It Would Help If We Could Find A "Chakra" Too

Man, for a mere exercise, Yoga sure does keep popping up in the weirdo spiritual world. As a reader reminded me, there's those cultists that gassed everyone on the subway in Japan - a Yoga cult:

"Aum Shinrikyo/Aleph is a composite belief system that incorporates Asahara's idiosyncratic interpretations of Yoga with facets of Buddhism and Christianity, and even the writings of Nostradamus.

In 1992 Asahara published a book, within which he declared himself 'Christ', Japan's only fully enlightened master and the 'Lamb of God'. His purported mission was to take upon himself the sins of the world. He claimed he could transfer to his followers spiritual power and ultimately take away their sins and bad Karma. He also saw dark conspiracies everywhere promulgated by the Jews, Freemasons, the Dutch, the British Royal Family, and rival Japanese religions.

Ultimately, Asahara outlined a doomsday prophecy, which included a Third World War. Asahara described a final conflict culminating in a nuclear 'Armageddon', borrowing the term from the Book of Revelation. Humanity would end, except for the elite few who joined Aum. Aum's mission was not only to spread the word of 'salvation', but also to survive these 'End Times'. Asahara predicted Armageddon would occur in 1997. He named the United States as The Beast from the Book of Revelation, predicting it would eventually attack Japan.

History

The movement was founded by Shoko Asahara in his one-bedroom apartment in Tokyo's Shibuya ward in 1984, starting off as a Yoga and meditation class known as Aum-no-kai ('Aum club') and steadily grew in the following years. It gained the official status as a religious organization in 1989. It attracted such a considerable number of young graduates from Japan's elite universities that it was dubbed a 'religion for the elite'."

All the way up to that cultist in Yogaville who killed his yogi:

"Testimony: I had a horrible experience with Andrew Cohen. He presents himself to be a teacher of enlightenment and meditation, neither of which he really is interested in.

I met him first at the Integral Yoga Institute in New York City when he gave a lecture. After the lecture I met with him privately and asked him several spiritual questions that had been on my mind. He responded to my questions telling me that I should not worry about practicing celibacy and that my Yoga and meditation teacher in Virginia and the man who built the center we were standing in at the time couldn't even keep his vows as a monk. I smiled and nodded and left the room. Later I would be absolutely appalled at what he had said, insulting Swami Satchidananda in such a way and after being invited into his institute, but at the time I was eerily nonchalant and calm.

I attended a retreat soon afterwards and had an absolutely horrible time. He sat upon his platform and embarrassed and ridiculed people in the name of spirituality and enlightenment, I wanted to leave all week it was truly one of the worst retreats I had ever been on. Strangely a year later I went on another, longer retreat with him. I suppose that I had forgotten the horrible experience that I had.

When I arrived at this retreat I remember feeling that there was something really strange about all of the people that were there. There seemed to be this look on their faces of exhaustion. They all seemed to have dark circles around their eyes. I just remember having a really bad feeling."

Weird, huh? It seems like, the more cultists keep claiming there's one thing going on with Yoga - like exercise - the more evidence emerges that there's something else going on.
It definitely ain't proper stretching - unless you're trying to develop an "open mind" about joining a cult or killing someone.