By Karen Kinnard
Yoga injuries are on the rise as the popularity of "hot yoga", "power yoga", hot yoga, vinyasa flow and other catchy class names increases. Businesses have jumped on the yoga popularity train and inexperienced teachers and other entrepreneurs are opening more studios (and many failing at this business). To aggravate the problem, cookie cutter "yoga teacher training" programs are also promising certification in a weekend, a week or just a month. The lack of education in this field is frightening.
To be trained as a yoga teacher in the past, a person had to study and commit to learning from a yoga master for many years. Before the boom in yoga as a business, there were a few trainings in the U.S. that lasted only a year or two. Now you can go online and even be "certified" to teach yoga via the internet.
How to know? If you want to learn to practice yoga, look for a teacher who has experience teaching and practicing yoga. I practiced 20 years before teaching, attended a one-year training, and after completing that, I still didn't know enough to help students prevent all injuries. It wasn't until I had taught at least 5 years, that I began to be able to discern the risks not only to my students but also to myself of some of the sequences and classes I attended.
Now, I frequently teach beginners or veterans to yoga and see that most of them have 1) bad habits they learned in other classes, 2) previously uncorrected alignment or 3) injuries from practicing yoga. This is much more common than you might know. In fact, two students have told me that either physical therapists or an acupuncturist claimed that they see injured patients showing up quite frequently in their clinics from yoga.
Here are links to some articles for you.
Ashtanga Yoga - SOME teachers, not all are good with assisting students in alignment within this style - ask
Alignment-based yoga
Eischens Yoga
Hatha Yoga
Gentle Yoga
Iyengar Yoga (be cautious as some of these teachers can be forceful in adjusting students in poses - ask that you not be touched/adjusted until you are sure of how the teacher works with other students
This is not a complete list yet, check back or view the article links above to learn more.
Yoga injuries are on the rise as the popularity of "hot yoga", "power yoga", hot yoga, vinyasa flow and other catchy class names increases. Businesses have jumped on the yoga popularity train and inexperienced teachers and other entrepreneurs are opening more studios (and many failing at this business). To aggravate the problem, cookie cutter "yoga teacher training" programs are also promising certification in a weekend, a week or just a month. The lack of education in this field is frightening.
To be trained as a yoga teacher in the past, a person had to study and commit to learning from a yoga master for many years. Before the boom in yoga as a business, there were a few trainings in the U.S. that lasted only a year or two. Now you can go online and even be "certified" to teach yoga via the internet.
How to know? If you want to learn to practice yoga, look for a teacher who has experience teaching and practicing yoga. I practiced 20 years before teaching, attended a one-year training, and after completing that, I still didn't know enough to help students prevent all injuries. It wasn't until I had taught at least 5 years, that I began to be able to discern the risks not only to my students but also to myself of some of the sequences and classes I attended.
Now, I frequently teach beginners or veterans to yoga and see that most of them have 1) bad habits they learned in other classes, 2) previously uncorrected alignment or 3) injuries from practicing yoga. This is much more common than you might know. In fact, two students have told me that either physical therapists or an acupuncturist claimed that they see injured patients showing up quite frequently in their clinics from yoga.
Here are links to some articles for you.
- Hip Injuries
- Yoga Injuries - several articles
Preventing Yoga Injury click
Ashtanga Yoga - SOME teachers, not all are good with assisting students in alignment within this style - ask
Alignment-based yoga
Eischens Yoga
Hatha Yoga
Gentle Yoga
Iyengar Yoga (be cautious as some of these teachers can be forceful in adjusting students in poses - ask that you not be touched/adjusted until you are sure of how the teacher works with other students
This is not a complete list yet, check back or view the article links above to learn more.
