Perilous Times, Witchcraft and The Occult -
The Great Falling Away!
Blending Yoga's Eastern Mysticism and Pagan Religious Beliefs with
Christianity
Many Christian and Jewish yogis are incorporating prayer and religious
teachings into the practice. 'It allows us to blur the line between the
physical and the spiritual,' one leader says.
Christian yoga??
Mojgan Sadeghi, right, holds a pose during the Lord's Prayer at a
Christian yoga class in Chatsworth. Integration of yoga and religion is
spreading. (Anne Cusack, Los Angeles Times / March 6, 2010)
By Nomi Morris
April 5, 2010
Christian pop music played quietly in the background as instructor
Bryan Brock led a recent yoga class at the nondenominational Church at
Rocky Peak in Chatsworth.
Incorporating prayer and readings from the Bible, Brock urged his class
of about 20 students to find strength in their connection to their
creator through yoga's deep, controlled breathing. "The goal of
Christian yoga is to open ourselves up to God," he said. "It allows us
to blur the line between the physical and the spiritual."
The instructor then recited the Lord's Prayer while his students moved
slowly through a series of postures known as the sun salutation.
Such hybrid classes, which combine yoga practice with elements of
Christianity or Judaism, appear to be growing in popularity across
Southern California and elsewhere.
Some Christians call their versions of the discipline holy yoga or
Yahweh yoga and some teachers urge participants to "breathe down
Jesus." Jewish yogis, in turn, have developed -- and in some cases,
even trademarked -- Torah yoga, Kabbalah yoga and aleph bet yoga,
applying Eastern meditative movements to Jewish prayer and study.
Meanwhile, Californian Muslims who practice yoga have yet to merge it
with the teachings of the Koran or worship of Allah, a local leader
says. And there are skeptics within all three Abrahamic religions who
question whether it is proper to integrate the Hindu-based spiritual
practice into Western monotheistic traditions.
Rayna Mike said she was skeptical of yoga before she started going to
Brock's class at the Church at Rocky Peak, an evangelical congregation.
"I never did it before because I considered it Eastern philosophy and I
didn't want any part of it," said Mike, a Bel-Air businesswoman.
Mike changed her mind when her trainer at the Church on the Way in Van
Nuys recommended the yoga class, and she said the practice has improved
her health while feeding her soul.
"You can go and sweat anywhere, but that's not the point," she said.
"This is a beautiful thing. It's an answer to my prayers."
Brock completed a 200-hour accredited course in Phoenix designed by
Brooke Boon, author of the book "Holy Yoga." Boon has trained nearly
200 Christian yogis, about a dozen of whom are teaching in Southern
California.
"Christ is my guru. Yoga is a spiritual discipline much like prayer,
meditation and fasting," Boon said in a telephone interview. "No one
religion can claim ownership."
Some fundamentalist Christians distance themselves from yoga, saying it
is inseparable from Hinduism or Buddhism and therefore dangerous, even
blasphemous. Some Orthodox Jewish authorities warn that if practiced
with all its Eastern components, including Sanskrit chanting and small
statues of deities, it amounts to avodah zarah, or the worship of false
gods.
For many religious Jews, Christians and Muslims, viewing yoga as a
physical rather than spiritual practice solves the dilemma.
But Rabbi Avivah Winocur Erlick, a chaplain at Providence Tarzana
Medical Center, says it is impossible to separate yoga from her Jewish
spiritualism. About six years ago, Erlick began having intense
spiritual experiences while doing yoga. She sought advice from a rabbi.
"He said, 'God has been trying to reach you all these years and he is
reaching you through yoga," Erlick recalled. The rabbi challenged her
to reconcile yoga with Judaism, which led to five years of study to
become a rabbi. "For me, yoga is prayer," Erlick said.
Erlick, who is writing a book on the subject, says Jews have vigorously
debated the issue for two decades. She counts 83 active teachers,
mainly in the U.S. and Israel, who combine yoga and Judaism.
One is Californian Ida Unger, who draws on Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism,
to interpret yoga postures as Hebrew letters. Unger recently
demonstrated her aleph bet yoga to seniors at Los Angeles' Milken
Community High School.
"I was in a triangle pose and I had an epiphany. I was an aleph," Unger
told the class, posing in the shape of the first letter of the Hebrew
alphabet.
"In Kabbalah, letters are the building blocks with which the holy
creator is channeled to Earth."
Unger chants shalom (peace) instead of om, and recites the daily Jewish
prayer for awakening when she does the sun salutation.
Milken students Jamie Mayer and Sharon Winter, both 17, said they found
the hybrid yoga class more spiritually fulfilling than conventional
synagogue services.
"I want my yoga practice to be my daily prayer. It's not instead of,
but in addition to, my other Jewish practices," Jamie said.
Rabbi Yechiel Hoffman, who teaches the teens' Jewish Thought class at
Milken, said there are "places of alignment and integration" between
yoga and Judaism -- particularly in Kabbalah -- but he cautioned that
important elements may be watered down or lost when religions borrow
from one another.
Still, Hoffman has no problem with Judaism embracing yoga as it has
embraced aspects of other cultures throughout history. "Judaism has
always borrowed from other religions to re-energize itself," he said.
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