The stretching, the breathing, the deep sense of serenity… there’s a reason yoga pulls you back each and every day, and as a yoga teacher, you’ve likely wondered, “What would happen if I pushed my students too far?”
With yoga insurance from Insurance Canopy, you can rest easy knowing you’re protected against third-party liability claims that arise out of your business practices. In other words, if someone gets hurt or damages the place you teach at, you could be protected against any resulting lawsuits.
To help explain a little better, we’ve found five crazy yoga poses that could potentially lead to an accident if performed by someone pushed past their limits.
In order to mitigate risk, you should be carrying yoga insurance meant for yoga teachers. Insurance Canopy offers an annual policy that starts at just $129 and offers coverages for business personal property, general liability, and professional liability, which we’ll discuss further below.
So, just how far is too far?
Let’s talk about it.
Pose 1: Firefly Pose
As an instructor, you’re probably thinking, “That one’s not that bad!” And you’d be right, but when you’re teaching class, you can’t always trust that everyone is flowing at the same level of difficulty. You could label your class as ‘intermediate’ or ‘advanced’, letting people know you’ll be doing harder poses, but you can’t be certain that any stragglers won’t try to do the more intense stuff. In the firefly pose, you are maneuvering your body to balance on your arms and wrists. You’ll need to shift your shoulders behind your knees, meaning students should have fully stretched out their hips, shoulders, and hamstrings. With the full weight of your body just on your hands, many people would likely be prone to losing their balance and tipping over. If they’re not stretched out, someone could easily pull a muscle in their arms, hamstrings, or maybe even sprain or break their wrists. If this were to happen to anyone you were teaching, you would be liable for their injuries. If you didn’t have yoga insurance, you could be looking at a multi-thousand dollar personal injury lawsuit. With yoga insurance, you could potentially have those costs covered and not have to pay much out of pocket. Your commercial general liability coverage may come into play if a bodily injury claim came your way, preventing you from paying out of pocket for the expensive suit.
Pose 2: One-Legged King Pigeon Pose
The One-Legged King Pigeon Pose requires a lot of flexibility. Not many people can bend their arms over their heads to meet with their legs. In this version, the student would need to cross their arms behind their back to meet one leg behind and the other on the floor. This pose is a powerful hip-opener that can help increase flexibility and the range of motion in the hip joints. It stimulates the abdominal organs, thighs, groin, and abdomen. It can often be felt deeply in specific upper-leg and hip muscles, including the psoas, piriformis, tensor fasciae latae, and gluteus maximus, helping to relieve tension. As much as you’d want each and every student to feel the positive effects of this pose, you’d need to be careful about how far you push your student. Someone could overextend their leg and hurt themselves, or even possibly lose grip on their hold and fling their leg or arm back, injuring someone else.
Pose 3: One-Legged Headstand
The One-Legged Headstand Pose is a preparatory pose for the full headstand. By slowly working toward a full headstand, students learn to use their leg and core muscles in order to get them upright. A headstand is usually only performed by those in advanced-level classes, or by those willing to try something slightly dangerous. We don’t need to delve too deeply into the risks someone takes on while trying to perform this pose, they would sound wild. Someone could lose their balance and quite literally break their neck. If they’re using a wall for balance, they could damage the wall if slammed too hard, or they could fall over and land on someone else. Whatever the accident, it could only lead to a nightmare of a lawsuit. As we’ve mentioned, if someone sues you for getting injured as a result of your teaching, you could see a hefty lawsuit come your way. Did you know the average payout for a personal injury claim can be as much as $50,000? Often, these are settled outside of court, but would you be able to pay that yourself? Or would you need to rely on someone else to pick up the tab? With yoga insurance, your policy may cover fees and costs associated with a lawsuit which usually include:- Lawyer costs
- Court fees
- Deposition costs
- Costs of investigation
- And more
Pose 4: Fallen Angel Pose
Next on our list of crazy poses is the Fallen Angel Pose, also known as Devadatta Panna Asana. Fallen Angel requires a great deal of strength in the arms, legs, and core, it is a full-body workout, and if the back isn’t fully stretched out and warmed up, you won’t be able to maneuver yourself into the correct position. This pose is primarily an arm balance and little to no weight should be placed on the head and neck. This means the full weight of someone’s body is again being put on their arms and wrists. As warm as someone should be when attempting this, there is still the possibility of personal injury or property damage resulting from an attempt. If the student were to fall out of the pose while next to the studio’s mirror, you could possibly have an injured student or in a worst-case scenario, completely shattered mirror. Say someone does try this, they land the pose and stay in it for a few seconds. Upon losing balance, they topple over and crash into the mirror. The mirror shatters, leaving an empty panel and leaving you to clear out your classroom and tiptoe around broken glass. Without yoga insurance that includes property damage coverages, you could be seeing a pretty large fine for the damage to the studio, and that’s not including the possible lawsuit from the student you encouraged to push themselves.
