The Idolatry of Yoga – Gospel Adorned

The Idolatry of Yoga
For eight years, I practiced yoga in New York City and partnered with many yogis and studios over the years as a spiritual teacher in the New Age. It was one of the first gateways into my false spiritual path before I knew Christ. I was not following the yoga philosophy – I was just focusing on the movement and sometimes I even prayed to the god I made in my own image instead of bowing down to the Hindu statues that stood in the front of most classes. This mattered not. I believed I could divorce the spiritual purpose from the physical movement, unaware that yoga is rooted in doctrines of demons. But after thousands of hours of yoga, God had mercy on me and commanded the true light of Christ to shine in my heart that I may know truth from error, granting me repentance and bringing me to saving faith in Jesus Christ. I left yoga behind forever and I never looked back. Now I want to help those who are trapped in this deception.
People are flocking to yoga not only for exercise but also for physical, emotional and spiritual healing – over 35 million Americans are now practicing yoga and it has entered into the professing church, repackaged as Christian. The draw can be for anything from exercise and stress release to healing back pain and anxiety, or healing from a breakup or death of a loved one. Yoga sounds really attractive especially when you’re in a lot of physical, relational or emotional pain. If we are really naïve, as I was, and without Christ, we do not question the practices we go to for healing—or whether or not we are meant to yoke and come into union with whatever force we’re opening ourselves to through New Age practices. We don’t even consider that we could instead have a personal relationship with our Creator who commanded us to love Him with our whole heart, mind, soul and strength. This of course means worshipping no other gods and idols because this is sin and leads to eternal death. But for those of us who do have Christ, we will not continue in idolatry – we repent, turning from all false religion and dead idols to serve the true living God.
Yoga is the gateway to the New Age. More often than not evil is subtle and tricky, so many New Age practices are seemingly innocuous because they feel good and look good, and they’re wrapped up in beautiful packages. But many professing Christians and those who may just identify as atheists or “spiritual seekers” will find that over time they actually go deeper and deeper onto a path they didn’t even intend to go down until they begin New Age practices like yoga, even if they say they just want to “exercise”. Deception is progressive. We’re trained to think evil is very obvious like a devil with two horns but it’s not. It’s subtle. Otherwise we wouldn’t be deceived. Eve was deceived in the Garden, seduced by the serpent, and told that she could be like god – there is nothing new under the sun. When we go to something outside of Christianity, outside of the Bible for answers, it will always lead to idolatry.
WHAT YOGA MEANS
By definition yoga means to “yoke”. Yoke with what? Specifically, the purpose of yoga is seen as union with “the universe”, an impersonal god or divine force, through the realization of the divine/god-self. Essentially, yoga is the worship of self, as all false religion is – yoga is making your self “god”. Yoga is a Hindu word and a Hindu discipline, which also means to be one with the Hindu god Brahman. Yoga is the Hindu way of salvation—the way of ending the cycle of death and rebirth, ending the cycle of suffering. This is in opposition to Scripture that does not support reincarnation. Yoga is Hinduism, the worship of millions of false gods. It’s idol worship. We like to think we can separate yoga from Hinduism and false idol worship, but we can’t. When we do this, we are no different from the Old Testament Israelites who continually hardened their hearts and turned away from the living God to idolatry. God is specific in what He accepts as worship. We are not to worship the Lord God through the ways of pagan worship and we are not to take the Lord’s name in vain by practicing idolatry in His name.
Yoga is 5,000 years old and it comes out of India; modern yoga was once practiced by an occultist clique in America and Europe, but now over 60 million Americans incorporate Eastern philosophy into their worldview. Yoga is the heart of Hinduism; there is no yoga without Hinduism and no Hinduism without yoga. Although there are many types of yoga, the one most common in the West most often passes for physical exercise and is called Hatha yoga; it promises mental and physical health but its Hindu roots and real goal to yoke with false gods and Hindu deities are seldom taught.
Yoga is designed for worship not for exercise. All of the yoga movements, postures, breathing techniques and meditations are assigned to release what is called the Kundalini serpent energy – the counterfeit Holy Spirit. This does not connect you with God, but invites demons. At the root of each pose in yoga is the worship of the serpent, designed for activating the Kundalini awakening—the serpent energy that travels up the spine, whether we intend it to or not to induce a false born again experience counterfeit to the Bible when God regenerates His elect in saving faith. In every culture the serpent is worshipped on some level, but in the Bible the serpent is described as Satan, the enemy or adversary of God. When done properly, yoga makes it possible to do things that are only available through demonic power. You are granted this demonic power for worshipping the demons through the yoga poses and the false enlightenment it brings.
The bible of yogis is called The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali—and then there’s the Bhagavad-Gita—the sutras describe the real purpose of yoga which is completely spiritual and not about movement. Sri S. Satchidananda in The Yoga Sutras said, “Truth is the same always. Whoever ponders it will get the same answer. Buddha got it. Patanjali got it. Jesus got it. Mohammed got it. The answer is the same, but the method of working it out may vary this way or that. (115)” and he said, “[C]ontinence is a very important part of yoga. If a handful of people come forward with strong wills, nothing is impossible. One Buddha changed half the globe; one Jesus, three quarters of the world. We all have that capacity. (140)” We know from Scripture that there is salvation through no other name (Acts 4:12). It’s a Western quality to cherry pick religions and to remain ignorant around the roots of it. The North American yoga industry has registered so many thousands of copyrights and trademarks that it has angered the Indian government who has now set up their own task force to do something about it.
At the 1981 Transcendental Meditation (TM) Conference in India a spokesman stated that, “the entire mission of TM is to counter the ever-spreading demon of Christianity.” Reader, think about that—the religion in which this form of worship originates, claims that Christianity originates from evil. Maharishi brought Transcendental Meditation to the West, what he calls “the purest form of yoga practice.” This meditation, clearing the mind, guided visualization and varying practices are now being adopted by teachers of “holy yoga” or “Christian yoga” after yoga has been in the Catholic, Episcopal and mainline Protestant churches for many years. Many in the professing church today are naively succumbing to spiritual propaganda and unwittingly becoming disciples of the gods of the New Age. Yoga teachers in America are the main front for the Hindu and New Age missionaries. Today the desperate world is looking for another spiritual leader, not the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus says many will come in His name saying I am the Christ and He warns us to not believe them, for many false Christs will come with many false signs and wonders. Do we believe what God said?
YOGA & THE MIND
One of the main purposes of yoga is to kill the mind. The movements prepare the person for the meditations and chanting and breath work that follow, slowly destroying the mind, burning out and overloading our sensory perception. The real yogis who accomplish this total destruction of the mind are worshipped as gods in India. In these practices people are discouraged to use the mind but of course when the mind is not used, people lose their minds and the mind stops working. When the mind is no longer functioning this creates a space for demonic possession. By “emptying the mind” you open yourself to very dangerous spiritual risks, and it can actually feel like bliss; you experience a drug-like high and like any drug, the addiction follows. This spiritual force numbs you out, dissociates, takes away your pain and gives you the feeling of progression or spiritual advancement, when in reality you are filled with darkness and do not know God.
Intentions don’t matter. Everyone has the best of intentions when beginning yoga. Through worshipping these Hindu gods simply through the yoga poses – this is not about your intentions, but the specific yoga poses themselves – you invite demons. From a basic Hatha yoga style, you will eventually be led to deeper yoga practices and the various “deaths”, and the ideas of merging with the universe, the divine love, the source, and the energy of the universe. Satan always uses a strategy to make us “think different”. The world is brainwashed in all sorts of ways. And through New Age practices you go under a spell and into a trance of this other spirit that deeply influences how you think and what you see. “But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ”‭‭ (2 Corinthians‬ ‭11:3‬‭). The Bible warns and exhorts us to, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:” (1 Peter‬ ‭5:8)‬.
Satan counterfeits all that God has created. Yoga is another counterfeit path to salvation with a counterfeit worship of the sun. Sun Salutations are a series of movements considered to be the foundation to a yoga practice, a spiritual practice used as a way to worship the sun, and therefore traditionally practiced at sunrise.” All false religion ultimately points to sun worship – the counterfeit god. “And he brought me into the inner court of the Lord’s house, and, behold, at the door of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped the sun toward the east” (Ezekiel‬ ‭8:16‬).
Yoga is carefully packaged to strongly appeal to our pragmatic side because its true form would completely repel us. What we see in the West is the beautiful side of evil. In her book Like Lambs to the Slaughter, Johanna Michaelsen wrote, “There is a common misconception in the West that hatha-yoga, one of about ten forms of Yoga that supposedly leads to self-realization, is merely a neutral form of exercise, a soothing and effective alternative for those who abhor jogging and calisthenics …Hatha-yoga is ‘one of the six recognized systems of orthodox Hinduism’ and is at its roots religious and mystical. It is also one of the most difficult and potentially [spiritually] dangerous forms of Yoga. The term hatha is derived from the verb hath, which means ‘to oppress.’… What the practice of hatha-yoga is designed to do is suppress the flow of psychic energies through these channels [“symbolic, or psychic passages on either side of the spinal column”], thereby forcing the ‘serpent power’ or the kundalini force to rise through the central psychic channel in the spine (the sushumna) and up through the chakras, the supposed psychic centers of human personality and power. Westerners mistakenly believe that one can practice hatha-yoga apart from the philosophical and religious beliefs that undergird it. This is an absolutely false belief. … You cannot separate the exercises from the philosophy. … ‘The movements themselves become a form of meditation.’ The continued practice of the exercises will, whether you … intend it or not, eventually influence you toward an Eastern/mystical perspective. That is what it is meant to do! … There is, by definition, no such thing as ‘neutral’ Yoga” (pp. 93-95).
We are renewing our minds daily. How is our mind renewed? We can look to Romans 12:2 “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” We do not follow the practices and beliefs of the world. We do not throw away reason, logic and the ability to discern between what is right and wrong, good and evil. Our mind is mightily used of God, not to be seen as something bad and not to be seen as having any natural powers in itself, but the spirit of the mind under the power of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is in fellowship with God and directed towards God’s will. It’s only logical that we must renew our minds daily with sound doctrine by the teaching of the Holy Spirit. Why would Satan want to attack the mind? Because the mind is where God reveals His will to you. God renews our lives by renewing our minds through His truth in the Word.
MANTRAS & MEDITATION
In Scripture, we are told to meditate on the word of God. This is not sitting in postures, doing poses, or doing any practices or techniques—all of which have now entered the church. The Spirit of God gives us a sound mind, “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy‬ ‭1:7‬). ‭But the other spirit comes to kill, steal and destroy. “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly”‭‭ (John‬ ‭10:10)‬.
There are many dangers in the meditation and breathing techniques in yoga. Even the proponents of these practices are quick to warn that not only do these things trigger emotional and mental diseases, which can place people in insane asylums for the rest of their lives, but they can open you to demons as well. It’s terribly dangerous to go into a meditative state in which the mind is left blank. In a new study from Brown University published in 2017, 60 people were selected to participate, who were exempt from any psychological experiences in their past, and 82% reported fear, anxiety, panic and paranoia after meditation – and they weren’t novices. 43% of the participants had meditated 10,000 hours or more. 49% meditated between 1,000 and 10,000 hours.
Mantras, which are a prominent part of a yoga practice, are not just words. They are a direct calling on different Hindu deities. That’s why they are so precise. Since yoga is the preparation and ritual that summons and invokes the kundalini serpent spirit—the force that is believed to be “love and light” or good spirits that bring the spiritual awakening they covet, mantras are used for this as well. Another word for mantra is “charm” or to “cast a spell” to bring the individual to a vibration to attract and manifest what they want to bring into their life.
More and more people who profess to be Christian use the name Jesus like a mantra. They claim that it’s a “tool” to get them into the presence of God. The Bible warns against vain repetition in religious, spiritual and ritual practices created by man to worship false idols. “But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking” (Matthew‬ ‭6:7‬). For those who come to Christ, many report that those “good spirits” in yoga turn on them and manifest in their body as serious illness or spiritual attack from the outside as the enemy battles for the person’s soul. ‭God the Holy Spirit doesn’t oppress and give us more burdens and infiltrate us with darkness like the other spirit does—Jesus is the one true light and in Him is no darkness. He tell tells us, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew‬ ‭11:30).
A CALL FOR CHRISTIAN DISCERNMENT
As Christians, we are being conformed to the image of Christ, while the lost world is being conformed to image of Satan. Collossians 3:10 tells us “And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:” In 2 Corinthians 3:18 we are told, “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”
In Christ, we are a new creature with a new nature. We don’t have to work on self exhaustively turning to every false way. We have a new nature that did not exist before salvation in Christ, which makes possible a new way of life, no longer dominated by sin and rebellion against the Creator. The unsaved person is still in sin and ruled by the wickedness and rebellion of their depraved nature. Those in Christ daily put off the “old man” and put on the “new man”. The lost world is darkened in their understanding but we have the mind of Christ, we have been enlightened in our mind, giving us the ability to now appreciate what is right and what is wrong. The world will look at us and see the Gospel adorned, a living reality of the witness of Jesus Christ in us.
“For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;” (2 Corinthians 4:16-17). When we live by faith, we know that we are being renewed day by day, that our afflictions are for our good, that our trials are working to conform us to the image of Christ – so we don’t try to bypass or escape our sufferings as the lost world will do through vain philosophies, false healings and idolatrous practices.
Awareness is key. Once we can identify false spiritual practices, we can mark and avoid them. Yoga is no longer on the fridge of society. False teachers and pastors have repackaged yoga as Christian through names like “Holy Yoga” or “Praise Moves” and brought it into the churches. Historically, yoga and its poses are religious positions of worship to false gods and false idols, and therefore cannot be done in a way that is not spiritual, but this is why it’s coming in the name of Christianity and infiltrating churches—because it is spiritual. These churches aren’t choosing something that is just exercise, for a reason. No real yogi denies the spiritual reality of yoga. Satan is patient and progressive—he has a plan and a process and little by little he leads people into apostasy.
As we’ve seen here, simply changing the intent of the practice does not negate its inherent theological problems. Holy yoga or Christian yoga is a movement that attempts to merge yoga philosophies and practices with a Christian worldview. Brooke Boon, a holy yoga teacher wrote, “Yoga can be thought of as a philosophy. It’s the idea that by bringing a union of focus between mind and body, while simultaneously making the mind and body stronger and more flexible, we become more authentic people, able to hear God and experience Him in previously impossible ways” (Holy Yoga: Exercise for the Christian Body and Soul, New York: Faith Words, 2007, p. 8–9; quoted by Elliot Miller in “The Yoga Boom: A Call for Christian Discernment,” Christian Research Journal, volume 31, number 02, 2008).
To hear God and experience Him in a previously impossible way is clearly unscriptural and dangerous. Holy yoga is another form of mysticism that exalts experience over the Word of God and the focus on self is inherently unbiblical; the Bible never tells us to focus on ourselves, but rather that we are to die to self and follow Christ (Matthew 16:24). Our focus is to be on our Savior, “the pioneer and perfecter of faith” (Hebrews 12:2). The self-love, self-care movement of our day is heavily tied to the occult and witchcraft, and while it may appear to be helpful and innocent, it’s simply not. We are not pioneering anything new here. The old paths that God laid out in His Word is the only truth in a world of lies and deception. As Christians we must know that the whole world lies in wickedness.
True Christians know they are in a spiritual battle, and this world is not our home, and not a place to get casual and coast, and do what everyone else is doing to feel better. We have the true living God; we have LIFE, not death. We are told to be sober and vigilant, not flying high on teachings and practices that blaspheme our Savior. This is an age where the Lord’s people should be so alert and so full of hope and joy in Christ and the promise of His coming that they should not wish to turn to the cults and false answers of the world. To do so does not bear witness to the world that Christ alone is all we need and that His grace is sufficient—through our joys and through our sorrows. We represent Christ and we will walk in a way that glorifies Him. When we know the love of God and the light of His truth, we no longer turn to idols and darkness and call it light. “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). We offer our bodies as a living sacrifice unto God (Romans 12:1-2). We are not our own, but bought with a price. God has died for our sins, and given us eternal life and it is our reasonable service to devote our lives to Him, to walk in obedience to Him. Now is the time to be bold for Christ, not defending or following the culture and the false spirituality of this world. We must be prepared for persecution when we take a stand for the truth and we are told that, “All who desire to live godly will suffer persecution” (2 Timothy 3:12). If we are in Christ, we know Jesus is not one of the many paths that lead to God – He is the ONLY way. He is the Son of God. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. Self-enlightenment, mysticism, and all paths of self-actualization and works religion are for those seeking the god of their own imagination but refuse the Scripture and the true Jesus Christ. “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭5:20‬). The Bible is more than sufficient for those seeking to be closer to God. We don’t have to add anything. John 5:39 says, “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.”
Biblical Christianity has always been the minority—but a false apostate Christianity is quickly rising giving the appearance of a much larger church than there really is and this apostate church is taking the Lord’s name in vain—living in direct disobedience and opposition to God’s Word and preaching another gospel and another Jesus. Their Jesus is not sufficient so they must turn to idols. But we who know the true living God know that His grace is sufficient and we will not bow to dead idols. The true church is not living in idolatry – the church is the bride of Christ and God is sovereign and He keeps her – she is holy – no longer walking in profanity and idolatry. The true church doesn’t love entertainment more than God’s Word and sound doctrine. The true church is not falling into the many false gospels that tickle the ears and please the flesh – the true church does not love the New Age gospel, the prosperity gospel, the works-based gospel or a repentance-free gospel. The true church is not progressive “Christianity”. The true church loves God’s Word and by grace has been given a thirst and hunger for the Word – it is not a burden; sound doctrine is not a burden; it is desired and sought after when we have the Holy Spirit who leads us to all truth.
But there’s a warning to those who truly believe they are Christian but are not walking in obedience to Scripture: The Bible does call those who are in dangerous territory and walking in disobedience, “lukewarm” and “backslidden” at best, and a “hypocrite”, “Pharasee”, or a “worker of iniquity”, at worst. John 4:24 tells us friendship with the world is enmity against God. Do you love the world? Does the world love you? Who do you belong to? Who do you most look like? Are you walking as Christ walked or are you walking as a child of disobedience who’s father is the devil? We are told to examine ourselves that we be in the faith.
It is rebellion to say, “I do yoga but I pray to Jesus.” God tells us how to worship Him and when we make up our own way to worship God or adopt the ways of pagan worship in the name of Jesus, this is taking the Lord’s name in vain, blaspheming God and He hates it (Deut 12:29-31). God tells us clearly in His word how we are to worship Him – we are to worship God in spirit and in truth (John 4:24), not by doing yoga, not by any other means, but through faith in Jesus Christ, in spirit and in truth. We become very spiritually sensitive when we have the Holy Spirit and we will be convicted and turned from error when we are made aware. “For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:” (Ephesians‬ ‭5:8)‬ We are not to mix darkness and light – we are to have no fellowship with darkness, but to expose the unfruitful works of darkness. ‭If you are lukewarm or serving two masters, this displeases God. These two faiths are in opposition to one another. “For a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him” (2 Peter 2:19). Do not yoke with other gods, be yoked only to Christ Jesus. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1).
It’s pride that makes us go to false idols and it’s pride that makes ourselves as gods. When we repent and believe on Jesus, regenerated by the Holy Spirit, we are led to the truth, and we come out of false religion and our allegiance naturally changes from serving Satan’s kingdom to serving God’s Kingdom. Everything we do serves one or the other, we just don’t know it until we are saved by God’s grace, and learn God’s Word and Scripture tells us, “To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me” ‭(Acts‬ ‭26:18‬). Those claiming to know Jesus but continue to reject the Word of God are following a false Christ. The popular Westernized yoga path on a mission to save the world rejects the one true Light and Savior of the world. Scripture tells us, “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves” (Matthew‬ ‭7:13-15‬). ‭Do not be deceived.
If you are a professing Christian but are living in the New Age deception, it is my deep desire that you repent and believe on the true Jesus Christ. “Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart” ‭‭(2 Timothy‬ ‭2:22‬). Repent and believe and you will have eternal life. You can also hear my testimony of how God saved me out of spiritual deception here.