Kirsten Simone Kirsten Simone

Is yoga religious?

I see yoga as a non-religious practice.

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Spiritual, yes; in the sense that you're learning to connect with your own spirit.

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If it were "religious", it would teach the dogma of one particular religion. Sure, sometimes teachers weave in religious stories; often Hindu stories since yoga was developed in a mainly Hindu region, but that's a cultural choice and a way to teach life lessons via allegory. It doesn't have much to do with what yoga is about, in my opinion.

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Instead, yoga teaches us a method to connect to our own innermost self- the self that already knows and understands its inherent connection to all other beings. Yoga teaches us to remember what we already know, somewhere within ourselves: that we are one thread in a vast fabric of life on earth (and maybe beyond?) and there is a deep relief in that knowledge.

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Did you ever have a notion that yoga was a "religious" thing? For those if you that practice yoga, have you had teachers that weave their religious views into their teachings, or that borrow religious stories? If so, what did you think about it?

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