Photo of the Week

Poor Clares of Valladolid practicing Yoga

Ramiro Calle is a professor of Yoga in Madrid. He was introduced to the Convent of the Poor Clares in Valladolid by a friend journalist. Soon the Mother Superior asked him to give Yoga classes to the nuns. The photos on this page document their first class on January 29, 2013.

The nuns were taught Hatha Yoga plus techniques of conscious breathing and deep relaxation as well as some vision exercises. Instead of finding orientation in the spirituality of St. Clare, St. Francis of Assisi and, above all, Our Lord Jesus Christ, the nuns turn to an Eastern occult religion to find stress relief.

Calle defines himself as a "Gnostic intermediary" of Yoga, which means that he transmits to others the knowledge and methods of Yoga he received. He comments on what Yoga is about:

“Yoga is above all a soteriological [that which seeks salvation] system that intends to lead the practitioner toward definitive liberation: moksha. It was born as a spiritual technique and also as an ensemble of practices to lead the mind into the trance of Yoga, samadhi. As a science, it has a broad reach, encompassing psychosomatics, psychology and metaphysics, as well as contributing to natural medicine as a life position.” (interview here)

Calle travelled to India more than 100 times to be initiated in Yoga. However, as a typical anarchist, he does not admit any superior. So, he does not concede that he relied on Indian gurus for his initiation. Instead, he uses the term "spiritual friends" to refer to those who taught him the Yoga rituals that he now passes on to others in Spain.

In the last row below, you see Calle embracing his "spiritual friend" Babaj Shivananda. The latter used to tell Calle: "We are just the fingers of an enormous cosmic hand and we must learn how to connect with it."

In conclusion, to find Yoga being taught in Catholic convents and monasteries is one of the many reflections of the general apostasy that is officially triumphing in the Catholic Church since Council Vatican II.

Original news report on the Poor Clares by Ramiro Calle here.

Photos from YogaenRed, sent by a reader

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Posted May 22, 2016

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