The New York Times Magazine published an article titled “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body.” The Jan. 5 story portrayed the risks of yoga. William Broad writes that Glenn Black, an instructor in New York, “believe[s] that ‘the vast majority of people’ should give up yoga altogether. It’s simply too likely to cause harm.”
In the story, Black explained that ego and obsession cause many injuries: many people stretch farther than their bodies will allow.
He blamed most injuries, though, on yoga’s demographic shift. Yoga’s inventors were from India; many yoga poses developed from cross-legged sitting, a common daily posture.
Black told the Times, “Now urbanites who sit in chairs all day walk into a studio a couple of times a week and strain to twist themselves into ever-more-difficult postures despite their lack of flexibility and other physical problems.”
A version of this article appeared in print on 28 February 2012, on page 14 of The Shakerite.
