As a Catholic married to a Buddhist wife your advice was spot on. Their was a lot of wisdom and insight in your presentation and I really enjoyed listening to you and to your reasonings and advice.
In my early conversion God took me out of the esoteric practice of yoga that had been part of my upbringing (new agey stuff) and I fully quit it for years, but I was needing the right amount of exercise to deal with PCOS and the gymnastics of yoga kept coming back as a need. From my spiritual father I learned the discernment tools of St. Thomas Aquinas who, in short, differentiates between where we can explain the benefits of a practice merely from a natural, scientifically demonstrable stance and where it is a superstitious practice that can either be irrational or demonic. It helped me keep the yoga where a Catholic should have it. Turns out many of the physical aspects of yoga we deem to be intrinsic, helpful for health and esoteric, are actually the influence of British gymnastics. They are not intrinsic to yoga nor esoteric and the benefits can be explained naturally. Martial arts for the most part are also esoteric in their speech but I found data that helped me break through it as well: most things were pagan before they were Christianised. The main issue with many many things as to how pagan they are isn't in the what but in the how. From the use of wedding rings, the practice of olympic sports, the use of images in our temples, Christmas and Halloween, the matter isn't in the thing itself. To what or to who is your Christmas directed to? To worshipping Christ or to worshipping money at the mall? Is yoga a gymnastic practice for you or are you expecting to get an esoteric benefit from it? Did you get a nose job because you hate your God-given face or because you couldn't breathe? The Church is the heir of greek, mostly Aristotelian reasoning (pagan in origin btw). It was on purpose that The Church kept the good in all cultures and Christianised it. We do not simply throw into the bin entire cultures, from the Greeks the Church kept the saying "virtue is in the middle". Church authorities saw that traditional Greek stance as a version of the temperance of the Holy Spirit and it has done wonders for the world, lol.
I recently came across a case from a notable exorcist(Fr Carlos Martins) where he describes how during a session a demon manifested by doing yoga poses and claimed it’s rights over the victim were a direct result of the poses. It stated it’s name was Kundalini referring to a specific practice within yoga. It would seem that many of these poses can result Hindu deities/spirits yoking to people.
Yoga poses represent what their gods look like and what they represent, so I wouldn't do it. Let's change the name of Yoga for Satan and the exercises were better than Yoga's, would you do the exercises? Probably not because it's the devil. But then I would say, I'm Catholic and I'm not getting involved with the devil I'm just doing the exercises. What makes different gods from yoga different from the devil? Nothing. They both take you to bad places.
