Endless - Georgia Straight

SPIRITUAL
STRETCH
RELIGION MAY BE
YOGA’S NEXT
INCARNATION
| GEORGIA STRAIGHT MIND BODY SOUL | | FALL 2005 |
8
BY PIETA WOOLLEY
Eoin Finn hit his early 20s, he found that the Catholic Church
When he’d grown up with just wasn’t satisfying his spiritual hunger
anymore. His deepest questions—“What happens when I die?”, “Why am I
here?”, and “What can I contribute?”—weren’t being addressed in a digestible
way. As a student of comparative religion, he bent away from Catholicism
toward Buddhism, and then to yoga. That’s where he found his spiritual home.
Now a Kitsilano-based yoga instructor, Finn (who calls himself a Blissologist)
believes the discipline is filling a spiritual need for many Vancouverites who
have abandoned western spiritual traditions—just like him.
“The myths associated with our religions don’t work
for people anymore,” he told the Georgia Straight. “The
idea of a white, bearded guy in the sky passing judgment
doesn’t make sense to the average person.…For
the past 50 or 60 years, there’s been a spiritual void in
North America. Now, all of a sudden, there’s something
people can relate to. That makes it hugely popular.
Yoga is about how to deal with greed, which is a huge
spiritual issue in our culture.”
His statements are sweeping, but Finn might be on to
something. Vancouver is the least-religious major city in
Canada, with 42 percent of us declaring on the 2001 census
that we had “no religion”. That’s up from 30 percent
in 1991. Indeed, we seem to be losing our religion.
Meanwhile, Buddhism, which is associated with yoga,
has almost doubled its ranks over the past decade, according to Statistics Canada.
From University Boulevard to Boundary Road, mat-carrying locals can be seen
strolling to and from classes, with Tibetan emblems embroidered on their sacks.
So, is yoga filling our city’s religious void? Like everything in “Lotusland”, the answer
is richer and more complex than it might seem, thanks to our diverse and
contemplative population.
For yoga instructor Evelyn Neaman, it’s not a matter of replacing one religion with
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another. A synagogue-attending Jewish Kabbalist, Neaman told the Straight that
yoga practice strengthens her Judaism—and the faith of her dozens of students.
“I’m trying to bring life back into an ancient movement,” she said. “People are
searching out meaning from ancient traditions, asking themselves, ‘How can I blend
them and make my life more meaningful?’ ”
Neaman pointed out that among Buddhists, there’s an abundance of Jewish
people. She calls them “Jew-Bus”, shorthand for the kind of spiritual mixing she