BellaOnline Forums Health and Fitness Yoga Students who Add Stress

In our yoga class tonight we went through our class and then our savasana relaxation. The teacher had us come out of it slowly and told us to take our time getting up afterwards.

As everyone is very slowly opening their eyes and such, a woman in the back of the room started loudly calling to the teacher. "You know that niece of mine who went to Spain?"

The teacher didn't remember her.

The woman then went on in a loud voice, telling us all how the girl had been walking in a park and was attacked by a homeless man, stabbed twice in the neck, and nobody helped her, and how the woman with her then beat the man up wildly until the police got there.

So much for relaxation!

I realize the woman was excited about her story, but couldn't she have told it before class? Or more quietly to the teacher alone? Did she have to shout it out to the entire class while we were quietly relaxing?

Or am I a little too focused on relaxation?

Lisa

If this is that intense instructor, she may have set the tone for this kind of thing previously.

Some people are kind of clueless! In the yoga class I go to most often, I can't really imagine anyone doing that so maybe it's like Jilly said, the instructor is setting that kind of tone.

And that is why I don't do group yoga anymore. Every time I went it was something like that:

girl crying uncontrollably during savasana (disturbing)
old lady with poor balance practically falling on me (dangerous)
creepy guy with hangover burping and trying to flirt during class (gross)
instructors who want to use you as their demo because your hyper flexible (uncomfortable)
advanced students rolling eyes or snickering because you're not comfortable with headstand (I was just a beginner then, how rude)

The list goes on and you are right many instructors do set the tone in their classes so maybe find a better studio. I tried many until I found one that I was o.k. with but then that place closed so now I only practice at home.

Yoga studios are what gyms used to be back in the 80's and 90's. Not the most welcoming relaxing place or best way to improve. I've learned so much more from my Shiva DVD's and from Esther Eckhart on youtube and yoga journal magazine than I ever did in classes. Just my 2 cents though and also some people don't get motivated to practice solo so studios ARE good for accountability.

Some Yoga instructors seem particularly clueless, as revealed in this magazine article. . Hopefully the majority have much better standards. Certainly the ones I've met who belong to the International Federation of Yoga seem OK, especially as their training takes into account the various personalities and abreactions that can surface during practice.

Monica - I think you bring up a great point about looking around to find a good match. I really liked the previous instructor so I think that's why the comparison feels so strong to me. This new one has a quite different style and I'm just not meshing with it. Unfortunately this is the "free" offering at the club I already pay to belong to, so it is outside my budget to then also pay for secondary classes somewhere else.

I guess it might be DVDs for me for a while until they replace her

On one hand DVDs don't provide feedback, but really, neither does she, so I'm not losing much.