August 8, 2015 Sexual predators are more prevalent among rabbis, pastors and yogis than among Catholic priests But they are not as widely reported by the secular especially the international media

A family friend who first visited India, from UK in 1987, recalls an experience that she describes as "sexual enslavement", when on a visit to a Guru's ashram in Haridwar to perfect Kundalini yoga, she was asked to perform a complicated ceremony, at first. "He said it was some rudrabhishek... where basically I must pour milk on his penis and drink the same liquid… the Guru insisting I suck on his organ, claiming it would prepare me for my session - that I had to be one with the energy of the universe. It was sick. I somehow ran out, though I still feel the man had me in some kind of hypnotic trance all the while… it was easy to be attracted to this version of divine Indian male virility," quotes Amanda, who has since then travelled to India six times, staying clear of tantric touts, as she labels them.   

India's historical and mythological past too corroborates this primordial relationship between sex and religion. The Mahabharata, one of our greatest epics, is spilling over with debauchery, lechery, and sexual immorality. Ved Vyasa for starters was the illegitimate son of Rishi Parasara and Satyavati. His mother after her sexual romp with the Rishi married King Santanu. From whom she had a son called Vichitra-virya, who died childless. Ved Vyasa was later roped in to impregnate Vichitravirya's two widows at the insistence of Satyavati, and along came two sons Dhritrashtra and Pandu, between whose descendants the mighty war of Mahabharata was subsequently fought.

Before her nuptials with Pandu, Kunti is famously known to have had a son from Surya Devta - her eldest Karna who was later thrown into a river. Since Pandu was sterile, Kunti at his behest again invoked the mantra given by Durvasa Muni, and bore three sons: Yudhisthira (Son of Dharmraj, Lord of justice), Bhima (Son of Vayu), and Arjun (Son of Indra). Before passing on her shakti to Madri, who became a mother to Nakula and Sahadeva.

Sexual promiscuity is not new in India with many ancient texts even pointing to games like "Ghatkancuki" where some a group of elite men and women were made to indulge in sexual acts for the entertainment of the audience. The game was said to continue until every man would have had sexual intercourse with every woman. There is also reference to incest, a subject that we squirm at today. It is said that Shatrupa, sage Vasishta's daughter had a sexual relationship with him assuming him to be her husband. The Rig Veda, also bears traces of a conversation between a brother-sister duo Yam and Yami where Yami expresses her desire to initiate a sexual relationship with Yam and when he refuses to entertain the same, she claims that a brother is of no use if he cannot fulfill his sister innermost wishes. Narada, another popular mythological character too was born after Daksha gave his daughter to his father, Brahmadev.

Who are we then? As a race? Perhaps it's time to question. And introspect. And what becomes of our swacch sexual intentions? Who will save our souls? Which Guru must we trust? Who will sell them?

What is the price generations of God-fearing Indians must pay? How many more women must be violated? Touched? Tormented?
Sex and the yogi

http://www.dailyo.in/lifestyle/sex-and-the-yogi-sexuality-bikram/story/1/2368.html

By Gayatri Jayaraman, March 3, 2015

Does yoga reduce rape or does it enhance the chances of it? Centuries of celibacy attempts and spurious gurus gone wrong stand testimony.

The Brihadaranyaka Upanisad's sixth Adhyaya, which holds the incantations and mantras, recipes and potions for sexual intercourse and begetting a child, is not a very kosher tablet by modern standards. By any means, in the current environment, digital or printed, and were it not preordained as sacred, it would be banned as pornography.

Sex, in Indian Hindu tradition, and its enjoyment and wilful participation in it, is as much a part of Vedic culture as it is in modern celebration of it. Semen is said to contain the life force and the genitals, the source of procreation, vital energies. There is nothing unsacred about it. Brahmacarya, or celibacy, was recommended practice by those who wished to conserve this life force or energy.
The processes of yoga, apart from keeping the body limber enough to withstand the duress of deep meditation, are used to activate the chakras and utilise them. Asanas like parivritta trikonasana or utkatasana accentuate the energies of this chakra. The suryanamaskar, done correctly, alone activates it thrice during one complete cycle. But here is the thing about yoga, at advanced levels, and in the hands of a Master, the asanas are used in combination with each other to open and close advance and activate according to what energies the body requires. The simple practice of anulom-vilom is a pranayam, or method of alternate-nostril breathing, can be regulated to heat or cool the body. The ashtanga yoga format which studies ethics, self discipline, diet, the mind, to regulate the body is a comprehensive programme. It is only under the guidance of an expert, or more traditionally, a dedicated guru, and often after years of training that a student can begin to understand and activate the body in such a manner that is within his control. Rigorous yoga practitioners also speak of diseases the body throws up in the first few months or years of practice - akin to the withdrawal symptoms of an addict. It can take up to ten years for the kundalini shakti to rise along with one's levels of mastery over it to be made adept. If anything the purpose of the yogic practice is to reverse sexual energy or prana into brain energy via celibacy, and the few who achieve this impossible task, are yogis.

 

S. Radhakrishnan wrote in the introduction to his Principal Upanishads, "When controlled, brahmacharya helps creative work of every description. When the seed is wasted in sex excesses, the body becomes weak and crippled, the face lined, the eyes dull, hearing impaired and the brain inactive. If brahmacharya is practiced, the physical body remains youthful and beautiful, the brain keen and alert and the whole physical expression becomes the likeness and the image of the Divine."

It is yoga's impact on beauty and physical fitness, a side effect to its original purpose, that makes it a universal draw in a looks-driven age. Put all of this in the context of a Rs 200 a neighbourhood yoga centre session which anyone can sign up for or drop out of, do 20 suryanamskars, measure his or her hips for weight loss in 20 days and mix and match a bunch of asanas without understanding what it is they activate or energise. The unleashing of energies in strange concoctions implies, especially by the strictest yogic standards, chaos for the body, and the mind. 

An editor friend of a fitness magazine recently joked with me about how many socialites ended up having affairs with their yoga instructors. Even as Bikram, the hot yoga guru, currently facing rape and assault charges in the US*, told Elle magazine India in January that wherever he went, women he taught found him "irresistible" and he was forced to oblige them. These are not untrue instances of what results when yoga is used unchecked. The admittedly tenuous link also traces back to why spurious and mass spiritual movements are often rocked by sex scandals. *See following page

American yoga guru John Friend**, who taught an Anusara style of yoga, a couple of years ago shut his practice post a sex scandal. **See pages 104 ff.

The Hare Krishna and Mahesh Yogi followers of the post '60s saw sex scandals and free spiritedness with deep links to transcendental meditation. And Madonna, goddess of pop sex, and Sting and their experiments with tantra and the kundalini, are well documented. Gandhi's own experiments with truth and with celibacy, or those of spiritualist Andrew Cohen's, and the accounts of Japanese monks of the Taoist orders document the struggle some of the wisest men of our times in dealing with sexual energies. It is not then pragmatic to expect that the neighbourhood yokel who has walked into a yoga class and is unleashing energies without a second thought to them, will have them under balance in about two months.  

Ancient Indian systems of knowledge had built in checks and balances that allowed only hand-picked students, thought mature enough to handle the knowledge, to advance through levels. All knowledge was not to be disseminated without thought to the ultimate user and its impact on them and on society. That this eventually degenerated into a system that coercively kept certain classes out is another debate altogether. 

The ignorant propagation of yoga in fact, Dr Murli Manohar Joshi, could thus very well result in a rise of rape, not a decrease in it. It would be wonderful if those who propagated Hindu systems of practice took the pains to inform themselves about it, rather than sell them out of context, as fads and quick cures for everything from the size of your waist to rape. The latter, alas, only good governance can cure. How about some of that?
20. BIKRAM CHOUDHURY

Lawsuit accuses founder of yoga empire of misconduct

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/27/us/bikram-yoga-founder-is-sued-by-former-student.html?_r=0

By Sara Beck, March 26, 2013

A former student has sued Bikram Choudhury, the millionaire founder of a wildly popular yoga franchise, accusing him of sexual harassment, discrimination and defamation.

According to legal documents filed this month in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Sarah Baughn, 28, a Bikram student, teacher and international competitor who lives in San Francisco, said she considered Mr. Choudhury her hero until he made advances toward her during a 2005 teacher training course in Los Angeles.

Ms. Baughn, who was 20 at the time, said she was uncomfortable when she first noticed how other female students would brush his hair, wash his feet and give him massages, but she chalked it up to cultural differences. Then, she says, he offered her his diamond Rolex watch, which she did not accept, and told her he had known her in a past life.

“What should we do about this?” the lawsuit claims Mr. Choudhury said. “I have never felt this way about anyone,” he continued, adding, “Should we make this a relationship?”

Mr. Choudhury opened his first yoga studio in the early 1970s in the basement of a bank building in Beverly Hills, Calif. A national yoga champion from Calcutta, Mr. Choudhury was said to sleep on the studio floor, spurn the advances of women and offer classes by donation only.

Then Shirley MacLaine (a leading New Age guru), an early student, gave him some advice.

“She said no American respects anything that’s free,” Mr. Choudhury recalled at the 2012 Bishnu Charan Ghosh Cup, the yoga asana competition named after his guru.

Now, Mr. Choudhury, 67, charges $25 per class, oversees hundreds of studios on six continents, owns several Rolls-Royces and is called “Yoga’s Bad Boy” by Yoga Journal. His copyrighted yoga sequence is practiced in a 105-degree room often nicknamed the torture chamber.

“Sarah dropped out of college to study with Bikram, and every penny she had went to him,” said Mary Shea Hagebols, Ms. Baughn’s lawyer. “She was a true believer and student.”

Ms. Baughn says she rebuffed Mr. Choudhury’s repeated advances and at times tried to redirect his attention to his wife, also a teacher and the founder of USA Yoga, a yoga sports federation with Olympic ambitions. The legal document claims that his advances continued; he is accused of pressing his body against hers while adjusting her posture, whispering sexually charged comments into her ear, ordering her to kiss him in front of other trainees, and assaulting her in a hotel room in Acapulco, Mexico, during a teacher training.

Her lawyer declined to say whether Ms. Baughn ever reported any of these accusations to the police, but she did speak with senior teachers at his Los Angeles-based Yoga College of India. “Sarah wants whatever justice the jury decides so that this never happens again — that’s her primary goal,” Ms. Hagebols said.

Neither Mr. Choudhury nor his wife, Rajashree, who is also being sued for her role in running the business and the teacher training program, could be reached for comment. But a spokeswoman for USA Yoga said the group was confident that the court would determine the truth.

“In the interim,” said the spokeswoman, Rachel Golden, “we believe it is vitally important to continue to support the millions of devoted yoga practitioners around the world in reaping the benefits of their practice.”

Reporting Mr. Choudhury’s behavior to the senior teachers did little good, Ms. Baughn says in the suit. They promised that he was harmless and “innocent, like a child,” she said. Ms. Baughn said she was told that she needed to “separate the man from the teacher” and understand that powerful men were often flirtatious.

“Vulnerability and devotion are big parts of the practice,” said Benjamin Lorr, the author of the memoir “Hellbent:

Obsession, Pain, and the Search for Something like Transcendence in Competitive Yoga.” “Bikram creates this mentality that the outside is phony. There is no path but this path, and everything that happens in this path is just a part of your yoga, that you have to learn to be strong and get past it.”

Considered a guru to celebrities like Madonna, George Clooney and Jennifer Aniston, Mr. Choudhury wears a Speedo while presiding over teacher trainings that cost $11,000. Over 300 would-be teachers practice three hours of yoga per day in a sweltering hotel conference room. They also study anatomy, Hindu philosophy and Bikram’s views on life, love and ethics.

Ms. Baughn says her financial investment was one reason she continued to study, practice and teach the series despite her accusations that Mr. Choudhury attempted to sabotage her career and competition results when she repeatedly refused his advances.

“There was a culture of fear,” Mr. Lorr said of the Bikram teacher trainings he experienced, where he tried to interview other students. “No one really wanted to go on the record with me. They thought they would lose their certificates, that all the hard work and money they put into it would be taken away.”

Some Bikram studio owners are wondering how to confront the accusations.

Tricia Donegan, the owner of Bikram Yoga on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, explained that some students did not even know that Bikram was an actual person.

“Bikram’s name may be on the door,” she said, “but my particular space is a safe haven.”

Bikram Yoga Guru Hit With Yet another Sexual Assault Case

http://www.law360.com/articles/622393/bikram-yoga-guru-hit-with-yet-another-sexual-assault-case EXTRACT

By Michael Lipkin, February 18, 2015

San Diego - Bikram Choudhury, the founder of Bikram Yoga facing a barrage of rape claims from former yoga teachers who attended his training seminars, was hit with yet another suit Friday in California court from a woman accusing him of repeated sexual assaults.

Jill Lawler claims she spent $10,000 to join a Choudhury teacher training course in 2010, but was quickly the target of Choudhury’s requests for intimate massages and sexual advances...
Schism Emerges in Bikram Yoga Empire amid Rape Claims

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/us/cracks-show-in-bikram-yoga-empire-amid-claims-of-rape-and-assault.html?_r=0

By Jack Healy, February 23, 2015

Los Angeles — He is the yoga guru who built an empire on sweat and swagger. He has a stable of luxury cars and a Beverly Hills mansion. During trainings for hopeful yoga teachers, he paces a stage in a black Speedo and holds forth on life, sex and the transformative power of his brand of hot yoga. “I totally cure you,” he has told interviewers. “Whatever the problem you have.”

But a day of legal reckoning is drawing closer for the guru, Bikram Choudhury. He is facing six civil lawsuits from women accusing him of rape or assault. The most recent was filed on Feb. 13 by a Canadian yogi, Jill Lawler, who said Mr. Choudhury raped her during a teacher-training in the spring of 2010.

This month, a Los Angeles judge cleared away several challenges to a lawsuit from a former student who said Mr. Choudhury raped her during another 2010 teacher-training.

The first complaint was filed two years ago. As more surfaced, and more women spoke publicly about accusations of assault and harassment, their accounts have created fissures in the close-knit world of yoga students and teachers who have spent thousands of dollars to study with Mr. Choudhury; opened studios bearing his name; and found strength, flexibility and health in his formula of 26 yoga postures in a sweltering room.

Many have stayed loyal to a man they call Boss and revere as an eccentric guru. Others are walking away.

“A lot of people have blinders on,” said Sarah Baughn, 29, a onetime Bikram yoga devotee and international yoga competitor whose lawsuit against Mr. Choudhury in 2013 was like an earthquake among followers of his style of yoga. “This is their entire world. They don’t want to accept that this has happened.”

Mr. Choudhury, who remains the face of his yoga empire, his grinning photo placed prominently on the home page of Bikram’s Yoga College of India, denies any wrongdoing and faces no criminal charges.

A statement issued by lawyers for Mr. Choudhury and his yoga college, which is also named as a defendant in the lawsuits, said that “Mr. Choudhury did not sexually assault any of the plaintiffs” and that the women were “unjustly” exploiting the legal system for financial gain.

“Their claims are false and dishonor Bikram yoga and the health and spiritual benefits it has brought to the lives of millions of practitioners throughout the world,” the statement said. “After a thorough investigation, the Los Angeles County district attorney declined to file any sexual assault charges against Mr. Choudhury or the college for lack of evidence.”

An August trial date has been set in Ms. Baughn’s case. In her complaint, she said Mr. Choudhury pursued her starting with a teacher-training she attended in 2005, when she was 20. She said he had whispered sexual advances during classes, and had assaulted and groped her in a hotel room and at his home.

In the other case involving a 2010 teacher-training, Mr. Choudhury’s lawyers argued that the woman had waited too long to file the lawsuit, beyond the statute of limitations. But the judge denied parts of the lawyers’ argument, saying the woman, known in court papers as Jane Doe No. 2, had endured so much damage to her life and psyche that most of the suit could move ahead.

“The cases are moving very quickly,” said Mary Shea Hagebols, a lawyer for the six women suing Mr. Choudhury. “Any stays have been lifted, and we’re moving full steam ahead.”

Even as the lawsuits against Mr. Choudhury multiplied over the past two years, new Bikram-branded studios continued to open, joining a list of hundreds of independently operated studios in places like Buenos Aires and Shanghai. Mr. Choudhury is listed as the director of his Los Angeles headquarters, and he personally oversees the grueling, weeks-long teacher-trainings that cost $12,500 per pupil.

“There have been thousands of Bikram yoga teachers, studio owners and practitioners who have conveyed messages of support and encouragement,” the statement from his lawyers said.

But several owners have decided to jettison the name Bikram from their yoga, saying they now felt uncomfortable with the association. On the Southern California coast, Tiffany Friedman renamed her Bikram studio Haute Yogi Manhattan Beach and began offering her own mixture of yoga styles.

Ms. Friedman had been doing Bikram-style yoga for years, and she said that after buying a studio in 2008, she decided to attend a teacher-training in San Diego. She hoped to learn more about yoga philosophy, anatomy and the underpinnings of a physical practice she had come to love. She found none of that, she said.

“I was pretty much appalled,” she said. “It was very cultish.”

The daylong trainings, she said, consisted of marathon yoga practice in a roasting room, rote memorization of a yoga script to which teachers had to adhere, what she described as rambling lectures led by Mr. Choudhury and mandatory viewings of Bollywood movies until 3 a.m. She said other teacher trainees frequently massaged Mr. Choudhury as he sat in an oversize chair on stage before rows of pupils.

“I saw how people really wanted his favor and wanted him to shine a light on them and wanted to believe he was a guru and had all these powers,” Ms. Friedman said. “It was heartbreaking.”

Ms. Friedman said she had clashed with Mr. Choudhury when she had begun offering an abbreviated version of his 90-minute class, and decided to part ways with the Bikram brand after reading details from the lawsuits.

“I stopped sending people to training,” she said. “I changed the name.”

But other studio owners have drawn borders between the man and his yoga, saying his methods work. And they have continued to use his name in their business.

In moment-by-moment detail, the civil suits against Mr. Choudhury accused him of harassing, targeting and assaulting young women who had once revered him.

The most recent complaint, filed by Ms. Lawler, described how she felt that “Bikram Yoga was her calling, and that her purpose was to share it with as many people as possible.” At 18, she signed up for a spring 2010 teacher-training in Las Vegas.

Lawyers for Mr. Choudhury said they had not yet been formally served with the lawsuit.

According to the complaint, Mr. Choudhury praised Ms. Lawler’s recitation of the teaching script that accompanied the yoga postures. She massaged him for hours during Bollywood viewings, the complaint said, and at one point, he began groping her.

Ms. Lawler was afraid to speak up, the court papers said, and having spent $10,000 from her college fund on the training, she felt she had to complete the course. Mr. Choudhury pulled her aside one night, apologized for touching her and promised to “make her a champion,” the complaint said.

Weeks later, Mr. Choudhury told Ms. Lawler to accompany him to his hotel room, where he sexually assaulted her, the complaint said.

According to the lawsuit, Ms. Lawler stayed part of the Bikram world for years after that; the complaint accused Mr. Choudhury of sexually assaulting her on multiple subsequent occasions, most recently in February 2013.

In July 2014, she taught her last Bikram yoga class, the lawsuit said, and took a job as a waitress.

Ms. Baughn, who once loved teaching yoga and earned accolades for her strength and flexibility on the yoga mat, has also left the yoga world. She no longer teaches or practices, and she said she could never go back.

“I went through total hell,” she said, adding: “What happened to me was awful. I’ll probably always have bad dreams.”
Yoga: Harmless Exercise or New Age Sex Cult?

Recent expose of Bikram yoga founder prompts questions.

http://www.aleteia.org/en/society/aggregated-content/yoga-harmless-exercise-or-new-age-sex-cult-5815514559414272?utm_campaign=NL_en&utm_source=daily_newsletter&utm_medium=mail&utm_content=NL_en-26/02/2015

By Patti Maguire Armstrong, February 26, 2015

Editor's Note: In light of the February 23 New York Times article, "Schism Emerges in Bikram Yoga Empire amid Rape Claims," we take a closer look at the roots of yoga. Is it harmless exercise, or should we be concerned? 
I consider myself flexible.  But if you are talking about physical flexibility and the ability to cross my legs and the wrap them around my head, well, that’s not going to happen!
Yoga is not my sport. But my aversion to it is not a matter of disdain for the lean and limber who stretch into unnatural poses. Stretching is legitimately good for the body. Yoga, however, is more complicated than physical fitness.
My first introduction to yoga came when I was in high school living in Dearborn, Michigan. My friend Denise and I took an evening class at a local public school. We went to the Catholic school and were looking for something adventurous to do while we scanned the list of community education classes. Denise’s mother nixed the belly dancing class (bless her) so yoga it was. We did a lot of harmless balancing and stretching such as “The Tree” in which we stood one-legged with the foot from the other leg pressed on the opposing inner thigh while holding our arms outstretched.  We wobbled and struggled to stay upright and felt very un-tree-like.
One day, the instructor brought in a picture book of yogis in advanced poses.  Good heavens, I’ve bet you’ve never seen the likes of such contortions outside of a circus — and even then… The various Gumby-like yogis looked bizarre; bending and twisting in ways I never imagined possible.

Now, fast-forward 30-some years. I’ve grown in knowledge and experience and have ten kids. Where once my faith was shallow, it now goes to the core.  And I’ve learned some things about yoga along the way.  Many years ago I read a book by a Christian and former New Ager previously considered an authority on spiritual power though crystals. Once converted, he warned of the danger and actual demonic influences in New Age practices, which had become clear to him after a difficult but major awakening to Christianity.  This man had personally explored a number of new age practices in depth, including yoga.  He had attended a special center for Yoga in California and reached a high level. The author claimed that at the upper levels, practitioners are actually inviting the serpent into their bodies during advanced relaxation poses and meditations. Hint:  the serpent is not God.

Not one to spread rumors that cannot be verified, I went to the Internet and put in the words Yoga and Serpent.  Lots of entries popped up.  Some of it was Christian-based warning against yoga.  If you are a yoga enthusiast, you could easily brush these sites aside as fanatical.  But you can’t brush aside the fact that actual yoga sites announce the power of the serpent as part of the attraction. Here is an excerpt from one of many sites:
• Kundalini (Divine Serpent Power) is a super power of our life.
• Over here lies focused all energies of the body and mind.
• Great Yogis, Rishis, Munis had discovered it.
• They all proclaimed that Kundalini is the supreme energy.
• It is the final step that helps us unite with God.
• Divine Serpent Power is the super power of our life.
As a Christian, this should shout out… False god! One book on yoga sold through Amazon is even called The Serpent Power.

On “The Lighthouse” website, self-described as a Christian Bible Based Cult Awareness Center, people are warned that Yoga is not in harmony with Christianity:

Yoga, in the Indo-European language, the ancestor of English, Latin, Greek, Sanskrit and many others, had a root meaning "to join," according to Webster’s Dictionary of Word Origins. In the English word, borrowed from Sanskrit, yoga means literally "union" (with deity), and is used specifically to refer to a program of spiritual discipline to attain this union. Christian understanding is that the goal of uniting with an alternate spirituality to God is to be united with a demonic being. 

Harper’s Encyclopedia of Mystical & Paranormal Experience by Rosemary Ellen Guiley, describes yoga as “Various systems of spiritual discipline and liberation from the senses.” This is an interesting way of saying that yoga is designed to separate one from their mental faculties by creating an altered state of consciousness… 
In Asia, Yoga is also found in Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Bon (the early religion of Tibet) and has evolved into different systems, but all share the common goal of “union with the Absolute,” or divine, and are spiritual practices inseparable from the Eastern mystical religions that spawned them. 

To the Christian, the greatest danger is the spiritual idolatry, before God, in engaging in practices devised thousands of years ago by pagan experts or “adepts,” to become “united” with spiritual deity, they believed to be the "Absolute," or "Ultimate Reality," but which the Bible calls "fallen angels" or demons.

Is yoga rooted in the demonic?  Some say yes, while others say it’s merely an Eastern religion. To make the demonic connection automatically puts the naysayer in the light of fanatic. But even if it’s nothing more than an ancient religion, how should Catholics view it? Is it harmless physical exercise when just the stretching is used?

There is another, very surprising aspect behind those stretches. Yoga’s historical roots as a sex cult was reported in an article in New York Times this year.
Reporting on a sexual scandal of a well-known leader in yoga, the Times reported that the frequent scandals common among yoga devotees should come as no surprise.
Yoga teachers and how-to books seldom mention that the discipline began as a sex cult – an omission that leaves many practitioners open to libidinal surprise. 
Hatha yoga – the parent of the styles now practiced around the globe – began as a branch of Tantra. In medieval India, Tantra devotees sought to fuse the male and female aspects of the cosmos into a blissful state of consciousness. 
The rites of Tantric cults, while often steeped in symbolism, could also include group and individual sex.

Yoga is offered far and wide from gyms to schools and church activities. Isn’t it going overboard and becoming a troublemaker if we object to the practice of Yoga?  But even in a yoga class where you evaluate it as mere stretching and balancing, are you astute enough to understand any and all terms that might be thrown out there in languages you don’t understand?
Looking at an excerpt from The Power of the Serpent, it’s easy to see that you could unwittingly participate in a class without understanding what is really taking place.  Do you know what it means to pierce the Six Centres or regions (chakra) or Lotuses (padma) of the body?  I don’t, but based on what I know, I think we should abstain. Here is an excerpt from the book:
The power is the Goddess (Devi) Kundalini, or that which is coiled; for Her form is that of a coiled and sleeping serpent in the lowest bodily center at the base of the spinal column until by the means described She is aroused in that Yoga which is named after Her. Kundalini is the Divine Cosmic Energies in bodies…” 

Does it strike you as odd that the author capitalizes pronouns “she” and “her” when referring to this serpent?  A footnote on the page explains, “Devi is Bhujagi, or the Serpent.”  So if your yoga instructor mentions Bhujagi during class, will you recognize the serpent being called on? Many people like exotic, exciting things.  Different languages and cultures are interesting but yoga is not like a trip to a Chinese restaurant.

In Fr. Mitch Pacwa’s book, Catholics and the New Age, he describes Yoga as the general category of various kinds of Hindu disciplines meant to unite a person with the divine. He states: “Yoga can refer to physical (hatha) mental (raja) sexual (tantra) or other discipline to achieve enlightenment.” Fr. Pacwa’s book was written to alert Catholics of new age influences that hamper Catholic practices and traditions. It is highly regarded and is cited in the magisterial document Jesus Christ Bearer of the Water of Life: A Christian Reflection on the “New Age”.
On the Catholic Answers website, a mother wrote wondering what her response should be to Yoga being practiced at her daughter’s Catholic elementary school during religion class.  Here was their response:
Particular physical exercises that are common to yoga and that help improve one’s health are perfectly fine. The problem is when a Christian participates in non-Christian Eastern spirituality. If your church is sponsoring an exercise class, it should call it simply an exercise class and omit confusing and possibly scandalous terminology such as yoga. If the church is sponsoring classes in non-Christian Eastern spirituality that is a serious problem that should be discussed with the pastor.
My kids have been to a Catholic vacation Bible school that had yoga.  My highschoolers were in sports that had a class in yoga as part of their conditioning. (It’s not a part of the program any more, thanks to solid, Catholic influences.) I figured it was just the exercise part of yoga – no religion involved.  Since they were not rising to the upper levels, I did not imagine their stretches were anything more than harmless exercise.
But recently I reconsidered this issue. In the future, I plan to gently but firmly protest such practices.  I don’t like being a thorn in the side to anyone. However, I am willing to be a thorn for the One who wore a crown of thorns for us.
Yoga is an ancient pagan religion. There are many parts to it such as stretching and meditation but they are all connected. Therefore, even if we don’t consider the serpent, why is it okay to take a part of a pagan religion and sponsor it and even force participation of it in schools and sports?  My contention is that even in a public school, forced participation falls under the definition of pushing and proselytizing children into a religion. Certainly in a Catholic school, a pagan religion – even a part of it – should not be required.
“For crying out loud,” the reply may be, “we’re just talking about some simple stretches and relaxed breathing techniques.”  Well, fine.  Then why not simply have stretching exercises?  Yoga is a religion with different parts and levels to it.  The stretching and meditation is just a part of it. I am raising my kids Catholic. They can learn about other religions, but practicing it goes beyond learning.
As Catholics, we should not be put on the defensive if we don’t want our children participating in an Eastern religion.