It seems that every six months or so a flutter of press activity erupts over Christian Yoga. Typically, the press reduces this complex and juicy issue into two opposing sides. In one corner we usually meet one of a growing handful of Christian yoga “innovators”, who have stripped yoga of its popular Hindu roots and iconography and grafted Christian elements therein. In the other corner, we typically meet Subhas Tiwari, professor of yoga philosophy and meditation at the Hindu University of America in Florida, whose famous line is “Yoga is Hinduism.” He stresses how you can't separate yoga from Hinduism because they are one and the same.

But yoga will not be pinned down. It has always been ideologically diverse, alluring almost every religious doctrine that it encounters to somehow absorb it, or at least to assimilate its ideas and practices into its own fold. Certainly Hinduism has preserved and fathered the particular strain which has infected the West --and subsequently the entire planet undergoing globalization. But Hinduism itself is not entirely a singular doctrine. It's more like a competing set of complicated, and often conflicting, religious ideas and practices. Perhaps this idiosyncratic and sometimes outright contradictory environment helped to nurture the resilient strain of ideas and practices that today we call Yoga.

Yoga is an ancient philosophy and a set of associated practices that have been actively part of the Indian culture for roughly 3000 years. During that time, almost every major religion in India absorbed yoga into their fold. Translations of Patanjali's famous Yoga Sutras were quickly absorbed into Arabic; Islam assimilated yogic practices via the outlandish and infamous techniques of fakirs; Buddhist Yoga and Jainist Yoga became canonized and developed their own long, colorful histories.

Thus the rise of Christian yoga comes as no surprise. What may be surprising, however, is that it's nothing new. Religious scholars have found historic precedent. In his book Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, Mircea Eliade discusses the Hesychasts, a Christian sect that used yogic techniques in their meditation and prayers back in 13th century. Specifically, these rites involved pranayama, or controlled breathing; mantra, or the repetition of a phrase, namely the “Jesus Prayer,” which translates from the ancient Greek into roughly, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner;” and finally drishti, or gazing point, wherein the monks would stare into their naval.

Grafting yoga onto Christianity is far from seamless. Certainly there are anomalies and contadictions to resolve between doctrines of Yoga and that of Christianity. To name a few: liberation and heaven; judgment and the law of karma; sin and samskaras.

One of the most astute criticisms of yoga as it is practiced today comes from the Vatican. In a document issued in 1989, signed by then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger--now Pope Benedict XVI, the church warns that the practice of Eastern traditions like yoga can “degenerate into a cult of the body," warning us against mistaking "pleasing sensations" for "spiritual well-being."

It is only in the last century or so that yoga has become synonymous with physical culture. And who steps up to take a stand against vanity and self-delusion in the practice of yoga? Yep, the Pope. He's doing his part to keep it real. That's how the Christians shine some light on yoga.

Photo Credit: Was Jesus a Yogi?