Are We Women Who do Yoga, or Yoginīs?

Image: Yoginī with dog from the British Museum online archives

Are we - you and I - women who do yoga or can we call ourselves yoginīs?

First we must consider: what is a yoginī, what is a yogi and are they interchangeable?

These days, the word ‘yogi’ is often used colloquially in reference to anyone who practices yoga, regardless of gender or yogic ability. Technically, however, a yogi, or yogin, is a male adept, a sannyasin, a skilled practitioner of yoga. And technically a yoginī is a female adept.

So they’re not interchangeable but are they equivalent? Is a yoginī the female equivalent of a yogi? Linguistically, maybe, but we need to look at the textual sources to find out how both concepts can be understood in practice.

The 13th-century hatha yoga text, the Dattātreyayogaśāstra, addresses all of its instructions regarding yoga practice to men but there a few sections that shine a slither of light on the role of women.

For their (the men’s) yoga practice to succeed they have two options. Option one is to stave off women who will, inevitably, be attracted to their yogic success, in order to maintain success. Alternatively, he should find a woman who is well practiced in yoga who can be utilised for her sexual fluids (honestly, when I started looking into this, I did not expect to read so much about bodily fluids) and further his success. (Men’s success is coming up a lot here.)

Beyond this, women don’t get much of a mention. There is a suggestion that women who practice yoga do - in fact - exist and could be useful for men on the path to liberation. But it’s not clear if liberation is also available to women, in general, or women who do yoga, specifically. Do they need to accomplish specific things, independently, or simply be an accessory to a man’s yoga practice? And if the yogi is a householder must his associated woman be his wife?

Given women are so sparingly discussed it is hard to discern whether or not a woman who practices yoga - in this text - can be considered a yoginī or if a yoginī is something else entirely.

I should mention here that men and women, as social categories, are understood in very normative and essentialist terms - women are required for their vulvas, vaginas and uterine fluid. Again, when I embarked on research about women in yoga, I did not anticipate spending so much time reading about vulvas. Or semen. Perhaps I was naive, but I really thought women would be valued beyond their anatomy.

Let’s look at a tantric text where yoginīs get more of a mention.

The Brahmayāmala (probably 8th century, made up of 12 thousand verses) and tantra in general, broke away from Vedic ideas (Vedic ritual did not include women). Tantric texts are by no means monolithic - they all have different views of women - but this one is worth looking at as it includes details regarding ritual and initiation practices prescribed specifically for women and, unusually, women-only practices (Hatley 2015: 1).

Around this time, Goddess worship had been absorbed into the mainstream religious practices of Śaivaism. We see the influence of these practices in the way the text blurs the boundaries between women, i.e. real living beings, and goddesses, i.e. divine beings through the use of words such as śakti, yoginī and dūtī.

In the Brahmayāmala the yoginīs can fly, shape-shift from woman to goddess, and become one with male practitioners seeking powers and visions. The boundary between the mortal and the divine collapses and the power of the yoginī must be controlled.

Many rituals are described in this text but we only find accounts of women’s roles when it comes to coital rituals. In ritual contexts women are referred to as dūtī’s. The dūtī must be naked and her vulva becomes a site of worship, much like the fire and the mandala. Her role is central yet passive - she is little more than a ritual object used by the male practitioners seeking omniscient visions.

There are also verses on how to enslave the yoginī in order to use them in sexual rituals - they may be divine but they are also dangerous and must be mastered. It is apparent that many of the ritual instructions, whilst including women, are not specifically for their benefit.

(The idea of calling myself a yoginī is looking less and less appealing.)

If we skip forwards a few hundred years and look at the 15th century Hathapradīpikā (or Hatha Yoga Pradipika) - which borrowed verses from the Dattātreyayogaśāstra - we find that the role of women still hinges on descriptions of sexual acts, specifically the use of vajrolīmudrā. This mudra is a method for (male) householders to remain sexually active while not losing the benefits of their yoga practice. The male yogi can have sex, as long as he then draws up semen, through his urethra (and you thought yoga was about sun salutations!) as it falls into the vagina. The text addresses householders so presumably the vagina in question must belong to the practitioners wife.

If a woman can also perform vajrolī she becomes a yoginī. Great! But this involves retaining rajas, or menstrual fluid.

Understanding, honouring and connecting to older lineages and traditions is important in yoga - recognising yoga’s roots is part of cultural appreciation as opposed to appropriation. Therefore, if we, as women who practice yoga, are going to call ourselves yoginīs we really have to consider what this means. Historically, yoginīs were not simply women adepts in the way a yogi is a male adept rather, they were divine beings, rarely defined beyond their uses for men seeking power. They were sexual consorts or wives, or both.

From the available sources, it is not clear what kind of lives yoginīs had outside of ritual contexts or their divine, abstract existence. Given I am not divine (sadly), or an abstract concept but a woman who does - sometimes - practice yoga I think I will avoid referring to myself as a yoginī from now on.

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If you’d like to learn more about the role of women in pre-modern and modern yoga you might like to take my course starting in April 2023. See my courses page here for more info and sign up to my newsletter to get the early bird price.

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