Do you believe me because I look like this?

This paper will explore contested ideas of authenticity in yoga by focusing on the teacher training system and the question of who is trusted as a legitimate source of knowledge. It will consider the tension between the perceived erasure of indigenous voices in modern yoga spaces and efforts to reclaim yoga by Indian teachers, through a theoretical and ethnographic lens.

It will draw on the work of Dwanna McKay and Dana Brablec, who examine authenticity as a negotiated and contested practice, and combine their insights with my own primary research and professional experience. Using surveys, diaries and participant observation, I will investigate how students select teacher training programmes, how schools recruit faculty members, and how both processes reflect assumptions about legitimacy and authority.

Over the last seven years, I have taught over 600 students on more than 40 trainings and am developing a career as a yoga teacher trainer in the areas of history, philosophy and politics. Alongside this emperical work, my self-relfexive practice has led to me question whether the schools and students I work with trust me more because of who am I rather than what I know?

Though I hold an MA in the Traditions of Yoga and Meditation, and continue to engage in research as I work towards my PhD, I am often perceived through identity markers, especially my labelling as an Indian, conferred on me at birth, according to Apartheid South Africa's classification system. I use this personal positioning to ask: in the global yoga industry, is authenticity attributed to teachers on the basis of expertise or identity.

By situating lived experience within broader theoretical debates, this paper contributes to discussions on knowledge, authority, and identity in global yoga studies.