Oak & Iron Bound

January 9, 2012

"According to Black, a number of factors have converged to heighten the risk of practicing yoga. The biggest is the demographic shift in those who study it. Indian practitioners of yoga typically squatted and sat cross-legged in daily life, and yoga poses, or asanas, were an outgrowth of these postures. Now urbanites who sit in chairs all day walk into a studio a couple of times a week and strain to twist themselves into ever-more-difficult postures despite their lack of flexibility and other physical problems. Many come to yoga as a gentle alternative to vigorous sports or for rehabilitation for injuries. But yoga’s exploding popularity — the number of Americans doing yoga has risen from about 4 million in 2001 to what some estimate to be as many as 20 million in 2011 — means that there is now an abundance of studios where many teachers lack the deeper training necessary to recognize when students are headed toward injury. “Today many schools of yoga are just about pushing people,” Black said. “You can’t believe what’s going on — teachers jumping on people, pushing and pulling and saying, ‘You should be able to do this by now.’ It has to do with their egos."

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“How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body” - New York Times

There are some really bad yoga teachers out there, and there are some people for whom yoga doesn’t make sense. There are also really GOOD yoga teachers out there, and there are people who can benefit from practicing yoga. The thing that I always tell people who want to start doing yoga is that, like with therapists, you have to shop around to find the right instructor. Don’t just find the time and place that’s the most convenient and/or cheapest. You have to go to a bunch of different studios and classes and feel out what works best for you, and it’ll be different for everyone.

I feel like the quotation above is very relevant to the yoga classes offered at UW-Madison. I think it’s really irresponsible for the University to train students for a couple hours and then set them free to run a yoga class. To be a good instructor, you need years of training. I went to UW’s classes for a bit, and then I realized that they were a terrible substitute for classes in actual studios.

Now, I take Sundays off from training and go to an hour yoga session at The Studio. There’s an instructor there, Justin, who is the first yoga teacher I’ve found in Madison that I really like. Yoga works really well for me because I have strength & endurance through my tri training, but my body needs a way to stretch out and reconnect. I find that practicing yoga helps me maintain flexibility and avoid injury, and it also helps me gauge where my body is at every week so that I stay in touch with what’s going on. Yoga can be great if you do it for the right reasons. Also, I like freaking people out with the amount of sweat that I produce.