Pilot Event: Yoga Stretching with Christian Meditation

Version 2 August 2012

Guild Church of St Mary Aldermary http://moot.uk.net

1 Contents

1. Introduction

2. Yoga from a Christian perspective

3. Christianity and the body

4. A Biblical reflection on Yoga as a form of prayer practice

5. Cautions around the use of Eastern Esoteric Meditations

6. Proposed Approach

7. Considerations

8. Further Actions

9. Reading Materials

2 1. Introduction The Guild Church of St Mary Aldermary Church Community aims to serve the Kingdom of God in the Spirit of Jesus.

Given our emphasis on ‘hospitality as mission’ and our commitment to developing Christian approaches to prayer and meditation to and with the ‘de and unchurched’, the idea of piloting a yoga morning class during the week has been mooted at the Community Council (GCCM), where it was agreed that Ian Mobsby and Jen Richardson would go away and do some research and thinking.

As a New Monastic Community, we are committed to an integrated approach to health, spirituality and mission in what has been summarized as Orthopathy (right being, wellbeing, health), Orthpraxis (right living and acting) and Orthodoxy (right thinking and belief). Or put another way – a distinctly Christian and integrated approach to Head, Heart and Mind.

In the context of a Christian approach to spirituality, it is proposed that the community trial a morning yoga group during the week as a mission and orthopathy event.

It is our good fortune, that the Moot Community will have a qualified yoga instructor as an intern for 6 months, creating the human resources to make a pilot possible as part of the Host initiative.

This paper seeks to make the case that such a trial is not controversial if considered and planned for appropriately. However as a next step (and as we do with all new initiatives) we continue to ensure that we are good guardians of the Christian tradition at the heart of our faith and work in the Moot Community at the Guild Church of St Mary Aldermary.

2. Yoga from a Christian perspective A number of different Christian traditions and churches now utilise adapted approaches to yoga as part of their focus on prayer practices and wellbeing. Some Churches coming from a more conservative perspective have raised publically there concerns about cultural and religious syncretism, (compromising or the watering down of the faith to fit in with contemporary culture). It is the responsibility for all expressions of Church is seek to be in but not of culture. In a similar way we explore Yoga, affirming what is good opening up our ability to further prayer, wellbeing and the Gospel, but challenging those elements which grate or which are not compatible with the Christian faith as it has been received.

3. Christianity and the body Since the beginnings of the Church in Western Europe, there has been an uncomfortable relationship between bodies or our enfleshedness and the faith. Part of this has been the curse of an early heresy called Gnosticism, which has been a continuing problem particularly of Western Christendom. This heresy went very deep in the Western Church which saw all living bodily flesh as inherently sinful. The aim of faith was to escape the human body and sexuality, as only the human spirit could be truly free and whole. Although this heresy was challenged, its influence has continued in the West, particularly as a particular understanding of ‘sin’ however unconsciously this has impacted the practice of faith. This has impacted on many Western Christian theologians and writers to this day including Augustine and others cannot be underestimated.

3 In recently times this un-comfortableness with human bodies has been challenged by many Christian theologians and writers, who have emphasised how the bible and Jesus challenged ritual laws that did not honour the incredible metaphor in the book of Genesis that all human beings are made in the image of God.

Since the social revolution of the 1960s this unhealthy dualism between body and spirit has been challenged, which has rediscovered ancient and authentic approaches to prayer that utilises the body. We remember that the Islamic call to prayer and body prayer was absorbed into Islamic practice from observing and interaction with monastic Christians living in the Syrian and Alexandrian deserts.

Christianity … is in the awkward position of trying to affirm the goodness of creation without ever having delighted in human bodiliness. One would think that between our two central doctrines of the Incarnation and the Resurrection – the one, in which God chose to call human bodilliness “home”, and the other, in which that broken, weary, body is not discarded but re-embraced and taken into the very life o the Trinity for all eternity – we could do better at helping people to embrace and relate positively to their enspirited flesh as a joyful mode of existence… I submit that the church is not yet incarnational enough in its healing ministry to people in all respects … If it stays just at the level of the ‘head’, then once again we have denied our body and its role in things. Many people in our Western world do precious little with their bodies. They sit at a desk all day at work, sit during lunch breaks, sit behind a wheel of a car commuting, and sit in front of a television at night so to try and relax. Thomas Ryan, 1995, pp7-8.

4. A Biblical reflection on Yoga as a form of prayer practice In Moot we have already made the strong case of the importance of prayer as encounter with God. Further, we have supported people to understand that Christian meditation is a form of authentic prayer. We have used concentrative forms of Christian meditation whether using an anchor word as with the teachings of John Main or the approaches akin to Centering Prayer. We have affirmed the need for meditation to be recognised as a spiritual discipline. Yoga then can also be offered as a form of prayer discipline.

Meditation is not merely the intellectual effort to master certain ideas about God, or even to impress upon our minds the mysteries of the Christian faith. Conceptual knowledge of religious truth has an important place in our lives. The Spiritual life needs strong intellectual foundations, and reading theology helps us understand faith experience. But meditation itself is neither study nor intellectual activity as such. Its purpose is not to acquire or to deepen our speculative knowledge of God or of revelation. Rather than seeking to know about God, we are seeking to know God directly, beyond all the objects which God has made. We are seeking to experience God’s presence with the awareness of loving faith. Thomas Ryan, 1995, 15.

This approach has a strong biblical basis:

 Galatians 2: 20. The process of turning from the self to the Self is known in Christianity as metanoia, conversion, implying both repentance and transformation until we are able to say with St Paul, ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The Mystics say that there is only on God, one Self, one Spirit. Sin is the separate-self sense, the self-contraction in each of us.

4  Ephesians 2:7, Gal 5:1 reminds us that the Cross of Jesus Christ brings liberation from domination, and this includes liberation in our fleshness.  2 Corinthians 5:14 We are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. Gal 2:19-20. A Christian has not only a new life, but a new life with a new center and identity.  For the new life of the Holy Spirit to grow within us we have to die to the old life centred on self. We die to sln as we hold in faith that we are united with Christ in his death on the cross. Every day, through faith in the cross of Christ, we can know victory over patterns of sins. Everyday we can overcome temptations to give into anger, fear, bitterness,. Lust.  Luke 18:38, Luke 9:13. The Contemplative Jesus prayer combines elements from both “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner”.  Christians are those who invoke the name of Jesus Christ (1 Cor 1:2).  “Romans 12:1-2 says we are to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice to God,” Where Yoga is seen as a prayer practice, this is made possible.  Psalm 19:14 , Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.  Romans 8:14 , For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.  John 8:12 , Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

5. Cautions around the use of Eastern Esoteric Meditations Some of the greatest criticisms of churches using yoga have involved the unquestioning use of Buddhist or Taoist forms of meditation in the context of the Christian Church. Thinking about Moot and St Mary Aldermary, this is the area we need to be most careful about.

The question remains how we use Christian forms of contemplation and meditation in substitution of the more Eastern Esoteric practices.

From the reading we have completed, I think I am quite confident that we can do this form of substitution well which are authentically Christian, and could open up the Christian faith well through the meditative practice as part of a yoga session. For example Anthony De Ne Bello have developed 47 Christian Meditative Exercises in Eastern Form. Thomas Ryan explores body prayer in combination with making certain stretches. The question is more about how such Christian meditative practices are combined in a yoga session.

6. Proposed Possible Approach Following discussion at the Moot Community Council (GCC Meeting) in September, it was agreed the approach should be to focus on a time of yoga stretches and then finish with a short Christian contemplative meditation. This way we balance being true to the Christian faith and sensitivity of this event happening in a Church in front of an altar, and also being true to our Christian context using a Christian contemplative prayer, but at the same time, providing this to City people who are interested in spiritualty and in particular yoga and embodied approaches to spiritual activity.

6. Considerations

Clarity of Purpose We will ensure that in the introduction we say something like “Welcome to this session of yoga stretching and Christian meditation being run by the Moot Community, here at the 5 Guild Church of St Mary Aldermary” etc… This way we are being very clear of our intent and purpose and avoiding potential manipulation.

Adequate skill and insurance The group will be co-run by at least two people. One a trained and qualified Yoga instructor with a Christian faith and the other a participant of the Moot Community. We will ensure that we have public liability insurance for this event which will require additional consideration on top of the usual church insurance.

Sensitivities As the event will be happening in front of the Lady Chapel Altar, great sensitivity and respect of this will be an expected – such as not leaving anything on the altar, or interfering with it any form. We will be laying out a temporary carpet for this event, which will be folded up again at the end of the session.

Changing Area If people need to get changed before/after the session, the only rooms we have available for this are the two toilets. So in the half an hour before and after the session, priority will be given to those attending the session.

Full Explanation of the purpose of the pilot with Christian explanation Given the sensitivity of doing yoga stretching in a Church event, we will be using this pilot to give a full explanation of why we are doing on it as a form of embodied prayer practice promoting wellbeing. This will include some of the biblical points made in this proposal. This explanation will be put on the website.

8. Further Actions Following the Community Council Meeting, we have sent out a questionnaire seeking to explore timing/days for the pilot sessions and also to explore a name for the event. We are aiming to give these out at Meditation Groups and Sunday Evening Services to hold a balance between spiritual seekers and Christians committed to the Church. We will add a link to the website.

We will decide a name for this pilot event once we have reflected on the questionnaires.

9. Reading Materials Thomas Ryan (1995) Prayer of Heart and Body, Meditation and Yoga as Christian Spiritual Practice, Paulist Press, New York.

Doug Pagitt, Kathryn Prill (2002) Body Prayer, Water Brook, Colorado.

Anthony De Mello, (1984) Sadhana a Way to God, Christian Exercises in the Eastern Form, New York.