Last weekend I was at a friend’s cabin on an island of the coast of British Columbia. I offered to lead an informal yoga session with my peers on the beach; the scene was too beautiful to pass up. Everyone was enthusiastic except for one friend who questioned me about the practice. She was wary because she had been told that yoga was a religion, and that Christians should not practice yoga.

I immediately felt that she had been misinformed; that yoga does not conflict with religious belief systems. My first defense was that Westernized yoga focuses on postures, breathing and meditation (usually in that order), so she shouldn’t fear that I would rattle her faith with some down-dogs on the beach. But the next morning, I began to wrestle with her concern, trying to figure out if yoga was indeed an exclusive practice, or co-existent with other belief systems. I knew what I wanted to think, but that would have been too easy.

I do not consider myself a religious person, at least I am not a deist. Organized religion does not appeal to me because of the exclusivity that comes with membership, whether you were born and raised under a religious system or have made a choice to participate. I have a question mark tattooed on my ankle to remind me to always keep questioning, and I associate faith with a cessation of questioning.

Given my feelings on organized religion, I was surprised that my friend associated yoga, something that I am incorporating into my lifestyle, as a religious choice. But I challenged myself: was there something about my personal belief system that “fits” with yoga, something exclusive of religious systems (at least Judeo-Christian ones)?

From a philosophical perspective, institutions aside, I believe that religions have a well-founded raison d’etre. People understand that they as individuals are small, and that the “stew” that surrounds them is infinite. Religion offers an understanding of their relationship with, and importance within, the whole. It also lends an explanation of the nature of the whole itself. All good stuff.

My exercise in understanding the “stew” has always been cerebral, not spiritual. But beneath my pragmatic surface, yoga is taking me to unexplored territory. For me, it combines personal ethic with inner calm, and somewhere the boundary between what’s good for me and good for everything is lost.

At this time, I am not seeking to follow the full breadth of traditional yogic practice. I have my current goals, and that’s enough for now. But even at this level, it goes beyond visceral benefits of stretching, balance and strength. Eventually I do want to learn about yoga in greater depth, just as my curiosity has lead me to read about many belief systems, whether they hold meaning for me or not. It may be something that I can explain to others, that makes sense to them.

What I do believe, at this point in my exploration, is that yoga has magnified the lens of introspection. Through that lens, aspects of my nature are becoming clearer to me. For someone with a religious background, this practice may magnify their faith, or shed new light on a line of prayer that they had previously taken for granted.

Although on some level yoga may be aligning with a latent pantheism in me, that is only my experience. From my novice standpoint, I believe that yoga co-exists with organized religions, atheism, existentialism, name your poison. There are many different adaptations of yoga, countless applications and many intentions. Defining a boundary between what is and is not yoga would be near impossible on objective level: it is different each individual and has evolved through different cultural paradigms.

However, though yoga may not exclude other religious systems, the opposite may not be true: a strict religious doctrine could inhibit the exploration into yoga, in spite of it’s malleability. It’s up to the individual to decide where their boundaries lie, and to what depth they can explore any practice; mental, physical or spiritual.

Digression

I’m still annoyed at the high school curriculum for teaching us, with authority and certainty, that atoms look like solar systems. Why couldn’t the teacher have said that we just don’t know (or that our attempts to measure the placement of the electron draws a curtain over our ability to measure it’s velocity)? Instead a grade of believers was spawned – comfortably holding onto a simple model, without reason or motivation to question it – thinking that we now understood the basic nature of matter.