Last year, while attempting an advanced yoga move, Chris Flack ruptured a muscle in his back and slipped a disc in his neck. He had set himself a challenge – to achieve the scorpion pose, an advanced position that involves balancing on your hands or forearms, then arching your back and legs over until your toes touch your head, scorpion-like.
“I wasn’t listening to my body. It was a good lesson to me, to slow down. I had come out of some inversions [headstands and handstands] quite badly a few times, and came crashing down on to my neck. It was just irresponsible practice.”
For six months, Flack was in and out of hospital with pain management appointments, and taking morphine. The eventual cure happened shortly before he was due to have a guided cortisone injection, and was less orthodox. After staying off alcohol for months because of the injury, he got a little tipsy at a wedding, and was on the dancefloor at 2am when an elderly woman – “a drunk auntie,” he says with a laugh – jumped on his back and all but fixed him.
He still has to manage the injury, which involves daily physiotherapy and a fortnightly deep tissue massage. As for his yoga practice: “I don’t practice inversions any more. Here in the west we want to push ourselves. It’s a competitive culture where we want to win, to achieve, to be the gold medal winner of the yoga Olympics. I think for me yoga’s a lot more about letting go and being comfortable with just being. It’s quite hard to get that balance. I think it’s dangerous if you’re not really aware.” As a yoga instructor, he says, “I teach very carefully, I don’t want to push people, but the odd thing was I was pushing myself.”
Which goes to show even conscientious yoga teachers can get it wrong when it comes to their own practice. But it’s the ones who encourage their students to go too far who are currently under scrutiny. Now the British Wheel of Yoga has begun a year-long consultation with a view to regulating yoga teachers and introducing National Occupational Standards. Is there really a problem with bad, even dangerous, teachers? “We think so,” says Paul Fox, the organisation’s chair, which won’t be a surprise to anyone who has ever taken a dodgy yoga class (in my first class in a south London leisure centre, the teacher encouraged me to do a headstand).
In a now infamous (among the yoga community) excerpt from science journalist William J Broad’s book The Science of Yoga: the risks and rewards, he highlighted how yoga had been linked to knee, back and shoulder injuries and even strokes. Others have reported repetitive strain injury, torn ligaments, and damaged wrists and hips caused by yoga.
But there isn’t really any evidence to suggest yoga is more dangerous than any other physical activity.
Fox concedes most of the evidence is anecdotal, but says good teaching will minimise any risks. “If you’re going to take members of the public through a set of yoga poses, you do have a duty of care towards them. You do have to do a risk assessment, and know how to modify postures and how to deal with people who have lower back pain, arthritis, high blood pressure or any number of common ailments. Many good yoga teacher training courses will cover that.”
In gyms and leisure centres, yoga teachers have to join the Register of Exercise Professionals (REPs), in the same way spin and aerobics instructors do, but privately anyone can set themselves up as a yoga teacher. And the problem with REPs, say many within the yoga community, including Yoga Alliance, which represents and accredits instructors, is that its standards are so low. The new proposal is to improve standards, but it has been criticised as needless bureaucracy and financially beneficial for the bodies involved, the BWY among them. Yoga Alliance describes it as “a cosy little arrangement”.
Is it a money-making scheme? “I think it’s the opposite,” says Fox. The BWY trains teachers, which takes a minimum of 18 months; some courses take three years. “Because it’s unregulated, a lot of people run [sub-standard] teacher training courses and charge pretty much what we charge. They’re the ones making a lot of money out of it.” But people within the yoga community are not happy. At the recent first meeting, says Fox, the mood was “rather un-yogic”.
The problem is that it’s not entirely clear what yoga is. For a start, there are a variety of disciplines. Then there are some who believe it’s a spiritual or religious practice (and probably one that should not be taught by western instructors to white people in designer gymwear) and as such shouldn’t be regulated. Or that it’s a creative art and can’t be controlled.
“The other school of thought,” says Sarah Shone, a chartered physiotherapist who is also a yoga teacher, “is that yoga is more of a physical practice and physical practices do run the risk of having a negative effect on the body. There is a risk of injury with any physical activity that any of us undertake.”
In yoga, she says, the most common injuries are often to do with overstretching and that can apply to any joint of the body. “People who are put into poor alignment can overstretch ligaments and tendons and can flare up problems that are already there. Yoga is a very safe form of physical activity for the vast majority of people, and as long as they are sensible and take responsibility for their own practice and always make sure the yoga instructor is aware of any pains and injuries so they can take that into consideration.” She is undecided on whether it needs more regulation.
“Anybody can call themselves a yoga teacher because there isn’t a central governing body. But then is there a governing body for every other form of exercise? And there isn’t.”
Disharmony in British yoga community over moves to regulate teachers
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