Recently acknowledging an illness I've had since my teenage years, I am researching the options available to me to bring myself a peace of mind. I am seeking a nutritional specialist, a councelor, and my pastor/church/prayer. I am also seeking physical exercise. One avenue towards recovery is yoga. The stretching/healing/BREATHING all sounds tremendously beneficial to my highly-spun and overly uptight mind. I am a high-stress individual, and it hurts me in every way, because I don't want to be. I want to be able to breathe through all situations, and maintain a peaceful, healthy calm. Yoga is GREAT for this. It teaches you that through all situations (aka poses), to breathe, and maintain a steady breath. So I'm doing research about Christian Yoga, (oxymoronic), and some sites just scoff at it, others are bluntly against it. Yoga was developed by Hindu Masters, it's their way of reaching a self-enlightenment, and acknowledging the divine that they believe is within each person. The word 'Namaste' literally means "I bow to the divine within you." .....now from my Christian standpoint, when we accept Jesus Christ, and invite him into our hearts, he dwells there FOREVER. (Ephesians 3) So....for a Christian to bow to another Christian and acknowledging that jesus lives within us... it should be "OK", right? I find myself frustrated that a few links say that practicing Yoga is spiritually detrimental to the Christian's faith and spirituality. Simply because Christianity is from (western philosophy) and Yoga was created by (eastern philophy.) Are these pastors saying that we only worship the God that is on our western side? My faith is that my God is the ONLY God. He is the Alpha and the Omega, beginning and end, and He is high above ALL else. Even the Gods that other religions and cultures worship. My God created those people, those people created those gods. God doesn't worry about those "gods" because he knows He's the only REAL big guy up there. Also, side note, So many of the practices and teachings of eastern religions are identical to the teachings of Jesus Christ.

(deep breath)

I think that I can practice yoga, as a means to teach myself to be calm, and breathe. God is God, and always will be God, wether i, or anyone else, does yoga. I think it's healthy.