College Ends Free Campus Yoga Class After A Student Complained Yoga Was Offensive To Cultures Who Have Experience Oppression Due To Western Supremacy

Ottawa – 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.”

Jennifer Scharf, who has been offering free weekly yoga instruction to students since 2008, says she was shocked when told in September the program would be suspended.

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.

The centre is operated by the university’s Student Federation, which first approached Scharf seven years ago about offering yoga instruction to students both with and without disabilities.

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.”

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Welcome to the party Canada! The campus outrage machine led by the ruthless Social Justice Warriors has crossed the border and invaded our neighbors to the North. And I got to be honest, this one is for a pretty good cause. Yoga – gotta get rid of that shit. Has to be stopped, immediately. Just a disgusting, incredibly offensive practice that has no place in today’s society.

I know, I know – when you hear “yoga,” you think “hey that’s that exercise that helps with flexibility, strengthens the spine, and reduces mental stress, all very important things for college students dealing with high pressure to have access to.” That’s because you’re a bigot. Your privilege never even let you look past all the physical and mental benefits to consider the oppression and cultural genocide and diasporas that the ancient Yoga-ers had to deal with due to colonialism and western supremacy.

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Don’t blame yourself, it’s probably the way you were raised by your racist parents.

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.”

Ok fine, whatever, you’re going to fold like pussies. At the very least we can try to come up with some compromise right? Some way to make it “less offensive” so students can at least keep getting their free exercise?

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.”

Great, perfect, SJW satisfied, and class still open. Everyone can be happy.

Wait..

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.

Can’t translate mindful stretching appropriately enough for the campus poster. Classic white privilege issue. Classic.

PS,

Jennifer Scharf is on the wall.

But Scharf, a yoga teacher with the downtown Rama Lotus Centre, said the concept does not apply in this case, arguing the complaint that killed the program came instead from a “social justice warrior” with “fainting heart ideologies” in search of a cause celebre.

“People are just looking for a reason to be offended by anything they can find,” said Scharf.

“There’s a real divide between reasonable people and those people just looking to jump on a bandwagon. And unfortunately, it ends up with good people getting punished for doing good things.”