Christians Today Practice Yoga Because They Need It

What is Christian yoga? Why should Christians practice yoga – or any of the other Eastern meditative and spiritual practices we discuss in these pages? Aren’t yoga, Zen, Qigong and so on based on pagan religions and therefore something Christians should avoid? And isn’t contemporary culture already obsessed enough with the body?

These, and many other questions, are often raised by people who see our little online newsletter.

Even people who are sympathetic to yoga and Christianity see them as two utterly unrelated enterprises. You do yoga for your body, and Christianity for your soul. Others say that “Christian yoga” makes about as much sense as “Christian sewing” or “Christian basketball.”

I’d like to take a moment to address just a few of these questions.

First of all, as St. Paul told the Romans in his letter to them, Christians embrace and celebrate all that is good and true in other religions. They always have. The fact that yoga, Zen, Aikido, and other Eastern spiritual disciplines arose within non-Christian contexts does not automatically disqualify them for sincere Christians.

Just as Christians “baptized” and made their own a wide variety of non-Christian rituals and cultural activities – from the Jewish scriptures to the winter solstice that became Christmas to All Hallows Eve – so, too, many are now turning to the spiritual disciplines of Asia for health, mental training and relaxation.

If an association with pagan deities is all that is required for Christians to forsake something, then fundamentalist Christians should cease using the Gregorian calendar altogether – since even the months are named after pagan gods (January for the Roman god Janus, March for the Roman god of war, Mars, etc.).

Secondly, Christians turn to yoga, Zen meditation and other eastern spiritual disciplines because too many of the churches in the west have utterly abandoned their mystical and spiritual calling. Churches are places of public worship and proclamation, it is true, but few churches teach the spiritual disciplines of personal prayer, Christian meditation, fasting and self-denial that were once commonplace in the West. Even in Orthodox and Roman Catholic communities, where spirituality and devotional practices are part of their living heritage, many ordinary parishioners find they get little practical instruction. Catholics in their forties and fifties will sometimes shamefully admit that the last time they went to Confession (the ancient spiritual practice once nearly universal among Catholics) was in high school. Outside of monasteries and cloistered Carmelite convents, spiritual direction, retreats and similar traditional observances are largely a thing of the past (although making a comeback in some circles).

Thirdly, the reason why so many people turn to yoga can perhaps be found in Jean-Pierre de Caussade’s classic text, Abandonment to Divine Providence. A Jesuit priest born in 1675, Caussade was writing at a time when there was an explosion of interest (in both Protestant and Catholic circles) in “spiritual exercises” and devotional practices. But in his book, he asks why all of this spiritual technology is necessary.

“Today God still speaks to us as he used to speak to our ancestors at a time when there were neither spiritual directors nor any systems of spirituality,” he writes. “Religious devotion had not become a science crammed with precepts and detailed instructions. Nowadays, no doubt, our special needs make this necessary, but in the old days people were less complex and more straightforward.”

“Special needs” indeed. I would argue that our hyper-kinetic, urban life – with email and constant scurrying about – makes our needs even more special than in the 17^th century. We turn to the disciplines of the East as a way of slowing down in a culture that only values speed… to find silence in a society that is “plugged in” literally 24 hours a day.

Yoga is particularly countercultural in this regard. When I attend my usual yoga class, it looks for all the world like a dance studio. There are no statues of Shiva to freak out my fundamentalist friends. About a dozen people are led, over an hour and half, through a rigorous series of postures that systematically strength, relax and quiet themselves down. Yes, there is weird Indian sitar music gently humming in the background… and you can smell chai tea and the vaguest scent of incense in the air. It’s peaceful, quiet and very relaxing.

Yoga provides both the time and the space for a profound quieting down of the external and internal noise that prevents many people – or at least me – from hearing the “still, quiet voice” that is God.

Fourthly, the notion that modern culture “worships the body” is a bit of a joke to anyone who practices yoga regularly. Modern people in the West maybe worship sex – although even that is debatable as many overworked, exhausted couples might admit. But the idea that the overweight, stiff, largely out-of-shape people in North America, Europe, Australia and even India worship the human body is ludicrous. They do just the opposite: Ignore it utterly.

So, Christians who practice yoga, Zen, Aikido and similar eastern health and spiritual disciplines do so, not out of a repudiation of their own religious heritage, but as a way of deepening it.

They celebrate and embrace all that is true and good and wise in these practices – and simply ignore those aspects that are not in harmony with their own spiritual outlook. Frankly, anyone who thinks the average person who attends a yoga class is lighting incense to Krishna or something similar obviously has never been to a yoga class. I could only wish that my yoga teachers – whose emphasis is almost totally on hatha yoga – would hazard a few words on yoga philosophy, discuss Vedanta or something similar. Alas, such discussions are rare, even nonexistent.