I go to a great Saturday morning yoga class. The instructor is a particularly kind lady (who happens to be Indian) who takes the time to learn our names and makes sure that we understand all the poses and the right way to do them. Usually it’s a pretty big class and sometimes she will begin or end with a quote she likes or some information on whatever she is reading at the moment. Many instructors do the same thing. At the moment she is going through the Yoga Sutras and explaining about the history of yoga from that point of view and what the sutras mean (basically.)

Today, for whatever the reason, there were four of us. Two regulars and two new people. As she began to paraphrase the sutra chapters for the regulars (we had both missed a week) the two new people interrupted her, “Is this religious? …because we are Christian.” She tells them it’s not religious, it’s the history of yoga. Instead of listening to her and deciding for themselves they whispered (loudly) to each other, said “we’re just going to step out because we don’t agree with this,” made a big show of rolling up their mats and left!

I don’t care that they are Christian. They could have been aliens who worship toilet seats for all I care, but I felt that they showed a distinct lack of basic listening skills, were rude, and were obviously LOOKING for a reason to be upset about yoga. IF YOU AREN’T SURE THAT YOGA IS FOR YOU, FINE, BUT TRY TO GET MORE THAN 45 SECONDS IN TO A CLASS BEFORE YOU DECIDE YOU ARE BEING PUT UPON — and then putting upon others in the process.

This seems to be a popular problem for Christians in particular and I have never understood it. If your “faith” in your belief is so flimsy that you can’t sit for 45 seconds and listen to information about the history of yoga without calling it religious the fault doesn’t lie in a “secular world,” it’s not the yoga instructor pushing her beliefs on you, and it’s not that you are being singled out… the fault lies inside you. Because if you lack the basic capacity to listen openly and decide for yourself if something serves you, then you were on a shaky foundation to begin with. And you are the one who is narrow-minded and forcing your beliefs on other people by declaring something which is meant to be historical to be religious. 

And let’s be real here, while many people do yoga for fitness and for their health, yoga is fairly inextricably tied into the religious history of India. So if you are looking for a stripped down experience, maybe yoga at a studio is not for you.

I dunno… it just really bothered me.

And I can’t help but wonder if our instructor was a thin, twenty-something with blond hair, blue eyes, and an American accent that they would have had the same response…?

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Now back to my regularly scheduled programming…