Conclusion

The conclusion reconceptualizes secularization in terms of transparency and voluntarism and recommends best practices that respect cultural and religious diversity. The conclusion argues for an opt-in model of informed consent in which students and teachers may actively decide whether to opt into voluntary programs based on adequate information. Opt-in programs are offered during noninstructional hours (before or after school or during lunch) to minimize barriers to opting out, and cultivate transparency about strengths and limitations of scientific support, challenging, adverse, and/or religious effects, contraindications, and alternatives. Subtracting religious language and adding scientific framing may not go far enough to avoid religious endorsement or coercion. Paradoxically, the secular framing of yoga and mindfulness practices widens their platform to influence religious beliefs and values. Secularization may be construed not as subtraction and addition but as radically rebuilding from foundations that make explicit and interrogate—thereby enhancing agency to act without being controlled by—assumptions about self and world. Transparency counters the taken-for-grantedness that imbues assumptions about self and world with much of their power. Identifying, questioning, and choosing whether to accept, reject, or modify beliefs and practices protects against unduly coercive power of the state and subtle coercion of unthinking decisions.

Science

Chapter 12 contextualizes scientific claims about health benefits and considers evidence of adverse effects. The chapter argues that scientific support for school-based yoga, mindfulness, and meditation is weaker than often claimed and falls short of demonstrating that programs are secular, safe, or superior to alternatives. Low-quality studies report health benefits, using uncontrolled, pre-post designs, or nonactive controls, with small sample sizes, and high risk of bias, including expectation bias, researcher allegiance, publication bias, and citation bias; higher quality studies show less efficacy. Scientific evidence is not equivalent to evidence of secularity; research studies report that meditation in religious contexts, as well as prayer and Bible reading, can benefit health and activate specific brain regions. Some participants report challenging experiences with meditative practices, including anxiety, depression, physical pain, reexperiencing of traumatic memories, anger, and suicidality. Meditative practices may be contraindicated for participants with a history of trauma, PTSD, addiction, psychosis, anxiety, depression, or suicidality. Research shows that alternatives, such as aerobic exercise, math, music, nutritious food, or different behavioral therapies, can produce comparable benefits, including training the brain through neuroplasticity. Yet marketers rarely disclose risks of adverse effects, screen for contraindications, or provide information about alternatives.

Education and Law

Chapter 1 illuminates the educational and legal contexts in which yoga and meditation entered the U.S. cultural mainstream. Beginning in the seventeenth century, public schools taught Protestant Christianity. Since the mid-twentieth century, public schools have been tasked by courts with providing a secular education and by educational reformers with shaping moral character and ethical behavior. Yoga and meditation appeal to educators because they promise not only to enhance physical, mental, and emotional health but also to instill morality and ethics without promoting religion. The U.S. Supreme Court issued a series of landmark rulings, among them Engel v. Vitale (1962) and School of Abington Township v. Schempp (1963), that prohibited public schools from endorsing religious practices such as prayer and Bible reading. The Court developed constitutional tests, the Lemon test, endorsement test, and coercion test, for identifying violations of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, based on principles of religious voluntarism, equality, and nondiscrimination. Through the federal cases Malnak v. Yogi (1979) and United States v. Meyers (1996), courts developed the Malnak-Meyers indicia of religion. In 2008, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) identified the imposition of yoga and meditation as reverse religious discrimination.

Superbrain Yoga

Chapter 10 analyzes decisions by the Pennsylvania Department of Education Charter School Appeal Board (CAB) first to grant and then to rescind an elementary school charter in Education for New Generations Charter School v. North Penn School District (2016). CAB determined that school ties to Pranic Healing and Arhatic Yoga (PHAY) and plans to teach Superbrain yoga (SBY) constitute sectarian religious instruction. Master Choa Kok Sui (1952-2007) avowedly developed PHAY in the Philippines to manipulate subtle energies; SBY makes the brain “super” by increasing intuitive intelligence through activating heart and crown chakras to open the gateway to God. One of the proposed school’s co-founders argued in an unrelated case that PHAY is a religion for free exercise purposes. CAB almost granted the charter, illustrating that less familiar religions can be difficult to recognize when framed as scientific techniques with educational benefits. Comparing Sedlock with Education for New Generations, this chapter argues that resource disparities between those issuing and defending against religious charges exert a surprising degree of influence on legal determinations; the California school district had financial motives for teaching yoga, whereas the Pennsylvania district had financial reasons to block a charter school that happened to be based on yoga.

The Jois Foundation Partnership with the Encinitas Union School District

Chapter 5 explores the partnership between the Jois Foundation and the Encinitas Union School District (EUSD) from 2011 to 2016. The Foundation gave EUSD $4 million in grants to introduce Ashtanga yoga; in return, EUSD helped the Foundation develop and validate a curriculum to roll out nationally. The chapter explains how the Foundation got a foothold at EUSD; describes the 2011–12 pilot program (in EUSD and Florida charter schools), grant and expansion in 2012–13; and reveals the Foundation’s ongoing involvement in training, hiring, and supervising yoga teachers, co-authoring a curriculum, and funding research by the Center for Education Policy and Law (CEPAL) at the University of San Diego and the Contemplative Sciences Center (CSC) at the University of Virginia. The Foundation and EUSD deflected parent complaints and defended against litigation by modifying language, while preserving Ashtanga yoga practices—always opening with Sun Salutations and closing with Lotus and Rest. The chapter argues that the history and context of the Jois-Foundation-EUSD partnership shows that despite renaming “Ashtanga yoga” as “EUSD yoga” and disavowing Foundation control, EUSD still taught Ashtanga yoga, continued partnering with the Foundation, and promoted practices that critics and supporters perceived as religious.

Waldorf Methods

Chapter 11 considers Pennsylvania’s Hatboro-Horsham School District (HHSD)’s determination that the proposed Good Earth Charter School (GE) is religiously sectarian. GE is a Waldorf Methods school, premised on Rudolf Steiner’s (1861-1925) anthroposophy, a religious cosmology that explains humanity’s spiritual evolution from cosmic origins and anticipates humanity’s attainment of divine nature. Although Waldorf charter schools withstood a legal challenge in California in PLANS, Inc. v. Sacramento City Unified School Distict, Twin Ridges Elementary School District (1998–2012), HHSD found that GE’s curriculum, teacher training, and affiliations reflect its anthroposophic foundations. Contrasting the California and Pennsylvania cases illustrates how resource disparities can affect legal determinations of what counts as religion. This chapter argues that Waldorf Methods charter schools illustrate how a pedagogical approach can be secular and religious. GE’s curriculum is aligned with state educational standards, and there are public Waldorf Methods schools that promote secular interests by offering an arts-focused education to students who otherwise could not afford it. Yet, Waldorf’s distinctive pedagogy—including its meditation practices—is an outgrowth of Steiner’s esoteric understanding of child development. Modern anthroposophists have in two separate court cases argued successfully that anthroposophy is a religion for free exercise purposes.

Mindfulness in Education

Chapter 9 assesses MindUP, Mindful Schools, and Calmer Choice as representative examples of mindfulness-based programs (MBPs) with a mission of weaving “secular mindfulness” into the fabric of public-school curricula and school culture. Public-school MBPs foreground neuroscience, while avoiding religious-sounding terms such as “Buddhism” or “meditation.” Many MBPs were developed by Buddhists or Buddhist sympathizers and/or reflect Buddhist-derived assumptions, values, and world views. Controversies, notably a legal challenge to Calmer Choice in 2016, center on complaints of religious coercion. Certain Christians, Buddhists, and meditators note barriers to “opting out” of school programs and/or complain that mandatory mindfulness violates conscience. Because MBP leaders envision mindfulness as more than a curriculum—a way of life—training and certification often require public-school teachers to commit to personal practice, participation in retreats (often led by Buddhists at Buddhist centers), and supervision by guiding teachers (many of them Buddhist meditators). Guidelines for “ensuring secularity” advise subtracting religious language, gestures, and objects, without questioning assumptions undergirding the “core practice.” The chapter argues that secular framing paradoxically increases the potential of public-school MBPs to instill beliefs, values, and practices widely associated with religion.

After Sedlock

Chapter 7 narrates Foundation activities beyond Encinitas and after Sedlock. Sonia Jones rebranded the Jois Foundation as the Sonima Foundation (Sonima Health and Wellness Foundation) in 2014 and as Pure Edge in 2016, and provided funding, curriculum, training, and support to schools in Nairobi, Kenya; San Diego, California; New York City, New York; Houston, Texas; East Palo Alto, California, and Louisville, Kentucky. Seeking to avoid future lawsuits, the Foundation subtracted linguistic references to Ashtanga, but continued to teach core Ashtanga practices—including Sun Salutations, Lotus, and Rest—increasingly coupled with mindfulness meditation. Once the threat of litigation seemed safely past, Foundation leaders reintroduced references to Jois, Ashtanga, Hinduism, Buddhism, and spiritual goals through a visually distinct website, Sonima.com. This gave the Foundation perceptual distance to become more involved with funded schools by requiring use of a proprietary curriculum, mandatory training and supervision, and formal evaluation of results. The chapter argues that having won a victory for yoga in Encinitas, the Foundation accelerated its missional work of bringing the philosophy, teachings, and values of Pattabhi Jois to youth in underserved communities across the country and around the world.

Sedlock v. Baird

Chapter 6 interrogates Sedlock v. Baird (2013; 2015), the highest profile state court ruling on public-school yoga. California Superior Court Judge John Meyer found that yoga is “religious” and Ashtanga yoga is the “cornerstone” of “EUSD yoga,” but because a reasonable child would not perceive EUSD yoga as endorsing or disfavoring religion, the program is constitutional. Meyer’s primary example of how EUSD removed “religious, mystical, or spiritual trappings” is that EUSD relabeled Lotus as “criss-cross applesauce” (though it did not). An appellate court found that Hinduism is a “religion” and expressed “little doubt” that public-school Ashtanga yoga is unconstitutional—but determined that EUSD yoga is not Ashtanga yoga because EUSD subtracted Sanskrit and cultural references. This chapter explains how, for financial, conceptual, and procedural reasons, evidence crucial to understanding EUSD yoga was deemed irrelevant, lacking credibility, or inadmissible. Sedlock turned legal precedent on its head—concluding that schools may encourage children to perform religious practices if schools do not teach about the history and context of religious beliefs. The chapter argues that Sedlock illustrates how legal precedent built upon an incomplete documentary record and narrowly doctrinal understanding of religion may, ironically, make religious practice more acceptable in the public square.

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

Chapter 8 unpacks the modern American concept of “mindfulness.” Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1979, provides a model for mindfulness-based programs (MBPs), such as Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). MBSR is nominally “secular” and supported by scientific research, yet infused at every level—concept, structure, teaching training, and graduate resources—with systematic instruction in Buddhist-derived assumptions, values, and practices, what Kabat-Zinn interprets as the “essence” of Buddhism. Many MBPs exhibit the Malnak-Meyers indicia of religion. Certain mindfulness missionaries conceptualize their tactics as “skillful means,” “Stealth Buddhism,” “Trojan horse,” or “script.” Other proponents may understand mindfulness teachings as self-evidently true and “universal,” without recognizing that supposedly “secular ethics” are socially constructed and contested by others, including Christians and certain Buddhists. MBPs exemplify the difficulty of extracting the “secular” from the “religious.” Mindfulness is “secular” in privileging present experience and “religious” in comprising a world view and way of life premised on more-than-physical assumptions about the nature of reality, self, and the path to salvation from suffering. The chapter argues that secularization requires more than subtracting religious language and adding scientific framing: rebuilding from foundations uncontrolled by assumptions about the nature of the self and the world.