The Irish Association of Yoga says it has received no complaints of people getting injured in classes but stresses that people should always check the qualifications of teachers.
Patricia Roche of the association says there are about 200 teachers who are members of the Irish Yoga Association and that all of these have undergone training over a number of years. She says it is also important that teachers engage in continuing professional development to ensure their teaching methods and knowledge are up to date.
She cautions, however, that there are some yoga teaching courses that last only a few weeks or months. "Everybody starting a class should ask the teacher how long they trained for and it is very important to ask how many face-to-face hours they did with a tutor because there are actually people now offering correspondence courses in yoga, if you can believe that," Roche says.
Teachers who are members of the Irish Yoga Association, a voluntary group set up nearly 30 years ago and affiliated to the European Yoga Association, teach a gentle form of yoga called Hatha Yoga, she explains. It is unlikely anybody doing this type of yoga would injure themselves, she says, but there are other types such as Ashtanga which are more dynamic and make greater demands on the body. Roche says that in Hatha classes there are warm-ups, a gradual progression from beginners to more advanced exercises and an emphasis on being aware of what your body is telling you about what you should or should not do.
"A teacher will often say to someone to come back to where your body can go. And yoga is not just about doing physical exercises, it is also about relaxation, breathing techniques, and about relating with yourself and tuning into your essence," she says. She says that in some cases people who try to push themselves very hard in life will also try to push themselves in classes. She recommends that people look at the Irish Yoga Association's website before enrolling in classes.
Another yoga teacher who did not wish to be named says it is sometimes difficult to stop people from pushing themselves too hard and from doing the more advanced exercises even when they are at beginners' level. She says it is totally unacceptable for a teacher to push a class participant into trying a difficult posture if they do not feel comfortable doing it and that if anybody witnesses such behaviour they should avoid the teacher.