Specifically, the priest claims that such practices could cause risk to one’s “spiritual health,” and those who take part in yoga could open themselves to “Satan and the Fallen Angels.” Yoga could lead to the “Kingdom of Darkness,” according to the father.
“Pope Francis said ‘do not seek spiritual answers in yoga classes’. Yoga is certainly a risk. There’s the spiritual health risk,” he told the Derry Journal. “I’m not saying everyone gets it, or that it happens every time, and people may well be doing yoga harmlessly,” Colhoun said. “But there’s always a risk and that’s why the Pope mentioned it and that’s why we talk about that in terms of the danger of the new age movement and the danger of the occult today. That’s the fear.”
He added that when someone practices customs from outside the “Christian domain”, you can never be certain of what you will expose yourself to. Colhoun’s strange statements are only the latest in a series of similar claims by other priests. Gabriele Amorth, chief exorcist of the Vatican, had said back in 2011 that the practice of yoga is satanic, and could lead one into believing in Hinduism, much like reading J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter series would, according to him. Pope Benedict XVI had also warned of creating a cult of the body, if one practiced yoga, Zen and other forms of meditation. He had made these claims in the1980s, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, before he became Pope.
Not everyone is taking the priest’s statements seriously though. Evelyn Donnelly, a self-described good practicing Catholic, and a yoga teacher with 15 years experience says students come to her to “learn good posture and breathing to help them with tension in their bodies and to help calm a busy mind. In all the time I have been teaching, not one person has ever expressed an interest going deeper into the spiritual elements of yoga,” she added.
