Bill Would Ban Yoga In Schools Teaching Skills More Important Than Relaxation, Rep. Sterk Says

A Spokane Valley lawmaker wants to keep meditation, yoga and other relaxation exercises out of public schools.

“We need to teach students skills to read, write and do math,” said Rep. Mark Sterk, R-Spokane Valley, who is sponsoring a bill to ban the relaxation techniques in schools.

“I think it’s time misspent,” he said.

Though school administrators say yoga, meditation and other relaxation techniques aren’t part of the curriculum, students, parents and teachers say the methods are used.

At a recent House Education Committee hearing, Mead High School sophomore Jamie Robinson said students in her Academic Strategies class in 1995 sat in a candle-lit room and were asked to focus on traumatic events in their past.

Robinson, who refused to participate in the session, said some students began crying and moaning uncontrollably.

“It was really scary and it blew my mind away that this could happen in a classroom,” she told lawmakers. “The teachers said they just wanted us to be able to relate to other kids.”

Dawn Spickler, a yoga instructor and director of the Radha House in Spokane, said she has led several classes at Shadle Park High School.

She taught stretching exercises designed to relieve stress and told students to be aware of their breathing patterns and the value of “centering.”

Spickler said some students don’t want to participate, which she doesn’t mind. “I didn’t force it because yoga is voluntary,” she said.

More popular in schools is guided imagery, a visualization technique that Sterk says is a form of hypnosis.

In guided imagery, students try to visualize themselves in various situations. Sterk said his own daughter was exposed to guided imagery at Evergreen Junior High School.

The method is similar to what author and motivational speaker Jack Canfield advocates. In 1995, Canfield spoke to Spokane-area teachers and school administrators at Shadle Park, offering inspiring messages and putting in a pitch for his books and tapes.

Spokane School District doesn’t use Canfield’s curriculum, which encourages teachers to build a trusting and supportive classroom environment by using guided visualizations.

Gloria Clark, who said she has researched relaxation techniques for 10 years, said her daughter was led on a “guided fantasy” in a creative writing class at Spokane’s East Valley High School in 1993.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate for my daughter to be in an altered-state of consciousness at school on the floor,” Clark said. “Why should they take my child on a hypnotic trance in a classroom?”

Clark also pointed to research that suggests such relaxation techniques can actually increase anxiety in students.

Gary Livingston, superintendent of the Spokane School District, said relaxation techniques are not an official part of the curriculum and are inappropriate.

“I would find that surprising to find that happening,” Livingston said.

But Sterk said some teachers are using techniques that school administrators don’t know about. Lynn Jones, president of the Spokane Education Association, agreed, although he doesn’t know of any teachers who use relaxation methods in the classroom.

Under Sterk’s bill, teachers who use such methods would be suspended for 10 days without pay on the first offense and would be fired and lose their teaching certificate for a second violation.

The bill, HB 1598, remains in the House Education Committee pending a vote, which hasn’t yet been scheduled.

, DataTimes