Yoga, mindfulness, and detox diets: religion for those who’d never be caught dead in a church?
“Not everyone who goes to yoga is a spiritual seeker, but there is a lot of it (in yoga). I think yoga can make you start thinking about things, but it’s not really enough to fill that hole.”
Brigid Delaney is a columnist with The Guardian and the author of Wellmania: Misadventures in the Search for Wellness, in which she recounts her attempt to become clean, lean, and serene through an extreme detox diet, daily yoga practice, and meditation.
But Brigid also grew up Catholic. While she’s long been disenchanted with the church, that religious backstory gives her a unique take on wellness culture. She claims that for many young women, yoga is a form of ‘religion-lite’: a practice that addresses the spiritual yearning of those untethered from organised religion.
Brigid’s account of wellness culture is haunted by religion in other ways as well. At points in Wellmania, she seems to indirectly quote the Bible.
“Maybe I’ve been plagiarising, unintendedly plagiarising the Bible in my work. Or maybe I just listened to enough of it as a kid that it has seeped into some of my thinking.”
—
Brigid Delaney’s Diary
Losing my religion: after the Pell verdict, the conflict for Catholics
It’s not you, Bill, it’s the country: is this election Australia’s Trump or Brexit moment?
Buy Wellmania: Misadventures in the Search for Wellness
A full life found in the world’s trouble spots
The Vanishing
How CPX Writes About Easter
Being a chaplain in the ICU ... and prison
The Return of Religious Belief
Rebroadcast: To Change the World
Birth Days
Lent for Dummies
The Social Media Age
Christmas in a place of war
Brexit, Trump ... and the Voice? Australia’s political divides
Seen & Heard V: Getting disenchanted with disenchantment
Coming to Faith Through Dawkins
“Mere Christianity”: why does C.S. Lewis’s unlikely classic continue to hold such appeal?
Andrew Hastie: Lessons from the combat zone
The psychology of hope
Down the Rabbit Hole
REBROADCAST: The “Christian” Classroom
The wounds you can’t see
Gabriel Bani’s life in the Torres Strait
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Hello Heaven Podcast
Devoted To Prayer
Cast The Word
Let Me Be Frank | Bishop Frank Caggiano’s Podcast | Diocese of Bridgeport, CT
The Bible Recap
BardsFM