From Liberal Debutante, a reminder that wingnuts exist the world over: some (surprise! Christian) parents in British Columbia are freaking at the efforts of some schools to fight childhood obestity there with yoga. Because? Well. Um.
A school program to fight childhood obesity that includes yoga is drawing complaints from some Christian parents in the Quesnel area in B.C.’s Cariboo region.
They say yoga is a religion, and shouldn’t be taught in public schools.
Chelsea Brears, who has two children in the school system, said her son was asked to do different poses and “to put his hands together.”
Brears, a Christian, said she doesn’t want her children exposed to another religion during class time.
“It’s not fair to take prayer out, and yet they’re allowing yoga, which is religion, in our schools.”
Oh, no! He might get Vishnu Cooties if he puts his hands together in some way not approved by the Christian God!
I’ve done yoga, folks. It’s not “religion.” It’s a practice used by religious people as a means of focusing their minds to worship, and in that way probably no different than praying on a rosary; however, it’s also damned good exercise, and in that way it’s not like praying on a rosary.
And it’s especially appropriate for an anti-obesity campaign because it’s challenging but gentle and non-competitive.
Local rancher Audrey Cummings doesn’t believe Christian children should be doing yoga at all.
“There’s God and there’s the devil, and the devil’s not a gentleman. If you give him any kind of an opening, he will take that.”
Should I be this comforted that we’re not the only Western country with religious freaks?
Well, at least they’re not serving tofu in the cafeteria. We all know that makes you a faggot.
Yes, but now there’s True Christian alternatives to yoga, so you don’t have to deal with all that yucky multicultural business, which is obviously a cover for religious propaganda. Instead you can do Praisemoves, which have poses based on Bible verses, and the Hebrew alphabet.
Although the alphabet poses might accidentally turn children Jewish, which could be embaressing in the boy’s locker room.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I am in exquisite physical pain right now, and was in quite the sour mood until I saw this.
The sheer idiocy does more for me than my prescriptions! Cheers!
Speaking of religion and yoga, if yoga’s meant to clear the mind and help your body, wouldn’t it bring you closer to whatever god you had?
(I live in the Memphis ‘burbs – no real exposure to yoga, except that episode of King of the Hill with Johnny Depp.)
That’s so awesome – the school trying to do it.
Well, the kids whose parents object can go pray while kneeling or whatever.
She’s complaining about the removal of one and the insertion of the other at the same time? Make up your damned mind, lady!
When I was little the Catholics taught that yoga was a version of new ageism (so was martial arts!) and thus to be avoided, although they didn’t strictly call it a sin.
Sigh, this is one of the stupidest things I have read today. Are these people for real?
I was raised Catholic and I don’t remember any priest or nun ever mentioning a thing about Martial Arts being new agey. One old nun Sister Brendan actually asked me all about kickboxing one time and said it sounded ‘very good for the spine’. Guess it takes all sorts.
sigh
I don’t know why the CBC is giving these blockheads attention. Slow news day in BC, I hope.
It’s a practice used by religious people as a means of focusing their minds to worship, and in that way probably no different than praying on a rosary; however, it’s also damned good exercise, and in that way it’s not like praying on a rosary.
I have a hard time blaming these people for emphasizing the first thing you said here, and thinking the second bit is trivial.
Yoga did appear in North America as part of the early 90s bourgeoisie fascination with (utterly generic and neutered) eastern religions. Some just haven’t forgotten this.
But as Frank Black taught us, if Man is five and the Devil is six, then God is seven.
Anyway, I recall the community of my southern baptist upbringing being all freaked the fuck out by the early 90s new-ageism, including yoga, and remains freaked the fuck out, but the community of my catholic adulthood has, as far as I know, been accepting of it, both because of its meditative effects and its health benefits. But then we’re idol-worshippers anyway. Or something.
Nobody tell them that walking (i.e. in a labrynth) was used as meditation.
On second thought, it might be fun.
Actually, it appeared much earlier than that, as part of a hippie thing. I remember doing it at camp in the late 70s.
I’m Christian, and I have done yoga for the past 4 years regularly and as far as I know…I have not been taken over by the devil (although…these horns I’ve begun to sprout are really getting in the way of doing my hair…). :) As fatmammycat says, ‘it takes all sorts’. Unfortunately, the sort of Christian most likely to be loudly vocal in the public sphere is the crazy conservative sort.
My recollection is that the fascination with eastern religions started to gain steam on the west coast with Alan Watts in the 50′s. So it goes back to the beats (pre-hippie).
If we’re talking South Asian relgions in particular, I’d say the Transcendentalists in the 1850s rather than Watts in the 1950s.
*
Anyway, my gf and the canter in her (fairly traditional) synagogue are both into yoga, so yoga must be kosher, so to speak.
I don’t know, we all know once they bring in the yoga, the tofu is next …
Yeah, I’ve heard that before from some fundies in the US. One of the really stupid things about it is that a lot of stretching moves done by athlete come from yoga stretches. So, you know, if it’s co-opted and called something different so that most people don’t know it’s origin, then A-OK for the football team to do yoga stretches. But if you acknowledge that it’s not something developed in the West, well, ZOMG! Brainwashing kids!
My grandma had similar concerns when I started taking yoga in high school. She was worried that it would leave me open to possession (!).
Anyway, I actually can understand these parents being upset. Yoga does have religious connotations, and it would be just as easy to do something like pilates or aerobics or something that doesn’t have those connotations. Me, I don’t like taking yoga because they make you meditate and crap – I just want to stretch and get out of there. I’d much rather do pilates.
I saw that the other day and it is totally ridiculous. I’ve been doing yoga regularly off and on for years now and I have yet to become a Satan worshipper (although I am athiest, so that may be enough to freak out the fundies, I know it worked well on my own fundie relatives). It’s basically just very good, and very relaxing and strength building, exercise.
When I was a kid, our gym teacher sometimes had us hold our arms straight out for a minute or more. At the time, I thought it was just an exercise to strengthen our arms and shoulders, but now I know it was an insidious attempt at Christian indoctrination through replicating the crucifixion.
We do that arms-out-to-the-sides thing in my karate class somtimes…so with what am I being indoctrinated? ;)
Yeah, I don’t know that this is all that crazy. I do yoga regularly, and while there are plenty of instructors for whom it’s just stretching and breathing, there are plenty who emphasize the various metaphysical and, yeah, ultimately religious ideas with which the practice is at least historically bound up. You can, of course, separate the practice from that other baggage, which, as an atheist, I do. But the connection is strong enough that there are at least some Hindus who find the watered down, de-spiritualized version you’d get in a Bally’s class vaguely offensive. I assume the way it’s being practiced in the schools IS just the stretching and breathing, but I’ve been in plenty of yoga classes where the instructors offered commentary on what we were doing that would be unambiguously blasphemous from the perspective of a fundamentalist Christian. So yeah, I guess I don’t blame them for being at least concerned.
I’m with Sara – I do like the stretching, don’t like all that “visualize peace” and chanting bit. When I took a yoga class and we were instructed to draw in tension and release it with an “ohm” or whatever vocalization we wanted – I sat there silent and uncomfortable b/c I felt like I was being asked to pray or participate in some spiritual ritual. All I wanted to do was exercise and stretch. Most yoga teachers take the spiritual part very seriously as part of the exercise – its a big reason I stick to Pilates and plain secular cardio stuff.
JenM – There are actually valid physiological reasons for vocalizing during yoga (similar to the reasons that women are encouraged to grunt rather than scream during childbirth, or that martial artists vocalize at various points). I love yoga, but I’ve never really been pulled in by the spiritual side of it. For me, it’s the stretching and the toning and the breathing; I’ll make peace with my inner whatever on my own time.
OK, what does that Frank Black song mean? I’ve got it stuck in my head now and if anyone can explain the lyrics to me I’d appreciate it. I’ve never bothered to investigate it and it’s gonna drive me nuts.
Thanks.
IIRC, Joseph Pilates used yoga as the basis for his system. So I guess you are still going to Hell. ;-)
Anyway, I actually can understand these parents being upset. Yoga does have religious connotations, and it would be just as easy to do something like pilates or aerobics or something that doesn’t have those connotations. Me, I don’t like taking yoga because they make you meditate and crap – I just want to stretch and get out of there. I’d much rather do pilates.
If you’re trying to get kids into exercise, I think you’d have a better chance with yoga, since yoga is easier on the body than pilates (from what I’ve heard). And yoga and aerobics do pretty different things–yoga builds flexibility and (if you do it a certain way) strength, aerobics is, well, aerobic exercise. I imagine if they’re teaching it in schools, the teachers are in fact emphasizing the physical aspects rather than the religious ones. Yes, it still has originally religious connotations, but I don’t think that’s a problem; in my high school Glee Club most of what we sang was Christian music, but we weren’t singing it to glorify Jesus or anything (considering the school’s religious/cultural majority was Jewish, many of them also atheists), we were singing it because it was pretty music.
This is not the first time I’ve encountered this particular Christian hangup.
I used to live across the street from a little Jehova’s Witness hive (“Kingdom Hall”). They would show up at our door like clockwork the morning of any day my roomate and I were going to throw a party. It was eerie. I almost started to believe they had magical powers.
But the point of the story is that once, around Halloween, they dropped off an issue of The Watchtower that dealt with how supersitions — you know, fear of black cats, astrology, yoga — were all paths to Satan worship. Their article on yoga started off with some amazing stories about little girls in India who used their yogic powers to, like, lift tractors over their heads and shit. But, uh, you shouldn’t do it, because it’s against God or something.
The upshot of the article was: yoga will give you fucking amazing powers like being indestructible and being able to levitate and shoot frickin laser beams out of your eyes, but don’t do it because it’s teh Satan. It made yoga sound much cooler than it really is.
I’ve practiced yoga with several different schools and ashrams, most of which retained quite a bit of the peripheral Hindu practices associated with yoga. Ditto for the kung fu and tai chi schools where I’ve trained that retained much of their Zen, Buddhist, Confucian, and Taoist quasi-mystical medicinal, geomantic, and alchemical practices. If you were to run a mystically-oriented yoga class in a public school, I could understand religious parents crying foul. But: 1) I doubt the classes in the article retain any of the Hindu trappings, and 2) Christian practice so pervades American life that it’s invisible to the people affected by it. These kids still pledge allegiance to “one nation under God” and spend money stamped with “in God we trust”. I think the Christians will be just fine.
These kids still pledge allegiance to “one nation under God” and spend money stamped with “in God we trust”.
Oops! I forgot this story was from Canada. I should have said, “These kids still sing ‘God keep our land glorious and free’ every morning” … not to mention the fact that, as members of the Commonwealth, they’re charged with loyalty to the Queen, whom Yahweh has deputized to rule over the United Kingdom.
As the uncoordinated kid in every gym class I ever took, I would have killed for a segment on yoga. I jumped at the chance to get credit for it in college for probably the same reasons the teachers think it’ll appeal to today’s lazy kids: there’s no running, no sweating, lots of sitting and laying down, and it looks pretty easy to just hold a pose for a while (you learn different once you start doing it, but by then you know that it feels really good).
Meditation has been a part of almost every religious tradition, including Christianity, and it really doesn’t need to be bound up in any religion at all. In yoga, all that chanting and breathing and clearing your mind is there to help you physically, not steer you towards a certain god. The whole thing with meditating is the absence of thought anyway, so where’s the brainwashing? I think what scares the fundies about this particular aspect of yoga is that once you learn how to relax into your own mind and, um, introspect, you start getting better at knowing what you really think. I mean, why else sweepingly oppose a whole way of approaching your body and your brain?
Yes yes, it’s so great for this, because the only person you really compete with is yourself! I remember when I started doing yoga, in a studio that had mirrors lining 2 walls. Eventually it helped me get used to looking my whole body without necessarily judging it.
Hmmm, practising Christian here (alas, I live in the same province as these nutjobs. But Quesnel’s a one-stop sign town in the middle of nowhere). Not only have I done yoga on and off for years without losing my faith, when I was at a parish retreat in the country two years ago, one of the daily activities was a pre-breakfast yoga class, led by one of our priests!!!! (she’s been doing yoga for years, and is experienced enough to act as a teacher in a setting where there isn’t a real one. And she’s got a PhD in Divinity)
Of course, I’m an Anglican (Episcopalian in the US), and everybody knows that a large wing of the Anglican Church has been cunningly infiltrated by far-left, horribly-tolerant, love-thy-neighbour, fight-for-peace-and-justice WACKJOBS! We’re all going to hell.
If they wouldn’t talk about chakras and snakes and other nonsense, it wouldn’t be religion. When you remove the chakras and the snakes, it becomes exercise.
Unless things have radically changed since I was a schoolgirl in the Great White North, the national anthem is usually reserved for large assemblies and sporting events, and isn’t actually sung every day. There isn’t a direct Canadian equivalent for the Pledge of Allegiance.
My limited experience has been that yoga is easier to divorce form spirituo-philosophical or whatever ideas then, say, martial arts, or Tai Chi.
I’ve long felt that we spend too much time talking about chi and chakras.
What about tonalli? Asia’s not the only continent in the world, you know!
I really try to be humble. I really try not to be arrogant. Yet, I still find my self saying, “People are stupid!”
The culturally ignorant rule the world!
WRT Catholic doctrine, particularly WRT the acceptability of certain things, quite often the clergy at any level of the hierarchy just sort of make shit up. At some Catholic schools in Memphis, the Harry Potter books were banned as occult; at others, they were perfectly OK. A couple of archconservative bishops excommunicated anyone belonging to certain groups perceived as anti-Catholic, including not only prochoice groups but such tools of the devil as the Rainbow Girls.
Speaking of Memphis, and yoga, Kaitlyn: were you in town when Woody Harrelson was in town filming The People vs. Larry Flynt? He’d teach yoga in between filming. Wonder what the Baptists thought of that?
I must say that the longer I leave this tab open, the more the phrase “The Om Conspiracy” starts to appeal to me…maybe as a title for an oxymoronically mellow action flick?
To play devil’s advocate…
Many of the “magick” rituals of Aleister Crowley and the O.T.O. utilize yoga as a means towards transcendance. Utilizing a mantra during these meditations is also supposed to help reinforce the change one is seeking.
Although, I must say, the same book also suggested cutting your forearms everytime to you say your “chosen word” that you have chosen to do away with.
Aleister Crowley even studied with mystical yogi in India, and at one point, claimed to have contacted his “God-Head” through yoga.
Yoga may be harmless as a physical activity, but there are those who say it is more than just a hip new exercise routine.
I’m with Sara and JenM. I’ve tried yoga once or twice, and while I liked the stretching etc., I was really turned off by the talk of “chakras” and the unscientific use of the word “energy.” (Yes, I know words have more than one use, but every time I’m told to picture energy flowing through my body I get distracted trying to figure out what form it’s in. Mechanical? Chemical? Gravitational potential?) I switched to pilates: similar moves without the weirdness.
Obviously this particular Quesnel resident is a bit unbalanced, but I actually think she has a point. Depending on how it’s taught, yoga definitely has a “spiritual” component.
I should probably say that the only place I’ve ever taken a yoga class is at my gym (24 Hour Fitness) and I don’t know that I’ve ever heard the teacher say the word “chakra.”
Though I have to say, it was pretty entertaining to have a former drill sergeant teaching yoga. I kept expecting him to yell, “Drop and give me 20 downward dogs, maggot!”
When I took gym in Canada, we did all sorts of activities. Folk and square dancing, tae bo, lacrosse, cricket, rugby, rhythmic gymnastics, cross-country skiing… the idea was that if we did a wide variety of activities, most of which usually weren’t done in gym class, SOMETHING would appeal to us and stick, and we would keep it up on our own, thus keeping fit.
I really wish we had done yoga when I was in Gr. 10… all the female gym teachers (which was like, three) had gotten pregnant at approximately the same time, and just kept on teaching gym. Oh, the hilarity that would have ensued.
Or capoeira. That looks like fun, and it’s all sneaky martial-arts-disguised-as-dancing.
prairielily, the high school I would have gone to had we stayed in New Jersey had really cool gym units, like juggling and fencing. But we left, and the school in our new town had a pool, and we did swimming and team sports. Though I did get to take a unit in boat safety with canoes in the pool and in my senior year, I took a self-defense course that met every day for a semester and got me out of gym the rest of the year.
What about Bush Yoga? These folks can’t possibly object to such a patriotic exercise.
I’ve found that it depends on the Province/school/teacher, as to whether or not O Canada is sung daily or not. I can speciffically remember standing and singing at the begining of every day in my Grade 1 class (1988) in Kinuso AB.
As to the whole issue though, I’ve quipped for a while now that the US has the Bible Belt, and we have the Suspenders. I would have said that I would have expected something like this to happen more in Alberta, but then I remembered all the redneck/hillbilly type folks that live throughout the BC interior.
Interesting. I’m probably the only overweight person on here to really dislike doing yoga (when I tried it, it was all the bad kinds of uncomfortable), but I really like martial arts. And there’s a lot of similar fuss over schoolkids bowing. Everything I’ve heard puts this as a sign of respect, not any kind of religious practice, but there’s continuous accusations that having a kid bow to their opponent, their teacher, and the mat (in certain traditions) is a form of prayer.
I wonder if there’s people in China who think having boxers shake hands before the match is secretly a form of Christian prayer?
Except for the fact that the kids don’t sing the national anthem every morning. In my experience it once every couple of months if we had a special assembly, like for Rememberance Day or something like that.
As for the Queen, we mostly think she’s quaint, though the older generation who immigrated from the UK or born to immigrants from the UK think she’s pretty wow. Anyway, people born in Canada are never asked to pledge loyalty or allegiance to her, although it is there in the oath if you decide to become a Canadian citizen.
Fruminous B, do you need an attitude adjustment or something?
According to the LCMS website, yoga is bad because it encourages looking inward rather than outward. By looking inward you are removing yourself from the world God created for you.
I read this years ago so I may be misremembering some bit but that was the gist of it.
prairielily et al.:
My high school also had a wide variety of Phys.Ed. units, including weight lifting and dancing. But gym was overall such a traumatic experience for me that the only physical activities I can tolerate today are ones I never did in gym class. Not that my experience should set curricula or anything.
This sounded too much like a Chick Tract, so I went over to see if there was indeed a comic about how Yoga was an indoctrination into Hinduism (which is, in turn an indoctrination into Satanism, natch). But there wasn’t one … so … :(
There was, however, a really funny one called “The Unwelcome Guest” about Masonry. The frilled lizard exorcism had me laughing out loud.
“When I took gym in Canada, we did all sorts of activities. Folk and square dancing, tae bo, lacrosse, cricket, rugby, rhythmic gymnastics, cross-country skiing”
I’m massively, massively jealous. For a very brief while we were allowed to snowshoe in gym, but basically the only options other than “play huge competitive game at which you will suck and feel humiliated” is (and these only occasionally offered): walk in circles around the track if the class was outside, or sit in the “fitness room” and use of the equipment. Or, “use”, as there aren’t any teachers in there anyway, so most of us bone-lazy kids just sit there.
I’d kill to have a yoga option. Much, much better than standing on the sidelines of a basketball game.
That’s how it was at my schools in Montreal in the 70′s and 80′s, and it’s still the same at my kids’ schools now.