Christy Turlington has a new book out on yoga in which she promotes many different yoga traditions. One of the traditions that she has studied and promotes in her book is 3HO. She is proud to have taken 3HO yoga classes and lists their contact addresses and phone numbers in the back of her trendy new book available at a Barnes and Noble in every town USA.

I found out that the yoga positions used during meditation are actually based on prayers to Hindu deities. So that may cause some cognitive dissonance for some people.

Hmm... Her book didn't do as well as they hoped yah?

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richardmgreen
I found out that the yoga positions used during meditation are actually based on prayers to Hindu deities. So that may cause some cognitive dissonance for some people.

don't see how it would. cognitive dissonance means the stress of having to believing two contradictory ideas.

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richardmgreen
I found out that the yoga positions used during meditation are actually based on prayers to Hindu deities. So that may cause some cognitive dissonance for some people.

My understanding of hatha yoga is that the exercises were developed to help prepare your body for meditation. I suppose it's possible that some of the positions ("asanas") are similar to positions used for praying, but I don't really see how that could be harmful.

If you wonder how Yoga can be harmful, just type "yoga" into the search engine available on the red bar at the top of this page.

Yoga is used as a come-on by many cults to gain access to potential converts.
(There is a lot about that on this website).
Many cults offer Yoga classes; the religious stuff is slowly introduced to receptive students.

3HO teaches Kundalini Yoga, not Hatha Yoga.
A long time ago I was exposed to a very unethical East Indian "guru" through Hatha Yoga classes, however.

3HO is a religious organization run by Sikhs. 3HO stands for Happy, Healthy, Holy Organization. The deceased leader was Yogi Bhagan.

Their website:
[www.3ho.org]

About Yogi Bhajan:
[www.sikhnet.com]

I do not know whether or not 3HO is a dangerous group.
I am familiar with other groups that use yoga as a way to recruit members.

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bonnie
Yoga is used as a come-on by many cults to gain access to potential converts.
(There is a lot about that on this website).
Many cults offer Yoga classes; the religious stuff is slowly introduced to receptive students.
3HO teaches Kundalini Yoga, not Hatha Yoga.

True, but that doesn't necessarily mean that yoga exercises or poses themselves are harmful. In fact, they're very good for your health.

And I used the term "hatha yoga" here as a generic term for the physical exercise form of yoga, to differentiate that from other definitions of yoga. In many hindu spiritual paths, the term "yoga" encompasses meditation to prayer (kriya yoga), breathing exercise (prana yoga) to physical excercise (hatha yoga) to your spiritual group itself (the last use is the equivalent of the Buddhist term "sangha" or the Christian term "congregation"). All forms of physical exercise yoga are descended from hatha yoga, including bikram, iyengar, etc. I imagine Kundalini Yoga is a form of that too, but you would know better than I would.