Namaste: The perilous journey of ‘real’ yoga

Abstract

In this chapter, I explore the theme of authenticity as it plays out in public institutions, particularly schools and in law. I consider the entry of yoga into public education systems in Canada and the USA, and I refl ect on the ways that it is transformed by public and legal conversations. Of particular interest is the way that yoga is stripped of any religious connotations and rendered, in the words of a California court, thoroughly American. This reconstitution of yoga serves to make it more palatable to hegemonic religion, which is, of course, in both countries, still largely Christian. The reconstruction of yoga raises questions about the meaning of the terms ‘religion’, ‘spiritual’, and ‘the secular’, as well as about the power relations involved in the social construction of those terms.