All Bent Out of Shape
January 21, 2012 by admin
Filed under Yoga Articles
I first heard about William Broad’s debate-sparking article, “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body,” in yoga class on Saturday afternoon. As the class inhaled in an extended downward dog, the teacher asked if anyone had read the article. As we were guided into pigeon pose, the teacher offered this: “The thing is,” she told us, “if you’re mindful, you won’t get hurt.” I went home and read the article. I had not so much a crisis of confidence, but a feeling that “if you’re mindful, you won’t get hurt” was very possibly an inadequate answer.
ALISON PACE,
alternet.org
If yoga hurts, it is not yoga. A student’s overreaching ego, a teacher’s ignorance — many causes may lead to injury while doing yoga, but yoga itself cannot be blamed. Those of us who pursue the eight-limbed path of yoga must practice the guidelines of yama and niyama; first among these is ahimsa: nonviolence. For a teacher, this means “do no harm.”
CHRISTOPHER BEACH,
President, Iyengar Yoga National Association of the United States
According to the article, B. K. S. Iyengar “insisted” that students perform shoulder stands in a way that forced their necks into extreme flexion, citing as evidence some of Iyengar’s shoulder-stand instructions that were published in his 1965 book, “Light on Yoga.”
Meanwhile, it portrays me as a reformer, citing my 2004 Yoga Journal column that describes a method of “reducing neck bending in a shoulder stand by lifting the shoulders on a stack of folded blankets.”
The article fails to mention, however, that Iyengar himself developed this safer way of doing shoulder stands in the 1970s, and that since then he has been adamant that all his certified teachers teach the pose this way. Iyengar, who recently celebrated his 93rd birthday, still maintains a vigorous yoga practice that includes long holds in headstand (without support) and shoulder stand with his shoulders lifted on a prop.
ROGER COLE,
Del Mar, Calif., certified Iyengar yoga teacher
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