Judaism and Yoga: Bibliyoga

I saw on a fellow Moishe Housenik’s blog that like us other houses have also been having yoga groups meeting in their house. What is special about our recently ended four week yogic course is that we have been learning a form of Yoga as inspired by Jewish teaching and tradition.

The class’s teacher, MoHoLo community member Marcus Freed, has pioneered a Jewish approach to yoga that he calls biblioyoga. Our four week course looked at Biblical and Rabbinic Jewish texts on the elements – fire, water, air and earth – over each of the weeks, whilst expressing them physically through yoga moves and meditation.

We were full to capacity in the class for two of ours weeks, with as many people in the room as possible without knocking each other over when you change position.

The final one in the series was particularly challenging. Happening yesterday, the day before Birchat HaChamah, when you mark the sun’s return to its original position every 28 years, we did 28 sun salutations to prepare ourselves. Unfortunately, at 6am in the morning, in misty, wet and cold London, people were not so keen to do quite that many.

Chag sameach to all from London’s pesach-clean house!