Yoga in Schools

Trigger Warning white supremacy, cultural appropriation, genocide, racism, patriarchy, harm to children

screenshot Children being forced to engage with colonial extraction of the abuse of other children

In November 2019, one of my Indigenous matriarch friends reached out to me in concern because her children’s school was engaging in cultural appropriation of both her own culture and Hindu culture.

If I remember correctly, the school had a teacher who was bringing eagle feathers to the classroom. This is a desecration of the sacred Indigenous eagles and also illegal for non-Indigenous peoples to do. Yes, that’s right. It’s illegal for anyone who is not Indigenous in the US to be in possession of an eagle feather. It is very serious because it causes harm to the endangered species and makes it that much harder for Indigenous peoples’ to engage in their own spiritual practices and culture.

Meanwhile, the teachers were also teaching “yoga” in the school. My matriarch friend wanted to talk to her child’s teacher about both harms and wondered if I could write a letter about the cultural appropriation of yoga she could bring to the conversation.

This is that letter I wrote for her child’s school and all schools, with some edits and additions:

To western schools who teach yoga to children and youth:

Yoga comes from Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs. As an Indian Hindu woman descended from the ancestors of India who invented yoga, I know that it is my responsibility to protect my culture and make sure that it is passed down intact to the next generation. That is why seeing white people or western people (with no connection to authorized yoga lineages) calling themselves “teachers of yoga” is so devastating. Yoga belongs to our lineages. It is not a free-for-all commodity for just anyone to claim as their own and exploit.

All people can access learning yoga through an authorized spiritual lineage with direct descent from the sages who invented yoga. A 200 hour teacher training does not count as lineage or authorization. That is not how the traditional practice is passed down by any authentic lineage. Any institutions offering 200 hour yoga teacher trainings are offering a wrongful certification that bastardizes yoga and distorts the true meaning of the path. What is so awful is that even people from authentic lineages have started to offer westernized 200 hour teacher trainings in recent decades because they think it’s the only way to have any space in the “yoga” world. This means that my own people are being colonized into corrupt western methodologies that are the opposite of what yoga stands for. This is destroying our culture and spiritual practices and makes it harder for us to pass down true yoga to our next generations.

Westerners who do not belong to an authorized spiritual lineage of yoga have no idea what the practice of yoga means. They do not know that this is a spiritual practice that was only ever meant for those who proved their character and worthiness of the path through years of dedicated service to a spiritual master. It was not and never has been for just anyone, because a spiritual practice in the hands of unscrupulous people can be abused and violated. This is clear in the capitalist profiting of “yoga” studios, “yoga” pants, “yoga” blocks, and “yoga” literally anything. Any profiting or exploiting of yoga for material gain is the direct opposite of what yoga is for.

These days we see people and institutions who call themselves “non-discriminatory” and “progressive” appropriating yoga without a thought to how they are continuing to colonize my culture with their white supremacist and capitalist entitlement. They don’t realize that my people were tortured, raped, murdered, and pillaged for practicing yoga. They don’t realize that colonizers enacted genocide upon my people for centuries because we practiced yoga. They don’t realize that my people suffered forced conversations, abductions, enslavement, and transportation for practicing yoga. They don’t know that this is STILL happening to my people all over the world. Yoga only survives to this day because of the sacrifices my ancestors made to keep our indigenous spiritual practices alive, and the sacrifices my community continues to make to keep yoga alive.

Practicing yoga and teaching yoga without authorization from our bona fide lineages is a continuing of the genocide and colonization of my people. The assumption that westerners know how to teach yoga and don’t need permission from my people to do so is racist and patriarchal. The idea that the practice my ancestors died to protect can be co-opted by the white people who brutalized us and forcibly converted us to Abrahamic religions is an outrage.

One excuse such colonizers give is that culturally appropriating yoga is acceptable because they’re not teaching it as a spiritual practice but as non-spiritual practice for people to relax and be healthy. They don’t realize that there is nothing healthy about stealing. There is nothing healthy about racism. There is nothing healthy about colonization. Anyone who is relaxed after stealing has something gravely wrong with them. Denying the true roots of yoga corrupts so utterly that yoga becomes unrecognizable as a practice of integrity. A corrupt practice will corrupt those who practice it.

Westerners are now teaching this corrupt thieving version of “yoga” to children in schools. That is child abuse, as far as I am concerned, because they are indoctrinating innocent children into their corrupt colonizing practices. It’s particularly abusive to Hindu children who are forced to suffer their culture being sold back to them in corrupt and bastardized forms that confuse their understanding of their own heritage. It causes self-hate, inferiority complex, internalized oppression, assimilation, and deracination. I repeat, it is child abuse.

Another excuse colonizers give is that yoga is for everyone and we shouldn’t be so negative by telling people to stop culturally appropriating. This is not only factually incorrect, it is a colonizer’s excuse to pillage the culture of my people. My culture does not exist for you to exploit. My culture exists for my people. Spiritually bypassing us to justify your continued violence is wrong.

These truths have been spoken by Hindu lineages and other Dharmic spiritual lineages for years, as we have watched westerners culturally appropriate and profit from our practices and culture. The colonizers have ignored our protests and continued to take whatever they want. That is called white supremacist entitlement. It is patriarchy and a violation of consent culture. If it is not consent culture, it is rape culture.

As mentioned before, so-called “progressives” are teaching such bastardized “yoga” in schools to children. They think they are helping children by giving them a practice that will help them de-stress. What they are really doing is teaching the children that stealing my people’s culture is acceptable. The children are learning that they can be racist towards my people. They can colonize us. They can take from us and they don’t have to ask for consent. They think yoga is a commodity that they can utilize for their own benefit, as if it’s meant for material gain. They think they don’t have to honor the spiritual roots of the practice. They think they can take our ideas and practices and twist it into whatever they want, with “yoga” dancing, “yoga” drinking, “yoga” fashion, “goat yoga”, and on and on. Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh children who are in such schools end up learning this bastardized “yoga” from westerners and think it is correct. It distances them from their own culture and identity. That causes untold damage to their psyches and bodies. It does not de-stress the children. It creates stress and suffering for generations to come.

There are laws against co-opting the intellectual property of others but these laws don’t care about co-opting from my people. That’s because we live in a white supremacist society that believes in only protecting the ideas of colonizers. Westerners, meanwhile, enforce the lie that they are entitled to take whatever they want from my culture.

This is why I am urging schools to stop teaching their students culturally appropriated yoga. Please stop the continued colonization of my people and our culture. My ancestors sacrificed to protect the integrity of yoga so that it could be passed down intact, uncorrupted. If you wish to teach yoga asanas (poses) in your school, then you must reach out to your local Hindu temples and organizations and ask them to send authentic teachers who will teach authentic practices based in their Dharmic religion that includes mantras, Sanskrit, chanting, prayers, and everything else that is true yoga. Yoga asanas are part of Ashtanga yoga which is an ancient Hindu practice, and this is why you must reach out specifically to Hindu temples and organizations. Zen Buddhist teachers, for example, don’t count as authorities for Ashtanga yoga and never will. Pay bona fide Hindu lineage teachers well for their time and service. Give back to those temples and communities as a way to show your appreciation of our practices. If you can’t find any Hindu lineage based teachers who are willing to come to your school, then accept that and let it go. If you can’t allow authentic teachers to teach yoga asanas as the authentic Hindu practice it is, then let it go. If you can’t give back to our communities, learn our culture directly from us with consent and without bastardization or corruption, and compensate us honorably for our time, wisdom, and expertise, then you shouldn’t be learning yoga. You are not entitled to our culture for any reason. You are not entitled to our practices at all.

There are those in my community who are so colonized that they let colonizers do whatever they want and even speak up to defend colonizers. It is similar to a battered housewife making excuses for her abusive husband. We hear phrases very similar to these; “he doesn’t mean to hurt me,” “he needs me,” “it’ll hurt him if I leave him,” “I’m afraid to get away from him,“ and the last and most devastating: “What if I tell him no and he kills me?” People who have gone through the trauma of colonization have such thoughts. That is how violent and abusive racism and white supremacy is. That is how cruel colonization is. That is how patriarchal it is. Only someone who has been healing from that trauma develops the courage to speak up about it. Therefore, it is not acceptable to go find a token “South Asian” and ask them if it’s acceptable for white people or westerners to do yoga. It is very likely that they will - for their own safety - say whatever it is the colonizers want to hear. They may, through their own internalized oppression, believe their own lies and distorted interpretations of truth.

Another thing to keep in mind is that where there is cultural appropriation of yoga, there will very likely be other types of cultural appropriation. The desecration of Indigenous practices and the colonization of our cultures is everywhere and a constant trauma for Indigenous peoples. I often see fake “yoga” teachers alongside fake sweat lodge “experts”, or fake eagle feather carriers, or fake practitioners of ayahuasca. It is all cultural appropriation and it is colonial extraction of our sacred practices. Meanwhile, there is the racist cultural appropriation of African American culture that permeates everything.

I am an Indian Hindu woman. I teach yoga only with the permission of my lineage and elders and I make no profit from it. I speak out against the cultural appropriation of yoga because I must in order to protect my culture and my people. I don’t enjoy having to confront white supremacy and cultural appropriation. I do it only because I have no choice. My people have suffered centuries of colonial trauma and thanks to white supremacy and religious bigotry that is Hinduphobia, they continue to suffer this trauma.

I have shared some resources below for your further education. You may contact me also if you wish to learn from me directly.

Best regards,

Zarna Joshi

For The People Organizer