YOGA DECISION LEAVES BOTH SIDES SATISFIED
TOCCOA, Ga. (UPI) September 11, 1990 Caught between opposing views of devil worship and a complete exercise, a joint meeting of the Toccoa city and Stephens County commissions came up with a Solomon-like decision on the issue of yoga.
The commissions ruled Monday night that yoga is a religion and affirmed the earlier cancellation of yoga classes by the local recreation board. But it also voted to allow private religious groups, including anyone interested in yoga, to rent city-county recreation facilities for meetings and classes.
The decision came at the end of a two-hour public forum in the Stephens County Courthouse. About 100 people attended and appeared evenly divided between opponents of yoga, who see it as government-sponsored devil worship and proponents who view yoga as a source of physical and mental well-being. Both sides supported their arguments with quotes from the Bible, encyclopedias and scholarly essays.
And one man even called upon personal observation. "If you've ever been to Calcutta, India, as I have, then you'll see what yoga does to people," said Clinton Fulbright. "You see these poor, demonic possessed souls wandering the streets."
Afterward, each side claimed victory. "We're satisfied," said Philip Lawrence, a chiropractor who led the fight to have the yoga classes canceled. "The truth has won," said Katherine Williamson Hodges, one of the 26 people who signed up for the yoga classes. Hodges said she now hopes to organize yoga classes and rent facilities from the recreation department.
Webster's New World Dictionary also had something for each side. It said yoga is "a mystic and ascetic discipline by which one seeks to achieve liberation of the self and union with the supreme spirit or universal soul through intense concentration, deep meditation and practices involving prescribed postures." It also describes yoga as "a system of exercising involving the postures, breathing, etc. practiced in yoga."
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