Showing posts with label Jois Yoga. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jois Yoga. Show all posts

Saturday, June 1, 2013

Yoga Train Wreck in Encinitas: Or, What's Up with the Jois Foundation??

Please bear with me for a few caveats and disclaimers before I begin my rant. 

1. Although I don't practice Ashtanga, I'm attracted to the culture it generates insofar as I know it. I tend to connect intellectually with Ashtangis more than any other identifiable group of practitioners. I feel that the method attracts a relatively high percentage of smart, independently-minded people. From my outsider's perspective, it seems that the Ashtanga community has an exceptionally interesting, serious, engaged culture. I like that. 

2. I'm strongly in favor of making yoga more available in institutions such as schools, hospitals, and prisons, as well as in underserved and socially marginalized communities. As a teacher, I find yoga outreach . I'm an unashamed booster of the not particularly popular notion of . 

 Soooooo . . . you'd think I'd not only be super-supportive of the fact that the Jois Foundation gave a $500,000 grant to the Encinitas schools to fund a district-wide yoga program, but also stand staunchly by them as the maddening lawsuit that grant generated drags on. And this would be true, except for the fact that . . .

 3. I believe strongly not only in the values of multiculturalism, but in the need to actively engage them in practice if we're to have any hope at all of healing some of the divisions in our frighteningly polarized society.

Although multiculturalism is rightfully associated with left-of-center political values, I've always believed that it's got to be applied evenly across the board. And when it comes to the current lawsuit over the constitutionality of teaching yoga in public schools, that means treating the conservative Christians involved with equal consideration and respect, whether one agrees with them or not.

And that's why - despite being being strongly opposed to the conservative Christian political agenda - I'm nonetheless moved to say that I think the plaintiffs in Encinitas have raised some legitimate questions about the Jois Foundation grant. 

In fact, the more that I read through the Jois Yoga website, and search in vain for some sort of statement they may have made about the many important issues raised in this case, the more frustrated I feel. At this point, I'm simply wondering: 

What the hell is up with the Jois Foundation??
 

"Inherently Religious"? 

Let me explain. The Encinitas lawsuit boils down to an argument over whether yoga is "inherently religious" or not. Framed in such broad terms, it's easy to refute the claim that it is. After all, how could anyone seriously think that the practice that produced this video qualifies as having religious stature? 

But this litigation is much more tricky than that. Because the case was not, of course, filed to judge  "yoga" in the abstract: it was filed against the Encinitas program in particular. But now that it's up and running, there's a (most likely calculated) slipperiness between the attack on "yoga" writ large and the specific program in Encinitas.

And that slipperiness bodes ill both for the reputation of yoga in more religiously conservative communities (which, after all, is a good bit of the U.S.) as well as its status in publicly funded institutions such as schools, hospitals, prisons and so on. 

 When I first researched the Encinitas case I was not surprised to learn that the plaintiffs were associated with a conservative Christian activist group and represented by a conservative Christian legal advocacy group. and have a good understanding of how its interlinked network of right-wing think tanks, foundations, law firms, and activist groups operates - and how powerful it is. 

 Though expected, this discovery revved up my righteous indignation. I'm profoundly dismayed and certainly somewhat alarmed to see yoga dragged into the juggernaut of litigious culture wars that's been churning on now for decades.


Yoga teacher Jennifer Brown demonstrating Lotus at the Encinitas trial

Still, ever the obsessive researcher, I started looking for information on the Jois Foundation online. I expected to find material explaining precisely how and why the Foundation's grant-making program differed from Jois Yoga's overall commitment to Ashtanga. After all, I understood the argument being made in court was that the Encinitas program doesn't represent Ashtanga per se. Instead, it's an exercise-oriented program developed under the authority of the school district to support children's health and well-being. 

 I believe this to be the case. I certainly don't think that the Encinitas program is really designed to indoctrinate kids into Hinduism. On many levels, I find that claim completely absurd. 

 But.

 The fact of the matter is that if you read the Jois Yoga website, it's full of what can only be described as religiously-inflected spiritual language. And of course, that would be fine, except for the fact that there's virtually nothing on the Jois Foundation side of fence to balance it out. 


"Our Website is Underway"

While the plaintiffs are being ridiculed in court and across the internet as irrational fanatics who refuse to accept the obvious fact that yoga is exercise, the Jois Yoga website describes the Ashtanga method as “an ancient system that can lead to liberation and greater awareness of our spiritual potential.”
  
While I'd quibble with the "ancient system" claim, that's fine as far as it goes within its appropriate context. But it does raise some legitimate questions regarding precisely how this understanding of yoga is being translated into a program that's appropriate for children from diverse backgrounds attending a public school.

 These questions intensify dramatically once you start perusing the "Philosophy" page of the website, which presents a series of "Conference Notes with Sharath Jois" from 2011-12. These notes not only contains a lot of religious-sounding language, but buttress some of the plaintiff’s more seemingly outlandish claims as well.

For example, many commentators have derided the plaintiffs as idiots for charging that Sun Salutations could be in any way connected to worshiping a “sun god.” Yet, the Jois Yoga website explains that Ashtanga founder Pattahbi Jois taught Sun Salutations “for two reasons”:
To pray to the sun god each morning would insure good health . . . Also, the Sūrya Namaskāra is used in our practice . . . to create heat in the body and help us do other postures.
Now, this is the first time in 15 years of practice that I’ve ever heard of “praying to the sun god” in any context connected with yoga. Regardless of this statement, I don't believe that 99.9% of American yoga practitioners have any clue that such a linkage has ever been made - and if they did, they'd either dismiss it as fanciful metaphor, or disapprove. Nonetheless, the fact that it’s stated on the Jois Yoga website is obviously relevant to the Encinitas case.



Again, this wouldn't be so bad if there was robust and compelling information available explaining precisely how the Foundation's grant-making program differentiates itself in terms of both philosophy and practice. Unfortunately, I've looked a good bit for such information, and as far as I can tell, it isn't there. 

Instead, there is a single web page on the Jois Yoga site that only explains the Foundation's program very briefly and vaguely: 
Our Health and Wellness Program for Children . . . uses the techniques of yoga, meditation, and proper nutrition to create a positive lifestyle change.
There's a bit more, but not much. Most of the font on the page is too small and hard to read. One sentence stands out in bolded caps at the bottom, however:

OUR WEBSITE IS UNDERWAY.

Whaaaaaaatttt??? The Jois Foundation has given over half a million in funding to the Encinitas school district, produced a , sparked a lawsuit that could have a seriously negative impact on the evolution of yoga in American society and . . . their website is underway??


AARRRRRGGGGH

To be sure, the fact that the Jois Foundation funded the Encinitas program isn’t by itself enough to discredit it. The EUSD insists that it had complete control over the curriculum, and no interest in or knowledge of yoga as anything other than exercise. To bar the program simply because of the beliefs of its funders would be discriminatory. That said, one really has to wonder just what the Jois Foundation was thinking when it launched this initiative without more adequately addressing the obvious legal, educational, cultural, and religious issues involved. 

Our website is underway?! How about a robust website that explains the philosophy behind the yoga in public schools grant-making program in depth? How about some appropriately useful resources, such as a study of best practices in that field? How about consultations with experts who have been successfully implementing yoga in schools programs for years? How about a resource page of studies assessing the positive benefits of yoga for kids? How about a stated commitment to respecting the diverse religious commitments of a multicultural society, along with a detailed account of why yoga is well-suited to being adapted to all faith traditions - and none? 

If the Jois Foundation were a strapped, struggling effort of politically naive, but well-meaning yoga aficionados who had no way of putting all that together, that would be one thing. But that's not the case. Jois Yoga has a lot of money. If they didn't, you can bet that the National Center for Law and Policy wouldn't have bothered to take on the case. 

Contemplative Sciences Center website: uvacontemplation.org

What's even more galling to me is that beyond their financial resources, Jois Yoga is already connected with an academic research center, the Contemplative Sciences Center at the University of Virginia. This Center was established in 2012 thanks to a $12 million grant from "billionaire alum Paul Tudor Jones and his wife Sonia," the same couple that funded and created Jois Yoga.

The mission of the Center sounds wonderfully multidisciplinary and innovative: 
to foster dynamic partnerships of unusual depth and breadth towards exploring the transformative impact of contemplation in a variety of social sectors. Binding together the humanities and sciences, we are pursuing serious programs of learning, research, and engagement across the liberal arts, sciences, health sciences, medicine and nursing, education, architecture, business research, policy making, contemplative practice, and more.
A quick glance through the website confirms that there's a lot of interesting work going on there. Yet . . . when you search "Encinitas" on the site, nothing comes up. Search "yoga" and six listings come up. Further fueling my frustration with the entire situation is the fact that one of them is titled, "Gurus on Grounds" ("Please join an extraordinary opportunity for contemplative experience and learning under expert guidance as world-renowned master teachers Sharath and Saraswathi Jois teach Ashtanga Yoga practice to a large public gathering.") Arrrrgghhhh.


What. The.

On the one hand, I really do feel rather churlish complaining about the Tudor Jones charitable work. After all, they've contributed millions of dollars to visionary endeavors I strongly support, such as furthering contemplative studies and bringing yoga into the public schools. Such public-minded use of private wealth is all too rare today, and (political concerns about the destructively unequal distribution of wealth in the U.S. aside), I certainly appreciate it.  

On the other hand, I feel enormously frustrated that with all these resources, the Encinitas case seems to have been handled in an embarrassingly inept and potentially destructive way. The level of disconnect between the reality of the culture wars on the ground in American society and the lofty vision of expanding the reach of yoga and contemplative practices in the U.S. strikes me as stunning - not to mention discouraging. 

Threading through the Encinitas case is a vagueness about the relationship between Ashtanga yoga (as understood and promulgated by Jois Yoga) and American yoga as a much bigger, and highly diversified phenomenon. The Jois Foundation has simply not, as far as I can see, drawn a bright line between their school-based yoga programs and their commitment to the Ashtanga method. 


This fuzziness raises legitimate concerns among conservative Christian parents who are sincerely concerned about the spiritual development of their children. Honestly, I were a conservative Christian who knew nothing about yoga other than what was happening in Encinitas, it would be entirely possible to read the Jois Yoga website and freak out about a possible “Hindu invasion.”

Potentially, some of these unnecessary concerns could have been alleviated with better program development and implementation procedures. For starters, a clear and thorough separation between the Ashtanga and school-based methods needed to be made internally, and stated publicly. Then, community outreach and parent-teacher conversations could have built bridges between the yoga program and worried parents. 

Of course, some of the opposition would never have been won over regardless. I wouldn't expect the Encinitas parent on the staff of truthXchange (a very strange-sounding conservative Christian activist group committed to combating the supposedly rising tide of global paganism) to accept yoga (in schools or otherwise) as OK no matter what. 

In my experience, however, most conservative-leaning Christians who are not hardcore activists are very open to accepting yoga if they felt that their concerns are heard and addressed. Given yoga is not inherently religious, and is in fact intended to be open to supporting all faith traditions (or none), this is not difficult to do. 

 If we keep steamrolling forward as we have been, however, we'll never have the chance to find out. The lack of clarity about the Jois Foundation's grant-making program has provided a prime opportunity for zealous conservative Christian activists to reframe the understanding of yoga in schools, both culturally, politically, and legally. And with some smart, seasoned, and committed leadership in place, they know how to leverage the opening that Encinitas has provided. 


It wasn't an accident that the first lawsuit to challenge yoga in the public schools didn't involve on of the many school yoga nonprofits run by experienced educators who understand the school system from the inside out. No, this case was selected for solid political reasons. And it frustrates me no end that the side I'm backing seems to be ignoring the mountains of evidence showing that we have a problem here, Houston. Instead, they keep insisting over and over that anyone with any intelligence understands that "yoga is exercise." 

 Sigh. 

 Hopefully the judge will render a smart, incisive, balanced, and original position that reframes the many important issues involved in this case in more constructive ways. Because right now, I'm not liking the direction it's going, at all.



Please also check out my recent post on Yoga U Online: "Yoga on Trial: Encinitas and the Need for a New Paradigm."

Thursday, February 28, 2013

The Real Trojan Horse in Encinitas Isn't Hinduism - It's Christian Extremism



In my previous post on the recently filed lawsuit to prohibit yoga classes in the Encinitas public schools, I promised this one would elaborate a reasonable counter-position. I'm sorry to report, however, that this project - which I still want to do! - is being put off once again. Because once I started digging a little deeper into what's behind this National Center for Law and Policy lawsuit, I got hit by a stunning avalanche of information.

 Before launching into what I discovered about the backstory behind the Encinitas case, however, I want to just note that it's remarkably ironic that the expert witness for the prosecution, Dr. Candy Gunther Brown, closed her 36-page brief with a dark warning that:
A pattern that I have observed in my long-term research on yoga, meditation, and other forms of CAM is that participation in spiritually-premised practices—even when marketed as “secular” and stripped of religious language—leads practitioners to change their religious views.

Because this process often occurs gradually, individuals may not even recognize that it is taking place or consciously choose to change their religious beliefs.
In other words: don't imagine for a split second that you can justify yoga in schools on the grounds that it's good for kids' health! No, pretty much every form of complementary and alternative medicine, or "CAM," is a veritable Trojan Horse, sneaking in spiritually damaging views that undermine Americans' religious beliefs - whether they know it or not!


Talk about a slippery slope argument! How, I wondered, did she get from critiquing the Jois Foundation in particular to this sweeping denunciation of everything connected with yoga, meditation, and alternative medicine in general? It seemed odd. 

A little more research, however, revealed a right-wing religious culture that would very much support such assertions. Which suggests that if you thought this case was simply a matter of few religiously conservative parents with some legit worries about their kids taking yoga classes in school - it's time to think again.

Of course, some parents no doubt do feel deeply concerned about their kids taking yoga, and that should be respected - up to a point. Because legally, politically, and culturally, that's really not even the tip of the iceberg.


Litigating Against "the Lie"

Here's how NPR described Encinitas parents Mary Eady's involvement in the yoga controversy: 
Encinitas Superintendent Tim Baird says yoga is just one element of the district's physical education curriculum . . . But when Mary Eady visited one of the yoga classes at her son's school last year, she saw much more than a fitness program.
"They were being taught to thank the sun for their lives and the warmth that it brought, the life that it brought to the earth and they were told to do that right before they did their sun salutation exercises," she says.

Those looked like religious teachings to her, so she opted to keep her son out of the classes. The more Eady reads about the Jois Foundation and its founders' beliefs in the spiritual benefits of Ashtanga yoga, the more she's convinced that the poses and meditation can't be separated from their Hindu roots . . .

Eady is part of a group of parents working with Dean Broyles, president and chief counsel of the Escondido-based National Center for Law and Policy.
 OK, so Ms. Eady grew concerned and took action. Fair enough, right? Well - it's not really that simple. 

Yesterday, Alternet posted an excellent piece of investigative journalism,  explaining among other things that "Mary Eady, one of the parents organizing against Encinitas’ yoga program . . . works at a Christian organization called truthxchange." 

And what, you may ask, is truthxchange?

I checked it out. As it turns out, Ms. Eady is one of four staff members of this group, which describes itself as an activist "ministry" organization. 

The site goes on to explain that the group was formed in 2003 under the name, "Christian Witness to a Pagan Planet," or CWiPP. Later, it "changed its name to truthXchange" and instituted "a new emphasis on reaching college and university students." 

http://truthxchange.com/books/

Here's how truthxchange describes its current "Vision":
Our Purpose: For God’s glory, truthXchange exists to equip the Christian community in general and its leaders in particular to recognize and effectively respond to the rising tide of neopaganism.
Our Passion: truthXchange desires to be a global communication center that broadcasts a gospel-driven worldview response to pagan spirituality as well as recruiting, equipping, and mobilizing a network of fearless Christian leaders.
 Our Plans: To train a new generation of scholars and leaders to understand and inform the Church of the challenge of global paganism . . . To engage in “antithesis” apologetics, or, as the apostle Paul says, to clarify the Truth by understanding and explaining the Lie.
Want to learn more about truthxchange's crusade for "the Truth" and against "the Lie"? Check out their 8-minute video, "Only Two Religions," which is posted both on their website and . In it, you can hear Executive Director Peter Jones explain their philosophy of "One-ism and Two-ism," which, as you might expect, boils down to an insistence that their understanding of Christianity is the one true religion, and everything else is horribly wrong.



 "Spreading the Gospel by Transforming the Legal System"

 NPR reported simply that "Eady is part of a group of parents working with Dean Broyles," President of the NCLP. But let's learn a little more about Mr. Broyles and the organization he leads. 

 According to its website, the NCLP is a non-profit "legal defense organization which focuses on the protection and promotion of religious freedom, the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, parental rights, and other civil liberties." They proudly assert a position of militant Christian nationalism:
Our nations’ founders believed that our rights and liberties are not manufactured by men, but are established by our Creator . . . 'It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Galatians 5:1.'
But even though it is a natural right, freedom does not just “happen” by default. Throughout recorded history, liberty must be esteemed, fought for, established, and guarded if is to survive and flourish.
Today is no different. Indeed, the enemies of freedom have multiplied, and with them, we have clearly witnessed a mounting number of assaults on faith, family and freedom. Our attorneys stand ready, willing, and able to defend freedom against its enemies . . . We are motivated in our endeavors by our faith to keep the doors open for the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.


Now, let's learn a little more about the lead attorney in the Encinitas case.

As explained on the NCLP website, Mr. Boyles "clerked for several years at the National Legal Foundation, a religious liberty non-profit organization." After graduating from law school, "he was invited to become an affiliate attorney of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), from which Dean has received extensive training in pro-family, pro-life and pro-religious liberty matters at ADF’s outstanding National Litigation Academies (NLA)":
Because of Dean’s pro-bono work, he was invited to receive special training at ADF’s advanced NLA. Dean is proud to be an ADF affiliate attorney and member of ADF’s honor guard.
And what, you may wonder, is the ADF?
  
Recently renamed the Alliance Defending Freedom, the ADF website describes the organization as "a servant ministry building an alliance to keep the door open for the spread of the Gospel by transforming the legal system and advocating for religious liberty, the sanctity of life, and marriage and family":
Recognizing the need for a strong, coordinated legal defense against growing attacks on religious freedom, more than 30 prominent Christian leaders launched Alliance Defending Freedom in 1994. Over the past 18 years, this unique legal ministry has brought together thousands of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations that work tirelessly to advocate for the right of people to freely live out their faith in America and around the world.
Thanks be to God, Alliance Defending Freedom and its allies have won 8 out of every 10 cases litigated to conclusion, including 38 precedent-setting victories at the U.S. Supreme Court and hundreds more in the lower courts.

Right-Wing Watch explains that the ADF "sees itself as a counter to the ACLU." They are well-financed, highly networked, strongly anti-gay and anti-abortion, and quite powerful. 
Unique to the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) is their collective of high-powered founders, including wealthy right-wing organizations such as Dobson's Focus on the Family and D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries.

The ADF embodies the beliefs of its founders, harnessing the efforts of a cadre of right-wing groups with hundreds of millions of dollars at their disposal. All of these groups are influential members of the Right; they are pro-life and anti-gay, and their ultimate goal is to see the law and U.S. government enshrined with conservative Christian principles.

The relationship between ADF and it's founders is one of mutual self-interest; ADF has access to the resources and networking of large organizations, who in turn are equipped with an endless supply of readily-available lawyers.
ADF's strength goes beyond their budget due to their influence with well-funded religious-right groups.

Two issues common to each of ADF's founders are their work against the right to abortion, and against the civil rights/liberties of gays and lesbians. They are particularly persistent in attacking attempts by homosexuals to have families, establish domestic partnerships or civil unions, or to be protected from discrimination in employment or housing.
On its website, the ADF lists its official "Allies" as including 13 legal groups, 10 advocacy organizations, 8 "educational" institiutions, and 8 "ministries." Many of these organizations are extremely powerful in their own right. Considered as a tight network of right-wing activists with deep pockets and literally missionary zeal, the forces lined up against the Jois Foundation's yoga program are formidable indeed. 

In this context, the Jois grant of $550,000 to fund the yoga program in the Encinitas school, while huge in the yoga world, seems laughably small. True, it was big enough to put them into the NCLP/ADF/truthxchange crosshairs. I wonder if they realize, however, just how many soldiers are contained in that battleship of a conservative Christian Trojan Horse. 

 Note: My next post will (hopefully) deliver on my pro-yoga in public schools argument as promised.


Monday, February 25, 2013

Taking Encinitas Seriously: The Conservative Attack on Teaching Yoga in Public Schools is No Joke




The time for hand waving dismissals of the conservative attack on teaching yoga in public schools is past.   

 On February 20th, a well-established conservative activist organization, The National Center for Law & Policy (NCLP) slapped the Encinitas Union School District (EUSD) with a civil rights suit, claiming that their yoga curriculum violates the California state constitution's freedom of religion clause.

If you imagine that no one could possibly take the claims of some right wingnuts who think doing Down Dog puts you on a slippery slope to Hindu indoctrination seriously, I disagree. I've studied the history of conservative legal activism and know just how stunningly (and, for many holding a more liberal perspective, unexpectedly) successful it can be. 

 This is a serious case with far-reaching implications. As such, it requires a solidly researched, intellectually sophisticated, and legally compelling response from those who believe that the option of teaching yoga in publicly funded institutions should remain open. And while I'm sure that the EUSD is working on it, so far I haven't seen any public evidence that such a well-crafted rebuttal to the NCLP's charges exists. 

 It's time to develop one. And, I believe that doing so is best seen as an opportunity, rather than simply a hassle or a threat. Coming up with a solid response to the NCLP's legal attack will require thinking more deeply into what contemporary yoga is really about. Given that American yoga culture harbors a certain anti-intellectual bias, the need for more rigorous thinking about the history and development of modern yoga could, in fact, turn out to be a good thing.

 Yoga, Spirituality, and Religion

 This is no frivolous lawsuit. NCLP has done its research and recruited some big guns. These most prominently include one Professor Candy Gunther Brown, who recently filed a 36-page expert witness brief supporting the claim that the "practices taught by the EUSD yoga curriculum promote and advance religion, including Hinduism - whether or not these practices are taught using Hindu or religious language."

 Professor Brown is no slouch. After graduating summa cum laude from Harvard, she went on to earn her M.A. and Ph.D. in History of American Civilization there. Currently an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University, she is the author of three books and editor of two more, all published by top university presses. She's won numerous grants, awards, and fellowships. In short, her academic credentials are sterling.

 Brown argues that the term "'religion' should be defined to include 'sacred' bodily practices and 'spirituality':
Although “religion” has been defined in many ways . . . there is agreement among many of today’s scholars that religion should be defined broadly enough to account for the diversity of human experience and the variety of ways people set apart that which seems sacred from that which seems profane . . . 'religion' by definition includes not only theistic beliefs - like those found in Christianity - but also bodily practices perceived as connecting individuals with suprahuman energies, beings, or transcendent realities, or as inducing heightened spiritual awareness or virtues. I include “spirituality” within my definition of religion - rather than distinguishing the two - because both religion and spirituality (derived from the Latin “spiritus”) make metaphysical - that is, more than physical (including suprahuman or supernatural) - assumptions about the nature of reality.
She goes on to point out that "in the religious origins of yoga, body and spirit are not separable categories (as presupposed by Cartesian mind-body dualism), but aspects of each other, and bodily practices are spiritual as well as physical." Further, she argues, this spirituality is rooted in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain religious traditions.

She also notes that the yoga program in question is sponsored by a $533,000 grant from the Jois Foundation, whose website "includes Hindu religious content." Having checked out the Jois Yoga website (which houses the Jois Foundation site) myself, I can only conclude that an impartial jury would say this is true - see, for example, the notes on the Sharath Jois lectures under "Philosophy."
Not Wild-Eyed Fanaticism

 Could Professor Brown's claims be considered true by a fair-minded observer? In all honesty, I think that the answer here has to be "yes."



Brown's brief is serious, solid, and well-researched. It's not wild-eyed right-wing fanaticism. On the contrary, it demonstrates an exceptional degree of familiarity both with the history of yoga and some of its relevant cultural dynamics today. (For example, she quite accurately notes that many yoga teachers tone down the more spiritual dimensions of the practice to make it more accessible to beginning students. Rather than seeing this as reasonable, however, she attacks it as "camouflaging" its essential religiosity.)

 Does this mean that I think Professor Brown and the NCLP have made any sort of definitive or unassailable statement about why yoga is inherently religious, and therefore unconstitutional to teach in public schools? Not at all. I do think, however, that those of us who would like to see yoga remain available to public school students need to seriously step up our game if we're going to make a convincing case to the contrary.

 This is particularly true when you consider that this case now has to be argued in terms that will hold up in court. I don't know all the relevant legal precedent (hopefully, the EUSD legal team is busily finding that out). But as the NCLP points out, the 1979 case Malnak v. Yogi supports their position.

 Fascinatingly, Malnak v. Yogi was about the popular Transcendental Meditation (TIM) technique developed by none other than the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (yes, he of the Beatles and "Sexy Sadie" fame) himself. (As a side note, I'm also fascinated by the fact that TM is now being championed by none other than David Lynch of Eraserhead, Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, etc. fame, who is propagating it worldwide through his "Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace." As the New York Times noted this past Sunday, Lynch's "babbling dwarfs, ominous red curtains and just-around-the-corner episodes of hideous violence have become shorthand for a generation of art-house filmmaking" . . . yet, he's now invested $7 billion in his belief that teaching TM will bring about world peace. Is that delightfully weird or what? Anyway . . . )



Malnak v. Yogi ruled in favor of plaintiffs who argued that teaching TM in public high schools in New Jersey violated the First Amendment's prohibition of state establishment of religion. This was held true notwithstanding the fact that those teaching TM to students claimed it was entirely secular in nature. 

The parallels with Encinitas are obvious.

And as the movement to bring yoga into non-traditional settings such as public schools, VA hospitals, homeless shelters and so on is growing, the ruling in the Encinitas case stands to have far-reaching repercussions. If the courts rule in the NCLP's favor, then any institution with any public funding (which means many, if not most working with underserved populations today) will have to think hard about whether they want to risk offering yoga or not. 

Finally, don't forget that the conservative legal movement has been working assiduously - and often successfully - to establish a right-leaning judiciary for decades now. (Remember Bush v. Gore in 2000?) And California, despite its well-deserved crunchy reputation, is also a powerful and well-established bastion of right-wing politics. So, don't assume that a bunch of Bay Area liberals are going to be deciding this case - it could just as well be Orange County conservatives. 


 An Alternative Perspective

While I think that Professor Brown's NCLP brief denouncing contemporary yoga as an inherently religious (and essentially Hindu) is well-done, I also believe that it's wrong. 

In over 15 years of involvement in the American yoga scene, which has included studying numerous methods and becoming certified as a teacher, I've never met anyone in person who has indicated in any way that practicing yoga led them to embrace Hindu beliefs. (I have, I admit, encountered a tiny handful of people who fit this description online.)

Of course, given the breadth of Brown's definition of religion, this doesn't necessarily matter. Presumably, one could be indoctrinated into a Hindu belief framework without ever realizing this is the case, simply by accepting views such as "yoga connects me to my True Self" - which are, of course, common in the yoga community. 

Does this mean that she's right? Again, I'd say "no." Even given the most generous interpretation of her position - e.g., that believing in something called the "True Self" makes you some sort of de facto Hindu - her basic understanding of the nature of modern yoga is nonetheless simply wrong. 

There are several key reasons for this: 

 1. She doesn't recognize the integrity of modern yoga as a distinct cultural formation in the longer history of yoga. 

2. She doesn't acknowledge that the American tradition of physical education is rooted the same historical movement that produced modern yoga. 

3. She doesn't allow for the fact that both modern yoga, physical education, progressive education, and contemporary science share a belief in the reality and importance of the mind/body connection. Further, none of these traditions - which are infinitely more relevant to the case at hand than ancient or medieval yoga - has ever understood this valuation of the mind/body connection to be in any sense inherently "religious." 

Given that this post is already pretty long, I'll hold off on expanding these points for the moment. Some of my argument regarding point #1 is provided in my previous post, which is an excerpt from my new book, Yoga Ph.D. I'll say more about this claim, as well as how it relates to points #2-3, in my next post. 

 In the meantime, if you have any thoughts to share, please leave them in the comments. If I can, I'll follow up before writing up the rest of my current thoughts on the Encinitas case.



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