Can Christians practice Yoga? No.

Alex Frank tells Matt Fradd of Pints with Aquinas (Australia) that he used to be very heavily into Yoga.  He was also not a Christian. The one good thing he did learn from Yoga was that the spiritual side of life is real. That led him eventually to Christ. 

https://youtu.be/UUOfp8Ssp3A

He grew up in an atheist home--nominally Jewish--but also lived in DC where leftist ideology and constant focus on politics were numbing.  He went away to college and found some relief in studying physics.  It was in the military where he became interested in Yoga, but also learned about servant leadership which helped lead him to an interest in Christ.  He explains in detail what happens when you do/imitate the poses. If you think you need Yoga as exercise, he now suggests pilates--alignment and flexibility without the spiritual side. Buzz words that are red flags--uuuming, or the instructor speaking in an odd voice or touching, or referring to gods' names. He had hired an excellent Yoga teacher/spiritual director who began as a fitness instructor while he was at Yale (after military) and he began to face up to how he was living his life. The modern mindfulness movement is not secular but spiritual according to the founder and is based in Buddhism (Jon Kabat-Zinn) according to Alex. McMindfulness--Yoga is a big business.  Many of the claims are very commercial. 

Hatha yoga is the most common in the West.   Don't start, is Frank's advice. It's not harm free.

Extremists don't respect the religion of others

Ours isn’t the only government with radicals who want to bring down religion (see stories about HHS vs. Catholics). Look at what Islamist extremists were doing to priceless Buddhist statues in the Maldives earlier this week.

During the coup that ousted President Mohamed Nasheed on Tuesday, scenes of violence resulted in the wanton destruction of historical treasures. Considered as a mark of idolatry by Islamic salafists, statues and monuments were destroyed by extremists blamed for the toppling of Nasheed.

The Maldives’ National Museum was the scene of the destruction, as a group of five men deliberately targeted artefact's from the Maldives pre-Islamic era, destroying Buddhist relics.

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Mindful meditation

Your child probably can’t sing Christmas carols at school this time of year, but you will find wide acceptance of Buddhism in classroom exercises, taught as “mindful meditation.” In the western way of thinking, if you’re not “doing” --reading scripture, praying, singing, volunteering--then you’re not technically practicing a religion. But in the eastern way, it’s the technique, not the teaching or the doing, that matters. You can "believe" anything you want. That’s because the godhead is inside, not outside, the body in that faith tradition. Therefore, lots of schools close their doors to our traditional religious practices--prayer, religious symbols in the classrooms, daily Bible readings, Bible stories of heroes, teaching creation, and songs--while welcoming warmly religions from other cultures with wide open arms if they can masquerade as something "healthy" like meditation, thought control for a good purpose, anxiety and stress control, and drug and alcohol reduction tools. It's ignorance of religious thought and teaching on the part of your school board and administration that allows this.

If you are a Christian, "man up" and object to your child being taught that god is within. That's a religion. It's not our religion, it's not our culture, and what's sauce for the Christian is sauce for the Buddhist, Hindu and Humanist. Don't let the word "meditation" fool you. In the Christian and Jewish traditions, that is mediation on God's word. It is content, not a blank mind stilled to allow anything in with the power of suggestion from the teacher or guru.

NYTimes

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