Abstract
This workshop critiques the Oprah-endorsed Eat, Pray, Love cultural model—a “white imagination of sanctuary”—as a colonial fantasy embedded in neoliberal tourism. In this model, “finding oneself” through spiritual travel depends on racialized and class-based mobility between the Global North and South, erasing the realities of bordered movement and citizenship restrictions. Enlightenment becomes tied to exotic consumption: falling in love abroad, sipping orgasmic coffee, and returning “home” transformed. We interrogate how dominant narratives of sanctuary and leisure privilege white, Western travelers whose access to “healing journeys” relies on histories of imperial conquest, luxury, and entitlement. Drawing from Indigenous epistemologies, feminist ethnography, and decolonial critique, this session examines how tourism and spirituality intertwine to market healing as a purchasable experience while obscuring structural violence. Participants will critically reflect on how the leisure industry packages sanctuary as a site of personal transformation for the West, extracted from the cultural and spiritual traditions of the Global South. We will explore how these narratives perpetuate a commodified, racialized vision of healing, dislocated from collective responsibility or land-based relationality. The workshop concludes with an embodied experience: a guided ancestral sanctuary journey grounded in meditation, Indigenous cosmology, and shamanic practice. Rather than traveling outward in search of escape, participants will journey inward—using breath, rhythm, and visualization to connect with ancestral presence and sacred geographies. This practice invites a reimagining of “home” as relational, reciprocal, and rooted in stillness rather than movement—offering a decolonial path to resilience beyond the fantasy of travel.
Presenters
Roksana BadruddojaProfessor, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Manhattan University, New York, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
2026 Special Focus—Pathways to Resilience; Sustainable Practices in Tourism and Leisure
KEYWORDS
Decolonial Travel, Indigenous Epistemology, Spiritual Commodification, White Imagination of Sanctuary
