As someone who strongly dislikes yoga, specifically because it’s so boring and doesn’t do anything for me, I am ecstatic at the justification as to why hot yoga and yoga in general should not be popularly practiced.

Glenn Black, a celebrity yoga teacher of almost 40 years who currently lives in Rhinebeck, NY and is known for his rigorous yet down to earth style, is someone who speaks out about the damaging effects of yoga. These effects consists of slipped discs and broken ribs.

William J. Broad, the author of this article, went to Black not only to find out about why someone who makes a living off of yoga would put down it’s popular practice but also because he suffered a ruptured disc in his lower back and reached out to Black to help with the pain. Broad noticed that Black really only does simple poses and makes his students hold them as long as possible, making the exercise hard as possible while also leaving it up to his students to be easy on themselves and their bodies.

The way he has his students practice yoga is a direct reflection of his belief that more people should give up yoga because it harms more than it helps. He said yoga should be used therapeutically, to strengthen weak parts of the body or should only be practiced by people in good physical condition. Ultimately, in Black’s eyes, yoga is not for everyone, especially since today’s popular practitioners sit in chairs all day and then go to yoga classes, putting strain on their bodies, bodies that aren’t very flexible and that may have other physical problems.

Though yoga has become very popular, with numbers increasing from 4 million to 20 million practitioners, Black is not in support of this at all, so much so that when people come to him with yoga injuries, his solution is often “Don’t do yoga”.