I go to yoga the way a lot of people go to church. Which is to say, occasionally. And that means I feel guilty a lot of the time because I believe going to yoga is good for me. Yoga saves the body from corruption.
I didn’t always believe that. I had to be convinced the way a sinner has to be convinced that Jesus saves a soul from corruption.
As luck would have it, in this town yoga has more evangelists than the churches do. Nearly every street corner has one.
I heard testimonies. I heard people say that through yoga they had been born again. OK. They didn’t actually use those words. Still, I knew what they meant. Weight loss. Flexibility. Lower back pain relieved. Stability. Decluttered mind. Enlightenment.
I saw throngs going to yoga with mats under their arms the way Baptists carry Bibles to church. A few years ago, a friend said, Come with me. I went.
It felt like being in church. Instead of pews, we sat on mats. Instead of prayers, we did poses. An instructor led us through a ritual. It took an hour. I learned how to sit, stand, twist, tuck, breathe, and bow to the divine in the other. Namaste.
Believing in Jesus will get you saved—or so it’s been said. Believing in yoga won’t get you anything. You gotta practice. It’s not what you say. It’s what you do.
Yoga is a yoke. It joins two things that tend to drift apart.
I want to go more often—weekly, in fact. But I don’t. And that’s something yoga can’t fix.
I do yoga. I believe in yoga. I do church too. I believe in church. But, in church, I’m not sure what I believe.
Nothing wrong with doing both. And nothing wrong with not being sure. Those who practice without the assurance of faith, are more than you think. Think: Mother Teresa.
Another frontier for the church? Services where we sit on mats, stretch this way and that, and sing “For the Beauty of the Earth”?
I’m in. Just as long as we don’t end with “Stand Up for Jesus.”
For some inexplicable reason, my first wife, then girlfriend, and I, started doing Yoga. At the time, there was great interest in eastern mysticism greatly fueled by the Beatles and other celebrity worthies going to India to meditate with the Maharishi. The greatest outcome for us is that in less than a year we had both stopped smoking cigarettes. Neither one of us ever picked up the habit again. I continue to do yoga to this day. I found something when I was a 21-year old seeker; but I didn’t know what it was. Forty eight years later, I find that Sunday mornings with yoga does more for me than anything I ever experienced in church. To each, their own.
Now that’s one I hadn’t heard. Smoking cessation. Good for you. Good for yoga. Keep sittin’, brother.
Your lack of consistency in going to Yoga is simply a matter of nomenclature. A friend felt so guilty about missing his physical fitness routine that he renamed his comode from “john” to “jim”. Then he told his friends that he went to the jim three times today…..
Brilliant idea. I’m renaming my “john” YOGA. And I’ll now call you Cousin Yoga.
For me yoga is a spiritual practice. The postures are compatible with any religion, offering many benefits, but most particularly transporting one into the present moment, connected to mind-body. The deeper practices, however, of breath work and meditation are meant to rid us of delusional beliefs and concepts, transporting us to a place—in the words of Hafiz— of freeing one’s self “of every concept and image” the mind had ever known. Not that I have achieved that, but that seems to be the path I find myself on through this practice called yoga.
When you practice yoga you can’t say: “I’m spiritual but not religious.” Yoga is both or nothing at all. It holds together two things that tend to drift apart. But, then, I’m just a novice with lots to learn.