DISPATCH #20
Revealing the True Nature of Mindfulness , Meditation, and Yoga
January 17, 2020
A short while past a prominent Seventh-day Adventists TV channel carried an hour long program wherein a US Airforce psychologists was interviewed who spoke of “mindfulness meditation” in a promotional manner. The psychologist stated that the mindfulness practice in the Air Force would be joined with Eastern style meditation and yoga. A member of the leadership team of the Health and Spirituality Research Network contacted a member of the Health Ministries Department of the General Conference who in turn spoke with the individual who manages the programs of this TV channel. The showing of this program was done in innocence due to lack of a full understanding of the spiritual danger involved in these practices. I am aware of other SDA institutions who have likewise accepted yoga practice as a wholesome endeavor.
It is obvious that a realistic understanding of the spiritual nature and danger of these practices is not appreciated as it should be. Therefore this Dispatch # 20 is presented to increase our understanding of these Eastern Pantheistic spiritual practices. So often there is the belief that mindfulness, Eastern meditation, and yoga and other healing practices can be separated from their pagan roots to be a benefit, but that is not true.
This dispatch will consist of two parts: 1) Correspondence recently shared with individuals who hold the belief that all religious connection can be removed from such practices. 2) A link to Yip Kok Tho’s web site which in turn has links to three recently updated presentations on mindfulness and yoga which reveal the true nature and spiritual dangers involved.
This is such an important subject and so necessary to bring a clear understanding to more people in the Christian faith that the Network Team recommends that each member forward this dispatch to many additional people. Also for anyone who receives the dispatch to continue forwarding. Thank you for your joining us in this important endeavor.
Edwin Noyes M.D. Coordinator
See attachments below:
Just Exercise? Former Yogi Says Spiritual Effects of Yoga Occur Spontaneously
Posted on April 7, 2014 by SBrinkmann
This guest blog has been written by Connie J. Fait, a former Tibetan nun, yogi, and head of a Tibetan Buddhist Temple who spent 40 years steeped in the practice and study of the yogic traditions before returning to her native Catholicism. In this blog, she carefully explains why the effects of yoga can occur whether or not we will it or think we’re “just doing the exercises.”
I had forty years of knowledge and experience in the Yogic Traditions before returning to the Catholic Church. It is in true charity that I offer this.
Over the past 30-40 years we in the west have been introduced to a lot of eastern traditions, in healing arts like acupuncture, martial arts, meditation traditions and yoga asanas (postures). We have grown accustomed to their presence and many of us have participated in them without knowing much about their spiritual origins. The following has been gathered from traditional teachers of Yogic Tradition, and is only referring to the practice of yoga asanas being done alone without any additional spiritual practices or meditation.
Yoga asanas are not exercise as westerners would like to believe. I will use common language to explain yogic teachings concerning the practice of Yoga asanas and provide a few foot notes for those who want to read more from reference materials.
The knowledge of the Yogic Tradition is deeply hidden in mystery, and only understood by accomplished yogis who have passed on those secrets orally to one another for 5000 years. Yoga asanas are recognized as the main tool to realizing these secrets and is accomplished only through a process of experience. Anyone who is doing yoga asanas is in that same process – whether or not they are aware of it or intend it.
Let me explain.
The Yoga asanas are the basis for the theology of Hinduism. In the beginning, the first recluse yogis sat yearning for union with their believed creator Brahman. While sitting in mystical altered states, they began experiencing the spontaneous movements called kriyas, which later became the asanas we know today. While perfecting these asanas, yogis would experience high meditative states during which they experienced gods and deities who appeared to them, moving their bodies into postures/kriyas, and so created the names of some yoga poses as gods or deities.
Iyengar Yogacharia, believes that only two forms of the 8 limbs of yoga are necessary for accomplishing the goal of all yoga: the asanas, the stretches and poses; and pranayama the controlled breathing.
The well known Yogacharia who has taught people of the west, has made clear that if performed well, asanas will bring about a spontaneous pranayama response in the body. In other words, the breathing aspect of yoga need not be taught in a class because it occurs naturally with perfection of the asanas.(1) Essentially the point made is the asanas are the main limb according to Iyengar, with pranayama as second and will occur on its own with perfection of the asanas.
Meditation is never taught as it is also a result of the perfection of the asanas and alleged prana moving in the body, which leads to experiencing the meditative states and eventually ultimate Union with Brahman, gods and deities, or demons.
It is important for those who love to do yoga asanas because they believe it’s only exercise to understand what they are involved with. In their zealous quest for perfection of these poses, it will be just a matter of time before the pranayama aspect will spontaneously occur without ever actually being taught it.
Pranayama is the spiritual aspect of yoga. It is hidden, unseen by normal vision and occurs as a result of doing the asanas. Everyone experiences pranayama during the asanas poses to some greater or lesser degree. This is why the spiritual aspect of yoga, which is experienced through the prana, can never be separated from the asanas, no matter who you pray to.
When the pranayama aspect starts to occur it is the beginning of the spiritual yogic induction for people practicing asanas. Some of the most frequent troubling signs that can occur when experiencing pranayama are: physical blockages resulting in undiagnosable pain, sometime debilitating; intense body heat; loss of normal life activities; mental/emotional disturbances; and psychotic breaks. These are just some of the signs of kundalini activation.
What is so frightening about this is that no one, especially not the one who is doing the asanas, has any idea of what’s causing their symptoms when in crisis. A very common form of yoga asanas known as Hatha Yoga is in the top six yoga forms known to facilitate kundalini. All people will experience some of these – it’s just a matter of when.
The yoga instructors in the west are not traditionally yogically trained because that requires complete renunciation to the yogic tradition – meaning they would be expected to detach from all worldly possessions. Most instructors in the West receive a 200 hour yoga instructor certification, and are not qualified or knowledgeable to teach the mystical esoteric teachings or theology of yoga. This does not mean a class is safe from these harmful effects however; it just means that the instructors will not able to recognize the signs of kundalini activation or to be able to support someone in crisis.
In the mystical occult teachings of yoga it is the stretching poses which open the subtle body to activate the kundalini. Other poses will induce levels of meditation states which open one up to unite with Hindu deities.
Iyengar Yogacharia said, the ‘mere’ practice of asana has the potential to induce a meditative state.(2) This spontaneously occurs based on each unique individual and can happen at any unpredictable time from early in practice for a novice to one who is very advanced.
In conclusion, since all effects of yoga asanas are not a personally willed experience, they only occur spontaneously. Clearly, the willful act to practice any of the asanas is predictably dangerous for ones body, mind and soul.
For most people this information is not completely unknown except in innocent children being taught poses. As Jesus commanded, we are not to have anything to do with any part of these traditions for fear of not entering the kingdom of God. It is difficult for Christians to turn completely away from Yoga asanas for many complex reasons. It will take informed knowledge, self conviction, humility, and the power of Gods grace.
(1) http://www.bksiyengar.com/iyengaryoga.htm
(2) http://www.bksiyengar.com/iyengaryogmed.htm
Connie recommends these excellent safe alternative to yoga asanas: Stretching Exercises:
http://www.sportsinjuryclinic.net/rehabilitation-exercises/stretching-exercises
http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/fitness/multimedia/stretching/sls-20076840
Posted in New Age, Yoga | Tagged asanas, Connie J. Fait, pranayama
– See more at: http://www.womenofgrace.com/blog/?p=29077#sthash.360czamT.dpuf
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From General Conference Institution Manuel Guidelines 2009: (below)
Adventist health care and ministries are to promote only those practices based upon the Bible or the Spirit of Prophecy, or evidence based methods of disease prevention, treatment, and health maintenance.
“Evidence-based” means there is an accepted body of peer reviewed, statistically significant evidence that raises probability of effectiveness to a scientifically convincing level. Practices without a firm evidence-base and not based on the Bible or the Spirit of Prophecy, including though not limited to aromatherapy, cranial sacral therapy, homeopathy, hypnotherapy, iridology, magnets, methods aligning forces of energy (includes acupuncture, meditation, yoga) pendulum diagnostics, untested herbal remedies, reflexology, repetitive colonic irrigation, “therapeutic touch,” and urine therapy, should be discouraged.
Words in brackets added by Edwin Noyes as these are energy aligning practices.
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From Biblical Research Committee of Gen. Conf. 1987 paper on SDA’s and New Age Movement.
- The technique is neutral. It is argued that a holistic health practitioner may interpret its use in one manner; the Christian healer may interpret its use in another manner.
Our study of this subject concludes that a technique distinctively linked to an occult-mystical background cannot be treated as neutral. For example, no Christian can regard the Ouija board as neutral. This is a distinctive occult instrument that will always be linked with demonic powers of spiritism.
Psychometry and the use of the pendulum are other examples of distinctive occult procedures. Apart from an occult-mystical explanation they are irrational. They make sense only in the occult context. As admitted by their advocates, these methods are examples of psychic healing that can never be explained on a scientific basis. It takes a psychic or someone sensitive to developing psychic powers actually to achieve healing by these means.
Forms of meditation that alter consciousness are linked inseparably to Eastern mysticism. Can the Christian safely adopt these procedures by cutting away their roots? Those in the holistic health movement have observed: “There is often a change in one’s belief system that accompanies meditation—a change that reflects the assumptions of pantheistic theology underlying most of the proposed healing techniques” (Spiritual Counterfeits Project Journal, august 1978, 41, emphasis added).
We repeat an earlier observation: God explicitly forbad Israel to adopt the occult techniques of the pagan Canaanites (Deut. 18:9-14; Lev 19:26). Consequently we Adventist Christians function like a holistic healer by using techniques and therapies that are the distinctive property of the occult-mystic program. Nothing can prevent the demonic powers from intruding into the processes to affect either the practitioner, the patient, or both.
Duet. 12: 1-5 Even the names of the pagan worship places were to be destroyed.
Yoga is a pagan practice which is believed to be a means of attaining escape from reincarnation and reaching full godhood and on into Nirvana, spirit heaven.
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The book The Buddha Pill is a terrific book to recommend. It has a chapter on the adverse effects of yoga which is not reported in the thousands of articles promoting yoga.
From Yip Kok Tho January 2020
Dear SDA family,
It’s the new year 2020 and I have been counting my blessings.
The greatest blessing occurred 33 years ago when God pulled me out of Zen Buddhism into SDAism, providentially the only faith which has that clear and specific message against pantheistic spiritualism.
In the last 4 years, I have had the opportunity of presenting this truth against eastern meditation in all its myriad of hybridized forms including false Christian meditation and Mindfulness.
I regard Mindfulness as the most dangerous of meditative practices because since US courts have mistakenly ruled it as not religious, it has been able to enter into medical and educational systems worldwide and into Christendom.
That Mindfulness is based on eastern meditation practices is a fact. The relevant question is “Can eastern beliefs and their pantheistic world view be removed from Mindfulness to make it secular?” It is scientifically verifiable that eastern meditation alters the brain and the mind to generate neural phenomena that is neurally experienced as discovering God within. This experience is not the Christian experience of Biblical conversion by the God of Heaven but of following in the ritual of eastern meditative practices that generate within the meditator’s own brain the sensation of discovering divinity which they presume was there from birth. This is done in silence without words. Hence, it is not possible by eliminating religious words from Buddhism and Hinduism that a secular form called Mindfulness can be developed because the religious spiritual worldview is generated directly within the meditator’s own brain. This fact is clearly presented in my 2nd video below.
I have upgraded the screen format and content of my previous 3 videos on my website. Now, the second video includes material on Mindfulness which is based on Zen and Hatha Yoga. If you find that the videos are compelling and suitable for distribution, please forward it to your friends. http://www.meditation-mindyourbrain.com/
Have a blessed New Year