I’ve been loosely following some religious bans on yoga over the years. First, in the US, some school districts have “banned” yoga on the grounds that it does not keep church and state separate.
Now, in several Muslim countries, a fatwa (religious ruling) has been put out banning yoga, most recently in Indonesia. This is interesting because the island of Bali has a lot of yoga retreat centers, and I have a lot of yoga teacher friends who have moved there or visited there over the years to teach and practice.
I’m curious to see how this will play out, because yoga truly can be practiced by anyone, no matter their religious background or practice. However, it’s true that yoga’s history is steeped within Hinduism, and to a lesser extent, Buddhism and Sikhism. And of course, we sense that still in a lot of yoga classes – we say, “Namaste” and we sing “Om.” We listen to traditional Hindu mantras in a lot of the popular yoga music.
And so many people feel much more “spiritual” in their yoga class than they do in a traditional religious setting. So how do we reconcile yoga? How do we create a yoga space that’s welcoming and inviting, but also true to yoga’s roots?
Somehow I don’t feel the paradox much in my personal life. I don’t have a problem practicing yoga and also feeling connected to my religious tradition. I’m curious if any of you have thought of this, or struggled with it in your personal life?
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Barrett, This is such an interesting question you pose. As I get older and more steeped in both my yoga practice and clinical practice, and never having been a very “religious” person, I am realizing more and more that religion, psychotherapy, yoga, philosophy are all pretty much the same thing–the human striving for peace, acceptance, salvation from pain, and the belief in something greater than us that explains the human condition. So whether you call it yoga, psychotherapy, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, meditation, or Freudian theory, we are all united in our very human desire to seek something beyond ourselves to explain the complexities of what we experience. What do you think?
I, too, have always been interested in the universal experience that happens amidst the particular outlooks we each have from our religious and cultural backgrounds. What I’ve loved about yoga is my sense that it touches a universal place within that helps us toward happiness and peace. Though I’ve had this experience time and again in my own life, I’m still kind of amazed when another person remarks to me that yoga has helped them in very tangible ways in those human pursuits you’ve outlined.