In India, A Catholic Priest Is Healing Addicts With Yoga

Father Joseph Pereira, a Mumbai-based Catholic priest who teaches Iyengar yoga around the world, demonstrates an asana on Zoom. Photo by Kripa Foundation.

NEW DELHI — When the lights come on, Father Joseph Pereira—propped up against a bookshelf laden with volumes on meditation— recites a serenity prayer. He then launches an hour-long zoom session to empower addicts through healing.

When the focus shifts to the participants’ experiences of addiction intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic, the session transforms into an act of collective healing.

Pereira notes that the solution to chemical dependency is not chemical.

“The kind of consciousness we carry has a measurable impact on our loved ones in these difficult times,” says the Mumbai-based Catholic priest who is also the founder of Kripa Foundation, an NGO dedicated to the rehabilitation of those affected by chemical dependency and HIV/AIDS.

Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a nationwide lockdown in March, Pereira has offered yoga classes, meditation retreats, counseling and therapy sessions online to boost communities and addicts across more than 40 countries.

“I’m not an orthodox priest,” he says. “Even though religious fundamentalism is on the rise globally, people of faith should counter hate through a heterodox approach.”

In his white cassock, Pereira maneuvers skillfully between liturgical services at Mumbai’s Mount Carmel Church where he’s the priest-in-residence and online funeral services. The church is located in an upscale, hip neighborhood called Bandra that attracts professional class Indians and expats. He later changes into yoga shorts to offer healing through asanas, detox and meditation sessions.    

Ordained a Catholic priest in 1967, Pereira spent 46 years integrating spirituality and physical development under the late yoga master B.K.S Iyengar who is often referred to as the “father of modern yoga.”

Pereira’s uncle was a Jesuit priest who worked extensively with poor tribal people across India. His uncle had a deep impact on his spiritual disposition. But it was the chance meeting with Iyengar that solidified the Pereira’s conviction that the church altar and yoga mat were paths to the same destination. 

Father Joseph Pereira, a Mumbai-based Catholic priest who teaches Iyengar yoga around the world, demonstrates an asana at the Kripa Foundation Vasai Centre. Photo by Kripa Foundation.

Sangeeta (she asked for her name to be changed since these are private sessions) , a co-dependent  who has been attending Pereira’s sessions since 2011, says his innate compassion has not only helped her understand addiction better but aided her own transformation.

“Father taught me how to work on myself as the first step toward healing my loved one ,” says Sangeeta. “Mutually shared brokenness empowers people, especially in exceptional times like these.”  

Like Sangeeta, an increasing number of people are seeking Pereira’s spirituality not only for psychosocial support but also for the rehabilitation of alcohol and drug addicts in these uncertain times.  

In India, the pandemic has stripped thousands of their basic livelihoods besides increasing alcoholic and drug abuse in cities and small towns. With critical mental health and substance use services paralyzed, addicts are at increased risk of opioid dependence and other substance abuse.

Pereira believes his 12-step treatment model derived from Alcoholics Anonymous—a now secular international fellowship that began as a Christian ministry to help addicts recover from substance and behavioral compulsions—is meant to shift the “locus of control from the external to the internal realm.”

Mumbai Catholic priest Father Joseph Pereira with Mother Teresa. Photo by Kripa Foundation.

“Psychosocial support is part of COVID-19 response plans, but how much funding has really gone into it?” asks Pereira. “We see people with seizures, withdrawal symptoms, delirium.”

Distress calls from alcoholics and substance abusers on national helplines surged 200% during the lockdown in India, according to a report in the Times of India[MC4] . Public health journals have also reported how the marginalized with substance use disorders are likely to contract the virus and suffer from greater psychosocial burden.  In Punjab, where drug addiction is a political battleground issue, de-addiction registrations and consultations at treatment centers have increased since March.

Pereira’s extensive work with addiction and mental health has allowed him to bring the internal-healing conversation center-stage since the outbreak of COVID-19.     

In his early years of yoga practice with Iyengar, Pereira had discovered the health benefits of his teaching modalities after a decade spent studying theology and spirituality. But after learning about addiction treatment at the Hazeldon Betty Ford Graduate School of Addiction Studies in Minnesota, he resolved to help the vulnerable through yoga and interpersonal healing.

Father Joseph Pereira after the launch of his book “The Spiritual Paradox of Addiction.” Photo by Kripa Foundation.

In 1981, the Catholic priest set up the Kripa Foundation on the premises of Mount Carmel Church after Mother Teresa, who he worked closely with, urged him to combine health and spirituality.

“Mother told me to reach out to the poorest of poor, while Iyengar taught me how to reach the poor in health,” says Pereira. “Spiritual training without body consciousness is a one-dimensional obsolete model.”

Over the next four decades, Pereira’s 12-step program has expanded to 12 states across India through its 16 residential facilities and 77 projects.  With a growing international community, the priest’s workshops in the United Kingdom, United States and Europe have gained popularity.

Royal, a 40-year-old volunteer with the Kripa Foundation who was convicted for murder in 2001, says Pereira helped him reform and confront his weaknesses when he felt isolated.

“I was an alcoholic with a personality disorder,” he says. “When I came to Kripa I felt I was beyond repair, but then slowly I started transforming through Father’s healing programs.”

Rajan, a 57-year old volunteer worker in Mumbai who abused drugs for 17 years, says the spiritual journey has not only boosted his immunity but also restored faith in his capacity to serve.

“Many of us wounded healers, as Father calls us, are now healing people with addictive behaviors,” says Rajan.

Most of Pereira’s volunteers are “wounded healers” on their own paths of recovery and spiritual growth. Not only are they helping other suffering addicts, but are also assisting Pereira in his inter-faith solidarity-building efforts in cities, towns and slums like Dharavi in Mumbai.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, their critical assistance has held together Pereira’s healing sessions.

“My community is my biggest support,” says Pereira. “The pandemic has not only intensified stigma against minorities, but also led to anti-yoga propaganda by extremists and Christian fundamentalists.”

The Syro-Malabar Church, an Eastern Catholic Archiepiscopal Church based in Kerala in South India, objected to the practice of yoga in a 2018 report, Yoga and Catholic Faith. It said yoga aids physical and mental health, but the spiritual aspect doesn’t gel with the theological views of the Catholic tradition. The church also said the government’s “attempt to make yoga compulsory at schools and making yoga crucial to Indian culture” was a contributing factor behind their reviewing the issue.

In addition, the Greek Orthodox Church recently ruled that yoga was “absolutely incompatible” with Christianity. The Synodal Committee under the archbishop of Athens announced that “yoga techniques” which had “a variety of schools, disciplines, applications and trends within Hinduism” has “no place in the lives of Christians.” Even the Church of Cyprus has spoken out against it.

Last year, a church hall in Devon in England barred a yoga class; pastors in the U.S. have called the practice “demonic,” while a leading Islamic council  in Malaysia said in 2008 that yoga could corrupt Muslims, stopping short of issuing a fatwa after a backlash.

Despite being called a “Satanic priest” by Pentecostal pastors, Pereira is unperturbed. He believes scientists are increasingly acknowledging yoga’s efficacy, even noting how mutually shared pain and vulnerability empowers communities and people.

In India, the Catholic church allows some traditions and symbols to be carried over from older belief systems so long as they are remade to conform with a Christian worldview. But syncretism of other religious practices such as yoga with the Catholic faith have at times been condemned by sections of the conservative clergy.

As an “earthly healer,” Pereira considers his faith a mosaic of Sufi, Christian, Hindu and fringe traditions meant to heal the planet and bring people closer in a divided world.

“Broken people are deeply spiritual,” he says. “In a pandemic world where brokenness has grown, my work is to help people through faith and love.”

Priyadarshini Sen is an independent journalist based in Delhi. She writes for India and US-based media. She’s a fellow with the University of Southern California's Center for Religion and Civic Culture. Follow her on Twitter @PriyadarshiniS_.