It's my understanding that the most basic step in yoga is to learn how to breathe properly, and use the whole capacity of your lungs.

So, whenever I see a southern U.S. fake-Christian tirade against yoga, I remind myself that here is yet another sect against breathing.

Changing the subject slightly, I bought some shoes Sunday after looking at running shoes and cross-trainers. It now occurs to me that I should have gone into a complete tirade about how cross-trainers make light of the Crucifixion by their name, and how impure the idea of a multipurpose shoe is.

The fact that the closer your sandals and hair resemble Christs, the more likely you'd get kicked out of one of these outfits is for another thread.

Zamboro: Yoga is a prime example of taking the best ideas religion has to offer, stripping away the mysticism and turning them into something helpful and productive.

It'd be nice if all religious practice of value eventually underwent this process.

The problem is that many Yoga classes still subscribe to the mysticism bullshiat. Took me several months to find a Yoga class that limited the mysticism talk and just dealt with the moves and the breathing.

/took it up to balance out my regular weight training and cardio

theorellior: grout: Dabbled in yoga.

Maybe it's an Identity Disorder.

More like dabbled in yogurt. Frozen yogurt. And plenty of it by the looks of things. That's a brain freeze pic if I've ever seen one.

America: You're farked.

Brought to you by the people who are worried how quickly Obama's name is dropped in completely unrelated diatribes (tm).

Sudo_Make_Me_A_Sandwich: Quasar: All I know is that yoga makes women hotter.

And more flexible. It's a win-win-win situation.

Yoga making you more flexible?


Agrees.

a cool story, bro:

at my yoga class, the woman in charge plays johnny cash as the background music during practice. It's phenomenal.

Veteran of the Cola Wars:One of the gospels not found in the Bible makes it very very clear that before his public ministry, Yeshua traveled to India. Who knows what he learned there?

Don't eat the prawn vindaloo if you are travelling on a train the next day.

The fact I do yoga AND am a godless heathen is just a coincidence.

Not new. Also horoscopes.

grout: Dabbled in yoga.

She looks like a master of teabagasena.

Or a limber flexible woman with high levels of testosterone and a strong developing sexual appetite. I swear, as soon as I'm able to get a job again, I'm putting my gf back into yoga classes. She enjoys the class, I enjoy the results.

She did stripper aerobics too, but only the chair class.

//Couldn't take pole class.
//Clumsy blonde

After three paragraphs, that got into tl;dr territory.

/Christian who does yoga if I don't have to pay for it.

Shoot, they have "christian" karate schools in my area....they actually call it "Karate for christ".

Somehow when I think "WWJD" the first thing that comes to my mind is not the martial arts.

Personally I'd think that it would be much more acceptable for a christian to do yoga than karate.

Well, according to the Prophet Moore, Jesus actually took Eastern philosophy to learn how to multiple food and such so I'm not buying it.

I heard this over 25 years ago, when I briefly joined an ultra-fundie church (Church of God), and when I mentioned to the preacher that I was doing yoga he immediately went into a tirade about how incredibly demonic it is, and that I was putting my soul in mortal danger.

BTW, the best beginner's yoga book ever is Richard Hittleman's '28 day program'.

StormnMormon: Yea I purchased Yoga for dummies awhile back, in an effort to start stretching and stuff as a prelude to more exercise for weight loss. After slogging through a few chapters of BS (Seriously, just so much crap about "connecting to the universe" and creating a sense of harmony") I returned it and just bought stretching for dummies.

So there are some pseudo-religious or at least "mystical" elements or whatever, but just enough to be annoying.

You had to have video instruction on stretching? Really?

/idiot

sheumack: Veteran of the Cola Wars:One of the gospels not found in the Bible makes it very very clear that before his public ministry, Yeshua traveled to India. Who knows what he learned there?

Don't eat the prawn vindaloo if you are travelling on a train the next day.

Book of Curries, chapter 11, verse 3
Woe unto you, ye miserable lot, who dares to eat the tiny purple peppers in the goat vindaloo. Cursed be ye, let your bowels be turned to water and let ye cry out unto the LORD.

Iron Nacho Melt: I first ran into someone of this stripe in the late '80s. a Born Again Christian who had already been raised in a very politically and socially "conservative" environment, it was part of her worldview that this was just another gateway to paganism, at best.

This is obviously still an important part of religious fundamentalism. I myself was a participant of that discourse. Fark has long since broken me of that.

Douglas R. Groothuis, Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary and a respected specialist on the New Age Movement, warns Christians that yoga is not merely about physical exercise or health. "All forms of yoga involve occult assumptions," he warns, "even hatha yoga, which is often presented as a merely physical discipline." While most adherents of yoga avoid the more exotic forms of ritualized sex that are associated with tantric yoga, virtually all forms of yoga involve an emphasis on channeling sexual energy throughout the body as a means of spiritual enlightenment.


How stupid. Really depends on your Charisma score. If you're below 12 you can't even take Yoga as a prestige class.

You can't drink if you want to follow the yoga lifestyle. Margaritas relax me better, anyway.

Yoga was better when it wasn't so mainstream. Now it's like golf for the "deeper" people.

reillan: Iron Nacho Melt: I first ran into someone of this stripe in the late '80s. a Born Again Christian who had already been raised in a very politically and socially "conservative" environment, it was part of her worldview that this was just another gateway to paganism, at best.

This is obviously still an important part of religious fundamentalism. I myself was a participant of that discourse. Fark has long since broken me of that.

Nonsense. That would imply that Fark is good for something, and we all know that to be untrue.

Unpossible!

AbbeySomeone: StormnMormon: Yea I purchased Yoga for dummies awhile back, in an effort to start stretching and stuff as a prelude to more exercise for weight loss. After slogging through a few chapters of BS (Seriously, just so much crap about "connecting to the universe" and creating a sense of harmony") I returned it and just bought stretching for dummies.

So there are some pseudo-religious or at least "mystical" elements or whatever, but just enough to be annoying.

You had to have video instruction on stretching? Really?

/idiot

No, you see there are these things called books, with words forming instructions..

Yup, and the local mega-church offering yoga classes amuses me to no end.

//You can separate the spiritual aspects from the physical ones.

DNRTFA, but I just wanted to know: What, exactly, is so bad about a dairy product produced by bacterial fermentation of milk?

SWEET! Off to yoga class...

I'm a big Jnana Yoga myself. Doesn't get you as many ladies as the 24 Hour Fitness version, sadly.

Jakevol2: I attend a Catholic University and they offer free yoga classes every week. We also just had a big campus wide celebration of Ramadan. Today we hung Tibetan peace flags on campus. Only closed minded, ethnocentric, bigoted Christians would say you shouldn't do yoga if you want to be a good Christian.

Oh and I put on my Tibetan prayer flag I wrote that I hoped FSM would touch everyone with His noodly goodness, and the director of Campus Ministries loved it.

This is why I like Bikram Yoga, no talk of feeling the universe or reviving my Chakra, it's just stretch this, and there, pull here and you're done

They should be more worried about yoga's effectiveness and not that it might turn you into a Hindu.

And we all know Hinduism is almost like Islam since they are close on the map.

It's only sinful if practiced by males.

/you know that there's only one reason why a guy would try yoga, right?
//tried it myself, gave up shortly after the breath control stuff

StormnMormon: AbbeySomeone: StormnMormon: Yea I purchased Yoga for dummies awhile back, in an effort to start stretching and stuff as a prelude to more exercise for weight loss. After slogging through a few chapters of BS (Seriously, just so much crap about "connecting to the universe" and creating a sense of harmony") I returned it and just bought stretching for dummies.

So there are some pseudo-religious or at least "mystical" elements or whatever, but just enough to be annoying.

You had to have video instruction on stretching? Really?

/idiot

No, you see there are these things called books, with words forming instructions..

Nuh uh!

Blah. My step-mom is one of those Christians who thinks that meditating and yoga is heathen.

/Loves me some yoga. Except sun salutations. Those get boring after a while and EVERY yoga class does them. Isn't there some other warm-up asana routine that doesn't make me do chaturanga Link?

Untaken_name: "DNRTFA, but I just wanted to know: What, exactly, is so bad about a dairy product produced by bacterial fermentation of milk?"

I take it you have yet to sample the culinary atrocity that is American cheddar.

Oh lordy... some things never change...

Just as there are atheist, science loving nut-jobs who claim we never went to the moon, Bush blew up the towers on 9-11 etc, there are Christians who have strange interpretations of things.

FTR, cooking can be an occult practice inspired by Satan - if you approach it as a spiritual/religious practice that takes you away from a relationship with Jesus Christ. Does this mean we should starve? Of course not. It means putting it into its perspective of being subordinate to one's relationship with God.

Same can be said of making money. Does God want us to all be poor? Well, some of the greatest figures from the Old Testament were rich - King David, Solomon both come to mind. In the New Testament, Nicodemus was wealthy and righteous. It means that when one puts making money ahead of all else, especially one's relationship to God, then money becomes the object of worship.

If one is using yoga as means of physical fitness and a means to calm the mind (and better yet, to meditate upon God's Word), then there is nothing wrong with it.

I have heard many wacky interpretations of Christianity, often without Biblical support or in direct contradiction of Scripture. In other words, people will try to make it say what they want it to say, not what it actually says. Trouble comes when people also take a line or two out and then interpret it outside the spirit of the entire text.

So, stretch and flex to your heart's content, and channel all that sexual tension to release it with your spouse (tantric sex gives the most mind-blowing orgasms!)

With "they" being India and the middle east in case some derper wants to be, well, a derper.

Kanemano: This is why I like Bikram Yoga, no talk of feeling the universe or reviving my Chakra, it's just stretch this, and there, pull here and you're done

They're calling that "Yoga" now?

I have to confess: I have a crush on the Wii Fit's female yoga trainer. It's creepy that she doesn't move her lips when she talks, but I can look past that.

What I find amusing (not that anyone cares...) is that the Christian who wrote TFA thinks everyone is and should be a fundamentalist, whatever their spiritual orientation. I guess, in that sense, he (she? it?) is probably proud as hell of Muslim extremists for keeping it real.

Zamboro: Yoga is a prime example of taking the best ideas religion has to offer, stripping away the mysticism and turning them into something helpful and productive.

It'd be nice if all religious practice of value eventually underwent this process.

Read Ludwig Feuerbach.

/that is all

VictorOfBorge: Oh lordy... some things never change...

Just as there are atheist, science loving nut-jobs who claim we never went to the moon, Bush blew up the towers on 9-11 etc

Well sure, but we can prove those things.

Still waiting for God.

Dont you dare compare nut jobs with the idea that we never went to the moon or that Bush killed 3 thousand Americans for some kind of street cred that was never gunna happen. This is not a nut job - hes thought out his position, he's a good writer. But what the fark dude, you seem to think that the folks who believe that we never went to the moon or Bush did 9/11 are a mutually exclusive group.

No problems with Christians. It's your faith, I hear that. But with all due respect, I don't think it has much to do with the folks who think we never went to the moon, etc.

Man, this guy is a bit behind the times.

Link (new window)

traylor: It's only sinful if practiced by males.

/you know that there's only one reason why a guy would try yoga, right?
//tried it myself, gave up shortly after the breath control stuff

I have no idea why a man might try this but I am interested in finding out. Maybe there is a clip discussing it on the internet I can find staring Misha Collins.

FTA: We had turned a technique for God realization that had, at various points in time, enjoined its adherents to reduce their diet to rice, milk, and a few vegetables, fix their minds on a set of, to us, incomprehensible syllables, and self-administer daily enemas (without the benefit of equipment)

How the hell do you do that? Pour really hard?

Jesus was into stretching. In the bible, it says he tied his ass to a tree and walked into town...

Zamboro: Untaken_name: "DNRTFA, but I just wanted to know: What, exactly, is so bad about a dairy product produced by bacterial fermentation of milk?"

I take it you have yet to sample the culinary atrocity that is American cheddar.

I worked as a lunch "chef" at this cafe a few years back. Big menu of just fantastic sandwiches, paninis, all that stuff. Every day, I would have to make some idiot something like "A reuben, but you know like instead of swiss cheese do you guys have American?"

That job experience helped me develop into the humanity hating person I am today.