Keep UK Sports Council Out Of Yoga

This petition is to formally complain to the UK Sports Council (aka Sport England) about the deleterious effects on Yoga that awarding the status of Governing Body to a single organisation has had.

Yoga is not a sport and though some yogis utilise physical exercise in their practice, it is far more than an exercise regime.

As well as the physical, Yoga has defining philosophical, spiritual, religious, emotional and ethical dimensions.

For this reason, it is simply not appropriate for Sport England to have any impact on the practice and dissemination of Yoga.

The effect that it has had has been to create difficulties for authentic practitioners who choose not to work with the current Governing Body, and particularly those who teach and train teachers.

It has also aided the circulation of a highly truncated notion of what Yoga is, and what it can do for people in the minds of the general public within the UK.

Sport Englands own Influence and Control criteria state that a governing body should have reasonable influence in the context of the sport controlled, e.g. in terms of governing the rules of the sporting activity within the jurisdiction, the training and education of coaches and officials..

This certainly is not this case as many more Yoga practitioners and teachers lie outside of its reach than are within it.

Also, there is much misunderstanding as to what Governing Body actually means.

People reasonably believe that it has some legal import, whilst in fact it does not.

For the reasons I have given, I request that the current Governing Body be derecognised and, as importantly that the Sport England award of Governing Body status is not given to any other organisation of any kind for the foreseeable future.
________
Follow this link for more resources and things you can do to take more direct action, sample letters, contact information etc:-

http://yoga-eu.net/opensource/view/AfroEurasia/UK/UkYogaRegulation