Christians beating plowshares into swords, legal style.

Yoga. Not what one thinks of when the word "controversy". But in California some Christians seem to have awoken to the fact that yoga is a Hindu religious practice, not plain old calisthenics.

Encinitas is believed to be the only public school system that will have yoga instructors teach full-time at its nine schools as part of an overall wellness curriculum that includes nutrition and a school garden program, among other things.

The program is expected to teach a 30-minute yoga lesson to roughly 5,000 students twice a week at the district's schools, which run kindergarten through sixth grade. It is funded with a $533,000 grant from the Jois Foundation, a nonprofit whose board of directors includes the son of the late Indian instructor Krishna Pattabhi Jois, whose teachings are said to have popularized Ashtanga yoga in the Western world and were followed by Madonna and Sting.

A parent is going to sue the Encinitas school board  on the basis of that old chestnut so beloved by liberals everywhere, the separation of Church and State.

Mary Eady pulled her first-grade son out of the classes.

Eady said she observed a kindergarten class in which the children did the motions referred to in yoga practices as a sun salutation. The folded over children, stood upright, sweeping up their arms toward the sky.

She said while the teacher called it an "opening sequence" the connotation was the same in her mind: Students were learning to worship the sun, which went against her Christian beliefs that only God should be worshipped.

"It will change the way you think," she said. "What they are teaching is inherently spiritual, it's just inappropriate therefore in our public schools."

Their attorney, Dean Broyles, says they are considering suing to halt the program.

The article goes to some considerable length to ridicule this woman, but give all the lawsuits over Christmas trees and nativity scenes from the Left over the years, I think she's got a major point. Yoga IS a Hindu religious practice. It is designed to lead the practitioner in the ways of Hindu spirituality. Its properly considered as prayer, and is practiced as such.  It has no Christian  basis at all, and indeed runs counter to many basic Christian tenets. One need not read too far in the Yoga Sutras to discover that.

So way to go Mary Eady for making the Lefty sword cut the other way for a change. Stand up for yourself or be ground under.

The Phantom