White people have always been stiff
Yet again – one keeps checking to make sure it’s not The Onion. It’s not, though, it’s a respectable Ottawa newspaper. [Updating to add: actually a right-wing rag, which sounds like that Sun across the pond.]
Student leaders have pulled the mat out from 60 University of Ottawa students, ending a free on-campus yoga class over fears the teachings could be seen as a form of “cultural appropriation.”
Sorry, white people, you no longer get to stretch. White people have always been stiff and it’s colonialist to try to change that.
Staff at the Centre for Students with Disabilities believe that “while yoga is a really great idea and accessible and great for students … there are cultural issues of implication involved in the practice,” according to an email from the centre.
Of implication? Do they mean complicity? Or appropriation? Do they think “implication” is a portmanteau word that means both together?
The centre goes on to say, “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 centre official argues since 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 practising yoga.”
And therefore we have to stop practicing yoga, and we have to stop everyone else practicing yoga.
Never mind that practicing yoga actually reverses the colonialist relationship. Never mind that the sharing of cultures can be a way of uniting people. Never mind that interactions with other cultures are generally good things. Never mind any kind of detail or complexity – just look at yoga and go “Ooooooh, from South Asia!” and put a stop to it.
Acting student federation president Romeo Ahimakin denied the decision resulted from a complaint.
Ahimakin said the student federation put the yoga session on hiatus while they consult with students “to make it better, more accessible and more inclusive to certain groups of people that feel left out in yoga-like spaces. … We are trying to have those sessions done in a way in which students are aware of where the spiritual and cultural aspects come from, so that these sessions are done in a respectful manner.”
Scharf offered a compromise, suggesting she change the name from yoga to “mindful stretching,” since that would reflect the content of the program and would “literally change nothing about the course.”
Thinky bending? Contemplative reaching? Attentive pretzeling?
What am I thinking, pretzels are German and contemplation is…what, Japanese? Still South Asian? I forget, but it’s certainly not white people.
“I’m not pretending to be some enlightened yogi master, and the point (of the program) isn’t to educate people on the finer points of the ancient yogi scripture,” she told the Sun.
“The point is to get people to have higher physical awareness for their own physical health and enjoyment.”
According to email correspondence between Scharf and the centre, student leaders debated rebranding the program, but stumbled over how the French translation for “mindful stretching” would appear on a promotional poster, and eventually decided to suspend the program.
Ahhhhh yes, you always want to be careful about how the French translation will look on the poster. Naughty people, the French.
That thing about “Oh, but what about the French translation” makes me suspect the ending of the classes has nothing to do with the reasons given and everything to do with some kind of silly nonsense on the part of someone at the health center. Something like, “The yoga woman did not say “Hi” to me when I walked by her in the parking lot. She must pay!”
Whether the motives are what they say or not, it’s terrible that someone’s bs ended a really good opportunity for the students.
The Ottawa Sun is actually a right-wing tabloid rag. It is not a respected paper, and features a nearly naked very young “Sunshine Girl” within the 1st few sexist pages. I take what they say, especially when talking about “progressives ” and those awful “intellectuals” with a big grain of salt.
When I culturally appropriate tai-chi I make sure to improve my balance while ignoring unevidenced claims about energy flow.
They also can’t stand the idea of French anything, btw. Multiculturalism and bilingualism frays at their ultra right wing nerves, as does welcoming refugees. If there is much truth in what they’ve written, it would surprise me. The target audience for that rag is the ultra conservative antifeminist white male.
So, reading and writing come from somewhere under the bomb damage in Iraq / Syria, our Indo-European languages come from …. go on, you work it out …, our mathematics uses indian numerals and Greek letters, printing comes from Germany and before that China, computers come from England.
Better give up any attempt to have a university at all then!
This story *could* appear in The Onion, but would be more likely to betray its Canadian origins by being published in thelapine.ca or thebeaverton.com. However, it seems to be a legitimate story. Whatever one’s opinion of The Sun chain, this seems to be a problem with the air in Ottawa (it is, after all, the Nation’s Capitol.
Attentive pretzeling!
I am stealing that. I don’t know what for, but it’s mine now.
I’m trying to imagine how the French translation for “mindful stretching” could be problematic. L’etirage attentif? Meditation et elongation? I mean what? Is there some idiomatic phrase normally used that causes denizens of junior high (those in the Advanced French program) to giggle?
Now I’m not going to get any sleep tonight. Thank you very much.
Does this mean that stuff like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBMc9s8oDWE actually happens?
The Sun is not a very reliable paper. I’d be somewhat skeptical about some aspects of this story because the paper is sensationalist.
It reminds me of this story from a couple of years ago.
Well, here in the USA we have public Yoga classes cancelled at the whinging of Christians terrified of Hindu indoctrination, if not Satan worship.
There’s coverage now in the CBC, too. See http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/ottawa/university-ottawa-yoga-cultural-sensitivity-1.3330441.
I was at a coffee shop Saturday morning, heard a yoga instructor at the next table talking about it, too. As I was with my son (and trying not to eavesdrop), I only got the gist that she also would have no great objection to ‘rebranding’ if there was real offense. Kinda doubt the demographic at said shop are huge Sun readers, for what it’s worth. So sounds like it did happen, at least.
Said instructor, speaking of, also did make the point that cultures do blend and mix and learn from one another. I figure: sure, it’s only respectful to try to appreciate the original context of what you borrow. And still only basic freedom (and sensible, and the way we and the world get anywhere) still to be able to pick and choose the bits of anything you will adopt, after making that effort. Arrogant, dominant institutions like certain religions especially tend to be bothered by this. Go figure. They tend, however, I think, very dishonestly to try to make dogma sticky by attaching it to useful rituals. Agree with the rules (we ourselves once ‘borrowed’) on murder? Ah, that was our god’s thing, so you must also accept him. Similarly, suggesting doing healthy stretching exercises require you to endorse Samkhya seems, well…
A bit of a stretch…
I’d say also a lot of those philosophies are a lot more ‘additive’ in nature, traditionally, as I understand it. As in: it’s really pretty okay to think of it as a practise, a philosophy, add it to whatever else you do or believe, as it fits. So it doesn’t surprise me even practitioners of religions associated associated with it are mixed in their response, here. Which is an attitude I do like better myself.
Here, as in many cases, I think, it may be a bit of a mistake to let those most offended make the rules, even as it’s fair enough to note the objection. But hey, ‘contemplative stretching’? Whatever. I figure people will get the gist.