Alabama has lifted its 27-year ban on yoga in public schools…
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When he was thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.
That’s because yoga is harder than it looks.
It began the summer that Dill came to us, and one hot, lazy afternoon when he bet Jem that he couldn’t invent a silly pose. Jem got down on all fours and arched his back. He said he was calling it the Downward Dog, though I said why not just call it the Normal Dog, a downward dog should be lying flat out with a quick brown fox jumping over you.
Jem ignored that and told Dill it was his turn. Dill also got onto all fours, with his back stiff and horizontal.
“Shoot, that’s just a press-up,” said Jem, “without the press and the up.”
“It ain’t,” said Dill. “I call it the, um, Plank.”
“The Um Plank?” I said. The others laughed.
We played all afternoon. We called it ‘yoga’, because that was the funniest word we could think of, and with each pose we would say “um” as we were doing it, then roll around laughing. Our neighbours came and watched, because there was no hurry, there was nowhere to go in Maycomb.
Even in the Radley Place we thought we saw an inside shutter move. Flick. A tiny, almost invisible movement, and the house was still.
Aunt Alexandra was not impressed by our yoga. She told Atticus that if God had wanted us to stand on one leg he would have given us, well, one leg. Atticus asked her what God’s attitude was to holding a coffee cup in one hand, and it was at times like that that I thought that my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.
Next day Jem, while attempting something he called the Ballet Giraffe, fell and broke his arm. Neighbours sniffed “I told you so,” the Maycomb Chronicle wrote a sharp editorial, and Sheriff Heck Tate said that anyone seen practicing yoga would be arrested.
Atticus argued our case, but lost, and yoga was done. Rumours grew that some people had secretly loved what we had been doing and had started practicing it in the privacy of their parlours. Occasionally when passing a house you might hear a wail, or a crash that sounded an awful lot like someone toppling from a Tree Pose onto a sideboard full of china, but no-one would ever admit to anything.
Then one night, on the way home from the school Halloween pageant, I was attacked by Bob Ewell.
I screamed and was struggling desperately when I saw a stranger race across the park. He wrapped both legs behind his own neck, thrust himself forward onto his hands and somersaulted toward us. His legs unwrapped, locked themselves instead around the neck of Ewell, and the stranger twisted in mid-air.
There was a snapping sound, and Ewell fell to the ground.
I looked into the eyes of Boo Radley.
My scream had attracted attention, and as Boo unwrapped his legs and stood, Sheriff Tate ran towards us. He looked at the scene for a long time.
“Practicin’ yoga,” he said eventually.
Boo bowed his head.
“Yep, I reckon that was it,” said the sheriff. “Ewell was illegally practicin’ yoga when he fatally injured himself attemptin’ the -” he looked down at the body.
“Corpse position,” I said.
“Looks like he’d got pretty good at it,” said Sheriff Heck Tate.