Unity in Diversity: Yoga’s gift to the Ecumenical Community

Since its founding in 2001, CPY has been an ecumenical community, which promotes unity among different Christian traditions. Through CPY, I’ve encountered Christians from a broad range of traditions: Baptist, Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, Orthodox, Presbyterian, United Church, Church of the Savior, and a variety of Free Church traditions. We are also in dialogue with other world religions and religious texts, including the Hindu faith and Yoga scriptures. It’s tricky territory to facilitate connections with people and ideas outside of our personal and limited version of the Christian faith while doing our best to serve all with respect and compassion. There are not a whole lot of people willing or even interested in sitting in the midst of all these tensions. Those of us with this niche passion can end up feeling lost and alone in our faith communities. Wandering around the internet, we each eventually stumbled upon CPY.

So, when we come together as a group to retreat, work, practice yoga, study and share our faith, the connection is often instant and overwhelmingly positive. We declare that we have found our people, those with a deep, generous, loving faith in Christ who honor and practice yoga to continually renew that faith. 

Then upon closer inspection, we begin to see differences. We come face-to-face with the reality of ecumenism: other followers of Christ, even within this tiny niche, express faith differently, in ways we are not always comfortable with. 

If you’ve ever attended a CPY retreat, you are acutely aware that seemingly small shifts in language and practice can lead to discomfort and anxiety; an unfamiliar practice might cause a shift from feeling “at home” to feeling alienated and alone (see Jennifer and Doreen’s story). Yoga asana, music, discussions, and worship services are each experienced and often judged through a single body’s experience: “too Catholic” for one is “too Protestant” for another. 

As yoga teachers, we are trained to make each class comfortable and safe. However, within a group of this nature, I am not convinced that creating a completely “comfortable” space is possible. Maybe it’s not even optimal. With Fr. Tom Ryan as a model, CPY offers a space where people can be safe to feel this discomfort and to recognize, love and accept it for what it is.

A Gift of Yoga 

One of the first teachings I encountered through yoga, a singular gift of this wisdom tradition, is that we are each walking, talking creatures of habit.  Yoga philosophy teaches that habits are how we cope with our life experiences, family, culture, race, abilities, shape, size, fears, and most especially our traumas. Habits create preferences, and over time we begin to believe these preferences are who we are. We cling to them for fear of losing ourselves. Yoga practices, such as asana and meditation, work to disentangle these preferences from our true self and put them in their proper place. On our mat, we willingly encounter the unfamiliar or challenging and observe the reaction of this creature we call “me,” seemingly hardwired from birth with opinions and preferences. We get curious. We train ourselves to follow the exhale as we sink into the quieter, deeper, fertile place inside of that creature, where these preferences are formed. We dig up a root from our past, hold it up to the light, and gaze at it with wonder. We get to know and to love a part of ourselves in a new way. Then we can sink even deeper to where these preferences don’t even exist. 

We all start small. Remember the first time you were asked to switch the clasp of your hands in a pose? Even as I try this now, it feels new and unfamiliar and inherently wrong. My body registers the sensation and forms an opinion before reason gets a fighting chance. If I dwell on it long enough, I might even add this to my identity. I am a left hand over right girl. But the yoga says: notice and believe the sensation of the moment, appreciate it for what it is, and let it go. This doesn’t define you. 

Before I studied yoga, I’d never thought about whether my perception of myself was “real.”  It never occurred to me that spiritual beliefs and the experience of God could be entangled with our habits. This aspect of the yoga practice is paramount to what comes next. Let’s head back to the retreat.

Yoga and the Spiritual Friendship

Here we are, surrounded by our people, a “left hand over right” kind of people. We relax for what feels like the first time in ages until the hairs on the back of our neck stand to alert us of danger.  Something new and unfamiliar is crossing our path. We encounter something that we judge as “bad” from someone we just judged as “good,” and we don’t know which judgment to trust. We are tempted to just leave, but the wisdom of yoga beckons us to come face-to-face with our creature and her preferences. Years of practice have prepared us. We know how to do this like we know how to breathe.

So if we are willing, we let ourselves sink into a quieter, deeper place inside of that creature we call “me.” We dig up and bring into the light the faith tradition, family, culture, life experience, fear and trauma buried deep inside our preferences. We observe. We soothe what needs to be soothed. From the safety and familiarity of our mat, we come to rediscover and accept what we buried, and love it in spite of what caused us to bury it in the first place. Then we sink even deeper.

I believe it is a rare privilege to experience spiritual friendship with people who hold different worldviews. This privilege demands we put the doctrine, dogma and creeds that hold together our own unique identity into its proper place. I don’t know how it would be possible to do this without yoga and meditation. At the “preference” level, the words of our faith can separate us. When we allow ourselves to observe, rediscover and love our faith traditions from a deeper place, we know unity. Here, dogma, doctrine and creeds still serve us, but the edges are less sharp, less material. Here, the gospel is not taken and held for our personal salvation; rather, we plunge into it day after day as our saving grace. It is at that depth, beyond language, that we are united. We live beyond yet enriched by our personal experience. It is from this place that we are privileged to be called sisters and brothers. 

The CPY Community

Through the practice of yoga, we come full circle to arrive at the heart of Christian contemplation: the intention to change ourselves. A contemplative life means living in and acting through that deeper place where we know unity. Here we can be of service to all. Unity never meant changing others’ minds, only our own, so we can come to a respectful common understanding. 

CPY strives to be a community that honors and supports this journey for each of us. CPY encourages and teaches practices that lead to a contemplative life, the gift of communing with God beyond words, thoughts, and feelings. When we free God from the preferences of our small self, we can embrace our creeds and identities alongside the freedom and wholeness of creation. 

Together, this is how we can carry out the  vision to heal the divides in our lives and in the world. This is what connects us and will bring us home.