A recent article in the New York Times entitled 'How yoga can wreck your body' has caused shockwaves through the yoga community and generated a huge online buzz.
It is certainly confronting to read sensationalist claims such as “the vast majority of people should give up yoga altogether. It’s simply too likely to cause harm,” but the main argument of the article is hard to fault: doing extreme yoga poses, or even practicing simple poses incorrectly, can cause injury.
So why do yoga students practice poses that are inappropriate for them, or do simple poses in a way that causes harm? An article in the UK newspaper The Guardian provides plenty of explanations:
“Elizabeth Bennett, 45, slipped a disc in her neck after being "bullied" into a headstand at a New York yoga studio. "When I hesitated, he called me a wimp. There are too many teachers who push unwitting students too far to serve their own egos," she said.”
Or take the case of Megan Branch, a 22 yr old who injured her back practicing locust pose “because she was in a class that was so crowded with up to 70 people that she had to lie at an odd angle so the next student did not have his feet in her face”.
Yoga was never meant to be taught in big classes by inexperienced teachers. Traditionally, seasoned yoga teachers worked under the guidance of their own expert teachers, passing down the wisdom of their tradition to three or four students at a time. Teachers got to know their students and taught them poses that were uniquely designed to suit their individual needs.
If you’re doing yoga in a gym or a big studio, you may be one of 30 to 80 students being taught by a teacher with as little as 14 days training.
Describing a typical community yoga class in New York, Joanna Walters in The Guardian says that a class of over 70 students “simply had a leader to mimic, with no expert correction of students' postures or warnings about injuries or not pushing one's limits. In an industry where there is cursory certification and no official licensing, yoga teachers can become "qualified" with a 200-hour online course”.
Unfortunately, this situation is not limited to New York and the minimum 200-hour certification set by the Yoga Alliance in the USA has become the benchmark for teacher training in Australia too.
However, Yoga Australia, the professional body that represents yoga teachers in this country, requires teachers to undertake a minimum of 350hrs professional training before achieving Level 1 teacher status and will only accord teachers with a 200hr certification provisional membership. A Yoga Australia Level 2 teacher must have 500 hours training and 5 years/500hrs teaching experience, while a Level 3 teacher must demonstrate 1000hrs training and 10 yrs and 1000hrs teaching experience.
Yoga has been confused with exercise and the gym culture of recent years has normalised the idea of big group classes, obediently mimicking the moves of an ‘expert’ at the front of the room. It’s certainly a cost effective way for studio’s to run their businesses, but it is not a safe or effective way to teach yoga.
If you want to practice safe, effective and authentic yoga, here four things to look out for when choosing a teacher:
1. Make sure your teacher is a Yoga Australia accredited Level 1, 2 or 3 teacher.
2. Check that your teacher has experience in modifying poses for individuals (ie adapting for injury, age, flexibility level etc.)
3. Choose a class with a smaller number of students to ensure your teacher is able to spot mis-alignments and prevent injury.
4. A good teacher will ask students at the start of class if they have any injuries or medical conditions. If a teacher fails to do this, it’s an indicator that they may not be trained or willing to teach students according to their individual capacities.
Nikola Ellis is the founder & principal teacher at Adore Yoga. Adore Yoga teaches small groups of 4 and 6 students, as well as providing private instruction and professional mentoring programs for yoga teachers.
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