Yoga And/or Martial Arts

[Cherie]

Perhaps this has been posted a zillion times before, but I'm curious as to people's opinions regarding them [i]both[/i]; after all, aren't they rather similar? Do you think one is better than the other? Do you think they're both morally wrong to engage in, from a Christian perspective? Do you think they're both perfectly all right?

Would love to discuss this, as my husband is a black belt and we are most likely considering enrolling our children in karate. I'm of the opinion that yoga is not a morally acceptable form of "exercise," but I'm unsure where to stand in regard to martial arts. My husband was never taught anything about "chi" or any kind of Eastern philosophies regarding his karate, but I know some Christians recommend extreme caution (or avoidance altogether?) in dealing with it.

[Archaeology cat]

This has definitely been discussed a lot. I waver a bit on yoga. I mean, on the one hand, God made our bodies good, and these various positions seem innocuous, but of course we can also use our bodies in ways that aren't good, so then I don't know. (if you can follow this, you're doing well). I guess the question is whether yoga can be divorced from the spirituality of it. That being said, I think in many ways it can be, since many similar exercises are found in Pilates and other things. I do some yoga stretches on the Wii fit because they really help my back (residual sciatic pain after having Kieran). There's no set routine with that, and of course nothing of the philosophy or spirituality.

As for martial arts, I see nothing wrong with them. If a specific philosophy or spirituality were taught and practised along with them, that would get dicey, but the way they're generally done in the West? I don't think that would be a problem.

So this is my uninformed opinion.

[MIKolbe]

I know Nihil can speak from a first hand knowledge as it applies to Martial Arts. I believe he is a black belt in some form of Karate. And I sincerely doubt Nihil would participate in something that would be detrimental to his faith.

As for Yoga, as I understand it....to 'truly' do yoga is, ipso facto, to participate in its false teachings. Though some believe if you simply do them as exercise, while not embracing any 'philosophy', it is simply exercise. Some believe it is impossible to separate the exercise from the 'philosophy'; so these exercises are to be avoided.

I tend to believe it is possible for the body to do exercises without believing or adhering to any philosophy.

[faithcecelia]

I have never given any thoughts to martial arts, so i will not comment there. There are, however, many yoga classes and techniques that do not have spiritual connotations and are purely and simply exercise and relaxation. I do not do yoga at present but I have in the past, and I actually find it can aid prayer as it encourages me to quieten my mind and to some extent my body, leaving me in a state where I can put myself conciously into God's presence and listen to him. i would not go to a class I knew to be spiritually-focused, but I have no qualms at all in taking a class where it is not - the fact that it originated in one faith culture doesn't worry me - many of our customs, celebrations etc originated in non-Christian cultures.

[Nihil Obstat]

Some martial arts schools preach a syncretic eastern philosophy. Luckily, as it happens, (as long as we're talking about the western world) they're going to be the schools you want to avoid anyway, because the stuff they teach will be what we like affectionately to call bullshido. As long as you know the red flags to look for, you shouldn't have any trouble finding a school that is perfectly acceptable to a Catholic.
The club with which I've trained for 13 years or so has absolutely no spiritual/philosophic aspect to it (besides the self-evident 'philosophy' of self-defense), and I've had plenty of idle time to turn over every aspect of it in my head.
In conclusion: don't be wary about martial arts; be wary about individual clubs and teachers. Your husband I'm sure knows what to look for.

Two guesses as to which is the club you want to avoid:
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_vvI26NnwE[/media]

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3wxEMz7dP8[/media]

Edited May 27, 2011 by Nihil Obstat

[Archaeology cat]

[quote name='MIkolbe' timestamp='1306506509' post='2246737']
As for Yoga, as I understand it....to 'truly' do yoga is, ipso facto, to participate in its false teachings. Though some believe if you simply do them as exercise, while not embracing any 'philosophy', it is simply exercise. Some believe it is impossible to separate the exercise from the 'philosophy'; so these exercises are to be avoided.

I tend to believe it is possible for the body to do exercises without believing or adhering to any philosophy.
[/quote]
You said that better than I did. I was thinking of yoga philosophy to be a corruption of the exercises, perhaps, by imbuing them with certain meanings that lead away from God, but if one is doing the exercises without that you wouldn't run into that, perhaps.

[Cherie]

[quote name='Archaeology cat' timestamp='1306510166' post='2246755']
You said that better than I did. I was thinking of yoga philosophy to be a corruption of the exercises, perhaps, by imbuing them with certain meanings that lead away from God, but if one is doing the exercises without that you wouldn't run into that, perhaps.
[/quote]

Yeah, I guess I shouldn't have made such a definitive statement on my opinion on yoga, because as it stands, I'm still not sure.

The convent of which I was a member was very much against any kind of yoga, even for just "exercise." For the record, they were also very much against Harry Potter, too. I think that colored my thinking; plus, the Catholics who are against yoga are VERY adamant, to the point of - "You will be condoning and participating in the occult if you take part in it because the philosophy cannot be separated from the exercises ..." and, well, I'd certainly never want to be participating in the occult, or even just causing scandal by participating in yoga.

Nihil, glad to hear you do martial arts - My husband endorsing it is pretty darn good (he comes from a super Catholic family upbringing) but hearing that you do it definitely tips the scale for sure.

[MIKolbe]

[img]http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n129/corsetti3/yoga.jpg[/img]
This is something I just pulled up from google images when 'yoga positions' was entered

In my sveltier highschool baseball days, we used to do #'s: 1, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, 24, and 25 as warm up exercises for about 20 minutes. Not sure why, but coach REALLY wanted us to stretch, as most other teams took 5 minutes.

Nowadays, I got # 13 down-pat!!!

[TeresaBenedicta]

Pretty much what others have said...

Yoga- depends. Body positions, in themselves, have no moral value. They can't be inherently evil. Do the exercises, reject the philosophy and you're good to go.

Martial Arts- can't imagine how it'd be wrong. Unless someone was arguing from a pacifist point of view. But even then one could do martial arts without the intention of ever using it outside of the arena.

[ThePenciledOne]

As long as you are not doing the prayers/meditations it's good, though I have heard some true yoga practices make the individual perform exercises that open them up to the 'divine'. Even to where the forms are a sort of forming letters to spell out names of their gods and etc, but this is just something as I have heard.

I'm not exactly an entire fan of marital arts, I would rather just some basic self defense. Again as people have mentioned before, do the exercises ignore or throw out the philosophy.

[PaladinSoG]

Yoga I don't agree with. If you just keep to the basic stretches that cool but so many people get caught up in the chanting and philosophy that they don't understand and they get into some big spiritual trouble.

Of course the same thing could always apply to martial arts depending on the style and the teacher. I currently am a black belt recommended working on my 1st degree black belt in taekwondo. Whats nice about that style is that there really isn't any philosophy or spiritual aspect to it. It all about using your body to its fullest. Of course you have some who could try and place there own philosophy into it and then you'll get problems. Its like what Nihil said, "don't be wary about martial arts; be wary about individual clubs and teachers."

[stevil]

Being an atheist I'm not too keen on being taught or participating in any spiritual practices, I'm not afraid of them, I don't see the point to them and would consider myself to be participating in a lie if I pretended to perform them.

But the "spiritual" side of Yoga is just techniques to help relax the mind, an inner peace of sorts, like listening to waves splash on the beach or the soft pitter patter of light rain at night-time. There is no god of Yoga, no prayers to such god, just soothing, calming techniques, pretty neutral really.
It shouldn't be called spiritual, it is just a basterdisation of the word to mean inner peace.

Edited May 27, 2011 by stevil

[MithLuin]

I do kendo, a Japanese martial art that trains in sword-fighting. Obviously, it's not even really a self-defense class - I don't intend to ever get involved in a 'real' sword fight. And so it's basically some stretching to get warmed up and then shouting and bashing people in the head (etc) with a bamboo stick. [They're wearing armor.] It's all about timing, and also some aggression.

But anyway, there is a lot of bowing to the other person to show respect. So far, so good. If someone is going to let you hit him in the head, and help [i]you[/i] practice, the least you can do is show respect, and the Japanese way of doing that is bowing and saying 'thank you'.

But in the beginning and end, when everyone lines up (by rank) and sits in seiza (kneeling), you bow again - to your instructors, and to....well, something else. The instruction is 'rei' (which just means 'bow') and my sensei explained it as 'towards the holy place.' I imagine if you were in Japan, there might actually be idols set up in the dojo and you'd be expected to bow to them to show respect. This would be SERIOUSLY problematic for a Christian, and if true, I could never do kendo in Japan. In the US, most people practice in some sort of gym, so there are no idols or anything else, really, and you are just bowing one extra time, though not 'to' anything. My dojo is an old Presbyterian church, so we bow towards the old altar area for rei.

So, I'm fine with what I'm doing, but I could see how the practices associated with kendo could be problematic to some people.

[Norseman82]

[quote name='MithLuin' timestamp='1306537449' post='2246907']
I do kendo, a Japanese martial art that trains in sword-fighting. [/quote]

Do you work in a deli?

[media]http://www.hulu.com/watch/4262/saturday-night-live-samurai-delicatessen[/media]

[Don John of Austria]

THe Term martial Arts was coined in a Elizabethan book and was refering to western martial arts. Certianly there is nothing wrong with learning the Western arts, Wrestling, pugilism, fencing (and I don't men that pansy stuff they call fencing now), general melee skills etc, they were all develpped to a high art during a united Christendom.

That said, I assume you mean eastern martial arts, th answer is, maybe. American Karate is a ritualized sport not a martial art, as are many other "martial arts" they improve physical fitness confedence, teach youhow to take a hit and the like, but are not really martial anymore, much like fencing, they have become highlyrefined sports, with rules and artifical movements which have little bearing on real combat. Obviously there is no problem studying this.

If you want to lean a real "martial" martial art, you are going to have to look for a serious teacher, there are martial arts that have had the spiritual side taken out of them, but in my experiance they are either, really super hard core, survivalist types or hve been largly demartialed. Many of the really hard core guys around still incorporate a lot of eastern philosophy in thier instruction, at least that was true a few year back.


Just my experiance anyway.