Holy Yoga

Have you ever uttered the words when confronting a tough situation, “Well, part of me wants to … (fill in the blank), but another part of me does not”?

Part of me wants to reach out to a hurting person, but part of me does not.

Part of me wants to start eating right, but part of me does not. And won’t.

Part of me wants to go after the job I really dream of, but the part of me that lives in fear of the unknown absolutely does not.

This list for what we desire to do could go on and on—confront a situation, exercise, get more organized, quit a smoking habit, stop lashing out in anger, stop turning to an addiction, stop running frantically throughout the day, practice a little patience.…

I wonder how you would fill in the part-of-me-wants-to gap.

What is this thing in me—and perhaps in you too—that isn’t quite on the same page with the other parts of me? Some of me wants to, while some of me doesn’t—what is that about? What are these places in us that are broken, fragmented, divided? And is that how we were meant to live? It doesn’t feel right, that’s for sure. I hate the sensation of wanting one thing and doing another. It makes me feel lost, like I’m a mini-me floating above my own out-of-body experience. Likewise, though, when I live and walk in the way my heart longs to do, I feel more alive, more “myself” than at any other time.

I find God’s mission for me clear: “Long before he laid down earth's foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love,” says Ephesians 1:3, “to be made whole and holy by his love,” (MSG).

He came to make us whole. Then holiness will follow—I will actually begin to look more like Jesus Christ in my life. I will begin to live the same kind of life he lived. They come as a package, don’t they? The more “whole” are our hearts, lives, minds and souls, the more that holiness or living as God desires us to live will follow.

I think it’s this sort of truth that made the psalmist declare, “I run in the paths of your commands for you have set my heart free!” (Psalm 119:32). Talk about a free man! Someone who runs after God’s commands—a pursuer of holiness—is someone who hides nothing, fears nothing, smiles, laughs, loves, lives. Doesn’t that sound enticing? It certainly does to me.

I have always loved God, but I have not always known wholeness in my life. At times I felt fragmented, disjointed, dis-integrated in some sort of way. I longed for something to unite me further, deeper with God. I knew he lived in me; that I had been united with Christ, one spirit with him. Yet I wanted a deeper understanding and working-out of that truth. I wanted a more substantial integrity—an inward one—to define my life in different ways. I found what I was looking for in an unexpected place; the furthering was found in yoga.

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The word yoga actually means “union; to yoke, to unite.” Of course! Precisely what I was longing for.

Yoga is counter-cultural because it brushes against the grain of what today’s norms drive us to do—to be driven. Rush around, get as much done as you possibly can, take care of everyone and everything, be busy. What’s the first thing someone says when you ask them, “Hey! How are you?” If your sphere of influence is like mine, the response is some variation of, “Oh, I’m sooo busy.” But busy isn’t what God invites us to be.

Running contrary to society’s stream, yoga allows us to stop, breathe, stretch, elongate, stabilize, strengthen … and the list goes on. Not just our bodies, but our hearts, minds, and souls. There are a million wonderful effects from yoga, each as different as the person practicing, but the number one reason I do yoga is to connect, to unite me with the rest of myself, me with my Father above.

Yoga was created in ancient cultures to prepare oneself for meditation. A true yoga practice is done to allow the mind to center on God in a deep way that can only be accomplished from yoga. Ask any yogi: They know this to be true.

God tells us in the Bible that the most important thing, the biggest thing to focus on in all of the Word of God is to love him “with all your heart, with all of your mind, and with all your strength.” Sounds pretty central, pretty important, to me, but how does it actually get done? I think the start is uniting them—heart, mind, strength—so that they then may unite with him.

Lately my attention has been absorbed by a book by Agnes Sanford titled, “The Healing Light.” In it she writes, “In order to fill ourselves with His whole being, let us think of Him, imagining His presence, seeing Him with the yes of the mind, trying to love Him with the heart. Let us beseech Him to come and dwell within us. Let us ask Him to enter into our spirits and fill us with His own consciousness of the fatherhood of God; to enter into our mind and think within us His own thoughts; to enter into our hearts and feel through us His own love, directing it to those who need it most; to enter into our bodies and build them up according to the pattern of His perfect holiness; making us more and more fit channels for the inflow and outflow of His life.”

Agnes’s words are one example of an inner musing, a prayer of the soul, for use in meditation or contemplation. Yoga is a vehicle to intimacy with God in every single facet of our lives. Can we even fathom the truth of being made in the image of God? How complex and wonderful our Creator is! And how complex and wonderful are his creatures … what dignity he bestows upon us. I love having an outlet for thinking on such marvelous things.

This is what this practice of stillness and “being” is truly meant for: uniting us with God. God makes his home inside our heart, and we are one spirit with him. In yoga, we unite and allow his life to flow more fully inside of us. The fruit that comes from simply allowing this to happen is mind-blowing, its effects altogether altering to life.

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Since late 2007 chronic illness has halted my pace of life in a way I never knew was possible. It disrupted my world one day, and I have not been the same since. If I’m honest it hasn’t all been bad. Truly I wouldn’t change the effects I’ve known for anything else in the world, even as the alterations I’ve been asked to make stretch my capacity thin. I have always been one to maintain a measured pace, to nurture the introverted soul inside me that loves people contemplatively and solitude even more. Yet I was destined to learn an even deeper sort of stillness than comes by way of being home, saying “no” to requests, retreating, or reading a good book.

Illness forced me to my knees and then to my back, at which point the couch became my dwelling place. Weakness sapped the last of each day’s energy supply, most of which was spent walking from one waiting room or another into one doctor’s office or another. Who wants to be social when that’s what your life has become? Still, I felt so alone. Alone and afraid and sad.

But then came yoga.

Yoga awakened something in me that I’d never experienced before—simply being with God. I wasn’t speaking, praying, thinking, singing. I was simply being with him. My body was moving in worship, and I was offering a deeper part of myself to him. No words could have been uttered to express what my heart was expressing; in fact, words surely would have cheapened it. My heart was expressing something, conveying something to God, to the One I love and who loves me, and something big was beginning to happen. I started to feel more like myself … the woman God crafted me to be.

My yoga teacher constantly encouraged me during my schooling to become a yoga instructor for whom “the being is the becoming.” What she meant by this was that simply being—not striving, working, planning, projecting—will allow for more transformation than my mere mind could fathom.

Settling down, silence, meditation, quiet. We need these things desperately and yet our jam-packed days balk at the idea. But when we carve out requisite space, oh the power that unfolds! How could God not respond to your cry for more of him? More wholeness, more holiness—he’ll always supply our demand.

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When tragedy happens in a life the common response is to rush to its side and try to evict it as soon as possible. For that matter, whenever anything uncomfortable comes our way, don’t we move swiftly and efficiently in order to thoroughly do away with it? Welcome to the human experience, I suppose, where there is little tolerance for being burdened by things like waiting, frustration, or pain of any sort. Fast and effective and perfect and neat—this is what we aim for, even if God had something altogether different in mind.

The atmosphere most receptive to the life God wants to live in us and through us comes via a different path—the way of waiting, the way of being, the way of yoga, union with God and union with one’s own heart.

Sue Monk Kidd writes in her book, When the Heart Waits, that a monk once said to her: “I hope you’ll hear what I’m about to tell you. I hope you’ll hear it all the way down to your toes. When you’re waiting, you’re not doing nothing. You’re doing the most important something there is. You’re allowing your soul to grow up. If you can’t be still and wait, you can’t become what God created you to be.”

If you are new to the concept of yoga, here is a great place to start: Simply come to the floor and sit on your knees, opening them a comfortable distance apart, your legs tucked underneath you. Fold your torso forward over your legs and rest your forehead gently on the floor, or if it is more pleasant, tilt your head to the side and rest your temple there. Let your arms stretch out in front of your head, or rest them by your sides, palms facing upwards in receptivity to what God has. Rest here for five minutes without moving. Be still here. You are experiencing what is called Child’s Pose. Think about being God’s child as you take several full, deep, slow breaths. See what happens. It’s just five minutes. But better is five minutes in his gates than thousands elsewhere.