[Question:]{.underline} Can Catholics practice Yoga?
[Answer:]{.underline} Yoga is a complex routine of physical positions, borrowed from the Eastern religions of Buddhism and Hinduism, directed towards meditative practices also learned from these religions. In former times there would have been no question of Catholics practicing a discipline learned from the false Eastern religions. However, an intense propaganda has presented Yoga as a simple technique of relaxation, not necessarily related to any particular spirituality, but very helpful in obtaining harmony of mind and body.
Furthermore, the development of Ecumenism in the post-conciliar church over the past fifty years has led to an effort to incorporate certain non-Catholic practices into Catholic spirituality, amongst which is yoga. The question, then, arises as to whether this is a licit enrichment of spirituality or in fact a syncretism, a uniting of different religions into one, clearly opposed to the Catholic Faith.
In order to recognize that Yoga is not just a physical exercise of bodily relaxation, but truly a spiritual activity, it suffices to look at the efforts of Catholics to reconcile the two, as on the website of the Archdiocese of Chicago (www.holynamecathedral.org). There you will find an entire page entitled Catholic Yoga, which begins in this way:
“Drawing from multiple faith traditions, yoga has evolved across the ages as a means of tuning the body for better communion with God through prayer and meditation. Join us as we explore the multiple spiritual and physical benefits of yoga practice while explicitly integrating prayers and spiritual themes of our Catholic Faith. Typical sessions will include an opening prayer, inspired movement & strengthening, and contemplative prayer to close.”
The statements of “Catholic” yogis, such as Holy Name Cathedral’s instructor Ali Niederkorn belie the myth that Yoga is a physical exercise, for she “offers faith-based yoga classes encouraging yoga practice as a form of prayer and meditation”. The legitimacy of Catholics practicing Yoga is consequently not that of a physical exercise, but of a spiritual practice.
Yoga is not one single practice, theory or philosophy, but for none of its practitioners is it a purely physical exercise. It forms an integral part of the meditative practices of three different religions: Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, each religion giving its own, and different, explanation of the value of yogic meditation (See www.wikipedia.org). The practice of Yoga in the west consequently shows no more coherency than in the east, but in every case it is heir to a pagan spirituality, claiming to bring some kind of communion with the divine. It is consequently an integral part of the New Age movement, which pretends to build up a post-Christian spirituality, according to which man achieves the divine by some communion with nature.
Rome has spoken out against the use of Yoga by Catholics in two little known documents. The first, from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, entitled Orationis formas, or letter to the bishops of the Catholic Church on some aspects of Christian meditation, was dated October 15, 1989. It highlights the differences and the incompatibilities between Christian meditation and the styles of meditation used in the Eastern religions, including yoga, warning of the “dangers of attempting to mix Christian meditation with eastern approaches since that could be both confusing and misleading, and may result in the loss of the essential Christocentric nature of Christian meditation“ (www.wikipedia.org) It is the least one could say, but rather an understatement. It points out the radical opposition, Eastern meditation being a technique of concentration on oneself, a self-absorption, whereas Christian prayer is a flight from the self, a conversion from self to God.
Similar warnings were contained in a 2003 booklet, a report issued as the fruit of the reflections of a working group composed of members of the Pontifical Councils for Culture and for Interreligious Dialogue, the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, entitled Jesus Christ, the Bearer of the Water of Life, A Christian reflection on the New Age, as a response to requests for clarification concerning New Age phenomena, such as Yoga. (www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils). Amongst the many critiques of the New Age, what interests us here is the teaching that New Age practices are not compatible with Christian prayer: “New Age practices are not really prayer, in that they are generally a question of introspection or fusion with cosmic energy, as opposed to Christian prayer, which involves introspection, but is essentially a meeting with God“. It reiterates the fundamental Catholic teaching that Jesus Christ, the one foundation of the Church, must be at the heart of every Christian action, which is clearly not the case with New Age. It also points out that New Age spirituality deliberately blurs the fundamental distinctions between Creator and creation, religion and psychology, subjective and objective reality. This is a much more profound perversion than the modern confusion between nature and grace, for it destroys the whole sense of reality and man`s place in God`s creation and leads to pantheism.
Yet the practice of Yoga amongst Catholics continues to be on the increase. Certainly it is partly a consequence of the spiritual vacuum created by the loss of true spirituality after Vatican II. Certainly it is also because these reports never became translated into authoritative moral teachings with canonical punishments for those who infringe them. However, it is also because the ecumenical movement with non-Catholics forbids any condemnation of false anti-Christian spirituality.
It is for these reasons that we can find, incongruously, clearer statements from some Protestants than from Catholic bishops. Dr. Albert Mohler, for example, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has made a study of the question of Yoga, analyzing the recently published book by Stefanie Syman, a fifteen-year devotee of yoga, entitled The subtle body: the story of Yoga in America. Here are some of his observations:
Syman describes yoga as a varied practice, but she makes clear that yoga cannot be fully extricated from its spiritual roots in Hinduism and Buddhism. She is also straightforward in explaining the role of sexual energy in virtually all forms of yoga, and of ritualized sex in some yoga traditions…Most (American Christians) seem unaware that yoga cannot be nearly separated into physical and spiritual dimensions. The physical is the spiritual in yoga, and the exercises and disciplines of yoga are meant to connect with the divine…
”…When Christians practice yoga, they must either deny the reality of what yoga represents or fail to see the contradictions between their Christian commitments and their embrace of yoga. The contradictions are not few, nor are they peripheral. The bare fact is that yoga is a spiritual discipline by which the adherent is trained to use the body as a vehicle for achieving consciousness of the divine…” (www.albertmohler.com )
What exactly are these contradictions? There is certainly a different attitude to the body, which for the Catholic, is an instrument for our sanctification only on the condition that it be mortified, spiritually put to death, so that the inclinations of fallen human nature are not followed, whereas for the yoga practitioner it is a means of contact, or consciousness of the divine that is in man, overcoming, they say, the duality between the Creator and the creature. Dr. Mohler has this to say, quoting Prof. Doug Groothuis:
“The goal of yoga is not the purification of the body or the beautification of the physique, the point of yoga is a change in consciousness, a transformation of the consciousness wherein one finds oneself at one with the ultimate reality which in Hinduism is Brahman…the biggest impact on the west is the Vadantic or the non-dualistic school which says that ultimately everything is one, that’s non-dual, and everything is divine. So instead of the biblical view that there is a creator-creature relationship this is a monistic or non-dualistic view that all that exists is Brahma…and Brahma is beyond words and beyond thought” (Ib.)
In conclusion, it cannot be denied that the practice of Yoga is an implicit denial of the Catholic Faith in the divinity of Christ, true God and true man, and of a true Christ-centered spirituality. Any practice of it must be included under the grave sin against the Faith called indifferentism. Persons who attend Yoga classes place their Faith in grave danger, and those who practice or teach it must be considered as suspect of heresy, implicitly promoting a world view that is directly and explicitly anti-Christian.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.