Yoga: Harmless stretching or religious practice?
Posted by AdamJun 16
Yoga: Is it just stretching and increasing your flexibility? Or is there something more to it than simple exercise?
Yoga is tied heavily to Eastern Religion, predominately Hindu. In the Hindu Religious worldview, the nature of spiritual reality is that the only thing that exists is an impersonal God and that we are all a part of God, existing in some sort of dream or illusion called Maya. We think we are separate from God but in reality we are part of the divine essence. The goal in the Hindu worldview is to perform certain spiritual practices known as “asana’s” in order to get back to the Godhead. Also known as transcending or achieving enlightenment. Some of these asana’s are fasting, praying, chanting, meditation and yoga.
Now you can’t get away from the fact that yoga is first and foremost a spiritual discipline. Yoga is not done for your physical health but rather your spiritual health. In “kundalini” yoga there is a belief that there is a spirit at the base of the spine, and the kundalini spirit is released with the aid of the yoga asana. Yoga is a system of doing physical things (stretches, breathing, poses and utterances) which is tied to a spiritual outcome.
Thinking that doing yoga is simply physical activity would be like taking the Catholic Rosary beads and praying the Rosary prayers over and over again to calm you down, to make you feel better, all the while believing that praying the Rosary is not religious.
The concern for a Christian doing yoga simply for the stretches is that not all of the stretches are benign. Some have a specific goal which is an Eastern spiritual goal. There may be some physical benefit from doing yoga, and that may be part of the appeal, but yoga should not be confused with a gym workout. By all means, if you can isolate the stretch from the yoga system, then fine, a stretch is just a stretch. But if it’s tied in with the yoga system then there is a concern for the Christian, or anyone else for that matter who doesn’t think that what they are doing is buying into an Eastern religion.
Paraphrased from Greg Koukl’s radio show (www.str.org)
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3 comments
Comment by Rene Mulder on 17 Jun 2010 at 02:27
I’ve been having problems with sleeping for years now, and I recently started a course to help me get more insight in the sleeping process and the course offers helpful tips as well.
One of the tools used to improve sleep is the excercise of guided fantasy, to help one relax, and there is a stretching excercise as well.
Of course my alarm bells start ringing when I hear mention of such things, and yoga, but I often wonder what the actual effects of such excercises are, even when practiced without the focus on spirituality.
The question would be, does partaking in such activities ACTUALLY accomplish something on a spiritual level? Is there a cause and effect?
Does that effect happen even when one is not aware of the spiritual background or when there is no focus on those aspects?
I would imagine in the end, the effects would have to come from a spiritual (demonic) force, rather than through the human’s efforts.
As said, a stretch is just a stretch.
That said, I still wouldn’t do Yoga and I’m not doing the guided fantasy excercise or the muscle stretching excercise from my sleep course, even though the latter is probably harmless.
Comment by Adam on 17 Jun 2010 at 14:36
I think that yoga does accomplish something on the spiritual level. Given the Christian worldview, the origin of yoga is demonic in nature which, like all non-Christian religious practices, leads away from God and the saving grace of Jesus Christ.
I’m sure that there are many people who, for a bit of fun, are dabbling in the occult, holding séances, using Ouija boards and practicing witchcraft. They would have no idea of the spiritual background or implications of such practice. It’s not just an active pursuit of a different religious system or practice, but a non-pursuit of the true religion, and any activity which undermines the truth or distracts from the truth has serious spiritual ramifications.
Keep in mind that yoga is not just stretches. Yoga, properly practiced, involves much more than stretching, like chanting and out of body experiences etc. So if you just do a stretch, then that would be ok for the Christian. But any more would put you in dangerous territory.
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