I wonder how many yoga cults there are as a lot of the teaching and what we’re doing feels a bit cult like.

We’re being taught a lot of things about the philosophy of yoga but most of it is very akin to the type of things people were told years ago to explain functions we see externally of the body because people weren’t able to see inside or didn’t understand the different processes at the time.

We’ve been being taught about chakras and nadis and koshas all of which aren’t visible but are apparently real none the less. We’re given no reason for that belief though, they just are.

I do believe that our bodies are capable of a lot more than we use them for most of the time which is part of the reason why I do have an interest in learning more about yoga but the ways in which it is being explained that our bodies are capable of more, or how we can activate that capability is for me akin to someone having looked at the body from the outside years ago and then made up a story about how it all works inside. No justification is given other than, well that explains why x happens.

For example, we were told the other day that we have a certain number of breaths in our life. The justification being well dogs and other animals breath faster and they have shorter lives. Yoga teaches us to control our breathing therefore we will live longer if we become a yogi in the sense of dedicating our lives to meditation.

I then asked how old the oldest yogi therefore is, as surely if the theory is true they’ll live much longer than any average person, only to be told the yogis will have died before that point anyway so their soul can be reunited with the supreme being.

Oh ok then. Silly me, I’ll just believe it then.

Which is what most people seems to be doing though. They’re sitting nodding along saying they can feel this energy or that as we chant to some undefined supreme being making it feel more like a cult by the day.