Tanja Hamester
Heulyoga (Crying Yoga)
Workshops Performances, ongoing since 2017

Filmstill videoclip, Crying Tutorial 3, filmed by Marjan Asadi, Palermo 2019
Cryingyoga is based on the idea of a workshop-like collective crying exercise against racism and sexism. This creates the fiction of a worldwide Crying-Yoga movement, which is followed by the participants. Participants are taught crying tecniques to use as a non-violent defense.
With the project I am speaking against the cultural appropriation of Yoga in the western system to make the tired worker able to work again. Yoga is often toxically used for self optimisation. Cryingyoga is a non-violent way to speak up against perpetrators. I often see male dominated resistance that are reproducing violence. With my strategy I want to follow Ynestra King´s idea of not copying patriarchal power positions, but “creating a different kind of culture and politics that would integrate intuitive, spiritual, and rational forms of knowledge, embracing both science and magic (…)”.
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Cryingyoga-workshop, Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa, Palermo Summer School 2019

