Yoga – inappropriate touching and healthism

This post covers couple of thoughts about a yoga class I just attended. The two thoughts are really only related because they relate to the same person, so please bear with me.

I love yoga, but I’m not really into the WHOLE philosophy (I turn off when I hear “chakra”). I love it because of the way you use your whole body, its strength and flexibility – same reason I love kickboxing, dancing and swimming. I also love the idea that you do what you can do as well as you can. Doesn’t matter if it’s not “perfect”.

I’m at a new gym, and I’m still finding out which yoga instructors I enjoy. Today’s instructor had an attitude to the actual yoga that I could appreciate. However, there are two reasons I think I’ll be avoiding him.

First: inappropriate touching. Some touching is pretty normal in a yoga class. It’s not unusual for an instructor to approach and suggest that you change your position a bit. Sometimes, they will then use their hands gently to help you – usually, just the flat of their hands. This makes me a little uncomfortable, but I can cope – it’s often really helpful, and if they’ve just told me what they’re about to do, I’m ok.

Not so much today’s instructor (and his trainee).

First, a couple of times, I hadn’t heard the instructions for the pose properly, and the trainee instructor noticed. When she noticed, she grabbed the offending body part and tried to put it in the right position. This was dangerous, intrusive and distracting, especially since she didn’t first try to explain, nor did she tell me what she was about to do.

I saw the main instructor do this to others, too. In one case, he stood over a woman who was lying on her stomach (his feet were either side of her body), grabbed her hips and pulled up. He then remained standing over her while he gave instructions to the class for the next pose. I’m not sure how she felt, but I would have been extremely uncomfortable.

It gets worse. We were in another pose with one leg stretched out behind us. Turns out that this pose is meant to make your back foot go a little numb – not to the point of pins and needles, not even so you’d notice if your foot is just sitting there by itself, just to the point so you don’t feel pain if someone jabs a stick into your toe.

Um, yes, you heard that right. He jabbed a stick into my toe, jabbed it and kept the pressure on. At the time, I had no idea what he was using. I saw the stick later. It looked like a debarked twig.

He didn’t stop, even when I told him it hurt. He didn’t explain what he was doing, or why.

After he left me alone, I heard him comment to someone else that their foot should feel a little numb, and I thought “ah, that’s why he was doing that”. That did NOT make it ok!

Now for the healthism. Next to me in the class was a middle-aged woman. She was a bit plump – basically the stereotypical body-type for a middle-aged woman. From her reactions to instructions, I’d guess she’s fairly new to yoga. She had trouble with some of the poses.

The instructor was lovely about it and got her appropriate aids. In doing so, he said something like:

“You wouldn’t want your hips to go – you don’t want a hip replacement. The way I see it, my yoga is my insurance policy – you may as well not live…”

Yes, he actually used those words.

I cannot believe that someone would suggest that you might as well die if you need a hip replacement!

(Ok, that’s probably not exactly what he meant, and if this implication was pointed out to him, maybe he’d clarify. But still!)

And see, this is one of the things that frustrates me about yoga sometimes, this hypocrisy in practice. I said I love that yoga is about doing what you can as well as you can, not about perfection. I should have said that’s what it’s supposed to be about. Because although I have heard pretty much every instructor I’ve ever come across SAY “don’t push yourself, don’t overstrain, don’t do that if this is enough for you”, I’ve also had many of those same instructors try to push me (sometimes literally!) into something I wasn’t comfortable with.

And most instructors seem to be very good at giving a class that leaves you feeling balanced if you can do everything, but not so great at making sure you feel balanced if you’re leaving some parts out (if, say, you’ve got a slight injury).

Both of those things make me think there’s an inherent health bias in yoga.

Which is somewhat ironic, but not entirely surprising.