This blog post is part of a 5-part email campaign I sent out in January 2022.
I suggest you read them in order:
#1 What’s missing from yoga?
#2 Nothing is missing from yoga.
#3 The one cue you could lay to rest.
#4 Yoga isn’t going anywhere.
#5 Yoga may not be a magic pill.
Yoga may not be a magic pill; that doesn’t make it dangerous.
For years now, I’ve watched yoga’s fall from grace. While I agree the former position on the pedestal as the panacea for just about any ailment anyone has ever googled wasn’t sustainable or realistic, where it landed might actually be worse. The former encouraging and supportive message was replaced with one far more dismal. Suddenly yoga was dangerous – hips joints were shredding, ligaments were overstretching, and spinal discs were exploding. (I’m only being slightly hyperbolic.)
The pendulum swung so hard, so fast, and so far, that yoga teachers were left completely disempowered. They were left with one of two choices:
- Join the fear-mongering bandwagon and start talking poorly about the craft they loved (thereby sending the same message to their student/customer base).
OR
- Go against the grain and defend yoga but feel totally disempowered because of an insecurity around education, evidence, and epistemology.
Which one are you? 1 or 2?
It’s okay if you’re a little bit of both, this isn’t a test. It’s an opportunity to reflect on how you’ve been communicating about yoga to your base.
If you recall from an earlier email, there is one simple promise I make to you in my 300-hour yoga teacher training: “You will fall in love with yoga again.” If you are looking for any of these experiences to help you get there, join the 300hr YTT today:
- Innovation for your sequences
- Appreciation of the human body
- Amazement of human movement
- Respect for science and research
- Community of like-minded teachers
- Lifelong friendships and networks
- Enthusiasm for teaching yoga
- Inspiration for social media and marketing
- Passion for your profession
- Top-notch education you can be proud of
Extend Your Learning: Advanced Yoga Teacher Training with Jules Mitchell
This program is ideal if you have an interest in biomechanics, principles of exercise science, applications of pain science, neurophysiology, and stretching. These themes are combined with somatics, motor control theory, pose analysis and purpose, use of props for specific adaptations, pathology, restorative yoga, and intentional sequencing.
You will learn to read original research papers and analyze them for both their strengths and their biases. Critical thinking and intellectual discourse are central components in this training, which was designed to help teachers like you navigate through contradictory perspectives and empower you with education. Learn more >