An Interview with Sheena Sood

Sep 25

Written By Miami Institute for the Social Sciences .

Note: In this closing post for the Miami Institute’s “Reckoning with Empire” forum, T.D. Harper-Shipman interviews Sheena Sood, a sociologist and yoga practitioner in the U.S. who details the historical and contemporary “weaponization of yoga” in support of empire and colonialism, urging us “to think critically on the ethics of how yoga is used.” While a Fulbright Scholar in Senegal during the 2023-2023 academic year, Harper-Shipman launched the Miami Institute’s forum, “Reckoning with Empire.” Since then, Harper-Shipman has been bringing to the Miami Institute’s community interviews with academics and activists “who are thinking actively with and against empire from different vantage points.” The below prose is written by Harper-Shipman. Recorded in May 2025, Harper-Shipman’s interview with Sood is available via this link.

The final installment for “Reckoning with Empires” is a conversation with scholar-activist, Sheena Sood. Sheena Sood is a Philly-based educator and co-founder to Yogis for Palestine. In our interview, Sheena discusses how she came to align Yoga with anti-imperialism and how these two ideas straddle her scholarship and community work. Her scholarly work takes up the issue of ‘omwashing’—the strategic use of yoga for more efficient nationalist projects and military violence. The links to Sheena’s scholarship and Yogis for Palestine are below. We hope this conversation nurtures belief in a shared humanity, one that transcends the project of nation-building and its roots in empire.

-T.D. Harper-Shipman

T.D. Haper-Shipman is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur, Chair & Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Davidson College. Prior to Davidson, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Institute for Politics and Strategy at Carnegie Mellon University. Her first book, Rethinking Ownership of Development in Africa, was published in 2019 with Routledge Press. She has published in Third World Quarterly, Journal of Asian and African Studies, Philosophy and Global Affairs, and International Studies Review. She has also published public-facing work in Pambazuka, The Global African Worker, Miami Institute for the Social Sciences and Africa is a Country. During the 2023-2023 academic year, Harper-Shipman was a Fulbright Scholar in Senegal working on a project titled “Suturing Reproduction and the Nation: the politics of family planning in West Africa.”

Sheena Sood, PhD (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Delaware Valley University, a Philly-based activist, yoga practitioner, and healing justice visionary. Sheena earned her yoga certifications at Kailash Tribal School in McLeodganj, India. Her research “Omwashing Yoga: Self-care and State Violence among the Global Far-Right,” examines how the far-right uses yoga to advance ethnonational, colonial, and supremacist agendas. Her work has appeared in Jadaliyya, Race & Yoga Journal, Al Jazeera, and Colorlines. Sheena serves on the editorial board of Race & Yoga Journal; is a co-founder of Yogis for Palestine - a collective of yoga teachers and students who politicize yoga toward action for Palestinian freedom and liberation; and is also the founder of Yoga Warrior Tales, an educational program that teaches kids yoga and mindfulness through a social justice lens. Read more about Sheena's offerings here.

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