage cross-racially, wants to work alongside peers to begin the lifelong work of diminishing their potential for causing harm.
Named after one of the most territorial and lethal animals on earth and belying the myth of gentle, water-going giant, the Hippopotamus Workshop is designed for white yoga teachers who — rather than insisting that they are untouched by the water in which they are swimming — have decided they are no longer willing to flow with the deep currents of systemic white supremacy and racial oppression that often wound Black and Indigenous People of Color within the mercantile model of yoga and our culture ar large.
Further, it is for all white-identifying allies who believe that the work of dismantling racism begins with the willingness and courage to face directly their own neurobiologically-based racism and to sit in their deep discomfort of metabolizing racial charge. Participants will leave with tools for self-regulation and engagement around race as well as the seeds of somatic fortitude to continue this work for life. They will create for themselves a working plan of active, concrete anti-racist behaviors and specific actions they can take.
MYP founder Jeffrey Thomas named this workshop after the Hippopatumus, one of the most territorial and lethal animals on earth, but often thought of as a gentle, water-going giant. He conceived of the workshop in response to his yoga-teacher colleagues (all white women) asking him how they could be of service in the work of making yoga more inclusive and accessible.
His response was to ask them to turn inward and work on themselves, to investigate the deep currents of systemic white supremacy and racial oppression that live unconsciously in their bodies and often wound people of color with whom they practice within the mercantile model of yoga and our culture at large.
This workshop is designed as the first step in this process.
In This White-Ally Peer Workshop, Participants Will:
Gain knowledge of how stress, trauma and whiteness operate in our bodies.
Gain skills for increased awareness of the body/mind connection as well as body-based practices that improve the flexibility and resilience of their own nervous system.
Gain knowledge of the origins of race-based stress in white humans.
Have opportunities to practice these tools while experiencing race-based stressors.
This foundational work is designed to provide the seeds of fortitude for participants to continue to engage mindfully and effectively in anti-racism work.
Resources
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, Peggy McIntosh (1989)
Peggy McIntosh, Associate Director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, describes white privilege as 'an invisible package of unearned assets, which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious.
'White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, code books, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.'
'[...] My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will. My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work which will allow “them” to be more like “us.”
I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life. I have chosen those conditions which I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin-color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographic location, though of course all these other factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can see, my African American co-workers, friends, and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place and line of work cannot count on most of these conditions.'
We encourage and invite you to privately consider your own conditions using
Seeing and Unlearning Whiteness: A Mindfulness Workshop for Racial Justice, Emily Haranas (2023)
For her master's thesis, Emily Haranas - 2023 graduate of Mindfulness Studies at Lesley University and concurrently an intern at Mandela Yoga Project during the program - proposed mindfulness as a tool for "unlearning whiteness". Its abstract reads as follows:
"Racism is a deeply embedded, foundational aspect of American society. However, because the privilege of Whiteness insulates White individuals from the workings of systemic injustice and oppression and enables them to choose the conditions of their accountability in the movement for racial justice, many remain painfully blind to this fact.
As such, there is a significant need for those who have been racialized White to develop a critical awareness of the powers and privileges ascribed to their racial identity.
The working premise of this thesis is that mindfulness can assist White individuals in unlinking the socialized habits of mind that sustain and reinforce racism and increase their capacity to identify and interrupt embodied experiences of unconscious bias as they occur. Additionally, mindfulness can help them to build the emotional resilience to withstand the inevitable discomfort that arises during explorations of race. Development of these crucial skills could clear a path to racial equity."
"By visibly hovering near us, they are ‘proving’ that they are ‘with us.’ But the hard truth is this isn’t helping to solve America’s racist problem. The Negroes aren’t the racists. Where the really sincere white people have got to do their ‘proving’ of themselves is not among the black victims, but out on the battle lines of where America’s racism really is - and that’s in their home communities; America’s racism is among their own fellow whites. That’s where sincere whites who really mean to accomplish something have got to work."
- Malcolm X
Should you wish to read Haranas' full master's thesis, with the generous permission of Emily, we invite you to do so here:
Seeing and Unlearning Whiteness: A Mindfulness Workshop for Racial Justice,
Videos
Mandela Yoga Project at Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Systems Alignment Innovation Hub Grantee Meeting
In the December 2024 session hosted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Systems for Action national program office, the Mandela Yoga team along with other people of-color-led nonprofits invited white allies at consider their role in White Supremacy and Racial Oppression that leads to premature death and disparities in health outcomes for people of color.
Facing White Supremacy in a Yoga Studio
Founding Thought Partner Emily Peterson leads white allies in a somatic session confronting White Supremacy that perpetuates racial oppression, work which Mandela Yoga Project calls the Hippopotamus Workshop.