#168 Embodiment & movement with Joelle of Butch Yoga

The Making & Mending Podcast

For this episode I had the honour of talking to Joelle of Butch Yoga again - we had a great first chat for episode #159 and so in this one we got to dive a little bit deeper. Here is some of what we talked about:

• Finding time for stillness in one's body
• Bringing in joy, self-compassion and playfulness
• Letting things move through our bodies

Joelle is a non-binary butch lesbian who is really into queering spirituality. Joelle started practicing meditation and yoga in 2007. Then in 2009, they completed an Master of Arts in Cognitive Studies with a focus on Philosophy, Psychology, Linguistics, and Neuroscience. That means before Joelle was on a yoga mat, they were in lecture halls studying the mind, but their professors didn’t teach how to work with the mind to find happiness—and then Joelle found in most yoga classes they teach practices to work with the mind and body, but don’t usually go in depth with the concepts! And it’s been rare for Joelle to find queer yoga spaces, and even rarer to find other butches in those spaces—so Joelle created Butch Yoga as a space for butches and gender non-conforming friends to study and practice spirituality together. More about Joelle: Joelle is a white Latinx Jewish person who has been living on Mayan land in Guatemala for 7 years with their 3 cats

https://www.instagram.com/butchyoga/

https://butchyoga.com/

Thank you for listening!