This is Part 1 in a series focusing on historic and current issues impacting on modern yoga teachers and students. Read Part 2 here.

“We are literally telling people when to breathe – how much more power can we have?” ~ Hala Khouri (1)

Let’s talk about power. Power in life, power in yoga class, my power, your power. I became interested in this as part of my research into the ethics of touch in yoga classes. After doing some research, I came to understand that, across the spectrum of any learning environment, power differentials exist. So I thought it was important to lay out exactly what’s going on here.

What is a power imbalance?

There are many views of what the word ‘power’ means. One definition is that it is an “individual's potential to have an effect on another person's or group of persons' behavior” (2).

Power imbalance between teacher and student, whatever the discipline, is real and complex, affecting boundaries inside and outside of class. It’s a societal issue; hierarchies and privileges exist everywhere, influenced consciously or subconsciously by status markers such as gender, intelligence, size, age, experience, qualifications and/or knowledge.

These are all things we come across in the yoga studio; I can, for instance, testify to feeling out of place as the fattest person in a studio or because I chose to use props and no one else did. I’ve seen new practitioners worry and stress about their ability to practice; heard first-hand from people who’ve been discriminated against in class because of their age or size.

It’s time we considered how this imbalance affects us as teachers and as students; what impact it has on our consent practices, our use of touch, our interactions and the respect we have - or don’t - for each other, and put in place some effective counterbalances. But first, let’s dig in a little deeper.

What impact does power imbalance have in teaching?

A 1997 study on power dynamics in adult education discovered that they had a direct impact on student learning. For some students, they prevented impactful learning, while others felt empowered to learn on a deeper level (3). This is corroborated by Linda Briskin’s higher education research - she found that “dynamics of power shape, constrain, interrupt and facilitate both learning and teaching” (4).

This means we can often find it hard to question what happen in the moment (5) as a student, and as teachers it’s also easy to let our ego run rampant. For instance, I attended a David Swenson workshop in 2017 (he’s a very well-known Ashtanga teacher, who trained initially with Jois in Mysore and runs a lot of training sessions) and complimented him on his inclusive use of props, as he mentions them a lot in his book on completing the Primary Series (a series of postures Ashtanga practitioners move through each time).

I was surprised; he seemed displeased with me asking this, said ‘if I wrote the book again, I wouldn’t include them’, and then spent the rest of the session coming to me during the practice and adjusting me deeply into poses like parivrtta parsvakonasana, saying ‘see, you don’t need props’. I never stopped him or said no to this, even though during a supported supta vajrasana he accidentally twinged my shoulder due to the strength he used to lower me to the floor (I was fine, it wasn’t an injury that lasted beyond that day - but still).

Me and David Swenson in 2017 - note the arm length differential!

Because Swenson is so ‘senior’ in the grand scheme of things, and so well-respected, he was already operating in an environment with an enormous power differential from the minute he began his workshop. From the start of the workshop,a room full of 60-something people who hung on every word and laughed at every joke, it’s hard to see where the balance of power could be righted with ease.

In this case, I wasn’t aware some of the adjustments were going to happen, and with others, I just let them go. None of it was abusive (he’s not a problematic teacher in that way!) but it felt ego-driven, and none of it was consented to. Otherwise, he seemed perfectly pleasant, and was never less than extremely friendly (in an appropriate way). Afterwards, we took a photo together, and I felt warm towards him, albeit confused about why he was so anti-prop. Most confusing for my psyche!

I wish in retrospect I’d been where I am now, able to speak up and say ‘no, don’t touch me’ and to push back on the prop thing, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. I have thought since about taking more training with him - perhaps it would be a learning opportunity for him to have me be stronger about this sort of thing. He certainly knows a lot about the practice itself, and isn’t one of the Ashtanga teachers I’d avoid for safety purposes. But.

Swenson is certainly not the only one to feel like this and to be a ‘celebrity’ in a room full of acolytes - just look at what happens when Kino MacGregor comes to town. This is exactly the issue that people are attempting to address at the moment through opening these teachers’ eyes, to, it must be said, little success.

Yoga teachers vs therapists and the NHS/healthcare

However, the solution isn’t as simple as just saying ‘well, I’ll make my class a place where students can speak up easily’. Yoga teacher and clinical psychologist Raphael Gunner says the relationship between yoga teacher and student is similar to that of psychotherapist and patient: “As yoga students, we enlist the aid of specialists, rely on their observations to deepen our sense of self, and hope they’ll be sensitive with their comments and wise with their timing.” (6)

While therapists learn this during extensive training, yoga teachers are generally left to find this out for themselves, post-qualification, or through ongoing CPD. Some teachers never learn it at all. I’ll come to this in future blogs.

A 2014 study on shared decision making between clinicians and patients (where a similar power imbalance exists) found that while patients may want to speak up about treatment, they often feel unable to. This is because, the study says:

a) “their information needs are not met

b) they undervalue their own ability to understand the information given to them and therefore defer decisions to the clinician

c) they do not recognise their unique expertise about personal preferences and

d) enact covert contracts the clinician may not be aware of where they feel compelled to behave in what they feel is a ‘good’ way in order to avoid offending or annoying the clinician to avoid any potential consequences” (7)

Sound familiar?

A quick history lesson

Yoga in the 20th and early 21st century also saw multiple accounts of sexual and physical abuse. Here are some high-profile examples of the extreme situations that power imbalance can lead to:

Teacher Holly Faurot received a settlement from Jivamukti founders Sharon Gannon and David Kirkpatrick after exposing abuse by senior teacher Ruth Laurer-Manenti (9)
Bikram Choudhury is in hiding after multiple accusations of raping students (10) (11)
Anneke Lucas (12) and Karen Rain (13) spoke out about sexual assault at the hands of Ashtanga founder Sri Pattabhi Jois, behaviour evidenced in images and video (14)
Ashtangi Leela Miller told Norman Blair: “I was told over 25 years ago not to go to Mysore because I’d get groped or injured or both” (15), backed up by the testimony of Guy Donahaye, whose spine, knee and hip were injured during his first trip to Mysore and on later trips (16)
The leader of the Australian branch of Satyananda, Swami Akhandananda Saraswati (17), was the subject of an Australian High Commission investigation into child sex abuse carried out between 1974-2014
Anusura creator John Friend was exposed for sexual misconduct (and financial corruption); many teachers then left the style and he was discredited (18)
Iyengar teacher Manouso Manos, then a senior teacher at the Iyengar Institute of San Francisco, was accused of in-class sexual assault back in the 80s (19) (20)
Iyengar himself was physically aggressive. John Shumacher says: "People used to call B.K.S. 'beat-kick-shout' or 'beat-kick-slap’ (21). Iyengar himself is quoted as saying: “I hint, nothing happens. I hit and it happens... If people minded my hitting, why would they come to me?” (22)
Yoga teacher Rachel Brathen collated hundreds of anonymous email submissions of sexual abuse, harassment and assault (23) within the yoga community on her blog after an Instagram shoutout (24)

So we can see that these power issues stretch way back, and cover all systems and styles of modern yoga, such as it is. In future blogs, I’ll look in more depth at consent, different ways to cue and instruct, how teachers can give students agency and students can find the ability to stand in their own power more, and also look at the situation with teacher training and what might need to change. But for now, let’s conclude with the words of the wise former yoga teacher Joslyn Hamilton.

She says: “We think of yoga teachers as being perfect, regardless of their level of training or experience... worse than our narcissism as students is our willingness to cede our authority over ourselves to a yoga teacher or to group-think. That’s when we get hurt. When we listen to the teacher - instead of to our knee.” (8)

Preach, Joslyn.

Footnotes

1 (Tanner, 2016, Talking Teacher Ethics with Hala Khouri)

2 (McCroskey & Richmond, 1983, Power in the classroom I: Teacher and student perceptions)

3 (Johnson-Bailey. & Cervero, 1997, Beyond facilitation in adult education: power dynamics in teaching and learning practices)

4 (Briskin, 2015, Power in the classroom (from Voices from the Classroom: Reflections on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education))

5 (Alison, n.d., Wheel of Consent)

6 (Gunner, 2007, Idol Teachings)

7 (Joseph-Williams, Edwards & Elwyn, 2014, Power imbalance prevents shared decision making)

8 (Hamilton, 2012, Be Wary of the Yoga Master)

9 (Remski, 2016, Jivamukti, Dark and Light: Holly Faurot, Sharon Gannon, and David Life Speak Out)

10 (Fagan, 2018, Bikram yoga’s moral dilemma)