On Yoga, Voice, and the Quiet Power of Philosophical Literacy

This essay was first published on Substack. I’m archiving it here because it represents a central conviction of my work: that women deserve access to the intellectual foundations of yoga. It expands the dialogue on women’s voices in yoga philosophy found on A Woman’s Gita podcast, the threshold we must cross, and why voice matters.

The world has been burning since before I had language for it. War, corporatocracy, the casual brutality of patriarchy — by the early 1990s, I felt like a conscientious objector to the whole thing. Sensitive people absorb that violence in their nervous systems, and I was no exception. I went looking for a life where compassion, care, and meaning were still possible.

But even in refuge spaces, the struggle followed me. Not the struggle to believe — I have always believed in the possibility of something better — but the struggle to speak. What Carol Gilligan calls the threshold of voice: that moment when a woman knows something is true, feels it in her bones, but hesitates to say it out loud. Gilligan writes, “At the threshold of voice, a woman knows and cannot speak. She remembers and cannot tell. She feels compelled and silenced at the same time.” I know this territory intimately. The throughline of my life has been approaching that threshold, retreating from it, and slowly, steadily, crossing it.

I entered monastic life because I wanted a world organized around ethics rather than profit, around contemplation rather than domination. I had experienced the uneven burden placed on women — the pay gap, the expectation that we hold everything together, the exhaustion of watching men rise while women carry. I longed for a communal alternative to the nuclear family, a place where compassion could be practiced, not merely admired.

But longing for compassion is not the same as understanding it.

For years, I lived inside devotional translations of sophisticated philosophical ideas. They were cohesive and comforting, but over time I began to see what had been blurred. Essential distinctions had softened. Boundaries dissolved. “Compassion” was interpreted as infinite availability. “Selflessness” became self-erasure. Exhaustion was framed as a virtue. The more deferential I was, the more spiritual I seemed.

It took years to understand that what had been blurred was agency.

Without philosophical clarity, compassion becomes a mandate to disappear. Without structure, service turns into depletion. Without intellectual grounding, women — especially in spiritual communities — are quietly encouraged to stay small so others can shine.

The cost is real. I felt it. In my body. In my health. In the way my own voice thinned and trembled over time.

This is what happens to yoga teachers today when philosophy is withheld from them. They trail off mid-sentence. They feel fraudulent. They sense there is something profound under the surface of what they teach, but they don’t have the tools to articulate it. The emotional toll is not minor — it is erosive.

To reclaim my own voice, I needed to go deeper. Not into more sentiment, but into philosophy.

And that is when I ran headlong into Sanskrit.

Even in the ashram, I realized that my access to philosophy had been filtered through a single interpretive lens. When I stepped outside that lens, I could feel how unsteady I was. The words in italics — yoga, dhāraṇā, vṛtti, nirodhaḥ — formed a wall. I could repeat inherited interpretations, but I could not encounter the text directly. I could not test the meaning for myself.

For a woman already struggling to speak, that wall mattered.

“At the threshold of voice, a woman knows and cannot speak. She remembers and cannot tell. She feels compelled and silenced at the same time.” – Carol Gilligan

Eventually, I found Srivatsa Ramaswami. His training was rigorous, grounded in classical Sāṃkhya philosophy, unapologetically textual. He had a way of saying, “Let’s hear what this bloke Patañjali has to say. You don’t have to agree — but let’s hear him on his own terms.” Not through devotion. Not through marketing. Not through oversimplified wellness language. Just the text. The words. The philosophy.

That changed me in ways I am still discovering.

Learning to read IAST (the International Alphabet of Sanskrit transliteration). Learning the sounds. Reading the sūtras word by word. Understanding Sāṃkhya as a complete philosophical system rather than a vague spiritual backdrop. Bit by bit, I felt something return: intellectual footing. Discernment. The capacity to say yes here and no there. The ability to interpret instead of defer.

Philosophy did not diminish compassion — it gave it structure. It allowed it to become relational rather than martyring, ethical rather than exhausting. It returned me to myself.

And in that restoration, I could finally see the larger pattern.

Women are already doing the emotional labor of yoga. We hold the spaces. We track the energy. We make the rooms safe. But men have dominated the philosophical narrative — men like Deepak Chopra and the countless male gurus who lowered the bar while keeping the real tools behind closed doors. Some abused power outright; others simply benefited from the assumption that authority belonged to them.

If women do not have access to the intellectual foundations of the tradition they’re holding together, we are left carrying the emotional labor without the structural strength.

That is not empowerment. That is an imbalance.

Leaving monastic life was not rebellion. It was honesty. My voice was asking for a larger room. I had spent years speaking through a borrowed vocabulary, staying small so others could shine. Only now, after many years of contraction, am I rediscovering my creative voice. What I’m building here is that larger room — a room where women can encounter yoga philosophy directly, rigorously, without apology.

Because I believe this: philosophy is not a gate to be guarded. It is a birthright. It is one of the few tools that return women to themselves — ethically, intellectually, spiritually.

If you have ever trailed off mid-sentence when someone asked about philosophy… if you have felt the subtle shame of not quite knowing how to ground what you teach… then you know what the threshold of voice feels like.

And you deserve to cross it with your dignity intact.

This is why I created Sutra to Self. Not to replace traditional teachers — but to build the stairs women were never offered. This is my part in shifting the future of yoga: giving women the tools that return agency, clarity, and voice.

If you’re ready to step across your own threshold, you can learn more about Sutra to Self here.

Reflections from our Women’s Gita Podcast: Chapter 3 – On Karma, Consumption, and Conscious Living

Sitting with the Stuff

I’m sitting in my new place surrounded by boxes, and honestly? I’m confronting every single thing I own. Having just moved, the question of what’s necessary versus what I’ve been carrying – sometimes literally – has become impossible to ignore.

All I have are books and clothes. Books are a different metric – they’re shreyas, the higher good. But clothes? Preyas. Gratifying. Looking at them now, I find myself asking: who is this person?

In our latest Women’s Gita podcast episode, as Nischala Devi and I explored the opening verses of the Bhagavad Gita’s Third Chapter and Arjuna’s crisis on the battlefield, this question kept surfacing: How do we know when we’re taking more than our share?

It’s the same question Arjuna is essentially asking Krishna: If the higher Self exists equally in all beings, what am I doing here in this decisive action? What’s the right relationship between my philosophy and my participation in the world?

For most of us, that battlefield looks different from ancient Kurukshetra. Mine, right now, looks like moving boxes and the accumulated weight of stuff. Yours might be the closet you can’t quite close, the storage unit you haven’t visited in years, or that 4 a.m. moment when you’re scrolling another online sale, wondering if you really need it.

The Teacher I Didn’t Expect

I left monastic life officially a month ago. I’m accustomed to austerity – probably more than most people reading this. And yet, re-entering what I half-jokingly call “the world of hustle” has been its own education.

Over the last few years, in anticipation of this move, I’ve become what you might call a junk hustler: Poshmark, yard sales, thrifting, redistributing – a job for the marginal, like monks and yoginis. And here’s what surprised me: this practice has become one of my most profound teachers about prakriti (PRAK-ri-tee)- about nature, matter, the manifest world, and our relationship to it.

My teacher, Srivatsa Ramaswami, once said something that never left me: there’s a point where you’re taking more than your share from prakriti. You’re taking too much from nature.

This idea goes completely against the Western myth of perpetual growth – the American Dream of more, bigger, better, always. We know intellectually it’s not sustainable. But living that knowledge? That’s the gap Arjuna is standing in.

It’s Not Always Summer

Here’s what prakriti teaches when we pay attention: it’s not always summer.

Look at nature around us – there are seasons. Accumulation has its time (autumn’s harvest), but so does release (winter’s composting), renewal (spring’s emergence), and abundance (summer’s growth).

Prakriti’s intelligence is circulation, not accumulation. She moves, cycles, transforms. Nothing stagnates in her healthy systems.

But we’ve created a culture of perpetual summer – constant growth, endless harvest, no fallow time. Fast fashion embodies this perfectly: fifty-two “micro-seasons” a year, constantly producing, never resting. When I sort through donations at local mutual-aid events and see clothing with tags still on, I’m witnessing the consequences of breaking prakriti’s rhythm.

Who told us it was okay to buy something to wear once? When did we agree to this?

The Violence We Don’t See

Fast fashion is not ahimsa – not non-violence.

There’s violence to the workers – often women and children – in sweatshops. Violence to the earth through pesticides, dyes, microplastics, and water pollution. Violence to our own consciousness through disconnection from consequences. Violence to future generations inheriting our landfills and our climate.

When the Gita asks us to consider the impact of our actions, this is what it’s talking about – not abstract philosophy, but the actual wake we leave in the world.
I say this not from a place of having it figured out, but as someone who just moved and had to reckon with every single item I thought I needed. The overwhelm is real. The seduction of abundance is real. And the difficulty of knowing where the line is – that’s real too.

Prakriti as Teacher: The Samkhya Thread

In Samkhya philosophy, prakriti loves purusha – nature performs for consciousness, supports its evolution. When the yogi becomes realized, nature herself becomes the means of liberation. She is yoga’s method and teaching.

I see this now in the secondhand economy. When I’m thrifting or facilitating clothing swaps, I’m participating in prakriti’s own movement – witnessing her abundance, learning from her intelligence, and discovering what truly circulates.

This isn’t renunciation for its own sake. It’s right relationship.

Vairāgya – etting go – doesn’t mean rejecting the world; it means loving something, using it, appreciating it, and releasing it when it’s time. It means joining prakriti’s flow instead of damming it through hoarding.

Mutual Aid, Not Charity

Through our Mountain Area Mutual Aid work, we’ve redistributed tons of clothing, food, and housewares. We’ve cared for neighbors’ needs. But mutual aid transcends the charity model – it’s not hierarchical, not about feeling good for giving to “the less fortunate.” It’s reciprocal: neighbors helping neighbors, each of us responsible for the circulation.

This is shreyas, not preyas – the higher good, not ego gratification.

The Katha Upanishad asks us to know the difference between shreya (what serves the highest good) and preyas (what gratifies the ego). That discernment helps us see whether we’re taking more than our share.

I ask myself constantly: Is this good, or is it gratifying? Is this necessary, or am I filling some other emptiness?

I don’t always get it right. That’s not the point. The point is asking.

Closet as Battlefield

So here I am, standing before my unpacked boxes, asking Arjuna’s question in my own way. If I understand these teachings – about taking only my share, about circulation and ahimsa – then what does “necessary action” look like?

For me right now, it looks like:

• Renting instead of buying
• Actually wearing what I own before considering anything new
• Participating in clothing swaps with friends and neighbors
• Using services like Trashie to keep textiles out of landfills
• Repairing instead of replacing
• Supporting local mutual-aid networks
• Teaching resale skills to others who want to learn

I’m not prescribing this for anyone else. You stand on your own battlefield, with your own questions and your own prakriti. What I am suggesting is that we keep asking.

Black Friday: A Different Kind of Battle

Consider making the Friday after Thanksgiving a Buy Nothing Day.

Not as punishment. Not as moral superiority. But as practice.

As an experiment in asking:

• Do I need this, or am I gratifying my ego?
• Is this shreyas or preyas?
• Am I taking more than my share?
• How can I participate in circulation instead of extraction?

Instead of lining up for deals, what if we:

• Organized clothing swaps in our communities
• Shared tools and equipment with neighbors
• Repaired something we already own
• Made, cooked, or upcycled something
• Offered our skills in exchange for others’
• Simply rested—honoring the fallow season and letting the earth breathe

This is karma yoga: necessary action with self-transcending motive, for the world’s welfare.

Not perfection, but participation.

Not renunciation, but right relationship.

The Question That Keeps Returning

How often do we consider the impact of our actions?

Prakriti is always teaching, if we’re willing to listen. She shows us the rhythm of enough—the seasons, the cycles, the natural intelligence of circulation. She shows us, through the mountains of discarded clothing and the climate crisis, what happens when we break that rhythm.

This isn’t about guilt. It’s about relationship. About remembering that prakriti loves purusha—that she serves our awakening – and that when we honor her intelligence, when we take only our share, she becomes both teacher and liberation.

So this season, as marketers gear up to convince us we need more, maybe we can step off that battlefield and into the circle of circulation instead. Maybe we can ask: What’s necessary? What’s enough? What does right relationship look like now?

The boxes will eventually empty, but prakriti’s teaching remains:

it’s not always summer.

And there’s profound relief in finally moving with her seasons instead of against them.
This is one of the Gita’s most fundamental invitations – not to shame us, but to wake us up. To bring us into conscious relationship with our choices, our consumption, our footprint in prakriti’s web.

The battlefield is wherever we are. The choice is always now.

I’m still learning. Still balancing the austerity I know with the world I now live in. Still making mistakes and buying things I don’t need. But I’m asking – and in the asking, something shifts.

By Kamala Rose, published on August 7, 2025

As yoga practitioners, we often speak of peace. The kind that lingers after savasana, that spaciousness between breaths in pranayama, that elusive stillness that sometimes visits us in meditation. But Shanti, as described in the Bhagavad Gita, is not simply a moment of calm – it is a complete and radical reorientation of consciousness. In the final verses of Chapter 2, Krishna offers something deeper than tranquility. He speaks of the absolute state, a state of being that is not just undisturbed by the noise of life but fundamentally free from the delusion that the noise is all there is.

Verse 2.72 declares that this state leads one “from death to immortality.” Not metaphorically, but existentially. From a life rooted in fear, desire, and the small self to one anchored in what the text calls Brahma Nirvana—a condition of complete clarity and absorption in the truth of being. This is not transcendence as escape. It is transcendence as participation.

And it begins, paradoxically, by walking in the opposite direction of the world.

“That which is, night to all beings, in it the sage is awake; where all beings are awake, that is the night for the sage who knows the Self.“(2.69)

This verse – borrowed from the Katha Upanishad – is one of the most haunting and beautiful in the Gita. It suggests that awakening involves a complete reversal of values. What most of us chase – the accolades, the desires, the frantic daylight of worldly striving – is night to the awakened. And what the world ignores or fears – the silence, the interiority, the dark unknown – is where the sage begins to see clearly.

In practice, we taste this. There is a shift that comes with time and devotion. I remember when, early in my path, success meant how long or how still I could sit. But over the years, through discipline and surrender, something softened. My measure of yoga became less about doing and more about being. Less about progress and more about presence. In those moments, I began to understand the sage’s “night vision” – a kind of inner luminosity not dependent on anything external. The Upanishads call it the unflickering flame in the heart cave of all beings. That is where this journey takes us.

Krishna speaks of peace not as a mood but as an identity shift. In verse 2.71, he describes,

“One who lives completely free from desires, without longing, devoid of the sense of “I” “me” and “mine,” attains peace.” (2.71)

The ego does not vanish through suppression – it dissolves in the radiance of a broader awareness. Like watching a sunset and realizing the sun doesn’t actually set – the earth moves. The self doesn’t disappear; it reframes itself within a much greater field. As practice deepens, the breath begins to breathe us. The pose holds us. We start to sense that yoga is not something we perform, but something we are being performed by.

There is a moment in A Woman’s Gita – our podcast – where we ask a question that is both playful and profound: Is the sun conscious? Rupert Sheldrake poses this same question in earnest in his paper by that title. If human consciousness emits an electromagnetic field, and if the heart itself is a broadcaster of measurable energy, what of the sun – billions of times more powerful than any human mind? Could it be that the sun, long revered in the Vedas, is not only the physical source of life but a spiritual presence as well?

When we bow in Surya Namaskar, we do more than stretch and flow. I believe we participate in one of humanity’s most ancient gestures: reverence for light, for clarity, for the central truth that warms, nourishes, and guides. Whether or not the sun salutation asana series dates back to antiquity (historians disagree), the symbolism is timeless. We turn our bodies and breath toward what is eternal. Perhaps the sun is not a metaphor. Perhaps it is kin.

The Bhagavad Gita’s final verse in Chapter 2 introduces Brahma Nirvana – a state in which the limited, individual identity merges with the whole. Not erasure, but expansion. Not detachment, but total integration. Krishna offers this not as some abstract mystical attainment but as a practical realization, something accessible to all who are willing to release the tight grip of “I” and awaken into what serves the whole.

In this state, there is:

• No fear of death, because what you are was never born
• No fatigue in service, because you act from the inexhaustible
• No anxiety about outcomes, because you see clearly what is
• No need to control or cling, because you trust the rhythm of dharma

Many of us have already had glimpses – while walking in nature, while sitting in meditation, while holding someone’s hand at just the right moment. These moments come, and they go. What the Gita asks of us is not merely to taste peace, but to become established in it.

This is why we practice. Not to escape the world, but to see it clearly. Not to transcend the body, but to inhabit it as sacred. Not to perfect the pose, but to awaken the flame that was already burning long before we began.

The battlefield where Arjuna receives this teaching is not incidental. It’s a symbol of the complexity of modern life – family obligations, ethical conflicts, personal despair, political firestorms. Shanti is not a luxury. It is the only true clarity from which to act.

When we stabilize in this peace:

• We love without possession
• We serve without burnout
• We lead without power struggles
• We create without comparison
• We walk through grief, through beauty, through uncertainty with grace

Each breath, each mantra, each morning you show up—this is how you prepare your body and mind to receive what has always been present.

The light is already within you. Let’s walk toward it together.

→ Learn more about Sutra to Self, my guided immersion into yoga philosophy and practice.

With reverence and clarity,

Kamala Rose

How women transformed yoga and found our voices in ancient wisdom

One year ago, on July 20th, 2024, I stepped into something that terrified and thrilled me in equal measure. Together with my dear colleague Nischala Joy Devi, I began recording “A Woman’s Gita Podcast” – our ongoing exploration of the Bhagavad Gita through feminine eyes. We chose that date intentionally, honoring the 176th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention, the first gathering in the United States dedicated to women’s rights.

As yoga teachers, we carry forward ancient wisdom traditions, but how often do we pause to consider whose voices have shaped the interpretations we’ve inherited? How often do we ask ourselves: where are the women’s perspectives in these sacred texts that form the foundation of our practice?

And here’s what’s remarkable: we’ve already achieved something extraordinary. Women now make up at least 80% of the international yoga community. Think about that for a moment. An ancient spiritual tradition that once restricted women from advanced teachings has become a space where we are not just participants, but leaders, innovators, and wisdom-keepers.

An Adaptable Tradition

Women stand at the crossroads of yoga’s ancient roots and the modern world, and what we’ve accomplished is remarkable. The fact that yoga has flourished globally—spreading across continents, touching millions of lives – speaks to something profound about both the tradition itself and the women who have carried it forward. But as we celebrate this success, I find myself holding a deeper concern: can this ancient practice survive capitalism with its depth and existentialism intact?

We’ve taken a practice that was once the domain of male renunciants in caves and mountain retreats and made it accessible to busy mothers, working professionals, students, and seekers of all backgrounds. We’ve created studios, teacher trainings, retreat centers, and online communities. We’ve written books, developed curricula, and yes – we’ve begun to offer our own interpretations of the sacred texts that underpin this tradition.

This transformation has happened largely through women’s hands, and there’s something beautiful about that. Where other ancient practices have remained rigid or faded into obscurity, yoga has proven remarkably adaptable. But adaptability is both yoga’s gift and its vulnerability. As we navigate the demands of the marketplace, we must ask ourselves: are we preserving the essence of what makes this practice transformational, or are we in danger of losing its soul to commercial success?

The Courage to Speak – And the Right to Lead

But even with this success, even with our 80% majority, I’ll be honest with you, sisters. This year has been one of the most challenging of my spiritual journey – not because the work itself is difficult, but because stepping outside the safe, nurturing walls of the ashram where I spent years as a monastic has required a kind of courage I wasn’t sure I possessed.

In the ashram, my voice was welcomed, my insights valued. But sharing that same voice in the wider world – on social media, through podcasts, in public forums – has felt like standing naked in a storm. There’s something about claiming authority as a woman in spiritual interpretation that still feels radical, even revolutionary. And perhaps it is.

Nischaladevi has been my anchor in this work, encouraging me to trust that my perspective matters, that our perspectives matter. She reminded me that when we remain silent, we perpetuate the very systems that have kept women’s voices from sacred discourse for millennia.

The Weight of Tradition

The parallel between the women who gathered at Seneca Falls and those of us interpreting ancient texts today is profound. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her colleagues dared to draft “The Woman’s Bible,” challenging traditional interpretations that had relegated women to secondary status in spiritual life. They understood something we’re still grappling with: that how we interpret sacred texts shapes how we see ourselves, our worth, and our place in the divine order.

In traditional Vedic society, women were not permitted to interpret the Bhagavad Gita. This interpretation was reserved for Brahmin priests – men who held not just religious authority, but social and political power. When Nischala and I sit down to discuss Krishna’s teachings, we’re continuing a lineage of women who have dared to say: “Our understanding matters. Our insights have value. Our voices deserve to be heard.”

As Western women, we’re already considered mlecchas – outsiders to the Sanskrit tradition. But perhaps this positioning on the margins gives us something valuable: the ability to see with fresh eyes, to ask different questions, to find meaning that speaks to the lived experience of women navigating both spiritual practice and modern life.

What We Bring to the Mat

When I teach yoga, I’m not just guiding students through asanas or breathing techniques. I’m part of a revolution that has already happened – a quiet, powerful transformation where women have claimed not just participation in an ancient tradition, but leadership within it. We are the ones filling the teaching roles, opening the studios, writing the books, and yes, offering new interpretations of the texts.

The fact that women have so thoroughly embraced yoga tells us something profound about both our spiritual hunger and the tradition’s capacity for growth. Unlike religious structures that have maintained rigid hierarchies, yoga has proven flexible enough to honor its roots while flowering in new soil.

Where Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Women

The feminine perspective isn’t about creating division or claiming superiority. It’s about wholeness. It’s about recognizing that spirituality belongs to everyone, regardless of gender, that devotion (bhakti) makes us all equal in the eyes of the divine. As Krishna tells us in Chapter 9, verse 32:

“No matter your birth, race, gender, or caste, even if you are scorned by others, if you take refuge in me, then certainly you will attain the Supreme goal.” – BG 9.32

And perhaps this is why yoga has thrived under women’s stewardship: because we’ve intuitively understood this message of inclusion. We’ve created spaces where everyone belongs, where spiritual authority isn’t about hierarchy but about service, where wisdom is shared rather than hoarded.

The Distinction That Changes Everything

Through this year of deep study and vulnerable conversation, I’ve come to understand a crucial distinction that I believe can liberate us all: the difference between religion as an institutional force and spirituality as our inherent birthright.

Religion, with its rules and hierarchies, has too often been wielded as a tool of control, determining who can speak, who can interpret, who can access advanced teachings. But spirituality – that spark of the divine that exists in every living being – knows no such boundaries. It flows freely, speaks through any willing vessel, and recognizes no artificial barriers based on gender, race, or social status.

When we step onto our mats, when we guide our students into meditation, when we share the wisdom of these ancient texts, we’re engaging with spirituality in its purest form. We’re not bound by the limitations that patriarchal religious structures have tried to impose. We are inheritors of wisdom, carriers of light, voices in an ongoing conversation with the sacred.

The Sisterhood of Courage

To my fellow yoga teachers, especially those who struggle as I have with stepping fully into your voice: we are not alone in this work. We stand in a lineage of women who have refused to accept that wisdom belongs only to others. We are part of a sisterhood that spans centuries, connecting us to the bold women of Seneca Falls and extending forward to the students we serve today.

Your voice matters. Your interpretation of these teachings, filtered through your lived experience as a woman, brings something to the tradition that has been missing for too long. When you teach, you’re not just sharing poses or breathing techniques – you’re offering a perspective that includes, that nurtures, that sees the sacred in the margins as clearly as in the center.

The yoga community is predominantly made up of women, yet for too long we’ve received these teachings primarily through masculine interpretation. It’s time for us to trust our own understanding, to share our insights with confidence, to know that our spiritual authority is not something we need to earn or apologize for – it’s our birthright.

Moving Forward with Trust

As Nischaladevi and I continue this podcast, as we keep exploring these ancient texts through contemporary feminine eyes, I’m learning to trust that this work is not just worthwhile – it’s essential. Every time we offer a different perspective, every time we find new meaning in familiar verses, every time we speak with authority about our spiritual experience, we’re creating space for other women to do the same.

The path forward isn’t about rejecting tradition, but about expanding it. It’s about recognizing that spirituality is vast enough to hold all our voices, wise enough to be enriched by our diverse perspectives, and sacred enough to deserve our full participation.

Don’t be afraid of your own power, dear sisters. Wrap it in love, share it with compassion, but don’t hide it. The world needs what you have to offer. The students in your classes need your authentic voice, your unique insights, your willingness to stand in your voice with grace and confidence.

Trust each other. Support each other. And remember: in this work of preserving and sharing sacred wisdom, you are not alone. We are part of something larger than ourselves, something that began long before us and will continue long after. Our voices matter. Our perspectives are valuable. Our courage to speak creates space for others to find their voices too.

The conversation continues, and there is room for all of us at the table.

Reclaiming Women’s Voices in Yoga Philosophy

This blog post emerges from a recent talk I gave as part of “A Woman’s Gita” podcast, created in partnership with my co-host Nischala Joy Devi and supported by Yoga Gives Back—an international community of yoga teachers who donate classes to uplift women and children in India as gratitude for the gift of yoga.

Welcome to my first blog post. I’m Kamala Rose, and I want to share why I’ve devoted my life to yoga, and why I believe women’s voices are essential to the future of yoga philosophy. My teaching focus for many years has been on the Bhagavad Gita as I see it as a meeting place where the essential idea of Eastern worldviews can be discussed and made meaningful in our modern lives.

Finding My Voice in Ancient Wisdom

My journey with the Bhagavad Gita began in an unexpected way. As a blonde kid from the Midwest, India seemed impossibly distant until my father’s academic work brought my family to India and Krishna into our home. His research on Max Mueller’s translation of the Upanishads, inspired by a flash of insight during a flight home from India, introduced me to a world where mystical knowledge was real and accessible. That same trip included a meeting with Indira Gandhi – a moment that imprinted the power of India, and Krishna, on my young consciousness.

This early exposure led me to spend thirty years in an ashram, diving deep into the Gita and the spiritual psychology that accompanies it. I’ve studied with traditional Sanskrit teachers, including Mr. Ramaswami of Krishnamacharya’s lineage, and explored the text through various academic institutions. Yet even with all this experience and support, I still found myself doubting my voice when it came to sharing these ancient teachings.

And therein lies the heart of why we need a feminine interpretation of the Gita.

The Courage to Act: Beyond the Fruits of Action

One of the verses we most wrestle with in the Gita speaks directly to this challenge:

“You have a right to action, but not to the fruits of action. Let not the fruit of action be your motive, nor let your attachment be to inaction.” (2.47, Devi/Rose)

This verse forces us to ask the hardest questions: What is your motive? What’s the why behind your action? In our transactional, capitalist society, we expect rewards for our efforts. But as yogis, we must have the courage to practice satya – honesty – about our true motivations.

For women, this verse carries particular weight. Why do we hold back our voices? Why do we feel timid about expressing ourselves, especially around spiritual or religious ideas? The answer lies partly in our societal conditioning. Our voices are often not heard in spirituality, just as they’re not heard in many other spheres. This silencing makes us hesitant to speak about our understanding of yoga, worried that our personal comprehension might be too shallow to speak confidently on such profound subjects.

But the verse also warns against attachment to inaction. By not doing something, are we avoiding out of fear? For women, there’s deep psychology here –  we become habituated to not speaking our voices, creating a different kind of attachment that comes from the same place as attachment to results.

The Gita speaks of sattvic action in karma yoga: do what needs to be done, not what you want to do or what will make you look good. I believe this is a perspective that women can uniquely bring to spiritual dialogue – understanding necessary action, not ego-driven action.

The Purity of Inner Knowledge

Another profound verse speaks to the nature of spiritual wisdom:

“Indeed, there is nothing in this world as pure as knowledge. Once the path of Yoga is perfected, one knows that wisdom is within.” (4.38, Devi/Rose)

Here, Krishna speaks of jnana—mystical knowledge and insight. This isn’t knowledge of how to fix a car or build a website, valuable though those skills are. This is transcendent, revelatory knowledge that comes like Einstein’s flash of insight about light, “like a raindrop or a birdsong” dropping into consciousness.

I remember my father’s story of his dissertation insight – how the whole picture came to him “like a drop of water in his mind” while flying home from India. He used words like “epiphany,” and “satori.” That’s the kind of knowing yoga offers: insight about Reality, about oneself as a spiritual being, about the essence that exists within us and connects us to everything.

The path of wisdom requires shraddha – faith. In our modern era, we struggle to put faith in concepts like Krishna or Brahman, foreign as they may seem to Western minds. We often seek external validation—association with charismatic individuals or certain certifications—to prove our knowledge. But yoga asks for a different kind of knowing, beyond degrees and approval.

This requires faith in the tradition itself, in a path that has guided generations of practitioners through the eightfold path from ethics to samadhi. As yoga practitioners, we can put faith in this tradition beyond any personality or certification. Then comes the courage to trust our own experience.

Traditional translations often say “he who is perfected in wisdom.” When we read this as women, it’s easy to exclude ourselves. But when we understand it as “one who knows the wisdom within,” the path opens for all of us – which is a fundamental strength of the Gita. It declares that everyone can know this wisdom; gender makes no difference.

Most men I know in the yoga community are strong and intuitive enough to recognize how women see the world differently and would benefit from greater peer discussion to make yoga theory more practical.

Claiming Our Authority in a Post-Lineage World

After spending decades studying the Gita and sitting with traditional teachers, I still doubted my voice. Even when recording our podcast, I questioned whether I knew enough, whether my knowledge was perfect enough to present this subject. But there is no perfect – you can’t know everything about the Gita. At some point, you must trust what you know and recognize that this knowledge is valuable to others.

This connects to what researcher Theodora Wildcroft calls “post-lineage” yoga. Through her doctoral fieldwork in the yoga community, she observed how modern yoga teachers absorb and share knowledge in collective spaces like studios, trainings, and festivals. She uses the image of spreading mycelium, supporting each other like a forest’s underground web. This organic, interconnected network stands in stark contrast to the conventional vertical lineages of traditional yoga – the father-to-son transmissions that move knowledge downward through hierarchical structures. Where traditional lineage resembles a family tree with clear branches and succession, post-lineage yoga functions more like the hidden fungal networks that connect entire forests, sharing resources and wisdom horizontally, peer to peer, in ways that are less visible but perhaps more resilient.

I suggest we need both, like a healthy forest. The deep roots of traditional lineage provide stability and connection to ancient wisdom, while the mycelial networks allow for adaptation, cross-pollination of ideas, and the kind of collaborative learning that can help yoga philosophy evolve to meet our modern needs.

This resonates deeply with my own journey. I’ve studied with the Theosophical Society, explored traditional Indian worldviews, embraced systems theory, and engaged with academic approaches that leave no room for intuitive knowledge. We’re often combinations of multiple influences, and that’s not a weakness – it’s an evolution.

Yet spirituality and religion remain areas where women are terribly underrepresented, despite these fields centering on interior knowing – something women often navigate intuitively. Today, women make up over 80% of the yoga community. We’re the ones doing yoga, teaching yoga—but we’re still primarily learning from men, quoting men, studying texts featuring only men.

Setting the Standard: The Great Person’s Example

The Gita tells us:

“A great person’s actions inspire others who follow by example. Setting the standard, others follow.” (3.21, Devi/Rose)

We’re living in a time when we desperately need new standards, ones not established by charismatic but flawed personalities, or by an inconsistent certification process that underrepresents practice beyond asana. This may mean supplemental training, mentorships, and community gatherings that emphasize continuing education.

Women’s voices are a powerful part of the dialogue about the future we’re shaping together. As yoga teachers, especially women, we must embrace and embody the role we’ve stepped into. We must let ourselves be part of the tradition we represent, allow our voices to be heard, and claim our own understanding of these verses. Finding practical ways to relate to the teachings on a consistent basis is what the Gita does best – it can be a crossroads of new ideas when most needed.

Why do we look at heroes winning wars as the model of righteousness? What about the people quietly feeding everyone, seeking no praise or recognition? Why isn’t the example of a mother who gives nine months of her life and body to gestate another human being, then feeds that person from her own body, considered the ultimate example of karma yoga and selflessness?

As women, we must consciously insert ourselves into this spiritual dialogue. The vital work of inspiring children to grow up as good people shapes future society – these are admirable acts fulfilled largely by women.

As more and more men are stepping into caregiving roles – for children, parents, partners – women’s perspectives may become a welcome addition to what is often dry and intellectual. It’s not an either/or – it’s a yes/and.

Living the Teaching

The Gita asks us to take this knowledge into our lives, into society, into the way we live and work. Don’t leave it in a dusty old book that you think you don’t understand. I challenge women in the yoga community: you understand more than you think. If you wrestle with getting in your own way or sometimes feel overwhelmed, you have insight into exactly what the Gita is discussing.

Taking time with texts like this is essential. You don’t need to know everything in a day, but you can understand key ideas very well and put them to work in your life. Take them off the page and carry them with you in your daily experience.

The Future of Women’s Spiritual Authority

Through “A Woman’s Gita” podcast and this blog, I’m exploring what it means to teach from your own voice—not from charisma or credentials, but from lived truth. We’re asking why so many women hesitate to share yoga wisdom, whether spiritual authority is evolving beyond institutions, and how women yoga teachers can claim their voices in this rich tradition.

This work reaches far beyond each of us as individuals. It empowers a community that is largely female. This is where we can stand up and claim our voices in the yoga tradition, trusting the wisdom that lives in our bones, the knowledge that comes from our direct experience with these ancient teachings.

If yoga is to survive as a fully integrated practice, with its beautiful teachings on the depth available to human beings, we must ensure that a greater percentage of yoga teachers are fluent in philosophy.

The voice within is worthy of trust. The wisdom you’ve cultivated through your practice, your life experience, your unique perspective as a woman—this is pure knowledge, as valuable as any traditional commentary. It’s time to let it be heard.

– Kamala Rose July 2025