Yoga - a reminder that nothing good comes out of India

I have long held the opinion that practicing yoga is a very bad idea, especially for a Christian. There are two reasons for this. The first is that yoga is not simply a form of exercise, although that is exactly how it has been sold to gullible westerners. Yoga is instead an ancient form of Hindu worship developed over hundreds and hundreds of years. The poses are specifically designed to put the body in contorted positions that allow spiritual contact with Hindu gods, also known as demons.

Kundalini yoga is a prime example of this. This type of yoga explicitly seeks to awaken a type of snake energy located in the spine of the practicer. Snakes; now where have Christians encountered those before, I wonder.

So a Christian practicing yoga is participating in a double spiritual whammy. They’re exposing themselves to demons while also actively breaking the 1st Commandment. And that’s the most important one, because the Commandments are written in order of importance.

Here is an interesting interview with a former long term yoga instructor and Catholic.

There are a few things that stand out to me in the interview. She mentions Carl Jung as being extremely fascinated with yoga and promoting it extensively. However, after his experiences with Kundalini yoga he reversed his stance and warned people of the great dangers of going down the yoga rabbit hole.

But the most interesting part for me was when she speaks about her experiences with her local Catholic priest when she was beginning to have doubts about the wisdom of practicing yoga, particularly as a Catholic. For a start the priest had allowed her to run yoga classes in the parish, which betrays a disturbing lack of awareness of what yoga actually is.

But when she confided to her priest the doubts that were growing in her mind as regards the wisdom of practicing and teaching yoga, his response was simply that he did not know. From that point it was up to her to decide. This lack of theological curiosity from a professional theologian is an example of why I do not bow to authority or to credentials. As a layman I regularly run into the argument that being a layman I either have no place to question what is going on in the Church, or I have no professional experience to be able to question anything. And yet, here we have a supposed professional being presented with a very real theological issue and simply washing his hands of the problem. And this sort of thing is very widespread. Part of it can be blamed on the lack of real teaching and professional direction in seminaries, but a lot of it can also be blamed on the type of men that are being accepted as future priests. Boat rockers and men who can think for themselves are not welcome. As a result there are many priests who are just bad at their jobs.

But back to yoga. The nail in the coffin for yoga is not that it worships demons, and nor is it that it breaks the 1st Commandment. No, the biggest argument against yoga is that it comes from India, and nothing good has ever come from that cursed land. India and Indians are a plague on the earth, a plague that the powers at be seem to be keen to spread to every corner of the world. If you want to partake in stretching exercises, which is lame enough to begin with, but if you want to do that then just do stretching. But attempting to awaken your own personal Kundalini spirit serpent is a path of great foolishness which unfortunately too many people, mostly women, walk heedlessly into. And doing something that is Indian is quite simply the lamest of the lame. So don’t be lame, and don’t do yoga. Your soul will thank you.