If Yoga is sitting there contemplating, then why not contemplate Christ? Meditation is not Christian either, but can people meditate on Christ. If one engages in Yoga not as a universalist spiritism thing, I see no problem in it. Many cultures integrate their ways with their Christian religion. That's why Christianity has been successful.
Time to revive the Spanish Inquisition. They knew how to "deal with" dangerous trends. What a crock.
How about meditation?
My girl does Yoga everyday, it's just stretching.
placemark for later comments.
It is not exactly on topic, but let me say this. Islam is destroying religion. And the plentiful Christians who sound as absurd and irrational as moslems are helping to destroy religion.
This article reflects the smallness of spirit which is the essence of Islam. Why would Christians want to be that small?
Thanks for this article and the extra link. This is dangerous stuff that appears harmless and folks get sucked in without realizing what they are doing.
I don't practice any sort of spirituality associated with yoga. I just do a few exercises that stretch my muscles and joints, and it keeps my joint pain under control. I am a Christian, so I would like to know exactly what other Christians find wrong about reducing joint pain?
This article is completely ridiculous. Christian mystics (many of them saints) have meditated on Christ for centuries. Physical yoga (aka Hatha Yoga) is, as someone else already said, just stretching. And as a matter of fact, some Eastern philosophies *are* compatible with Christianity. Gautama Buddha, for example, adamantly refused to identify himself as a god. When asked about his views on deities, the Buddha refused to answer, since he said that gods and such had no bearing on the philosophy which he was teaching. It is possible to be a Christian and still follow Buddhist philosophy, as long as you stick with what the Buddha actually said, rather than getting into the centuries of tradion and so forth that were added on later. (In fairness, I don't think it is possible to be both a Hindu and a Christian, since Hindus generally follow several gods. Interestingly, however, some modern Hindus identify Jesus as one of their several gods.)
If some idiot renounces Christianity because he follows a workout tape that teaches him how to breathe and stretch in sync, then that idiot isn't long for the faith anyways.
If you do yoga, Satan will subvert your mind into becoming a Hindu. If you read the Iliad, you'll become a pagan. If you listen to rock music, you're worshipping Satan. If you read a book on the history of Japan, you'll become a Shintoiest, ie, a Satanist. If you read the Lord of the Rings, you'll become a wiccan who believes in earth witches. If you read Hamlet, you'll emulate your role model Hamlet like the good monkey you are and commit regicide. If a woman wears a dress, a man will definitely lust after her and he will rape her. If a church puts on a play--any play--that church is falling away as prophesized in Revelation because it is embracing pagan roots --after all, it was the ancient Greeks who invented the play, therefore all plays should be banned. Oh and alphabets? Don't get me started on alphabets and those pagan Phoenicians. Better wrap everyone up like bhirka mummies so they won't be exposed to anything.
The Spiritual Counterfeits Project has been doing something like this since 1973.
Odd title.
As an Orthodox Christian, I've always thought of Christianity as a form of Eastern mysticism.
:-)======
(That was an Athonite smiley, with a long monastic beard.)
If yogic practice is limited to stretching exercises, as it often is in North America, the idea that it is harmful to Christians is absurd. Ergonomically sound physical exercises are good for the body as meat is, so if they are of pagan origin, we may apply St. Paul's advice on meat offered to idols.
On the other hand, the full practice of yoga involves mental and spiritual exercises. Mantras given for meditation often involve names of pagan deities. Plainly these are to be avoided. But what of meditation itself?
The goal of yogic meditation is to empty oneself. Some may argue that the goal itself is harmful, but I would suggest that it is merely defective.
The fundamental error of paganism (the natural religious state of fallen man) is the confounding of the created (and its properties) with the Uncreated (with His properties). Paganism knows nothing of the Uncreated.
The goal of yogic self-emptying is defective because the emptiness is merely the created opposition to the created being. (Note that the spiritual objective of Hinduism, and the improved version Buddhism, is to escape from being.) The goal of a Christian is to empty self of the created that one might be filled with the Uncreated.
Yogic and Buddhist meditaiton may be seen as the nearest pagan approximation to the true Christian practice of hesychasm, which also uses physical exercises, breathing, postures, attention to the heart beat, but uses them to unite the person to Christ through the Jesus Prayer (sometimes just the name Jesus repeated on each breath, sometimes the prayer "Lord Jesus Christ Son of God, have mercy on me (a sinner)".) As the mere emptiness yoga seeks is at least not filled with passions or sins it might be considered somewhat beneficial, but as it stops short of being filled with the Holy Spirit, which St. Seraphim of Sarov tells us is the goal of the Christian life, it is harmful.
When I called Buddhism 'the improved version' I meant it. The Buddha got many things right which basic paganism (Hinduism included) gets wrong: he correctly discerned that the existence or non-existence of the sort of beings Hindus call 'gods' is irrelevant to human existence, that human beings do not have a fragment of divinity within them (the Hindu notion of 'soul' which he denied), and that ascetic discipline is necessary for spiritual growth. (Not bad for one without the light of divine revelation.)
Lao Tzu did even better--he failed to understand that the Absolute is personal, but did understand that the Absolute is self-less. Read the Tao Te Ching, thinking of the Tao as a person. There is only One who fits. Or better still, pick up Fr. Damascene's book "Christ the Eternal Tao", which delightfully coopts Taoism (at the philosophical level as found in the Tao Te Ching, without the pagan accretions from Chinese folk religion) to proclaim the Gospel.
The posture of meditation is a hatha yoga exercise.
The exercises in hatha yoga strengthens the joints and the vulnerable parts of your body, keeps the muscles and tendons pliable and limber especially those around the joints, improves your balance, keeps your eye single.
An appropriate way to treate the temple of God. 
Is this a joke... Is this from the Onion... This can't be serious...
Jan should have been around a few thousand years ago when Greek and Roman culture really altered Christianity.