The last newsletter/blog we looked at how energy is said to work spiritually through the organized system of yoga philosophy. Practices like breathwork, meditation, movement, nutrition, devotion, prayer, and other tools that help you live into the fullness of your design in your humanity. Yoga philosophy is not a religion or set of beliefs. Rather, it is a tool with practices on how to live a “yoga lifestyle”, in other words, living your best life!
More conservative Christian circles look at yoga philosophy as an evil practice that leads to opening yourself up to a dark spiritual realm. This could not be further from the truth. Some of these beliefs result from simply not understanding the practice itself. Some come from misunderstanding the culture and their spiritual practices. Misunderstanding these practices has led to teaching Christians that the people who practice yoga in its country of origin are evil people who worship many gods and should be avoided. This as well is a misunderstanding of the people and we must not villainize the people, or the practice. We also must avoid adopting the practice but then changing all the names and claiming it as our own. The perpetuates the misunderstanding and we end up essentially stealing from the culture.
As with any spiritual practice it has been used for things, we are warned to not participate in. This tends to be the biggest argument against the practice. Yet if we stand back and look at that concept logically, we will see that as Christian’s we have adopted many practices over the years that have now become totally acceptable practices in our belief system.
I discuss some of these practices in my upcoming newsletter set to be released Tuesday if you would like to head to the home page and sign up for the weekly newsletter.
Additionally, I would love to equip current yoga teachers who are Christian, and Christians who are curious about the practice and its benefits. I have a free workshop coming up that will offer us the opportunity to chat about this and interact together so we can toss around a few ideas about these thoughts. Not for the sake of convincing you, quite the opposite. I want to allow the space to question, ask questions, and wrestle with the questions. Click to register, and if you can’t make it to the live call, I’ll send out with recording to you:
Link to register for workshop: https://fb.me/e/4ojEfkNmJ