Yoga banned at Canadian university

Yoga classes at the University of Ottawa have been cancelled by the university’s Student Federation (the Canadian student union equivalent) after apparent concerns over “cultural appropriation”.

Jennifer Scharf, an instructor who had been running free weekly yoga sessions at the university’s Centre for Students with Disabilities, claimed in an interview with the Ottawa Sun that she had been told via an email exchange in September that the yoga program had been cancelled for the upcoming term.

In the email, Scharf claimed that a representative of the Centre wrote that “while yoga is a really great idea and accessible and great for students ... there are cultural issues of implication involved in the practice.”

The email continued: “yoga has been under a lot of controversy lately due to how it is being practiced and what practices from what cultures ... they are being taken from. Many of these cultures ... have experienced oppression, cultural genocide and diasporas due to colonialism and western supremacy, and we need to be mindful of this.”

Scharf attempted to offer a compromise, suggesting changing the name of the program away from yoga and towards “mindful stretching”, claiming that since yoga is “not really what we are doing, we are just stretching”, and name change would not require a material change to the classes content. This compromise was ultimately rejected by the Federation, and the classes were discontinued, at which point opposition to the move began to take hold in the student community.

In response, the Centre issued a statement via Facebook, insisting that “the classes were not cancelled”, and were instead temporarily suspended to allow for “proper consultation” over the future of the service.

This consultation is part of a review of the service, which the Centre claim is required as during the “couple of years” the program has been running it “has never been reviewed.”

In a comment on the statement, the Facebook account for the Centre also added that “no one attended the classes so that’s why we ended them, its [sic] not that hard to understand people, the fact that disabled people are getting harrassed over this is ridiculous”, with no further comment or context available.

Finally, the Federation itself stepped in to provide an update (also via Facebook), claiming that neither the Federation nor the Centre “release[d] the statements around cultural appropriation tothe Ottawa Sun [which broke the story originally]”, and dismissing the quotes on cultural appropriation as falsified. They also reiterated the claim that “the attendance of the Yoga classes was declining” and that the program “has been running for the past 8 years without any re­evaluation.”

The statement concludes with an expression of disappointment over the “harassment and violence” some Centre/Federation staff have experienced over this issue, as well as a plea to be able to “revaluate this conversation and have a more conducive dialogue.”