Finding God On The Mat: Yoga Meets Christianity In Colorado
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Many Christians know the routine. Church service ends, and it’s time to visit, but really there’s not much time to visit.
They might have children to round up. They might need to hurry home to prepare lunch, watch a football game or mow the lawn.
“There’s a lot going on,” said Casey Hymore, a member of the Castle Rock Church of Christ on Colorado’s Front Range.
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Blessedly for Hymore and other church members, there’s another place to meet during the week. A place to release burdens and talk about disappointments and victories. And a place to deeply consider the Word of God.
“Here,” Hymore said, “you just have time with your Christian friends. It’s a ‘what’s going on in your life’ kind of thing.”
“Here” is weekly Christian yoga classes for women led by Charity Morine.
During the school year, Morine leads a group of up to 20 women in weekly sessions at a dance studio in Castle Rock. The ages range from 20s to 70s. The fitness range is just as varied.
The sessions begin with the women listening to soft worship music. Morine asks her students to notice their bodies and the state of their emotions. Are you at peace? Are you feeling fragile?
She tells them to unclench their jaws, relax their shoulders.
“Release what is clouding your mind,” she said, “and come into the presence of God. Breath in his goodness.”
In one recent session, she led her students in consideration of their blind spots. King David failed to comprehend his vicious role in the death of Uriah the Hittite, his friend and, alas, romantic rival.
It required a story from the prophet Nathan to confront the king’s intentional blindness and inexplicable cluelessness. David, with Nathan’s aid, finally saw the truth about himself.
Spend time listening to God as he reveals his wisdom, Morine encouraged participants. Shine light on those blind spots.
Jenn Anderson has been attending the yoga sessions for six years. She always leaves uplifted and inspired, she said.
“You remove yourself from whatever mood you’re in and focus on the biblical message for that day,” Anderson said. “Whatever burden you brought into the class isn’t as important as you thought when you’re thinking about it from a godly and biblical perspective.”
To end a session, students close their eyes while considering the lesson of the day. Morine rubs their foreheads with a cool lavender-soaked washcloth and offers a brief head massage.
They are weary from the exercise, which can be demanding — but even more energized, said Lynn Lauterbach.
“I always go away feeling filled versus feeling exhausted from exercising,” Lauterbach said. “Our bodies are the temple, you know, like the verses say, and we need to be using them. The process of doing that, it’s spiritually filling.”
Morine’s path to teaching Christian yoga began nearly seven years ago. She faced, in her words, “a pretty dark spot” in her life. She knew God held the answers, and she prayed each day, inspired by Philippians 4 6-7: “Do not be anxious about anything.”
Still, she felt anxious and unseen and unfavored by God..
Then she watched Christian yoga on YouTube. At the end of a video session, she reclined on her back. Her palms were up. She was alone.
“I remember, in that quiet, hearing from God and allowing my body to release my anxiousness and the tightness in my gut and the racing in my heart,” she said. “I began to find the peace that passes understanding. I was giving God space. I was quieting my mind and giving him room to speak.”
A few months later, during the height of the Covid pandemic, Morine began her yoga sessions, starting in her backyard in northwest Castle Rock.
Daphne Walsh has worked alongside Morine for four years. She first came to the sessions to work on her balance and core strength.
She found more. Much more.
“It has helped us when we carry a lot of stress, when we’re bogged down with worries,” she said. “We see that we can present these things to Christ and come to him just as we are.”
Christian yoga has critics among followers of Jesus who see the practice — Christian or not — as a retreat from biblical faith and believe yoga never can be fully separated from its roots in Hinduism and Buddhism. Starting yoga sessions at a Church of Christ can lead to controversy.
During a recent visit to Morine’s home, a group of five of her students enjoyed a healthy lunch and talked of their enthusiasm for their weekly time together. Nobody in the group had heard from Christian friends who objected to Christian yoga.
“I have never received a negative reaction from my Church of Christ friends,” Morine said. “I’ve experienced nothing but support.”
Christians who are critics and skeptics of God-based yoga are welcome at Morine’s sessions. Walsh offers a personal invitation.
“They need to come and experience it for themselves,” she said. “To find out that it is a spiritual activity. We pray together. We meditate on the Word of God. We listen to Christian music.
“It has nothing to do with eastern yoga. Nothing at all.”
It is, Walsh said, Christ based.
This article was originally published by The Christian Chronicle.
David Ramsey graduated in 1979 from York University and in 1981 from Abilene Christian University and learned the art of journalism from York’s Tim Bruner and ACU’s Charlie Marler. Ramsey worked as sports columnist in Syracuse, N.Y., and Colorado Springs, Colo. He covered five Olympics and reported from five continents. Reach him at davidlukeramsey@gmail.com.