TYT: PC Police Now Attacking Yoga

[WhoIsNumberNone]

Cultural appropriation is a problem that is just now gaining attention. At the University of Ottawa a group is saying that yoga classes should be stopped because the people doing the yoga don’t understand enough of the cultural significance of where it comes from. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian (The Point) hosts of The Young Turks discuss.

Do you think cultural appropriation is a problem? Should yoga classes only be attended by people who understand its origins? Let us know in the comments below.

Read more here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/university-of-ottawa-yoga_56536246e4b0d4093a589bd3

“Days after being widely ridiculed for suspending a yoga class for students with disabilities due to concerns over "cultural appropriation," a student center at the University of Ottawa is now saying the class was scrapped because no one attended them.

"[No] one attended the classes so that's why we ended them, its not that hard to understand people, the fact that disabled people are getting harrassed [sic] over this is ridiculous," the university's Centre for Students with Disabilities said Monday via Facebook in response to criticism of its decision.

Yoga instructor Jennifer Scharf, who taught a class at the CSD since 2008, told the CBC on Sunday that she learned in September the class wouldn't be happening because several staff members and students were uncomfortable with "cultural issues."

"I guess it was this cultural appropriation issue because yoga originally comes from India," Scharf told the CBC. Scharf said she offered to change the name of the course to "mindful stretching" since her instructions don't address Hindu scripture or other aspects tied to the practice's religious roots.”

[zeemike]

1. I think it is something in the water.

Fluoride, lead, who knows, but people are acting crazy.

Or they are so privileged they are bored and just want something to be angry about so they can feel alive.

[haikugal]

2. There are real issues that need addressing...

This kind of thing is just distraction.

[GoneFishin]

3. Yeah. And only people from North Carolina should be able to learn to fly, because only those who

live in the same state as the Wright brothers can truly appreciate the marvels of manned flight.

[Orrex]

4. Yeah, about that "cultural appropriation" thing...

Snarky, but well-documented with plenty of hyperlinks.[hr]
7 'Ancient' Forms of Mysticism That Are Recent Inventions

#7. Yoga

Ask anyone wearing a leotard and staring off into the middle distance how long yoga has been practiced, and chances are they'll tell you that it's around five thousand years old. In other words, people were stretching and posing serenely several hundred years before aliens secretly built the Egyptian pyramids.

The Reality:

Yoga as we know it today -- a set of postures (asanas) combined with breathing techniques -- dates back to around the grand old year of 1960.

In other words, yoga is as old as Bono.

"But how can that be?" you scream, rending your organic exercise mat in two. Well, that "five thousand years old" claim rests entirely on some 5,000-year-old pictures found in the Indus Valley of a man sitting cross-legged. Though this is one of the main yoga positions, it so happens that it's also the position most people take when, you know, they sit on any flat surface.

Yoga is first mentioned by name in some 2,500-year-old Hindu religious texts called the Upanishads, but this is actually a term relating to a method of strapping horses together -- literally the origin for our word "yoke." The Upanishads use it as a metaphor for a mental prayer technique, but as far as all those weird stretches are concerned, the texts mention exactly one physical posture, and that posture is pretty much "sit in a way that makes meditation comfortable." So the word "yoga" might describe an old Hindu teaching, but then so does the word "avatar," and nobody's claiming that the James Cameron movie reflects an unbroken line of ancient sacred tradition.

It wasn't until the 19th century that an Indian prince named Krishnaraja Wodeyar III produced something resembling what we call yoga: a manual called the Sritattvanidhi, which listed 122 poses mostly taken from Indian gymnastics. What really kicked-started modern yoga, though, was the influence of the Imperial British, who introduced Indians to the new exercise craze that was sweeping Europe at the time.

Later a guy named B.K.S. Iyengar came up with the idea of combining these exercise techniques with some of the teachings described in old Hindu texts like the Yoga Sutras and let the result loose on America in the 1960s. Since then, yoga fans have grown by the millions, with few realizing that they are practicing a chanted-up version of early 20th-century gym class.

Emphasis mine. This "appropriated" culture was actually marketed to the US, and the rest, as they say, is history. Retconned history, but still.

[gregcrawford]

5. It has been my experience...

... that the PC Police are just sanctimonious control freaks who get their jollies criticizing and belittling others to make themselves feel superior.

Cultures have been appropriating good ideas from one another since humanity first became a thing. If we didn't, we'd still be eating bushes, grunting, and throwing rocks at each other.

So, all you Politically Correct tight-asses should find a way to relax. Try yoga, for instance.