I had been planning to write a response to the recent story on McMindfulness in Evergreen Schools (“A brain break: Students learn, practice mindfulness,” Dec. 27) when I came across this Jan. 3 news brief: “Vancouver to join in ‘Holy Yoga’ experience.”
The term “McMindfulness” refers to the widespread fad taking place of introducing “mindfulness” in schools, and workplaces, as an attempt at a panacea for people. As an American Buddhist who has been practicing for three decades, I, and many others like me, find such efforts disturbing. They are divorced from the underlying religious principles that give rise to the practice of mindfulness and, in the long run, will be no good if mindfulness is used as an opiate or a sedating modality, instead of as a catalyst to effect real change in people and society.
McMindfulness is a form of cultural appropriation. Even more so is “Holy Yoga,” a fundamentalist Christian cultural appropriation of yoga. The very name is offensive as it implies that other forms of yoga and meditation are not holy, including Hindu forms of yoga.
