photo courtesy of Lorenzo Tugnoli

I a Jewish, but I do not lead an observant religious life. I though practice, teach and live a very spiritual life. Many would define me as a “yogi,” but I could, just as easily, be called a “person who learnt how to know her-self, so now she does know how to avoid altering her equilibrium to cause the minimum suffering.” Yes, I have learnt this through yoga, not religion. And I am not ashamed to say so even if I consider myself a Jew 100%.
My religious belief have not lead me to the same self-understanding I gained through asana, breathing and meditation practice and through limiting myself in what I could eat, drink and think for a while. I discovered the “I” beneath my own skin feeling for it through my own body and overstepping the “mind games” I had played for many years before. No religious book tell you how to conquer the “monkey mind,” they may suggest you live with certain values and respect for each other, but they do not spell out for you that if you use breath retainment and you do lots of back-bending, your heart rate will decrease and you will feel less
stressed…so,here you have it:

Yoga is yoga and religion is religion.
Two, very spiritual practices, but not the same thing!

My “yogic life” showed me the way to the “most real self I could find below the five senses,” but this does not mean I stopped being attached to my Judaism roots, the same ones my ancestors lived by over 2,000 years ago. I lead an ordinary life where the secular values I respect within the realms of my yoga reality are the same ones I have always known when raised as an Italian Jew in Rome.

Yet, I do realize for many who have not gotten through a similar “path of self-awarness” trying to define yoga without the world creed, religion, belief or spirituality is not so easy. As an example, the other day after a yoga class, I overheard one of my student saying he does yoga only for the physical benefit and he did not like to chant the “OM” before and at the end of class because he does not want to be converted to the “yoga faith.”

Now, according to my teacher Sri Dharma Mittra: “Yoga is a discipline of self-knowledge” that has nothing to do with religion. It has rules and regulations that one should respect for a better understanding of him/herself, but there is no “yoga bible,” there is not yogi as followers of a particular religious creed, but just yogi as followers of a teacher who will show them what he did to understand himself best and encourage them to do the same. Being called a Yogi is simply the definition of those who have “reached the yoking of their minds and bodies,” those who have paid their dues understanding that these two entities work on their own and that the whole goal of life is to make them work in accordance with one another to avoid pain and suffering.

Religion is belonging to a tribe, a group of people with similar beliefs, Yoga is a selfish, individualists search for the meaning of our own self on this Earth. Yoga is a combination of physical exercise with breath, meditation and respect of the ethical rules *(which if you read them properly could remind you of what your parents told you when you were little, or what you would hear your grandmother yelling at you when you were playing with your friends in the backyard!). There is not religion that requires you to twist and turn like a gummy bear,neither to breath through your nose after holding the breath for 12 counts for physical benefits!

Some could argue that yoga practice can become very spiritual and lose some of its “exercise-only” traits especially when one speaks of Kirtan and chanting to the images of “personified god and goddess.” Yet again, Krishna, Ganesh and company are nothing, but the personification of a “stronger force” called “the Divine Self,” or “our own pure essence” that co-exist within ourselves unrelated to the religious back-ground we may have.