It’s very rare that I find myself in 100% agreement with a single post here at CAF, yet, spot on
Havard!
That’s your belief (and mine), which is good, but not universal. Here in Cali, there is a demand for more authentic, real yoga, as people are more experimental with spirituality. IMO it’d be helpful if we just called the stretching portion, stretching, and let yoga be yoga.
This has been my experience as well living in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and now San Diego. The only place I’ve ever seen a truly secular “Yoga” course was at the hospital and it was attended by two geriatrics (likely at the behest of their physicians). My first experience of “Yoga” was here, and I brought a “Yoga” practitioner colleague of mine (who is an avowed atheist materialist). There was no Sanskrit, no Hindu prayers, or any of the other things that I would assume my colleague would call “philosophical mumbo jumbo”. I was surprised to hear him say that this wasn’t “real Yoga” for lack of such spiritual things. I’ve also spoken to
Hindu colleagues who are quite offended that pale-skinned westerners are essentially hijacking their practices and stripping them of the necessary elements that
they, the actual people who created Yoga feel define the very practice!
I went to four or five other yoga studios recommended to me by various individuals and every single one was seeping with spirituality. “Emptying of one’s consciousness”, “Bhakti Yoga” or the uniting oneself in supreme adoration of Lord Krishna, chanting in Sanskrit, etc. What’s worse is that these studios were usually quite syncretistic, having pamphlets on Astrology, Tarot, and even
European neo-paganism!
It’s the yoga exercises that we are doing. Hence, we call it what it is – yoga.
Not going to lie and call it something else just because some people go off the deep end about it.
But it
isn’t Yoga. Here’s an honest hypothetical question: If an Easterner were to take the Liturgy of the Mass, strip it of all its religious connotation (or just conveniently ignore the religious connotation) while keeping all the respective body movements prescribed in the rubrics (or through tradition), would you say that person was actually experiencing “Mass”? Even if she were to insist that she doesn’t believe, practice, or follow any of the Jesus stuff in it; it’s just her exercise that’s called “Mass”?
Does the sitting, standing, kneeling, genuflecting, bowing, listening to Gregorian Chant, all lead by a guy wearing a Chasuble make the Mass the Mass, or is it the
re-presentation of the singular sacrifice of Christ on Calvary?
One black guy smiled, otherwise frozen awkward silence and staring. The teacher, however, has never mentioned a woman’s right to choose again.) I pray the Jesus prayer (or Hail Marys) during Eucharistic Adoration when I can concentrate and eliminate other thoughts. Where I go for yoga it is very secular and Western, not traditional eastern yoga, which I did in the 90s. I say the Jesus prayer or Hail Marys sometimes when I am running too.