Fr. Tom's Address to CPY Community
In July 2020, a small group of teachers within the CPY network gathered online for yoga, prayers and community. This address by Fr. Tom Ryan followed a morning of yoga and body prayer. His teaching here is foundational for all Christians who practice yoga. If you’d like to learn about future gatherings or event, please subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on social media. (Facebook, Instagram). Or reach out and introduce yourself.
We offer the video, audio-only download and transcript for you below.
“We have no desire whatsoever here to Christianize yoga, but to live a holistic Christian spirituality and benefit from practices that contribute to it.”
“Our bodies have a role in our prayer. They express the attitudes of the heart, thoughts of the mind and enable us to go to God the way God came to us: in and through our body.”
TRANSCRIPT
(00:06):
Are your feelings about your body more positive or less? How does that compare to past periods of your life? Well, there are some key points of reference in Christian faith that indicate why a spiritual practice that gives a substantial role to the body should make good sense to us Christians. And the first of course would be what we celebrate at Christmas time. The influx of God, God becomes one of us, flesh and blood eating and drinking, working, and resting, suffering, and dying. And when in his lifetime we see Jesus transfigured above Mount Tabor; He is not only fulfilling the law and the prophets, but he is giving us a foretaste of what awaits us in our own bodies, which will be transfigured in the kingdom of God.
(01:49):
And at the end of his life, Easter, we call it, we celebrate the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the bodily resurrection of Jesus. And then 40 days after Easter, we have the feast of the Ascension in which Christ now takes his transfigured and glorified, embodied nature into the very life of the Godhead; takes that into the very life of the Godhead -- a foreshadowing again of our own future. And then just 10 days later on our liturgical calendars is the feast of Pentecost. The very life of God, namely the Holy spirit, is poured out into the human vessels of Jesus’ followers. The very life of God is poured out into the human vessels of Jesus’ followers.
(03:21):
So, our biblical verses just read from one Corinthians, “Do you not know that your bodies are the temples of the Holy spirit…then glorify God in your bodies” In short, salvation doesn't mean getting out of this skin, but being transfigured and glorified in it. You might say, considering these major feasts in our calendar, that we Christians have the highest theological evaluation of the body amongst all the religions of the world. But historically we Christians have actually given little attention to the role of the body in the spiritual life. You might say we have high theology, but low practice.
(04:40):
We need some help here. And that's where dialogue in our time with other world religions has been helpful to us, provided us with some helpful spiritual practices. That said, we want to be clear that yoga itself is not a religion. It is a science and a spiritual practice that is helping people of all religions --all religions-- to advance towards greater realization of their human potential. So we have no desire whatsoever here to Christianize yoga, but to live a holistic Christian spirituality and benefit from practices that contribute to it. How yoga can make a positive contribution to our prayer lives you is something we have been experiencing; just moments ago (practices) led by Jody, and early on by Cindy and by Don: how yoga can make a contribution to our prayer lives.
(06:20):
Oftentimes we just think of prayer or something we do in our minds, right? Something we do with our brains. But our bodies have a very real contribution to make to our prayer. They express the attitude, the feelings of the heart and the mind. When I went to India for a three month study sabbatical in 1991, of other religions, I first stayed at the ashram of Shantivanam in South India, a Christian Ashram led by Father Bede Griffiths, a Benedictine. And I had heard, hither and yon, before coming in to India, that, from people who knew I was a regular daily meditator, “did you ever hear that yoga was originally designed to help people meditate better?” Well, no, I said. I hadn't. But if that's true, if I ever get a chance to check that out, I will do it. And then came my chance at the Ashram of Shantivanam in India to check it out, because twice daily, the whole community met in meditation and that period of meditation was preceeded by a session of yoga.
(07:57):
Well, it didn't take but two or three days there for me to realize that by sitting in quiet meditation after a practice of yoga left me feeling more quiet, more peaceful, with a calmer body, then I normally feel in meditation. And I thought, what is going on here? I want to understand the effects of yoga better. I am feeling them in real time. And I continue to avail myself of yoga practice throughout my time in India. And it was motivating for me. When I got back, I decided I wanted to deepen my knowledge and understanding by becoming a yoga instructor and went to the Kripalu spiritual Institute in Western Massachusetts for my yoga teacher training. And as Patanjali, who lived somewhere between the second and the fifth centuries of the common era, and who wrote the yoga sutras, says in the sutras: the purpose of Hatha yoga is to still the thought waves of the mind, to still the thought waves of the mind, and to relieve tension and stress from the body.
(09:37):
I had experienced that to be exactly what it did in my time at Shantivanam Ashram, meditating after our yoga practice. Yoga also teaches us to give our bodies a role in our prayer via the postures. You know, when we want to praise God, we generally stand, don't we? Sometimes even raise our hands and arms. And when we want to, out of a repentant spirit, ask for forgiveness, we normally kneel, don’t we? And when we want to simply pay attention to a homily, for example, we generally sit and listen. In other words, our bodies have a role in our prayer. They express the attitudes of the heart, thoughts of the mind and enable us to go to God the way God came to us: in and through our body.
(10:51):
They give us a way, these postures, of creating some prayers of our own. And thus we have created posture flows. Posture flows support us in going to God, the way God came to us, in and through a body. In Christian spirituality today, our whole existence is lived under the influence of the Holy spirit. What happens in the body effects the mind, doesn't it? If you eat too much, for example, after that meal, you won't sit down to undertake a writing project that will require a lively creative imagination, because your mind is feeling a little weighed down by all that's in your body.
(12:02):
Or if you shared a wonderfully energizing, engaging conversation with someone that is really stimulated your mind and energized you, when it's over and the sun is shining, you look out the window, what do you feel inclined to do? What's just happened for your mind, in that renewing conversation you had, now you want to just go outside and have an energizing walk. Your body wants to express the state of your mind, which is feeling renewed, energized, and enlivened with new, fresh insight from this person you've just had a wonderful conversation with. In other words, what happens in the body effects the mind, what happens in the mind effects of body, because we are an embodied spirit, one whole being, and our spiritual growth and human growth partake of the same reality.
(13:14):
Just look at the material, sensual places where we meet God. For example, through water, which we've just had some time celebrating this morning. The water of baptism is where we receive the very life of God. We receive it through oil in our baptism as well. And in our confirmation it is rubbed on our heads. It's rubbed in the body of someone who is sick, perhaps even dying. It's a medium of our encounter with the life of God. And then of course, there is bread and there's wine that we partake of at the very table of the Lord.
(14:23):
Again, our spiritual growth and our human growth partake of the same reality. All we need to do is look at material, the sensual places where we meet God. They're very earthy aren’t they? Bread, wine, water, oil, and God's incarnational presence continues. The body of believers doesn't replace Christ's body. Doesn't replace it. As Paul says, we are Christ’s body. As we heard in that first reading or that little reading we did from one Corinthians again, “glorify God then in your bodies.” Not glorify your body, but glorify God in your body, through your body, with your body. And as Christ once did, so the church now makes every effort to do. And what he did was expressed in what he gave us as the two greatest commandments. Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength. That's a pretty holistic expression, isn't it? Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength: implies the body. And second greatest commandment love your neighbor as yourself.
(16:16):
In other words, God became flesh and is now identified with our embodied spirit. And we are not burdened, but gifted with embodied being. How can we celebrate that? Well, I don't know about you, but I celebrate it in the beginning of each day. I start off my day after rising from bed and sleep with about well, 15, 20 minutes of just waking up my body through a series of yoga warm-up postures. And then another 15, 20 minutes praying, putting on the music, and praying through three or four yoga prayers. In other words, yoga posture flows to music. Those of you who are familiar with my DVD, Yoga Prayer, know what I'm talking about here.
(17:44):
And over the years, I've developed about 35 of those yoga postures, to different hymns and songs. And I just move through them day after day, after that period of warmup. Waking up to the day to the whole of my being body, mind, heart, and spirit with several yoga prayers, and then just lie back for a couple of minutes and relax, and then come into that seated position to simply soak in the presence of God with 20 to 25 minutes of seated meditation. As you can see, our bodies have a significant role to play for us in our communion with the Lord. To carry the life of God in our bodies is both a gift and a responsibility.
(18:57):
The Holy Spirit's call within us is to use our bodies for responsible living, in our work, in our prayer, in our devotions, in our play, in our study, in all that we do before God. And when our central intent is opening to God's presence through the use of our bodies, whatever we do with them then becomes a form of prayer. Let me just close this reflection with a poem prayer.
The poem is titled “Blessing” (Poem by Jan Richardson)
<Blessing the Body>
This blessing takes
one look at you
and all it can say is
holy.
Holy hands.
Holy face.
Holy feet.
Holy everything
in between.
Holy even in pain.
Holy even when weary.
In brokenness, holy.
In shame, holy still.
Holy in delight.
Holy in distress.
Holy when being born.
Holy when we lay it down
at the hour of our death.
So, friend, open your eyes
(holy eyes).
For one moment
see what this blessing sees,
this blessing that knows
how you have been formed
and knit together
in wonder and
in love.
Welcome this blessing
That folds its hands
in prayer
when it meets you;
receive this blessing
that wants to kneel
in reverence
before you:
you who are temple,
sanctuary,
home for God
in this world.
