Yoga and emotional literacy

Emotional literacy was pioneered in the United Kingdom by Susie Orbach, who suggested that studying our emotions is a lifelong process of cultivating self-awareness.1 Additionally, Claude Steiner2 suggested that emotional literacy skills encourage identifying our emotions and speaking about their roots, developing an intuitive capacity, and creating amends for our mistakes. Emotional literacy is rooted in the art of self-love and cultivates a personal power.2 In addition to Steiner, I assert that emotional literacy teaches individuals how to set healthy emotional boundaries and to create new family narratives to mend intergenerational trauma.3 Despite emotional literacy’s value, it is second to popular notions of emotional intelligence testing promoted by Daniel Goleman.4 Goleman’s research studies were based on workplace efficiency and emotional competence for customer service5 Emotional intelligence is fixed and rooted in workplace efficiency2,6 and historically is rooted in eugenics testing that promoted the notion that being smart is an inherent trait that is not learned.6