Prayer of Heart and Body: Meditation and Yoga As Christian Spiritual Practice

Rating:
Summary: Insightful, articulate Christian Review of Yoga
Review: As a Christian pastor who has found yoga helpful in my own physical and spiritual journey I have looked for something to help me discern the religious dynamics behind and or within yoga. Thomas Ryan's book is wise, clear, exceptionally well-writtten and uplifting as well. I love his chapter on How Yoga can help a Chrstian Pray. Ryan describes the way yoga works within our bodily systems in a way that makes what I have experienced for many years understandable for the first time. He also shows us how Christians can utilize the practice of yoga as a springboard to deeper levels of surrender and as Christians, to focus our surrender into the presence of God.
In the chapter, Notions Strange to Christian Ears, the author clarifies concepts connected with yoga and compares them to Christian beliefs in a very insightful way that I found immensely helpful. He explores the concepts of reincarnation, kundalini energy, chakras and astral bodies and contrasts them with Christian convictions about death and resurrection, and the goal of meditation-prayer for Christians: communion and even union with God.
Some Christians are afraid of Yoga, or condemnatory. I have always felt a l ittle unsettled because I did not understand how yoga and Christianity interfaced. I have a lot more to read in this wonderful book and am finding it perfect for my search.
Ryan also offers insights that I find immensely helpful in my own spiritual practice: like cues during the day that can call me to take an idle moment and focus it in some deep prayerful breathing, times of tension or discouragement or tiredness or boredom that can be my moment to breath the Breath of Life again.
I have only read two chapters of this exceptional book and am stopping writing to go back to the delight of reading it. I invite you to give yourself a gift!

Rating:
Summary: Insightful, articulate Christian Review of Yoga
Review: As a Christian pastor who has found yoga helpful in my own physical and spiritual journey I have looked for something to help me discern the religious dynamics behind and or within yoga. Thomas Ryan's book is wise, clear, exceptionally well-writtten and uplifting as well. I love his chapter on How Yoga can help a Chrstian Pray. Ryan describes the way yoga works within our bodily systems in a way that makes what I have experienced for many years understandable for the first time. He also shows us how Christians can utilize the practice of yoga as a springboard to deeper levels of surrender and as Christians, to focus our surrender into the presence of God.
In the chapter, Notions Strange to Christian Ears, the author clarifies concepts connected with yoga and compares them to Christian beliefs in a very insightful way that I found immensely helpful. He explores the concepts of reincarnation, kundalini energy, chakras and astral bodies and contrasts them with Christian convictions about death and resurrection, and the goal of meditation-prayer for Christians: communion and even union with God.
Some Christians are afraid of Yoga, or condemnatory. I have always felt a l ittle unsettled because I did not understand how yoga and Christianity interfaced. I have a lot more to read in this wonderful book and am finding it perfect for my search.
Ryan also offers insights that I find immensely helpful in my own spiritual practice: like cues during the day that can call me to take an idle moment and focus it in some deep prayerful breathing, times of tension or discouragement or tiredness or boredom that can be my moment to breath the Breath of Life again.
I have only read two chapters of this exceptional book and am stopping writing to go back to the delight of reading it. I invite you to give yourself a gift!

Rating:
Summary: Useful and interesting
Review: I have been learning to do yoga for health reasons, to enhance both my physical strength and the body/mind connection in order to reduce the effects of fibromyalgia. I am interested in both the physical as well as the spiritual effects of yoga. Because I am a Christian, I have found it hard to use traditional yogic, primarily Kundalini chants, as they do not represent my religious views completely. This book has helped me to put my yoga practice together with my Christian beliefs, and to begin to explore and accept the mystical spirit of God in a new way. I recommend it to anyone who is on the same spiritual and health path.