“Practicing yoga doesn’t make you a Hindu”

Hinduism doesn’t require you to do anything or believe anything, so technically everyone is a Hindu.

Hindus are just scared and not proud , and they make the illusion that BE WHAT U WANT TO BE…

theyve been killed and bullied by muslims and christians way too long and just like humans evolved to survive the weather change, and to walk, lift, think…hindus have evolved to be scared and give in

Almost any practice can be spiritualized depending on the intent of the person practicing it. The issue with Yoga is that some people use it with spiritual intent and others use it just for exercise. To be fully non-religious, we should understand why we are doing each action and the reasoning behind each of the words we are using.

If we wanted Yoga to be fully “secularized”, we would probably need to do the following:

- Rename the “sun salutation” since this could be a reference sun worship
- Rename the “corpse” position, since this could be a reference to dying and ultimately ending samsara
- Remove the focus on breathing, since breath is related to the spiritual life force
- Remove the meditative atmosphere, since the endorphins generated by the exercise are used to make some people feel they are having a spiritual experience
- Remove any of the more advanced asanas which do not have a direct physical benefit, but may be seen as mortifying the body in an attempt to focus on the spiritual.
- Other moves should be added to make a systematic set of stretching moves (if there are any other moves that are not already cataloged under the Hatha Yoga system).
- And yes, rename it to something that is descriptive of what it is

Here is an analogy. If we learned that wine and unleavened bread had excellent health benefits (more than other foods), would you feel comfortable if kids were given a small cup of wine and a small piece of bread each day in a part of class called “communion”? Even if it were only practiced for the health benefits, the Christian terms should be removed and the “nutrition” should be given in a larger, secularized context of the lunch room.

I’m not arguing that Hindus should do anything different (other than to be clear about the meanings that can be poured into the words and positions of Yoga). I’m just arguing that secular people as well as people in the western religions, which do not accept that all paths can lead to God, do have a valid point that there are still religious aspects to some Yoga terms and moves, even if most people do not intend to use Yoga for that purpose.