Who Owns Yoga?

Recently John Sheveland raised the question, "Who owns yoga?" in an issue of Christian Century magazine. 

To answer the question, Sheveland first points to the Hindu American Foundation, which declares that yoga cannot be dissociated from its Hindu roots.  The HAF website contains an article entitled "Yoga Beyond Asana: Hindu Thought in Practice" that addresses the issue.

"Both Yoga magazines and studios," the article asserts, "assiduously present Yoga as an ancient practice independent and disembodied from the Hinduism that gave forth this immense contribution to humanity.  With the intense focus on asana, magazines and studios have seemingly 'gotten away' with this mischaracterization.

Yet, even when Yoga is practiced solely in the form of an exercise, it cannot be completely delinked from its Hindu roots."

Sheveland points secondly to Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, who in his blog states, "Yoga begins and ends with an understanding of the body that is, to say the very least, at odds with the Christian understanding...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 Subtle Body--Should Christians Practice Yoga?," September 20, 2010).

So, in essence, the HAF and Mohler, while coming at the question from very different angles, agree that yoga is indelibly connected to Hindu (and, Mohler would add, Buddhist) belief systems.

But is that the final word? Do Hindus and Buddhists alone lay claim to yoga?  Can Christians, Muslims, Jews, or adherents of other faith traditions (or none at all) practice yoga while remaining true to their beliefs?

To gain more insight on the question, I consulted Katrina Woodworth, an instructor for Yoga on the Square in Regent Square. Woodworth, a registered yoga teacher since January 2009, comes from an evengelical Christian background and had never practiced yoga before being invited to a class entitled "Yoga as a Spiritual Discipline" by Yoga on the Square director .  She fell in love with it and became an instructor soon afterwards.

"Learning movement, stillness, and breath -- that's what I love about yoga," Woodworth says. "It gave me a chance to slow down, to become aware of my own body, which I think I had never been aware of before, and to learn to listen to see how my body was speaking to me."

"I think the spirit in which I teach every class is in the spirit of Jesus, but I don't have to talk about that. I don't have to tell people that. The yoga room is not a place of proselytizing to make my beliefs known. It's a sacred space where you welcome people in to encounter God or encounter the divine however they're going to encounter the divine. And, more important than that, to encounter their bodies. Because I think that as Westerners there is a huge split between mind and body. We live in a very fractured culture. There is a huge split between anything spiritual, anything intellectual, and anything bodily -- these are all fragmented.  There's just so much healing that can be done in someone's life just by encountering their own body."

In so teaching, Woodworth is getting at the very heart of yoga: the word yoga means to yoke or bind together. "Yoga thus signifies all the corporal, psychic, ascetic, and especially meditative efforts harnessed to help the spirit attain freedom," says Heinrich Dumoulin in his book Zen Enlightenment. "As a psychosomatic technique, Yoga embraces body and mind and brings their reciprocal relationship to bear on the full range of human activity."

Counter to the views of the HAF and Mohler, religious historians have long affirmed that the practice of yoga predates the development of the belief systems of either Hinduism or Buddhism. Moreoever, while in a narrower sense yoga can refer to a specific school of orthodox philosophy given classical expression in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, yoga ultimately cannot be claimed by any one faith tradition, as it has been associated with a wide variety of philosophical systems, views of life, and religious movements, taking the forms of Vedic Yoga, Buddhist Yoga, Jainist Yoga, Tantric Yoga, Vedanta Yoga, and modern variations found in the West, to name just a few.

Concerning the history of yoga, Woodworth admits, "I don't really focus on that or think about that because I think what we practice here today in the west is very different from what is practiced in the east or what has been practiced 5,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago, even 100 years ago. Yoga in the west is being created now as a western practice, and the question is, worldview-wise, 'How do you understand an eastern worldview and a western worldview and yoga as a western practice today?'"

When she brought yoga to her church, it was not very well received.

"When I started going to trainings, almost inevitably the conversation would come up, 'I had a Christian in my class who told me I was going to hell.'  I'm seeing that, wow, there's a lot of woundedness here," she said. "And there are a lot of misunderstandings. This is a whole movement in the culture right now that Christians don't know what to do with at all."

But Woodworth is secure in her belief that the practice of yoga is compatible with her Christian roots. "If Buddhists want to say, 'This is a Buddhist practice.'  No.  If Hindus want to say, 'This is a Hindu practice.' No.  If Christians want to say, 'This is a Christian practice.' No."

When asked if you can practice yoga without adopting the teachings of Hinduism or Buddhism, Woodworth answers without hesitation: "Oh, yeah.  Absolutely."  She, along with many others, affirms that no one faith tradition can lay exclusive claim to yoga. It is available to be practiced by all.

If you would like to participate in a yoga class, contact Yoga on the Square at 412-287-4591.