Zoning and zen: how regulations and charges of "cultural appropriation" destroyed a widow's small business dream.

• Author: Soave, Robby
• Position: Renee Bierbaum

THREE YEARS AGO, tragedy struck Renee Bierbaum of Palmetto, Florida. Her husband was killed in a motorcycle accident, leaving her a widow with an u-year-old son. Consumed by grief, she eventually found solace by practicing yoga--and decided to quit her job and become a full-time instructor.

When he died, I realized the brevity of my life," she says. "I hated what I was doing." Now Bierbaum is a certified yoga instructor and the proud owner of an expansive yoga pavilion in her backyard. Her business is on hold, however, because the county government won't let her teach yoga--on her own property--unless she coughs up $7,000 for a permit.

Even if she's able to pay, there's no guarantee the county government will actually let her proceed. According to zoning laws, the public has the right to weigh in on the matter of whether officials should grant Bierbaum her permit. And as it turns out, a certain member of the public--a Native American activist who believes Bierbaum is appropriating his culture--is determined to stop her from realizing her vision.

Sal Serbin is a member of the Sioux nation and an activist with the American Indian Movement in Florida. He doesn't object to the yoga portion of Bierbaum's class--yoga has South-Asian Indian origins, not Native American origins. But Bierbaum intended to incorporate a sweat lodge into her offerings.

"It is my right as an Indian to preserve and protect our culture," he says. Serbin, who alerted county officials to the illegality of Bierbaum's practice in the first place, says he will use every means at his disposal to prevent her from appropriating his culture. "The law helped me in this case and I took advantage of that."

Some yoga practitioners strip it from any cultural context and treat it mostly as a workout. Indeed, when liberal students at the University of Ottawa tried to have a yoga class shut down on grounds that it appropriates Indian culture and marginalizes non-white students, the instructor offered to change the name of the class to "mindful stretching," since it had very little to do with authentic yoga.

But Bierbaum--who also teaches martial arts--fully embraces yoga's cultural, spiritual, and meditative properties. She even teaches the proper Indian terminology in her classes. "When I present the postures, I use their Sanskrit names," she explains. "I want to honor that tradition."

Bierbaum started by holding classes for friends at various neighbors' houses. Eventually, there was too...