Let's Talk About Yoga & Faith

YJ Senior Editor Tamara Jeffries set out to answer some perennial questions about whether yoga is secular or spiritual. What she discovered: It’s both. And more.

- By Tamara Jeffries

I WAS ROLLING UP MY MAT AFTER CLASS —I had just taught yoga at the small, Methodist– affiliated women’s college where I also taught journalism—when one of the students hesitantly approached me.

She was a Christian, she explained; her mother was a minister. She was concerned about how yoga aligned with her faith. “Will this make Jesus mad?” she asked.

“Oh my goodness, no!” I said. I explained to her what I had been taught myself: that yoga was a series of exercises developed by Hindu teachers to prepare their young students to sit in meditation. It was brought to the West by Indian teachers who willingly shared it with Western practitioners. It had South Asian roots, but it was a secular practice. I told her that the class would mostly be stretching and breathing, and when we covered the Eight Limbs, she could think of the yamas and niyamas as a yogic Ten Commandments. She could dedicate her practice to Christ; she could meditate on whatever or whomever she wanted. She left relieved.