You are not supposed to know everything
By Bernie Clark
September 1, 2026
[Note: this article was not written by an AI, although most illustrations were by ChatGPT. See the About Us Page for our AI philosophy.]
Imagine the following scenario…You are an experienced yoga teacher. You have taught for years and have taken hundreds of hours of extra training. You have taken trainings in prenatal yoga, trauma sensitivity and you have studied anatomy. You have grown quite confident in your abilities. You are preparing to start a class…
A new student arrives just a couple of minutes before class starts. You have never seen her before, so you walk over and say, “Hello”. She tells you her name and you welcome her. You venture to ask, “Is there anything I should know before we begin? Any special conditions or concerns?” She says, “Oh, nothing much. I do have some whiplash from a recent car accident and my right shoulder tends to sublux, but my cancer is in remission so all is good.” You pause and wonder to yourself, “What?!!” Unsure what to say, you mumble, “Well, please listen to your body and take it easy today.” As you begin the centering for the whole class, part of your mind keeps going back to the student. What are you going to do for her?
Throughout the class, your confidence is diminished. You keep looking over at the new student wondering if postures you are suggesting are appropriate or dangerous for her. Several times you ask her in a quiet voice how she is doing. She smiles weakly and says she is fine. After class ends, she slips away before you get to talk to her again. For the rest of the day, you wonder about her. You worry that you should have done more to help her.
Setting Reasonable Expectations
Imagine this same student shows up at her doctor’s office. Her doctor knows all about her cancer treatments because they have been working together for years. The doctor even knows about the tendency for the head of her right humerus to pop out of the shoulder socket, due to an old athletic injury. But the car accident is new and she is seeing the doctor about the pain in her neck that has gotten worse over the last few weeks. The doctor tests her range of motion of the neck, noting where pain is worse, and then orders some X-rays and considers a referral to a physiotherapist.
In this scenario, the doctor knows all about the patient. She has enough time to ask for the details about her accident, the injury and the level of pain. She can examine her and order tests and imaging to gather more detailed information. You have spent 60 seconds with her. There is simply no way you can assess these conditions and determine what is medically appropriate for her, nor should you try. You are not her doctor. You are her yoga teacher.
So Many Conditions!
There is no way any yoga teacher can be an expert in all the conditions that may show up in a yoga class. Just consider this partial list: arthritis, breast cancer, diabetes, glaucoma, hypermobility, hypertension, joint replacements, long Covid, multiple sclerosis, neurodivergence, neuropathy, osteoporosis, perimenopause, postpartum recovery, PTSD, and spinal fusion.
Want some more? Anxiety, asthma, chronic back pain, dementia, depression, irritable bowel syndrome, macular degeneration, migraines, sciatica, sinusitis, stroke, and tinnitus. I could go on, but hopefully you get the point.1 Even if you had some expertise in a particular condition, that doesn’t tell you exactly what this student should do. Two students with chronic back pain may have very different capabilities and contraindications. A diagnosis is not a prescription.
A doctor with a decade of schooling and years of clinical experience is not expected to be an expert in every condition. That is why doctors refer patients to specialists, and even specialists may need considerable time and testing to determine the precise nature of an ailment. So how can we possibly expect a yoga teacher to be well-versed in every condition a student might bring into the yoga room, let alone know what to prescribe for her? We can’t, and we shouldn’t.
Know Some Things, Not Everything
Admitting that you cannot know everything does not mean you shouldn’t know some things. Yoga teachers do receive basic training on how to safely instruct students with some of the most common conditions likely to be present in a yoga class. What are the most likely conditions? There have been studies addressing this question. One study found that musculoskeletal issues were the most commonly encountered, including injuries, arthritis, joint pain, osteoporosis and scoliosis. Pregnancy came second, followed by hypertension.2 Another study, this one of predominantly Iyengar yoga practitioners and including psychological as well as physical conditions, found that the most commonly reported conditions included depression, arthritis, anxiety, headaches and hypertension.3
As our training and experience grow, we do learn about the more common issues. We don’t need to know how to treat them, but we should know enough to recognize when a posture or practice may be inappropriate. The goal is not to become a clinician. It is to become a safer yoga teacher.
Some doctors, physiotherapists and other clinicians are also yoga teachers. But when someone is teaching a general drop-in yoga class, the class itself is not a clinical consultation. A yoga studio is not a doctor’s office, and a drop-in yoga class does not provide the time or setting necessary to take a detailed history, investigate symptoms, diagnose their cause or prescribe treatment.
Even trained yoga therapists, who have considerably more specialized training than general yoga teachers, must work within a defined scope of practice. The International Association of Yoga Therapists expects its members to understand common health conditions, symptoms, medications and contraindications well enough to select appropriate yoga practices, but they are not qualified to diagnose medical or psychological conditions, interpret diagnostic tests, prescribe medications or supplements, override the advice of other health-care professionals, or work with conditions outside their own competence.4 When a client’s needs exceed their expertise, they are expected to refer the client to an appropriate health-care professional.
What you can do
This may sound paradoxical but once you drop the idea that you can and should help each student with whatever ailment or condition they have, you will be free! You do not have to be Doctor Yogi. None of this absolves us of the responsibility to teach competently. We should understand the practices we teach, recognize significant warning signs, stay within our scope of competence, and avoid offering advice when we don’t know what we’re talking about.
While you cannot diagnose or prescribe treatments, you can listen. This is as much for your own educational benefit as for the student. Allow them to tell you about their situation. Even offer time after the class for them to educate you further. (Time before a class is always so limited.) After listening, acknowledge that 1) you are not a therapist, 2) you do not have any expertise in the condition, and 3) ask the magic words, “What have you been advised to do or not to do? What does your health-care team suggest?”
Now, I have had students reply to me, “Oh, doctors! What do they know?” I laugh and reply, “Well, they know a lot more than me!” Sometimes students tell me that their doctors said, “You should try yoga.” Which prompts my response, “Did she say what kind of yoga?” Unfortunately, many doctors do not know the difference between Ashtanga yoga and Restorative yoga. Thus, admittedly, many times the doctor’s advice is not going to help you determine what is best for this student, but this still does not mean you are responsible for determining the student’s therapy.
My default position is to return control and decision-making to the student. I admit that I do not know what will be best given her condition. If there are no known contraindications that rule out the practice, I may suggest she approach the class as an experiment: testing a little and observing a lot.5 While I will try to avoid any postures that I think will be problematic, I still want her to take responsibility. I ask her to notice what she feels while in the poses, when she comes out of the poses and over the next couple of days.6 She will need to monitor what works for her and what doesn’t. Keep what works. Drop what doesn’t. Go slowly. Develop more depth in the practice, if that is advisable, over time.
The student is flying her plane
Consider yourself ground control and your student the pilot flying her own plane. Ground control has a responsibility to provide the accurate, timely and helpful information they have access to. You can provide wisdom and guidance, but you cannot feel what she feels. You do not know her airplane. You cannot make every decision for her. She is the one receiving the signals from her body, and ultimately, she has to decide whether to continue, modify or stop. Your responsibility is to teach responsibly; hers is to pay attention to what is happening in her own body.
You can be an advisor, but at the end of the day, you are her yoga teacher, not her doctor. It is okay to admit you do not know about her condition. It is okay to remind her that she has responsibility for deciding what is appropriate for her own body. You can make suggestions, but she has to decide whether to follow them. Do not suggest, however, that she ignore whatever her health care team recommended.
In Short
Do not beat yourself up if you have no idea what to do for a student’s condition. Your role is to teach yoga, not to be a medical provider. Know what you know. Keep learning. Know what you don’t know. Listen to the student. Don’t diagnose. Don’t advise students to disregard their health-care providers. Offer options rather than prescriptions. Encourage students to pay attention to their own experience. And when something is beyond your competence, say so. That is perfectly okay. Give yourself a break.
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1 If you would like to see a more extensive list of conditions, visit https://www.nhsinform.scot/illnesses-and-conditions/a-to-z/.
2 Ross A, Touchton-Leonard K, Yang L, Wallen G. A National Survey of Yoga Instructors and their Delivery of Yoga Therapy. Int J Yoga Therap. 2016 Jan;26(1):83-91. doi: 10.17761/1531-2054-26.1.83. PMID: 27797670. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27797670/
3 Ross A, Friedmann E, Bevans M, Thomas S. National survey of yoga practitioners: mental and physical health benefits. Complement Ther Med. 2013 Aug;21(4):313-23. doi: 10.1016/j.ctim.2013.04.001. Epub 2013 May 2. PMID: 23876562; PMCID: PMC3721070. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3721070/pdf/nihms475569.pdf
4 The IAYT Scope of Practice, updated in September 2020, can be found here: https://www.iayt.org/page/IntroScope
5 I do have to admit there have been times when I requested a student not attend my class, when I felt it really was not going to be suitable for her. A friend of mine told a student, who was 8 months pregnant and experiencing contractions, to not take her yoga class but to go seek medical attention. Fortunately, these incidents have been rare.
6 Admittedly, pain is a poor indicator as to whether a pose is safe or not, but it is one of the best indicators we have. Many conditions do not come with early warning signs. Many students do not know that they have hypertension, osteoporosis, glaucoma or are newly pregnant. Pain, when present, can be significant, but the absence of pain is no guarantee of an absence of a condition.