Yoga at Walden Pond? What about Wasilla, Alaska? After all, Sarah Palin does poses.
But stretching the body is only as spiritual as you make it, as Lisa Miller points out in Newsweek. And Palin, who grew up Pentecostal, shows no sign of twisting in a new religious direction. Still, she was photographed in the tree pose for Runners World.

The Yoga Dork blog says Palin mangled the pose but we have never been a nation of purists. Americans like philosophic mash-ups -- such melding a belief in reincarnation with Christianity, which has a very different understanding of salvation --- but we still identify overwhelmingly with name-brand Western religions. Surveys find only about 2 million Americans identify themselve as Hindu.

Yet, we have been doing Hindu-Lite for years, sampling of the flavor, images and style of a 6,000-year-old faith but with no actual theology involved. Anywhere you look you can find loose chatter about dharma (a way of living leading to spiritual advancement) and karma ( the "neutral, self-perpetuating law of the inner cosmos," Hindu monk Sannyasin Arumugaswami, editor of Hinduism Today magazine, told me in 2006) .

Yoga Journal estimated at that time that nearly a third of folks who try the 5,000-year-old Hindu physical and meditative discipline, say they're seeking "spiritual development." I would bet that's a higher percentage now than my four-year-old story..