Yoga, Seane Corn, Christianity

Since hardly anyone reads this blog on any regular basis, you won't know that I occassionaly brag about NPR's Speaking of Faith Program. But I do. I am not whining, it's true. I don't care if anyone reads this blog. I am writing for me and that reader of writers in me.

SOF ran an excellent program this week on Yoga with yoga teacher Seane Corn. You really need to hear this one, and can't see how genuine and on the money she is from this excerpt from the transcript. But I put a couple of sections from the interview with her in order show how Christianity and Yoga can work together. It was a highly revealing interview for me.

There are some 20 million people across the U.S. that are doing yoga on a regular bassis, and there are far more outside that country. If we can't connect Christianity with some of the gems that are coming to us and through the issues talked about here, then we are missing a major opportunity. I am quoting way more than I should here, but just sort of can't help it. And you should hear what she says about working with junkie and prostitute teenagers, which I have not put here. Gotta' go online for that, which is here http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/

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Ms. Tippett: Let's talk about some of the words that you use in the context of yoga that in fact are spiritual words, like "grace." Talk about invoking the energy of grace in a yoga practice. I don't think that would make sense to many people.
Ms. Corn: I think that there's a lot of ways. I think first I need to define my relationship with God. I talk about God all the time in class, and I'm pretty confident in my relationship with God. And therefore, I'm comfortable using the word. But when I define spirit, it's that which exists within that's of truth and love. And so when I refer to grace or to spirit or to God, I'm talking of truth and love.
Ms. Tippett: And so, I mean, again, and this is kind of the same theme, when you say that the heart of the practice of yoga is love, you know, what do you mean by that?
Ms. Corn: Yeah.
Ms. Tippett: How can love be the heart of this practice of a series of physical poses and breathing?
Ms. Corn: It comes down to this for me: You can't get to God through your head, at least in my experience. I might come back in 20 years and say, you know, "Remember everything I was saying at 41? I was totally wrong." But how I've experienced it is that you can't get to God through your head, because it's determined by your five senses, so therefore we're limited to what we know, what we see, what we've experienced here on earth. For me, I've only been able to get to God through my heart, not through what I know but through what I feel because feelings lead to surrender. Surrender allows you to step into that unknown state where there's a different level of acceptance to what is rather than what you're choosing it to be. So for me, you release the tension, it opens you up to feelings, feelings connect you to surrender, and suddenly you're hearing with a new ear that moves beyond human interpretation but to spiritual perception which is infinite and limitless.

Ms. Corn: Yeah. Yeah. Another aspect is actually using your body to pray.
Ms. Tippett: Well, talk to me about that. Body prayer is something you do.
Ms. Corn: Yeah. Well, again, it all connects ultimately back to service, which is also, you know, kind of the evolution of the work that I've done. But using your body to pray. I trust that if I do my yoga practice, I'm going to get stronger and more flexible. If I stay in alignment, if I don't push, if I don't force, then my body will organically open in time. I know that if I breathe deeply, I'll oxygenate my body. It has an influence on my nervous system. These things are fixed and I know to be true. But I also recognize that it's a mystical practice, and you can use your body as an expression of your devotion. So the way that you place your hands, the ways that you step a foot forward or back, everything is done as an offering. I offer the movements to someone I love or to the healing of the planet. And so if I'm moving from a state of love and my heart is open to that connection between myself and another person or myself and the universe, it becomes an active form of prayer, of meditation, of grace.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------



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Ms. Tippett: I want to ask you if these experiences of yours, these insights, and especially the work you do with child prostitutes, there's also this shadow side of this observation that mind, body, and spirit are linked. We know that when there is sexual violence, when there is rape or, you know, when there's sexual abuse, it's not just bodies that suffer; it's the soul.
Ms. Corn: Mm-hmm.
Ms. Tippett: How has yoga helped you understand that more deeply?
Ms. Corn: Well, again, it goes back into my own history, and it all lines — you know, it's all interdependent and connected and that's where I see the god. My first experience of betrayal, perhaps, was molestation at six years old. And I'm very public with this. I've talked about this frequently because it's led me to where I am today. It's where I find so much gratitude, and I marvel at how one thing can become something else. When you're a child, you have no — I had no sense of sexuality, of course, yet I experienced both panic and pleasure. And I didn't know what pleasure was, so I felt ashamed and guilty. And, again, this is not something I was conscious about. I was very aware of the molestation, but I wasn't as conscious of the intricacies that I'm sharing with you.
Ms. Tippett: Right. Right.
Ms. Corn: That came later. And so when I went through my own journey to the understanding that these events have happened, now what am I going to do with it? Am I going to continue pointing the finger back to my life and saying, "You did this to me and therefore I get to spend the rest of my life in inappropriate relationships, afraid of the world, because of what you did"? Or can I say, like, "No. That was done. Here's how it disconnected me to spirit. Here's how I can reclaim this. And now look what I get to do with it, not in spite of the experience, but because of it." And suddenly this thing that was so bad actually became a gift. And that gift not only changes my heart, but maybe can impact someone else's.
Ms. Tippett: You also in that practice of body prayer, I think it was there, you talked about — let me just look at my notes — about thinking about, dedicating your practice and channeling that energy that you experience and tap into and take in and release in yoga, even towards the people who have, you know, not just towards the people you love and the things you're grateful for, but the people you're not grateful for. Right? That the people who've hurt you.
Ms. Corn: I have to.
Ms. Tippett: And what happens when you do that? I mean, what —
Ms. Corn: Part of me gets irritated, but that's just my ego. That's the part of me that just doesn't know better. But my heart opens. The people who have hurt or harmed me were also my teachers. They provided fierce lessons that brought me closer to myself and then therefore God, and also taught me about life. I always pray for the people who have hurt and harmed me, and just when I think I've forgiven them, I forgive them again, because always that energy will rear its head, and I have to make sure that I'm constantly keeping myself clean. Otherwise, I'm holding onto that shadow of anger, and the inability to forgive, they say, is a poison you take hoping someone else will die. And, again, it keeps us disconnected from God.
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Ms. Tippett: You know, as we've said, there are so many people doing yoga now. There are yoga centers springing up on every street corner in every city and not just yoga centers, but classes and YMCAs. And I'm sure you're aware within Christian circles there is some resistance to that, some wariness, because there is this sacred aspect to the tradition of yoga, the sacred history. And, you know, there is some movement to replace some of the Hindu phrases or the Sanskrit phrases with Christian vocabulary and words. I'm just curious about your response to that, how you think about that.
Ms. Corn: You know, again, yoga has been happening for thousands of years, and it's certainly a continually evolving practice. I like to think that yoga itself is bigger than any one tradition and that it has its place in all the different traditions. And if a Christian needs to bring in — I mean, when I go into the Bible Belt, for example, and using prayer in the class, I will always mention Jesus Christ because I want to invoke into the space a sense of the sacred that's going to be familiar and comfortable to the practitioners that I'm working with so that they feel at home and they feel welcomed. So I don't really have a problem with it.
That's probably not a popular decision or opinion, but there is room for yoga and Christianity. There's room for yoga and Judaism. There's room for yoga in all the different traditions. What it comes down to, what you can't take away is that yoga means we are all one, and so it's fine by me. If that's what's going to take these religions to get everyone breathing together, moving together, releasing tension together, and being more available to authentic prayer — not prayer from your head, but prayer from your heart — that's more unified, then I welcome it.