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Bible Yoga

Why aren't Jehovah's Witnesses allowed to practice yoga?

So I asked my mom to accompany me to a complimentary class of yoga from this studio that just opened by my house. She was completely terrified by the idea and reproached me something along the lines of 'how I could practice such things in the light of my bible knowledge and the christian upbringing she gave me.' I was a little confused, even when I was a Jehovah's Witness I never heard that we couldn't practice yoga. Now that I no longer attend and don't consider myself religious, christian, or whatever, I think it's even sillier the things the organization comes up with to keep people in place. But in all honesty and with no insult intended, can someone tell me why is abhorrent to god's eyes?????

Hi Gabby,

You've received some good answers already but I thought I'd add my twopence worth in as well...

As with many activities such as yoga, tai chi, karate etc there are clear physical benefits that can be experienced. However, more often than not, the more you begin to attend, the more you find out that your instructor mixes the physical experience with a spiritual experience as well. There are of course some instructors who do not do this but many do.

Those people who follow monotheistic religions (Jews, Christians, Muslims) all believe that you should worship only one God and should seek Him alone in your spirit. The spiritual aspects of tai chi, yoga, karate and others encourage you to connect with 'god' in the way of eastern mysticisms which generally include man's efforts to become a part of something deeper, something spiritual, something more powerful than the natural. Generally the thrust of such meditations is to empty oneself of everything of who you are to connect with this raw power. This flies in the face of Christian, Jewish and Islamic meditation which involves setting oneself aside to connect with God. What you are seeking is not power which you can manipulate and control but you are seeking someone greater whom you can serve. I know that these two things seem very similar but the reality of the experience is very different and it is these spiritual aspects that the sincere follower of a monotheistic religion wishes to avoid.

Have a read of the wiki article on yoga: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga and see that it is very tied in to Hindu philosophies which go directly against Christian, Jewish and Islamic faiths.

You can, of course, find instructors who teach the physical aspects of such practices without any interest in the spiritual aspects and there ought to be little problem with performing the exercises for exercise sake (although some still disagree with this as well). We know that the stretching exercises of yoga can be good for you and science has shown that such exercises have an emotional benefit as well as physical benefit in that they help alleviate stress, anxiety and other such negative feelings.

Personally, I was involved in Tae-Kwon Do for a long time (less so recently). The instructor that I trained under emphasised the physical aspects of the sport and did not consider it spiritual. The patterns that you perform in this martial art were not intended to worship ancestors or mysticisms but were more intended to instruct the soldiers for whom the art was invented in the history of the Korean nation. Accordingly you can be involved in TKD without any problems. However, I have also known instructors who combine TKD with spiritual exercises intended to connect with a deeper power. These are the instructors I have avoided as a Christian because it was the physical exercise I was seeking and not the spiritual exercise.

I know that there are yoga instructors who are Christian and they do not combine the philosophy with the exercise but rather they divide the two and if they do anything they try to combine Christian meditation with the exercise rather than Hindu meditation. If you want to do yoga with your mum you would probably need to seek out one of these instructors and have the instructor explain how the philosophy is separated from the exercise... But even then she might not be interested because she might not want to compromise her witness to her JW congregation...

I hope this helps to explain why she might not be interested in yoga though... It is not always combined with Hindu philosophy but it also can be and so a Christian would need to be sure of the separation before they became interested in the potential physical and emotional benefits of it.

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