Hundreds of yoginis packed the Landmark Albany Twin on Tuesday, September 6 to see the Bay Area premiere of YogaWoman—an independent documentary that is as much about women and yoga as it is about the Bay Area’s leadership in all things yoga.
Touring the world to interview exemplary female yoga teachers, the film’s directors set out to explore themes as varied as the traditional exclusion of women during yoga’s development and the transformative role yoga can play in hormonal regulation, cancer treatment and prison rehabilitation. While men were visible in footage of classes, an explicit aim of the film was to have only women talking about women. This isn’t necessarily a feminist statement—as the film notes, 85% of students in yoga classes in the United States today are women.
