Wednesday, March 26, 2003


buy shoes, get lattes

so-called "affiliate" credit cards have long been a factor in the u.s.a. get a special card with a logo for some cause or organization and get a donation to the charity based on what you charge, or for airline affiliate cards, get frequent flier miles.

with this in mind, starbucks is beginning an affiliate card all its own. "in addition to allowing customers to charge purchases as usual, customers will receive a rebate based on their monthly spending -- which is automatically credited to their card for buying lattes, coffee beans and other products at starbucks stores."

this is a stroke of brilliance, much better than their current pre-paid card system, i think.

on another note, anti-yoga articles like this mystify me. the author clearly confuses yoga with hinduism; she does not see -- and her yoga instructor didn't seem to mention -- that any connection you may feel with any divinity while doing yoga is a personal connection with your own "still small voice" inside. whoever (or not) that may be for you.

if the author had just found yoga boring, hey, that's different. . .i mean, the yoga teacher isn't forcing durga or anything upon you. to feel, as the author does, that touching your toes and doing basically some push-ups is leading her to worship the sun seems rather to me like saying, "well, if i pray with a string of beads, i must be catholic."

when in fact several religions use beads as part of the personal prayer ritual. it's not the beads per se that make you one religion or another, but what or to whom you're praying. . .how you've directed yourself, not the outward form alone. . .

this continual confusion of yoga with hinduism is becoming a problem, i think. many under-educated yoga teachers mistakenly foster this association. we can't deny that yoga came to us in the west from an indian cultural context. but that doesn't mean it is inseparable from that context. yoga really is for everyone.

i wish more yoga authorities would speak clearly about yoga's pre-hindu roots, as professor of indology georg feuerstein has done. yoga is merely a means to consolidate your own authentic harmony, whatever that may be.

for the christian, that could be the experience of jesus. indeed, christian yoga is still a popular topic on amazon (here and here).

clearly yoga and christianity are not in some kind of struggle or opposition. for, as any student of st. theresa of avila, hildegard von bingen, or other classic christian mystic will tell you, the experiences of christian mysticism and those often attributed to yoga are often in alignment.

as st. theresa said: "christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours; yours are the eyes through which christ's compassion looks out on the world, yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good and yours are the hands with which he is to bless us now."

if you are christian, it seems to me that a meditative yoga practice would only serve to intensify your personal emotional experience of st. theresa's insight.

likewise, hildegard wrote: "the body is the garment of the soul and it is the soul which gives life to the voice. that's why the body must raise its voice in harmony with the soul for the praise of god . . . . for all the arts serving human desires and needs are derived from the breath that god sent into the human body."

thus a breath-focused yoga practice, with chanting and poses performed as moving meditation, would seem truly in the spirit of both these christian women. . .

but hey, even if buddha, oshun, or planck's constant speak more clearly to your heart, there's still a yoga practice you can create for your own benefit. . .

posted by fortune | 4:21 PM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 0 comments