Semantics, Religion and Middle-schoolers

Before teaching yoga was my main job, I lead an after school program in an inner city middle school in San Francisco. On Friday afternoons, our leadership team chose activities to offer the students.  One week I thought I would try offering yoga.  Shouting over a cafeteria of noisy middle schoolers, my site coordinator announced "yoga in the park" and an eruption of groans, grumbles, and snickers bubbled across the cafeteria.  When the students were released to choose their activities, no one came my way. A group of girls lingered close to me, some looking like they wanted to join and some were not sure. "Do you want to come do yoga in the park?" I asked them. They made a series of excuses and reasons why they don't do yoga so I invited them to just come stretch and relax which they readily agreed to.

"Why are you so opposed to yoga?" I asked them when the time was right. One girl replied she was lazy, another girl because she was tired and didn't want to move, but the one that struck me the most was two girls said it was against their religion.  This caught me pretty off guard.  She continued to share that her step-mom used to do yoga and really liked it until her teacher gave her a pendant with a symbol and chant written on it and asked her class to perform the chant. When the step-mom found out what it meant, she was offended because it was not in line with her christian beliefs. The mom stopped going to the class and warned her daughter that yoga is "a religious practice that prays to false gods. " I took a deep breath.

To connect with these students I realized I needed to ditch the word yoga because it held a stigma. I needed to just teach the practice.  Instead of "doing yoga" I taught them "stretches" and "poses" and which they were all fine to try.  I taught them the three part breath and we talked about body awareness.  At the end of the afternoon, each person there moved their body, breathed deeply, and tried something new. As far as I was concerned, it was a success.  I realized that calling something "yoga" is not important- it is just a label and does not change the practice. The next time I attempted to teach yoga there, I called it "Stretch and Relax" and it was received far better by the students.