Doggie Yoga...No Joke

RELIGION IN THE NEWS

Now Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media.This week’s item is from The Washington Post, April 1, 2008, with a headline:“Yoga for Dogs, No Joke,” the following are excerpts.When Ashley Storm wants to chill she does yoga, and when she wants to help her Labrador mix relax shehas Lokie join in, yes, a dog doing yoga, it’s called, “Doga.”People help their dogs into yoga poses and then rub or nuzzle them while the dogs stretch, or just hang out.They stretch naturally like we do when our yoga poses, says Storm, a yoga instructor and co-owner of Hot Yoga.It just feels good to them, it feels good to us, too. Doga is popular in New York City and London, England.In Doga poses the dogs look a lot like they do when they loll about and appear to be happy.It’sno coincidence, Storm says, that a common yoga stretch for people is called, “downward facing dog.”In the chair pose dogs sit on their hind legs with their front paws in the air while a person holds them from behind.In the chatter onga pose dogs lie on their abdomens while someone strokes their backs.In the savasona relaxation pose they lie on their backs while someone rubs their belly.Storm started doing Doga with Lokie about four years ago, shortly after a friend gave her a book about it.Lokie, a rescue dog who had been abused used to get so stressed out around strangers that she would shake, but after hanging around the yoga studio and doing Doga she seems far more relaxed and happy.Everyone says she’s a different dog, Storm says.

Tom:

Dave, there are so many ironies here.Those that you know and I know who are serious about Hinduism, their religion is being trashed here, as far as they are concerned. It’s been so commercialized.There’s no doubt about it that unless you took the idea that a dog had been formerly a person who is reincarnated as a dog, the whole idea of yoga to get you out of through a life span, get you moving up toward Brahman to Moksha, this is idiotic. Yet it’s very offensive.We talked earlier in the other segment about somebody offending somebody in another religion, this is an incredible offense.

Dave:

Tom, the whole idea of Westernizing yoga, that’s what they have done.First of all it is the heart of Hinduism, and the yoga instructors in America deny that.Oh no, this is not religion, its science.It was devised, (as you inferred a few minutes ago), as a means of escaping time, sense and the elements, from this world of illusion, and to achieve unity with Brahman the universe, the universal mind, or whatever.This is what it’s designed for.Yoga was not designed for relaxation, it was not designed to help your dog, for sure, but this is very serious stuff.It’s designed to reach an altered state of consciousness, where you then get in touch with the Hindu deities. That is Hindu demons, and this is why the real yoga books from India, they warn you, you could awaken the kundalini at any moment.Kundalini is like a serpent coiled three and a half times at the base of your spine.When you reach that trigger point—Bingo!It leaps up, spreads through the chakras, the force centers, and so forth, and therefore the real gurus and yogis say you’ve got to have someone with you, you’ve got to have someone more advance in this with you because you could totally freak out!

Tom:

Dave, let alone your dog going berserk on you.But seriously, we have a mutual friend who grew up in Poona, India, and she’s shocked.She’s lived in England as well, she’s English, and she says that when she was living in Poona, no one did yoga until they were elderly, because they were getting ready for that next rebirth, and so on.So, it was a process for dying, not for health and not for how we—you just can’t believe the many forms, or the application of the title yoga, how it is being applied today.There’s body sculpting yoga, we have a major in the Medical Corp in Iraq and she’s doing yoga with the troops, this is yoga for peace.I mean, Dave, this is insanity!

Dave:

It is.

Tom:

Not that we agree that yoga is a legitimate way to their claims, it’s a way to peace, and so on.So, we are not agreeing with yoga, but we are saying that here’s a religion, we believe it’s a false religion, nevertheless people are serious, they are being offended by this.

Dave:

Well, if you are a real guru and a real yogi, you practice the real yoga, you definitely get offended at the commercialization.Many of these people over here, they don’t even know what yoga is.They’ve never been to India, they’ve never had an initiation into kundalini.They are just comercializers of a spiritual practice, and that offends the real yogi, the real guru.

Tom:

Dave, could this commercialization, does it still open you up to what we know and what the yogis claim could be demonic influence?

Dave:

It could, depending upon what variety of it is, there are many different varieties out there.

Tom:

Well, we mentioned the Dalai Lama initiating people into kalachakra tantric yoga.

Dave:

Tantric yoga is the sexual yoga.But Tom, they are all aiming for the kundalini.That gives you the psychic powers, this is the ultimate goal of yoga, and it brings you into union with the universe.