KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Yoga is designed to help bring peace and wellness to body and mind. But at Benedictine College — a small Catholic liberal arts school in Atchison, Kan. — yoga classes per se will soon be yo-gone, out of apparent concern that use of the word "yoga" suggests advocacy for Hindu mysticism.
College spokesman Stephen Johnson said that starting this fall, both recreational classes and for-credit exercise classes that once taught yoga will likely still be taught the same way, but instead will be rebranded as "lifestyle fitness."
The move to recast the practice of yoga, with positions like upward dog and downward dog, into classes of more generic stretching and breathing exercises has landed the college of 2,000 students in something of a doghouse.
An online petition posted by students calls on Benedictine President Stephen Minnis to "bring back yoga!" So far, it has received 105 online signatures. The petition has also drawn the support of Rajan Zed, a well-known Hindu cleric in Nevada, who urged the college to "relook into their reported yoga decision."
Johnson, the spokesman, said the decision to ditch the term yoga came soon after the college began offering recreational yoga classes (as opposed to the one-hour, for-credit yoga exercise class it has offered for years) at the school's new recreation center, which opened last fall.
Complaints, Johnson said, began to come in from alumni, students, faculty and some administrators who argued that as a Hindu practice, yoga was not in keeping with Catholic-based education. Others, Johnson said, argued that the name yoga should no longer be used because in teaching just the exercise aspects of yoga — as opposed to both its physical and spiritual aspects — Benedictine wasn't teaching true yoga. Thus it should not use the Hindu name.
The college's school newspaper, the Circuit, noted that concern also was raised by Archbishop Joseph Naumann of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, and Abbot James Albers of St. Benedict's Abbey in Atchison.
"Yoga as created has some potential for eastern mysticism which has caused concern among members of the Catholic Church," Minnis told the paper. Naumann "has expressed his concerns and the issues surrounding that. We asked ourselves if there was a way to bring those yoga benefits to our students and faculty without the possible effects of eastern mysticism."
The archdiocese issued a statement from its chancellor, the Rev. John Riley.
"Many people do not realize that yoga … is intended to be more than a series of exercises coupled with deliberative breathing and meditation," Riley said in a statement. "It is a mind and body practice developed under Hinduism."
