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Stretching Towards Jesus
If yoga is Hindu, why are Christians doing it in church – and to the Lord’s Prayer?
e.valerio@nyu.edu
To get to their weekly yoga class, practitioners carry their mats past a New York Sports Club and Crunch gym. They walk instead into a church, where the minister wears a T-shirt and 50%-spandex capris, and recites the Lord’s Prayer while stretching into the sun salute.
They’re part of a growing U.S. movement, of Christians who say they are getting closer to God in a non-traditional way.
Christian yoga classes have been the most popular way for adults to enrich their faith in the past seven years, according to the Rev. Thomas Ryan, a Christian yoga instructor who directs the Paulist North American Office for Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations in New York City, and author of Prayer of Heart and Body: Meditation and Yoga as a Christian Spiritual Practice. Ryan leads a two-hour weekly yoga classes at his church, St. Paul the Apostle, in Manhattan. Every session is packed with 40 people.
It’s a turnabout of sorts, since for many conservative Christians, the rise of yoga in the United States has been almost blasphemous. Some were uncomfortable with the fact that Christians were taking on a Hindu practice. Others attacked it even more vehemently, as a kind of widespread sinning, a turning-away from Christianity.
For Ryan’s students, and others, those conflicts have been reconciled.
“The Christ-centered [yoga] format is an effective way for Christians to enjoy the practice, and the many benefits of yoga without the concern that it is in any way contrary to their spiritual beliefs,” argued Susan Bordenkircher, author of Yoga for Christians.
Ryan, a pioneer who helped popularize Christian yoga in the past five years with his published how-to books and DVD Yoga Prayer, couldn’t agree more.
“The science of yoga is like a software that you plug into the hardware of your beliefs,” he proposes. “It can be adapted as people need it to be.” Yoga isn’t tied exclusively to Hindu cultural expressions or philosophical understandings, he argues. What it does is help people go beyond their egocentrism to put them in touch with their spiritual core; it’s “a science contributing to peaceful living with greater awareness.”
The classes are a mix of prayer and pose, with a contemporary twist of Jesus. A typical session begins with personal prayer followed by the assani, or poses. The sun-salute, perhaps the most prevalent yoga sequence in hatha yoga, or yoga for a physical purpose, is paired with the Lord’s Prayer.
“Our Father, who art in Heaven…” the students chant, arms in the air. “Hallowed be thy name” is paired with a dive into a folded position. And it goes on that way, with each line of the prayer teamed with a pose in the sequence. Ryan says this coupling gives each spiritual phrase a physical meaning.
The innovation comes at an auspicious time. Americans love yoga. According to a recent article in Yoga Journal magazine, yoga’s top news source, 16.5 million people practice yoga in the United States. And yoga has become a $3 billion national industry.
Christian yoga is a departure from yoga’s Hindu roots, and its underlying philosophy that through poses and meditation, one finds God in oneself. The practice of Christian yoga is fueled by faith in Jesus Christ, and allows that faith to penetrate the body, mind and spirit, Ryan said.
Some Hindus are puzzled, even disgruntled, by Christian co-opting of their practice. Mitesh Kapadia, a 25-year-old Long Islander, teaches Hindu yoga to youth. He is enthusiastic about yoga’s newest following, but doesn’t see why practitioners are changing its basic structure.
“It’s great that the Christians have taken up this practice, but they could benefit from it the way it is,” he said.
Others are even less forgiving.
“[Contemporary] yoga left out the meditative religious aspect of yoga, but at least it didn’t change what was already there,” said Neil Haranhalli, 20, a New York University philosophy major and vice president of the Hindu Student Council. “Yoga is something that you should do for your person, but all those ideas come from Hindu philosophy. It shouldn’t be seen as just a tool for [Christians].”
But Hindu concern isn’t standing in the way of Christian yoga’s expansion. Kapadia agreed. “Yoga is here to stay as a spiritual vehicle,” he said, “and I know it will flourish for many faiths.”
The Rev. Thomas Ryan argues that yoga is relevant to Christianity, too.
Photo by Kaveri Marathe