I'm A Yoga Teacher. Here Are 5 Things Yoga Teachers Get Wrong ALL The Time

In our new Realtalk Fitness series, we’re sharing the realities of being a fitness instructor today. We know it takes a lot of effort to create a lasting career with a steady following, and we want to shed light on what it’s really like.

As a science-minded yoga and movement coach, one of my biggest frustrations with the yoga and fitness world is the constant barrage of misinformation based on pseudoscience. Teachers will tell people what they want to hear and usually sell them a product that might not deliver on its promises.

I feel particularly defeated by the poor quality of yoga teacher trainings and the lack of biomechanically accurate information about the body. As Derek Beres says in his poignant Realtalk Fitness article, “Instead of turning to researchers for answers, magical thinking persists in the yoga vocabulary.”

It drives me crazy when I hear yoga teachers say things like, “Twists cleanse your organs,” “Being upside down increases brain activity,” “Doing shoulder stand is good for the thyroid,” or “Belly breathing is the most beneficial way to breathe.”

This could be true if all you had to do all day was practice yoga. Speaking from my experience, doing ONLY yoga does NOT give us the muscular adaptations needed to lift heavier things, run faster, jump higher, punch harder, throw farther, or endure long periods of physical demand.

We’ve seen photos and videos of “gurus” and established well-known yoga teachers giving adjustments that look downright violating and violent. We’ve also experienced these pushy adjustments from all kinds of teachers in group classes. Using brute force to push the body into a preconceived idea of how a pose should look is not okay.

We hear it all the time, “Hot yoga rids your body of toxins.” There is less real, scientific evidence that shows that doing yoga in excess heat will help eliminate these “toxins” than there is for proving that the tooth fairy exists. The truth is REAL toxic substances are handled by a large organ in your abdomen called your LIVER.

I’ve read in recent mainstream publications that shoulder stand can balance hormones, cure constipation and the common cold, strengthen the heart and respiratory system, decrease varicose veins, stimulate the root chakra, aid in sleep, and reduce wrinkles. These supposed benefits are completely unsupported by medical literature. Not only that, I believe these poses are inappropriate for most group yoga classes. In most cases, students’ neck muscles aren’t prepared to support the weight of their bodies in these inverted positions, especially with head forward posture being so prevalent these days.