Original Godmothers of Yoga is the first ever e-book from the Yoga is Dead team! With this e-book we aspire to mainstream the incredibly impactful stories of a selection of the women who have been the champions of yoga over the centuries in an effort to bring these Original Godmothers (OG) the global recognition they deserve.

The stories contained in these pages are of South Asian women from a variety of regions, backgrounds and points in history; we hope these women’s stories showcase the diversity of practitioners and the varied paths to enlightenment.

In creating this book, we’ve formatted two accessible versions. A color version with high contrast colors and a grayscale, printer-friendly version with some visual elements removed for clarity. Both versions contain image descriptions where relevant. A link to the grayscale version is included in your purchase confirmation email.

Some early praise for the book:

"Yoga history and philosophy has had a patriarchal lens and there needs to be an intentional shift in including and embracing the plurality of powerful voices of ancient Yoga. There are so many things I enjoyed about this e-book about Matriarchs in Yoga. It’s informative, gets us to wonder and learn about our ancestors from a decolonized perspective and dig deeper as students of Yoga."

-Anjali Rao

“As someone who comes from a matrilineal culture in Assam, in the North Eastern part of India, it’s empowering to see all of the matriarchs of yoga together in one text. In true devoted

and collaborative form, the authors Jesal, Tejal, Jazzy, Lauren and Payal, all bring their unique perspectives and flavors to these explorations of what the matriarchs of yoga mean to them - and can to us. A powerful read.”

-Susanna Barkataki