My history with yoga
Ok, so, if you’ve got nothing better to do, go and read WHAT’S IN A WORD? By Catholic Evangelist, Eddie Russell FMI. This, similar to The Vatican’s A Christian reflection
on the “New Age” is a Christian based opposition to the New Age movement. In a variety of forms. But “What’s in a word?” goes beyond what the Vatican said to include things even remotely New Age. Like yoga.
Portions of the following are from a blog I stopped using a while ago.
One summer, about 2.5 years ago, (edit, now more like 3.5) someone informed me about the MSU Medical Yoga club (edit, which I’ve been the president of the past two years), which is just an outreach of the Yogic Sciences Research Foundation (YSRF). They are free classes, and there are a variety of them throughout the (edit: East Lansing, Michigan) area.
Anyway, some of them are used for teacher training. What happens during teaching training is that, after the regular teacher thinks that the person in training has seen a particular series of postures done enough, the person in training is allowed to teach that series of postures. If in accordance with the teacher’s expectations, the teacher in training is considered capable of teaching that series - perhaps as a substitute or something. When a teacher in training has successfully taught the six main series, there’s a little certificate they get, and voila - the YSRF considers the person capable of teaching.
I took the teacher training during late 2001 and early 2002, and substitute taught for a while, then co-taught for a while, and now (edit: did, not now) teach two classes of my own as well as take turns teaching a third one, all for free.
I’ve been doing yoga on and off throughout my life,
but more off than on until I got involved with the YSRF.
So, as you can see, I’ve got some experience with yoga, and, some of you may have come to feel from my reading that I’ve got got some experience with Christianity and so I, of course, feel like I’m qualified to say something about the proposed opposition between the two.
There is an opposition. I’m not going to say that there isn’t. We can’t unify things without sacrificing parts of others, there is no doubt in that. And the spiritual aspect of yoga, which is what I have been repeatedly drawn to at different points in my life, is something that, as I better come to understand Christianity, is something that doesn’t quite mesh with it. The spiritual aspect of yoga also went missing from my life, and that’s one of the reasons that I’ve stopped doing it for a while. Maybe this is God’s will. I don’t know. But as I’ve come to understand Christianity better, and the metaphor of our body as a temple for worship, I come to realize that just as some people have worshiped the Bible instead of God, so to, some people worship the temple for worship instead of God. The Bible and the instrument of worship, the body, both of rightful places in our relationship with God, but to think that either should be neglected for the other is, I believe, not being respectful of God’s gifts to us - for to have a Bible, the ability to read it, and a body, and the ability to use it, are gifts, as is everything that we have.
What then? Moderation in all things. We can not all be biblical scholars, and I do not believe God expects us to. We can not all be incredibly adept yogis that have the side effect of being limber contortionists, and I do not believe God expects us to. We each have our unique calling, and we need to do, know, and respond to it as best we can.
It reminds me of a story from Sesame Street of a king that was so glad that a fireman saved his palace from fire that he made everyone a fireman, and then, when we wondered why he didn’t have any mail, made everyone a postal employee, and so on, until finally he realized that it would be fine for everyone to just be the position that they had originally and then everything could work. The apostle Paul has similar things to say regarding the parts of the body of Christ.
But I digress. Yes, yoga and Christianity are opposed to each other. And the underlying views of searching for the truth within and the truth from above are different. And while one can attempt to unify them together, you lose something along the way. For those that favor the Bible, this tends to get lost in the excitement about a more experiential way of relating to God. And for those that favor looking within through yogic practices, it is easy to procrastinate about paying proper reverence to scriptures.
I think a guiding principle that should be applied is that one can know things by their fruit:
For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes.
A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.
Luke 6:43-45 (King James Version)
Why do I mention this? We’ve got this site which seems all nice and professional, but clearly, the people that like that content don’t mind violating laws and not attributing the source of their content because it is replicated, without attribution, here, and here which actually dates to an earlier time? Who is telling the truth regarding when they copyrighted it and whether it belongs to them or not?
Along that same vein, we’ve got Christian Tantra techniques from Reverand Banks. Note that he’s advocating “deep breathing” and “meditation”. This is exactly what Catholic Evangelist, Eddie Russell warns us against in WHAT’S IN A WORD?: Certainly, keeping your back straight, focusing and deep breathing excersises also appear to have their roots in these practices. That is, yogic practices.
Of course, unless you’ve been reading the links, this is going to seem like a bit of a stretch. Surely, there’s nothing wrong with good posture, attentiveness, and avoidance of shallow breathing, right? Perhaps. From first-hand experience, corroborated with that of one of the yoga instructors that I’ve had Suzanne Wingate (not associated with the YSRF at all), I can tell you that that is just the beginning in the steps to awaken Kundalini. My attempts to deal with this phenomena and understand it were assisted by a nice person from Kundalini Information and Kundalini Network as well as folks from one of the many Yahoo groups dealing with kundalini.
I’m not trying to scare you. I’m not trying to tell you all that kundalini is “bad” per se. It is something to be careful with, and it isn’t right for everyone. Whether or not it is right for anyone is not something I know.
This actually is one of the reasons why I don’t quite teach YSRF style yoga like I used to. I’ve backed away from too many of the different breathing exercises because I wanted to make sure I didn’t awaken the kundalini within my students. Unintentionally, one of my students did have an emotional and energetic release one day, within the past year, and that was just further confirmation of this for me.
Certainly, the benefits of yoga are not to be dismissed. But there are traditions rooted in culture, rather than religion, which are more compatible with Christianity. Things like walking meditation have been used by Christian mystics in labyrinths all over the world from, such as Chartes Cathetral to The Peoples Church where I’ve been going the past few years. (There are two other labyrinths in the East Lansing, Michigan area. I’m going to miss them. I hope I can find some where I’m moving.)
“Just walking?” you say “Can I really get all the benefits of yoga from just walking?” Well, no, but you can take care of the attentiveness, breathing, and posture concerns that way, in a way that I believe is more natural for us as humans than just to sit still. As for the benefits of yoga like flexibility, being “in tune” with one’s body, balance, and so forth, can and have all been developed via standard stretches and balancing postures (some found in Pilates) that can and should be done as part of any exercise routine that involves those muscles being moved.
As far as the being “in tune” with one’s body goes, I really am not qualified to say much about this. I’ve inherited an incredible sense of touch to the point where I can feel my blood pulse through any part of me, and can usually even feel my food flow along the digestive path. So I have an advantage in that regard, but at the same time, it is a disadvantage because I often can not relate to the difficulties that my yoga students have had in that regard.
So am I ready to say goodbye to yoga just yet? No, not just yet. Something the YSRF developed and perfected, but which I have seen in no other health system, is that of what they call “medical yoga”. They’ve found a parallel between the “chakras” or energy centers (in traditional yogic psychic anatomy) and the ductless glands that can be found in the human body, and have designed their system of yoga to stimulate these appropriately. This happens to correspond with stimulating the chakras in a way so as to facilitate the arousing of kundalini, unfortunately. But the stimulation of these glands works and makes sense. I can attest to this as I had abnormally low (but not incredibly low) levels of a certain thyroid produced hormone and this style of yoga seems to have remedied it.
Of course, in this day and age in which there are so many artificial and unnatural substances in the air, food, and water, it is almost expected that we have hormone imbalances. But I think that if we were truly able to find a healthy lifestyle, we wouldn’t need the yoga to stimulate these glands because they’d be naturally stimulated in the food we ate, the activities and movement we did would all contribute to whatever stimulation the glands needed, and there wouldn’t be such artificial substances interfering. What sort of movement? Just walking, like I mentioned above? No, not just walking. Liturgical dance.
In fact, Christians are trying to create Christian alternatives to yoga, for similar reasons to why I’m writing this post. I’m still in the top 6 search results for Christian Aerobics, and it is a search term that has brought me much traffic as evidenced by the comments on that post.
I like yoga. I like what it has done for me. But for where I am, spiritually, I need to set it aside, at least for the time being, at least for the most part, and pursue other ways of staying healthy.