About Us
“Glorify God in your body.”– 1 Corinthians 6:20
Like many Christians who practice yoga, I am hardly a purist. You could even call me a “cafeteria yogi.” I pick and choose among the various yoga practices that fit my overall lifestyle, level of fitness and religious beliefs. Fortunately, at every single yoga school where I have studied, without exception, the other students are exactly the same.
They are typical Canadian and American suburban professional types: harried moms, latte-swilling office workers, students, retired folk. The music is funky New Age chanting music, which, quite frankly, I find very relaxing and enjoy immensely. The teachers invariably say “Namaste” after class — which, despite all the hullabaloo among fundamentalists about its alleged polytheistic meanings, is just the ordinary Hindi way of saying “hello” (as my Indian relatives inform me). But beyond that, my yoga classes are about as pagan as an aerobics class down at the YMCA.
More and more people are awakening to this fact. Yoga is not the be all and end all of health. My doctor informs me that, while yoga is great for flexibility and stress-reduction, I still must hit the treadmill or swim for aerobics. If the yoga workout is particularly intense, it may qualify for the strength training that doctors now add to the list. (When are we supposed to do all this stuff, by the way?)
I find that two formal yoga classes a week are just about right for me — combined with brief but intense sessions when I wake up and right before I go to sleep. Yoga gives me something that no other activity does. It provides a systematic stretching and what I can only describe as “liberation” of muscle groups ignored by all my other sports (Aikido, tennis, swimming) and activities (walking on the beach with my wife).
It also quiets me down, physically and mentally, and harmonizes very well with a lifelong meditation practice. For Christians who find little time for prayer and contemplation in the hectic modern world, regular yoga practices literally forces them to quiet down. It relaxes you unlike anything else — and then quiets your mind.
Yoga (or Buddhist) meditation is not the same thing as Christian or Jewish prayer, but they can be a necessary preparation for prayer — even a prerequisite. Without the quiet, stillness and relaxation that yoga provides, many people find it almost impossible to pray. But Christian yogis, blessed with such islands of silence and stillness, inevitably find themselves spontaneously giving thanks and lifting their minds and hearts to God.
My introduction to yoga came, nearly 40 years ago, from a Benedictine monk. A friend gave me a copy of Dom J.-M. Dechanet’s classic work Yoga in Ten Lessons and then, later, Christian Yoga. Dechanet advocated a middle course between an intellectually shallow syncretism (that sees no conflicts at all between Christianity and yoga) and an equally shallow fundamentalism that believes Christians have nothing to learn whatsoever from the world’s great mystical traditions.
Over the decades, I found others who chartered this middle path, exploring how the disciplines of Eastern mysticism could help deepen and restore the mystical core of Christianity that has been obscured and even lost in much of the urban west — including Bede Griffiths, Thomas Merton, the whole Centering Prayer movement, William Johnston, SJ; William McNamara, OCD; Thomas Ryan, CSP; and many others. It’s no accident that many pioneers of Christian Yoga have been from the Roman Catholic or Orthodox traditions. Both of these apostolic Christian communions have a long tradition of “body prayer” and mudra-like gestures — bows and genuflections, the Sign of the Cross, even full-body prostations — as well as a mystical tradition that dates back to the earliest years of Christianity. Indeed, even in warning against some aspects of New Age religion in its “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on some aspects of Christian Meditation,” the Vatican pointed out how yoga and some Eastern meditation forms can be helpful for Christians:
“The majority of the ‘great religions’ which have sought union with God in prayer have also pointed out ways to achieve it. Just as the Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in these religions, neither should these ways be rejected out of hand simply because they are not Christian. On the contrary, one can take from them what is useful so long as the Christian conception of prayer, its logic and requirements are never obscured. It is within the context of all of this that these bits and pieces should be taken up and expressed anew…”
Many Protestant churches and organizations do “reject out of hand” yoga and Eastern spirituality out of a concern that they are a form of “idolatry” condemned in the Mosaic law. But in recent years, a few courageous evangelicals have attempted to make use of yoga to deepen that mystical core of Christianity — although a few have attempted, instead, to create “alternatives” to yoga that depart so radically from the basic intent of yoga that I don’t believe they should actually be called yoga at all.
Please explore this website. We hope to make it a “clearinghouse” of information about Christian yoga and other “experiments in truth,” including Zen and other types of eastern meditation, Aikido, natural wellness, simple living, and so on.
So, the bottom line is this: If you’ve been thinking about trying out yoga but are concerned about the alleged “spiritual dangers,” forget about it. The people who prattle on about that have rarely stepped inside a yoga studio in their lives. What you’ll find is probably people exactly like yourself — stiff, overworked, semi-arthritic, stressed-out modern men and women — who are trying to ease the kinks out of their tired bodies and souls. And that is a good thing. Namaste!