Campfire Friday, How do you feel about Taiji, or Yoga?

A good spiritual exercise?

Yeah, Taiji-Tai Chi. Just a different spelling.

What most people practice as yoga and tai chi in the West is only physical exercise, which is good in itself because, depending on the type of exercise, it promotes range of motion, toning of the lymphatic, nervous, respiratory, and endocrine systems, improves muscle tone and lung capacity, etc. Basic meditation and relaxation practices are of course helpful because they relieve stress and help improve mental focus and cognition.

The spiritual aspect is generally watered down or New Age-ized wherein practitioners might be encouraged to chant Om or some such mantra as part of the exercise class. This freaks out some very Christian relgious folks--or the whole idea that the exercises supposedly originated in the east in Hindu or Buddhist cultures freaks out folks, but some forms of physical yoga are actually very similar to Pilates and calisthenic exercises. The spiritual aspect of yoga--which is yoga in the true sense of the word --are different from physical yoga although physical yoga is how to condition the body and nervous system for spiritual forms of yoga. Many of those spiritual forms of yoga can indeed be adapted to JudeoChristian sensibilities, actually, and meditative type Kundalini yoga has equivalents in Christian/Hermetic and possibly ancient Greek mysticism. I myself am about to begin teaching yoga again--this time to a community of pagan (Wiccans and others) in which I intend to explore parallels between yoga and Western esotericism.

They're good spiritual exercises, as you say.
There's nothing harmful about them as long as you take it easy and warm up beforehand.
I've heard people criticise yoga on a spiritual level, relative to their own beliefs. All I can think to say to them would be that if they aren't comfortable, perhaps some other form of exercise would suit their needs better.

Yoga = stretching. Stretching is nice.
"Taiji" doesn't ring a bell, unless you wrote Tai chi chuan in a really weird way. Which is stretching with fighting thrown in.

It's good exercise, spirituality notwithstanding. Do you know any good beginner videos?

I've never heard of Taiji, but Yoga's very good exercise for muscles and breathing.

i think both are beautiful and suffer from being separated from their religious philosophies.

i like yoga