Imagine if every parent brought a 3-year-old to a late-night yoga event – there would be pandemonium! But beyond that – these kids are too little too appreciate or care about these types of events. All that little girl wanted to do was sleep and that’s precisely what she did, even with all the chanting and gonging going on around her.

There are yoga programs for kids. Keep your kids in them. Don’t take your kid to adult yoga class. It’s in the least possibly going to bore the kid or turn them off from yoga. At worst, if you force your child to follow your intense yoga belief system, you may push them into the opposite direction.

Consider Laurette Willis, founder of “PraiseMoves,” a Christian co-op of yoga incorporating renamed yoga poses so they aren’t so darn Satanic. Go read this page on her website. If that’s not reason to stop pushing your young kid into the New Age, I don’t know what is. Willis started doing yoga at age 7 with her mom and was hanging around ashrams at the age of 10. Now she’s a bitter ex-New Ager with a bone to pick, and has gotten coo-coo for cocoa puffs over her rigid brand of fundamentalist Christianity.

(And you, too, can turn your child into an angry fundamentalist Christian, complete with 1980s clothes and hair-do!)

Intense meditation and spiritual practices are not meant for children, folks!

So please, don’t force your kid into your adult New Age practice. A little religious structure for a child is OK. Taking your kid to a church is OK. But don’t take your young kid to a night-time Kundalini Yoga class and have them try to chant to the point where their brain is exploding. Their nervous systems aren’t fully developed yet – they should not be pushed energetically in the way adults can be pushed.

Yes, I realize that Gurmukh herself loves children and does a lot of prenatal work at Golden Bridge Yoga. And yet, surprisingly, I don’t see kids overrunning the regular classes there. That’s probably for a good reason.

Or are certain fundamentalist Christian leaders worried that if people got a taste of something else, they might like it better? People doing yoga may not fill their donation box as much…

I also don’t get this nitpicking over the concept of God. Some Christians criticize Hinduism, claiming it’s wrong to suggest that God is “everything” even though whenever I went to Sunday School, they told me that God was “everywhere.” Seems to me it’s the same difference. God is GOD; our descriptions of him/her/it will forever be limited.

Not all Christians react in a fear-based manner. Here is a snippet from a thoughtful commentary from Bishop T.D. Jakes.

However, if I am a Christian, then the fact that I do yoga to enhance my physical condition, or meditate to help me clear my mind, do not change my beliefs in Christianity or remove or weaken my faith. My primary concern only lies with wondering if new Christians are adept at discerning where breathing and meditation end, and a newfound religion begins. Like many things in life, perhaps the answer lies in each individual’s ability to have boundaries that are adjusted to his or her maturity level as a Christian.

That seems reasonable to me.

At any rate, I have been reading a few books on Christian Yoga, and the yoga is generally sound but some of the Christian thought processes are really interesting. I will share some reviews here soon.

I am not a Christian, but I am fascinated with the concept of Christian Yoga and I think it is a good idea. I am all for yoga that can honor other religions, especially Christianity. If Christian Yoga can bring yoga to the masses, then let’s have more Christian Yoga.

My concern with Christian Yoga, however, is the extremely negative portrayal some Christians make of yoga’s Hindu roots.

For example, on this Christian Yoga website, the FAQ explains:

If secular yoga is not completely separated from its eastern religion and philosophy, it could expose participants to spiritual forces that are not of God. Scripture Yoga is a Christ-centered approach that allows you to enjoy the physical benefits of yoga without the spiritual dangers presented by other forms of yoga.

Holy Moses!!! Heaven forbid someone gets exposed to an eastern religion in yoga class! It might be contagious and catching!!

She further goes on to claim that if you open yourself to eastern religion, then you are opening yourself up to “dark spiritual forces.” Give me a break. Who’s the darker spiritual force? Jerry Falwell or the Dalai Lama? No contest in my book.

Sadly, this ridiculously uninformed and prejudicial attitude is present with a lot of Christian yogis. I’ve even seen the Hindu religion called “heathen.”

If you think that’s bad, another woman completely co-opted yoga and many yoga poses to rename it into something called “PraiseMoves.” She goes on a complete tirade against New Age thought and other religions on her so-called “Christian” website. That’s not what Jesus would have done. Such hypocrisy.

Excuse me, well-meaning but close-minded holier than thou Christians: Hinduism is not in conflict with your Christian God! If you knew anything about it (which obviously you do not), you would know that the deities in Hinduism are not separate Gods but aspects of the one God.

Now, you may be saying that this is counter to Christian theology. Well, bull-pucky! What do you call the Trinity – the Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Three Gods in one! So why on earth do you have a problem with a singular God manifesting separately as Ganesha, Krishna, or Siva? It’s all the same thing – just different lingo.

What really burns my britches is that these people take thousands of years of a Hindu spiritual practice – yoga – claim it for their own – and then bitch-slap the religion it came from.

Is there any good reason to be so fearful of another religion? If Christianity truly is the one true religion, then why do you need to “shield” Christians from other religions? Are you afraid they might actually find something of value there?

So, Christian yogis – feel free to use yoga, but stop with the holier than thou attitude. Be respectful of other religions. There is nothing “Satanic” about Hinduism, and if you truly believe that, then the darkness is within you. Such insanity in the name of religion.

I will be reviewing a Christian yoga book soon – stay tuned.

Namaste Yoga is the regular yoga series seen on cable’s FitTV. They show a few episodes a day, and from what I can tell, this is the only yoga show currently on FitTV.

The initial concept was by (surprise) a guy, and the show’s yoga flow is directed and narrated by Kate Potter. Kate, however, is never to be seen in the show. I suppose by lowering her voice to a throaty whisper that’s limit of the “sex appeal” she provides – otherwise, she must not be attractive enough to appear herself.

Instead, Namaste Yoga relies on three hot young women as the draw. In each episode, two must be wearing short shorts, one wears a leotard, and all three are required to have large tracts of midriff showing. Fake boobs are mercilessly absent, but who needs those when you can take in the tight buns of these women as they sensuously arch into “down face dog.”

With Kate’s overly done throaty voice and the three hot babes, this is less of a yoga training show and more a new age form of soft porn. I can only imagine that most of the audience for this is either horny, lonely men, or women who don’t have a clue that there’s more to yoga than this.

But let’s get to the actual yoga. In spite of my initial reservations, I did try two Namaste Yoga episodes to see how they made me feel physically. I could put up with hot chicks and Kate’s lame attempt at a bedroom voice if the yoga was decent.

Sadly, it was not. The first session I got through OK but it felt fairly tame in terms of its intensity. The pacing of the second went so fast that I finally quit in the middle since it just wasn’t worth the bother, and I was frustrated that I was expected to move out of the poses so quickly.

This particular video involved jumping from standing up to plow pose to a forward bend and back up and down again. You barely had time to enter plow pose before she told you to move out of it again. Not only did I find this to be useless in terms of the yoga benefits, but potentially dangerous to yoga newbies. Plow pose puts extreme pressure on the neck and it’s not something you want to be messing around with like this. Let’s not forget that the majority of Americans are also overweight so expecting them to flip their legs up behind their heads and back again in the span of a second is just pushing it.

That Kate is rushing the yoga is no surprise though – she’s got less than 30 minutes to craft a routine, which is then interrupted by commercials. I found the commercials to be jarring (I would not mind slow, meditative commercials if I’m getting a free yoga class), but that wasn’t the killer for me. Commercials gave me a second to sit in a forward bend or other pose for a little length of time.

It’s just that this yoga series is all flash and no substance. The yoga isn’t great, the vocal direction consists mainly of sexy little soundbites (“Let’s try” seems to be one of her favorites), and the speed makes your head spin.

The production values and locations are what some folks rave about Namaste Yoga. Yes, the cinematography is beautiful, but it’s also distracting. During the asanas, the models (I’m not going to call them “teachers”) are often seen switching from a beach to an industrial setting to a forest during the same pose. This is more a yoga music video than a class. What happens is that so much attention is paid to the lush scenery (and lush bodies) that you really don’t get a good viewing of how to do the poses properly.

Not that you’d have time anyway – you’d need a Tivo with a freeze frame to actually see what’s happening. Yes, it’s that gripe about the quick pacing again. If you are completely new to yoga, I have no idea how you’d even get through an episode of Namaste Yoga.

“Flow” yoga has gotten very popular lately. I’m not a huge fan of it, since I like to sit in a pose for a while and really feel the stretch and develop my endurance. But to me, Namaste Yoga went beyond a flow class to become a full on speed yoga session.

To me, this yoga series is so useless I will skip it completely and turn to home videos or my own series of poses when I need to practice at home. This is what often turns me off about yoga. We’ve got a so-called qualified celebrity yoga teacher out there putting out crappy McDonald’s yoga. Namaste Yoga removes all the benefits of yoga and makes it no better than the cheesy aerobic videos of the 1980s showing off shiny tights reaching into women’s buttcracks.

A preview is available on YouTube. Note that one of the most articulate comments on this clip is “that girl is HOT.”

What a joke.

Update, August 2008: After over a year, I have finally turned off comments on this post, because nobody has anything intelligent to say and I’m tired of the idiotic responses here. A common charge in these less-than-insightful comments is “you’re jealous!” These guys don’t seem to get that I’ve had a slender body my entire life, and believe it or not, being an attractive female isn’t the end-all and be-all of existence.

I think a lot of these guys are coming here because they are searching Google for pictures of the “babes” on the show. Seeing their hostile, sexist responses here is reason number one why I find this type of yoga-exploitation to be a bad trend for yoga in general. (And there are some really bad comments I didn’t even approve!) I don’t want yoga to be about hot babes and sex. If you think this is not an issue, search “yoga” on YouTube and look at some of the creepy stuff that comes up.

Bottom line: If you can’t possibly fathom why I might find this type of video to be a little disturbing, then you really don’t need to waste my bandwidth commenting here. Please go vent somewhere else. Namaste!