Amid coronavirus panic, this church’s bizarre objection to yoga is the last thing we need

If the worst comes to the worst and I can’t leave my house, exercising won’t just be about the physical benefits, writes Jenny Eclair

If there’s such a thing as inner peace, it wouldn’t go amiss right now (Getty)

Isn’t it peculiar how unchristian some Christians can be; how mean-spirited and objectionable?

Take, for example, the case this week of the vicar’s wife who attended a yoga class in her husband’s church hall and promptly went home to snitch on the class for not being either physical or Christian enough.

Um, since when did Christianity have anything to do with yoga? Yoga belongs to ancient India and as far as I’m concerned, Christianity has no equivalent, so why had the vicar, if he was going to be “funny” about it, been allowing the sessions in the church hall for the last six years? I suppose the subs were useful.

Apparently, the last straw for the vicar’s wife had something to do with the teacher’s unchristian practices of lighting joss sticks and chanting in class. Hmm, in her defence, the teacher responded that the joss sticks had mostly been used to mask the smell of cooked dinners and bleach that pervaded the church hall.

Despite being described as a “yoga enthusiast”, according to Mrs Vicar, not only did the class display “worrying” Hindu tendencies, it was also not physical enough. In her opinion, there was too much “lying down” and the practice needed to be stripped of all its spirituality and switched to a “gym-style workout”. So not really yoga then?

I love yoga, I’ve been practising on and off for about 25 years and have experienced many different classes, ranging from those that concentrate mostly on breathing techniques, to a brilliant Ashtanga class which I attended back in the Nineties. This was taught in a small, airless, windowless room at my local leisure centre and attracted a loyal bunch of hugely competitive yogis who tended to sneer at anyone who wasn’t able to support themselves in a crow position (look it up and try it).

These days, I’m far too cumbersome for quite a lot of moves and I find my own body weight quite tricky to lift, but I still go, marvelling at other people’s ability, grace and balance; yoga done well is beautiful in a way that working out in a gym just isn’t.

But back to the story: alerted by his wife who, by all accounts, had spent her time in the unchristian yoga class texting, doing her own exercises and refusing to meditate, the vicar charitably chucked the yoga class out of his church hall and the teacher (who is also a nurse) has since set up camp in a smaller local community centre.

Well, how petty and rude can you get?

If anyone dared text in a yoga class I was attending, I’d make sure I accidentally on purpose fell on top of them; my tree poses are notoriously shaky. Alternatively, there’s always the option of releasing a sneaky gust of wind in the direction of anyone who misbehaves in class, preferably right into their face.

I genuinely don’t understand what the vicar and his misses hoped to achieve by this mean-spirited action; it just seems so small-minded and nasty at a time when we all need to pull together and be more tolerant of each other.

With the coronavirus threatening to restrict our movements and even put some of us in self-isolation, what better way to pass a few hours indoors than with a bit of home yoga, with or without joss sticks?

Last week on the BBC Breakfast, a middle-aged man was interviewed about his quarantine experience back in China. Having gone to visit his ageing father for Chinese new year, the man had inadvertently become trapped in the coronavirus crisis and found that practising tai chi while unable to leave the apartment had helped keep himself and his family sane.

Keeping active, as we all know, is vital for both physical and mental wellbeing and should the problem with the coronavirus escalate, very few of us have basement gyms or pools to keep us healthy and occupied.

Most of us, however, do have a strip of floor space on which we can take some time to move and bend and take ourselves to a place of inner peace, that’s if such a thing actually exists, when we’re down to our last loo roll and making our own hand sanitiser out of precious vodka supplies!

Personally, if my neighbourhood goes into lockdown (which seemed unlikely a week ago, before two cases were diagnosed literally within several hundred yards of where I live) then I shall be taking to my yoga mat and attending a daily online class. These are widely available for all ages and abilities for £0 on YouTube; a few minutes of googling should find you someone that you fancy spending time with.

If the worst comes to the worst and I can’t leave my house, then for me, practising yoga won’t just be about the physical benefits. After all, when you’re trying not to panic, then it isn’t just about being able to fold yourself into increasingly extraordinary shapes, sometimes it’s just about breathing.

Namaste.