Yoga and Activism: The Politics of Presence and Embodied Resistance

Yoga is often framed as a path of personal healing, a method for self-regulation, an inner refuge from the chaos of the world. But to stop there is to misunderstand its potential. Yoga is not just a practice of self-care—it is a technology of adaptation, a reorganization of perception, cognition, and relational attunement. And if it changes how we experience reality, it changes how we move through it.

This is not a radical reframing; it is a return to roots. Yoga has never been only about individual transcendence. It has always been a method for altering human experience—an instrument of transformation that can shape both the individual and the collective. Yet, in modern discourse, yoga is often criticized as apolitical, as a tool of neoliberal self-optimization that soothes rather than disrupts. This critique, while not unfounded, flattens yoga into a privatized wellness commodity rather than recognizing its deeper potential as a practice of resistance, adaptability, and liberation. We receive the practice we create.

If haṭha yoga is about increasing capacity—breaking, refining, and dissolving constraints—what happens when we extend that process beyond the individual nervous system and into culture, justice, and social transformation? If we train for fluidity and resilience on the mat, how do we apply those capacities to the structures that shape collective existence?

This post explores the intersection of yoga and activism, reframing embodied practice as a foundation for political engagement, ethical action, and systemic change.

The Nervous System as a Political Site: From Individual Regulation to Collective Liberation

Yoga, at its core, is a training in nervous system adaptability. Prāṇāyāma, āsana, and focused attention alter autonomic states, shifting how we engage with discomfort, challenge, and intensity. But this is not merely an internal process—it is inherently social and political.

Modern power structures are built on nervous system dysregulation. Chronic stress, economic precarity, media saturation, and systemic injustice create conditions that keep bodies locked in hyper-vigilance, reactivity, or collapse. A burned-out body does not resist. A fragmented attention cannot sustain focus. A system that thrives on exhaustion does not need to enforce compliance directly—it relies on the fact that exhaustion is compliance.

In this context, nervous system regulation becomes an act of refusal—not as disengagement, but as the capacity to remain present, clear, and adaptable despite systemic pressures. As adrienne maree brown writes in Emergent Strategy, “If we are not in control of our own responses, then we are at the mercy of those who seek to control us” (2017). To cultivate self-regulation is to reclaim agency.

Many activists exist in states of chronic nervous system overload, cycling between urgency, rage, and collapse. While anger is valid and necessary, a system trapped in reactivity cannot sustain long-term transformation. If yoga cultivates non-reactivity—not in the sense of passivity, but in the sense of strategic adaptability—then it offers a way to engage without being consumed.

From a Merleau-Pontian perspective, resistance is not just cognitive; it is bodily. It is not only about what we believe but about how we breathe, stand, and move in the face of oppression. From a Deleuzian perspective, resistance is not about opposing pre-existing forms but about breaking conditioned flows and generating new possibilities. The politics of embodiment is a politics of emergence.

To be fully present in an oppressive system is already an act of transformation.

Beyond Individual Liberation: The Ethics of Embodiment in Social Movements

One of modern yoga’s most pervasive distortions is the belief that liberation is an individual achievement—a matter of personal healing, self-awareness, and self-actualization. But what does it mean to be “liberated” in a world that is not free?

In classical yoga traditions, particularly non-dual Śaiva Tantra, liberation (*mokṣa*) is not about transcending the world but about full engagement with it. The body is not a barrier to realization; it is the very medium through which it unfolds. As Christopher Wallis emphasizes in *The Recognition Sutras*, Tantric yoga does not seek escape from the world but a radical participation in it (2017). To be awakened is not to withdraw but to perceive with greater clarity, to act with greater skill, and to engage without being constrained by habitual conditioning.

This presents an ethical demand. If yoga is a practice of seeing clearly, what is our responsibility when we perceive systemic harm? If yoga is a practice of adaptability, how do we apply that adaptability to dismantling structures that limit collective well-being? If yoga is a practice of interdependence, how do we move from self-improvement to collective liberation?

The ethical foundations of yoga already point toward social engagement:

Ahimsa (non-harm) is often framed as personal kindness, but structural harm exists beyond individual intention. If harm is embedded in institutions, economic systems, and political hierarchies, then meaningful non-violence must extend beyond personal action into systemic transformation.

Satya (truthfulness) demands that we see reality clearly, including the ways in which privilege, power, and oppression operate.

Aparigraha (non-grasping) challenges attachment not just to material possessions but to comfort, avoidance, and the illusion of neutrality.

To practice yoga ethically is to practice it relationally. And in a world shaped by power, embodiment is already a political act.

Yoga, Protest, and the Intelligence of Non-Reactivity

Social movements require sustained energy, resilience, and strategic engagement. But many activists experience burnout, emotional depletion, and physiological exhaustion—trapped in cycles of reaction rather than sustainable action. Yoga, when understood as a system of nervous system training, offers an alternative: a practice of embodied activism that prioritizes adaptability, presence, and resilience.

This is not about pacification. It is about increasing capacity.

Rather than suppressing anger, yoga refines it. Rather than eliminating discomfort, yoga increases tolerance for it. Rather than being consumed by systemic crises, yoga strengthens the ability to engage without collapse. The nervous system, trained through practice, becomes a site of stability in the face of uncertainty. The breath, regulated through prāṇāyāma*, becomes a source of resilience. The body, attuned through *āsana*, becomes a medium for holding tension without being shattered by it.

From a Deleuzian perspective, this is about breaking habitual patterns of resistance—disrupting the binary of fight-or-flight and expanding the range of possible responses. If activism is not just about opposing existing structures but about generating new ways of being, then yoga is a technology for sustaining that process.

A nervous system locked in resistance cannot imagine liberation. A nervous system in balance can create it.

Reimagining Liberation: From the Mat to the World

If haṭha yoga is a technology of transformation, then its insights must extend beyond personal well-being into systemic change. This requires a shift:

From self-regulation to collective resilience

From individual self-improvement to structural transformation

From yoga as escape to yoga as radical presence

This does not mean that yoga must always be explicitly political. Nor does it mean that every practitioner must engage in activism. But it does mean that yoga, by its very nature, is a practice that alters perception, embodiment, and agency—and that shift, whether acknowledged or not, has political implications.

A yoga practice that does not challenge systems of harm risks becoming a tool of the status quo. A yoga practice that engages with power, justice, and embodied awareness has the potential to serve as a foundation for reimagining the possible.

The Politics of Presence

To practice yoga is to practice staying with sensation, breath, and intensity. It is to train non-reactivity in the face of challenge. It is to cultivate resilience, adaptability, and clarity in a world that often demands fear, compliance, or exhaustion.

This is why yoga is not just a personal practice—it is a social, political, and ethical act.