Abstract
YOGA has historically posed a number of ethical and spiritual challenges for American evangelical Christians. Drawing from ethnographic research conducted among evangelical practitioners of Christian Yoga in the United States, this article argues that a distinctly Christianized form of modern postural yoga relies on the conceptual disentanglement of yoga from the Hindu tradition. I describe three strategies by which teachers and students of Christian Yoga articulate the relationship between yoga and Hinduism: (1) yoga as having mixed-up roots, (2) yoga as predating Hinduism, and (3) yoga as a gift to the West. This decontextualization of yoga from Hinduism fits within a larger historical trend in the West of labeling Eastern religious practices as universal spirituality.
Recommended Citation
Mernaugh Bergman, Leah
(2025)
"Disentangling Yoga: A Christian Take on a “Universal” Practice,"
Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies:
Vol. 37, Article 4.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.7825/2164-6279.1880
