What lessons can Christians learn from the success of yoga?

In the next two posts, are the third and the fourth (and final) posts in a series that is a personal response to the phenomenon of the success of yoga. In the first post I considered the reasons for the success of yoga, here; in the second I discussed the problems with yoga from the point of view of a Christian, here. In these next two posts I consider various possible Christian responses to this success. 

The options I consider here are as follows:

1. Develop a Christian version of yoga

2. Develop a non-yoga alternative by attaching Christian contemplative prayer and mysticism to spiritually neutral physical pursuits that offer a similar all round health benefits as yoga, such as Pilates, Natural Movement, Barre, Alexander Technique, StretchLab. These can be either something pursued as a main source of fitness or as a wind-down after intense physical exercise of any form. 

3. Develop a Christian account of the good of physical exercise that asserts the dignity of seeking to be physically fit and its place in a Christian life. Then work hard to offer traditional Christian practices that fulfill the desire for mysticism of modern man, but not necessarily directly attached to the physical exercise. We might, for example, highlight traditional Christian practices in such a way that they are used to santify any human activity that is not specifically religious. This might be analagous to the way in which Leo XIII asserted the dignity of gainful employment. Christians have offered up work as part of the their Christian life, for example the Prelature of Opus Dei in the recent times, and the Rule of Benedict in the 6th century. A traditional Catholic education always taught people to do this.

4. Adapt psychological techniques for improving performance in professional sports and in physical rehabilitation to a Christian form. The psychological techniques are proven to improve the endurance in training especially. The science of psychology does not acknowledge a spiritual dimension to man, but their approach is easily adapted to a Christian anthropology.  

I will discuss options 1, 2, and 3 this week, and 4 next week. The most solid options are, I believe, items 3 and 4. 

1. The development of Christian yoga

In principle this is possible although there are pitfalls which I will describe and so it is an approach which may not be prudent.

I am aware that some argue that the poses are intrinsically evil, but I do not agree with this objection. If the physical poses are intrinsically evil, as is argued, then every baby that falls asleep in what is the yoga position called Child’s Pose, would be at risk of demonic possession. This I do not believe.

I object to the Christianizing of yoga for other reasons, however. The deepest problem is that the language used by the instructors to direct people to those poses is intimately bound up with false spirituality. Although yoga could in principle be stripped of all Hindhu, Buddhist or New Age incantations, prayers and exhortations thereby reducing it to a purely physical pursuit, in practice this is difficult. For all that the Christian yoga studio might have an icon corner, so as to suggest to people the existence of a transcendent God; and that the Christian yogi could be taught technques in Christian contemplative prayer during the wind-down given the nature of the instruction, unless one is rigorous in rooting out false teaching embedded into the instructions, the result is likely to be sycretist - a fusion of the two religions.

Even if, hypothetically, an authentic Christian yoga could be created, there will be difficulties. First, the association in the minds of most people is that yoga is so intimately connected with non-Christian religion that it is likely to be viewed as an inferior version of pure yoga. Christian yoga, I suggest, is then likely to be a doorway that leads Christians to ‘pure’ yoga. It is more likely to lead Christians away from the Faith and towards pure yoga than in the other direction, it seems to me. 

Second, and again even if the creations of a Christian yoga is successful, it could still be attracting people for the wrong reasons, and develop into its own esoteric and heretical religion. This is because any form of spirituality, even if it is consistent with the Christian Faith is a danger if it is not integrated with the wider practice of the Faith with the Eucharist at its heart. Unless there is a path that leads people from the exercise studio to the church it will likely become its own gnostic practice that will ultimately undermine the Faith. Heresy can arise as much a reduction of the Faith as it can from asserting truths that are contrary to it.

One reason that yoga attracts people is that it is presented as a short cut to the supernatural. In common with the whole new-age movement (characterized by the phrase ‘spiritual but not religious’), it promises contemplation of the divine or something analogous to it at least, without the ‘burden’ of living out the full Christian life. There is no imposition of a moral authority, no rigorous demand that we love our neigbor to the point of self sacrifice if necessary, and no need to attend church on Sundays or participate in the sacraments.

Many today, including many who identify themselves as Christian, possess a mindset that prioritizes their right to freedom and have a false understanding of what freedom is. In practice what many of them think of as an exercise in personal freedom, is in fact a claim of individual license. Their approach to life is that of a consumer who considers first, what’s in this for me? rather than, what can I give? As fallen people there is very likely an aspect of this in nearly all of us today, to some degree. The yoga studio appeals to this desire for license in spiritual matters, by claiming to offer the rewards of a good spiritual life, but without the drawback, if one might put it like that, of having to love God or neighbor.  They effectively offer the opportunity to establish a personal hotline to God. If Christians approach Christian yogo with this mindset, they will be susceptible to the same dangers in Christian yoga that are present with non-Christian yoga, that is possession of malevolent spirits. A trusted spiritual directior, who assists in exorcisms and has seen many people possessed as a result of practicing yoga told me that those spirits are often happy to give some superficial pleasure to the person, in exchange for the assurity that they will not attain eternal life with God in heaven. 

I suspect that while many people are attracted to yoga because they are ignorant of this danger, many others deliberately court it. They believe that it really does offer them a spirituality without sacrifice and the obligation to love our neighbor. It is the same attraction that the occult holds for people.

2. The fusion of Christian practices with other, non yoga, forms of physical exercise

This is, in essence, a similar approach to that described above, that is, we can add Christian mysticism, prayer and ritual to a non-yoga physical exercise in a way that is similar to what yoga does. Exercise routines such as Natural Movement, Pilates, Barre, and Alexander Technique offer similar physical benefits to yoga and all have a low barrier to entry - people can start at pretty much any age and any level of fitness - but have the advantage of having no existing association with any spiritual or religious movement. This allows, so the argument runs, for a more natural marriage between Christian spirituality and physical movement.

In principle I think this is worth a try. The studio could be created as a beautiful environment that is suggestive of Christian spirituality, combined with instruction in Christian prayer and meditation at appropriate junctures (something that could be done in principle in any meeting place for work or recreation, incidentally). The directions on how to adopt poses can can use language that encourages respect for the body as the temple of the Holy Spirit, for example, rather than a temple of by which I worship myself. These could in principle be introduced also before or after the main session physical effort when people are generally content to sit and reflect and hence, if the lesson of yoga tells us anything, inclined to be receptive to the supernatural. Routines that incorporate the above could be developed as wind-downs after any other form of intense physical exercise designed to build up cardio or muscular strength, such as athletics or weights.

The test as to whether or not such practices will succeed is that people both benefit physically and are drawn to God and his Church. If this is to happen the connection of the material and spiritual must seem authentic and natural. This will be, I believe, the challenge for anyone who tries it. If it is not done successfully, it will either fail to attract people at all or attract them and lead them astray for the same reasons that yoga does now.  

Promote a Christian account of the dignity of physical exercise, and insert that into the traditional practice of the Faith

In consideration of physical exercise as a good the Church, to my knowledge, has very little to say. It is clearly accepted that physical health, which includes one presumes physical fitness, is a personal good. In regard to working out in the gym and intense physical exercise and training, one is as likely to encounter suspicion as encouragement. The suspicion is that the desire for physical fitness is driven by vanity. 

Contrast this to the Christian attitude to work (considering now as gainful employment rather than expending energy) which is generally positive. St Paul talks in his Letter to the Corinthians of the obligation for people to pay their way and work for a living rather than off charity of others. In the Catholic world it is especially since Leo XIII and his encyclical Rerum novarum in 1892 that there has been a strong focus on the dignity of the activity of work itself. 

At the time that Leo wrote his enyclical, the assumption was that for most people work meant manual work and the need for exercise for fitness and health (as distinct to its value as recreation) was not an issue - the main priority for the working man whether in field or factory was more on getting enough rest, and food. Exercise for recreation was not unknown at this time. Most of the competitive sports and their competitions that we see today were already established and gaining popularity. It was common to look favourably at the character building effect of teams sports and participating in competition, but I am not aware of the pursuit of fitness and of physical training being emphasized as possessing a dignity in itself.

In more than a hundred years since Rerum Novarum was published, however, the pattern of work and recreation has changed. For many, work - meaning gainful employment - is no longer manual work. The component of physical work that might have been present in farm work for which Leo had such high esteem, for example, is not present in the typical office or computer-based job. In parallel, the number of people engaging in physical exercise to the end of fitness, and not even directed towards participation in competitive sport, has increased dramatically. It is not unreasonable to  suggest that as well a being desirable for its end of physical health, the actual activity of exercising has a dignity associated with it. As a general principle, if any activity is good at all, then it has a dignity that is intrinsic to it if it is properly ordered to the Christian life. 

Certainly most people who exercise regularly talk of the pleasure of exercise and an increased sense of self-worth as a result of being to exercise well.  It occurs to me that physical exercise in the context of work is, perhaps, one component of made working on the land possess such dignity in the eyes of Leo XIII.

The 1981 film Chariots of Fire, is a dramatization of a the true story of a Christian missionary, Eric Liddel who in real life won gold as a sprinter in the 1924 Olympics, representing Great Britain. Liddel was a missionary and in the dramatization his church, which was Scottish Presbyterian, was portrayed as as a discouraging force that was against his participation. Interestingly, the argument put into the mouth of Liddell by the screenplay writer, Colin Welland, to justify his participation in the games was an appeal to the inherent dignity of running as fast as he could for the greater glory to God. ‘When I run I feel God’s pleasure,’ says Liddell. Incidentally, the historical Liddell both won gold and became a missionary and martyr, dying in internment in China in 1945, imprisoned by the occupying Japanese.

Once we consider that physical exercise itself as a good that has a dignity, then it becomes more natural for the Christian to connect it to the good of the whole person and hence to his spiritual well being as well. One wonders if many who head for the yoga studio are at some level and intuiting this truth. The connection of yoga with spiritual well being in its marketing then becomes a attraction to those who are seeking a genuine good albeit in a misguided way.

If we Christians are to talk of the inherent dignity of physical training, we must be careful to do so in a way that is consistent with a Christian anthropology and the hierarchy of human activity as directed by what we love.

It is the hierarchy of loves that ‘orders all human activity. 

According to St Thomas Aquinas this hierarchy is as follows: love of God, self love, love of neighbor, and finally love of the body. So we seek first to love God by accepting His love for us and then returning it to him - this will not be a surprise to many I anticipate. However some may raise an eyebrow on seeing that the love of self comes next. The reason for this is that we cannot love our neighbor unless we love ourselves too - we must look after ourselves well so that we are fit and healthy both physically and spiritually so that in turn we have the capacity to love others and to return God’s love for us back to Him. The self here, refers to the whole person, both body and soul. Sometimes people, such as the martyrs sacrifice their body in this life in order to save their souls, but this is in fact a temporary sacrifice for in saving his soul the martyr saves his body too, as body and soul will be reunited on the Last Day. This hierarchy of loves does tell us that it is good to love the body, also, but not at the expense of our ultimate union with God. It is important that we respect this hierarchy of loves, all of which are good in their proper place, in asserting the good of physical exercise and do not elevate a love for the body above the other demands made of us. This is, perhaps, the very real danger that Christians have in mind if at times they adopt a cautious attitude to physical exercise. 

If physical exercise is accepted as a worthy activity, then we do not necessarily need to integrate it in a new or specialized way with prayer or meditation in order to integrate it into the Christian life. Exercise can be approached just as one would with any other human activity that is not considered intrinsically religious. For example, in regard to gainful employment, Christians have long considered ways of sanctifying the activity. One could look to the Rule of Benedict in 5th century or the spirituality of the Prelature of Opus Dei, the practice used by saints such as St Francis de Sales and St Augustine of offering aspirational of ejaculatory prayers to God while exercising.

Those who observe a spiritual life that follows the patterns and rhythms of the sacred time by, for example, marking the Hours with prayer and regularly engaging in Chritian meditation and contemplative prayer will naturally embed mundane activities, including physical training, into the pattern of a Christian life. The General Instruction of the Liturgy of Hours tells us that one purpose of this prayer is to ‘sanctify the day’. This does not mean that we pray the psalms while exercising, rather, that if we pray the Hours we are more disposed to cooperate with God’s grace in the mundane activities between prayer. There are centuries of traditional spiritual guidance that Christians can draw on, to do what one might call - to use the title of the spiritual classic - ‘praticising the presence of God’. When one reaches the ideal that even ‘picking up a straw from the ground’ is done ‘for the love of God’ then one can also pump iron or work out on the treadmill for the love of God too. 

Similarly, well catechized and spiritually mature Christians will feel no need to search out mysticism in the yoga studio for they are spiritually fulfilled by their participation in the Christian life

The goal then, as well as asserting the dignity of physical exercise that can be done gracefully and beautifully, is one of mystagogical catechesis by which Christian actually know the spirituality of their own faith. The Christian whose life is open to grace elevates and integrates all human activity within  the sacramental life so as to give greater glory to God.

I am well aware that the sort of mystagogical catechesis that would open this world up to a Christian is typically not available at your average Catholic parish, sadly. Consequently, many within the Church as well as those on the outside looking in will not be aware that Christianity can offer the fullness of what they seek in life, and this is what leads them to look to the yoga studio.

This is really a call to a return to a good Catholic education, which is what Catholic schools always used to do. Here is Pius XI on Christian education and the effect that it has on ordinary life in Divini illustri magister: 

96. Hence the true Christian, product of Christian education, is the supernatural man who thinks, judges and acts constantly and consistently in accordance with right reason illumined by the supernatural light of the example and teaching of Christ; in other words, to use the current term, the true and finished man of character. For, it is not every kind of consistency and firmness of conduct based on subjective principles that makes true character, but only constancy in following the eternal principles of justice, as is admitted even by the pagan poet when he praises as one and the same "the man who is just and firm of purpose."[66] And on the other hand, there cannot be full justice except in giving to God what is due to God, as the true Christian does. 

97. The scope and aim of Christian education as here described, appears to the worldly as an abstraction, or rather as something that cannot be attained without the suppression or dwarfing of the natural faculties, and without a renunciation of the activities of the present life, and hence inimical to social life and temporal prosperity, and contrary to all progress in letters, arts and sciences, and all the other elements of civilization. To a like objection raised by the ignorance and the prejudice of even cultured pagans of a former day, and repeated with greater frequency and insistence in modern times, Tertullian has replied as follows: 

“We are not strangers to life.We are fully aware of the gratitude we owe to God, our Lord and Creator. We reject none of the fruits of His handiwork; we only abstain from their immoderate or unlawful use. We are living in the world with you; we do not shun your forum, your markets, your baths, your shops, your factories, your stables, your places of business and traffic. We take shop with you and we serve in your armies; we are farmers and merchants with you; we interchange skilled labor and display our works in public for your service. How we can seem unprofitable to you with whom we live and of whom we are, I know not.” 

98. The true Christian does not renounce the activities of this life, he does not stunt his natural faculties; but he develops and perfects them, by coordinating them with the supernatural. He thus ennobles what is merely natural in life and secures for it new strength in the material and temporal order, no less then in the spiritual and eternal.

Part 4, covers item 4 is next week.