A legislation allowing yoga to be taught in public schools of Alabama state in the US was quashed in committee on Wednesday, stalling an uphill years-long battle by one state legislator to bring the practice back.
According to a 2016 study, around 36.7 million people practice yoga in the US.
If passed, the Bill AL HB246, put forth by Alabama State Rep. Jeremy Gray, would have made bringing yoga back to school voluntary. It sought to overturn a ban on the practice in Alabama schools in place since 1993.
The text of the ban says “school personnel shall be prohibited from using any techniques that involve the induction of hypnotic states, guided imagery, meditation or yoga” and additionally banned the use of the word “namaste.” Alabama is the only state with such a ban.
Lawmakers in Alabama’s state Senate voted against Gray’s proposal, effectively endorsing the existing ban. While Gray can attempt to pass the measure again in the future, this vote against the bill is a significant setback.
Several conservative Christian groups say that the practice of yoga promotes Hinduism. Because yoga is rooted in Hinduism, Eric Johnston, a legal adviser for the Alabama Citizens Action Program, said, “it does not need to be taught to small children in public schools.”
“If this bill passes, then instructors will be able to come into classrooms as young as kindergarten and bring these children through guided imagery, which is a spiritual exercise, and it’s outside their parents’ view. And we just believe that this is not appropriate,” Betsy Garrison of the Eagle Forum of Alabama, argued in session.
Gray’s proposal still included language seeking to address that. It said that “chanting, mantras, mudras, use of mandalas, and 11 namaste greetings shall be expressly prohibited.”
Gray and other yoga advocates say their critics have it wrong, and that yoga can help students focus and relax, which leads to better academic performance. “This whole notion that if you do yoga, you’ll become Hindu — I’ve been doing yoga for 10 years and I go to church and I’m very much a Christian,” Gray told reporters.
While the arguments against yoga indicate how deeply ingrained the Christian worldview is in a significant section of the US population, the issue also highlights the unintelligibility between two vastly diverse cultures.
There have also been several attempts, in the West, to dismember the practice of yoga from its philosophical roots in Hindu traditions and orthopraxy − and churning out a ‘digested’, superficial and ‘secular’ version of the practice. This is evident from the bizarre kinds of yoga peddled in the US by yoga studios, like ‘goat yoga’, ‘beer yoga’, ‘hip-hop yoga’, and so on.
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