“Rather a sad statement. Shows a complete lack of appreciation of what is the essence of yoga- the spiritual side. If it is only the physical side that concerns one, one is better off as a contortionist.”
People are free to do whatever exercise they want - asana or contortionist.
Sarvamangala, you are confusing a lot of things here;
The real appropiation is done by the Christian yogis and the Kaballah yogis who take a lot from Hindu philosophy, but give it an abrahamic coating. This behavior is very common in the history of the abrahamic relgions, Christianity in particular. Everytime they went on a mission of conversion, they adopted the local customs and integrated them into Christianity. You can see this in african and native american groups who have become Christian. They have kept a lot of their original animistic aspects of their old religions.
The African and Native groups had Christianity forced upon them. They wanted to continue practicing their original religious customs so they continued to do so under a vaneer of Christianity in order to satisfy their Christian colonial masters. That way they were able to fool them into believing that they had completely given up their previous ways.
The new agers who do chakra stuff in order to attain “Christ consciousness” are not traditional Christians and would not call themselves as such nor would they be accepted as anything less than heretics by many Christians who consider themselves “traditionalists” today.
Christ consciousness is synonomous with Buddha consciousness or Shiva consciousness to these folks and they openly talk about how Jesus travelled to India and learned from yogis there. They are not at all unfavorable to India, Hindus or Hinduism.
There is currently a global consciousness of moving towards a “oneness” with humanity and seeing the similarities between cultures and religions while also respecting the differences.
If one wants to remain mired in a sectarian mindset that sees no similarities whatsoever with any other sect, religion or culture, one can do that too. But don’t expect people with a more universal approach to follow suit.
