Book explores ‘darkness’ of yoga

Author Linda Carl warns that it is easy to enter into the “darkness” of yoga because its terminology and actions can be “confusing or misleading.”

A book by a certified yoga instructor explores the “darkness” behind the practice of yoga and the many “misconceptions” of the practice for Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

Linda Carl spoke about the dangers of yoga and her newest book, “Yoga Unveiled: My Spiritual Journey from Darkness to Light,” at a May 11 discussion at the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C.

As a stay-at-home mom, Carl began to take yoga classes and eventually became a certified instructor. The practice led her into the chakras and Reiki, which “are New Age modalities” that claim to be energy healing techniques.

For nearly 20 years, much of Carl’s life revolved around yoga and other New Age philosophies. She taught yoga, practiced it, and promoted it, but after prayer and discernment, and an encounter with the devil, Carl said she left the practice entirely.

“I got swooped into the seduction, and it wasnʼt until I fully removed myself from yoga that I was able to even begin to understand what I was deeply involved in,” Carl said.

Yoga is “a fairly controversial issue, so I think when we armor ourselves, or when we arm ourselves with information, that helps us tell the truth,” Carl said. “Even priests and religious donʼt necessarily know or understand … yogaʼs dangers.”

In order to “arm” people, Carl drew from years of research, personal experience, Scripture, and the words of Hindu teachers themselves to write her book. The book explores how yoga’s postures, mantras, breathing practices, and techniques are not neutral but are acts of devotion to other gods.

The book draws “a side-by-side comparison … of what yoga beliefs are and what Christian or Catholic beliefs are, and theyʼre very, very different,” Carl said.

What is yoga?

While many people practice and recommend yoga, Carl said many donʼt know exactly what it is or the meaning behind it. She posed the questions: “What is yoga?” and “Where did it come from?”

“Yoga is done in the language of Sanskrit,” she said. In Sanskrit, “yoga actually means to yoke or to unite. So what youʼre yoking to is not the Judeo-Christian God but the Hindu god Brahman. Brahman is their main god.”

“Itʼs not the God revealed in the Bible. And Scripture cautions us not to be yoked to unbelievers. Christians, on the other hand, yoke to Christ,” she said.

“Yoga is actually a Hindu spirituality, which makes it an occult practice, and anything of the occult opens the door to Satan and evil spirits,” she said. “We learned in the very beginning of the Bible that in the garden, Satan was present but hidden. Itʼs really no different in yoga.”

“Yoga is not really what most people think,” Carl said. There are “four major Hindu scriptures, and … one of them, the Vedas, provides all liturgical sequences for their worship, and yoga is in there. So yoga is essentially a worship of their gods.”

“The moves that were created through this liturgical process were intended to honor and venerate Hindu gods and to adore them,” she said. “And we know that Hindu gods are not real. We know that demons hide behind Hindu gods. So yoga, through its practice, through doing it, youʼre opening a door to those demonic entities that hide behind,” Carl said.

Yoga is also “a gateway to the New Age,” including “crystals, numerology, astrology, channeling,” Carl said. “The New Age is an ideology that essentially replaces religion, which essentially replaces God.”

Yoga ‘misleading’ Christians

Carl warned that it is easy to enter into the darkness of yoga because terminology and actions can be “confusing or misleading.”

“When I would go to my teacher trainings, we learned everything in Sanskrit — the postures, the invocations,“ she said. Often in the trainings, ”nobody takes the time to tell you what the translation is or to tell you what it means.”

She gave the example of breaking in yoga, which is “an important component.”

“Itʼs called Ujjayi breath. Ujjayi means snake,” Carl said. “We were never told that. So the first type of yoga that I practiced was Kundalini. Kundalini is one of the most dangerous types of yoga. Kundalini is said to be an energy that resides at the base of your spine in the form of a serpent. We know who the serpent is, right?”

Carl further discussed a book she read on Kundalini that “talks about G-O-D,” which she believed to mean God. Carl said: “Well, itʼs generator, oppressor, and destroyer, and those are three main Hindu gods, and those are what they do. So itʼs not God as we know, itʼs a different god.”

“In yoga, they talk about the universe,” Carl said. “But thatʼs not God. People mistake the universe with God. God created the universe, but God is not the universe.”

In training they also “talk about the spirit,” Carl said. “Well, itʼs the snake spirit, not the Holy Spirit … So these kinds of things become confusing or misleading to people who are not well catechized.”

“Spirituality has to be tethered to something, and if itʼs not tethered to God, then itʼs tethered to something not of God, and thatʼs where the dangers come in,” Carl said. “So we have to be really careful when we think about that. As Catholics, we know and we believe that everything comes from God. God is the source of all, everything, all good, all challenges in our life.”