In the news, parents of a school were taking the school to court to prevent yoga as a physical education class. They were stating that Yoga is a religion. They contend that as the school systems can not teach religion at the schools, yoga as a religion should not be practiced during school hours.

Yoga comes from the Sanskrit word yui which means to unite or join. To unite or join with what? Yoga helps you connect to your inner spirit (soul), which in my previous blog was said to be a part of God. In essence our  soul was once divine. Yoga is a technique to find this pure soul.

In the Tip of the Writing Brush, it is said that the universe is the body of God. Initially, as we are part of God, our souls were pure. But evils (greed, arrogance, and self love) thoughts have originated from our selfish minds and have contaminated our hearts. This state is said to lead to suffering.

It is this state of the pure heart, where there is only positive thoughts and positive energies that yoga helps us find. Inevitably when one reaches this state,  our sufferings disappears. Some  say that this focusing technique blocks the evils that originate from our minds, cleansing our thoughts and leading to a state of bless and joy. This is a state where we all want to be all the time.

But even if yoga helps us lessen our sufferings, how can we maintain this bless during our daily routines?  Is it practical to practice yoga in a middle of a meeting, or a stressful situation? My belief is that we can find the inner heart or our pure soul that yoga helps us unite with. If we consciously remove greed, arrogance, and self love from our minds, we can eventually reach the state of bless without yoga.

In summary, yoga is not a religion. It temporarily helps us find our innermost heart (divine). Some say it makes us one with God. The world can easily reach this state permanently by removing greed, arrogance, and self love from their minds.

Heaven’s Truth Church/Tenrikyo Church