by Lawrence Wilson, MD

YOGA AND ITS DANGERS

by Dr. Lawrence Wilson

All information in this article is for educational purposes only. It is not for the diagnosis, treatment, prescription or cure of any disease or health condition.

I. INTRODUCTION

Yoga is an ancient and comprehensive Oriental system of philosophy and development. I have read a number of books about yoga and the development program borrows some concepts from the very old science of yoga.

However, there are many problems with yoga and it is not working well today as a development system.

As a result, we cannot recommend yoga and we recommend avoiding it. Let us explain this in more detail.

II. PROBLEMS WITH YOGA

1. Moving subtle energy incorrectly. Some yoga postures or poses moves subtle energy or etheric energy upwards and sideways. This always interferes with development, even if it provides symptomatic relief of pain or other benefits. For details about the movement of subtle energy, read Downward Moving Energy And Healing.

2. Reversing the third center. Doing Yoga tends to reverse the direction of spin of the third energy center. This tends to make a person more rigid and more stubborn. These qualities are not desirable, especially for development.

3. Inverting the body. Yoga with inversion of the body can damage the neck. This occurs more often than one might imagine. Please, if you must do yoga, do not do any inverted posture, including the shoulder stand.

4. Soft tissue damage. Yoga often causes soft tissue damage. If one stretches too much or bounces during yoga, there is often some soft tissue injury. This occurs, in part, because few Western bodies are strong enough to handle the stress that yoga can put on the ligaments, tendons and joints.

5. Leaking subtle energy and picking up entities. Holding the body in any twisted position leaks some energy from the body, which is not desirable or safe. Never hold a twist of the body.

We recommend certain twists of the body in order to align the spine and balance the body. However, always twist the body and then quickly bring it back to a centered position. For details, read The Pops, Pulls, Twists and Kicks.

6. The yoga lifestyle – vegetarian, incorrect meditation and often sexy. Yoga philosophy, often taught along with the postures, often suggests a vegetarian diet and the wrong meditation. Yoga teachers may also suggest the use of a lot of herbs, essential oils, and homeopathy. Implied is also often a loose view of sexuality. We find all this is very harmful.

The meditation problem is serious because we find that only the Pulling Down Procedure causes development. All other meditative exercises may be relaxing, or may develop other aspects of the body, but they do not cause development.

7. Safety for women. Yoga classes tend to be sexy, between the body positions and the outfits the students wear. All such classes are somewhat dangerous for women, and this just makes the problem worse.

8. Yoga retreats. These are especially dangerous for women, in particular. Rapes are common and often devastating. Do not go on yoga retreats.

9. Slowing development. Yoga interferes with the important process called development. Development is an amazing genetic upgrade of the body that requires lots of rest, a special diet, sexual restraint and the pulling down procedure. For details, read Introduction To Development and Introduction To The Development Program.

OTHER CAUTIONS WITH YOGA

1. Not enough focus on rest and relaxation. Too many classes stress how many poses one can do in an hour, and how many classes a week one can take. The worst is “power yoga”, and some pilates classes that are even more vigorous.

“Hot yoga” is also popular, and often a cause of injuries because people believe they are relaxed, so they go faster and bounce more deeply in the poses, both of which are no good.

2. Poor teacher training. A lot of yoga teachers are not that well-trained. It does not matter if they were trained in America, Europe or India. A few of the worst teacher-related problems are:

A. Not learning the poses correctly. It takes years of working on one pose to really do some of them right. This means that the students do not even have a chance of doing the poses correctly.

B. Not walking around and looking around during the entire class, checking to see if the students are doing the poses correctly. This is critical because not doing poses correctly can cause the most tissue damage. Really watching all the students is difficult, if not impossible, if the class is larger than about 10 students, as are many yoga classes.

C. Not asking enough questions of every student about their health, bone strength, back problems, medications, diet, supplements and more.

3. Social, sexual and other distractions in yoga classes. There can be peer pressure to do more poses, and to do them deeper than one can comfortably tolerate. Other distractions that endanger students include trying to impress a sexy teacher or other students, “bouncing” in poses, showing off, and feeling guilty for stopping when you feel pain.

Male sexual predators may attend yoga classes to spot women for rape.

4. The yoga ‘identity’. Another common problem is a tendency to view doing yoga as a “new identity”. This idea is heavily promoted, as though you are a better person because you do or know yoga.

Part of this cult-like quality seen in some yoga participants is to think of hatha yoga as a “spiritual path”. This is not the truth, no matter what anyone says. It is a set of exercises designed to change or alter the body in certain ways. Efforts to make more of yoga than it is lead to overdoing, wrong intent, and other problems.

5. Yoga addiction. This may sound odd, but we have encountered it on a number of occasions. Just as exercise can be addictive, yoga can be, as well, for certain personality types.

The nature of the addiction is similar to exercise addiction. That is, a person finds that he or she must continue to do a lot of yoga, or vigorous yoga every day or two, or he or she begins to feel depressed, exhausted, or develops other symptoms such as weight gain or aches and pains. Because yoga is thought to be so beneficial, the person does not realize that it has become an addiction.

SPECIAL PROBLEMS OF CERTAIN KINDS OF YOGA PRACTICES

Bikkrum yoga causes more injuries than most others. The reasons for this are:

- One thinks one is more flexible and relaxed due to the warmth, when it is not the case in many instances.

- The yoga routine is often fast and vigorous to encourage sweating. This is the most dangerous kind of yoga class.

Other types of yoga that cause more injuries are any that move fast, try to fit in a lot of poses, or do not rest a lot between poses.

Restorative yoga. What is called restorative yoga is better in that it is gentle and slow, with more rest. However, we cannot even recommend this style of yoga because the meditation is usually incorrect and the teacher often recommends holding the twists, which leaks energy out of the body, even if it feels good.

III. OTHER TOPICS

PILATES AND OTHER YOGA SPINOFFS

These tend to be less harmful, especially if they do not resemble yoga very much. They are more like exercise classes.

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