What about Yoga?

While watching EWTN, I heard that we as Catholics are to stay away from Yoga. What exactly are the spiritual dangers associated with this activity? - Cedarville, MI

The goal of practicing yoga is not heaven, but rather a sort of melting of oneself into the energy of everything, thereby excusing one from the cycle of reincarnation. Some say the goal of yoga is union with “God,” while this radically different conception of “God” is viewed vaguely as a sort of impersonal cosmic ooze of transcendence.

To reach this goal, one must strip away the external, supposedly illusory world in order to reach the spiritual. This process involves the dismantling of one’s own personality and individuality, since these too are considered an illusion.

For this purpose one seeks altered states of consciousness and an awareness in which rational thought is absent, reached by the aid of breathing techniques and specific posturing of the body. It works. This is real. But not good.

Some Spiritual Dangers:

1. You might just reach the goal toward which yoga is aimed. The reincarnation bit is bosh of course, but I mean the part about the absence of rational thought and the dissolving of one’s individual self. Emptiness. And emptiness is a pretty poor goal! Christians empty themselves out in service to others and to God, in order to be filled with the Holy Spirit, but throughout we remain the unique individuals whom God has created, and that is good!

2. Just as yoga is self-emptying in all the wrong ways, so it is also concerned with the growth of the self in all the wrong ways. Yoga is a totally self-absorbed practice. There’s nothing in it about serving other people. It’s all about escaping the world, as opposed to engaging and redeeming it.

3. Yogic techniques open the door to the spiritual realm, occupied not only by God and angels, but demons as well. They also work, are real, and are not good.

4. In experiencing the pleasant effects of yoga, one may have the delusion that they are spiritually healthy and are even receiving consolations of the Holy Spirit, when in fact their moral life may be in shambles.

So here’s what all the Christian ladies practicing yoga say:

Father, I only do yoga for the physical benefits. I could care less about the original intention for which yoga was created.

I’d like to have a pet grizzly that I pretend is a dog. I’d take it for walks and pet it and throw sticks for it to fetch. Cute idea, but sooner or later all things work according to their nature. When it finally decides to eat me, it won’t much matter what I imagine it to be.

Yoga’s postures were designed to have a specific spiritual impact, and they do. Those spiritual goals run contrary to Christianity.

Apply the same logic to a physical action in Christianity: say, making the sign of the cross or kneeling. Even if done absent-mindedly it “counts:” we still consider it to have a spiritual significance, which it does. Likewise, “going through the motions” of yoga has a spiritual significance and effect as well. It’s no more neutral to practice yoga than it is to make the sign of the cross: both are physical, religious practices. Likewise, yoga will always work according to the purpose for which it was designed. It’s a physical means to a spiritual end, and the physical benefits are inseparable from the false spiritual underpinnings.

The desire for spiritual and bodily health is good (and much needed in our distracted and noisy culture) but it needs to be subordinated to the desire for holiness in Christ. Our Catholic Faith has a rich tradition of mental prayer that is often ignored! Ditch the feeding trough and come to the banquet!

Further Reading:

“Catechism of Mental Prayer” by Joseph Simler TAN books.