Watch Out for Those "Sinister" Yoga Masters!

Trey Smith

A group of California parents are campaigning for the withdrawal of school yoga classes, believing the activity promotes Hinduism.

In an effort to promote student health, a school district in Encinitas incorporated the yoga classes into its wellness curriculum this week. But a vocal minority of parents, spurred on by an evangelical Christian group, are calling for the program to be dropped.

The parents are backed by the National Center for Law & Policy, a Christian civil liberties organization that advocates for religious causes. The NCLP, a non-profit group, said it is considering suing the school because it claims yoga is inherently religious.

After the yoga classes were introduced, the NCLP released a four-page document listing reasons why it believes the school district is promoting a religious form of the activity.

Many of the NCLP's claims center on the Jois Foundation, an Encinitas non-profit created in memory of Krishna Pattabhi Jois, who popularized the Ashtanga school of yoga. The district received a $533,000 grant from the foundation and also receives support from University of Virginia and University of San Diego, which are measuring the effects of yoga on children's health.

Timothy Baird, the school district superintendent, told Encinitas Patch that the district selected instructors and designed the program so there is no religion element to it it.

"To be unconstitutional, we would have to be promoting religion and religious instruction in our program. That just isn't happening," Baird said. "What we are promoting is physical activity and overall wellness."

Jon Gans, a member of the board of directors for USA Yoga, a body that promotes yoga in the US, said he has never been in a yoga class where people were encouraged to believe in a religious practice. "Yoga is a set of exercises to improve your body and your mind. It can be applied to anything you want; it is not in and of itself a religious practice," Gans said.

~ from Evangelical Christian Group Helps Sue California School Over Yoga Classes by Amanda Holpuch ~

This seems so ironic to me. A group that fights tooth-and-nail to allow an explicitly religious activity -- Christian prayer -- in schools is suing to stop a certain form of exercise!!

Thousands of organizations provide yoga instruction and it is rare that a religious component is included. The same goes for Tai Chi and the martial arts. While each of these forms do possess a spiritual aspect, my experience has been that American instructors largely tend to ignore that part.

The other thing I thought when I read this article is that, maybe, the Christian god favors obesity and overall ill health. If most Americans utilized yoga and other eastern disciplines, we might generally feel better about ourselves and, if we felt better about ourselves, then less people might join institutions that drive home the message that each of us is little more than pond scum!