My co-workers and I recently attended a morning yoga class together as a team-building exercise. Not being a regularly practicing yogini (the technical term for a female who practices yoga), I was surprised how jam-packed the room was on a weekday morning. More specifically, I was surprised that every single person in the room looked to be in their 20s or 30s.
Yoga studios across the United States are thriving, with 16.5 million people now practicing yoga. Of those 16.5 million, the fastest-growing group of practitioners is the 18-to-24 age group, which increased by 46 percent last year, according to a recent survey published by Yoga Journal, the country's premier yoga magazine.
It's no secret that yoga provides many physical benefits, including increased strength, flexibility and cardiovascular endurance. In addition to physical transformation, yoga provides many spiritual benefits --- spiritual benefits that dovetail nicely with precepts at the heart of Catholic spirituality and teaching.
Yoga originated 3,000 years ago as a practice to strengthen one's hips and back to provide physical stamina for long periods of meditation. Those who developed the practice firmly believed that physical discipline was a conduit for communication with God.
In other words, as a practice yoga always has integrated mind, spirit and body.
Participation in a yoga class requires attentiveness to and care for one's body, a practice that can actually bring us closer to God, according to Paulist Father Thomas Ryan, author of "Reclaiming the Body in Christian Spirituality" and the creator of a DVD titled "Yoga Prayer: Embodied Christian Spiritual Practice."
According to Father Ryan, a certified yoga instructor, the Catholic tradition always has valued the physical body. This prizing of the body is manifest in doctrines that address Christ's bodily resurrection, incarnation and Mary's assumption. "We do have a very high evaluation of the body that does not characterize every religion," Father Ryan said.
Practices like yoga, which require discipline, mindfulness and even periods of fasting, can provide the raw materials for a healthy spiritual life that integrates mind and body. I've experienced this even in the few yoga classes I've attended.
Through yoga I've learned to sit still quietly, and in silence, to fight restlessness and the urge to fidget. More experienced yoga practitioners sit still and are focused.
In the silence of the yoga studio I'm reminded of the words of spiritual writer Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine, who wrote: "Silence is full of what we need to learn about ourselves."
Spending time in some of the nation's jam-packed yoga studios, I think, can tell us a lot about the spiritual longings of young people from 18 to 24. They're longing for silence, for discipline, for a way to integrate mental, spiritual and physical health. They're longing for environments that are open and accepting. (Where else besides a yoga studio would one feel comfortable bending over, stretching, leaning and exhibiting one's physical limitations for all to see?)
After taking to the mat just a few times, observing the care, attentiveness and discipline that are embodied in the yoga studio, I can see St. Paul's injunction that the body be treated as a temple of the Holy Spirit take hold.
Perhaps most young adults wouldn't phrase it that way, but certainly that seems to be the reality that is unfolding. Catholic News Service columnist Renee M. LaReau lives in Columbus, Ohio.
|