Voting With Your Feet: Avoiding Abusive Teachers

by Baxter

Another View of Clear Water by Nina Zolotow

After Nina posted yesterday about abusive yoga teachers (see When to Fire Your Yoga Teacher), we received a follow-up message from another reader who had a similar experience of being humiliated when she attended the workshop of a visiting teacher to her community. In her case, she voted with her feet and did not attend a follow-up visit by the same teacher this year, but instead chose to study with a local teacher, and loved her experience. 

In discussing the humiliating teacher’s behavior with her regular teacher, the student was told, “That’s how they do it in India.” Well, this may indeed be true, but does it make this kind of behavior acceptable? In my own experience of studying with many teachers over the past 19 years at workshops and conferences and retreats, I have come across my fair share of angry, condescending, overtly or subtly demeaning behavior by teachers from at least two different traditions. In fact, I  studied with a well-regarded teacher a few times before a more subtle way of demeaning students on a fairly regular basis made me decide to give up the class despite some "good" asana instructions I was learning.  I could not justify continuing to support that kind of treatment of me or my fellow students.

 I also heard stories about a teacher I came to respect about how he had been a bear to study with when he was younger and how he had mellowed out as he aged. I felt blessed to have missed his “abusive” period since I learned so much and witnessed compassionate behavior from him regularly. I did carry a background concern about whether the other side might re-surface at some point; fortunately, I never had to encounter that situation from this particular teacher.

I do feel that teachers who study in a “lineage” that permits or even subtly approves of this bullying, degrading treatment of students tend to be more likely to participate in such behavior and maybe are even drawn to it. I don’t want to get into some deep exploration of trauma and its long-term effects, as it is a complex topic and I am not an expert in it. But, as Nina pointed out yesterday, you can vote with your feet, and I myself have done so more than once over the years. And that old observation that a happy customer tells one person about their experience, but a dissatisfied one will tell ten certainly has played out for me. I am asked all the time for referrals to other teachers or recommendations for teachers to study with at conferences. If a student happens to ask about a teacher I have had a bad experience with, I will recommend someone else instead.  I do not always go into the why of it, but do on occasion share my specific experience if I know that my personal experience was also confirmed by other yoga friends of mine. The good news is that we have more and more choices all around the country—and even internationally—when it comes to yoga instructors. So, don’t settle for anything less than a good instructor who is also respectful and kind.  

When to Fire Your Yoga Teacher

by Nina

Clear Water by Nina Zolotow

Yet another famous yoga teacher has been in the news recently for improper conduct. A former student has sued Bikram Choudhury, accusing him of sexual harassment, discrimination and defamation (see Lawsuit Accuses Founder of Yoga Empire of Misconduct).

Well, I could go on about that, and the tendency toward sexual abuse that appears to be a serious risk for some high-profile male teachers, but actually I’d like to focus on something a little more mundane. Recently we at YFHA received an email from one of our readers saying that she, a very long-time student, had attended a class where the female teacher had humiliated her in front of the class by angrily correcting her pose (which she was adapting for her particular body type) telling her that she was doing it completely “wrong.” This experience made our correspondent very upset. So, you see, abuse by yoga teachers comes in many forms, including simple verbal abuse and even, so I’ve heard, physical abuse.

Our correspondent was still trying to decide how she should handle this—maybe she should be considering forgiveness?—and asked us to address some of the issues that this situation raised. Because our reader was so upset, I decided to respond immediately by writing directly to her. And it was actually pretty easy for me to respond, because I said what I always tell people in this situation: you should never study with a teacher who you don’t respect or who doesn’t respect you.

In this case, I recommended, talking with the teacher, if possible—since it was a one-time occurrence, maybe she was just having a bad day—and seeing if an apology was forthcoming. But if a confrontation was out of the question or if the teacher defended her behavior, I recommended simply leaving the class for good. After all, you are paying your teacher to help you. Why would you put up with mistreatment? And isn’t the only way to stop this kind of behavior to vote with your feet (and your wallet)?

The question is, why does this kind of behavior continue? Why aren’t these teachers shunned by everyone? This brings us back to the NY Times article on Bikram because it included a quote that I found very perceptive about why students of any school of yoga will put up with inappropriate behavior from their teachers.

“Vulnerability and devotion are big parts of the practice,” said Benjamin Lorr, the author of the memoir Hellbent: Obsession, Pain, and the Search for Something like Transcendence in Competitive Yoga. “Bikram creates this mentality that the outside is phony. There is no path but this path, and everything that happens in this path is just a part of your yoga, that you have to learn to be strong and get past it.”

I think this myth that “There is no path but this path, and everything that happens in this path is just part of your yoga” is cultivated by more than one school of yoga and maybe even by some teachers in all the schools. Students feel like they can’t leave the teacher because of their emotional investment in "the path," their financial investment in "the path," or because they’ve been encouraged to believe this is a “good” teacher to guide them on "the path." And it takes strength and courage to resist this ideology.

But can a teacher who is abusive or corrupt really have anything important to teach you?

So, please, don’t hesitate to fire a yoga teacher who is mistreating you in any way. And if your teacher isn’t mistreating you in particular, but you witness him or her mistreating other students, you might want to consider the same action. That is the only way we can bring about change. And, trust me, there are many wonderful teachers out there who know that being a “good” teacher means something different than being able to get you into challenging poses or giving you access to some particular “lineage” of yoga.