Remember When Yoga Was Bad?

Last night in yoga, I couldn’t help but smile. I know I’m supposed to be totally and completely focused on the moment — and I was — but I was also thinking about the past. When I wrote The Sacred Way, editors and Zondervan made me take out two passages: one that mentioned drinking a beer, and one that referred to a yoga pose. (It didn’t matter that the pose I mentioned was in the context of a spiritual retreat led by Zondervan partner, Youth Specialties and Mike Yaconelli.) No yoga. No way.

Then, of course, Doug went on CNN to debate John MacArthur about yoga, seen above. At the time, Doug had done yoga, but I wouldn’t say it was a part of his daily life. Well, it is now, and his wife Shelley runs a non-profit yoga studio at Solomon’s Porch (she’s at the center of the photo above). And I take yoga classes a couple times a week at Life Time Fitness.

Back in those days, I’d be asked about yoga at conferences, and I’d say that I had no problem with it. Regularly, someone would confront me from the crowd, saying that demon enter the body through the anus during some yoga poses. I’m not kidding. That’s what they’d say.

But now the Christian warriors have moved on. They’ve pretty much left this blog, and they don’t come to “check out” Solomon’s Porch (and argue with Doug during the sermon) anymore. They always move on, don’t they. They’ve found some other person or movement that is definitely going to destroy Christ’s church. Surely, they’re on the warpath. Somewhere. But now their churches offer Christian yoga classes.

And that’s what made me smile last night in yoga. That, and the fact that I could do yoga for the first time in over a month, since my back injury. And the fact that my wife, Courtney, was teaching the class. All of it felt healing to me.

Namaste.