Woke Yoga? What We Can Learn From A Texas Private School’s Indoctrination SeminarBy Spencer Lindquist
February 04, 2022
The Parish Episcopal School in Dallas, Texas hosted their “6th Annual Upper School Conference on Diversity and Inclusion” and in doing so, might’ve taught us a valuable lesson.
The Federalist previously exposed the school’s promotion of racially segregated affinity groups and highlighted some of its conference sessions pertaining to toxic masculinity and LGBT issues. Another session at the school’s conference warrants examination.
For students who might prefer not to be bombarded with leftwing platitudes about gender before lunch, one would hope that respite could be found in a yoga class. Well, it depended on which one you chose. One yoga session, listed at the very bottom of the seminar’s form, was described exactly how you’d expect a yoga class to be described.
Then there was “Deeper Than Poses: Taking Yoga beyond Instagram.” The description read: “Get ready for all your preconceived ideas about yoga to be challenged, and get ready to sweat. Alondra Smith blends story-telling, classic yogi wisdom and high intensity music to lure you into the present moment, and in that moment, challenges all the things you think you know.”
But stretches and sweat weren’t enough for the high school students. No, this yoga session was an act of revolution, a rebellion against a deeply entrenched power structure.
The description read like a jab at the competing white-woman-run yoga session. It went on to explain that Smith was a black woman “practicing and teaching yoga in a city where that space is typically dominated” yes, dominated, “by upper class white women,” continuing to note that Smith brings an “inclusive energy” everywhere she goes.
Setting aside just how laughably contrived it is to inject racial grievance politics into yoga, the description raises a number of questions.
Why would the race of your yoga instructor be particularly important? Should upper-class white women stop practicing yoga for the sake of diversity, equity, and inclusion? Can over or under representations occur naturally, or is every instance of disproportionality the result of an all-powerful white supremacist conspiracy that controls everything, from politics to the yoga-industrial complex? What does it mean to be “inclusive” in a yoga studio, anyways? Why can’t yoga just be yoga?
* * *
Source:
https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/04/woke-yoga-what-we-can-learn-from-a-texas-private-schools-indoctrination-seminar/
