As a former yoga teacher, I cannot say I ever experienced anything spiritual in Iyengar yoga. That doesn't mean anything though. I was in my teens-early 20s, vegetarian, depressed, sick/weak and not very Christian. After a severe back injury, I stopped doing yoga because it causes so many back injuries. I began eating meat and lifting weights. Gradually, I became a much more healthy, happy person, who converted to Catholicism.
Thanks for writing about this, Jenny! Years before I became Catholic, I took a couple yoga classes and enjoyed the physical benefits. But none of that is worth the possibility of opening a door to spiritual darkness. I later went to confession about this, to clear anything out that might still have been hanging around... (That K*li picture scared me, btw. I should probably not scroll through certain posts in the middle of the night.)
Jul 16, 2023Liked by Jonathon Fessenden, Jenny duBay
Great subject!.
Alistair Crowley, wrote extensively on yoga or union, which is the meaning of this word and the goal of this spiritual discipline/practice.
Years ago before His hand plucked me out while I was yet lost to the world; searching around, beneath rocks, and in worldly crevices, I saw an article written by two Catholic priests, exorcists in fact.
They were all over the spiritual nature, the demonic union, and the raw danger of treading out into these black waters.
I had not read the Bible so I was of course, necessarily lost, confused and in all the trouble there is.
Other than reading Crowley's yoga treatise I had no personal interest in yoga but did think it a particularly cheap shot for the two men in black to take.
Haha. What a dolt!
Later in my study of the occult I would learn of the fakir, and the yogi, and other seekers seeking.
I was summarily thrown out of this group (thank Jesus Christ) for mentioning His name and for my interpretation of a vision which I attributed to Him.
Recently, a very good friend with Ganesh tattooed largely on his shoulder began to insist the virtues of yoga.
Thankfully the lessons had been learned.
I tried for months of conversation to encourage him to get under the Crown of The Everlasting Father.
Back and forth this went...the more I spoke of Jesus Christ, the harder he double-down on Pan. He said he is a Pantheist.
I said Pan? The goat-man, the pied-piper on the flute with two horns upon it's head?
Come on man are you serious? A goat-man with horns who mesmerizes men and sexually assaults animals?
Really?! That is where your standing now; in these days of clear implosion of well, everything, with all of it foretold in Scripture?
My friend was sure that money was the answer to all problems, all would be good when he was able to have enough.
I cautioned that the Johnny big-bollacks routine would fail to satisfy more than a long weekend.
A few months later after his job was toast as was his finances and John Barleycorn had him firmly in it's hand he rang from the back of a taxi headed for Bangkok from his place in the provence.
It's all over.
What's over.
Everything.
Ok, no worries, it can get restarted.
No, she won't let me see my son!
Of course she won't, she is a good mother, your drunk and out of your mind, your mother wouldn't see you now.
Go home, get some rest things will improve.
No! I'm going to the city to end it all with a hot shot of Golden Triangles finest smack.
What about your son? I thought you wanted to see him?
That was a Friday. He pinged me when he was back home. All was well.
On the Sunday I got a message with pics from his wife. In the ICU with tubes everywhere, he was restrained to the bed with cloth strips.
Traumatic brain injury from wrecking the motorcycle without a helmet. Intentionally no doubt.
He is now back in the provence with wife and son who turns five, quite possible today or tomorrow.
His baby-blue eyes look different directions simultaneously while his wife feeds him a juice box like a child.
He cannot walk, talk, brush his teeth, or do literally anything atm.
Perhaps that will change but I'm not holding my breath.
He was in my prayers then and now. That Jesus Christ would turn him back, convert him, redeem him into a state of reasonableness. Into a state that he might be reached. Into a place where the chains of darkness would be broken and where the demons disappear and the fear subsides.
We are told not to open these doors. Not because He wants to keep us from happiness but rather that we are not taken, lost, and ultimately denied - because WE are the deniers.
We cannot cope with the spirits we are yoked to in union, in yoga.
These demons know this. Our Lord Jesus knows this. Play with the bull...or the goat, sooner or later you will feel the horns.
Mar 9·edited Mar 9Liked by Jonathon Fessenden, Jenny duBay
You have done everyone a very valuable service with this article, Ms. duBay. Everything you wrote is true. Like you, I was born, baptized and raised Catholic. I turned my back on the faith while still in my teens. Last year I returned to the Church, and the priest who heard my first confession in many years spoke to me about the Parable of the Prodigal Son. His words are indelibly written on my heart, and hence my Substack name. During my lost years, I explored all "spiritual traditions", including Hinduism and yoga. I had any number of preternatural experiences as a result. Absolutely nothing good came of that. Thanks to the grace and mercy of Our Lord, I now understand from where those experiences originated.
Well said. It’s so hard to warn people who are doing yoga about all that you have said. I have friends doing yoga and they will not listen. More needs to be said of its dangers. Well done
I have done “yoga”, but I during the meditation phase, I would say my prayers - The Hail Mary, Our Lord’s Prayer and an Act of Contrition. So basically, I would do the yoga moves and stretches but pray my Catholic prayers.
"There is a yoga reduced to a kind of gymnastics: it offers some element that can help relax the body. Well, if yoga is really reduced to gymnastics, you can also accept it, in the case of movements that have an exclusively physical sense. But it must be really reduced, I repeat, to a pure exercise of physical relaxation, freed from any ideological element. On this point one must be very careful not to introduce a certain vision of man, of the world, of the relationship between man and God in a physical preparation."
The qualifying statement in this article is " authentically practice yoga" and is necessary in understanding what is loosely presented today as yoga. This does not include those watching the Asian woman on early morning PBS show going through some low impact exercises for the benefit of bored housewives in their lulu lemons desiring to prepare for the day. As stated, real yoga is a philosophy/religion committed to certain beliefs and demonstrated by a pattern of physical positions. In other words, if you see it you will recognize it as true yoga practice.
“In other words, rather than focusing one’s mind on Christ, the goal is to focus exclusively on the interior self.”
This sounds like an important distinction: but is it? Even when we focus on a Christian thought, we are focusing on something within ourselves because all thought is within ourselves (cf. Isaiah 55:6-9). Trusting in God is a rest of the heart upon God from our own thoughts; and, we are also resting from our mental imagery of God. The thrust of the mind goes outward when we unconditionally trust in God. See also See Philippians 4:6-7; 1Peter 5:5-7; Proverbs 3:5-6; Matthew 11:28-30; Psalms 37:7, 55:22; Isaiah 26:3-4, 30:15; John 6:63; Galatians 5:16-26; Romans 6:13, 8:28; and James 4:6-10.
As a former yoga teacher, I cannot say I ever experienced anything spiritual in Iyengar yoga. That doesn't mean anything though. I was in my teens-early 20s, vegetarian, depressed, sick/weak and not very Christian. After a severe back injury, I stopped doing yoga because it causes so many back injuries. I began eating meat and lifting weights. Gradually, I became a much more healthy, happy person, who converted to Catholicism.
Thanks for writing about this, Jenny! Years before I became Catholic, I took a couple yoga classes and enjoyed the physical benefits. But none of that is worth the possibility of opening a door to spiritual darkness. I later went to confession about this, to clear anything out that might still have been hanging around... (That K*li picture scared me, btw. I should probably not scroll through certain posts in the middle of the night.)
Great subject!.
Alistair Crowley, wrote extensively on yoga or union, which is the meaning of this word and the goal of this spiritual discipline/practice.
Years ago before His hand plucked me out while I was yet lost to the world; searching around, beneath rocks, and in worldly crevices, I saw an article written by two Catholic priests, exorcists in fact.
They were all over the spiritual nature, the demonic union, and the raw danger of treading out into these black waters.
I had not read the Bible so I was of course, necessarily lost, confused and in all the trouble there is.
Other than reading Crowley's yoga treatise I had no personal interest in yoga but did think it a particularly cheap shot for the two men in black to take.
Haha. What a dolt!
Later in my study of the occult I would learn of the fakir, and the yogi, and other seekers seeking.
I was summarily thrown out of this group (thank Jesus Christ) for mentioning His name and for my interpretation of a vision which I attributed to Him.
Recently, a very good friend with Ganesh tattooed largely on his shoulder began to insist the virtues of yoga.
Thankfully the lessons had been learned.
I tried for months of conversation to encourage him to get under the Crown of The Everlasting Father.
Back and forth this went...the more I spoke of Jesus Christ, the harder he double-down on Pan. He said he is a Pantheist.
I said Pan? The goat-man, the pied-piper on the flute with two horns upon it's head?
Come on man are you serious? A goat-man with horns who mesmerizes men and sexually assaults animals?
Really?! That is where your standing now; in these days of clear implosion of well, everything, with all of it foretold in Scripture?
My friend was sure that money was the answer to all problems, all would be good when he was able to have enough.
I cautioned that the Johnny big-bollacks routine would fail to satisfy more than a long weekend.
A few months later after his job was toast as was his finances and John Barleycorn had him firmly in it's hand he rang from the back of a taxi headed for Bangkok from his place in the provence.
It's all over.
What's over.
Everything.
Ok, no worries, it can get restarted.
No, she won't let me see my son!
Of course she won't, she is a good mother, your drunk and out of your mind, your mother wouldn't see you now.
Go home, get some rest things will improve.
No! I'm going to the city to end it all with a hot shot of Golden Triangles finest smack.
What about your son? I thought you wanted to see him?
That was a Friday. He pinged me when he was back home. All was well.
On the Sunday I got a message with pics from his wife. In the ICU with tubes everywhere, he was restrained to the bed with cloth strips.
Traumatic brain injury from wrecking the motorcycle without a helmet. Intentionally no doubt.
He is now back in the provence with wife and son who turns five, quite possible today or tomorrow.
His baby-blue eyes look different directions simultaneously while his wife feeds him a juice box like a child.
He cannot walk, talk, brush his teeth, or do literally anything atm.
Perhaps that will change but I'm not holding my breath.
He was in my prayers then and now. That Jesus Christ would turn him back, convert him, redeem him into a state of reasonableness. Into a state that he might be reached. Into a place where the chains of darkness would be broken and where the demons disappear and the fear subsides.
We are told not to open these doors. Not because He wants to keep us from happiness but rather that we are not taken, lost, and ultimately denied - because WE are the deniers.
We cannot cope with the spirits we are yoked to in union, in yoga.
These demons know this. Our Lord Jesus knows this. Play with the bull...or the goat, sooner or later you will feel the horns.
Sometimes it's hard to explain this, but the risks are there. Thank you for writing about this.
I admire your courage to write this, and I thank you! It needs to be said!!
You have done everyone a very valuable service with this article, Ms. duBay. Everything you wrote is true. Like you, I was born, baptized and raised Catholic. I turned my back on the faith while still in my teens. Last year I returned to the Church, and the priest who heard my first confession in many years spoke to me about the Parable of the Prodigal Son. His words are indelibly written on my heart, and hence my Substack name. During my lost years, I explored all "spiritual traditions", including Hinduism and yoga. I had any number of preternatural experiences as a result. Absolutely nothing good came of that. Thanks to the grace and mercy of Our Lord, I now understand from where those experiences originated.
Excellent!!!
Well said. It’s so hard to warn people who are doing yoga about all that you have said. I have friends doing yoga and they will not listen. More needs to be said of its dangers. Well done
This article, from the esteemed St. Michael Center, really breaks open the dangers of yoga.
https://www.catholicexorcism.org/post/exorcist-diary-282-kundalini-disasters
I have done “yoga”, but I during the meditation phase, I would say my prayers - The Hail Mary, Our Lord’s Prayer and an Act of Contrition. So basically, I would do the yoga moves and stretches but pray my Catholic prayers.
"There is a yoga reduced to a kind of gymnastics: it offers some element that can help relax the body. Well, if yoga is really reduced to gymnastics, you can also accept it, in the case of movements that have an exclusively physical sense. But it must be really reduced, I repeat, to a pure exercise of physical relaxation, freed from any ideological element. On this point one must be very careful not to introduce a certain vision of man, of the world, of the relationship between man and God in a physical preparation."
- Pope Benedict XVI
https://ephesians511blog.com/2014/10/17/pope-benedict-xvi-on-the-new-age-yoga-etc/
Thank you for this article and sharing your experience. Would you possibly consider removing/replacing the first photo of the woman practicing yoga?
The qualifying statement in this article is " authentically practice yoga" and is necessary in understanding what is loosely presented today as yoga. This does not include those watching the Asian woman on early morning PBS show going through some low impact exercises for the benefit of bored housewives in their lulu lemons desiring to prepare for the day. As stated, real yoga is a philosophy/religion committed to certain beliefs and demonstrated by a pattern of physical positions. In other words, if you see it you will recognize it as true yoga practice.
“In other words, rather than focusing one’s mind on Christ, the goal is to focus exclusively on the interior self.”
This sounds like an important distinction: but is it? Even when we focus on a Christian thought, we are focusing on something within ourselves because all thought is within ourselves (cf. Isaiah 55:6-9). Trusting in God is a rest of the heart upon God from our own thoughts; and, we are also resting from our mental imagery of God. The thrust of the mind goes outward when we unconditionally trust in God. See also See Philippians 4:6-7; 1Peter 5:5-7; Proverbs 3:5-6; Matthew 11:28-30; Psalms 37:7, 55:22; Isaiah 26:3-4, 30:15; John 6:63; Galatians 5:16-26; Romans 6:13, 8:28; and James 4:6-10.