A church in South India has stated that Christian beliefs cannot go hand in hand with yoga. The Syro Malabar Catholic Church in Kerala maintains that certain positions in traditional yoga could go against Christian principles and should not be used as a means to “get closer to God”. Laurette Willis (based on my 22 YEARS in yoga, 7 to 2 years old) Do these 12 truths about yoga speak to you as they have done with so many others? There is no official Catholic Church based on faith and morals that teaches about the practice of yoga. Many holy priests and holy people have opinions, but the fact is that yoga is a matter for a person to discern how it affects them.
Good advice, discernment from the Holy Spirit and a fairly clear understanding of Jesus are needed if you enter a yoga class as a Christian. They will find themselves having dreams or nightmares that most Christians don't have because they aren't open to the same spiritual forces as those who practice yoga. Some have used the practice of yoga, meditation, and moments of stillness to reflect on self-enlightenment, a source in which they believe, or as an act of worship. But ultimately, yoga was intended to lead a person to the so-called “Lord of Yoga”, Sheva, the destroyer.
Religion would love to replace this discernment process with strict rules such as “never do a stretching posture with your arms folded because it looks like Cactus, and that's a bad thing. In fact, yoga is based on the philosophy that there is more to life than just the body and that if we unite the inner spirit and the body, we can achieve a state of peace. Both the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutra contain rhetoric that translates into words like “God” and “Lord”. I'm not a theologian and have never studied yoga, so I haven't formed my own opinion because I know it's not well informed.
He's not Catholic, but I'd like to take a look at him: a couple of classes really changed my mind about how to use yoga. They use the term Christian Alternative to Yoga, but in reality she stole the movements, renamed them and pretended to have done them independently. In the absence of definitive evidence that yoga can be harmless, it seems best to avoid it, especially since there are certainly other methods of stretching. I've talked to him about these things in depth, and he strongly warns against yoga (as does the Vatican exorcist).
