Sheena Sood, PhD (she/her) is a Philly-based activist, educator, and healing justice visionary of the Desi diaspora and southern roots. Sheena earned her doctoral degree at Temple University. As a sociologist, Sheena’s scholarship explores topics of race and ethnicity, immigration, political solidarity, social movements, and critical yoga studies. Recently, Sheena has brought a geopolitical focus to her research by examining the ethical implications of yoga’s integration in military, policing, and corporate mindfulness programs around the world. Using India, the U.S., and Israel (occupied Palestine) as case studies, Sheena studies how regimes that advance colonial, fascist, and ethnonationalism agendas weaponize yoga to sanitize their public image.
As a certified advanced yoga practitioner and South Asian American who was raised in an upper-caste Hindu family, Sheena brings a complicated legacy to the work of decolonizing yoga. She curates healing justice offerings through frameworks that simultaneously recognize yoga’s oppressive layers and liberatory potential. Rather than propagate narratives that glorify yoga’s ancient past, Sheena envisions a futuristic yoga that centers collective freedom and embodied action. In her yoga practice, she encourages herself and others to envision how yoga can be purposed toward a liberatory spirituality that centers all of humanity, each and every living being, and Mother Earth. Finally, Sheena is grateful to call Philly home and to be in relationship with the incredible organizers of the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home, The MOVE Organization, and grassroots collectives that work to prioritize social justice by abolishing the carceral state and freeing all political prisoners.
