The Science of Yoga by William J Broad

Author:William J Broad [Broad, William J]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781451641424
Amazon: 1451641427
Barnesnoble: 1451641427
Goodreads: 12468635
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2012-02-06T23:00:00+00:00

Another surprise centered on judgments about what explained the injuries. The choices for survey takers included such factors as large classes, too much effort, and expanded ranks of students. A vast majority of the respondents—68 percent—pointed to “inadequate teacher training.” That was remarkable because most were teachers. In effect, they were criticizing themselves and their peers.

The candor went to an inconspicuous deficiency of modern yoga —that teacher training varies enormously in quantity and quality, from slapdash to rigorous. You can get certified as an instructor with as little as 100 hours of training and even do the course entirely online, putting in no time whatsoever in a classroom and getting no supervision from an experienced teacher.

Today many popular styles adhere to the minimum standards set by the Yoga Alliance, a private group in Arlington, Virginia, that seeks to build public confidence in yoga. Its definition of a yoga teacher is anyone who has participated in at least 200 hours of real training. Still, that effort—equal to four or five weeks—seems like an extraordinarily low bar in terms of serious education. Would you study with violin teacher who had trained for a month? A sculptor? A basketball player?

Bikram is more demanding. It trains its instructors for nine weeks. Yoga Alliance also endorses a category of training that requires at least 500 hours—equal to about three months.

Compare that to Iyengar. It requires candidates for teacher training to have studied the style for a minimum of three years, and then trains them for a minimum of two years and administers two examinations to ensure the requisite progress. As we have seen, it is the Iyengar people who have redesigned some of yoga’s most dangerous poses. Teacher training puts much emphasis on how to lessen the risks.

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