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February 26, 2010 | Hindus welcome Catholics to yoga |
Nevada (US): Hindus have welcomed Roman Catholics to yoga practice. Holy Name Cathedral Parish (Roman Catholic) on Wabash Avenue in Chicago (USA) has launched weekly 75-minute yoga sessions every Wednesday at the Parish Center. Its website says: "...yoga has evolved across the ages as a means of tuning the body for better communion with God through prayer and meditation. Join us as we explore the multiple spiritual and physical benefits
of yoga practice...Typical sessions will include an opening prayer, inspired movement
& strengthening, and contemplative prayer to close." It organized a Special Workshop
on Ash Wednesday-"Holy Name Yoga-Based Prayer for Body & Spirit: Creating Your
Home Practice"-with proceeds supporting weekly yoga program. Instructors include
Ali Niederkorn (who "has cultivated a daily home practice making yoga a part of
her regular prayer" and offers "yoga classes encouraging yoga practice as a form
of prayer and meditation") and Dina Wolf (teaches a spiritually inspired vinyasa
flow yoga class). Reverend Dan Mayall is Pastor of Holy Name Cathedral under Archdiocese
of Chicago headed by Archbishop Cardinal Francis George. Acclaimed Hindu statesman
Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, said that yoga (referred as "a
living fossil"), whose traces went back to around 2,000 BCE to Indus Valley civilization,
was one of the six systems of orthodox Hindu philosophy. Founded by Yajnavalkya
around 800 BCE and codified in Yoga Sutra by Patanjali around 300 BCE, yoga was
actually a mental and physical discipline by means of which the human-soul (jivatman)
united with universal-soul (parmatman). Swami Vivekananda brought yoga to USA
in 1893. Zed, who is president of Universal Society of Hinduism, further says
that some sages have described yoga as the silencing of all mental transformations,
which leads to the total realization of the Supreme Self. Some have used yoga
attempting to gain liberation by removing all sensory barriers. According to Patanjali,
yoga is a methodical effort to attain perfection, through the control of the different
elements of human nature, physical and psychical. Yoga is based on an eightfold
path to direct the practitioner from awareness of the external world to a focus
on the inner. Ancient Hindu scriptures Upanishads were the first yoga writings
and Bhagavad-Gita (Song of the Lord), which is a comprehensive yoga-sastra (treatise on yoga), talks about karma yoga, jnana yoga and bhakti yoga. |
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