Showing posts with label yoga in public schools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yoga in public schools. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

"Yoga Wins" in Encinitas: A Pyrrhic Victory?

Here's how the Los Angeles Times - one of the best papers still standing in the U.S. - reported on the outcome of the just-concluded trial challenging the constitutionality of teaching yoga in public schools:
(Lawyer Dean) Broyles said having yoga in the schools '"represents a serious breach of the public trust" and is a violation of state law that prohibits religious instruction in public schools.

But (Judge John) Meyer said that he agreed with the school district's explanation that it has taken out any references to Hinduism or Sanskrit from the program.

Yoga, the judge said, is similar to other exercise programs like dodgeball. He also said some opponents of the yoga program seem to have gotten their information from inaccurate sources on the Internet.


"It's almost like a trial by Wikipedia, which isn't what this court does," said Meyer. 
So, yoga fans, "we won" the Encinitas case contesting the constitutionality of teaching yoga in the public schools . . . and can now rest assured that, as Judge Meyer explained, "yoga as it has developed in the last 20 years is rooted in American culture" and therefore as wholesomely innocuous as a good 'ole game of grade school dodgeball!

Yay?

I don't know about you, but back when I had to play dodgeball in my grade school P.E. program, a clique of tough, athletic girls always took it as an opportunity to terrorize their less socially and physically aggressive classmates by expertly whipping the balls straight at our heads. It was not fun, and most certainly not a wholesome learning experience.

Now, that is not to denigrate dodgeball - both of my sons always loved it (although, it should be noted, they attended much better schools with infinitely better social supervision than I did.) No, the point of my dodgeball digression is simply to illustrate that despite being happy that the Court ruled that it's indeed OK to teach yoga in public schools, I'm nonetheless dismayed about the way in which  the case was argued and decided.

From start to finish, the two sides squared off in a battle to determine whether yoga is "inherently religious" or "only exercise."And in a contest like that, my understanding of yoga as a mind/body/spirit practice with much to offer our super-stressed, dis-ease ridden, and spiritually sick society was bound to lose.


A Pyrrihic Victory?
Given that expert witness for the plaintiffs, Professor Candy Gunther Brown, demonstrated that she knows infinitely more about the history of yoga than the defendants (or, for that matter, most yoga practitioners), I'm not sure where Judge Meyer's insulting remark about "trial by Wikipedia" came from. Nonetheless, in keeping with the absurdity of the whole thing, I offer this explanation of a "Pyrrihic victory" from that source for those of us who need a little brush-up on our ancient Greek history:
A Pyrrhic victory is a victory with such a devastating cost that it carries the implication that another such victory will ultimately lead to defeat. Someone who wins a Pyrrhic victory has been victorious in some way; however, the heavy toll negates any sense of achievement or profit.

The phrase Pyrrhic victory is named after Greek King Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose army suffered irreplaceable casualties in defeating the Romans at Heraclea in 280 BC and Asculum in 279 BC during the Pyrrhic War. After the latter battle, Plutarch relates in a report by Dionysius, "The armies separated; and, it is said, Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of his victory that one more such victory would utterly undo him."
Of course, I understand that the fact that this case was argued and decided as it was doesn't mean that everyone is automatically going to adapt the yoga-is-either-religious-or-it's-exericse framing. Still, I'm concerned about the cultural precedents it sets.

This is particularly true because other than some under-the-radar comments on scattered blogs and Facebook posts by dissident yoga practitioners (as well as excellent, but under-read post by Yogadork), by and large what I see is an uncritical celebration of the fact that "yoga won" (accompanied by much overt or covert sneering at the conservative Christians who lost the case) on one side, and stoic determination to hold the line against the rising tide of a corrupt secular culture that's reflexively hostile to Christianity, on the other.

Where's the Ahimsa in this? The Satya? The Svadhyaya?


Honesty is the Best Policy
If yoga is going to get dragged into the American culture wars, it should at least be on honest terms.

Everyone who's even semi-seriously involved in yoga in this country today recognizes that the reason they're so pumped about the practice is precisely because they believe that it is, in fact, more than "just exercise." Certainly, I find it very hard to believe that any yoga teacher motivated to work with kids in public schools is doing so because she feels it's a nice alternative to dodgeball.

If that's the case, why should the yoga community happily embrace a victory that tells that world that teaching yoga to school kids is OK because that's all it is? 

I suspect that the answer is in part the "by any means necessary" rationale - if that's what it takes to make yoga in schools kosher, then that's fine, because anything that exposes more people to yoga is good ultimately all good, no matter what.

This is the same reasoning that's used to legitimate the no-holds-barred commercialization of yoga. And it's deeply problematic. Yoga is not some magic "thing" that automatically produces "good," no matter what. To believe this flies in the face of mountains of evidence, both contemporary and historical. (As David Gordon White showed us in Sinister Yogis, even the much vaunted "ancient tradition" included a lot of ethically troubling practices.)

Yoga is simply an incredibly rich, evolving, and multifacted mind-body-spirit practice that human begins do in conjunction with many other things in our lives. "Yoga" doesn't automatically purify us. It's our actions - what we concretely do and don't do - that actually matter.


Yoga and Education
Personally, I believe that it's possible to construct a compelling legal case regarding why it's OK to teach yoga in public schools that offers an alternative to the "yoga is either religion or exercise" dichotomy. Certainly, this would be more challenging to do than falsely claiming that yoga is like dodgeball. But it would also be honest.

And, it would contribute something to our society that it desperately needs: an understanding of education that insists on the importance of educating the whole person - body, mind, and spirit.

Despite my troubles in grade-school P.E., when I was growing up, this perspective was still pretty common. No one thought that kids needed to start doing homework in kindergarten in order to prove they're working hard enough. It was commonly accepted that art, music, and drama contribute something irreplaceable to children's education. No one thought that standardized testing should be the be-all, end-all of educational assessment. It was taken for granted that school was supposed to be about more than simply preparing kids for the job market. Even if the ideal was seldom realized in practice, the culture of progressive education was still strong enough that most educators accepted that, as John Dewey put it
Education is not preparation for life - education is life itself.
Way back when, I worked at the Spencer Foundation under that able leadership of historian of education Lawrence Cremin. We were jazzed about improving the quality of education in all walks of life - recognizing that the process of education involves not simply schools, but also families, the media, libraries, afterschool programs, sports clubs, civic organizations, and so on.

Yoga is now well-established enough in American society that yoga teachers and practitioners could serve as much-needed educators about how to improve the quality of physical, psychological, and spiritual health in our communities, our country, and the world at large. However, that's not going to happen if we're content to celebrate "yoga as dodgeball." Instead, we need to embrace the challenge of  honestly explaining why we care about this practice, what we believe it offers, and how we can adapt it as necessary to work in any setting in our diverse, multicultural society.

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."

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Encinitas Revisited: Yoga, Education, and Sparking the Human Spirit


While I haven’t seen any public opinion polls on the Encinitas lawsuit over teaching yoga in the public schools, my best guess is that the vast majority of Americans would agree with attorney David Peck that the anti-yoga position is "ridiculous" because yoga is "simply stretching by another name."
 
“Stopping kids from yoga stretching . . . makes about as much sense as banning kids from shaving their heads simply because it reminds you of Buddhism,” wrote Katherine Stewart dismissively in an otherwise excellent piece of investigative reporting on the right-wing machinery operating behind the scenes in this case. More crankily, a retired television reporter now into opinionated rabble-rousing scoffed that “some people in Encinitas have way too much time on their hands, and not nearly enough functioning brain cells. It's an exercise program, for god's sake.”

It's understandable that people with no strong pre-existing opinions about yoga would feel this way. From the outside, yoga does indeed look like "nothing but stretching." And from that perspective, it's mind-bendingly absurd to imagine that asking kids to touch their toes puts them on a slippery slope toward religious indoctrination, as the parents filing the lawsuit claim.

But it's disingenuous for those of us who are more informed about yoga to pretend that it's that simple. To the contrary, it's stunningly obvious that for many practitioners, yoga is much more than "just stretching." Quite simply, when those of us who are seriously into yoga say it's a "mind-body-spirit" practice (or something along those lines), we actually mean it. 


http://us.macmillan.com/yogamindbodyspirit/DonnaFarhi

The Mind-Body Connection

This is hardly a revelation. Yoga Journal, which claims an audience of almost 2 million and is sold in supermarket checkout lines across the country, regularly features aspirational headlines such as “Soften Your Heart With Devotional Practice,” “Moving Meditation to Calm a Reactive Mind,” and “Stress Free Body, Happy Soul: 6 Poses to Reconnect with Yourself.” Such popular claims that yoga is more than "just stretching" aren't at all hard to find. 

Skeptics, of course, easily dismiss such statements as empty marketing slogans or fuzzy-minded "woo woo" nonsense. But if that's really all it is, then why are  the Marines and the V.A. using yoga to treat PTSD? Why are staid outlets such as Forbes reporting that "there’s something powerful and fundamental about syncing the mind and body as yoga does" and that researchers "are beginning to grasp the depths of the mind-body connection"?

The answer is obvious: yoga really does work with the mind as well as the body. Inconvenient as it may be for school district lawyers in this case, it really isn't "simply stretching by another name."

In fact, as anyone who's involved with the growing movement to bring yoga into settings such as schools, prisons, and hospitals knows perfectly well, that's precisely why we feel so passionately about it. We're all in favor of exercise, of course. But what gets us yoga teachers really fired up is our conviction that yoga offers significantly more than that.


c. Sabriya Simon Photography /

Difficulties of Defining "Yoga"

We don't believe this because of ideology or religious doctrine. Rather, we've got a gut-level conviction it's true because we've experienced it ourselves. Personally, I've met more people than I can count who've told me that yoga's changed their lives. And I don't doubt them: after all, it changed mine.

Yet as I wrote in my recent book, Yoga Ph.D.: Integrating the Life of the Mind and the Wisdom of the Body, the seemingly simple question of what contemporary yoga is and why so many find it so powerful is maddeningly difficult to unpack, let alone answer and explain:
I started talking to fellow practitioners willing to share their stories. This opened my eyes to just how different the experience of yoga can be for different people . . . I was even more struck by how truly difficult, if not impossible it was for people to explain their own experiences, even in terms that made sense to themselves. If everyone could identify ways in which yoga had positively impacted their lives, no one could even begin to say how or why.
All of which made me wonder: What is yoga, anyway? Why is it having such a profound effect on so many people’s lives? The most common explanation I’d hear vaguely invoked by teachers or in yoga magazines was that yoga works because it’s an unchanging spiritual practice developed thousands of years ago by all-knowing seers in India and handed down to us through the ages.
 Personally, however, I found this fuzzy belief that we’d somehow been initiated into a timeless yet ancient lineage utterly unconvincing. It seemed self-evident that yoga was far too in synch with contemporary culture to have been directly imported from such a radically different time and place. Besides, years of studying social theory had convinced me that this is simply not how traditions work – ever. All of them, yogic or otherwise, necessarily change over time.
The lack of a commonly shared understanding of the nature of contemporary yoga means that those of us who'd like to see the opportunity to practice it extended to as many people as possible have a hard time countering the passionate anti-yoga convictions expressed in the Encinitas case. We believe they're wrong, but have no solid explanation why. As a result, there's a tendency to cede the pro-yoga side of the debate to those who scoff that the suit's ridiculous because yoga is "just stretching." 

This is problematic. Even beyond the exigencies of this case, it'd be good if the North American yoga community were able to offer a coherent explanation of why, if yoga is indeed a mind-body-spirit practice, it's nonetheless OK to teach it in the public schools. Because, after all, in that context the "mind" and "spirit" parts of the equation do indeed raise legitimate questions regarding the separation of church and state.



Yoga Isn't "Just Stretching" - But it is Flexible

I don't pretend to have a definitive answer (and know the yoga community well enough to suspect that we'd never agree on one in any event). But I do think it's a fascinating and important topic. So, I offer the following ideas in the hope of sparking further discussion and debate.


1) There is not, and never has been any single, unified, or unchanging method or definition of yoga.

Scholars are unanimous on this point.
David Gordon White notes that "'Yoga' has a wider range of meanings than nearly any other words in the entire Sanskrit lexicon." emphasizes that both pre-modern and modern yoga exhibit tremendous "plurality and mutability," as well as "fragmentation, accretion, and innovation." writes that "Yoga philosophy has never existed as a fixed, primordial entity."


This simple, but important point belies Professor Candy Gunther Brown's suggestion (presented in her brief on behalf on the plantiffs in the Encinitas case) that yoga is an essentially religious practice. If yoga has no such irreducible cultural essence, then we must look carefully at how it's actually practiced and understood in our own particular time and place.

c Sarit Z. Rogers / sartphotography.com

2) Modern yoga represents a distinct phase in the longer history of yoga

If yoga has always been a diverse tradition, scholars also recognize certain basic historical and/or cultural patterns within it (medieval yoga, Tibetan yoga, etc.). Of these, the development of a distinctively modern form of yoga during the late 19th-mid 20th centuries is by far the most relevant here. As I explain in Yoga Ph.D.: 
The classical yoga of ancient India was singularly devoted to scaling the ultimate heights of Samadhi – merging Atman with Brahman, the self with the Source, the one with the All. Dedicated to (capital “E”) Enlightenment, yoga was a tool for transcending the cycle of death and rebirth, attaining complete liberation from the strictures of human existence.
 By and large, the type of yoga that we’re practicing today is quite different. It’s akin to an instrument that can be played in multiple keys. Some are dedicated to improving physical health, others to psychological healing, and still others to spiritual exploration . . . yoga, paradoxically, connects to postmodern North American culture at points ranging from the crass to the pragmatic to the visionary. 
If we focus on yoga as it actually exists in North America today (rather than muddying the waters with extensive discussions of medieval Indian practices), it's evident that it's part of a modern tradition that has always included a wide variety of pragmatic, secular aims. 


3) Modern yoga has always been committed to working in harmony with modern science, and the relationship between them is stronger than ever today.

Professor Brown dismisses claims concerning the compatibility of yoga and science as "camouflage" for a fundamentally religious sensibility: "Labeling a practice 'science' does not make the practice non-religious," she charges.

http://moby.to/dio2zk
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) disagrees. "Yoga is a mind and body practice with historical origins in ancient Indian philosophy," their website explains. "Many people who practice yoga do so to maintain their health and well-being, improve physical fitness, relieve stress, and enhance quality of life."

Similarly, Dr. Timothy McCall's Yoga as Medicine (2007) provides detailed scientific support for claims that yoga can improve physical health functions such as balance, strength, and flexibility, and serve mental health needs such as calming the nervous system, improving brain function, and lowering levels of the stress hormone cortisol. 


4) Because yoga works with the mind, it's more likely to connect to the realm of experience described as "spiritual" than ordinary physical exercise.  

This, of course, is where things get tricky in terms of church/state issues. Before getting into that, however, let's take a moment to think into what it means in our culture to say that something has a "spiritual" dimension. 

As I discuss in Yoga Ph.D., the word "spiritual" is "both useful and frustrating in its all-inclusive vagueness":
To a certain extent, the open-endedness of describing yoga as “spiritual” is wonderful in that it quite properly holds an infinite variety of more precise meanings under its umbrella. For some, yoga is spiritual in that it connects to religious faith. For others, of course, religion has nothing to do with it. For yoga traditionalists, “spirituality” is meaningless unless it denotes liberation from rebirth. For most Western practitioners, who have little if any familiarity with such beliefs, the term can and does encompass a huge range of meanings.
. . . I’ve often thought that there should be as many nuanced variations on the word “spiritual” as there are Eskimo words for “snow” . . . Yet there aren’t. We have only such grossly over-simplistic, over-homogenizing categories as “spirituality” and “religion” to work with. And to make matters even more difficult, the more we’re attempting to describe ineffable inner experiences, the more we’re trying to use this ridiculously limited number of words to explain something that goes beyond language.


Professor Brown, however, insists that religion and spirituality are synonymous because both "make metaphysical—that is, more than physical (including suprahuman or supernatural)—assumptions about the nature of reality." This, however, ignores mountains of evidence which show that for many Americans, "spirituality" doesn't necessarily involve any "metaphysical, suprahuman, or supernatural" claims at all. 

For example, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor's popular book and TED Talk (currently at over 10 million views), A Stroke of Insight (2006), analyzes why having a stroke connected her to an experience of "deep inner peace" in profoundly secular, scientific terms:
I whole-heartedly believe that the feeling of deep inner peace is neurological circuitry located in our right brain . .  . Once you learn to recognize the subtle feelings (and physiology) running through your body when you are connected to the circuitry of the present moment, you can then train yourself to reactivate that circuitry on demand. 
Expanding the term "religious" to subsume all such expressions of the "spiritual" makes no sense in a culture in which many people explain the mysteries of life to themselves in profoundly secular, scientific terms. 


5) Modern yoga has always been equally open to all religious and/or spiritual commitments and beliefs.

In (1998), T. K.V. Desikachar describes how his father, Sri T. Krishnamacharya - a man who was indisputably one the most important figures in the development of modern yoga - reshaped Indian tradition to serve the needs to the modern world: 
Krishnamacharya's knowledge was legendary. It included languages, scriptures, theological commentaries, astrology, literature, rhetoric, logic, law, medicine, Vedic chanting, ritual, meditation, music, and much more. He had earned the equivalent of seven Ph.D.’s. . . . Yet, the purpose of my father’s erudition was not to preserve the past, but to serve the present and the future.
The astonishing range and variety of his studies all combined toward a single end. This was to place the promise of Yoga at the service of humanity, without regard to age, sex, race, nationality, culture, station in life, belief, or non-belief.

http://www.nikolasschiller.com/blog/index.php/archives/2007/05/29/1056/

6). Historically, modern yoga is rooted in the same philosophy of education "through the body" that informed the American tradition of physical education. 

Mark Singleton’s Yoga Body (2010) explains that modern Hatha yoga represented an uniquely Indian adaptation of the transnational physical culture movement of the late 19th-early 20th centuries. In the U.S., this same movement produced the “new physical education,” which understood itself as a holistic process that worked through the body, rather than as an isolated training of the body. As Professor Catherine Ennis explains:
the New Physical Education focused on educating the complete human being through an emphasis on mind and body. Rather than a program of mindless exercise, the New Physical Education proposed students be educated 'through the physical' such that the mind, emotions, and human body formed a complete action. 
Given that this belief in the potential of working "through" the body to cultivate the whole person is common to the traditions of both physical education and modern yoga, nothing could be more appropriate than to incorporate yoga into contemporary P.E. programs, as is being done in Encinitas and many other schools across the country. 
 



7) Quality education itself has a spiritual dimension, sparking the human spirit by facilitating creativity, imagination, exploration, and a love of learning.

Quality education will naturally prompt inquiring minds to question certain previously taken-for-granted convictions. Consequently, even if Professor Brown's claim that participation in "yoga, meditation, and other forms of CAM" causes practitioners to modify their religious views is true, this is hardly an educational black mark against them. 

Today, we have scientific explanations of why yoga helps calm the nervous system, regulate emotion, and improve concentration. The claim that children shouldn't be exposed to such knowledge because it might generate experiences that could cause them to question certain religious beliefs may be a valid objection under that particular belief system. But it doesn't hold water from a secular perspective. After all, one could equally well argue that you shouldn't teach kids about evolution because it might challenge their religious beliefs (ahem) - or, for that matter, literature, history, poetry, philosophy, or any such subject.




"True education frees the human spirit," wrote progressive education pioneer in 1894. Today, many of us feel the same way about yoga. If yoga classes are tailored to respect the needs and concerns of the school environment, they are perfectly congruent with the traditional aspirations of a well-rounded, high quality public school education.   


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