There is a lot of controversy around Christians practicing yoga. Is that activity demonic and whether Christians should practice yoga? There are proponents both for and against it. Some state that it is a harmless physical activity while others ascertain that it leads to demon trafficking. Let us then roll our sleeves and work from the bottom-up.What is Yoga?Yoga is not just asana involving only bodily postures. It comprises one of the six philosophies that make up Hinduism (Sankhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisesika, Mimamsa and Vedanta). It is a philosophy subscribing to the notions of Purusha (pure consciousness) that it classified as the innermost conscious self with a human and Prakriti (the world of matter). The entire aim of Yoga is to liberate this Purusha from the Prakriti through meditation and by practicing what we call yoga that leads to self-annihilation i.e. death of the ego to enter the blissful state of liberation.The ThreatSo it becomes a tool of trying to reach an altered state of reality for liberation and it is here where it becomes dangerous, because just based on an idea you don’t know what you are opening yourself to.
Quoting Edwin F. Bryant, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, page xxx:
Neither the Upanishads nor the Gita mentions postures in the sense of stretching exercises and bodily poses, asana is not mentioned as one of the six limbs of the Maitri Upanishad, and Patanjali himself dedicates only three brief sutras from his text to this aspect of the practice. The reconfiguring, presentation, and perception of yoga as primarily of even exclusively asana in the sense of bodily poses, then, is essentially a modern Western Phenomenon and finds no precedent in the premodern yoga tradition, although the fourteenth century Hath yogaPradipika does dedicate one of its four chapters to asana.Paradox There is also a paradox today where yoga has been converted into something that it was never meant to be: just plain exercise and millions are benefiting today because of practicing these bodily postures looking at it as a purely physical activity, which it actually is in the way it is performed by these modern yoga practitioners (not to be confused with a yogi, which is an entirely different animal after you have dismissed the marketing). This has brought us to an interesting fork at the road.My analysis on the subject after researching on the subject is this. Any form of yoga that subscribes to any philosophy or spiritual practise/ altered state or connecting to any kind of ancient belief system is forbidden to Christians, this includes Yoga as it meant or understood in the mainstream. However, the modern yoga that works just as a physical exercise created out of ignorance (not even doing the asana as prescribed by the ancient system, but a unique modern day creation running parallel to other body fitness systems - if I may add) does not harm the Christian. It is just plain excercise.TipWhenever accessing or going through any metaphysical or esoteric philosophies claiming all kinds of deep knowledge, always remember this.
One important distinction between Christianity and any metaphysical approach is that all metaphysical approaches stop at the soul, whereas Christianity makes a distinction between the soul and the spirit, a division or a split caused by the Word of God. The other systems never get to the spirit.
Always keeps this in mind.
