Objection: Yoga is Hindu / Yoga has demonic roots
Yoga - it’s meaning, expression, purpose, and popularity - has changed radically over thousands of years. Our understanding of what yoga is today (tight clothes, mostly female practitioners, crazy feats of flexibility and strength) looks drastically different than what many of the ancient writers were discussing when they wrote about yoga. Some scholars even claim that yoga as we know it today can’t even be considered a descendent of the yoga of yore.* This is a key point to keep in mind.
The earliest writings about yoga come from the Indian subcontinent thousands of years ago and pre-date organized religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. These religions and the cultures that surrounded them were, and are, heavily influenced by these writings (called the Vedas). It’s not entirely truthful to say that Yoga is Hindu or Yoga is Buddhist, but, it is fair to say that the ancient yoga philosophies are widely incorporated in these religions and culture today.
The word yoga is a Sanskrit word meaning “to yoke” or “to unite.”
Ancient yogis were interested in uniting the separate pieces of themselves with a greater spiritual/supernatural power in order to transcend the physical world. They explored different physical techniques to help them achieve this kind of enlightenment – complex breathing techniques, meditation postures, dietary constraints, etc. Many of the asanas, or physical poses, that we practice today in yoga didn’t really develop until the 19th century.
Now, there is an entire field of scholarship about the Vedas that is super interesting and very complex. I’m not a scholar and this isn’t a place to debate the nuances of the Vedas, Upanishads, or other ancient yogic texts. BUT, I will say this:
The yoga we practice today looks almost nothing like the “yoga” that’s discussed in these ancient texts.
For one, we’re not ascetics living alone in the mountains seeking heightened spiritual experiences that allow us to transcend these bodies.
We, as Christians, recognize the dignity and sanctity of the human body, knowing that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit and that while we hope for heaven, we are present to the work of God here on earth right now.
And yet, the meaning of yoga itself is something we Christians can identify greatly with. The last thing Jesus prayed for with his disciples before he was betrayed was for unity within the individual believer and among the greater body of believers:
I pray… [that] they all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. May they also be one in us, so that the world may believe you sent me. I have given them the glory you have given me, so that they may be one as we are one. I am in them and you are in me, so that they may be made completely one, that the world may know you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me.
John 17:20-23
This is the beauty of the modern yoga practice – it helps us unite the different parts of ourselves (body, mind, heart, and spirit) and from this place of integrated wholeness, be one with God.
Let me be clear here that there are certain streams and philosophies of yoga that I would not participate in as a follower of Jesus. But their existence does not exclude me from participating in traditions of yoga that honor and enrich my own life and faith.
One way to think about this is the varied streams within the Christian tradition. Under the umbrella of Christianity, you have Catholics, Evangelicals, Lutherans, 7th Day Adventists, Calvinists, Baptists, Jesuits, Episcopalians, Westboro Baptist Churchgoers, Mormons, Presbyterians, Protestants, Charismatics, Pentecostals, Quakers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and my favorite, the nondenominationals (which, like it or not, still tend to hew closely to at least one of these traditions).
Maybe you’re looking at this list and are like “What! No! They’re not Christians!” And you will have proved the point. The same sentiment exists within the yoga world as well.
Nevertheless, there are people who will say Christians should not participate in any sort of yoga because of its roots. I understand the concern – we want to honor and obey God and are afraid of participating in something that would harm that relationship.
But I disagree and think that yoga can be an invaluable tool to the life of a believer desiring to walk in greater wholeness.
>> Read on for my top three reasons why Christians can (and should!) do yoga…
*In his book, Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice, Mark Singleton writes, “there is little or no evidence that asana [physical yoga poses]...has ever been the primary aspect of any Indian yoga practice tradition – including the medieval, body-oriented hatha yoga – in spite of the self-authenticating claims of many modern yoga schools. The primacy of asana performance in transnational yoga today is a new phenomenon that has no parallel in premodern times...Posture-based yoga as we know it today is the result of a dialogical exchange between para-religious, modern body culture techniques developed in the West and the various discourses of ‘modern’ Hindu yoga that emerged from the time of Vivekananda onward. Although it routinely appeals to the tradition of Indian hatha yoga, contemporary posture-based yoga cannot really be considered a direct successor of this tradition.” [emphasis mine]
