#159 Exploring queer spirituality with Joelle of Butch Yoga

The Making & Mending Podcast

This conversation was the first interview I did in a while and it was such a beautiful way to drop back into conversation! I spoke to the wonderful fellow Venus in Scorpio Joelle of Butch Yoga. Their practice and way of being in the world is so joyous, I really hope you'll love listening as much as I did. Here is some of what we talked about:

• Sitting with big spiritual questions
• Not finding a home in mainstream yoga spaces
• Embodying butch identities beyond stereotypes
• Integrating spiritual practices into our lives

Joelle is a non-binary butch lesbian who is really into queering spirituality. Joelle started practicing meditation and yoga in 2007. Then in 2009, they completed an Master of Arts in Cognitive Studies with a focus on Philosophy, Psychology, Linguistics, and Neuroscience. That means before Joelle was on a yoga mat, they were in lecture halls studying the mind, but their professors didn’t teach how to work with the mind to find happiness—and then Joelle found in most yoga classes they teach practices to work with the mind and body, but don’t usually go in depth with the concepts! And it’s been rare for Joelle to find queer yoga spaces, and even rarer to find other butches in those spaces—so Joelle created Butch Yoga as a space for butches and gender non-conforming friends to study and practice spirituality together.

More about Joelle: Joelle is a white Latinx Jewish person who has been living on Mayan land in Guatemala for 7 years with their 3 cats 😻😻😻 https://www.instagram.com/butchyoga/