Background

Jean-Marie Déchanet was born Gabriel-Robert-Vladimir Déchanet on January 18, 1906, in Isches, France. He was the son of Octave and Marie-Rose (Braconnier) Déchanet.

His father, Octave, died when Jean was only two, and his mother, raised him and his older brother with the help of her parents. His family survived in the location of the battle of Verdun, considered the lengthiest and bloodiest battle in human history.

Education

Jean received a Ph.D. from the Université de Londre.

Career

In 1924 Déchanet entered Saint-Andrew’s abbey as an oblate brother. He initially suffered from symptoms of epilepsy. So, he was refused the ordination process because Church law forbade a man with epilepsy, which he had, from becoming a priest.

In his early 40’s he was "providentially cured" of his illness and began learning various forms of physical exercises; eventually, he discovered hatha yoga, which he subsequently wrote about extensively as well as taught others through group classes over the course of 20-plus years.

He was ordained a priest on May 22, 1948. From 1956 to 1964 he lived at St. Andrew’s mission Kansenia (Katanga) in Africa working on various missionary projects. When his requests to adapt rather than impose European monastic culture on the locals was rejected by his superiors, he chose to leave the mission and return to Europe.

Not wanting to return to the St. Andrew’s Abbey, Déchanet reached an agreement with the bishop of Grenoble and his abbot at St. Andrews for him to establish himself in Valjouffrey, a small hamlet in southern France, where he lived and worked for more than 24 years. At Valjouffrey he gave classes on hatha yoga, theology and whole foods. From the 1970s, French, Swiss and Italian people came to visit him in Valjouffrey and to learn his teachings on spirituality and health.

During the autumn of 1990, Father Jean-Marie returned to the St. Andrew’s Abbey where he spent the last months his life.

Achievements

• Fr. Jean-Marie Déchanet is known as a French Benedictine priest who wrote prolifically about yoga and Christianity. Three of his books were translated into English.

Works

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  • Christian Yoga 1960
  • La voie du silence 1963
  • Yoga and God 1975
  • Yoga in Ten Lessons 1965
  • Journal d'un yogi 1968
  • William of St Thierry: The Man and His Work 1972

Views

When he was in his 40s, Déchanet discovered yoga through a magazine. As he read about yoga, Déchanet recognized it as a "gymnastics of repose" that would allow him to embody the kind of theology he had studied. As such, Déchanet’s teachings on hatha yoga are deeply rooted in Christian theology.

Déchanet contained that person should never judge how another person interprets scripture, connects to God, or how one prays, meditates or worships the Lord. The Christian yogi firmly believes they are to be worshiping the Lord with their whole self.

Steeped in the spirituality of William St Thierry, he became profoundly convinced of the close links between body, mind and spirit, and sought to live that out in his own life. It was this which led him to investigate Hindu yoga. With his theological and spiritual background, he came to see that the religious underpinning of such yoga clashed with his Christian beliefs.

He then went on to develop a form of yoga which he believed was eminently suited to Christians and which allowed healthy incorporation of the human body into spirituality. Firstly, he exorcised all Hindu beliefs from the techniques and disciplines of hatha yoga. In doing so, he believed that such purified techniques which took full account of the body’s effects on the mind and spirit, would be an excellent means of disposing Christians for prayer, liturgical and personal.

He then set himself to test his theory by experimenting with his modified yoga. In a short time he claimed to have experienced a number of physical and psychological benefits. And while he did not see this ‘Christian Yoga’, as he was later to call it, as a form of prayer, he saw it as an effective launching pad into contemplative prayer, as well as a means of putting renewed meaning into bodily postures and gestures in liturgical prayer, so much a part of Benedictine life.

Quotations: "It is not only my body but my soul and spirit also that the breath of the Almighty comes to awaken and seize."

Membership

Jean was a member of the Academie des Sciences de Rome.

Connections

Father:

Octave Déchanet

Mother:

Isabelle (Braconnier) Déchanet

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television, and Other Fields In response to the escalating need for up-to-date information on writers, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series brings researchers the most recent data on the worlds most-popular authors.
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