CHRISTIAN YOGA

CHRISTIAN YOGA

Is there such a thing as “Christian yoga”* ?

It is now common to see Jesus called a guru or depicted as a yogi in Indian Christian literature and art forms, 

seated in the yogi’s traditional padmasana posture with his right hand exhibiting the upadesa mudra (meaning 

‘instruction through meditation and contemplation’), thumb and index finger forming a circle, three fingers 

extended upright. One who has himself attained enlightenment through sustained effort in the practice of 

meditation and yoga, and now disciples others in their similar quest, is a guru; and a yogi is one who does yoga 

to achieve its sole declared objective, unity with the impersonal Brahman.               *See Section IV for a detailed 

examination of the debate on “Christian Yoga”.

We have seen already [page 3] what the lotus position used in meditation is meant to achieve. 

The clear distinction between Creator and creature means that divine truth cannot be reached by human effort, 

but requires revelation. But in most eastern religions, truth is arrived at through a form of instruction that 

comes in meditation, by intuition and not through words, thought process, or reasoning. Jesus Christ 

is the eternal Word of God, and God has always taught and directed His people by His word. 

The upadesa mudra communicates what the guru himself has attained, and he communicates not by spoken words,

logic or reason.  To call Jesus a guru or to depict him as a yogi is to deny his divinity and perfection and suggest he 

had a fallen nature subject to avidya and maya, from which he had to be liberated through the discipline of yoga.

The widespread use of the "Yesu Krist Jayanti" logo with the hand of Jesus in an upadesa mudra actually 

misrepresented Jesus, equating the divine Wisdom of God with one who meditates in the hope of attaining divinity. 

This misrepresentation was further compounded by the printing and release of a special postage stamp featuring 

the same logo, by the Indian Government on 25 December 1999.

If this spiritual discipline has for thousands of years been developed and employed for the specific purpose of 

achieving divinity, how can it, or its techniques, now be used to achieve the very opposite- the Christian’s total 

surrender to God ?

It has also become fashionable to adopt pagan practices into the Church in the name of inculturation, supposedly 

making them useable by “bringing them under the Lordship of Jesus”. 

This has led to such aberrations as the “Yoga Healing Mass” which also implies that the Eucharistic Lord lacks 

sufficiency. While it is certainly commendable that all things be brought under the Lordship of Jesus, it is highly 

questionable whether all of them may be safely inducted into regular Christian worship. Occult practices based on 

esoteric philosophies that are the very antithesis of Biblical teaching will always remain under the dominion of “the 

father of all lies”.

To justify their activities, Catholics promoting yoga etc. frequently take refuge in  the Vatican Document Nostra Aetate 

[NA] quoting that “The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with 

sincere reverence those ways of conduct and life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many 

aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all 

men” [n 2].

But half-truths can be more deceptive than a downright lie, as can be seen from their unfailing omission of  the very 

next sentence, which says: “Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ ‘the Way, the Truth and the Life’ 

(John 14:6) in whom men may find the fullness of life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself ”, without 

which the two sentences quoted by them communicate quite the opposite of what they were meant to.

Such deceptive use of the above Church teaching is employed in order to convince uninformed Catholics that practices

 of pagan origin and application such as yoga are “true and holy… and reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens 

all men.”