Religious compatibility
Many mistakenly consider yoga to be a religion, or that it has been before. The truth is that this practice never seems to have pretended to be or become a religion, while it does not seek to explain the origin of life or take a clear position on how human beings should live. It does, however, provide guidelines for achieving physical, spiritual and ethical balance. It is also true that meditation could be confused with prayer. It is for this reason that all the great religions of the world have had their reservations about defining yoga or admitting it. The Catholic religion itself expressed itself about yoga in 1989 when John Paul II in a document of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith warned that the only object of Christian contemplation is God, and that therefore yoga can serve to prepare us before prayer, but without confusing the two things.