Nuns Find Peace in their Yoga Class

There are so many strange and unprecedented things happening in the world today. As Spirit-filled believers, we should be able to discern the signs of the times, and not as the Pharisees whom Jesus chided for being able to interpret the weather, but not the signs of the times (Matt. 16:3).

The title of this post, taken from an article this morning in the Contra Costa Times, and the cute picture of elderly nuns doing yoga, caught my attention as one of these signs. "This is where I find the most peace," said one Sister, after a recent class. You may argue there is nothing wrong with practicing yoga as a physical exercise. But the fact is that yoga is a spiritual discipline by which the adherent is trained to use the body as a vehicle for achieving consciousness of the divine.

Albert Mohler recently wrote about this: When Christians practice yoga, they must either deny the reality of what yoga represents or fail to see the contradictions between their Christian commitments and their embrace of yoga. The contradictions are not few, nor are they peripheral. Christians are called to look to Christ for all that we need and to obey Christ through obeying his Word. We are not called to escape the consciousness of this world by achieving an elevated state of consciousness, but to follow Christ in the way of faithfulness. Stefanie Syman, author of “The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America” wrote, The embrace of yoga is a symptom of our postmodern spiritual confusion that reaches into the church. And so, the seemingly innocent story of nuns practicing yoga is not so cute after all. It's a sign of the times.