A Hindu Yogi Speaks: "There is no Christian Yoga."

The following article is written by Yogi Baba Prem, who is a Hindu Yogi, a Vedavisharada trained in the traditional gurukural system. We hope that Thomas Nelson, who publishes Yoga for Christians, American Family Association, who sells Holy Yoga, and emerging leader, Doug Pagitt, who offers it at his church, will all read this article by Yogi Baba Prem.

"There is no Christian Yoga?" by Yogi Baba Prem
"It was quite astonishing to see on the flyer 'Christian Yoga! This Thursday night....' I could feel the wheels spinning in my brain. 'Christian Yoga,' I thought. Now while Christians can practice yoga, I am not aware of any Christian teachings about yoga. Yoga is not a Judeo/Christian word! It is not a part of the Roman Catholic teachings and certainly not a part of protestant teachings. It is not found within the King James Version of the bible. It is a Hindu word, or more correctly a Sanskrit word from the Vedic civilization. So how did we get 'Christian Yoga'? "From this I could conclude that 'Christian Yoga' could only indicate one of two possibilities:" Read more ...

Yoga Uncoiled

Yoga and the Body of Christ

East and West, The Two Shall Never Meet
"Christianity cannot be integrated with yoga and remain Christian. To think otherwise imperils the Christian truth and faith. As the managing editor of 'Hinduism Today,' Sannyasin Arumugaswami, remarks, 'Hinduism is the soul of yoga 'based as it is on Hindu Scripture and developed by Hindu sages. Yoga opens up new and more refined states of mind, and to understand them one needs to believe in and understand the Hindu way of looking at God. . . . A Christian trying to adapt these practices will likely disrupt their own Christian beliefs'.' East is east, and west is west, and if Christianity is to remain Christian, 'the twain' should never be married. Can yogic practices be integrated with the Christian faith? Pastor Larry De Bruyn

"The practice of Yoga is pagan at best, and occult at worst. Its teachings emanate from the Eastern religions, all of which teach that self is God, only we just don't realize it until we do the techniques. 'The goal of Yoga is self-realization-to look deeply within to what ought to be the temple of the one true God and to discover the alleged true Self or higher Self to be God. Nothing could be more religious than that, yet with straight faces, all of the Yogis insist that practicing Yoga does not change anyone's religious beliefs.'"— Mike Oppenheimer, Let Us Reason Ministries, Read More ...

"When Westerners employ yoga techniques as a means to improve their health, they should understand that they can also be producing subtle changes within themselves which will have dramatic spiritual consequences that will not be for the better. Regardless of the school or spiritual tradition, yoga practice tends to alter a person's consciousness in an occult direction."—John Ankerberg, Innocent Yoga?

"Jacobs teaches meditation Judeo-Christian-style and minimizes the more overtly Hindu aspects of yoga in his classes—not to accommodate his Catholicism so much as to accent his universalism. 'I honor the Hindu path, the Buddhist path, the Sufi path,' he states with Midwestern matter-of-factness. 'I do not think that Christians have a monopoly on paradise.'—A Look at Yoga and Religious Belief By Alan Reder

Can We Separate the Exercise From the Philosophy?

"There is a common misconception in the West that hatha-yoga, one of about ten forms of Yoga that supposedly leads to self-realization, is merely a neutral form of exercise, a soothing and effective alternative for those who abhor jogging and calisthenics ...

"[However], Hatha-yoga is 'one of the six recognized systems of orthodox Hinduism' and is at its roots religious and mystical. It is also one of the most difficult and potentially dangerous [spiritually] forms of Yoga. "The term hatha is derived from the verb hath, which means 'to oppress.'... What the practice of hatha-yoga is designed to do is suppress the flow of psychic energies through these channels ["symbolic, or psychic, passages on either side of the spinal column"], thereby forcing the 'serpent power' or the kundalini force to rise through the central psychic channel in the spine (the sushumna) and up through the chakras, the supposed psychic centers of human personality and power. Westerners mistakenly believe that one can practice hatha-yoga apart from the philosophical and religious beliefs that undergrid it. This is an absolutely false belief. ...

"You cannot separate the exercises from the philosophy. ... 'The movements themselves become a form of meditation.' The continued practice of the exercises will, whether you ... intend it or not, eventually influence you toward an Eastern/mystical perspective. That is what it is meant to do! ... There is, by definition, no such thing as 'neutral' Yoga" —Johanna Michaelsen, Like Lambs to the Slaughter, pp. 93-95).