Sheena Sood

Sheena Sood, PhD is a Philly-based activist, educator, and healing justice visionary of South Asian descent. Sheena earned her PhD in Sociology at Temple University. Sheena’s scholarship explores topics of race/ethnicity, immigration, political solidarity, social movements and critical yoga studies. Her recent research examines the ethical implications of yoga’s integration in military, policing and corporate mindfulness programs around the globe. Using India, the U.S. and Israel (occupied Palestine) as case studies, Sheena explores how regimes that advance ethnonationalist and neoliberal agendas weaponize yoga to sanitize their public images. As a certified advanced yoga practitioner and South Asian from an upper-caste family, Sheena brings a complicated legacy to the work of liberating yoga. She curates healing justice offerings by asking students to simultaneously recognize yoga’s oppressive layers and its liberatory potential. Rather than propagate narratives that glorify yoga’s ancient past, Sheena envisions a futuristic yoga that centers freedom and embodied political action; and that envisions how yoga can be purposed toward a spirituality that centers all of humanity, all living beings, and Mother Earth. Sheena is grateful to call Philly home and to work with organizers of the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home, The MOVE Organization, and grassroots collectives that prioritize social justice by abolishing the carceral state and freeing all political prisoners.