Experiencing the Promise of Sabbath: Balancing Mind, Body & Spirit
by Jennifer Tufts

Two powerful forces have been at work in my mind, body and heart for the past 6 years: Sabbath, a foundational part of the Judeo-Christian tradition; and Yoga, the product of centuries of discovery about the human body and how it is wired. While searching for the meaning of Sabbath I found the spiritual practice of yoga. It has been a perfect marriage. While still foreign to many American Christians, the practice of yoga is sweeping the country and filling a vacuum created by too much stress and a culture that is out of balance.

In seeking to recover balance in my own life and discernment about God’s promise of rest and renewal, I started to plumb the depths of Isaiah, Chapter 58:

The Lord says, “If you treat the Sabbath as sacred and do not pursue your own interests on that day; if you value my holy day and honor it by not traveling, working, or talking idly on that day, then you will find the joy that comes from serving me.”

Not traveling; not working; not talking idly. These words come to us from a time that seems so far removed from our modern lifestyle.

Yet, it is possible to get at the heart of what the prophet was saying and apply it in today’s world. Physical disciplines are involved in respecting the Sabbath commandment. There is also the call to submit one’s whole being to God in order to see clearly with the heart’s eye.

In her book, Yoga Mind, Body & Spirit, Donna Farhi describes a collective spiritual, physical and emotional suffering that ought to worry us as Christians. “We live in a time of extreme dissociation from bodily experience. When we are not in our bodies, we are dissociated from our instincts, intuitions, feelings and insights, and it becomes possible to dissociate ourselves from other people’s feelings, and other people’s suffering. The insidious ways in which we become numb to our bodily experience and the feelings and perceptions that arise from them leave us powerless to know who we are, what we believe in, and what kind of world we wish to create. If we do not know when we are breathing in and when we are breathing out, when we are unable to perceive gross levels of tension, how then can we possibly know how to create a balanced world? Every violent impulse begins in a body filled with tension; every failure to reach out to someone in need begins in a body that has forgotten how to feel.”

Numbness to suffering of others, violence within and without, powerlessness - these are the enemies in our spiritual battleground.

How many times have you asked or thought to yourself, “that person is out of his or her mind!” It could have meant many things, but it usually was not a good thing. You might even have had moments when you wondered, “Am I out of my mind?!” But have you asked yourself as often whether you might be out of your body? Is someone you know or love out of his or her body? What does that mean and how does it impact all of us when we fail to inhabit the bodies God gave us?

It should be considered every bit as dangerous to be out of the body as it is to be out of the mind. A fellow yoga teacher expressed it so well when she said, “Lots of people call me up and ask whether I can lead them in an out-of-the-body experience. I tell them that I’m really not sure I can offer an out of the body experience. . . but I just might be able to give them an in-the-body experience!” When someone is out of their mind we feel a great responsibility to bring them back to reality. We should all feel the same urgency to help people reconnect with the reality of being in the body, or in the spirit.

Yoga is the yoking of body, mind and spirit. It is the practice of postures, breathing exercises, and evenness of being that has been developed over centuries of study of the body. Prior to the development of a science-based western form of modern medicine, yoga was one way of restoring and maintaining well-being. It’s time to go back to yoga’s truths with our 21st century lenses and find out whether we are going forward or backward in refining a quality human experience.

Hungry bodies, hungry souls:
What does Yoga have to offer to Christians?

Yoga is the yoking, the union of body, mind and spirit. My mind and my spirit were on one track, the spiritual journey of following Christ, but my body was not along for the ride. A wise yoga teacher gently led me back into my body about 6 years ago. She did it by being non-judgmental and patient, and by trusting in yoga itself to reconnect body and spirit. I don’t even know when exactly I had lost my way and separated from my body but it’s awfully good to be home again.

You could say, my body was lost but now it is found - and reunited with mind and spirit in the worship of God! This is the story of one Christian who was captured by the practice of yoga. I am not alone.

When the Bible says that the body is the temple of the Lord, it means the body is the temple of the Lord! Not the church building, not the synagogue, the human body. Each morning we wake up with the opportunity and the need to reconnect to God. Yoga was developed as a spiritual discipline. A quick tour of Yogic philosophy is striking in that Jesus is revered as a great teacher and spiritual leader. It need not detract from our understanding of the unique and ordained message of Christ’s life and his death to view scriptures through a different religious and cultural lens. Rather we find new and meaningful insights that only deepen our appreciation of Jesus’ words. It is only fear that could keep us from seeking to know Jesus better and scripture teaches us that perfect love casts out fear!

Paramahansa Yogananda’s book, The Second Coming of Christ, brings new light to Jesus’ teachings from the viewpoint of a practitioner of yoga.

“We must know Jesus as an Oriental [Eastern] Christ, a supreme yogi who manifested full mastery of the universal science of God-union, and thus could speak and act as a savior with the voice and authority of God. He has been Westernized too much.

Jesus was an Oriental, by birth and blood and training. To separate a teacher from the background of his nationality is to blur the understanding through which he is perceived. No matter what Jesus the Christ was himself, as regards his own soul, being born and maturing in the Orient [East], he had to use the medium of Oriental civilization, customs, mannerisms, language, parables, in spreading his message.” (Pg. 90-91)

As a young Christian I was taught to spend time each morning to read the Word of God, pray, and be quiet as the spiritual foundation of each day. No one mentioned bringing the body into that quiet time. Physical exercise was not something my Christian teachers would have mentioned. Important, maybe, but not on a similar plane to the spiritual disciplines.

No surprise that our culture is introducing the same split to the practice of yoga that we have introduced to the practice of Christian faith, that is to divide the body and the spirit. Yoga is all the rage among actors, models, the rich and famous, not to mention stressed-out working types. Yoga is being taught in fitness centers and studios alongside nautilus equipment, aerobics classes, and the treadmill. It is regarded as a tool for a more beautiful body, a treatment for stress, or an alternative medicine. The practice of yoga in America has broken into the mainstream as the cover story of Time magazine.

Churches could lead the way but, rather than jumping on the yoga bandwagon and responding to the evident need, many Christians are reacting out of fear, immediately critical of yoga without knowing much about it. America has grown and flourished based on its ability to assimilate other cultures and traditions. The medical and scientific communities have begun to acknowledge the health benefits of yoga and to demonstrate the important links between the mind, the spirit and the body. Yoga is starting to pop up in places of worship, in our schools, in hospitals and sports training facilities.

It is time to liven worship liturgy with dance. It is time to energize our prayer lives with body prayer. It is time to teach our children to breathe, to calm their over-stimulated minds. An overweight, stressed and addicted society is crying out for meaningful rest time, for truth about the body’s connection to the soul, for the tools to quiet physical, materialistic cravings.