Catholics Doing Yoga

YOGA ANYONE?

Posted on July 16, 2012 by AnishinabeSC

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Southdown Institute

MISSION STATEMENT

The Southdown Institute offers residential and outpatient psychological treatment and spiritual guidance to clergy and vowed religious and provides education promoting health and holiness for all committed to ministry and religious life.

Through the efforts of an interdisciplinary team of professionals, the Southdown Institute accomplishes its mission through an integration of the best of psychological science and practice with the wisdom of the Catholic spiritual tradition.

Residential Treatment Overview

• Upon admission, each person is assigned a professionally credentialed clinician to serve as primary therapist.
• In collaboration with the treatment team, this clinician develops a treatment plan that integrates referral data, assessment findings and the individual’s needs.
• Core modalities for every resident include individual psychotherapy, psychiatric consultation, medical assessment and ongoing nursing care.
• Each resident is assigned a trained spiritual director with whom they meet regularly.
• Private meditation, group opportunities for reflection and prayer, and community liturgies are all occasions for fostering both spiritual and emotional healing.
• Fitness programs are tailored to individual needs and capabilities, and may includes such activities as yoga, massage, swimming and aquatic exercise programs.

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Boston Archdiocese Offers Yoga

The Boston Archdiocese is offering a yoga class at the Pastoral Center.
As most people know, yoga  (Sanskrit, Pāli: योग, yoga) is a physical, mental, and spiritual discipline, originating in ancient India.We reference the definition in wikipedia:

The goal of yoga, or of the person practicing yoga, is the attainment of a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquility while meditating on the Hindu concept of divinity or Brahman. The word is associated with meditative practices in Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism.

Here is the email notice sent by Carol Gustavson, benefits administrator, to Pastoral Center employees promoting the program:

Subject: yoga sessions at the Pastoral Center
Good morning – following up on the wellness theme presented at this month’s staff meeting, and in honor of Richard Ely, who was a dedicated student of yoga, we hope to have a series of yoga sessions starting at the Pastoral Center in the near future.  The proposed structure is as follows:
*4-6 sessions (approximately one hour each) on Tuesday evenings at 5:00 pm
*instruction provided by a local yoga instructor
*fees to be paid directly to the instructor in advance to cover all sessions; approximate amount $10/session
*bring your own mat and other optional equipment
No prior yoga experience is required, just an interest in increasing the fitness level of your body and mind.  If you have an interest in joining us for this series, please let me know by Friday, March 2.  Once we have a headcount, we will determine the actual cost and the start date for the sessions.

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Watch this local documentary on the phenomenon of Yoga within the Christian community featuring Father Jack Lau, Oblate and former University Mass Presider.

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http://www.galileecentre.com/


Yoga classes are every Monday and Wednesday, led by Fr. Jack Lau, OMI.
(please take note, cancelation of class will happen when Fr. Jack is away)

Time of Classes: 4:15pm to about 5:15pm

All are welcome to attend. No prior yoga experience is necessary. In every day of life, we are all beginners. Where ever you are on your journey, is where you are and you are welcome.

In the class we are mindful of our breathing and our posture which guides us into Balance, Strength and Flexibility.

A donation basket is at the door.



Fr. Jack has been been teaching yoga classes for almost 10 years. Most of his training was with YogaFit, an organization which “designed its program to improve the health, performance and mental acuity of individuals interested in improving there level of fitness”

Though he has been practicing yoga for over 12 years he remembers doing yoga as a child and “sitting” at the age of five or six. In 2008-9 Fr. Jack,omi lived with his is religious community (Missionary Oblates) in India, in the state of Tamil Nadu with in the context of an Ashram. An ashram is similar to but not the same as what we in the west would call a Monastery. Here Fr. Jack would join in the life of the monk/ashramite and daily welcome the day in prayer and after with a yoga practice on the roof of the main building. http://www.omiindia.org/aanmodhaya_ashram.php



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Resurrection Catholic Secondary School 

265 Westmount Road North  Waterloo, ON
(519) 885-4370

Rez in Action

Rez has Yoga! 
The Yoga Club has members from both the staff and student body, mostly at the beginner level of yoga!  We meet every Friday after school at 2:45pm in the Chapel for a one hour class of asanas and relaxation.  Wear loose clothing and come out to join us.  Improved flexibility and better sleep will be your reward!  Mats, blocks and straps are available for borrowing for those who do not have their own.

~ logo by Jennifer Tran, Gr. 12 student

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Yoga Rocks @ Schoolhttp://www.snaphamilton.com/?option=com_sngevents&id%5B%5D=250849

 Friday Feb 25 2011, 11:45am-12:30pm

Location:St. David Catholic Elementary School

Address: 33 Cromwell Cres Hamilton, ON L8G2E9 T: (905) 560-3533 F: (905) 560-0036 Staff Infor

Phone:905 560 3533

URL:http://www.yogarocks.ca

Yoga Rocks is bringing yoga to school kids in Hamilton & Stoney Creek. Lunch time yoga has been a great hit this winter at St. David's Catholic Elementary School! The students love it! We bring the mats and the kids bring their bare feet. It is fun, energetic, a little dynamic and a little relaxing. Of coarse the kids love the relaxing part the most.
Friday's from 11.45 - 12.30pm.
Kids enjoy yoga because it in non-competitive and non- traditional.
You don't have to be athletic to do it, but you must want to have fun!!
Antoniette Finelli
www.yogarocks.ca

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Boys rock yoga at Cathedral High School

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Yoga Can Help Catholics Connect More Deeply With God 
By SARA ANGLE 
Source: Catholic News Service 
Published: Tuesday, July 05, 2011

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Barbara Moore and her daughter Gina Staub participate in a yoga class at St. Francis of Assisi Church.

WASHINGTON (CNS)—Sister Margaret Perron, a Religious of Jesus and Mary, trades her habit and rolls out her mat for Father Tom Ryan's yoga and Christian meditation class at St. Paul's College in Washington.

Carefully choreographed yoga-prayers allow participants to "embody a prayer," Father Ryan tells his classes. He said that they may have been praying a prayer their whole life, but by saying the prayer in conjunction with different postures, they can more fully understand and appreciate the words they are saying.

Participants in Father Ryan's class go through a series of yoga poses inspired by prayers as they pray and listen to traditional liturgical songs.

Sister Margaret was searching for a new form of exercise when she learned about Father Ryan's class from a friend. "It really spoke to me on the spiritual level," she told Catholic News Service.

Father Ryan, a Paulist priest and author of several books that connect Christian spirituality to the body, is one of the nation's foremost proponents of yoga as a tool for Christian prayer and spirituality. He has also produced the DVD "Yoga Prayer," which is described as, "praying with your whole body."

"This is the first time I have been encouraged to bring body, mind and spirit to prayer," said Sister Margaret. Yoga allows her to let go of some things she has been carrying throughout her day.

"I think I have learned to pray in a very different way. You don't need a lot of words to pray; it's not all about words and formulas," she said.

For years Catholics and other Christians have had qualms about practicing yoga, and conflicting information on its origins and meaning could be to blame. Although it has Eastern roots, many scholars say yoga existed on its own before being used in any religion.

"The practice of yoga is an avenue to prayer, a way to pray," explained Sister Margaret. "I see it as a way to being with God and stilling all those inner voices. I don't see it as being apart from Christianity; I just see it as a way of entering into prayer."

"Yoga is not a religion," states the American Yoga Association's website. "It has no creed or fixed set of beliefs, nor is there a prescribed godlike figure to be worshipped in a particular manner. The practice of Yoga will not interfere with any religion."

Georg Feuerstein, a well-known scholar of the yoga tradition, wrote in his book "The Deeper Dimension of Yoga," that "practicing Christians or Jews (or practitioners of any other religious tradition), should take from yoga what makes sense to them and deepens their own faith and spiritual commitment."

Still, many Catholic clergy and laypeople think that doing yoga can conflict with Catholicism because of yoga's perceived connections to Hinduism and other Eastern religions.

A 1989 "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation," signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, offers an answer to the question of conflict between yoga and religion.

It states, "The majority of the 'great religions' which have sought union with God in prayer have also pointed out ways to achieve it. Just as the Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in these religions, neither should these ways be rejected out of hand simply because they are not Christian. On the contrary, one can take from them what is useful so long as the Christian conception of prayer, its logic and requirements are never obscured. It is within the context of all of this that these bits and pieces should be taken up and expressed anew."

Christine Hobbs has been taking a Christian yoga class in Triangle, Va., for a little more than a year and told CNS it helps her calm down and connect with her Catholic faith in a different way. Hobbs, who is originally from India, is familiar with yoga's Eastern connections, but does not believe there is a disconnect between Catholicism and yoga.

Hobbs said the words used in the class she takes at St. Francis Church from Donna Kocian, a Catholic and registered yoga teacher, are "totally found in Christianity" and "they are about life."

Hobbs especially enjoys the way Kocian recites the Our Father and St. Francis of Peace Anthem in her yoga class. "I walk by faith; it's really important to me," said Hobbs.

In response to yoga's Eastern roots, Father Ryan wrote in his book "Prayer of Heart and Body: Meditation and Yoga as Christian Spiritual Practice" that "contrary to popular belief, the practices are not inseparably tied to the concepts peculiar to Hindu theology. The best practical proof of this is that so many yoga teachers in the West provide instruction in the postures and breathing techniques without ever going into concepts of Hindu religious belief."

In a conversation CNS had with Father Ryan, he stressed the importance of drawing a distinction between classic and contemporary yoga.

Contemporary yoga is practiced most commonly today as a form of exercise. It has a focus on the physical, but leaves out the spiritual element.

Father Ryan practices a more classic version, based on meditation rather than solely focused on fitness. The goal of classical yoga is to center, ground and make one present and aware, although practitioners still reap benefits that include flexibility and being more mindful of one's health.

"Physical exercises are but the skin of yoga," wrote Father Ryan in "Prayer of Heart and Body," "its sinews and skeleton are mental exercises that prepare the way for a transformation of consciousness which is always a gift of God and a work of grace."

Amy Russell took over Father Ryan's class at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle in Manhattan after he relocated to Washington. She was first introduced to yoga in 1972 by a friend, but considered it just a fun, calming practice. In 1989, Russell began attending a Christian yoga class.

"I had just delivered twin babies and I was full of God and motherhood, and being on bed rest and feeling out of shape," she recalled. It wasn't until later that Russell began teaching.
"I was living in Manhattan and 9/11 happened, and I was just profoundly moved that the horror of those events had been so deadly to human bodies ... not only the ones that died but the ones that lived." Russell felt a deep calling to commit her life to living in a way that honors the sacredness of the human body.

"Right after that I got a postcard in the mail about yoga teacher training. I went with the intention that I would use that certification to bring yoga as a prayer form into the Christian church."

Yoga has played an important role in her life. "I gained myself," she said, "knowing a deep connection with God and me in my body and in the pew."

"For a lot of Christians that whole connectedness does not always get connected. God may be out there, and my body is over here," she told CNS. "That sense of wholeness and unity is really what yoga is meant to unlock. For me as a practicing Christian I get to realize this is what God is trying to say. It's a deep connection to the reality of Jesus Christ that's with me in my body. It's not just a theoretical thing." 

Barbara Moore and her daughter Gina Staub participate in a yoga class at St. Francis of Assisi Church.