Yoga is dangerous?

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I acknowledged that it is good exercise. But if you don’t see the danger to your soul, you don’t know enough about it. Many of the names of the poses and the poses themselves are in praise and worship of false gods. Not knowing the truth about yoga is what Satan is counting on.
 
Praise cannot be offered without consent because by its very nature it is an act of the will. If praise is not intended I dont see how it can be praise. And since ther are no Hindu gods there is no one to praise anyway. How does Satan benefit, especially if one proceeds with the practice with intention oriented in praise of the one true God. To believe that the postures in and of themselves somehow honor gods that don’t exist and present a danger is superstition. But if it bothers you conscience, dont do it.

I have done yoga on and off for 45 years. I know quite a bit about it and its philosophy. There is actually some diversity there. There is the Classic yoga of Patanjali but also the yoga of the Upanishads and other texts and they have different metaphysics.
 
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S_A_M said:
it could make humans to be more like animals (obsessed with sex, unhealthy sex,
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Father Jean Marie Dechanet, O.S.B., did address this in his book “Christian Yoga.” While it is said that certain poses might increase libido, Fr. Dechanet found that certain other poses actually decreased his libido, which was a relief to him as a celibate priest.

This brings us back to the question: What is our intention as Christians practicing Yoga? As @Shakuhachi has suggested, and I tend to agree, naysayers like Women of Grace seem to discount the role of our intention, as though standing a certain way could invoke or invite evil spirits without our meaning it to do so. The Vatican documents, “Jesus Christ, Bearer of the Water of Life” and “On Some Aspects of Christian Meditation” do give the role of our intention its proper place, and indeed, if we decide to practice Yoga we should do so as committed Christians, not as Hindus or syncretists.

A little more about Fr. Dechanet: He suffered from seizures as a seminarian, and it was preventing him from ordination. He found relief from those symptoms through the practice of Yoga, and so was able to be ordained a priest of the Benedictine Order. His book Christian Yoga received the Nihil Obstat in 1956, and the Imprimatur in 1960, and so he was not some rogue priest dabbling in other religions, as some recent detractors have suggested. He was working with the approval of his abbot and bishop.

Knowledge is power, as they say. If you are interested in Yoga, do your research. If you decide you want to avoid it, that’s perfectly fine too.
 
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Sam below link is a good read,

Yoga: a cautionary tale. Catholic Spirituality, deliverance, spiritual warfare, yoga
April 25, 2017

I knew his take wasn’t going to be a popular one, so I asked a follow up question: could someone practicing yoga with absolutely zero intention of worshiping a false god or engaging in any alternative non-Christian spirituality still be negatively affected by practicing?

The answer was, unequivocally, “yes.”

I knew from my own experience that it would be, but I was curious to hear his accounts of other people who had experienced ill effects of completely benign participation in non-spiritual yoga.

He reminded me that in his opinion, there was no such thing as non-spiritual yoga.
 
Well from my own 45 years of personal experience I could tell a very different story, a story of lightness, health, peace and closer walk with the Lord. All with yoga. Watch for superstition.
 
So we have accounts of Catholics who find yoga helpful, such as Fr. Thomas Ryan, C.S.P., and we have accounts of those who are wary of yoga, such as Fr. Michael in the above-linked cautionary tale. I find it telling that nowhere in the Vatican document “Letter To The Bishops On Some Aspects Of Christian Meditation,” which touches on yoga more as a means of prayer than as therapy for health and healing, does it warn of potential demonic possession. I would think if this possibility was such a valid concern, the Vatican would warn us in no uncertain terms. Instead, it tells us,

“The majority of the great religions which have sought union with God in prayer have also pointed out ways to achieve it. Just as the Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in these religions (Vatican II Decree on Non-Christians, no.2) neither should these ways be rejected out of hand because simply because they are not Christian. On the contrary, one can take from them what is useful so long as the Christian conception of prayer, its logic and requirements are never obscured.”
On Some Aspects of Christian Meditation, Questions of Method, no. 909

Fr. Thomas Ryan further states in his book, “Prayer of Heart and Body” (Paulist Press 1995),

“I have met some Christians who are wary of yoga because of its origination in other religious contexts. But God seems often pleased to show us the divine handiwork in the lives of those who belong to other religious paths in order that our faith convictions may remain humble and unjudgmental and truly open to the Spirit of God at work everywhere in the world.”

So I have bent over backwards (pun intended) to make a positive case for the practice of yoga as a Catholic. Still, the warnings and wariness remain. Certainly, if anyone here finds yoga worrisome or troubling, by all means they should avoid it.
 
From the same letter:
28. Some physical exercises automatically produce a feeling of quiet and relaxation, pleasing sensations, perhaps even phenomena of light and of warmth, which resemble spiritual well-being. To take such feelings for the authentic consolations of the Holy Spirit would be a totally erroneous way of conceiving the spiritual life. Giving them a symbolic significance typical of the mystical experience, when the moral condition of the person concerned does not correspond to such an experience, would represent a kind of mental schizophrenia which could also lead to psychic disturbance and, at times, to moral deviations.

That does not mean that genuine practices of meditation which come from the Christian East and from the great non-Christian religions, which prove attractive to the man of today who is divided and disoriented, cannot constitute a suitable means of helping the person who prays to come before God with an interior peace, even in the midst of external pressures.

When I have time I will share my journey and experience with yoga. It was a step in my conversion.
 
Shakuhachi said:
That does not mean that genuine practices of meditation which come from the Christian East and from the great non-Christian religions, which prove attractive to the man of today who is divided and disoriented, cannot constitute a suitable means of helping the person who prays to come before God with an interior peace, even in the midst of external pressures.
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I’m not sure I understand this quote. Is he saying that yoga helps a man who is disoriented in spirituality find God through prayer and interior peace? He uses a double negative and the writing is unclear.

Also, Im wondering what you mean when you repeatedly say “superstitious.” Please define your understanding of the word. I take it to mean a practice based on beliefs that are completely absent of any reason. Would you consider house blessings and the blessings of religious items as superstitious? What is your attitude for instance towards miracles from the bones of dead saints?

Also, I did actually take time to read the long article linked by HolyTrinity. I wasn’t able to quote from it for some reason, but to synopsize her experience, she took a yoga class in college where the teacher was extremely entranced in spiritual worship. She sensed evil. Ten years later and now a practicing Catholic, during a healing group prayer, a priest asked her if she was involved in yoga, and said a deliverance prayer. She felt her spiritual life easier, boosted after that occurrence. So I do think there are certainly doors to the demonic, and it can be dangerous, especially if a person is not in a state of grace and is practicing it non-chalantly. That’s why I’m questioning your bolded text.
 
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Shakuhachi said:
Well from my own 45 years of personal experience I could tell a very different story, a story of lightness, health, peace and closer walk with the Lord. All with yoga. Watch for superstition.
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I disagree with you.
 
Yes, a double negative. That doesn’t make it easy. lets try to make it clearer:
Genuine practices of meditation which come from the Christian East and from the great non-Christian religions, which prove attractive to the man of today who is divided and disoriented, can constitute a suitable means of helping the person who prays to come before God with an interior peace, even in the midst of external pressures.

From Merriam-Webster:
Definition of superstition

1 a :a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation
b :an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature, or God resulting from superstition
2 :a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary

This fear that certain poses open one to the demonic by their very nature seems to me to fit this definition.

The account in the article could be a confluence of all sorts of things.

Here is my story. Lets go back to 1975 when I was a college student smoking pot, drinking beer or whatever, chasing girls, you name it. I took a yoga class mostly because of the girls in it. But through the stretches, the breathing, the release of tension, perhaps toxins and all that is entailed in a good class I began to ask deeper questions. You can do that because as you are stretching, holding a pose, your mind can think of all sorts of things. I slowly began to reflect on who I am. What life is all about. And in the physical peace that comes from the practice I would also get a taste of mental peace. I gave up all those vices and went back to Mass. Yoga has been a gift for me, a way to more fully engage my body in my spirituality. It is very incarnational, sacramental. If God’s spirit is to dwell within us, we need to do all that we can to honor this body and treat it like a temple. I do my yoga in the name of Christ. We don’t need to change the name of the practice, just the name of whom we do it in.
 
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That is fine. Do you have another way of involving your body in your spirituality and worship?
 
Well as I was saying in my 2nd post here, Catholics believe the body is an extension of the soul, and that worship of God is using the body to serve Him in the needy and weak, and in completing our duties and carrying our daily crosses out of love for Him.

You said yoga was “Sacramental.” I’m not so sure about that. I’d like to go deeper on this and other things we were talking about, but I don’t have time. Maybe another time.
 
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Maybe “sacramental” is pretty strong. By that I mean incarnational,tactile, experiencing God’s presence with the senses like with bells, incense, oil, water, etc.
 
hmm… i can see that yoga could’ve done unimaginable bad things… maybe i should’ve avoid it… i prefer to other ways that 100% safe and secure…
 
I dont care if it is a “saying”.
One can have yoga without Hinduism. I am living proof.
 
I remember this on Web of Faith, they warned very much about it as it is attached to bad spirits just as some martial arts, however if all you are doing is the exercising without calling on spirits then that is very different.
 
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