Ministers, priests, rabbis, imams and all other holy men and women spend their professional lives and careers ministering to the spiritual needs of their flocks and congregations. The greatest spiritual need we all have is dealing with the lifelong struggle that exists in each of us between good and evil. We are born and live our lives as body, mind and spirit. The fruits of the spirit, "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness and self-control," spoken of in Galatians, live within each of us, yet, get drowned out in our anxious, stressed and pressured lives in this hyperactive digital age.

The issue of yoga as a religious practice was raised again by a 27-page guideline document issued by the Kerala Catholic Bishops' Council of India, which said, "Christians must be vigilant against the fact that they should not be embracing another religion (Hinduism in this case) while practicing meditation." They went on to say that "chanting prayers of other faiths and idol worship goes against the basic tenets of Christianity."

However well-intentioned, this is uninformed. While less common than before, this canard still comes up from time to time in some of the more fundamentalist Protestant circles and certain arms of the Catholic church. It needs to be rebutted in the strongest terms, because in fact the very opposite is true and the adoption of a practice of mindfulness, such as yoga and meditation, is one the most effective methods of dealing with the internal struggle that is with us our entire lives.

It has been said that in our prayers, we are talking to God, either with requests for help with a problem in our life or with thanks for all the blessings in our life. In meditation, the mind is quieted so that God can talk to us. I have found this to be demonstrably true in my own life.

Patanjali, the first one to write on this topic 1,300 years ago, said the purpose of yoga is to "calm the agitations of the mind." Even among the most devout, the agitations of the mind, including anger, jealousy and each of the seven sins (lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride), are ever present as temptations and act to drown out the fruits of the spirit.

Those ministering to their faithful, as a general rule, have their presence and attention one or two days each week, usually for an hour at most. Needless to say, the temptations during the rest of the week are too much for anyone. The sex abuse scandals afflicting both the Southern Baptist Convention and the Catholic Church demonstrate that even these "holy men" struggle with the agitations and temptations of the mind. They did irreparable damage to others and themselves.

The Dalai Lama famously said, "If we could teach every eight-year-old to meditate, we could heal the planet of violence in one generation." The evidence of this is stacking up. A number of inner-city public school systems, including Newark, Baltimore and Dallas are finding remarkable results with yoga and meditation in reducing classroom discipline issues that require punishment or suspension. A number of jail and prison systems have adopted yoga and meditation to help deal with the violence and unrest.

I am now a ten-year regular practitioner of both yoga and meditation, and I have never witnessed or heard anything that could remotely be considered "religious" in any class or session I have attended. There are no prayers or chanting like that mentioned in the 27-page guideline document. I also know countless numbers of people who say their lives have either been saved or changed by adopting mindfulness into their daily regimens.

The truth is, yoga and meditation are body-mind-spirit regimens with physical benefits (flexibility, balance, strength), mental benefits (calmness, peace, serenity), and emotional benefits (freeing the fruits of the spirit to do their work in our lives).

The benefits to us individually and to society at large are truly enormous. I would encourage every minister and congregation to see that yoga and meditation classes can become an indispensable part of the offering to their members.

Alan Steelman is a former Republican member of Congress representing Dallas, a management consultant, and author of the book "Yoga on the Yellow Brick Road, Exiting the A.S.A.P. Lane, Calm Your Mind." He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.