Yoga - Redux

Katie from Kitchen Stewardship has gotten into the ring, regarding "Yoga & Catholics." I think she did a fair job trying to evaluate both sides of the issue, but I wouldn't use her post as a primer for the subject. It unfortunately glosses over a few key issues and areas, and misses one major area completely. Most importantly, I think she frames the question dangerously and misses what the core issue is with Yoga, "whether it is advisable for Catholics to participate in "New Age" & "Eastern" practices such as Yoga without a clear understanding of what dangers lie in wait." In other words, it isn't whether Catholics can do Yoga in terms of prohibition, but whether it is wise and safe to do some from a spiritual stand point.

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the cult of the body

The area that she doesn't really address is the idea of the "Cult of the Body" that so many of the "I just do the physical exercise, and in fact I even pray. I have noticed a very intense prayer during the 'stretching" crowd often falls into. So I wanted to let you know that she posted, and please don't let it disuade you from her real talent: Kitchen Stewardship!

I'll leave you with a quote from the Vatican's initial letter regarding this matter from 1989 and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith:

Some physical exercises automatically produce a feeling of quiet and relaxation, pleasing sensations, perhaps even phenomena of light and of warmth, which resemble spiritual well-being. To take such feelings for the authentic consolations of the Holy Spirit would be a totally erroneous way of conceiving the spiritual life. Giving them a symbolic significance typical of the mystical experience, when the moral condition of the person concerned does not correspond to such an experience, would represent a kind of mental schizophrenia which could also lead to psychic disturbance and, at times, to moral deviations.

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