Nightly Nuance - May 24, 2021

Hello, my friends. I hope you had the best weekends available. 

Today, let's talk about Alabama's law allowing yoga to be taught in schools for the first time since 1993. Alabama Representative Jeremy Gray (who is a Democrat, a former football player, and a registered yoga teacher) has tried twice before to lift Alabama's ban on yoga, and succeeded on this third go. 

In order to pass the law through Alabama's Republican-dominated legislature, the law contains some truly ignorant and offensive language. I think the controversial aspects of teaching yoga in American schools offers a chance to think deeply about the yoga industry and the way that Americans engage with yoga, especially as India is suffering so enormously from the pandemic. 

Because I have a strong personal connection with yoga, I begin this Nightly Nuance with a bit of my personal story. It feels important to me to disclose the strong biases and influences that I have around yoga and to admit to you that I don't always ask the right questions or find the right answers. I'm always living in the tension of truly loving yoga, trying to understand it more deeply, and knowing that I'm experiencing it in ways that are problematic. 

Thanks for thinking through these issues with me. 

-beth 

Resources: 

Reporting on AL law - BBC 

Reporting on AL law - NPR 

Reporting on AL law - CNN  

Reporting on AL law - Fox News 

Prachi Gupta's Elle Magazine Piece on India, Covid, and Yoga  

Rina Deshpande 

Ritu Bashin 

Yoga and Cultural Appropriation 

Tejal Yoga on YouTube 

Skill in Action with Michelle Cassandra Johnson   

Resources to donate to Covid relief in India from Savitha Moorthy  

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