 Did you know that yoga can easily injure you for life? Yoga is an extremely popular practice. Many of its famous instructors boast that it's entirely healthy and safe, but behind these bold statements lies an unspoken, dangerous truth. The first scientific light on the topic of yoga injury fell decades ago, and a number of early findings centered on nerve damage. The problems ranged from the relatively mild to permanent disabilities that left students unable to walk without aid. One of the worst cases featured a woman of 42. She fell asleep in the seated forward bend. Upon awakening, she found her legs numb and weak. A medical team told a finding injuries to both her sciatic nerves that had crippled her legs. The scientists reported that the woman regained some sensations after three months of therapy. A half year after the mishap, the woman was still unable to walk without assistance. Her doctor said evidence of permanent nerve damage left them doubtful that she would ever recover full use of her legs. In another instance, a male college student had done yoga for more than a year when he intensified his practice by sitting upright for long periods on his heels in a kneeling position known as Vajrasana. The young man did the post for hours a day, usually while chanting for world peace. Soon, he was experiencing difficulty walking, running, and climbing stairs. An examination showed that both of his feet drooped because of a lack of leg control. The doctors traced the problem to an unresponsive nerve. Apparently, the young man's kneeling in Vajrasana had clamped his knees tight enough and long enough to cut the flow of blood to the lower leg, depriving the nerve of oxygen. The result was nerve deadening. Other documented cases of injury from yoga revolved around damage centered on the brain itself, which arose not from stretching too much or holding postures too long, but from the skilled practice of poses that practitioners did routinely intended to see as completely safe. Neurophysiologist W. Ritchie Russell warned that some yoga postures threatened to reduce the blood flow to the brain and cause strokes. His concern was that yoga postures that involved extreme bending of the neck might compromise the region's blood supply, destroying parts of the brain rich in primal responsibilities. Scientists have measured the neck's normal range of motion and found the movements to be wide. The neck can stretch backwards 75 degrees, forward 40 degrees, and sideways 45 degrees, and can rotate on its axis about 50 degrees. Yoga practitioners typically moved the vertebra much further. For instance, an intermediate student can easily turn his or her neck 90 degrees, nearly twice the normal rotation. From decades of clinical practice and laboratory study, Russell knew that extreme motions of the head and neck could wound these remarkable arteries, producing clots, swelling, and havoc downstream in the brain. He specifically cited that the shoulder stand and cobra poses could lead to these potential dangers. With the following posture, famous yoga instructor Ayangar, in his book Light on Yoga, suggested that the head should arch as far back as possible, much further than it is actually healthy for the neck. Soon after Dr. Russell warned about these dangers, Willie Bold Nagler, an American physician, made public a gruesome case study. In his report, he described how a woman of 28, a yoga enthusiast, as he called her, had suffered a stroke while doing a position known publicly as the bridge, or in yoga as the wheel or upward bow. Diagnostic inquiry showed that her left vertebral artery had narrowed considerably between cervical vertebra C1 and C2, revealing the probable site of the blockage that resulted in the stroke due to the extreme neck position she was in during her yoga practice. After that, it took her two years to be able to walk with full balance again, but her left arm continued to wander and she continued to have issues with her left eye. Dozens of similar cases worldwide, caused by extreme yoga postures, were continued to be documented globally. In 2002, surveys conducted in sample hospitals showed that the number of admissions related to yoga after years of slow increases had begun to soar. The number of admissions went from 13 in 2000 to 20 in 2001. Then in 2002, they more than doubled to 46. By definition, all these episodes involved men and women, and in some cases even children, who had hurt themselves badly enough during yoga practice to seek out emergency assistance. The spike represented only the tip of a very large iceberg, since these surveys were done only in a small number of hospitals. There are many more documented cases of how yoga practice led people to lifelong injuries. Meanwhile, many yoga instructors continue to claim that yoga is 100% safe. Just as Swami Gitananda, a popular guru, claimed that real yoga is as safe as mother's milk. Many yoga courses last only a month, or sometimes even less. You can get certified as a yoga instructor with as little as 100 hours of training and even do the course entirely online, getting no supervision from an experienced teacher whatsoever. What is taught in many of these courses doesn't make things better either. Many of these courses pass on information about the effects of yoga postures that were described by spiritual teachers decades ago, all based entirely on pseudo-science or their own personal ideas. I remember vividly even myself, of a yoga book which claimed that a simple stretching posture known as the triangle reduces body fat around the hip area. A claim which has no scientific logic whatsoever. What makes the situation even worse is that various yoga instructors who have little to no scientific and medical understanding of what they teach often add pressure on the students. They either demand great intensity practice or literally push them forcefully into extreme poses. Yet these instructors usually don't know anything about the medical background of the student they are pushing, and too often the same extreme postures are given to all the students to do it at the same time, despite their individual injuries they may have. As Glenn Black, a famous yoga instructor who openly speaks about the issues says, instead of doing yoga, these people need to be doing a specific range of motions for articulation and organ condition to strengthen weak parts of the body. Yoga is for people in good physical condition, or it can be used therapeutically, it's controversial to say, but it really shouldn't be used for a general class. Many yoga instructors are unqualified to teach, yet the worst thing is that they are not even aware of it themselves. They do not have enough critical thinking to understand their limitations, and their students do not have enough critical thinking to oppose such a way of teaching. I know that because I used to be such a yoga instructor myself. If you are interested to learn more about my personal story, how I used to teach yoga for years, that I lacked proper education to do it appropriately, click on the picture here that this red arrow points to. It will also lead you to a playlist of more videos exploring the critical side of yoga. Not all yoga is bad, taught correctly, it can be a wonderful and healing practice. Yet like many areas in our society, yoga lacks critical thinking. If you want to help me promote critical thinking and create a culture of critical thinking together, share this video with your fellow yogis, and subscribe to the Critical Thinkers channel.