Raised on Yoga

Just a decade ago yoga families were on the fringe. Today yoga is influencing family values across the country, and kids are reaping the benefits.

By Jaimal Yogis

I remember the first time I worked up the courage to bring one of my friends, a lanky 12-year-old named Jimmy, to the ashram our family went to on Sundays. It was the early '90s, and in the suburbs of Sacramento, California, having yogi parents like mine was about as common as being raised by wolves. I was in junior high—identity fluctuating like the stock market—and I never mentioned yoga to my classmates, ever. They found out about it anyway—"India, man, that's a long drive," a friend once remarked—but I'd already taken flak for my strange name, the photos of bearded South Asian men on our walls, and the lack of Doritos in our pantry. I didn't need any extra questions like "What's that, like, yogurt thing your parents do again?"

But Jimmy seemed different. We did martial arts together, and I hoped that he'd make the connection between our Bruce Lee obsession and a morning of Om-ing, meditation, and stretching. It seemed worth a try, anyway, and I invited him to come along. I remember a feeling of peace washing over me as Jimmy and I sat in the meditation hall listening to a man named Ananda read the Bhagavad Gita. Jimmy seemed to be enjoying the whole scene—a room full of people sitting cross-legged, chanting to a harmonium, and nibbling on dried fruits. And after all was said and done, Jimmy said the meditation stuff was "pretty cool."

I was elated by the thought that I'd finally found a spiritual buddy. But on Monday at school, Jimmy changed his tune. "Dude, Jaimal took me to his parents' voodoo cult," I heard him reporting to our group of jockish friends. "That was, like, the trippiest experience of my life." Everyone laughed. "Don't your parents eat seaweed or something?" another asked. I played along; I was used to this. "Yeah, I hate going to that place," I said. "It's so boring." I laughed, but inside I felt troubled. I'd have to stick to my original game plan, keeping the depth I'd discovered in my parents' yogic and Buddhist practices hidden from view.

When I was growing up, yoga was still on the fringe—a hippie or New Age tradition. There were no mainstream studios to speak of. Most of us had to go to ashrams to learn about yoga—places where the sights, sounds, and experiences were so unlike the rest of American life, you felt a bit like you'd stepped across the threshold to a foreign land or even another planet. To many minds this unfamiliar terrain had all the trappings of a cult.

Most of us early American yoga brats (let's say from the 1960s into the early '90s) tagged along, not always voluntarily, on our parents' spiritual adventures, randomly picking up a good vibe or two but completely unsure of how to integrate the practice into our lives. For starters, the entire culture gave us not-so-subtle messages that this yoga stuff wasn't cool, so we weren't even sure we wanted to embrace the practice. And our own parents were probably unable to give us much guidance. A bit like immigrants in this vast new land, most of them would take years to figure out how to assimilate the practice into daily life. Yoga was often both a joyful adventure and an unsettling one for the entire family.

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