As I posted earlier, some fitness instructors have been Christianizing yoga out of fear that its Hindu origins open you up to demonic possession. It’s the same kind of assimilation which annoys theologians about Hinduism:
When Cathy Chadwick instructed her three yoga students to move into warrior position… she read aloud the prayer of St. Theresa of Avila. “Good Christian warriors,” Chadwick softly said as the women lunged into the position…
Chadwick is one of a growing number of people who practice Christian yoga, incorporating Biblical passages, prayers and Christian reflections. Occasionally, teachers rename yoga postures to reflect Christian teachings or, as Chadwick did with warrior position, include religious metaphors… [Link]
Good Christian warriors, assume the position! Apparently Catholics in yoga haven’t gotten the memo:
In a 1989 letter, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who is now Pope Benedict XVI, said practices like yoga and meditation could “degenerate into a cult of the body…” [Link]
Never mind that meditation is designed to do the exact opposite. Trying to keep up with the times, the Vatican issued the memo over IM. Here’s an actual, unedited transcript:
c^th0l1k: omg y0gA rOxX0Rz LOL
V^tic^n_1: newayz h0 dAt sHiZz b3 d3m0nIc ROTFL
The NYT reported recently that HinJews are now jumping in. Well, technically, they’re shuffling in while complaining about the weather 
A similar movement is taking place in Judaism, with teachers merging teachings or texts into yoga classes… Stephen A. Rapp, a Boston yoga teacher, developed Aleph-Bet yoga, a series of postures meant to represent Hebrew letters… Rapp expresses the Hebrew letter ‘bet’ in the posture Dandasana, where one sits on the ground with legs and arms straight out in front. [Link]
Some Hebrew letters translate pretty easily into yoga positions: 
Others seem to require a ménage à trois with gay aliens: 
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I am fully tolerant of threesomes with gay aliens. Being a New Yorker, I may even have seen it performed one night in Washington Square Park. I can’t say for sure though because it was 3 am and I was kind of in a hurry to meet my dealer.
I’m still waiting for someone to Jain-ize krav maga. That’s one mashup I’d pay to see.
In closing, I’d just like to say the old Yiddish farewell ‘sholem aleykham.’ Any resemblance to a Muslim greeting is purely coincidental, because religions don’t borrow from others, they’re transmitted on stone tablets directly from the mouth of God.
Related posts: Possessed by yogaYoga fusion run riot, ‘Laughing yoga’ video clip, Hip-hop yoga, Yoga for Kerry, Yoga for ‘ullu ke patthe’,
