Danielle’s journey out of yoga

I’ve always had an interest in yoga and practiced it off and on for several years, but never something consistent. In 2018 I decided to start back in classes and I even started teaching yoga in January of 2019. Little by little I started taking multiple trainings in yoga and then expanded my training to PiYo, Barre, Personal Training, etc. I fell in love with all of it. Then in the winter of 2021, God asked me to stop teaching yoga. 

I found it a little confusing as to why God would call me into yoga just to call me away from it. I’ve learned through the last year that He did this for many reasons. I think one was just a way to get me out of my comfort zone to teach in the first place. If God had called me to any other form of movement I don't know that I would have stepped into it. Yoga to me was peaceful, beautiful, and felt comfortable. The dim lighting, the quiet, the soft music - it all called to me.

During my time teaching I had followed the lead of many teachers around me - those I’d met in training and, of course, social media accounts had an influence. I would make promises of a better looking body, push self-care over everything else, encourage positive affirmations, giving a false sense of our own strength. I followed what the world around me was saying fitness was all about. I fell right in. Thankfully our God is patient and always has a plan.

Throughout my short time in the fitness world, God started revealing to me the darkness and selfishness of it all. He showed me that promises of a better body weren’t of Him and definitely not sustainable. He revealed that self-care in itself isn’t bad, but idols are easily created out of it. He led me to see that our positive affirmations should all point back to Him and who He says we are. These things weren’t all revealed at once, but little by little, in the perfect timing of God when He knew I could be open and receptive to it.

Then the big revelation came:

Yoga at its core is a spiritual practice that I needed to walk away from.

To say the least, this was unsettling to me. I had been teaching for 2 years and spent countless hours training and learning how to format yoga classes. I had shared how yoga was good for our mind, body and spirit. I defended yoga to those that shared it was a practice that Christians shouldn’t be doing. I would feel anger if someone said that yoga couldn’t be done by Christians (this in itself should’ve been a red flag). As long as my heart didn’t mean anything by it then yoga was fine.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” Jeremiah 17:9 ESV

I remember in classes I started feeling conviction for playing certain music, for using Sanskrit words and then finally for cueing certain postures. This happened slowly overtime and I began making the changes without fully understanding the why, just that God asked me to make them. I finally made the last change and quit teaching yoga altogether. 

I had come to realize that yoga is deeply rooted in spirituality and not of Jesus. Yoga isn’t just a physical practice like we’ve come to believe; there is so much more to it. Thankfully God is showing me that through other modalities of movement we can honor Him and take care of the body He has blessed us with. We can have the dim lighting, the quiet, the soft music and the peacefulness all rooted in Jesus.

If you’d like to know more of how God revealed this to me I’d love to chat. Feel free to reach out.