MAY 25/JULY 2014

U.S. Catholic magazine endorses New Age including Reiki, Yoga and Zen

The U.S. Catholic
monthly magazine (www.uscatholic.org/)
describes itself as “a forum for lay Catholics reviewing the intersection of U.S. cultural and political
life and the Catholic faith.” It is published by the Claretian Missionaries from Chicago, Illinois. Its editor is Fr. John Molyneux, CMF. Their email addresses are letters@uscatholic.org, editors@uscatholic.org,
and onlineeditor@uscatholic.org.

An extract from http://www.uscatholic.org/about-us:

The Claretian Missionaries are a Roman Catholic religious community of priests and brothers. We are dedicated to the mission of living and spreading the Gospel of Jesus. For more information, visit www.claretians.org.

Following are a few extracts from the May 2013, 2014 issues of the so-called Catholic magazine which serve to warn readers not to trust anything and everything that comes with the label “Catholic”.

1. Lessons from the church in Asia

http://www.uscatholic.org/articles/201405/lessons-church-asia-28913
EXTRACT

May 20, 2014

A U.S. Catholic interview with Claretian Missionaries Fr Samuel Canilang, the director of the Institute for Consecrated Life in Asia (ICLA) in Quezon City near Manila, Philippines, who currently serves on the Vatican’s Commission for the Church in China. The institute which is focused on preparing Chinese men and women for ministry in China, was founded by the Claretian Missionaries in 1997 and educates religious and lay students from all over Asia, offering degree programs in consecrated life, missiology, spirituality, and biblical ministry.

What are some of the spiritual practices that you’re adopting or adapting from other religious traditions?

Two years ago we invited an Indian Jesuit, Father Sebastian Painadath, who founded the Sameeksha Center for Indian Spirituality in the state of Kerala. He tries to integrate Christian prayer and meditation practices with Hindu practices, especially yoga. We invited him to direct the annual retreat of our students, and he introduced our students to some yoga ways of meditation, postures, and all that.

Then last July we had Ruben Habito, a Filipino-American Zen expert from the Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, give a Zen weekend and retreat at our school.

How has your own spiritual life been enriched and changed through these practices?

When I was a Claretian novice, we were introduced to some of these Asian practices like Zen or yoga meditations. I have been practicing them ever since.

Then in my doctoral dissertation I also explored interspiritual dialogue. I did some research on Greek Orthodox spirituality and studied the ancient ascetic spiritual tradition of Hesychasm. During that research I discovered the Jesus Prayer, and to me it resonated with forms of prayer and meditation in Asia, particularly the mantra.

A mantra is repetitive, and so is the Jesus prayer, as is the Muslim form of prayer called “Remembrance of Allah” or Dhikru’llah . When I am practicing the Jesus Prayer, I try to blend these commonalities.

When you pray a mantra, you get a phrase and you repeat it again and again. For example, there are the Hindu mantras “Aum” or “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare.” Or the Sufi mantra “al-Hayyu, al-Qayyum” (The living, the eternal) and “La ilaha illa’llah” (There is no god but Allah). The Jesus Prayer works the same way. It has several formulas, but the most famous one is “Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” You repeat it again and again.

But before you even get to that, you should have some kind of preparation, like breathing exercises, to relax yourself, to calm yourself. So, I often use yoga postures and breathing exercises in connection with my Jesus Prayer.

The Jesus Prayer posture, as practiced by the Orthodox monks on Mount Athos in Greece, is very difficult because you have to concentrate on your navel. But if you combine the prayer with a Zen or yoga meditation posture, it is simpler.

Fr. Sebastian Painadath SJ is a high-ranking leader of the heretical and New Age Catholic Ashrams movement in India. See http://ephesians-511.net/docs/CATHOLIC_ASHRAMS.doc. His name figures in over thirty of this ministry’s reports.

2. Spiritual exercises: Can other religious practices strengthen your Catholic core?
http://www.uscatholic.org/articles/201304/spiritual-exercises-can-other-religious-practices-strengthen-your-catholic-core

By Heather Grennan Gary, former editor, May 2013 issue of U.S. Catholic

Catholics searching for ways to experience their faith in both body and soul often look to other religious practices. But do they stretch their faith too thin?

Christine French attends Mass every Sunday, sings in the choir, volunteers with Vacation Bible School, and participates in a Bible study. She’s also a committed yogi who, whenever she’s in her hometown of Omaha, makes a beeline to her favorite yoga studio.

“In my head I replace a few of the things they say in class,” says French, a math teacher currently working on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. “When the instructor tells us that we have the power and to trust ourselves in meditations, I often think about how God is in control and I need to surrender to him. We are being asked to spread love, joy, and peace to others, and I think my source of that love, joy, and peace is Jesus. They say [the source is] the universe in class, but I’m capable of making that adjustment in my head.”

Still, she knows some of her Catholic friends and family don’t feel the same, so she tends to keep quiet about her practice. She won’t give it up, though, and here’s why: “Yoga integrates my physical body with my spirituality, something I have never found in the church.”

While yoga causes some Catholic eyebrows to raise, it’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to non-Catholic spiritual and religious practices that have made their way into the lives of many Catholics.

Part of that comes from the mainstream acceptance of practices such as yoga, meditation, and holistic healing. Another part comes from a greater visibility and understanding of other religions as well as more personal connections between Catholics and adherents of other religious traditions.

The phenomenon of Catholics engaging in “alternative” spiritual practices is hardly new—Thomas Merton started his dialogue with Buddhist philosophy professor D. T. Suzuki more than 50 years ago. But in the past quarter century alone, church leaders have been particularly focused on the issue. Recent church documents have set forth doctrine (Dominus Iesus, 2000), have urged bishops to respond and caution “those who are interested in some Eastern religions and their particular methods of prayer” (Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation, 1989), and have instructed Catholics “to have an understanding of authentic Catholic doctrine and spirituality in order to properly assess New Age themes” (Jesus Christ: The Bearer of the Water of Life, 2003).

In her book Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life (Oxford), religion sociologist Meredith McGuire explains how lived religion doesn’t have to be logically coherent and based on systematic beliefs. Rather, she writes, “It requires a practical coherence: It needs to make sense in one’s everyday life, and it needs to be effective.” Religious practices that promote physical and mental health, improve personal relationships, and help make sense of the world often offer just that, regardless of where they come from.

That’s a challenge for church leaders who are charged with helping Catholics understand what is authentically part of church tradition—and what is even acceptable to church tradition. In 2009, for instance, the U.S. bishops issued Guidelines for Evaluating Reiki as an Alternative Therapy, a document that brought chagrin to Catholics who had used the nonmedical healing technique that originated in Japan more than a century ago.

A Reiki practitioner places his or her hands on or above a patient’s body to restore the flow of  “universal life energy,” and, in turn, helps the patient heal physically or spiritually. The bishops’ guidelines state that Reiki “finds no support either in the findings of natural science or in Christian belief” and stress the lack of scientific evidence explaining Reiki’s effectiveness.

In regards to spiritual healing, the guidelines warn: “To use Reiki, one would have to accept, at least in an implicit way, central elements of the worldview that undergirds Reiki theory, elements that belong neither to Christian faith nor natural science.” The guidelines specify that Reiki therapy is inappropriate for Catholic institutions, including health care facilities and retreat centers, because “a Catholic who puts his or her trust in Reiki would be operating in the realm of superstition, the no-man’s-land that is neither faith nor science.”

Cobbling it together

The sociologist Robert Bellah famously wrote in his 1985 groundbreaking book Habits of the Heart (University of California) about “Sheilaism,” a term he picked up from one of his interview subjects, a nurse who had assembled a selection of spiritual truths and named the resulting “religion” after herself.

While Sheila herself was not Catholic, “I think we can say that many people sitting in the pews of Protestant and even Catholic churches are Sheilaists who feel that religion is essentially a private matter and that there is no particular constraint on them placed by the historic church, or even by the Bible and the tradition,” Bellah said in a lecture shortly after the book was published.

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life offered supporting evidence of Bellah’s claim when a survey it conducted in 2009 found that 28 percent of Catholics believe in reincarnation, 29 percent believe in astrology, and 17 percent had consulted with psychics or fortune-tellers.

The essential question Catholics need to ask when it comes to assessing a resource from outside their tradition, suggests Paulist Father Thomas Ryan is what effect it will have on the coherence and integrity of their faith.

Ryan, who directs the Paulist Office for Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations in Washington, takes reincarnation as an example. “For us Christians there’s a beginning and an end. That’s a very different worldview from the traditional Eastern understanding of the cycle of rebirth.” Additionally, the centrality of human effort in the concept of reincarnation conflicts with the centrality of God’s grace that is the core of Catholicism. When Catholics evaluate a non-Catholic resource, Ryan says, “There’s a need for discrimination, discernment, and sometimes rejection.” But Ryan cautions against rejecting resources outright. “I do think there is a difference between syncretism and enrichment,” he says, pointing to a key theme that runs through Pope John Paul II’s encyclicals Dominum et Vivificantem (1986) and Redemptoris Missio (1990)—that the Holy Spirit is present and active everywhere in the world, not just within the church. “The seeds of the Word are out there. We ought to have our antennae up for what might be edifying and beneficial.”

One example of enrichment involves the “tricycle” of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving—practices that are required of all Christians. “The tire that’s rather flat on that tricycle is fasting. We as Catholics have lost sense of the when, the why, and the how of that practice. When we encounter Muslims who are fasting for Ramadan, from sunrise to sunset, that might lead us to ask, ‘What are we missing?’ and to go back to our own treasure chest and take another look.”

A new lens on faith

For the past four years Tim Brauhn, 27, has fasted during Ramadan with his Muslim friends—something he first tried in his year as a Faiths Act Fellow (a program sponsored by the Tony Blair Faith Foundation in conjunction with the Interfaith Youth Core). “It’s part solidarity, part soul sharpening,” says Brauhn, a Catholic entrepreneur and social media consultant who lives in Denver. He fasts during Lent as well, and his Ramadan experience helps him make sense of what his Lenten practice means. “When I observe a worship ceremony, or when I participate in a spiritual practice, it’s always complementary,” says Brauhn. “The idea of a deli counter version of religion doesn’t appeal to me. But the moments when I get another lens on my faith help me to move forward.”

Since college Brauhn has spent time in mosques, synagogues, and temples, and he looks for connections between the religious traditions he encounters. In particular, he sees similarities between his own Catholicism and Hinduism—enough that he keeps a statue of Ganesh, the Hindu deity known as the remover of obstacles, on a small home altar along with prayer cards of St. Francis and St. Ignatius. It’s a focal point, Brauhn says, where he’ll sometimes light incense.

When asked whether he’s thinks he’s practicing the kind of syncretism that the Vatican has warned about, Brauhn says no. “Catholicism is my center,” he says, adding that a bigger problem than drawing from other traditions is the dearth of religious literacy among adults, including Catholics. “If you don’t know what you are doing and why [during Mass]—you’re just going through the motions.”

A great spiritual hunger

Susan Stabile, 55, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota and a spiritual director and retreat leader, has never met Brauhn but would agree with him on this point. “I believe there’s danger in people thinking they can pick and choose, but I also think some people have an irrational fear of things that come from other traditions. There’s an enormous difference between drawing from a faith tradition and blending faith traditions,” she says.

“People have an incredibly deep spiritual hunger, and many are not being fed in their own church,” says Stabile, who hopes her new book Growing in Love and Wisdom: Buddhist Sources for Christian Prayer (Oxford) will help offer sustenance. “Part of my message is, ‘Hey guys, you don’t have to go somewhere else.’ ”

Her message comes from personal experience. After 12 years of parochial school, Stabile gave up her Catholic faith as a high school senior. She graduated from college as an atheist and was introduced to Buddhism during law school. Several years later Stabile moved to Asia, quit her job as a lawyer, and was ordained a Buddhist nun at a Tibetan monastery. She stayed almost four years before deciding to return home to New York.

She continued her Buddhist practice after returning, however, because it had kindled a spiritual awareness that her Catholic upbringing lacked. Eventually she married, had a baby, and started her gradual return to the church when her daughter, then 8, asked for Catholic religious instruction. As part of the religious education program requirements, Stabile started taking her daughter to Sunday Mass.

“I started to hear the gospels in a way that spoke to me,” she says. She later found her way to St. Ignatius Jesuit Retreat House in New York, where she undertook the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. It changed her life. 

“People ask me if I am a Buddhist Christian. I don’t call myself that,” says Stabile. “I am a Christian. I am a Catholic. I take back from Buddhism some things that I use in my Catholic practice.”

That approach works for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), which wrote in the 1989 letter on Christian meditation, “One can take from [the great religions] what is useful so long as the Christian conception of prayer, its logic, and requirements are never obscured.”

The CDF also says that “each member of the faithful should seek and find his own way, his own form of prayer. … Each person will, therefore, let himself be led not so much by his personal tastes as by the Holy Spirit, who guides him, through Christ, to the Father.”

The underlying challenge, of course, is that Catholics of all ages are ignorant about the depth of their religious heritage and the richness of its spiritual practices. Stabile remembers how when she told her high school chaplain that she was leaving the church, he couldn’t persuade her to give it a second chance.

“If he had given me Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain or even Augustine’s Confessions, it would have made a difference,” she says. “For a lot of Catholics, the sum total of their prayer is what they recite at Mass and the rote prayers they know from childhood. The piece that’s often missing is the affective experience, the heartfelt knowledge—from thinking and talking about God to feeling and being with God.”

Getting centered

Christine Gallagher started finding that heartfelt knowledge when she took a graduate theology class at Villanova University called Current Contemplative Practices. Her assignment—20 minutes of centering prayer twice a day—wasn’t universally embraced by her classmates, but she found that the method of silent prayer popularized by Trappist Father Thomas Keating worked well after she got the hang of it. “It’s really helped me create a more integrative spirituality,” she says.

A few months into her practice, she remembers the day she decided to do her centering prayer right after she helped out with the Stations of the Cross last Lent. As usual, she sat with her hands open, palms facing upwards in her lap. But during her prayer, she felt a powerful, painful sensation of her arms being stretched out. “So much of the Stations of the Cross had been about the pain and agony Christ experienced,” she says. “Through centering prayer, I was able to experience my faith in a deeper and more personal way.”

The prayer form also has helped her to develop her intuition. “I feel like I can sense energy around me, like when people move into a room, or I can sense they’re in a bad mood before they know. I respond better to people because I can ‘feel’ them. That’s something I never hear about in mainstream Catholicism. I want to continue to hone that skill and use it.

“I’m still going to Mass and doing service and am interested in social justice. But centering prayer has taught me to pray and do that authentically. It’s helped me understand who I am and find the Holy Spirit within myself.”

Parish yoga nights

And for many, that’s the goal when they look to outside spiritual traditions. Like Christine French, Ali Niederkorn is a devout Catholic and devoted yogi. Niederkorn, an education and management consultant and certified yoga instructor from the Chicago area, first started practicing yoga a decade ago with the goal of exercise and relaxation. She found much more.

“I was seeing this overlap between how we use our bodies in Mass and how we use our bodies in yoga, and was wondering why no one was talking about it,” she says. In 2007 she attended a workshop given by Paulist Father Ryan, who is a longtime yoga practitioner. “For the first time I heard yoga tied to the Catholic faith, and it was music to my ears,” she says.

Eventually Niederkorn met up with fellow Catholic yogi Dina Wolf, and the pair was encouraged by a young adults group at Old St. Patrick’s Church to come up with a Catholic-friendly yoga class. They struck on the idea of designing a yoga practice to embody the theme of the Sunday readings.

For people who are accustomed to using words and thoughts for prayer, the practice can be both a challenge and a relief. “My weakness is that my mind can get in the way of my communion with God and with others,” says Niederkorn. “The kinesthetic knowing that prayer yoga allows has helped me with discernment. It’s given me an understanding of what light and dark feel like, and helps me understand God’s will even before my brain kicks in.”

The class starts with centering time and an introduction and ends with guided meditation and prayer. Running about 90 minutes, the class typically draws six to 12 people. The parishes that currently offer prayer yoga see it as a ministry rather than just a space to host a yoga class.

“We’ve had many people come for prayer yoga—and, before that, a winter spirituality series on yoga—because they wanted to understand a Christian context for what they were already doing,” says Susan Pudelek, director of pilgrimage ministry at the Shrine of Our Lady of Pompeii in Chicago. Pudelek sees participation in practices such as yoga or meditation as different from religious traditions such as the Passover Seder or Ramadan. “With yoga, we all have bodies, and they all basically work the same way. These postures help move you to a certain level of calm so you can enter into prayer more deeply.”

 On the other hand, the Seder meal—which has a growing popularity among Christians, including as an event at some Catholic parishes—is a Jewish practice that directly relates to their identity, much as the Ramadan fast is for Muslims. If those practices are not done in connection with members of that tradition, Pudelek has reservations.

“I understand the attraction to it, but it can feel a little like taking something and mimicking it. I’ve heard Jews ask, ‘Why are they doing it?’ It’s important to know why you want to do something from another tradition—if it’s to learn about it, or to be in solidarity for a particular reason, maybe. But when it’s not our tradition or identity, we’re only getting the surface, not the full, authentic practice. It’s preferable to have a sense of the tradition, respect it for what it is, and not co-opt it.”

See for yourself

Even if pastoral professionals appreciate yoga, not everyone does—Wolf and Niederkorn have had a few critics over the years. They’ve invited these folks to observe prayer yoga for themselves. Three people took them up on their invitation; two of them seemed satisfied after their initial visit, and one was satisfied enough to become a regular prayer yoga practitioner.

“I fully agree that bringing other religious traditions into [the church] is problematic,” says Niederkorn. “But it’s not that we’re bringing a Hindu practice into the church. It’s a spiritual practice that happened to be used by Hindus but could easily be used by anyone—including Christians.”

Ryan considers the interplay between religious traditions to be one of the particular graces of our age, providing Catholics with regular opportunities to be challenged and inspired to live and understand their faith more fully—and to challenge and inspire others to do the same.

Niederkorn, like so many other Catholics, is deeply grateful for that grace. “I’ve developed a much more personal relationship with God through prayer yoga,” she says. “My challenge is how to take what I experience on the mat and practice that in my everyday life.”

Interested in reading more? Here are two web-exclusive sidebars that accompany this article: Ten ways to determine if a practice is compatible with your Catholic faith and some tips to get you started with drawing from other religions. 

A reader responded:

#Why is praying with your hands over another in Reiki different than priests who bless us by holding their hands toward or over us? Maybe the words are different but they don’t have to be. We can do yoga as exercise or Reiki as a means of physical prayer taking the good from another tradition and adding it to the richness of our traditions.

And the editor of U.S. Catholic was so exhilarated that he sought the reader’s permission to publish the letter in their rag.

Despite the U.S. Bishops’ warnings on the practice of Reiki by Catholics, see http://ephesians-511.net/docs/REIKI_AS_A_NEW_AGE_ALTERNATIVE_THERAPY-EVALUATION_BY_THE_US_BISHOPS.doc, U.S. Catholic magazine does not condemn it but subtly promotes the occult therapy; the same with Buddhist Zen meditation and yoga which are addressed in two Pontifical Documents, 1989 and 2003. The magazine endorses the view that “religion is essentially a private matter and that there is no particular constraint on them placed by the historic church, or even by the Bible and the tradition.”

Fr. Thomas Ryan,
a Paulist priest in Washington, DC is a leading “Christian yoga” enthusiast and instructor. He directs the Paulist North American Office for Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations in New York City, and author of Prayer of Heart and Body: Meditation and Yoga as a Christian Spiritual Practice. See http://journalism.nyu.edu/publishing/archives/livewire/archived/christian_yoga/, http://ephesians-511.net/docs/YOGA–02.doc,
http://ephesians-511.net/docs/CATHOLIC_YOGA_HAS_ARRIVED.doc,
etc. at this ministry’s web site.

3. Thinking about drawing from other religions? Here are some tips to get you started
http://www.uscatholic.org/articles/201304/thinking-about-drawing-other-religions-here-are-some-tips-get-you-started-27154

By Heather Grennan Gary, former editor, May 2013 issue of U.S. Catholic

http://www.uscatholic.org/articles/201304/so-what-about-yoga-practice-27153
EXTRACT

By Heather Grennan Gary, former editor, May 2013 issue of U.S. Catholic

Ten ways to determine if a practice is compatible with your Catholic faith

Just because a spiritual practice comes from outside the Christian tradition doesn’t automatically mean it conflicts with church teaching—nor does it automatically mean the opposite. If you’re not so sure about your son’s meditation practice, your friend’s devotion to reiki, or if you can, in good faith, take that yoga class, your goal should be to wisely discern the answer.  

In 2003 the Vatican released a provisional document titled Jesus Christ: The Bearer of the Water of Life: A Christian Reflection on the ‘New Age‘ by the Working Group of New Religious Movements. The group (composed of staff members of the Pontifical Council for Culture, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity) acknowledges that “It can be hard to distinguish between things which are innocuous and those which really need to be questioned.”  

The term “New Age” is a bit of a catch-all in this document; it lumps together practices such as acupuncture, Zen meditation, yoga, homeopathy, transpersonal psychology, transcendental meditation, Feng Shui, crystal healing, and astrology. “The mere use of the term ‘New Age’ in itself means little, if anything,” the authors write. “The relationship of the person, group, practice, or commodity to the central tenets of Christianity is what counts.”

Here are 10 questions the document presents to help Catholics evaluate whether a particular spiritual practice is acceptable.

The “ten ways” or “10 questions” make as joke of the grave warnings against New Age in the Pontifical Document since U.S. Catholic is out and out New Age and so I do not reproduce them here.

A reader of U.S. Catholic writes suitably:

#I respect your opinion but cannot agree. If we study the scriptures, the Lord says to be holy for he is holy and won’t ever contaminate us with the false paganism practices of this world. We are to really practice what we learn from the bible and stop sugar coating everything for the benefit of your own to be pleasing to others. Our Lord is the same yesterday, today and forevermore, he doesn’t change with the times. That is a straight lie from the devil. Yoga is demonic, look it up.

5. Om-schooled: How Yoga can influence your Catholic prayer

http://uscatholic.org/life/2010/07/om-schooled-how-yoga-can-influence-your-catholic-prayer

By Meghan Murphy-Gill, August 22, 2010

Catholics can take a lesson from
the Hindu tradition of yoga
when it comes to praying with body, mind, and spirit.

Walking into the dark chapel, gothic arches soaring overhead and didactic glass staining the pews with jewel-toned light, I tried to calm my mind. Papers, classes, work, broken relationships, my future. The thoughts sparked in rapid succession, a finale-on-the-Fourth-of-July-show in my mind. I dropped a knee to the cold floor, blessed myself, and slumped into the nearest pew. Slouched against the pew’s hard back, I tried to quiet the thoughts stumbling over themselves. Ineffective, I finally sunk to the floor, struggling to disregard the slush and sand that seeped into my pants. The hardwood brought my attention all too readily to my knees. My back ached from the weight of my pack, my neck tightened around a crick, and every muscle complained from the laps I had done in the pool the day before.

But never mind. I drew my attention past the aches and pains, past the unyielding floor beneath my knees, past the cold wetness of my jeans. Unfurling my hands in front of me, I finally raised my eyes to the only lit object in the room: a gold-plated tabernacle brilliant with the reflection of a single spotlight. A candle flickered behind red glass in the corner.

Finally, I found silence.

That ritual in the dark campus chapel defined my years as an undergraduate. It was not that I was overly prayerful-more like chaotic to the point of self-detriment. Only in those moments passed in that cold, beautiful room could I find a peace that would draw me beyond my concerns. I could rarely initiate those blissful silences myself. Too many frustrations, anxieties, responsibilities plagued my mind. Over the years, though, I found an unexpected weapon in my arsenal against all of the daily stresses that obliterated peace. It was through the discomfort of kneeling, the humiliating and unappealing process of lowering myself to a dirty floor, that my mind could wrap itself around what I was doing. My prayer was made possible through my posture.

The notion that my body’s position impacted my prayer was nothing new. It all began nearly a decade earlier with the inspiration of a very rotund Franciscan friar. Shuffling back and forth in front of our youth group, Brother John gave us a challenge. “Next time you’re praying, I want each of you to try it with your hands clasped in your laps.” He showed us what he meant, his knuckles white with intention. “Then, try praying with your hands open, face up, on your knees.” He added to his list: hands placed over one’s heart, arms crossed over the chest, and limbs waving in the air. “Pay attention,” he instructed, his voice boiling up from deep within his frame, “to what your mind does each time. Do you find it easier to focus? Harder? Which works best for you?”

Taste-testing those postures alone in my room, I remember marveling at how drastically they affected my prayer. With my arms crossed in front of me, I couldn’t talk to God with any kind of authenticity. When I crossed them behind my back, suddenly I was open and honest. With each position, my prayer looked very different.

Providentially, it was at that time in my life that I began to practice yoga at the local gym. The appeal of yoga lay in the benefits to my posture and the definition added to my abs and arms. Considerations of the real meaning of the spiritual exercise never crossed my mind. That is, until I found myself in a Hindu theology class five years later.

As a theology major with a focus on comparative studies, much of my undergraduate career circled the lessons diverse religious traditions could teach one another. Hinduism especially entranced me. It was fascinating in its foreignness. As a devout traditional Catholic who grew up with a healthy spattering of New Age, I appreciated the newness of the lessons I learned by studying Hinduism, with its meditative self-knowledge, exotic festivals and flavors, eclectic practices. It all caught my fancy. So when I was given the opportunity to study Hinduism firsthand, I found myself on a plane faster than I could say “Bhagavad Gita.”

The yoga I encountered on that first journey to India was far removed from the yoga of flexibility and muscle tone. The yogi, a bird-like man with bushy eyebrows shadowing his coke-bottle glasses, sat before our class with his knees beneath his body and raised his arms above his head. “I want you all to inhale when you raise your arms like this.” Then he rapidly thrust his arms down-a pantomimed motion of a weight-lifter lowering his weights-exhaling a loud hrumph.

“You should exhale out your nose. I want to see snot flying,” the yogi explained, showing us the action once more to confirm for everyone exactly what he meant. I looked at my classmates, trying to stifle a laugh. What was this? This wasn’t yoga. Where was the warrior pose? Downward facing dog? Sun salutations? I inhaled and exhaled exactly as instructed, embarrassed when the requisite snot did fly.

Later, while consulting the professor who had brought me to India, I learned that the exercise we practiced was indeed yoga. “It’s a new type of yoga evolved from a very old form,” she explained with a smirk, acknowledging that my confusion was to be expected. “It’s meant to focus on the breath,” she explained. “Remember, that’s vital to yoga-the breath. You’re always supposed to focus on the breath. Be mindful of the breath.”

Mindful was exactly what I became. Never in my life had I spent more time working to breathe. My entire thought process began to center upon how to make my lungs inflate and deflate in new ways. Suddenly I was extraordinarily present; when you’re spending so much time focusing on how to breathe, you can’t help but be present to every moment.

That, it turns out, was exactly the point.

In the months following my experiences in India, I learned that the practice of yoga comes in many variants. Stemming from assorted religious books of Hinduism, the most comprehensive yogic text is the Yoga Sūtra by Patañjali. Within this text, Patañjali explains that “yoga is the cessation of mental fluctuations.” That is, it is complete control of thoughts for a singular purpose: Realizing liberation is the ultimate pursuit of Hinduism. “Which requires the greater strength,” asks Patañjali, “letting go or restraining? The calm man is not the man who is dull. . . . The calm man is the one who has control over the mind waves.”

To gain this control, Patañjali explains, one must practice assorted exercises ranging from adherence to nonviolence (ahimsā) to-yes-postures. Forming those exotic contortions with one’s body is not the goal. The goal is to be able to focus one’s mind while forming those exotic contortions. The postures of yoga are meant to lead the mind beyond the postures. They’re the method, not the goal.

As I investigated these yogic teachings, I found myself reconsidering the postures Brother John had introduced. Weren’t they methods for becoming mindful of what I was doing? Wasn’t I more receptive when I prayed with open hands? Didn’t my thanksgivings feel more fervent when I placed my hands over my heart? Intrigued, I began to pray with my entire body.

After reading Matthew’s account of the Passion, I lay on my back with my arms stretched out on either side; the struggle to breathe in that position embodied for me Christ’s time on the cross. Going into the adoration chapel, I lowered my head to the floor asking for the humility that would let me worship more fully. In Mass I knelt, bowed, genuflected-engaging every traditional bodily attitude in the hopes that I would learn something altogether new from them.

And an amazing thing happened: I couldn’t help but pray.
Just as shooting snot out of my nose with intentional breath had brought breathing to mind, so had prayer postures made me mindful of praying. Kneeling during the consecration suddenly made me consider why I knelt. Bowing my head to the floor brought to mind what I adored. Meditating on my arms outstretched rendered thoughts of how redemption came. Yoga had completely transformed my Catholicism.

Perhaps this only makes sense. As Catholics we believe that externals matter. What we do with our bodies impacts what we experience within our souls. We might not be trying to rein in unruly thoughts so as to reach liberation, but we certainly can benefit from a physical response to those things we point to as sacred. Our bodies can be used to bring our thoughts into line.

Now I don’t advocate a blind process of folding our limbs, bowing our heads, or opening our hands; postures are only as useful as our consideration of them is authentic. Each practitioner should approach a practice with a skeptical and self-critical eye. And I don’t support the syncretism of religions or New Age. Our differences make us unique for valid reasons, and to pick and choose and assimilate selectively only ever diminishes the value of every religion.

But perhaps by learning from our Hindu brothers and sisters we can rediscover an element of our tradition that is as old as the religion itself. Whether it’s leaping with joy during worship or extending our arms during a benediction, letting our bodies form our prayer can breathe a freshness into our faith. I may not be thinking of the mountain pose when I’m standing during Mass, but through my study of yoga I’ve come to rethink what I’m standing for.

M. M. Hubele is a freelance writer and editor. She is currently working on a Masters in Fine Arts for creative writing at the University of Arizona. This article appeared in the September 2010 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 75, No. 9, pages 32-34).

A CATHOLIC RESPONSE:

“U.S. Catholic” Publishes Article Endorsing Yoga

http://www.womenofgrace.com/blog/?p=189

By Susan Brinkmann, August 25, 2010

U.S. Catholic has published an article encouraging Catholics who wish to improve their prayer life to try yoga.

Written by freelance writer, M. M. Hubele, the article entitled “Om-schooled: How Yoga can influence your Catholic prayer,” tells Catholics that they can “take a lesson from the Hindu tradition of yoga when it comes to praying with body, mind and spirit.” The basic premise of her article* seems to be that in order to understand the importance of the body’s position in prayer, one needs to practice – or at least learn – yoga.

“As Catholics we believe that externals matter,” Hubele writes. “What we do with our bodies impacts what we experience within our souls. We might not be trying to rein in unruly thoughts so as to reach liberation, but we certainly can benefit from a physical response to those things we point to as sacred. Our bodies can be used to bring our thoughts into line … But perhaps by learning from our Hindu brothers and sisters we can rediscover an element of our tradition that is as old as the religion itself. Whether it’s leaping with joy during worship or extending our arms during a benediction, letting our bodies form our prayer can breathe a freshness into our faith. I may not be thinking of the mountain pose when I’m standing during Mass, but through my study of yoga I’ve come to rethink what I’m standing for.”

The author explains how a Franciscan Friar originally taught her the importance of physical position in prayer, a lesson she claims to have appreciated, then calls is “providential” that this happened to be at the same time that she began to practice yoga at the local gym. “The appeal of yoga lay in the benefits to my posture and the definition added to my abs and arms. Considerations of the real meaning of the spiritual exercise never crossed my mind. That is, until I found myself in a Hindu theology class five years later.”

From this point, Hubele embarks on what appears to be a full-scale study of Hinduism that led her to India and a guru who taught her how to focus on breathing until he saw “the snot flying”.

It all taught her to be mindful, she writes, and helped her to discover that “Forming those exotic contortions with one’s body is not the goal. The goal is to be able to focus one’s mind while forming those exotic contortions. The postures of yoga are meant to lead the mind beyond the postures. They’re the method, not the goal.”

Her article, which was published by U.S. Catholic, a magazine that was once the subject of an inquiry by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for an article appearing to endorse female ordination, does contain some notable contradictions.

For instance, the author claims to have been raised as a devout traditional Catholic “with a healthy smattering of New Age,” but concludes the article by saying she doesn’t “support the syncretism of religions or New Age.” One can’t help but wonder why she would discard something she considers “healthy”.

The article would have achieved balance if it had included a very sensible warning by the Church about becoming too interested in the physical aspects of Eastern prayer forms. In the CDF’s 1989 “Letter to the Bishops on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation,” then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger warns that body positions coupled with breathing techniques and meditation can have a calming effect on people that can be misinterpreted as spiritual wellness rather than just the relaxation exercise it is.

“Some physical exercises produce pleasing sensations of quiet and relaxation, perhaps even phenomena of light and warmth which resemble spiritual well-being,” he wrote. “But to take such feelings for the authentic consolations of the Holy Spirit would be a totally erroneous way of conceiving the spiritual life . . . When the moral condition of the person concerned does not correspond to such an experience . . . this would represent a kind of mental schizophrenia which could also lead to psychic disturbances and, at times, to moral deviations.”

Of course, none of this is mentioned, which is why Hindus are applauding the article.

Noted Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement made to
DNAIndia.com, said Yoga is a “living fossil” introduced to the humanity by Hinduism, was a world heritage, and we were pleased when it helped other faith traditions achieve their goals.” He also explains something else that Hubele neglects to add to her story – that yoga is a mental and physical discipline by means of which the human-soul (jivatman) unites with the universal-soul (parmatman) – which belongs to a belief system known as pantheism. 

It is interesting to note that the reader’s comments about the U.S. Catholic article were surprisingly negative, with most people weighing in against the promotion of yoga for what can easily be discovered without it.

YOGA-REPORTS

1. BRAHMA KUMARIS WORLD SPIRITUAL UNIVERSITY

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/BRAHMA_KUMARIS_WORLD_SPIRITUAL_UNIVERSITY.doc

2. CARDINAL OSWALD GRACIAS ENDORSES YOGA FOR CATHOLICS

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/CARDINAL_OSWALD_GRACIAS_ENDORSES_YOGA_FOR_CATHOLICS.doc

3. CATHOLIC YOGA HAS ARRIVED

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/CATHOLIC_YOGA_HAS_ARRIVED.doc

4. DIVINE RETREAT CENTRE ERRORS-05
YOGA PROMOTED

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/DIVINE_RETREAT_CENTRE_ERRORS-05.doc

5. FR ADRIAN MASCARENHAS-YOGA AT ST PATRICK’S CHURCH BANGALORE 

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/FR_ADRIAN_MASCARENHAS-YOGA_AT_ST_PATRICKS_CHURCH_BANGALORE.doc

6. FR JOE PEREIRA-KRIPA FOUNDATION-NEW AGE ENDORSED BY THE ARCHDIOCESE OF BOMBAY AND THE CBCI

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/FR_JOE_PEREIRA-KRIPA_FOUNDATION-NEW_AGE_ENDORSED_BY_THE_ARCHDIOCESE_OF_BOMBAY_AND_THE_CBCI.doc

7. FR JOE PEREIRA-KRIPA FOUNDATION-WORLD COMMUNITY FOR CHRISTIAN MEDITATION

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/FR_JOE_PEREIRA-KRIPA_FOUNDATION-WORLD_COMMUNITY_FOR_CHRISTIAN_MEDITATION.doc

8. FR JOHN FERREIRA-YOGA, SURYANAMASKAR AT ST. PETER’S COLLEGE, AGRA

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/FR_JOHN_FERREIRA-YOGA_SURYANAMASKAR_AT_ST_PETERS_COLLEGE_AGRA.doc

9. FR JOHN VALDARIS-NEW AGE CURES FOR CANCER

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/FR_JOHN_VALDARIS-NEW_AGE_CURES_FOR_CANCER.doc

10. IS BISHOP DABRE FORMER CHAIRMAN DOCTRINAL COMMISSION A PROPONENT OF YOGA

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/IS_BISHOP_DABRE_FORMER_CHAIRMAN_DOCTRINAL_COMMISSION_A_PROPONENT_OF_YOGA.doc

11. NEW AGE GURUS 01-SRI SRI RAVI SHANKAR-THE ‘ART OF LIVING’

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/NEW_AGE_GURUS_01-SRI_SRI_RAVI_SHANKAR-THE_ART_OF_LIVING.doc

12. PAPAL CANDIDATE OSWALD CARDINAL GRACIAS ENDORSES YOGA

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/PAPAL_CANDIDATE_OSWALD_CARDINAL_GRACIAS_ENDORSES_YOGA.doc

13. U.S. CATHOLIC MAGAZINE ENDORSES NEW AGE-REIKI, YOGA AND ZEN

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/U_S_CATHOLIC_MAGAZINE_ENDORSES_NEW_AGE-REIKI_YOGA_AND_ZEN.doc

14. VISHAL JAGRITI MAGAZINE PULLS YOGA SERIES OF FR FRANCIS CLOONEY

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/VISHAL_JAGRITI_MAGAZINE_PULLS_YOGA_SERIES_OF_FR_FRANCIS_CLOONEY.doc

15. YOGA AND THE BRAHMA KUMARIS AT A CATHOLIC COLLEGE IN THE ARCHDIOCESE OF BOMBAY
http://ephesians-511.net/docs/YOGA_AND_THE_BRAHMA_KUMARIS_AT_A_CATHOLIC_COLLEGE_IN_THE_ARCHDIOCESE_OF_BOMBAY.doc

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/YOGA_IN_THE_DIOCESE_OF_MANGALORE.doc

17. YOGA, SURYANAMASKAR, GAYATRI MANTRA, PRANAYAMA TO BE MADE COMPULSORY IN EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/YOGA_SURYANAMASKAR_GAYATRI_MANTRA_PRANAYAMA_TO_BE_MADE_COMPULSORY_IN_EDUCATIONAL_INSTITUTIONS.doc

YOGA-ARTICLES/COLLATIONS

1. A CATHOLIC ALTERNATIVE TO YOGA-PIETRA FITNESS

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/A_CATHOLIC_ALTERNATIVE_TO_YOGA-PIETRA_FITNESS.doc

2. AUM SHINRIKYO YOGA CULT

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/AUM_SHINRIKYO_YOGA_CULT.doc

3. AYURVEDA AND YOGA-DR EDWIN A NOYES

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/AYURVEDA_AND_YOGA-DR_EDWIN_A_NOYES.doc

4. TRUTH, LIES AND YOGA-ERROL FERNANDES

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/TRUTH_LIES_AND_YOGA-ERROL_FERNANDES.rtf

5. WAS JESUS A YOGI? SYNCRETISM AND INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE-ERROL FERNANDES

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/WAS_JESUS_A_YOGI_SYNCRETISM_AND_INTERRELIGIOUS_DIALOGUE-ERROL_FERNANDES.doc

6. YOGA

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/YOGA.doc

7. YOGA-02

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/YOGA-02.doc

8. YOGA AND DELIVERANCE

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/YOGA_AND_DELIVERANCE.doc

9. YOGA IS SATANIC-EXORCIST FR GABRIELE AMORTH

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/YOGA_IS_SATANIC-EXORCIST_FR_GABRIELE_AMORTH.doc

10. YOGA-A PATH TO GOD-FR LOUIS HUGHES

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/YOGA-A_PATH_TO_GOD-FR_LOUIS_HUGHES.doc

11. YOGA-BRO IGNATIUS MARY

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/YOGA-BRO_IGNATIUS_MARY.doc

12. YOGA-FR EZRA SULLIVAN

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/YOGA-FR_EZRA_SULLIVAN.doc

13. YOGA-MARTA ALVES

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/YOGA-MARTA_ALVES.doc

14. YOGA-MIKE SHREVE

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/YOGA-MIKE_SHREVE.doc

15. YOGA-SUMMARY

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/YOGA-SUMMARY.doc

16. YOGA-THE DECEPTION-FR CONRAD SALDANHA

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/YOGA-THE_DECEPTION-FR_CONRAD_SALDANHA.doc

17. YOGA-WHAT DOES THE CATHOLIC CATECHISM SAY ABOUT IT

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/YOGA-WHAT_DOES_THE_CATHOLIC_CATECHISM_SAY_ABOUT_IT.doc

18. YOGA-WHAT DOES THE CATHOLIC CHURCH SAY ABOUT IT?

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/YOGA-WHAT_DOES_THE_CATHOLIC_CHURCH_SAY_ABOUT_IT.doc

YOGA-DOCUMENTS

1. LETTER TO THE BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ON SOME ASPECTS OF CHRISTIAN MEDITATION
CDF/CARDINAL JOSEPH RATZINGER OCTOBER 15, 1989

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/LETTER_TO_THE_BISHOPS_OF_THE_CATHOLIC_CHURCH_ON_SOME_ASPECTS_OF_CHRISTIAN_MEDITATION.doc

2. JESUS CHRIST THE BEARER OF THE WATER OF LIFE, A CHRISTIAN REFLECTION ON THE NEW AGE COMBINED VATICAN DICASTERIES FEBRUARY 3, 2003

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/JESUS_CHRIST_THE_BEARER_OF_THE_WATER_OF_LIFE_A_CHRISTIAN_REFLECTION_ON_THE_NEW_AGE.doc

YOGA-TESTIMONIES

1.
TESTIMONY OF A FORMER YOGI-01
MIKE SHREVE

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/TESTIMONY_OF_A_FORMER_YOGI-01.doc

2. TESTIMONY OF A FORMER YOGI-02
TERRY JUSTISON

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/TESTIMONY_OF_A_FORMER_YOGI-02.doc

3. TESTIMONY OF A FORMER YOGI-03
KENT SULLIVAN

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/TESTIMONY_OF_A_FORMER_YOGI-03.doc

4. TESTIMONY OF A FORMER YOGI-04
MICHAEL GRAHAM

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/TESTIMONY_OF_A_FORMER_YOGI-04.doc

5. TESTIMONY OF A FORMER YOGI-05
BRAD SCOTT

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/TESTIMONY_OF_A_FORMER_YOGI-05.doc

6. TESTIMONY OF A FORMER YOGI-06
JANICE CLEARY

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/TESTIMONY_OF_A_FORMER_YOGI-06.doc

7. TESTIMONY OF A FORMER YOGI-07
CARL FAFORD

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/TESTIMONY_OF_A_FORMER_YOGI-07.doc

8. TESTIMONY OF A FORMER YOGI-08
ANONYMOUS

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/TESTIMONY_OF_A_FORMER_YOGI-08.doc

9. TESTIMONY OF A FORMER YOGI-09
DEBORAH HOLT

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/TESTIMONY_OF_A_FORMER_YOGI-09.doc

10. TESTIMONY OF A FORMER YOGI-10
DANION VASILE

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/TESTIMONY_OF_A_FORMER_YOGI-10.doc

11. TESTIMONY OF A FORMER YOGI-11
MICHAEL COUGHLIN

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/TESTIMONY_OF_A_FORMER_YOGI-11.doc

12. TESTIMONY OF A FORMER YOGI-12
LAURETTE WILLIS

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/TESTIMONY_OF_A_FORMER_YOGI-12.doc

13. TESTIMONY OF A FORMER YOGI-13
KEITH AGAIN

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/TESTIMONY_OF_A_FORMER_YOGI-13.doc

14. TESTIMONY OF A FORMER YOGI-14 VIRGO HANDOJO

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/TESTIMONY_OF_A_FORMER_YOGI-14.doc

15. TESTIMONY OF A FORMER YOGI-15 PURVI

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/TESTIMONY_OF_A_FORMER_YOGI-15.doc

REIKI-ARTICLES/COLLATIONS

REIKI AND CRANIOSACRAL THERAPY-DR EDWIN A NOYES
NOVEMBER 2013

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/REIKI_AND_CRANIOSACRAL_THERAPY-DR_EDWIN_A_NOYES.doc

REIKI AND HOLISTIC HEALING AUGUST 2004/AUGUST 2009/MAY/OCT/DEC 2012

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/REIKI_AND_HOLISTIC_HEALING.doc

REIKI-FR CLEMENS PILAR 14
NOVEMBER 2010

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/REIKI-FR_CLEMENS_PILAR_14.doc

REIKI-DOCUMENT

REIKI AS A NEW AGE ALTERNATIVE THERAPY-EVALUATION BY THE US BISHOPS APRIL 2009

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/REIKI_AS_A_NEW_AGE_ALTERNATIVE_THERAPY-EVALUATION_BY_THE_US_BISHOPS.doc

REIKI-TESTIMONY

TESTIMONY-MY EXPERIENCE WITH REIKI
2004, EDITED JULY 2010

http://ephesians-511.net/docs/TESTIMONY-MY_EXPERIENCE_WITH_REIKI.doc

Categories: Eastern Meditation, new age