Posted on 07/01/2014 4:20:15 PM PDT by NYer
Yelling “fire” in a crowded theater can get you into trouble. So can saying “yoga” in a group of Catholics.
I just do it for the stretches, I don’t do anything religious.
It’s evil…the work of the devil.
Oh please! The next thing you’ll be telling me is the number 13 brings bad luck.
Practicing yoga breaks the First Commandment; it’s pagan worship.
And so it goes. And goes. And goes.
Three years ago, I did an article titled “To Yoga or Not to Yoga.” Initially, I wrote it then put it aside for around a year. I was not sure I was up for putting my head into a hornet’s nest. When the time seemed right, I posted it. The hornets came. So did a number of radio interviews in which the listener lines lit up the whole time. “Can you stay on for another half hour,” I was asked by host Drew Mariani at Relevant Radio. “This happens every time we talk about yoga.”
There are a lot of issues that come with controversy—contraception, supposed same-sex marriage, and abortion, being among them. The difference is that the Church has spoken definitely on those issues. People can agree or disagree with the Catholic Church but they cannot pretend the Church is in favor of any of those issues. With yoga, interpretations abound. Debates can get heated, with both sides convince that yoga for exercise is either harmless or evil.
In a definition from About.com, yoga is described as, “ . . . a disciplined path for purification of our attachments to the temporal world of form (bodies and objects) and the ever changing world of energy and mind, to experience the bliss and unity of consciousness as the unchanging, ever permanent, immortal and infinite Being.” Wow. Cool. Wait, what’s that about the immortal and infinite Being? Is that God? Or the devil? Or is it nothing if I just show up with a mat and stretch pants ready to limber up?
Yoga is considered a whole body experience originating in Hinduism as a means to reach enlightenment through exercises and meditations that unite the body, mind, and spirit. For Catholics, worshiping or becoming one with a yoga deity breaks the First Commandment. No one argues that point. The question is, can we claim to just be there in pursuit of physical fitness alone?
Hatha yoga, the one used in exercise classes, prepares the body for enlightenment through physical postures. Some people say they don’t participate in the meditations or postures that could be religious. After all, if an atheist folds his hands, he’s not praying. So if a yoga posture used for worship means nothing but a balance exercise to you, then is that all it is?
Putting your body into a particular posture does not automatically turn it into a form of worship. But what if that is the purpose of the pose as many of the yoga postures are? Can you remain neutral even if the instructor is not? Isn’t the intent of the person what matters most?
The controversy with yoga goes beyond a person’s intent. No one is accusing Catholics of going to yoga class specifically to worship a Hindu God. The problem is that yoga holds that all existence is one; there is no distinction between God and the universe. Through enlightenment a person becomes one with all of existence.
Having taken a yoga class myself many years ago, I know that the stretches, relaxation meditations and poses, all mesh together. It would be hard to discern the instructor’s meaning behind everything. For instance, a classic yoga mantra: “So’ham” means, ‘I am the universal Self,’” which is often used repetitively, timed with your breathing.
A friend who took a yoga class told me everyone was supposed to fold their hands and bow before they began. She said she did not do that but upon considering that yoga exercise is one part of a bigger pagan spiritual practice, she decided to quit. “Why take a chance?” she said. “If parts of it are wrong, then I’m not going to participate in any of it.”
In part 1 of the 3 part series, “What is Yoga? A Catholic Perspective,” Fr. Ezra Sullivan O.P., a Dominican Friar of the Province of St. Joseph pointed out that one indication of yoga’s spiritual nature even in exercise classes is the way it affects practitioners over time. “The International Journal of Yoga published the results of a national survey in Australia. Physical postures (asana) comprised about 60% of the yoga they practiced; 40% was relaxation (savasana), breathing techniques (pranayama), meditation, and instruction. The survey showed very significant results: although most respondents commonly began yoga for reasons of physical health, they usually continued it for reasons of spirituality.
“In addition, the more people practiced yoga, the more likely they were to decrease their adherence to Christianity and the more likely they were to adhere to non-religious spirituality and Buddhism. In other words, whatever their intentions may have been, many people experience yoga as a gateway to a spirituality disconnected from Christ.”
Regardless of the warnings or information, there are always Catholics who say they will not give up their yoga because it makes them feel good and they personally don’t use it for religion. But there is a further consideration with yoga. By participating in yoga, or when a school or church sponsors classes, it gives the message of blanket approval. If yoga is okay with the Church or with Sally Stretchy, then it’s obviously okay, is the impression. So, if just part of it is wrong, is it still okay to practice some of it? What do you think?
(To read all three parts of the yoga article or for daily spiritual direction go to: http://spiritualdirection.com.)
I’ve never been a big fan of yoga .
It’s basically just sour milk ... tastes nasty even with the fruit on the bottom.
What’s more important? Anxiety or your immortal soul?
I want to see “Bad Grandpa” go to Pilates now.
When you throw in looking at woman wearing yoga pants now I’m going to hell for sure.
i’d use “thank you Jesus” and watch their ‘tolerant’ heads explode.
Yoga is one of many practices that Christians should avoid. Tarot, crystal balls, horoscopes, fortunetellers, all of that stuff. We’re not to look for answers and solutions except from God.
In regard to the title, some arguments just start on their own. I get enough action just giving Bible quotes without trying to start any trouble.
A few years ago, a Catholic friend asked my opinion about yoga, and she thought I was nuts when I said I preferred to stay away because of its pagan origins.
Besides, I believe kickboxing or weight training or even fast walking are all better workouts that bending yourself around on a mat.
You let me worry about that,
Japanese say 禅茶一味 zencha ichimi, "Zen and tea [have] one [and the same] flavor."
But does the tea ceremony have to be Buddhist? Of the seven disciples of Sen no Rikyu, the "originator" of the tea ceremomy, four were Buddhist and three--one of them the nephew of the Japanese ruler Oda Nobunaga--were Christian. Moreover, the Zen temple associated with Omotesenke is the Zuiho-in, the only Zen temple which commemorates a Christian samurai, Otomo Sorin. The temple has two rock gardens: one has a cross shape hidden in the rock placements, at the foot of which is buried a statue of Mary, and the other is an abstract representation of Jesus giving the Sermon on the Mount. Finally, there are ways in which the tea ceremony embodies hidden Christian messages, too numerous to list here; I will simply point out one, that the ritual of the tea ceremony seems to emulate the Sacrament of the Altar.
So can a Christian practice tea ceremony without fear of entering into the realms of Zen Buddhist heterodoxy? Of course s/he can, but it takes some wariness, and some open proclamation of one's faith. My most recent experience of this was teaching the basics of chanoyu to Christian martial arts students. In Japan this would be tantamount to heresy: people study tea or they study karate, but almost never both, and never at the same venue. In the US, however, it makes perfect sense: Christian martial arts teachers emulate Kingley's idea of muscular Christianity, and Christian tea ceremony provides the complementary discipline of learning theosis through reverence and koinonia through harmony.
So my answer to the Christian yogis would be: if you can teach Christian doctrine and practice through yoga, and if you can find some Christian historical connection to yoga--NOT pseudo-Christan "Jesus was Mahavishnu" or similar heresy, but rather something connected to, say, the Thomas churches or the Yashu Bakhti movement--then have at it. But the advice a fellow Christian gave me 34 years ago, when I began my first lessons in tea ceremony, still rings true today: if you EVER feel yourself being pulled away from Christ, leave it IMMEDIATELY, because there are worse things than gaining the whole world, and one of them is losing your own soul.
Many societal destructions are visited upon us through women breaking out of their roles for just the sake of breaking out
Women should be pilots, dictors, writers, CEOs and anything else they want to be, the PM of Great Britain, for instance. And they should have full respect when they do so. If they’re good at it and if they’re doing it because they’re good at it
But meanwhile, kids all over the western world are deserted without mothers. No one is home
Women do things because others are doing it. Like 15 year olds whose attentive parents would ask, ‘so, if someone told you to jump off of the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it?’
Oprah Winfrey is a great perpetrator, yet not even she understands the consequences and the power of her massive pied piper spirituality toward women looking to ‘feel better, and about everything, and now, immediately’
Yoga invites spirits. And not angels, guardian angels, saints, not the holy family nor the Holy Spirit It’s poses and positions create a channel for these spirits who are unfriendly to the holy spirits
Many things- activities, foods, drinks, people, etc, make us feel better. Yoga does. That doesn’t mean they’re good. It doesn’t mean they’re not evil
Women devote themselves to yoga. While men continue through this time unglazed by and disinterested in all of this, but continually interested in mesmerizing inconsequential sex, through the objectifying birth control, bowing to it and refusing to stand up to any principal, while women bow to this feel good activity completely oblivious
I’ve seen families scrounging for food on a Sunday morning while mom is at yoga, completely pissed on having to attend mass on Christmas Catholics going back to the 800s in Ireland
Not an image of the blessed mother not a crucifix not a cross in the house
Advising me to take up yoga. They look great, money in the billions ( no stretch) completely unable to not only not handle adversity, immorality, a wrong path, but unable to recognize it
No thanks. The rosary works just fine
Somewhere I read a Vatican release about yoga. Can never locate it
Johnette b or FR Mitch paces must have it somewhere
NYer this actually is very important. It takes the mother out of tge home effectively
All of the Seinfeld style, ‘oh how silly’ comments should tell you the nature of the power of yoga
Nothing wrong with Pilates. It was devised by a euro (French?) md to rehab war vets.
I saw a Kook who was standing on his head.
He flipped his lid like he should have been in bed.
I said, "what gives, man?"
He looked at me and said,
"I'm a Yogi, I'm a Yogi, baby.
I'm a Yogi, I'm a Yogi, baby."
Hey, Booboo!
And then the cat started strutting on hot coals.
He was wearing sneaks, but they were so full of holes.
He sang right out from the bottom of his soles,
"I'm a Yogi, I'm a Yogi, baby. I'm a Yogi, I'm a Yogi, baby."
Hey, Booboo!
"Listen here, baby," the Yogi man said,
"It's all a matter of the mind.
Just commune with your innermost being,
Baby, you'll be just fine."
He was hip, all right, wasn't he?
So I tried my best to dig my inner me.
I walked on coals, my head below my knee.
Until at last I heard me say perfectly,
"I'm a Yogi, I'm a Yogi, baby.
I'm a Yogi, I'm a Yogi, baby."
Hey, Booboo!
Same as the GRegorian Chants? It is a method to allow introspection, IMHO.
Catholics do not fear. In fact they, regardless of misconceptions, regard tge bible and Jesus’ words, ‘fear not’
But they are not stupid They know they must follow the will of God who will present them with necessary info, if they pray for it
Staying away from practices which alter spirituality is required, just like not reading bad literature, viewing bad movies. It’s like drinking too much or imbibing in drugs which do nothing good
Well, he was a pretty good baseball player.
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