For whatever it's worth, I just had to offer a South Asian Hindu response to that first review, representing perhaps the point of view of the culture from which yoga sprang. The previous reviewer does grant us that he is "not afraid of expanding his horizons with a little ethnic now and then" ... so, well, here's "a little ethnic" for you ;-):

DB: So did you read that "Yoga For the Rest of Us" review? Put that in your pipe and smoke it, eh?

DB's Friend: God does indeed work in mysterious ways ... and apparently She has a sense of humor! *lol* It was a well-written article, but the ideas are wild. I'm with is wife. Silly. And I think he's missing the forest for the trees with his objections.

DB: I think the whole "Yoga for Christians" book is missing the forest for the trees.

Friend: Actually, the Christian yoga thing did surprise me. But then, they have dieting for Christ too, so ...whatever. *lol*

DB: But he seems to have a pretty good handle on where the "Yoga For Christians" author is coming from! After all, he's her target audience, isn't he?

Friend: But these body-related Christian movements are on really marshy theological grounds. Christianity makes a big issue over the division between the creator and the created -- the divine and the not-divine. Body-oriented devotions blur the distinction (or don't recognize it).

DB: In my opinion there is no initial contradiction between practicing yoga and Christianity. Jesus works as well as any other deity ... but that, of course, precisely the issue. He can't be "just another deity"; Exclusivity Doctrine, remember? ;-)

Also this is "yoga" as un-yoking; the opposite of what yoga is, by definition! What the author seems to be saying is that she objects to yoga placing God in the individual. She seems to want to put God "out there" again; that's the opposite of what yoga is for! Once you put God "out there," it's not yoga anymore - it's calisthenics!

Friend: Exactly! To be theologically correct - Christian yoga can't be yoga anymore.

DB: Right, the very name "yoga" suggests a connection and identity between divine and non-divine that Christianity says is not there. The problem - and the Roman Catholic Church's objection to yoga recognizes this - is that once you get into the experiential aspects of yoga, whatever neatly designed "Christian" mental framework you approached the practice with isn't going to hold back the floodwaters. Quoth Swami Arugamaswami: "Yoga opens up new and more refined states of mind, and to understand them one needs to believe in and understand the Hindu way of looking at God. ... A Christian trying to adapt these practices will likely disrupt their own Christian beliefs."

Friend: Well, *we* have it all figured out *lol* But I still think worrying about sudden attractions to elephant-headed idols is silly.

DB: "the spiritual dangers of yoga"!

Friend: That part just cracks me up.

DB: But isn't he right? Isn't that part of the objection? At my old law office, I used to meditate before court appearances to get calm and centered and focused ...

Friend: I would imagine!

DB: ... and one day my secretary asked me what the heck I was doing. And when I told her, she said "Oh you shouldn't meditate; it's dangerous." I asked her why and she said her priest (she's Catholic) had told the congregation that it was a bad idea. Basically, the idea seems to be our Eastern religions are the abode of demons - elephant men and two-headed monsters, as our reviewer friend noted. You empty your mind and they all come flooding in. That is what I understood by the reviewer's elephant reference.

Friend: I think you interpreted the elephant reference better than I did. You're right. There is always that Christian worry about the devil just lurking everywhere, waiting to pounce on a quiet mind. Or maybe on some poor fool doing yoga. ;-)

I am a God-fearing, patriotic, white American Christian who is not afraid of expanding my horizons with a little ethnic now and then. I even accompanied my wife to a few of her yoga classes, thinking it might do my stiff back some good. While yoga did do wonders for my back, when the instructor began talking about chakras, meditation and enlightenment, I knew I had to get out of there before I began worshipping elephants and two-headed gods.

I missed the relaxation, calm, and overall sense of greater healthfulness yoga gave me, but I was not about to let the temptations of mere physical and mental well-being lead me down the dark path and away from the One and True God. My wife thought my apprehension about the potential evil of these weird, Eastern ways was silly and that I should resume yoga. I love my wife dearly, and she is as good a helpmeet as a man could wish for, but I could not expect her to see the potential harm of practicing heathen rituals.

I was talking with my local pastor about the spiritual dangers of yoga when he informed me that a Christian yoga movement was on the rise and that I should check it out. I went on the web, found "Yoga for Christians" by Susan Bordenkircher, and decided to give it a try. This book not only has descriptive photographs for each of the positions and exercises, it also comes with an instructional DVD. More important, however, is the Christian focus of the book. Ms. Bordenkircher hits all the right notes, reminding us that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, that we honor God with our bodies, and that everything we do and say must be as a representative of the Lord Jesus. So how does Bordenkircher reconcile the pagan practice of yoga with the greater glory of God?

"So to forego the healing benefits of yoga because it is sometimes practiced within a different belief system is like telling God that He is not big enough to take something from the dark and bring it into the light."

To Christians who fear that the yoga postures themselves constitute a form of pagan worship, Bordenkircher answers, "when you have a Christ-centered intent to your practice, how could holding that God-given vessel [our bodies] in any particular position be used for evil because of what another faith has named it?" She goes on to recount how many of our sacred hymns were adapted from popular bar songs and how rock and roll, the very embodiment of secular hedonism, has been co-opted into the service of the Lord by Christian rockers. Seen in this Christ-centered light, I realized I could not only enjoy the health benefits of yoga, but actually bring myself closer to God at the same time. Who would have thought that a pagan practice developed by Eastern heathens predating Christ by over a thousand years was actually a tool for the eventual glory of Christ the Lord? God does indeed work in mysterious ways.