YOGA CLASSES CALLED “SATANIC,” CANCELED

YOGA CLASSES CALLED “SATANIC,” CANCELED

http://www.skepticfiles.org/rumor/yoga-ban.htm

TOCCOA, Ga. (UPI) September 7, 1990 A fundamentalist Christian who led a successful fight to force the cancellation of a town-sponsored yoga class said Friday he acted to prevent potential students from satanic influence and "the occult."

"I have a burden to help people who are walking into this stuff like cattle to the slaughter," said Philip Lawrence, a Toccoa chiropractor. "They think it's just a harmless relaxation technique," Lawrence said. "It almost would take someone like myself to recognize the diabolical nature of it."

Lawrence, who said Friday he was "saved" from New Age religions and the occult by Christianity in 1982, persuaded the Stephens County Commission and the Toccoa City Council to cancel the program. The two bodies jointly run the town Recreation Department in Toccoa, a county seat in rural northeast Georgia near the South Carolina line.

Lawrence, who had the support of several church groups and faculty members at Toccoa Falls College, a Bible school, said his backers protested that town sponsorship of the class violated the principle of separation of church and state.

"We highly resented our tax money funding a course on Hinduism and the occult," he said.

He said yoga is dangerous because it teaches people to clear their minds, which he said allows Satan to have influence. "God's word commands us to let every thought be on obedience to Christ," Lawrence said.

Recreation Department director Cynthia Williams said her agency had offered the class in yoga, a Hindu relaxation and meditation discipline, as a "physical exercise program for elderly people, people with respiratory ailments and people

who needed more stretching exercise." "I had no earthly idea this would happen. My frustration level is very high

right now," Williams said. About 28 people had registered for the class, which was never taught.

When students tried to move the program from the Recreation Department to a nearby Campfire Girls camp, Lawrence also persuaded the directors of the private organization not to allow yoga to be taught. "Wherever they have it, I will approach the owners and try to educate them," Lawrence said. "We don't want it in the community, period. It affects all of us."

Toccoa Mayor Bill Harris said he was upset and intends to fight the decision.

"I feel like it was a vocal minority. I had more phone calls for (the class) than against it," Harris said. "I personally don't think it's dead yet. I think there will be someplace provided."

Carolyn Davis, the program instructor and a yoga teacher at the Center for Spiritual Awareness in nearby Lakemont, Ga., said she was shocked at the response. She added she does not consider yoga a religion. "I really felt like I'd stepped into a time warp, like I'd stepped into a different century," Davis said. "Yoga itself is a science. It's a set of procedures to let us clear our minds, settle our emotions and improve our health."

Lawrence said that, before he became a Christian, he practiced yoga, and also went to psychics, practiced astral projection and studied unidentified flying objects. He said yoga particularly frightened him. "All I got from that was tremendous depression. All I got from that was darkness, and I wanted to die," Lawrence said.