Gov. Kay Ivey has signed into law a bill allowing Alabama public schools to offer instruction in yoga.
The law ends a ban on yoga adopted by the State Board of Education in 1993 because of yoga’s connections to Hinduism.
Rep. Jeremy Gray, D-Opelika, today thanked Ivey for signing the bill and clearing the way for schools to begin offering yoga as an elective class or activity starting in the 2021-2022 school year. He said some schools are already doing yoga-like activities but use a different name, such as mindfulness movement.
This was the third year for Gray to sponsor the bill. Lawmakers gave it final approval Monday, the last night of the legislative session.
Gray discovered yoga through his athletic career. He played football at North Carolina State.
Gray said the students from the earliest grades through high school can benefit. He said high school athletic teams can use yoga for active cool-down sessions after workouts or practices.
Yoga can help children in early grades cope with difficulties they might have sitting still and focusing in a classroom, he said. Alabama is working to increase the mental health care available in public schools, and Gray said yoga can be a component of that and can be a tool in the fight against problems like teen suicide.
“This is a great way to help with mental health, being able to concentrate,” Gray said. “Find clarity. Stress relievers, those self-help tips you need dealing with anger and anxiety.”
The Senate amended the bill to say that “School personnel may not use any techniques that involve hypnosis, the induction of a dissociative mental state, guided imagery, meditation, or any aspect of Eastern philosophy and religious training.”
Gray said the amendments were unnecessary because he said the bill already kept the religious aspects of yoga out of schools by limiting yoga instruction to poses, exercises, and stretching techniques. It prohibits chanting, mantras, mudras and the use of mandalas. He said he thinks the amendments were an effort to appease conservative groups who opposed the bill.
“A lot of the stuff you don’t do anyway. You don’t hypnotize people,” Gray said.
“Really, it just seemed very offensive,” he said. “Had some phobia in it. A lot of it just didn’t really make sense.”
The bill says local school systems can allow or disallow yoga. For students to participate, their parents would have to sign a permission slip saying that they understand yoga is part of the Hindu religion.
Gray said he would prefer that the permission slip said yoga is associated with Eastern culture but is practiced all over the world.
Gray said he would work to amend the bill next year and take out the parts he thought were unnecessary. In the meantime, he said the bill will allow schools to begin offering yoga.
“It’s going to do what it needs to do,” Gray said. “I just didn’t like the amendments because we spent so much time making it very clean so that everybody could be on board with it.”