A Queer Dharma

Yoga and Meditations for Liberation

By: Jacoby Ballard, Susanna Barkataki

Narrated by: Phil Corin, Jacoby Ballard

Queer critique, queer practice: embodied teachings for healing from trauma and social injustice.

Jacoby Ballard provides an empowering and affirming guide to embodied healing through yoga and the dharma, grounded in the brilliance, resilience, and lived experiences of queer folks.

Part I deconstructs the ways mainstream yoga perpetuates queer- and transphobia and other systemic oppressions, exploring the intersections of yoga, capitalism, cultural appropriation, and sexual violence. Ballard also addresses the trauma - complex, vicarious, historical, and collective - perpetuated against queer communities. In response, he offers tools for self-compassion, tonglen, loving kindness, and grounding, and helps listeners explore questions like:

• What is trauma? How is it a product of injustice - and how can healing it create justice?
• The world won't stop being homo- and transphobic, so how do I encounter that in a way that does the least harm?
• How do we love what is uniquely trans about us?
• What are affinity groups, and why do we need them?

In part II, Ballard offers a queer-centered, fully embodied, and equity-rooted practice with meditations, practices, and sequences for processing and healing from trauma individually and in community. He explains concepts like loving kindness, letting go, compassion, joy, forgiveness, and equanimity through a queer lens, and pairs each with corresponding meditations, practices, and beautiful line drawings of queer bodies.

Enhanced with stories from Ballard's personal practice and professional experience teaching yoga in schools, prisons, conferences, and his weekly Queer and Trans Yoga class, A Queer Dharma is a guidebook, reclamation, and unapologetically queer heart offering for true healing and transformation.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2021 Jacoby Ballard, Susanna Barkataki (P)2022 North Atlantic Books

Critic reviews

“In A Queer Dharma, Jacoby Ballard offers us a fresh, tender, and bold guide on how to root the timeless truths of wisdom and compassion in a contemporary commitment to justice for all. He brilliantly weaves together powerful stories from his life journey with profound explorations of complex topics including forgiving what seems unforgivable, equanimity in the midst of oppression, and the colonization and commodification of yoga. The meditations and reflections blended throughout are clear and inspiring. This book is a nuanced, courageous, and compassionate gift for our individual and collective liberation.” (Sebene Selassie, author of You Belong)

“Through Jacoby Ballard’s homage to their teachers, offering of the teachings they embody, and awareness that more teachings will come forth through them, A Queer Dharma is the guide and medicine that we need at this time. Ballard offers powerful teachings about compassion, forgiveness, righteous rage, love, God, and knowing we have a place here and that it is our birthright to inhabit it. A Queer Dharma weaves in feminist, Black, and queer theory, creating a pathway for us to consider our identities and complexities and see ourselves as more expansive than our bodies. Ballard reminds us we are here on purpose and calls us into deep inquiry and action. Stories of their study and practice of dharma, Buddhism, and yoga, a beautiful love letter to queer and trans folks, call for us to heal our collective trauma and invite readers to dig deeper, transform and be better, to shift the culture of yoga and spiritual practice and beyond. This book is a blessing and should be received as such.” (ichelle C. Johnson, author of Skill in Action)

“What a gift A Queer Dharma is to the world! Filled with deep wisdom and vulnerability, Jacoby Ballard shares radically courageous teachings and practices for transforming our lives and our communities. Whether you are a curious new practitioner, a spiritual activist committed to social justice values, or a seasoned practitioner or teacher seeking to grow and stretch on your path, this book is a tremendous offering for befriending yourself and others and developing practices for building Beloved Community in brave and collaborative ways. Deep bows of gratitude to Jacoby Ballard for this timely medicine for these times of shift in the world.” (Brenda Salgado, author of Real World Mindfulness for Beginners)

An oasis of thought and perspective.

A deeply helpful text for Queer folk wishing to pursue Dharma or Yoga practice. This book helped me understand and affirm some of my misgivings about engaging in these communities and strengthened my resolve to do so. The author also challenged me to expand my ethical commitments in these spaces. You will come away from this book with skills to navigate harm and care in Sangha around race, gender, disability and more.

Illuminating and thought-provoking

That Jacoby Ballard is not your typical yoga teacher is immediately apparent in this fascinating book, which comes alive with his personal struggles and growth. From working in a health-food store (which fired him for discussing trans issues with a coworker), to cofounding a community health center in Brooklyn, to teaching yoga in schools, prisons, homeless shelters, and LGBTQ+ communities--and even teaching while pregnant--his story is one of fighting for justice in the arena of healing, with particular attention to the trauma experienced by queer, trans, and all other marginalized people. I listened to the audiobook, read by Jacoby, which was a real treat.

A Queer Dharma examines how mainstream yoga teachers and schools often exclude and demean LGBTQ+ students in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, and offers strategies for those who experience queer- and transphobia in spaces where yoga and meditation meet capitalism and cultural appropriation. Such tools include self-compassion, grounding, and cultivating resilience, and each chapter ends with a guided meditation to teach these skills. Jacoby also provides many valuable suggestions for yoga teachers and studios to make their offerings more appropriate, inclusive, and welcoming for LGBTQ+ folks as well as everyone else who is not your typical yoga student.

Jacoby now teaches a Queer and Trans Yoga class both in-person and virtually, as well as training yoga teachers and continuing his work for social justice. You can learn more on his website, https://jacobyballard.net/, where you will also find his excellent blog "Birthing Papa: A Yogi's Path to Parenthood," which includes suggestions for welcoming queer and trans families to prenatal classes and birth communities.