SHOULD I NOT DO YOGA, ACUPUNCTURE, AND OTHER PRACTICES THAT ARE ASSOCIATED WITH NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS?

The Church is tempted by many new and old fads and therapies, each claiming that it is the answer to our problems. We are particularly susceptible, because we are undergoing all kinds of painful trials (1 Peter 4:17; Psalm 34:19) and are tempted to think that we are missing out on something. Consequently, they bringing yoga into the church, not only for health reasons, but for spiritual reasons. Brooke Boon has claimed that yoga brings “mind and body” together so that:

·       “we become more authentic people, able to hear God and experience Him in previously impossible ways.” (Christian Research Journal, Vol.3, #4, 2008).

While doing yoga stretches is one thing, trusting in them to bring us closer to God is another thing entirely. On the other hand, we enjoy an amazing degree of freedom in Christ. For example, Paul wrote that we could even eat at a pagan temple, as long as it doesn’t encourage a brother to violate his conscience:

·       For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? And so by your knowledge this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. (1 Corinthians 8:10-11)

Paul also wrote that objects (or yoga stretches) cannot defile us. Nothing that impacts us from the outside can undermine our relationship with our Lord (Titus 1:15):

·       “All things are lawful,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor. Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience. For “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.” (1 Corinthians 10:23-26; 6:12; Luke 11:39-41)

Things themselves, like using a yoga mat, cannot tarnish us in God’s sight. Jesus also explained that we are not corrupted by things that impact us from the outside or even go into our stomachs:

·       And he said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.” (Matthew 15:16-20)

However, if we believe that eating or not eating certain foods will make us more spiritual, we are placing our trust in the wrong things at the expense of trusting Christ alone (Psalm 62).

·       For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. (Romans 14:17)

While eating or objects cannot contaminate us, placing our trust in them to make us more spiritual can. If we place our trust in eating or not eating certain foods, we are rejecting trust in Christ:

·       Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving (1 Timothy 4:1-4)

Of course, the freedom to eat all foods is opposed to the laws of Moses, which forbid eating non-kosher foods. Why the opposition between Moses’ laws and the teachings of the New Testament? Paul explained that certain laws were merely “shadows,” symbols, or representations, which have been fulfilled by Christ:

·       Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. (Colossians 2:16-17)

Christ, the substance and reality, remains. Thou shall not murder, steal, and commit adultery also remain because they are the substance of Christ Himself, His righteous nature.

Let’s now apply this back to yoga. We are also free to perform yoga stretches and even to submit to acupuncture. However, we are not free to allow such practices to influence our faith and trust in Christ.

There is also a danger that these practices might serve as a “gateway drug,” opening us up to the influences of Eastern philosophy, which might affect our beliefs.

However, mere physical procedures cannot jeopardize our faith. While Paul did warn against circumcision, it wasn’t the physical act or procedure that concerned him but the trusting in circumcision to become a Jew to follow the law to please God (Galatians 5:2-4). Had Paul been concerned about circumcision merely as a procedure, he would never have had Timothy circumcised (Acts 16:3). However, Paul had him circumcised, not to save him, but to enable him to minister among the Jews. Had Timothy not been circumcised, the Jews would have rejected him.

There is a similar confusion about eating foods offered to idols. As many verses indicate, we are free to eat any foods (Romans 14:14, 17), whether they have been offered to idols or not (1 Cor. 10:25-26; 8:8). However, it might seem that other verses contradict this freedom:

·       But I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality. (Revelation 2:14, 20; 1 Cor. 10:21)

However, this is different from just casually eating food that had been offered to idols. Instead, these false teachers were teaching the church to proactively seek to eat these foods, presumably for spiritual benefit. This represents a form of spiritual adultery, a compromise of the faith and hope we have invested in Christ.

On several occasions, I had eaten food offered to idols at a Hare Krishna temple. I had no problem doing this. However, if they would have required that I bow in the direction of their gods, I wouldn’t have been able to do so. This would have sent the message that I respected their beliefs and dishonored my own, something forbidden:

·       …what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? (1 Corinthians 10:20-22)

Therefore, if your yoga class requires that you pay some form of homage to their gods or beliefs, you will provoke the Lord. However, merely doing stretches is little different from participating in a swimming class. However, if the teacher insists that by doing exercises, you will be more in-tune with God, they have gone beyond the revelation of Scripture. We cannot put our trust in such things. While exercise might make you more clear-headed, it will not make God more receptive to your prayers. Such a trust also ignores what God has clearly prescribed – faith, obedience, confession, Scripture meditation, and prayer. Instead, faith in physical manipulations represents a lack of faith in the teachings of the Word of God. Rather, Paul taught:

·       Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. (1 Timothy 4:7-8)

I do back exercises and find them helpful. However, I would be wrong to think that these exercises are improving my relationship with God. Misguided Christians have also placed their faith in asceticism, various forms of self-depravation, thinking that these would make them more spiritual, worthy, or more able to hear the “voice of God.” However, Scripture warns against such a hope:

·       These [“human precepts and teachings,” verse 22] have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. (Colossians 2:23)

Paul, therefore, had warned against submitting to such “regulations” (verse 21). It is a matter of placing our hope in the wrong thing instead of in Christ. However, to trust in depriving yourself of dessert in order to lose weight does not violate our faith in Christ.

Another yoga promoter, Susan Bordenkircher claimed that:

·       “Ultimately…the pain and discomfort you may feel in your skin can be the cause of division between you and God.” (CRJ)

If “pain and discomfort” can cause a “division between you and God,” we should live insulated lives. We should also fear growing old with its many infirmities. However, this isn’t the message of Scripture. Instead, we are assured that we are overflowing with the riches in Christ even without yoga:

·       See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. (Colossians 2:8-10)

How can we guard against being taken captive by alien philosophies? By praying and meditating on Scripture day and night (Psalm 1). We also need the assurance that we already have all of the instructions we need to live a godly life:

·       All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

If the Scriptures are able to make us complete in our relationship with our Savior, then we shouldn’t fear that we are missing out if we fail to practice an unbiblical therapy.

SHOULD I NOT DO YOGA, ACUPUNCTURE, AND OTHER PRACTICES THAT ARE ASSOCIATED WITH NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS?

We enjoy an amazing degree of freedom in Christ. For example, Paul wrote that we could even eat at a pagan temple, as long as it doesn’t lead a brother to defile his conscience:

·       For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? And so by your knowledge this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. (1 Corinthians 8:10-11)

Although we have this freedom along with the freedom to eat all foods, even if they happen to be offered to idols, we should not allow this freedom to lead our brethren into anything that might wound their conscience.

Later, Paul wrote that any objects could not defile us. Nothing that impacts us on the outside can tarnish our relationship with our Lord (Titus 1:15):

·       “All things are lawful,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor. Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience. For “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.” (1 Corinthians 10:23-26; 6:12; Luke 11:39-41)

Things themselves cannot defile in God’s sight. Why? Because all things come from the Lord! However, we use things wrongly if they are not used in love.

Jesus further explained that we are not made unholy by things that impact us from the outside or go into our stomachs:

·       And he said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.” (Matthew 15:16-20)

What does make us unholy are the sinful temptations that arise from our hearts and minds – those temptations that we embrace. They will then grow into words and actions.

Of course, this teaching is opposed to those found in the laws of Moses. These taught that contact with the dead, disease, or eating non-kosher foods would defile us. Why the opposition between Moses’ laws and the teachings of the New Testament? Paul explained that certain laws were merely “shadows” or representations, which had been fulfilled by Christ:

·       Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. (Colossians 2:16-17)

As signs, shadows, or representations of Christ, they had been fulfilled at the Cross. What remains is the substance, the reality, what is of Christ. Thou shall not murder, steal, and commit adultery remain because they are the substance of Christ Himself, His righteous nature.

And so we are free to eat all foods as long as we conduct ourselves in love. We are also free to perform yoga stretches and even to submit to acupuncture. These are things that do not come from our heart and will not defile us.

Instead, there is a danger that these practices might serve as a gateway drug, like marijuana leading to heavier drug use. It is possible that these and similar practices might expose us to the temptations of Eastern philosophy, which might affect our beliefs. It is these that guard our heart and mind.

Similar questions arise regarding circumcision, since Paul seemed to teach that if we get circumcised, our life in Christ might be jeopardized:

·       Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. (Galatians 5:2-4)

How is it that an external surgical procedure could put our relationship with Christ in jeopardy? It can’t! Instead, it is matter of what we believe about circumcision and not the physical act.

Paul had been concerned that believers might be lured into placing their faith in circumcision to become a Jew and, to some extent, believe that they needed to earn God’s “free” gift by following the law. Clearly, Paul wasn’t concerned about the physical act of circumcision. He even had Timothy circumcised (Acts 16:3). However, Paul had him circumcised, not to save him, but to enable him to minister among the Jews. Had Timothy not been circumcised, the Jews would have rejected him.

There is a similar confusion about eating foods offered to idols. As many verses indicate, we are free to eat any foods (Romans 14:14, 17), whether they have been offered to idols or not (1 Cor. 10:25-26; 8:8). However, it might seem that other verses contradict this freedom:

·       But I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality. (Revelation 2:14, 20; 1 Cor. 10:21)

However, this is different from just casually eating food that had been offered to idols. Instead, these false teachers were teaching the church to proactively seek to eat these foods, presumably for spiritual benefit. This represents a form of spiritual adultery, a compromise of the faith and hope we have invested in Christ.

This is my problem with mystical practices to achieve an experience of God. While there is nothing the matter with closing our eyes and allowing our minds to drift to beautiful and relaxing scenes, it is another matter to imagine these relaxing scenes in faith that this practice will open for us a path to God.

Likewise, there is nothing the matter with jogging in order to relax our minds. However, if we believe that physical exertion will open for us a highway to the presence of God, then we are ignoring the priorities that God has clearly set forth for us – faith, obedience, confession, Scripture meditation, and prayer. Instead, faith in physical manipulations represents a lack of faith in the teachings of the Word of God. Rather, He claims:

·       Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. (1 Timothy 4:7-8)

Misguided Christians have also placed their faith in asceticism – various forms of self-depravation – thinking that these would make them more spiritual, worthy, or more able to hear the “voice of God.” However, Scripture warns against such a hope:

·       These [“human precepts and teachings,” verse 22] have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. (Colossians 2:23)

Paul, therefore, had warned against submitting to such “regulations” (verse 21). It is a matter of placing our hope in the wrong thing instead of in Christ. However, to trust in depriving yourself of dessert in order to lose weight does not violate our faith in Christ.

However, some “Christians” are attempting to bring bodily practices into the church, not only for health reasons, but for spiritual reasons. Brooke Boon has claimed that yoga brings “mind and body” together so that:

·       “we become more authentic people, able to hear God and experience Him in previously impossible ways.” (Christian Research Journal, Vol.3, #4, 2008).

The same article reports that Susan Bordenkircher claimed that:

·       “Ultimately…the pain and discomfort you may feel in your skin can be the cause of division between you and God.”

If “pain and discomfort” can cause a “division between you and God,” we should live insulated lives. However, this isn’t the message of Scripture. Instead, we are assured that we overflowing with the riches in Christ:

·       See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. (Colossians 2:8-10)

How can we guard against being taken captive by alien philosophies? By praying and meditating on Scripture day and night (Psalm 1).

Meditation: Curse or Comfort?

In the West, meditation is “in.” In fact, it is so “in” that the media seldom reports anything negative about this practice but instead showers praise on its reported benefits. However, one former meditator, writer Mary Garden, confessed:

•  Back in 1979, when I was living in Pune, India, as a starry-eyed devotee of the infamous guru Bhagwan Rajneesh, something happened that has disturbed me to this day. A man who had just come down from Kathmandu after completing a thirty-day Tibetan Buddhist meditation course killed himself. I had met him the night before, and we'd had coffee together. I don't remember what we spoke about, but he was friendly and didn't appear distressed. But the next day he climbed to the top of the multi-storied Blue Diamond Hotel and leapt off. The Bhagwan, at his first lecture after the man's suicide, tried to reassure us by saying the man had already reincarnated as a more enlightened soul. But I was quite upset and remember thinking how strange it was that someone should kill himself after a meditation course. Isn't meditation something you do to get--at the very least--peace of mind? I wondered whether he might have had a mental illness and perhaps shouldn't have taken the course in the first place. Even if he had, shouldn't the meditation have helped? It didn't occur to me that the meditation itself might have caused a mental imbalance that tipped him over the edge--that meditation could be dangerous for some people. Has such a notion ever appeared in the mainstream media, let alone the myriad New Age magazines?

She adds: “What is interesting is that Buddhist and Hindu teachers, even the Dalai Lama, have occasionally pointed out the potential hazards of meditation. Dhammananda warned”:

• The practice of meditation has been abused by people. They want immediate and quick results, just as they expect quick returns for everything they do in daily life . . . the mind must be brought under control in slow degrees and one should not try to reach for the higher states without proper training. We have heard of over-enthusiastic young men and women literally going out of their minds because they adopted the wrong attitudes towards meditation.

•  Dr. Lorin Roche, a meditation teacher, says a major problem arises from the way meditators interpret Buddhist and Hindu teachings. He points out that meditation techniques that encourage detachment from the world were intended only for monks and nuns. He has spent thirty years doing interviews with people who meditate regularly and says many were depressed.

Are the dangers of meditation simply a product of having the “wrong attitudes” or “interpretations?” Garden provides some anecdotal evidence regarding what seems to be dangers inherent to meditation:

·       On a Goenka Vipassana discussion board called tribe.net, a participant named Tristan writes: “I wish I could say wonderful things about my experience but I can't. I stayed the full ten days, many of them filled with incredible hallucinations, from being inside an egg, to being a bird-like animal with broken wings, to following tunnels through my brain, to feeling completely connected to the universe. No problem, I told myself, it's just sensation. I'm perfectly safe. On the last day of the retreat, listening to the last lecture, I let out a huge scream and fell down.” [This meditator] says he became psychotic and ended up in a psychiatric hospital for several weeks.

• With Goenka's courses there have been a number of failed suicide attempts in India, including one that resulted in a broken spine and another in which the survivor suffered a ruptured lung and a fractured skull. Researchers at Goenka's headquarters at Igatpuri looked at cases concerning nine persons who'd harmed themselves after a course, and they found all had either practiced other forms of meditation, used healing techniques, or used drugs prior to doing a course. They consequently attributed the serious mental disturbances following the retreat not as side effects of the meditation technique, but to the practice or use of these other things.

• But a woman who recently contacted me said her son did a Vipassana course in January in New Zealand, found it to be a very positive experience that produced many good feelings of love and so forth, but that within a few days of his return he'd had a "psychotic episode." He was committed to a mental hospital where he responded well to medication and is now on antidepressants. Her son had no history of mental instability, nor was there any such history in the family. He had never tried meditation before nor had he taken drugs.

• Geoffrey Dawson, a Sydney-based Zen meditation teacher and psychotherapist, has come across twenty people who had mentally distressing experiences as a result of attending courses at the Goenka Vipassana Retreat Center in Blackheath (located in the Blue Mountains of Australia). Dawson says these meditators became fragmented rather than integrated and their experiences included panic attacks, depressive episodes, or both that in most cases persisted months after the retreat ended. There were also some manic episodes, one of which later became diagnosed and treated as a bipolar disorder. Dawson was also contacted by a woman whose daughter had been to a retreat. Her friends and family noticed she became withdrawn and obsessive afterwards. Her psychological condition deteriorated and some months later she became psychotic. Within eighteen months she was hospitalized and committed suicide.

• Dawson suggests that "if a gradual approach to meditation retreats is adopted, supportive processes are put in place during retreats, and follow-up care is provided," while it's not guaranteed participants won't have adverse experiences, "it can certainly help prevent and minimize the development of mental disorders."

•   Christopher Titmuss, a former Buddhist monk who now lives in England, holds yearly Vipassana meditation retreats in Bodh Gaya, India. He reports that occasionally people go through very traumatic experiences and require round the clock support, the use of strong drugs, or even hospitalization. "Others may experience a short-lived terror of the mind utterly out of control, a temporary fear of going mad," he notes. "Or an alienation from conventional reality that makes it difficult for consciousness to recover without active intervention." But Titmuss claims it isn't the meditation that causes such behavior: "The function of meditation, as the Buddha points out, is to act as a mirror to what is."

Is meditation just “a mirror,” or does it open the meditator to new dangers? Garden gravitates towards the latter option, citing another former meditator:

• Those who play the "mental illness" defense card seem to have a vested interest in Eastern philosophy. Meditation appears to create mental imbalance by messing with the brain's chemistry.

Garden also backs up her concerns with the relevant research, pointing to the fact that there are profound costs endemic to meditation:

• Professor Richard Davidson of Wisconsin, a long-term Buddhist meditator himself, claims that meditation can "change neural states in circuits that may be important for compassionate behavior and attentional and emotional regulation." "Meditation is not going to be good for all patients with emotional disorders and it may even be bad for certain types of patients."

• Dr. Solomon Snyder, head of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University, warns that during meditation the brain releases serotonin. This may help those with mild depression but too much serotonin can cause, in some, a paradoxical relaxation-induced anxiety. Instead of relaxing during meditation, these people become distressed and may even have panic attacks. Snyder says that in some cases of schizophrenia, meditation can launch a person straight into psychosis.

• Dr. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania scanned the brains of long-term practitioners of Buddhism while they were meditating and compared them with images taken when they were not. Newberg saw that blood flow to the posterior superior parietal lobe decreased during meditation. This area of the brain determines the boundaries of one's body in relation to the environment and allows us to navigate a complex three-dimensional world without bumping into things. "We know that the posterior superior parietal lobe plays that particular role because there are patients with damage in this same region who literally cannot move around without falling," Newberg reports. "They'll miss the chair they intended to sit on, and generally have a fuzzy understanding of where their body ends and the rest of the universe begins." He says that when people have spiritual experiences and feel they become one with the universe and lose their sense of self, it may be because of what is happening in that area of the brain. "If you block that area, you lose that boundary between the self and the rest of the world."

•  Dr. Michael Persinger, a professor of neuroscience at the Laurentian University in Canada, studied 1,018 meditators in 1993 and found that meditation can bring on symptoms of complex partial epilepsy such as visual abnormalities, hearing voices, feeling vibrations, or experiencing automatic behaviors such as narcolepsy. Note that epileptic patients who suffer from seizures in the temporal lobes have auditory or visual hallucinations, which they often interpret as mystical experiences. Some are convinced that they conversed with God. 

•  Persinger set out to investigate so-called "mystical" experiences under controlled laboratory conditions. He got volunteers to wear a helmet fitted with a set of magnets through which he ran a weak electromagnetic signal. Persinger found that the magnetically induced seizures in the temporal lobes generate the same sort of hallucinations and mystical experiences reported by epileptic patients. Four in five people, he says, report a "mystical experience, the feeling that there is a sentient being or entity standing behind or near" them. Some weep, some feel God has touched them, others become frightened and talk of demons and evil spirits. "That's in the laboratory," Persinger notes, referring to subjects' knowledge of a controlled environment. "How much more intense might these experiences be if they happened late at night, or in a pew in a mosque or synagogue?"

Garden concludes:

• After my Indian odyssey and my return to worldly life in 1979, I've found being back in the world not such a bad thing after all. I no longer regard the world as a place from which to escape or detach myself. My mind is no longer something to conquer or to cleanse of impurities. In fact, my life is immeasurably richer without meditation.

There are many other pro-meditation sources that admit to the inherent dangers. Here are just two of them:

http://simonarich.com/meditation-dangers

http://thoughtbrick.com/meditation/dangers-meditation-10-things-look/

Here are some others studies reported in the Christian Research Journal:

·       “TM may lead to serious maladies such as mental illness, suicide, seizures and demon possession.” John Weldon, CRJ. Indeed, a study by Otis at the Stanford Research Institute involving 574 subjects revealed that the longer a person practiced TM, the more adverse mental effects were recorded; that 70% of subjects recorded mental disorders of one degree or another.

·       “A review of 75 articles in the International Journal of Psychotherapy noted the positive and negative effects found in studies…It reported that negative side effects were encountered by more than 62% of the meditators studied.” (Weldon)

·       “According to TranceNet, an extensive analysis of a small sample of meditators done by Germany’s Institute for Youth and Society found that 76% of long-term meditators experience psychological problems. The report also notes that 26% experienced nervous breakdowns, 63 p% experienced serious physical complaints, and 70% recorded a worsening ability to concentrate. Researchers, ironically, also found a ‘startling drop in honesty among long-term meditators.’” (Weldon)