Friday, August 05, 2005
YOGA
A Catholic nun lectures on it in downtown Cleveland on Public Square in cooperation with a Yoga instructor who then teaches it. She comes from the Sophia Center, a Humility of Mary ministry.
Catholic monks practice Yoga and provide instruction at their Monastery. They dialogue with Buddhist monks.
Yoga is used to quiet the mind, leading to meditation, and contemplation.
The Monastic Interreligious Dialogue website offers a report on The Yoga and Buddhism Retreat 2000 in which this explanation of dealing with anger through Yoga is given:
Find out how to be with anger or painful emotions by being with them. Let the body lead. Befriend your anger; ask it, 'How would you do this [meditate]? Let's do it together.' When you learn how, you are liberated. That's enlightenment. It is not what your idea of it is; it is wherever your awareness is.
In other words, "Let your anger hang out."
Norweigen's Ringerike prison which contains "some of Norway's most dangerous criminals" decided to try it, and found "that some of the prisoners became more aggressive and agitated." The hope had been that meditation and breathing exercises would help inmates contain their anger, but it had the opposite effect. It unblocked their psychological barriers.
Well, isn't that exactly what the article from the Monastic Interreligious Dialogue website says that it will do? Why would a Catholic want to unblock barriers to sin? That does seem to be what this anger, agitation, and aggression in the Norway prison were about...sin. And sinfulness is a factor in man's nature. Better not to unblock it. And so, better to leave Yoga alone.
