About
Marissa Clarke is a Yoga Teacher, Movement Facilitator, and – from September 2026 – an Associate Lecturer in Contemporary Yoga Practices at SOAS University of London. She completed her PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 2025, where she researched the phenomenology of yoga, the body, and sound. Her doctoral work was funded by the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities (SGSAH) Doctoral Training Partnership, and in 2024 she was a Visiting Doctoral Researcher-Artist at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil.
Alongside her academic work, Marissa has been teaching yoga since 2017, supporting a diverse range of practitioners across higher education, community, and studio settings. She has taught at the University of Glasgow, University of Edinburgh, University of the Arts London, and More Yoga in London. Her teaching approach is informed by somatic forms of inquiry, exploring the spatial, temporal and energetic qualities of movement. She guides practitioners through creative structured sequences which she combines with guided improvisations, helping practitioners cultivate greater kinaesthetic awareness, responsiveness and autonomy in their practices.
Yoga Teaching & Movement Facilitation
Group-based yoga classes
Mandala and vinyasa yoga classes combining structured sequences with guided improvisations, attending to how the body creates its own space, time, and force, while moving 360 degrees around/beyond the mat.
Group-based movement facilitation
Creative and experimental movement sessions developed through somatic and deep listening practices to explore kinaesthetic awareness, imagination, and collective presence.
Academic Research
Marissa explores kinaesthetic experiences in contemporary yoga practices. Her research investigates the relationship between perception, emotion, and learning across practices, with a particular interest in the kinaesthetic memories and skills that practitioners develop over time. A key contribution of her work is a new theory of kinaesthetic resonance, dissonance, and flux, which offers a temporal perspective to understanding kinaesthetic experience beyond tropes of ‘flow’.
Her broader research interests include theories and philosophies of the body and cognition, the anthropology of movement, temporality, pedagogy, process philosophy, and sonic arts. She takes a fluid, interdisciplinary approach to doing research that provokes new ways of understanding and challenges conventional modes of inquiry.
Marissa’s work has been published in Religions of South Asia, Religion, Yoga Studies in Five Minutes, and Art Review Oxford. She has presented internationally at conferences including Yoga Darśana Yoga Sādhana (Kraków 2022, Hamburg 2024, Paris 2026), Digital Body Festival (London 2024), and the XXIII International Association for the History of Religions World Congress (Kraków 2025). She has also delivered invited lectures on yoga, embodiment, and sound at the University of Edinburgh (2022), Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (2024), and SOAS University of London (2026).
Oceano Respiração
During her Visiting Doctoral Researcher-Artist residency in Brazil, Marissa worked with Professor Isabel Nogueira as a mentor and collaborator. Together, they created an album and participatory performance project entitled Oceano Respiração.
The album features original tracks created from field recordings of breathing, moving, and chanting in transnational yoga practices across London, Edinburgh, and Porto Alegre, alongside recordings made at beaches and riverbanks in southern Brazil. These recordings became a ‘reservoir of sonic events’ that Clarke and Nogueira transformed into compositions using audio processing techniques, virtual instruments, and analogue synthesisers. The tracks are accompanied by scores for ‘listening-in-movement’, inviting audiences to participate through improvised sounds, movements, and gestures. Participatory performances of Oceano Respiração have included Casa Baka Arte e Cultura in Porto Alegre (April 2024), and at the Yoga Darśana Yoga Sādhana conference at EHESS in Paris (May 2026).
The album and scores for listening-in-movement are available for purchase on cassette tape and digital download via COISAS QUE MATAM.
Publications
ARTICLES
Clarke, M. (2025) ‘The Meeting of the Waters’, Special Issue on Spectral Ecologies, Art Review Oxford, (12). Available: https://artreviewoxford.com/
Clarke, M. (2024) ‘Yoga and the Gig Economy: Pandemic, Precarity and Yoga Teacher Labour’. Religions of South Asia, 18 (1-2), 190-214. DOI: 10.1558/rosa.25489
BOOK CHAPTERS
Clarke, M. (2025) ‘What is the relationship between yoga and capitalism?’ in Yoga Studies in Five Minutes edited by Theodora Wildcroft and Barbora Sojková. Sheffield, Equinox Publishing, DOI: 10.1558/isbn.9781800506015
Clarke, M. (2025) ‘What is vinyasa?’ in Yoga Studies in Five Minutes edited by Theodora Wildcroft and Barbora Sojková. Sheffield, Equinox Publishing, DOI: 10.1558/isbn.9781800506015
Clarke, M. (2025) ‘What does yoga mean to Indians today?’ in Yoga Studies in Five Minutes edited by Theodora Wildcroft and Barbora Sojková. Sheffield, Equinox Publishing, DOI: 10.1558/isbn.9781800506015
BOOK REVIEWS
Clarke, M. (2023) Thinking in Āsana: Movement and Philosophy in Viniyoga, Iyengar Yoga, and Ashtanga Yoga, Religion, DOI: 10.1080/0048721X.2023.2194192
CONFERENCE PAPERS
Clarke, M (2026) Bloating, Slowness, Heaviness: Menstrual Rhythms in the Ashtanga Movementscape, Yoga Darśana Yoga Sādhana: Authenticity, Authority and Adaptation, EHESS Paris, France
Clarke, M (2025) Listening to Kinaesthetic Experiences: A Meta-Praxis of Phenomenology and Field Recording in Yoga Research, XXIII IAHR World Congress, Jagiellonian University Krakow, Poland
Clarke, M (2024) Artificial Intelligence, Embodiment, and the Metaphysical Wound, Bodies of Knowledge: Digital Body Festival, Arts Council England and University College London, UK
Clarke, M (2024) Acoustemologies of Breath: Sounding and Listening in Contemporary Yoga, Yoga Darśana, Yoga Sādhana: Introspection, Inspiration, Institutionalisation, University of Hamburg, Germany
Clarke, M (2022) Yoga and The Gig Economy: Pandemic, Precarity and Yoga Teacher Labour, Yoga Darśana, Yoga Sādhana: Methods, Migrations, Mediations, Jagiellonian University Krakow, Poland
Clarke, M and Fox, P (2019) How We Created the YIHA NHS Protocol: Theory, Discussion and Practical, Yoga in Healthcare Conference, University of Westminster, UK
MULTIMEDIA OUTPUTS
Clarke, M. (2026) Oceano Respiração [Participatory Performance],Yoga Darśana Yoga Sādhana: Authenticity, Authority and Adaptation, EHESS Paris, France
Clarke, M. and Nogueira, I. (2026) Oceano Respiração [Album: Digital and Tape], COISAS QUE MATAM, Berlin, São Paulo, Copenhagen. Available: https://coisasquematam.bandcamp.com/album/oceano-respira-o
Clarke, M (2024) Breath and In-betweenness [Installation]. Advance Research Centre, University of Glasgow
Clarke, M., Celestino, G., Jung, D., and Striebel, N. (2024) The Meeting of the Waters [Durational Performance], Independência, Porto Alegre, Brazil
Clarke, M., dos Anjos. B. and Nogueira, I. (2024) Oceano Respiração [Participatory Performance and Installation], Casa Baka Arte e Cultura, Porto Alegre, Brazil
Dr Marissa Clarke 