Sunday, January 12, 2003


yoga safety

new year's resolutions being what they are, i'm seeing a lot of new students in my regular yoga classes. and this all good! practiced with insight and care, yoga is a life-long activity that can be beneficial to everyone. practiced carelessly, competitively, and with a bad teacher, yoga is a fast ticket to injury.

so with the flood of new students also comes a surge in injuries. new students often try to do too much. it's important to remember that in yoga you are beginner for at least the first whole year.

the poses take time to learn and time to refine. even dancers, gymnasts, runners, weightlifters -- the "superfit" -- should be in a basics class for 6 months.

i've often seen new students, the naturally flexible, rush into open or intermediate classes, fold themselves into pretzel poses where they don't belong, and end up tearing a ligament! i've also seen strong but stiff weightlifters strain their knees trying to do lotus without prior practice!

in yoga, more than other activities, the student has to use caution and judgement when going to a class for the first time. if a teacher's assist seems too aggressive or assertive, you have to say no with a gentle "thanks -- but i'm taking it easy today."

sadly, in yoga right now there are too many underqualified teachers. it's easy for a new student to find themselves in a class with a bad teacher.

to my mind, most younger teachers should have been practicing at least 3 to 5 years regularly and taken a minimum of 200 hours certified training before they should be leading a class. 500 hours would be even better. (of course there are those senior teachers who have been doing yoga for decades and who have lived in india for a long time studying with a master teacher. but you know who they are already by their reputation.)

so many times new students go to classes and see all the fancy tricks others do. they don't realize these people have been doing yoga for 5 years, and the teacher for 10!

finally, a dirty little secret of many power yoga teachers is that they often spent years in a gentler form of yoga perfecting their alignment before they moved on. the noted ashtanga teacher richard freeman is a good example -- he studied iyengar yoga intensely first!

thus my advice to new students is: read about beginning yoga; make sure your teacher is qualified; and in those first classes, under-do.

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