Nevada: Bridge Methodist Church in Radcliffe, near Manchester (UK), has reportedly banned an over-50s yoga group, which has paid £60 a week for the last about ten years and met there twice a week, fearing its classes could be spiritually confusing.
Group founder member Iris Turner said: “This is an insult…we are offended…yoga helped the group's health.”
She invited the church minister to take part in a class to ‘allay' her fears. Currently this group of about 30, which has members up to 82 years old, is homeless.
Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) on Friday, said that although the church had every right to use its premises as it wanted, but yoga, though founded by Hinduism and whose traces went back to around 2000 BCE, was a world heritage and liberation powerhouse and anyone could enjoy its benefits.
Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, pointed out that yoga was the repository of something basic in the human soul and psyche. About 16 million Americans, including many celebrities, were said to practice yoga. Yoga never had any formal organization and yoga practice had been handed down from one guru to the next.
Zed argued that turning this yoga group of older people away from the church resulting in it becoming homeless was simply “un-Christian”.
“Love and compassion for the helpless was the hallmark of Christian ethics. Jesus Christ clearly told the world to help the helpless, defenseless and downtrodden and love them and he showed the way also. Church authorities should act like a shepherd to this flock as Jesus Himself said that he had sheep from other pastures,” he said.
