Manju Patel

Yoga has been practiced for thousands of years and the Vrksasana or tree pose is commonly used.

Yoga is a common practice that originated in India thousands of years ago. Most people in western culture believe yoga is a way to exercise, which it can be, but there are also many other styles of yoga that can be done. 

There are four main types of yoga: Karma, Jnana, Bhakti, and Raja yoga. Karma yoga is the yoga of action, Jnana yoga is the yoga of knowledge, Bhakti yoga is the yoga of devotion, and Raja yoga is the yoga of meditation. Recently on social media, yoga has been labeled as demonic.

Some Christian accounts on TikTok are claiming that practicing yoga poses will lead to having nightmares or worshiping demons because yoga is a Hindu practice. People believe that yoga is a Hindu practice since it originated from Hinduism. However, yoga doesn’t adhere to a particular religion or community. Yoga can be practiced amongst everyone in different ways. 

Yoga student Satya White is shocked that people claim that yoga is satanic. “I think it is really odd that people believe that yoga is satanic especially when they haven’t researched it. I’ve grown up doing yoga and I have bever had any negative experiences with it. If people are opposed to Yoga, then they don’t have to practice it”, White stated. 

Accounts such as @kimberlychurches are also throwing subtle racism into their statements. When declaring that yoga is a demonic practice, people often start by bashing Hindu gods and stating that they are “demons”. 

Yoga is commonly used to improve health and help people have more awareness of their minds and body. “As an athlete, I practiced yoga more often when I was in recovery from an injury. All I had done was simple asanas and it’s shocking that people believe that yoga is harmful because it helped me gain more stabilization and mobility”, White stated. 

People believe that different poses that have been westernized, such as “butterfly pose” are not okay to do because they will summon demons and serpents. Yoga teacher Seema Patel thinks that the claims made by some people are very hypocritical. 

“Yoga has been westernized for so many years and Americans have started doing it because it was a trend. They thought it was just a form of exercise and didn’t know the true meaning of yoga. Now, Christian Americans are making up their own meanings of yoga that aren’t based on scientific facts”, Patel said.

The word yoga means union and connects your consciousness with the universe so that there is harmony within the mind and body. There are different types of yoga that are practiced by Hindus such as Bhakti yoga where people can recite prayers. However, just because something comes from a different religion or part of the world doesn’t mean it should be unacceptable. Many things we use in our daily lives are from other faiths and countries. Yoga can bring unity within people by helping people have unity within themselves first.