Should we be tying ourselves in knots over the growing popularity of yoga? Some think so, charging its Western enthusiasts with “cultural appropriation”—that is, the borrowing by a dominant group of the cultural ideas or practices of a weaker group. In one notable case a couple of years ago, sensitivity to the issue led to the cancellation of a free weekly yoga class at the University of Ottawa. A member of the student federation explained to the white woman who taught it that yoga had been taken from “cultures that have experienced oppression, cultural genocide and diasporas due to colonialism and Western supremacy.”

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