Downward-Facing Demon
A local pastor says yoga is evil. Does he have a point?
THIS FALL Mark Driscoll, pastor at Seattle’s Mars Hill Church, told his congregation: “Sign up for a little yoga class, and you are signing up for a little demon class.” Eyes rolled, but it’s not like Driscoll was the first guy to demonize Seattle’s favorite meditative pastime. And really, is he so wrong? Yoga is hell. Consider:
The sense of eternity. Classes are often 90-minutes long—about equal to the run time of Annie Hall. You could get all the way to the part where Diane Keaton calls Woody Allen to come kill the spider in her bathroom and you’d still have almost half a class to go. Not that you’d know it. Yoga studios often pride themselves for their ban on watches and clocks.
The heat. Welcome to the Bikram studio, a 105-degree windowless cell into which adherents, dressed only in Speedos and sports bras, sardine themselves. Never mind if the dizzying heat and pretzely poses inspire them to vomit or pass out, students are told to stay in that steaming chamber of scantily clad, sweaty bodies no matter what. When Sartre wrote that “hell is other people,” he was totally thinking about Bikram.
The loss. Wonder what happened to grunge music? Your answer lies inside every yoga studio within 20 miles of Seattle. Yoga instructors love nothing more than to queue up Eddie Vedder’s cuckoo, chanty Into the Wild soundtrack just as class gets grueling. Listening to it while performing balancing poses in a room full of Prius-driving divorcees wearing $150 Lululemon lycras is like watching your cool-guy youth die on the sticky mat next to you.
The suffering. Nobody wants you to know this—they’ll even deny it and say you’re just doing it wrong—but the truth is, yoga hurts. Bad. “Breathe into the suffering,” yoga teachers like to say. And then they poke you with a pitchfork.
Published: December 2010
fyi, driscoll’s thing on yoga came last spring when someone asked about yoga and its connection to hinduism during a q&a session during the service. it was just the article that came out this fall.
this article’s an interesting follow-up: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/nyregion/28yoga.html?scp=2&sq=yoga&st=cse
seriously? I’m hoping this article was meant to be humorous, but it’s possible the author is being a bit too sub-tle for me.
I hadn’t heard about the pastor’s remarks until this article, so I haven’t read his words on it yet.
and in the print version the author’s name isn’t listed anywhere on the same page with the article, so in my Doctos’s office I wasn’t sure anyone evne actually wrote it.
but yes, if yoga is hell for you or hurts, you ARE doing it wrong.
If yoga is evil, sinning never felt so good… ommmmmmmm.