Feminist-Informed Yoga, Vulnerability, and Social Justice Research Methods

Proceedings of The 5th International Conference on Advanced Research in Social Sciences

Year: 2022

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Feminist-Informed Yoga, Vulnerability, and Social Justice Research Methods

Dr. Punam Mehta

ABSTRACT: 

Audre Lorde wrote, “And that visibility which makes us the most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength”¹. This quote resonates deeply with my experiences engaging in an autoethnography for my doctoral work.  The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the meaning of vulnerability in social justice research methodologies. This includes reflections upon contemporary feminist research and considers the extent of these reflections in other social justice work such as Indigenous and arts-based research.  Drawing on my autoethnographical study, I explored the transgenerational trauma resulting from being globally displaced, particularly from the social location of being a marginalized mother on a path of healing through the possibility of feminist-informed yoga.  In my doctoral work, I argued that vulnerable populations of mothers in Canada had experienced transgenerational trauma resulting from global human displacement and, as a result, are a population that requires healing.  Finally, this paper is centered around the belief that real power holds space for vulnerability and requires visionary feminist thinking², in particular for racialized women.

keywords: Auto ethnography, Motherhood, Decolonization, Racism, and Ahimsa.