The Bible is for Yogis

Christianity conceals how “Eastern” the scriptures really are

Christians haven’t been so fond of yoga. Isn’t it occult? Isn’t it Hindu? That would be the talk. Churches regularly oppose yoga practices in schools and communites.

But when I started to do it, yoga felt…spiritual? In a way church never did. I could focus on being there. In church I was to reflect on being a ‘sinner’ and judged. In yoga class I was asked to open and become.

I wasn’t so sure it wasn’t somehow Christlike. It felt like a connection lurked, just one the religion wouldn’t reveal.

William Holman Hunt, “Christ and the Two Marys” (1847)

When I started to read Bible scholarship, I realized the case against yoga was pretty thin.

The anti-yoga Bible reference most often cited is a ban, in Leviticus 20:6, on . . . sorcery.

And there was quite a bit more material that I was surprised by, and for which the only context I had would be . . . yoga class? Like the lotuses.

I didn’t know the Bible is full of lotuses until reading a 2005 paper by W. Derek Suderman, “Modest or Magnificent? Lotus versus Lily in Canticles,” which claims that…