Alabama Ban on Yoga in Schools
Yoga has been banned in Alabama schools since 1993 when conservative groups convinced the Alabama Board of Education that yoga should not be allowed in schools because of its Hindu roots. The language of the regulation said that “The State Board of Education specifically prohibits the use of hypnosis and dissociative mental states. School personnel shall be prohibited from using any techniques that involve the induction of hypnotic states, guided imagery, meditation or yoga.”
The vote was 73-25 in the state’s House of Representatives to pass the bill that lifted the ban. It will go next to the Senate, where it will be carried forward by Republican Senator Tom Whatley.
Nikunj Trivedi, president of the Coalition of Hindus of North America, said this is a positive step, given the racism and violence against Asian Americans and other minorities. He said practicing yoga is cultural appreciation, not cultural appropriation. “Yes, it has roots in Hinduism, and it’s a Hindu practice, but it’s a gift Hindus have shared with the world,” he said.
He also said the bill didn’t go far enough. The bill did not lift bans on chanting and teaching Sanskrit phrases like “Namaste,” which means, “I bow to you.” Trivedi said, “You can’t just selectively take something. That’s a very colonial way of thinking, where you just strip away the indigenous culture and pick and choose.”
Under the bill, the moves and exercises must have exclusively English names, and students would have the option not to participate. The poses and exercises will be limited exclusively to sitting, standing, reclining twisting, and balancing.
The legislation was sponsored by Rep. Jeremy Gray (D-Opelika), who admitted the bill didn’t lift the entire ban. He said, “There’s no such thing as a perfect bill. I had to think about the long game and bigger picture and what am I trying to do here. I’m trying to make yoga accessible to children in K-12 public schools.” “It’s just exercise,” he said.
Gray first introduced the measure in 2019 and said many lawmakers didn’t understand it. The bill was on the list for the “Shroud Award,” a title given every legislative session to the “deadest bill.” After that bill failed, Gray went to work to educate the House. He had yogis and doctors talk to them. He picked up support by 2020, but the pandemic put the legislation on hold.
Now, he says, “Most of the senators that I’ve talked to are OK with it. A lot of people in their districts have reached out to them, and a lot of their wives actually do yoga. So I think it has a good chance of passing.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that more than 14% of U.S. adults practiced yoga in 2017. Gray said yoga’s breathing exercises helped him when he had the coronavirus. He began practicing yoga at the end of his workouts as a college football player.
It wasn’t until Gray visited a class to talk about lawmaking and politics that he realized yoga wasn’t permitted in schools. He told the pupils that he meditated to help himself focus, and faculty and students seemed uncomfortable. Teachers later told him they had become certified to teach a course, but parents complained, so they weren’t allowed to do so.
There are no other states with a ban of this type, although in 2016, one school in Georgia removed the word “namaste” from its yoga class and also removed coloring pages with the mandala on them to assuage parents offended by non-Christian forms of expression.
The groups who argued against the Alabama bill insist that it violates the separation of church and state set forth in the Establishment Clause. Constitutional lawyer Eric Johnston argues that the act of meditation is spiritual. Johnston works with Christian advocacy groups that disapprove of the bill.
He said, “If you pass a law that says you can do stretches and sit in positions and so forth, that’s fine, but to say you can teach yoga is an entirely different thing, because yoga is an exercise of the Hindu religion.” He went on to say that yoga is “a very important part of the Hindu religion. As such, it does not need to be taught to small children in public schools.” While he doesn’t object to adults participating in yoga, he thinks children are impressionable.
“Children at that age are very tech-savvy, and if they are taught yoga, all they have to do is Google it, and they will immediately find information on the spiritual aspects of it and look at it,” he said. “And if they look at it, it might lead them to believe that’s something they should be involved in.”
Rajan Zed, president of the Universal Society of Hinduism, is a vigorous advocate for lifting the ban. He says that yoga, even without the traditional chants and phrases, will be beneficial to “the overall well-being of Alabamians.” He said, “It is a step in the positive direction.”
