A friend of mine asked me recently about my take on yoga, and I thought I’d share my thoughts here as a skeptic in hopes that it might spark a debate or what have you. As a kid, my mom was a big fan of the whole yoga thing. It was the seventies, and so-called radical eastern thought was starting to permeate the middle class world we lived in. Of course, it was always taken with the “those poor heathens sure are flexible, too bad God isn’t going to save them from Hell” perspective of a doting Christian. I KID! My mom was never that bad. At any rate, I remember taking a few yoga courses as a wee’un, and as a grown-up have taken a few as well. It’s my opinion that yoga has two distinct parts; there’s the physical act of yoga and the spiritual side.

As a physical act, it’d be hard to say that yoga was a bad thing. The stretching and muscle control are fabulous ways to make the body work better. I’m a big fan of exercise and consider it to be one of the most important things that we can do to be healthy, particularly in terms of hormonal balance and overall physical health. When we’re limber, our bodies are far better at handling the little things that come up. That doesn’t mean a person who stretches lots isn’t going to tear their ACL as easily; for all I know they might even be more likely to tear it given the stress they put on it more regularly, but as a sleeping blanket generalization, I think having a limber body is a good choice.

With all forms of exercise, though, it’s important not to over-do it. One of my concerns about yoga is an echoing of my concern over most alt-med-friendly activities, the notion that our bodies are meant to do something so it couldn’t possibly be harmful. This is dangerous thinking, and quite a few of the yoga people I know enjoy yoga on what may well be far too often and far too intense a basis.

What’s interesting about stretching in general is how well the body responds to it. When I got fat, I began taking taekwondo as a means to lose weight, and I was astounded to notice how quickly I became so much more graceful and dexterous in general. I was still monster-big, but I felt a lot better and was much more confident on my feet. This was news, as I’d never been graceful, even when I was a skinny twig of a man. I had never really been flexible either, but very quickly I was pulling off jumping axe kicks and kissing my knee. Admittedly, this would have been a lot easier if the gargantuan tummy hadn’t been in the way. Stupid delicious chocolate bars…

And of course there’s hot yoga. I don’t know what to think about this. Frankly, without knowing the actual mechanics of the body’s reaction to increased heat and all the other factors here, I’m kind of apprehensive to say that it’s actually dangerous. But the fact remains, when I think of the idea of people engaging in this kind of exercise without the benefit of any monitoring of their reaction, I get nervous.

So my opinions are based on plain ole’ regular yoga being a good physical activity. But the spirituality of yoga? Well that’s a whole different story. All that talk of universal energies and stuff just bugs me to hell. Meditation is a good time to clear the mind and enjoy a moment’s peace, but the idea that we’re doing anything more than just letting the brain have a vacation doesn’t sit well with me. The benefits of taking that little brain-cation are myriad, but going clear or transcending are not among them.

So the short and skinny of it is that I think yoga is a great exercise. I don’t do it right now because when I did do it, I felt conspicuously fat and inflexible in a room full of tiny little soccer moms, hot female actresses who work at Kinkos, and a pair of very gay men in way-too-tight spandex. It didn’t bring my chakras into alignment or cause lotus blossoms to bloom from my footsteps, but it did feel great.

Jim