Occult Deception

Is Yoga an Exercise Program?

Most Americans see Yoga as an exercise program. To us, it seems like a benign way to improve your health. In fact, Yoga is taught at many exercise facilities and hospitals and clinics. Yoga is a fast growing therapy.

However, if you travel to India, where Yoga originates from, you will not find that Yoga is offered as an exercise class. To Hindus, Yoga is not an exercise but a worship practice. Hindus use Yoga to clear the mind and relax the body for the purpose of communication with the spirit world. Hindus worship 330 million god's and goddesses and without sounding too simplistic Yoga is the chief means used to connect with the. There are over 6 methods for practicing Yoga and each focuses on the worship of this pantheon of divinities.

When I was in graduate school in my chaplain's training program, one of our instructors had us greet each morning using the word "Nameste". This word is used in a cable exercise program called "Nameste Yoga". My supervisor told our class that the word means, "the divine within me greets the divine withing you". This is not quite accurate. The word "nameste" means, "the Buddha within me greets the Buddha withing you", yet another religious twist.

What are the implications for the use of Yoga for Christians. 1 Thessalonians 5:22 instructs believers to "avoid the appearance of evil". Think about it for a moment, if the police catch you robbing a store with a toy gun won't they still arrest you for armed robbery? The answer is "of course". Using a counterfeit of the real thing still makes you guilty. Using Yoga as an exercise program, when it was intended for the worship of the demonic still puts us spiritually at risk and opens the door to the occult in our lives.

Worship practices like Yoga were never designed to be "exercise programs, they were designed to be a form of worship. Christians should think twice about using a practice steeped in Eastern religion and false worship as a means for improving their bodies. The Bible tells us, "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit? You are not your own, you have been bought with a price" (1 Corinthians 6:19). I think that the underlying issue is do we want to please God. We must recognize that we belong to Him body, soul and spirit. Our bodies are not our own and we should not use them in a way that would dishonor Him.