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I’m beginning to think it isn’t possible to separate yoga from its spirituality.

I watched a good friend of mine as she first experimented with yoga. Then she began to attend retreats. Then she decided she wanted to become an instructor and went on certification retreats.

This is going on 8 years now since she started and in the past 2 years she has slowly lost her grip on reality.

I’m not saying yoga does this to everyone - my point is that from the very beginning it was a slow introduction into a specifice brand of spirituality and thought process.

People are capable of stretching, balancing, strenthening, etc....without having to bring spirituality into it, and many people take yoga without buying into its basic principles.

But that doesn’t mean yoga in itself is not a faith system all its own.

In the end it is classic pantheism.

Yoga as a spiritual practice is definitely not a positive thing. Your friend was probably a “seeker” to begin with. I had a similar friend who eventually went off to live at a yoga retreat and be exploited by the “guru” who ran it. And then, of course, there’s kundalini yoga...

But yoga in exercise classes here is nothing but flexibility training to soothing music. I am much more worried about things like the goofy yoga and enneagram “retreats” they run at our local diocesan retreat house. I thought all that stuff had phased out, but apparently it’s still with us (being conducted by elderly nuns, as usual). Our bishop is very orthodox, so it surprises me that we still have this, but perhaps whoever runs the retreat center is one of those people who has strong supporters and the bishop feels it’s a battle he’d rather not take on right now. He’s got a lot of other battles going on!