Yoga: A Window to Embodied Theology and Spirituality
A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444). This special issue belongs to the section "Religions and Health/Psychology/Social Sciences".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 February 2022) | Viewed by 11496
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
While many Christian churches are emptying, yoga studios are filling up. Why? What does yoga offer that is lacking in church? Grappling with this question could provide guidance and insights for deepening understandings of embodied spirituality and embodied theology. This conversation could offer revisions for thinking about God with our attention to our bodies, enrich the practice of yoga, and offer churches possible venues for connecting with a broader range of participants.
Yoga is not merely a science of exercises that strengthen the muscles of the body and increase flexibility and range of motion. While it does provide these and other health benefits, yoga, at heart, is an ancient science, art, and practice of embodied spirituality. Some 2000 years ago, Patanjali recorded threads of wisdom for alleviating suffering and realizing joy and freedom. In the Yoga Sutras, he defines yoga as the stilling of the fluctuations of thinking and calming the disturbances of mind. There are eight limbs, which include ethical principles and personal disciplines as well as physical and breathing exercises, along with mental and spiritual practices toward meditation and prayer. Yoga is nonsectarian, and its tools and techniques can be used toward deepening integrated spiritual unity and wholeness in a variety of worldviews and religious traditions.
Christian theology, on the other hand, has had an ambiguous relationship with the body. While Christianity claims that Jesus’s incarnation, physical suffering, and bodily resurrection are at the heart of its theology, it has a checkered history of viewing the human body in positive ways in its formulations as well as in its common practices.
This is a significant flaw in many historical and current theological formulations. There have been a variety of approaches toward amelioration of this issue from varied perspectives and traditions, including the Roman Catholic “Body Theology”, and Open Theist Evangelical John Sanders’ Theology in the Flesh, as well as many feminist and womanist theologians, such as Carol Christ, Rosemary Radford Ruether, and Kelly Douglas, as well as Anthony Pinn’s excellent work on embodiment and Black theology. Nevertheless, few have had a sustained dialogue with the philosophy, theology, and practice of Yoga with an eye toward how Yoga might help theology and philosophy to consider the self as an embodied whole.
The question I pose is the following: In what ways can yoga provide insights, tools, and practices as well as an example, and even as a paradigm, for embodied, integrated spirituality and an embodied, integrated theology to match?
Proposals for essays addressing this issue are welcome. Areas of focus might include embodied theology for embodied spirituality; practical theology of breath and spirit; trauma, yoga, and theology; and other creative approaches.
Dr. Helene T. Russell
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- Yoga
- Theology
- Embodiment
- Body
- Spirituality
- Well-being