“However strange it may appear, I was led to Yoga by William of Saint-Thierry.” This sentence began the preface of Jean-Marie Déchanet’s English translation of his mid-twentieth century book titled La Voie Du Silence later translated as Christian Yoga. In the text, Déchanet argues the aim of both William of Saint-Thierry, a French Benedictine mystic, and Christian Yoga is the union and balance of anima, animus, and spiritus. For him, Yoga creates an “openness [toward the] mystical life,” “quickens the life of faith, the love of God and our neighbor,” and “sharpens our sense of duty and responsibility as men and, above all, as Christians.” While he argues yoga supports the Christian spiritual life, Déchanet enforces parameters on what type of yoga a Christian should practice. This paper examines Déchanet’s argument for a Christian Yoga through his historical context and scholarship of William of Saint-Thierry.
Jean-Marie Déchanet (1906-1992), a French Benedictine monk, first encountered yoga as not spiritual in nature. He discovered yoga through “an article in a magazine, extolling the beneficial effects of certain Yoga postures.” This article described eight āsanas, or postures, in contrast to the thirteen outlined in La Voie du Silence.
His “experiment” (a term put forth by book advertisements) with yoga, was not accepted by all. The publishing of La Voie du Silence in 1956 caused issues with Déchanet’s abbot, Théodore Neve. Déchanet recounted this disapproval, repeating Neve’s words, “My child, what are certain people going to think when they’ll learn that William of Saint Thierry’s [sic] specialist stands on his head every morning? What are they going to think? That he may have his feet on the ground!” This disapproval resulted in a nihil obstat and imprimi potest to publish the book.
Déchanet, however, did receive support from Father Sauvage and Father Regamey. His biggest support was Father Regamey who wrote a concluding statement for La Voie du Silence and wrote several articles on the topic of Christian Yoga prior to its publishing. In fact, Déchanet clarifies the term Christian Yoga came from Father Regamey’s previous work titled “A Christian Yoga?”
Déchanet initially published La Voie du Silence “under the loud pseudonym Yogin du Christ.” He continued his work with yoga and, by the time of his passing in the early 1990s, he published three books on yoga as a Christian practice from his hermitage – translated into English as Christian Yoga (1956), Yoga in Ten Lessons (1965), and Yoga and God (1974).
In Christian Yoga, Déchanet demonstrates a contextual understanding of yoga by citing the Upaniṣads, the Bhagavad Gītā, and the Yoga Sūtras as references. He spends several pages offering a summary of aṣṭāṅga yoga present in Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras (200 BCE to 200 CE). Aṣṭāṅga yoga, literally “eight-limbed,” presents the eight elements that one must undertake to achieve the ultimate goal of yoga, an absorptive state with the divine. While it is possible to engage with these practices on their own, the Yoga Sūtras implicitly recommend participating in these practices sequentially. When explaining yoga, Déchanet writes, “The whole of Indian yoga may be summed up in one word: meditation.” This essentializing of yoga as meditation serves the Christian’s spiritual life and justifies the practice of Christian yoga.
Déchanet lauds the benefits of yoga for the Christian throughout the book, yet necessitates a warning for the risks for the Christians who seek to practice yoga. In the text, Déchanet introduced this novel concept of Christian engagement with the body while including stipulations of the dangers of yoga. As employed by Déchanet, a person practicing Christian Yoga must “remove the exercises from the Brahmanic atmosphere” and “restore them to their pristine condition before introducing them into a Christian climate.” What this “pristine condition” remains vague. Essentially, his primary requirement of Christian Yoga is to ignore any religious basis from which yoga comes and implores practitioners of Christian Yoga to “take [the practices of Yoga] simply for what they are, neither religion nor mysticism, but a discipline, a skill, admittedly ingenious.” This reshaping phenomenon of Christian Yoga, therefore, can only happen due to yoga’s susceptibility as a supple practice.
In his chapter titled “An Ancient View of Man,” Déchanet argues the aim of both William of Saint-Thierry and Christian Yoga is the union and balance of anima, animus, and spiritus. This balance allows the person to “transition from the image [of God] (the mark of which is clearly set on these “three”) to divine resemblance.” The imbalance of the three in the human person is due to the effects of sin which separates the person from divine resemblance. Christian Yoga as a method to embody this divine resemblance is unmistakably unique from other forms of Christian spiritual practice.
While Modern Yoga as an industry was not fully developed during the time of Déchanet’s work with Christian Yoga, traces of capitalist tendencies appear within Christian Yoga through his conceptions of profit and self-development. Within the first few pages of his preface, Déchanet describes how yoga has personally benefited his productivity in writing and praying. He also references a self-entitlement to profiting from yoga. Within his instructional guide to yoga postures in part two, he makes a point to identify the “fruits” of a postural practice. So, even though Déchanet prides the practice of Christian Yoga to be different from the profane yoga of the West, he still cites the physical benefits of yoga as a support for an individual’s yoga practice.
Déchanet recognized this assumption at the time of his writing saying “the great masters of Yoga never stop asserting and claiming that their practices are independent of all religions, that they will fit any credo….” Déchanet considers this insistence to be a “frightening” and “dangerous” statement due to Hindu Yoga’s spiritual aims that are incompatible with the Church, yet in the statement, he highlights the process of secularizing the sacred before re-sacralization of the sacred-turned-secular.
“However strange it may appear, I was led to Yoga by William of Saint-Thierry.” This sentence began the preface of Jean-Marie Déchanet’s English translation of his mid-twentieth century book titled La Voie Du Silence later translated as Christian Yoga. In the text, Déchanet argues the aim of both William of Saint-Thierry, a French Benedictine mystic, and Christian Yoga is the union and balance of anima, animus, and spiritus. For him, Yoga creates an “openness [toward the] mystical life,” “quickens the life of faith, the love of God and our neighbor,” and “sharpens our sense of duty and responsibility as men and, above all, as Christians.” While he argues yoga supports the Christian spiritual life, Déchanet enforces parameters on what type of yoga a Christian should practice. This paper examines Déchanet’s argument for a Christian Yoga through his historical context and scholarship of William of Saint-Thierry.