Version 2
August 2012
Pilot Event: Yoga Stretching with Christian Meditation
Guild Church of St Mary Aldermary
http://moot.uk.net
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Contents
1.
Introduction
2.
Yoga from a Christian perspective
3.
Christianity and the body
4.
A Biblical reflection on Yoga as a form of prayer practice
5.
Cautions around the use of Eastern Esoteric Meditations
6.
Proposed Approach
7.
Considerations
8.
Further Actions
9.
Reading Materials
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1. Introduction
The Guild Church of St Mary Aldermary Church Community aims to serve the Kingdom of
God in the Spirit of Jesus.
Given our emphasis on ‘hospitality as mission’ and our commitment to developing Christian
approaches to prayer and meditation to and with the ‘de and unchurched’, the idea of
piloting a yoga morning class during the week has been mooted at the Community Council
(GCCM), where it was agreed that Ian Mobsby and Jen Richardson would go away and do
some research and thinking.
As a New Monastic Community, we are committed to an integrated approach to health,
spirituality and mission in what has been summarized as Orthopathy (right being, wellbeing,
health), Orthpraxis (right living and acting) and Orthodoxy (right thinking and belief). Or put
another way – a distinctly Christian and integrated approach to Head, Heart and Mind.
In the context of a Christian approach to spirituality, it is proposed that the community trial
a morning yoga group during the week as a mission and orthopathy event.
It is our good fortune, that the Moot Community will have a qualified yoga instructor as an
intern for 6 months, creating the human resources to make a pilot possible as part of the
Host initiative.
This paper seeks to make the case that such a trial is not controversial if considered and
planned for appropriately. However as a next step (and as we do with all new initiatives)
we continue to ensure that we are good guardians of the Christian tradition at the heart of
our faith and work in the Moot Community at the Guild Church of St Mary Aldermary.
2. Yoga from a Christian perspective
A number of different Christian traditions and churches now utilise adapted approaches to
yoga as part of their focus on prayer practices and wellbeing. Some Churches coming from
a more conservative perspective have raised publically there concerns about cultural and
religious syncretism, (compromising or the watering down of the faith to fit in with
contemporary culture). It is the responsibility for all expressions of Church is seek to be in
but not of culture. In a similar way we explore Yoga, affirming what is good opening up our
ability to further prayer, wellbeing and the Gospel, but challenging those elements which
grate or which are not compatible with the Christian faith as it has been received.
3. Christianity and the body
Since the beginnings of the Church in Western Europe, there has been an uncomfortable
relationship between bodies or our enfleshedness and the faith. Part of this has been the
curse of an early heresy called Gnosticism, which has been a continuing problem
particularly of Western Christendom. This heresy went very deep in the Western Church
which saw all living bodily flesh as inherently sinful. The aim of faith was to escape the
human body and sexuality, as only the human spirit could be truly free and whole.
Although this heresy was challenged, its influence has continued in the West, particularly as
a particular understanding of ‘sin’ however unconsciously this has impacted the practice of
faith. This has impacted on many Western Christian theologians and writers to this day
including Augustine and others cannot be underestimated.
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In recently times this un-comfortableness with human bodies has been challenged by many
Christian theologians and writers, who have emphasised how the bible and Jesus
challenged ritual laws that did not honour the incredible metaphor in the book of Genesis
that all human beings are made in the image of God.
Since the social revolution of the 1960s this unhealthy dualism between body and spirit has
been challenged, which has rediscovered ancient and authentic approaches to prayer that
utilises the body. We remember that the Islamic call to prayer and body prayer was
absorbed into Islamic practice from observing and interaction with monastic Christians
living in the Syrian and Alexandrian deserts.
Christianity … is in the awkward position of trying to affirm the goodness of creation without
ever having delighted in human bodiliness. One would think that between our two central
doctrines of the Incarnation and the Resurrection – the one, in which God chose to call
human bodilliness “home”, and the other, in which that broken, weary, body is not
discarded but re-embraced and taken into the very life o the Trinity for all eternity – we
could do better at helping people to embrace and relate positively to their enspirited flesh as
a joyful mode of existence… I submit that the church is not yet incarnational enough in its
healing ministry to people in all respects … If it stays just at the level of the ‘head’, then once
again we have denied our body and its role in things. Many people in our Western world do
precious little with their bodies. They sit at a desk all day at work, sit during lunch breaks,
sit behind a wheel of a car commuting, and sit in front of a television at night so to try and
relax. Thomas Ryan, 1995, pp7-8.
4. A Biblical reflection on Yoga as a form of prayer practice
In Moot we have already made the strong case of the importance of prayer as encounter
with God. Further, we have supported people to understand that Christian meditation is a
form of authentic prayer. We have used concentrative forms of Christian meditation
whether using an anchor word as with the teachings of John Main or the approaches akin to
Centering Prayer. We have affirmed the need for meditation to be recognised as a spiritual
discipline. Yoga then can also be offered as a form of prayer discipline.
Meditation is not merely the intellectual effort to master certain ideas about God, or even to
impress upon our minds the mysteries of the Christian faith. Conceptual knowledge of
religious truth has an important place in our lives. The Spiritual life needs strong intellectual
foundations, and reading theology helps us understand faith experience. But meditation
itself is neither study nor intellectual activity as such. Its purpose is not to acquire or to
deepen our speculative knowledge of God or of revelation. Rather than seeking to know
about God, we are seeking to know God directly, beyond all the objects which God has
made. We are seeking to experience God’s presence with the awareness of loving faith.
Thomas Ryan, 1995, 15.
This approach has a strong biblical basis:
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Galatians 2: 20. The process of turning from the self to the Self is known in
Christianity as metanoia, conversion, implying both repentance and transformation
until we are able to say with St Paul, ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in
me. The Mystics say that there is only on God, one Self, one Spirit. Sin is the
separate-self sense, the self-contraction in each of us.
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Ephesians 2:7, Gal 5:1 reminds us that the Cross of Jesus Christ brings liberation
from domination, and this includes liberation in our fleshness.
2 Corinthians 5:14 We are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have
died. Gal 2:19-20. A Christian has not only a new life, but a new life with a new
center and identity.
For the new life of the Holy Spirit to grow within us we have to die to the old life
centred on self. We die to sln as we hold in faith that we are united with Christ in
his death on the cross. Every day, through faith in the cross of Christ, we can know
victory over patterns of sins. Everyday we can overcome temptations to give into
anger, fear, bitterness,. Lust.
Luke 18:38, Luke 9:13. The Contemplative Jesus prayer combines elements from
both “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner”.
Christians are those who invoke the name of Jesus Christ (1 Cor 1:2).
“Romans 12:1-2 says we are to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice to God,” Where
Yoga is seen as a prayer practice, this is made possible.
Psalm 19:14, Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be
acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
Romans 8:14 , For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.
John 8:12, Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever
follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
5. Cautions around the use of Eastern Esoteric Meditations
Some of the greatest criticisms of churches using yoga have involved the unquestioning use
of Buddhist or Taoist forms of meditation in the context of the Christian Church. Thinking
about Moot and St Mary Aldermary, this is the area we need to be most careful about.
The question remains how we use Christian forms of contemplation and meditation in
substitution of the more Eastern Esoteric practices.
From the reading we have completed, I think I am quite confident that we can do this form
of substitution well which are authentically Christian, and could open up the Christian faith
well through the meditative practice as part of a yoga session. For example Anthony De Ne
Bello have developed 47 Christian Meditative Exercises in Eastern Form. Thomas Ryan
explores body prayer in combination with making certain stretches. The question is more
about how such Christian meditative practices are combined in a yoga session.
6. Proposed Possible Approach
Following discussion at the Moot Community Council (GCC Meeting) in September, it was
agreed the approach should be to focus on a time of yoga stretches and then finish with a
short Christian contemplative meditation. This way we balance being true to the Christian
faith and sensitivity of this event happening in a Church in front of an altar, and also being
true to our Christian context using a Christian contemplative prayer, but at the same time,
providing this to City people who are interested in spiritualty and in particular yoga and
embodied approaches to spiritual activity.
6. Considerations
Clarity of Purpose
We will ensure that in the introduction we say something like “Welcome to this session of
yoga stretching and Christian meditation being run by the Moot Community, here at the
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Guild Church of St Mary Aldermary” etc… This way we are being very clear of our intent and
purpose and avoiding potential manipulation.
Adequate skill and insurance
The group will be co-run by at least two people. One a trained and qualified Yoga instructor
with a Christian faith and the other a participant of the Moot Community. We will ensure
that we have public liability insurance for this event which will require additional
consideration on top of the usual church insurance.
Sensitivities
As the event will be happening in front of the Lady Chapel Altar, great sensitivity and
respect of this will be an expected – such as not leaving anything on the altar, or interfering
with it any form. We will be laying out a temporary carpet for this event, which will be
folded up again at the end of the session.
Changing Area
If people need to get changed before/after the session, the only rooms we have available
for this are the two toilets. So in the half an hour before and after the session, priority will
be given to those attending the session.
Full Explanation of the purpose of the pilot with Christian explanation
Given the sensitivity of doing yoga stretching in a Church event, we will be using this pilot to
give a full explanation of why we are doing on it as a form of embodied prayer practice
promoting wellbeing. This will include some of the biblical points made in this proposal.
This explanation will be put on the website.
8. Further Actions
Following the Community Council Meeting, we have sent out a questionnaire seeking to
explore timing/days for the pilot sessions and also to explore a name for the event. We are
aiming to give these out at Meditation Groups and Sunday Evening Services to hold a
balance between spiritual seekers and Christians committed to the Church. We will add a
link to the website.
We will decide a name for this pilot event once we have reflected on the questionnaires.
9. Reading Materials
Thomas Ryan (1995) Prayer of Heart and Body, Meditation and Yoga as Christian Spiritual
Practice, Paulist Press, New York.
Doug Pagitt, Kathryn Prill (2002) Body Prayer, Water Brook, Colorado.
Anthony De Mello, (1984) Sadhana a Way to God, Christian Exercises in the Eastern Form,
New York.
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