The Spreading Virus, Yoga Edition

By this point I can’t tell what’s genuine on college campuses and what are hoaxes or Onion parodies. I was sure the story about a yoga class being suspended at a Canadian university because yoga is a “cultural appropriation” was a satire—or is it yogurt classes, because invasive bacteria or something? Anyway, it turns out the story is true:

A free yoga class has been suspended after student leaders at a Canadian university are concerned the practice of it could be seen as ‘cultural appropriation’.

Jennifer Scharf, who has been offering the weekly yoga class at the University of Ottawa campus for seven years, said she was notified in September that the program was being ended.

In an email from the Center for Students with Disabilities, staff wrote that while yoga is ‘accessible and great for students’, there are ‘cultural issues of implication involved in the practice’, the Ottawa Sun reported. . .

The center’s staff said that yoga has been under ‘a lot of controversy lately’ as a result of how it is being practiced and which cultures those practices are ‘being taken from,’ according to the Ottawa Sun.

Staff from the center also expressed that many of those cultures ‘experienced oppression, cultural genocide and Diasporas due to colonialism and western supremacy’.

This is going to harsh some mellows at the Esalen Institute.

A few questions. I gather yoga comes from India originally. What else do they have in India? Well these days they have parliamentary democracy. Isn’t that a “cultural appropriation” from Britain? Shouldn’t they have to stop that, or give it back? Love to take a survey of Indians today and ask how many would like to abandon this “cultural appropriation”? I’m guessing a large majority of Indians rather like democracy, elections, human rights, rule of law, etc.

I’m sure today’s postmodern left will say that Indians suffer from “false consciousness” from centuries of Western colonialism and oppression—nothing that a few hundred thousand PC counselors from the UN couldn’t cure, so they can get back to the business of setting up authoritarian governments.

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