The University of Ottawa in Canada notified Jennifer Scharf that her free weekly yoga classes were to be suspended...for cultural appropriation. Scharf had been offering free beginning yoga classes to students at the university since 2008. 

“I’d been in touch to prepare for the new semester’s classes when, out of nowhere, I received an email telling me there were some issues in terms of a formal complaint,” she told The Independent.

The decision to cancel the classes came from the Ottawa Student Federation, a group that describes itself as an "instrument of political action."

According to the Ottawa Sun, staff from the Centre for Students with Disabilities, where the classes were held for students of all abilities, wrote in an email: “While yoga is a really great idea and accessible and great for students...there are cultural issues of implication involved in the practice. Yoga has been under a lot of controversy lately due to how it is being practiced”, and which cultures those practices “are being taken from”.

 The email also informed Scharf  many of those cultures “have experienced oppression, cultural genocide and diasporas due to colonialism and western supremacy... we need to be mindful of this and how we express ourselves while practising yoga.”

Scharf, trying to salvage her class from extinction, offered to change the name to "mindful stretching" but the school was not interested. Her request was rejected. “I think it’s easy to worry too much about accommodating everyone,” she said. “By saving one person’s feelings, we’re ruined the experience for so many others.”

The Washington Post contacted Scharf who told the paper she was unhappy, but accepted the decision.

“This particular class was intro to beginners yoga because I’m very sensitive to this issue,” she said. “I would never want anyone to think I was making some sort of spiritual claim other than the pure joy of being human that belongs to everyone free of religion.”