Recently a University cancelled its free Yoga classes. University Cancels Free Yoga Class Because It’s ‘Cultural Appropriation’
The University of Ottawa in Canada has abruptly canceled the free yoga classes it has offered to students since 2008 over concerns that they amounted to “cultural appropriation” and were connected to “cultural genocide.”
Jennifer Scharf, the practitioner who had offered the classes, told the Independent that she had suddenly received a message telling her that they’d be suspended because “there were some issues in terms of a formal complaint.”
The decision to cancel the classes was made by the Ottawa Student Federation, the university’s independent student body.
According to the Ottawa Sun, staff at the Centre for Students with Disabilities sent out an e-mail claiming that “while yoga is a really great idea and accessible and great for students . . . there are cultural issues of implication involved in the practice.”
”Yoga has been under a lot of controversy lately due to how it is being practiced,” and which cultures those practices “are being taken from,” the e-mail continued.
According to the centre, many of those cultures “have experienced oppression, cultural genocide and diasporas due to colonialism and western supremacy . . . we need to be mindful of this and how we express ourselves while practicing yoga.”
The Sun reports that about 60 people had participated in the program, and Scharf said she thinks it’s ridiculous and sad that they won’t be able to do so anymore.
I have been giving some thought to trying Yoga because I am a runner and running is a high impact exercise. Yoga tends to be low impact exercise. I did not realize that Yoga has been criticized this harshly.
I guess just about any exercise has pros and cons. We have read that too much running can be bad for your heart. Maybe Yoga is bad for society.
EDIT: Ok. Some people are continuing to make Yoga their exercise of choice despite claims of cultural appropriation.
Huffington Post Says the Way I Do Yoga Is Cultural Appropriation . . . but I Feel Like It’s Fine
by Katherine Timpf
I mean, sure, I was and always have been aware that, culturally, there’s more to yoga than just the moves, but kind of figured that I wouldn’t be required to learn how to change the spiritual state of my soul just because I wanted to change the physical state of my glutes. I really felt like it was fine for me to stand on one leg and lean forward without learning all about standing-on-one-leg-and-leaning-forward’s historical, spiritual, and cultural implications.
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According to Barkataki, however, I’m very, very wrong. In fact, she actually goes so far as to say that people teaching others how to do yoga without teaching them about its cultural history is comparable to how “colonizing powers, such as the British, used to take over the land of colonies then utilize and exploit the labor, natural resources, industrial power, and anything deemed of value inherent to that place.”
