Originally Posted by r.payton@att.net

Focus on the exhale HERK

Not helping...and neither are my allergies.

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Are you holding the breath to a 6 count before switching nostrils ? eventually you'll get to holding 30 seconds and more .Force the breath into your stomach .

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Yoga and demonic possession
Ban,
I ran across this (among hundreds of like articles), when researching yoga .This one is amusing yet others swear you'll burn in hell or be possessed .


I bet you thought that yoga was a great way to improve flexibility, stretch and tone your muscles, and relax? Little did you know that by practicing yoga, you're risking your immortal soul.

This from Seattle pastor Mark Driscoll, who in a long, rambling directive to his flock, says,

Giving sound teaching on yoga is important because there is increasing adoption of yoga by our culture, with over 15.8 million people practicing yoga and nearly every store you go into selling all kinds of yoga products. It’s gone mainstream. As such, Christians are also adopting it as a healthy aspect of exercise and lifestyle—complete with things like “Holy Yoga,” which is an oxymoron. Saying yoga can be Christian because you do it for Jesus is a bit like going into a mosque, going through the worship practices, and then saying you’re not a Muslim because you’re doing it for Jesus. They don’t mix.

He said about Christians trying to inject Christian beliefs into yoga that "you cannot redeem such a thing... (it is) unchristian, against scripture, and thus demonic in nature."

So, I wonder where you draw the line? If you do a "downward dog" pose to stretch before a run, are the demons ready to pounce? Does the lotus position somehow invite Satan to attack me because my feet are asleep, so I won't be able to run away? (At least that's what always happens to me when I go into the lotus position.) Is my wife's yoga mat infused with Demonic Energy? What will happen if our cat sleeps on the yoga mat? Will he become possessed by evil spirits? (Actually, possession by evil spirits might actually be an improvement on this cat's current personality.)


What I find astounding about all of this is not that some wingnut has made a bizarre pronouncement. That, after all, is what wingnuts do. What I find amazing is that people still continue to attend his church and believe what he has to say afterwards. If in my classroom, I started claiming that the Earth's mantle was composed of cherry pie filling, and that lava is red because of the cherry juice, my credibility would be compromised, to put it mildly. But this guy can babble away about how practicing yoga is inviting demonic possession, and his congregation just kind of sits there nodding and mumbling "Amen, brother," instead of guffawing directly in his face and walking out, which is what I would do.

Wow! I never dreamed that people would take yoga so damned seriously! First, its acceptance leads to acceptance of homosexuality, now you can't be a Christian and practice yoga!

Things get weirder every day...

Ban,
When I was teaching/coaching in Frankfort,In. parents actually had the local pastor speak to me about the evils of Yoga .i told him I'd stop teaching Yoga when he could tell me the name of every single author of the Bible .

I just find all of that so bizarre! I have to assume that people think that it is a religious belief/system, as opposed to what it really is and what we use it for in the U.S.

I'm with you: if I was coaching any level of wrestling, I would see it as critical to their overall fitness as wrestlers. It's the perfect supplement to traditional training.