Yeah, and if they were to allow fencing, all the participating students would be forever declaring, "This is Sparta!"

Several years ago, talking with a friend's father, the topic of yoga exercise — the stretching and breathing and so on — came up. My friend's father insisted that separating the exercise from the religion wasn't possible, and that the poses and breathing techniques opened up the body to be ovretaken by evil spirits. This man, who is very kind and generous and soft spoken, went into detail about his brief experience with yoga in his youth, claiming to have felt a powerful presence that terrified him when in a meditative state and, when bringing it up to one of the yogis, said that she had this delighted, "evil snarl" on her face when he explained what he experienced. I was still relatively young and naïve when he told me this, so my exposure to the insanity that religion sometimes embodies was rather limited. It wasn't until that moment that I realized how much power many fundamentalist Christians ascribe to those they consider to be adversaries or who espouse incompatible worldviews. Its not enough that they believe others who follow a different path are misguided, but rather they must indeed be evil. And they genuinely believe that their adversaries wield dark, supernatural abilities. There is so much superstitious and conspiratorial thinking among the extremities of Christianity.

I've taken yoga classes, and yes it can leave you injured if you push too hard. Other than that, I think yoga is great!