The Exorcist Files - Father Martins Reopens The Yoga Case

Episode Date: August 5, 2026

It is by far the most debated and contentious episode in the canon of Exorcist Files episodes. And for good reason. For many Yoga is a lifestyle and exorcise that confers real health benefits. For others it represents a spiritual practice that cannot be separated from its roots. In a return to the case file Father Martins breaks down why he believes it is an issue for Christians. Thanks to our Sponsors:Ollie. Feed the Obsession. Go to ollie.com/exfiles and use code EXFILES to get 70% off your first box!For a limited time, our listeners get 50% off FOR LIFE, Free Shipping, AND 3 Free Gifts at Mars Men at Mengotomars.com.Go to Babbel.com/EXFILES for up to 60% off.Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code EXFILES at cowboycolostrum.com/EXFILES.The Born Again Identity - check out the new series with Father Gregory Pine and Ryan Bethea on finding identity and calling . Linktree.com/exorcistfilesTimestamps:00:00 | Cold Open: A Serpent Spirit That Lives in Your Spine00:38 | The Most Controversial Case We Have Aired01:45 | The Paratrooper, and What Martins Will Not Argue With04:11 | Freemasonry Got a Declaration. Why Not This?06:27 | Jeremy the Firefighter: You Do Not Have To Mean It07:12 | Gym Clothes or Malice, a Door Is a Door08:41 | Awakened, a Primer: Gloria, Paul, and a Sunday Class09:48 | The Page Was Blank11:47 | Rolled Audio: Father David’s Voicemail12:59 | Pulling the Weed Versus Getting the Root15:44 | Feral Cat, Not Water Buffalo17:01 | Sponsor Break21:21 | Dr. Gallagher’s Parallel Case, and the Medical Caveat23:49 | The Church Walk Was a Diagnostic24:33 | Tree Pose, and a Demon That Gave Its Name25:59 | Rolled Audio: The Manifestation27:02 | Why They Crawl Like Snakes28:12 | Sponsor Break31:34 | A Rattlesnake Only Rattles When It Senses Danger33:03 | Two Different Injuries: Guilt and Rights36:28 | Was Skipping Mass the Real Door?37:39 | Was It Even a Yoga Demon?39:30 | Ten Exorcists Around a Kitchen Table40:40 | Yoga Did Not Invent Stretching42:43 | The Reddit Objection and the Cursed Object44:48 | Christian Yoga and Target Number One46:25 | Close: Go For a WalkSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I think the thing to also remember is, look, Kundalini is a serpent spirit, and it is believed to dwell within the spine once it is invoked. It sits at the center of the spine and rises and recedes according to whatever the heck it wants to do with you. How is that for an image? I mean, this should send alarm bells off to Christians, right? We don't want serpent spirits within us. I mean, you know, since Genesis, serpents get a bad rap and for good reason. Welcome back to The Exorcist Files where I normally tell a joke,

but today we're going to talk about a word that means to yoke. Right, Father? You bet. There you go. See, folks, do you see the joy emanating out of this man's face? He is asking, Lord, why do I have to make up what is lacking in Christ suffering in the cross this way, right? Is this, are you just, are you lamenting the cross that God gave you, Father?

To care. You see it there, folks. See what I have to put up with? For those watching, you just missed a cross. great awkward pause there. So today we are going to revisit. I know I say this all the time, our most controversial case. So the predatory case about Dylan was one of the most unpopular cases. People didn't necessarily disagree with it. They were just mad that we shared a story that didn't end well. And as a reminder, many cases don't end well. We just happen to bring you the ones that

are instructive and do end well because we want to be, end on a redemptive note. This case, however, and Father, tell me if you disagree, is probably the one people take the most issue with, theologically, and just in general, find it deeply offensive and unbelievable, right? For the most part, it is. It's a difficult issue to raise because it's just in the West. It's just become so fashionable and so vogue. It's practiced by people for exercise. It's practiced for people for stress reduction. It's become kind of like just a way to put the body through therapy. In fact, I remember seeing a video on the internet, the journey of this. This paratrooper from the U.S. Army whose body had just become broken from all the different jumps that he had done.

And he had become obese. And, you know, he charted himself, did like a video journal, a video blog of his progress. And at the beginning, you know, he could hardly move at all. And then by the end, gosh, he had lost a lot of weight. You know, he wasn't skinny, but he was much more tone than what he was. But he had a lot more mobility. and it seemed to even get rid of his depression. I'm not challenging any of that.

I don't see that as my job. I'm not here to tell you what to do. I'm here to share experiences that are real. This exorcism case was a bona fide one where someone became possessed because of the practice of yoga. I'm by far from being the only exorcist that have had cases like this.

And naturally, the question arises, is, hey, well, why aren't millions of more people possessed because millions practice it all over the world? And I don't have an answer for that, but I will tell you this, that it is opening a door because of what yoga is. Yoga is a religious practice, and you cannot separate yoga positions from the religious spirituality that upon which they're predicated. Why can't you go in with an intention of this being simply purely exercise? Well, look, if you ask an actual yogi, every one of them will tell you that you cannot separate the religious dimension from the practice. You just can't. It's not designed it that way.

You may practice it. Hey, you open a door, but nothing may crawl through that door. You may not catch any demonic friends kind of thing. Okay, fine. But you know what? The opposite can happen. And there you go. And that has happened and it does happen.

And that's what I view my job as, as just putting forward the reality, the fact. And you make that your decision. Because if I didn't convey what I know to be the truth, then I have to answer to God for that one day. So, Father, I think my first question is, again, I was surprised in, you know, obviously I'm not an exorcist. I've never seen anyone incur that I know of any spiritual ramifications from yoga. And I was very surprised, especially at Candies and Dr. Brown's analysis on it. But I think my first question would be, we did an episode covering Freemasonry where the Vatican has actually put out the Catholic Church has issued formal declarations that you cannot be a Catholic in good standing

and an open, you know, Freemason, attending, actively engaged in Freemasonry. If it is kind of this well-known, you know, situation amongst Exorcists that, you know, yoga could theoretically be an issue spiritually, why has there not been any stronger language from the Catholic Church? I'm curious. Yeah. Well, so free masonry is a very different thing, right? So they're built on different principles. And the principles of yoga are not quite as clear as the principles of Freemasonry, which is at heart a secret society that makes you undertake an oath and the oath is made on your behalf. So you're simply giving your quiet assent to it and there's a sleight of hand. Freemasonry presents itself as morally and religiously

neutral and it's not because every one of its ceremonies has a religious character. There's also the fact that mason's throughout history have been very clear. The number one enemy is the Catholic Church. In fact, I remember when I was young, I knew several men who were in it. One day, so they were quoting what they were taught, that one day the streets will flow red with the blood of Catholics. So it's a different thing. There is a violent aspect to masonry in the sense that when you look at some of the revolutions of the the 20th century, they were Masonic. They were Masonic in character. There is no overt oath that one

takes, so that mitigates risk by a lot, because on the surface, what you're participating in is a physical activity that, if engaged in exercise, that yes, there's no intention of making any religious symbolism, and one may be completely ignorant of it, of its religious and spiritual dimension, fine, it's not as overt as playing, gosh, with a Ouija board of that. Yeah, I give you that. But at the same time, I'll tell you this, like look back to our case with Jeremy the firefighter. He had no idea when he was seven years old and played with this Ouija board that what he was doing was an act of the occult and that it was opening a door to demons. And guess what? That very night, he got possessed as a result of it. So again, you can just, you can sit there and say, hey,

it's just not fair. You know, why would this be? Why would God allow this? And that's all fine. And And you know what? You can take that up with God one day. When you go to heaven, you can challenge him on it. You know, on your judgment day anyway, you know, I hope you go to heaven. But the fact is, the reality is that people do get possessed, even when they have no intention of transgressing a divine law. And so for those who are going, all right, this sounds insane, you know, it just looks like stretching. I do it at my YMCA. It's the highly commercialized Western version. could you, Father, restate sort of the main case for why, you know, independent of just your experience of what you've seen, why you would argue that yoga is problematic for a Christian. And if I recall it, you would contend if you do it knowingly in the sort of liturgical order of the poses and actually follow through with what it, you know, truly is in a spirit sense, it would be a violation of the first commandment, right? Yeah, precisely because they are designed to be an act of worship. So they are connected to Hindu deities.

And you just cannot separate that. I mean, according to the yogi masters, you cannot separate it from this. So you're taking what is a religious practice of another faith, and you are appropriating it in your own life for, you know, albeit maybe different circumstances and so forth. But that doesn't wash the practice clean of what it is attached to and connected to. Look, a door to the demonic is a door, whether you open it with malice or whether you open it with gym clothes on. It's up to you, but it is not up to you once that door is open to control what comes in and out of that door.

So if a demon happens to come through, he happens to come through. And as, you know, how do you think Gloria felt after all that? Yeah. Well, limber probably, right? A lot of stretching there. Well, speaking of Gloria, our case awakened, invited a lot of, We got a lot of negative press on that one and a lot of praise. Could you give the listeners who maybe have not heard, or it's been a while since they heard,

Awakened, a brief primer on this case and who Gloria and Paul were? Yeah, so Gloria and Paul, they were, they're from the New England area of America, and Paul was a tech engineer, and he got a very high-paying job on the West Coast. So they moved across the country. It required settling in a brand-new city, not knowing anyone. And, you know, Gloria was always an outgoing person, but took her a bit of a while to kind of connect with people. And eventually, she met some girlfriends. And the tradition with the girlfriends, they'd go and attend a yoga class every Sunday.

And so she, Gloria, started to do that. She joined them. Gloria and Paul, they were both Catholics, lifelong Catholics. What happened is in their move, they kind of, you know, in the busyness of the transition and setting life up and so forth, they stopped attending Sunday Mass. And so after several months, yoga class for Gloria had taken the place of Mass. And when, you know, Paul finally insisted, like, look, we've got to go to church, Paula went to church and just started to feel nauseous and sick. And every time they attempted that, that's what would happen. And as soon as they would exit the church, even on the drive home, everything was fine.

She only got ill when she was in church. Then there were other kind of manifestations. Paul would see her kind of, Paul would see her either in her sleep or when she was just kind of sitting on the sofa relaxing, she would be doing a yoga gesture with her hand. What are those gestures called? Mojra. Yeah, modra. Doing a modra, like a spinning action of some gesture or another. Things really came to a head when Father David called to check in on them and he left a voicemail for them, left them a note of encouragement.

and left a scripture. And when Gloria heard the message, she could hear the entire message, except the scripture. And she said, oh, no, it's cut off. And, you know, Paul looks at her, said, no, I heard the scripture. He read it. It's there. So he played it again, and he could hear it.

And she's standing right next to him. And she can hear the entire message except the scripture that Father David reads. So Paul goes and gets the Bible, and he opens it up. And she looks at the Bible, and it's just a blank page. Whereas in actuality, a page out of the Bible with writing on it. So there was this phenomena where she could not see the word of God and she couldn't hear it either. This was bizarre. And then that combined with the fact that, you know, she was never well whenever she'd go to church,

it triggered a phone call to Father David. And so Father David says a prayer with her on the phone. And Ryan, why don't you roll the clip of that interaction? Absolutely. Okay. Here is the fateful voice message from Father David. David to Gloria and Paul. I thought I'd try you but homeless.

You know this as well. Or praying for the cause. Yeah, he's got the jokes. I'm praying for you both. We miss you out here. And be anxious over nothing, but in everything with prayer and Thanksgiving. What? Let your request be known to God.

Well. Which surpasses all understanding. We'll guard your hearts and minds in Christ. What do you mean? Anyway, that's all I got. Okay, he's back. Blesses you. Oh, no.

What? It cut out. Babe, what are you talking about? The Bible verse. His receptionist must have dropped or something. Huh? He's reading Philippians 4. No, he said he would, but I mean, it's, but the verse, it's like cut out.

He did? I mean, what are you talking about? Oh, stop. That's not funny. Okay, so, Father, problem solved, right? Prayed over, suddenly can read and hear again. So great. No trip to the ophthalmologist, no trip to the ear doctor. All set, right? Well, not quite. So he recommended that she come and see me. And, you know, I know Father David. He's a friend of mine. And for him, what, so he knew Paul and Gloria well. And at heart is the fact that he detected just a change in the personality that when I asked him what, and he said, you know, I just, I don't know if I can put my finger.

on it, but she's not the same. And, you know, for Paul, Paul noticed that she wasn't the same in her kind of outward behaviors, in her gestures and in her sleeping and so forth. And of course, when she tried to enter a church and so forth, then, and obviously the situation that we just heard with her not being able to connect either auditorily or by sight with scripture. Father, I'm curious, what do you think happened? Why was Father David's prayer effective in restoring to Gloria, her ability to read and hear the scriptures again, and yet she still, as we'll learn later in the story, was significantly spiritually compromised. So what happened there? Was it like getting a dose of a medicine to kind of abate the symptoms while the main root pathogen remained?

Yeah. So there's a difference between suppressing a manifestation and removing the rights. And so it all, you know, are you just pulling at the weed or are you actually getting at the root? And so what we're talking about is what's the level of the hold. So he was able to get at a particular manifestation, a symptom of the rights that the devil had gained. But he didn't remove the rights. When there's a removal, the demon is going to regroup. He's going to attack again. He's going to do whatever he can to gain that real estate that he had lost and other real estate besides.

So Father David's prayer did something. And you know, that was a big, big indicator. It's a gigantic indicator that the problem is spiritual. Now, you can have somebody, you know, present on site and, you know, who, you know, gosh, like a neurosurgeon who could say, like, look, I can think of a situation where there's something going on in the brain and they can't see something written on the page. And so, like, and I don't want to take anything away from that because it is certainly it's possible that there could be something medical. But at that point in time, like, which is the prudent action to do? To continue praying or to stop everything? And let's go through eight weeks of brain scans and visiting specialists and seeing.

I mean, the simplest, quickest thing, least expensive thing, is to just pray, is to just do more of the same. And so that's what Father David suggested. And I agreed. I thought, you know, like, hey, let's just do a diagnostic prayer session here and see if there's anything that manifests. Boy, the spirit came out right away. and the spirit, you know, if you recall from the episode, when I asked for its name, it gave its name immediately. So what that also tells me is, although it was a bona fide possession, the overall hold, the overall rights that the demon had were limited. Either that or his nature itself, you know, he's a minor demon.

So he didn't have a lot of the strength that certainly other demons have. That could be because his rights were so limited. He might be a gigantic demon for all I know. Or it could be like his own nature. Like he's just, he's a pipsqueak. He's a little guy. But he's not, he's just, he's not a giant. He's not a water buffalo.

He's a feral cat. A feral cat can do a lot of damage. Can't do the damage that a water buffalo will do to you, but I can do a lot of damage if it decides to attack you. Also, Father, you mentioned the yoga demon might not have been that strong. I mean, you know, at least it's probably flexible, but not a lot of strength training for yoga. so maybe that's why it's a weaker demon.

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like blank. And I think it is important, obviously, for just for intellectual honesty, too. There are known illnesses and ailments that can actually cause this and mimic this, our auditory and visual processing disorders, et cetera. So I think to be totally fair, it is not completely outside the realm of naturalistic explanation that someone could have something like this. But to your point, Why not pray? The fact that it responded to prayer, even if it was psychosomatic, whatever, it's a win. Following up with a priest seems like a healthy option. And, you know, why not do both, right? Right. So look, demons often, you know, they work with the furniture that's in somebody's mind. And they work with the mental structure of the victim in question. So it's totally the case that there could be something cognitively wrong with her.

But let's say even if there was, even if there was, let's say even if she had two or three or five tumors in her head. And then, okay, so the obvious explanation would, well, something going on with these tumors, you know, produce this. But that, you know, neither is that a conclusive finish to the episode. You know, there's no QED that can be written on that because that's not solving anything. That hasn't traced any causality out. Now, the only thing that that could posit is that a tumor or some of these tumors could produce the phenomena. But, you know, look at what happened. There was a selective scriptural deafness that Paul verified in real time.

Then there was the voicemail test where, you know, so it was identical, the scripture, but now expressed orally. But there was something there that Father David just kind of his spiked. senties were telling him, you know, I restored something, but I don't think she's healed. So he just asked if they would be able to come and see me. So they made a trip out to do that. When they did, you know, I led them into the church and I walked around the church when they showed them different aspects of the church. And Gloria didn't know it and Paul didn't know it.

But that was also a diagnostic for me. Pointing things out, pointing out the windows, pointing out where the tabernacle is, pointing out the different pieces of art in the church and, you know, there was still a smell of incense there from Sunday Mass and so forth. So what I did was I invited them then into a room where I just said, look, you know, how about I just pray over you? And, you know, she agreed. And when I put my hands on and I invoke grace upon her and it was fine, I asked God to come into her, it was fine. However, when I said, I bind any and every evil that might be afflicting you, what happened is she sprouted out of her chair and she took the tree pose that you see in yoga, where, you know,

the practitioner is standing on one leg, the other leg is bent at a 90 degree angle, and the bottom of the foot is touching the thigh of the leg that is vertical. And so, and the hands are both kind of in a prayer position at the chest. And then, then it was on, right? Then, then we had, So a demon manifested. I asked him what his name was, said his name was Kundalini. We had a full out possession here. A possession in the sense that, you know, she couldn't remember what happened during those manifestations. So there really was a bona fide genuine possession there that was complete.

Her consciousness was suppressed every time the demon manifested. You know, and I think the thing to also remember is, look, you know, Kundalini is a serpent spirit. And it is believed to dwell within the spine once it is invoked. And it sits at the center of the spine and rises and recedes according to whatever the heck it wants to do with you. So, I mean, how is that for an image? I mean, this should send alarm bells off to Christians, right? We don't want serpent spirits within us. I mean, you know, since Genesis, serpents get a bad rap and for good reason.

That is true. Let's actually roll the clip of the actual deliverance scene, and we can actually hear what went down. I renounce accepting idols and granting rights to them. Okay, okay, I understand. I confess to accepting. Potty. And, well, that's when the showster.

Demons will take great pains to avoid detection. But once you get close to removing their rights, they spring into action to protect them. And they come at you with fangs. Gloria. Father, what's going on, father? Do something. Gloria rose up out of her chair and began moving in a strange commingling of rhythmic dancing and pulsing. All the while, her tongue darted in and out of her mouth as she hissed loudly.

bow to me worship me faith in your worship the spirit just be fun of Jesus. She said, pray. Okay, so you actually prayed for her and she decides to confess and renounce yoga and then right away, thing comes out, starts hissing, crawling around on the ground and it's constantly saying bow to her worship, etc. So, yeah, Father, you know, it's interesting when I first heard this case was that I've actually had two other friends.

Well, one, Father Rehill, has she. shared on the show how he has seen people writhe around on the floor like snakes. And also, another friend of mine has been on the show shared how he actually was at a dinner hall at a prestigious university and someone had started manifesting as a demon and crawling around on the floor like a snake as well, who was totally of sound mind. And it's interesting. And these instances had to do with yoga? I know. Actually, well, with Father Rehills, I don't recall. And with my friend, it was more just they were praying for this individual at dinner and I mean just show started and it was so interesting and he said it was the last person who thought this would happen but is this fairly

common father that the demons will when they hijack someone they'll often you know try to debase them by acting out as strange animals or I feel like I've heard the slithering like a snake anecdote quite a bit people have accused me of babbling for years and it's true maybe that's why babble is actually the perfect sponsor for this show. Babel is an award-winning app that has sold over 25 million subscriptions helping people learn languages in a fun and dynamic way. In fact, it might be the perfect app to help you learn a new language with that big summer trip. As I record this even, I'm getting ready to head to a five-country extravaganza. Even just 10 minutes a day with Babel can help you start having real conversations in as little as three weeks. And instead of memorizing random

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They only do that when there's a confrontation, right? Just like a rattles snake rattles its rattle when it senses danger. And until then, you know, why waste the energy? Certainly in the latter case that you said, they were praying for that individual at that dinner. And all of a sudden, boom, so the demons are feeling those prayers and they're caustic to them. They react, right? They're being singed. So it is not the case that the demon wants to react, right?

It doesn't want exposure like that. It likes operating behind the tall hidden grass. You know, once it has that, it's by and large content. But those prayers were bona fide prayers because they produced a clash. And so it's being wounded and it manifests itself according to the type of nature that it has. And this is the irony, and I've said it before, that, you know, demons, are fallen angels and angels as a type of being is they are higher than humans. Demons are fallen angels.

And yet, you know, when they manifest, they often manifest as animals. And it varies from culture to culture. But, you know, like swine, cows, goats, serpents, crickets, pigs, you know, all of that. So it's ironic that when they manifest, they often do so as an even lesser being. than humans. Father, let me ask you this, just because now that I've been working with the cases you've provided to me, I noticed trends and, you know, I try to find commonalities. A lot of times you will have people go to confession. In this case, there were just renunciations. Why did you not have them go through confession before heading into the exorcism? So actually, I did bring in confession,

but that was done off the air. So look, there are two aspects to think about kind of a transgression here. There's two different concepts that produce a negative effect. So one is juridical, like you're giving rights to the demons. So you're bestowing upon them a legality, a legal right. The other is the guilt of having done something that offends God. So yoga is a violation against the First Commandment because it is giving worship to other gods. Now, in a glorious case, she didn't intend to do that. So there's no mortal sin here with regard to that. In fact, she didn't have any awareness that the act was wrong. That doesn't mean that the act itself doesn't bestow rights.

Again, there's two different concepts. One bestows a juridical right. The other one has the committer of the action incur a guilt. Even if this one, if the latter one doesn't occur, the first one can. So there may have been no mortal sin within Gloria. That's fine. But I would have her go to confession regardless. Why?

Because confession has a whole other dimension, which in some sense is even greater than the removal of guilt. And that is, it bestows grace. It bestows the life of God, which is my favorite definition of grace, which is my operative definition of grace. It's the life of God, God's divinity. It bestows that. And so we receive that. And so when she had that, I mean, that's worth way more than any prayer I can utter. It's worth way more than any, you know, action that I can take.

And in fact, than any other grace the church can bestow, because the highest grace the church can be stow is sacramental grace, right? There's nothing higher. So for glorious sake, there was, certainly she was helped and aided by that sacramental grace. That made the exorcism occur that much more quickly. And the fact that she could undergo that act of confession relatively freely, again, it just bespeaks to the fact that the demon there either was not in his own nature, large, powerful, or the rights he got were very narrow and limited. I'm inclined to think of number two, that it's number two.

Why? You know, Gloria, yes, she was an outgoing person. She was extroverted, but she was relatively a simple person. You know, she's a fun-loving person. Her life was not complicated. She was somebody who always tried to be a good, nice person. Was somebody who didn't have a wild side, never did, just wanted to be genuinely good, genuinely helpful person. So she's a person who gave a right, but that right was very narrow and very limited.

So I think our astute observers to the show will point out that she was also skipping church on Sunday. And in the Catholic Church, missing church is a mortal sin. Would that be a doorway? Obviously, in our tradition, it's less. But is that a doorway that you've seen exploited? And does it somehow compound with what Gloria is already doing? Yeah, I think there's a good candidate that it did, right? Obviously.

So it's a sinful action. So you're failing at something that you know you're failing at. you know, and she chose to do that over going to church. She chose to do the yoga over going to church. I think at the beginning, if I recall, they had some intention of, well, we'll go, you know, we'll go to Sunday Mass on Saturday nights, that kind of thing. But it never panned out. It's just their Saturdays were busy, and, you know, people today, they're just, they're busy.

They're doing stuff, fair enough. And so church was the first thing jettisoned. So that prepared the ground. Absolutely. You know, that prepared the ground. But she didn't get possessed for the skipping of the mass. She got possessed for doing the act that had the occult attachment to it. You know, and there it is.

There it is. It's writ large right there. What was it like, Father, to just, I mean, you've seen a lot of crazy things in the room, but is this the first time you've seen someone from yoga or doing these kind of poses, etc? I just imagine quite a sight of someone doing like these like really interesting stretches while you're praying over them. Yeah. Now, this is the only time that I saw the demonic gestures explicitly tied to yoga, where there was an identity to yoga.

And I'll tell you this. You know, was this specifically a yoga demon? I couldn't tell you. And maybe the manifestations happened that way because those were the only rights that he had. And so the manifestations come out in a form connecting those rights. you know, whereas if there was something else, you know, so let's say she just all of a sudden ran wild and just started doing multiple occult things, conducting a seance and terra-court. It isn't to say that the demon isn't going to manifest in an entirely different way and perhaps

in a much more powerful way. Right. So we're always operating from a position of ignorance in that sense because we can't, we can't see the demon. We can't see the demon because there is nothing to see. There's no body. And by nature, you know, we see bodies. We see light reflected off of bodies. That's what sight is. But we know they're there because of the effects. And so we, we, but it requires some study and analysis.

Like, okay, we did this, that produced why. We did this and produced the. We did this. And it just, gosh, it didn't produce anything that we thought. So out of that, you know, you move towards predictability. Right. So there is a science behind this. You are using reason and rationality to get an understanding of the situation so that you can be helpful to the victim.

So, Father, you mentioned other exorcists have warned against this as well. Is this sort of a most or some? Because we've had actually many people write into the show and actually mentioned that the priests in their parish actually are saying they don't think yoga's harmful and there's like nearby classes that are like loosely affiliated or whatever. So I'm curious, is this something that if I were to have 10 exorcists around like a kitchen table, you would venture a guess that most of them would agree with you on this? And then broadly speaking, why is it more, like less controversial maybe at a broader scale? I'd be shocked if there was an exorcist who disagreed with me simply because even if that exorcist has never had any yoga cases in particular.

But he's seen other occult things. He has seen other things that like, you know, yeah, I could see the logic. I can see, based on what yoga is, I could see the logic of their being rights granted to a demon when you engage in it. So, you know, he wouldn't bat an eyelash with it. I mean, that would be what I would surmise. That would be my suspicion. You know, Father, one of the questions that I do really appreciate that comes in on this episode is that, you know, we pointed out so many people around the world do this. There appears to be, at least on the surface, like no immediate negative ramifications.

this. There are some physical benefits absolutely to doing this. Dr. Brown's contention was, there's plenty of things you can do any type of movement is actually, in fact, she actually made the case that there are benefits, but it's actually not as, they're not as significant as you would think. And in many cases, there's actually a lot of injuries that happen from yoga that people don't talk about as well. But there's plenty of other things to do to get physical benefits. But to someone, we've had, you know, we've had many people write in and say, this sounds so absurd. Like, are you saying, like, how do demons actually co-opt? poses like for example there's a stretch that i like doing which i don't know if it's actually in the yoga

like it's it's the physical therapist gives it to you i've never i've never heard of i've never been to a yoga class so i don't know but it's a stretch where you lean forward i think they call it preachers stretch where you sit you sit on your knees and you stretch forward and i think there's a it's a lower back stretch and i think there is a yoga pose that is similar to that or mirrors that and so people have written in saying like how come as christians like save the sister how do how how come demons co-opt positions like stretches? Are you saying that if I do any stretch by itself that somehow I'm like inviting demons in and I think we responded that it. No one is saying this. All right. So yoga did not invent stretching. But what's the difference? Well, when you're doing something called

yoga, the very word itself means to yoke. What do you do? You're yoking yourself to Hindu deities. That's, it is what it is. That's what it is. When you're going to physiotherapy, you're doing a stretch. You're doing something medical. So even if, for all intents and purposes, you have two different people. One is doing the physiotherapy stretching. One is doing, say, a yoga pose that involves that same stretching. And exteriorly, they look identical. One is yoga and one is not.

So there is an inherent danger. So the probability is not zero that there's going to be a spiritual implication for engaging in the yoga pose. So again, this is, you know, I'm not. talking about the danger being in the intrinsic dimension of the postures themselves but what those postures are connected to by their nature this is good that we're talking about this because it comes up so on Reddit there was vehement objection to this episode you know people kept going back well there's nothing intrinsically evil about these yoga positions there's nothing

intrinsically evil. I will be the first to agree with that. But there's nothing intrinsically evil about you accepting a cursed object in your hand, right? Let's say you don't know that it's cursed. Even if, I mean, the same thing applies even if you know, but let's say you don't know. And you put it in your pocket. And all of a sudden, the effects of that curse start making manifest. Well, there's nothing you did that was intrinsically evil there. And yet you were experiencing the effects of the curse. So the positions of yoga, in other words, there are a type of curse that you're bringing upon yourself. So yes, there's nothing intrinsically evil about them, but that's not the point. The point is you're opening a door. The point is that demons are being given rights to this.

Remember what St. Paul says, right? It's like all these other gods, all they are at that heart, they're demons. So you're doing an action that is intended to yoke you to gods whom Paul defines as demons and a story. You want to keep doing that? That's fine. You may end up in front of an exorcist one day. So if people want to meet you, they can either write into the show or take yoga. Well, if you want to do that, that's up to you. If you want to continue it. There are lots of other things you can do. You can do Pilates.

You can do other types of exercise that are not connected to a religious practice. I would encourage you to do those. And if you want to insist on doing yoga, that's your prerogative. That's your choice. But, you know, you've been duly warned. Father, what do you have to say about the Christian attempts to make a sort of redemptive yoga, a Christian yoga, like I heard of one called Yo God, and like renaming the poses and making it like, you know, Christian liturgical. And I had a friend who would go to yoga class regularly and she would take her mat and put scriptures on it. And so it actually started an interesting conversation. I said, why do you feel the need to put scriptures on your yoga mat if it's totally fine? Why do you feel the need to pray over the mat when you go do it? And they said, oh, well, that's a great question. So do you feel that there are ways that, how do you feel about Christian yoga if such a thing exists? I don't think you can redefine yoga into something else.

I, you know, look, why don't you just do some other type of exercise? Why do yoga, which is, the word of which means, by definition, it means to yoke. So I don't know that you're getting rid of that yoke. I don't know that you're, I think, I think it's less harmful. Probably it is than just doing overt yoga, but I'll tell you this. I think if you're doing that, if it's possible, the demons are going to come at you even more, if it's possible for them to do so. As a way to just, oh, you think you can get away from me. Watch this. You might make yourself target number one. I don't know. I don't know. I'm trying to think the way a demon would think in this situation. And that, I mean, every exorcist does. If you're going to be successful, it's because you've

learned to think in that manner. You try to think like the enemy. So anyway, it seems to me, if I were the enemy, that's what I would try to do. I want to get you back for that. All right. Well, I think that's all the time we have for today. The case was awakened. It's a two-parter. If you haven't heard it, go back and listen to it.

It's great. And, Father, any final parting words on what they should do instead of yoga, exercise orders? Yeah, go for a walk, learn to do Pilates, get some weights, do that, and you'll get in shape. You don't need to do yoga. Does lifting a good cigar and a glass of cognac? Oh, that's my favorite exercise. That's my favorite kind. You bet.

Okay. All right. Exorcist orders. All right, folks. Well, thanks for listening. And season three is coming soon. I promise. We'll talk to you soon, folks.