I can believe that.
I’m doing Bikram right now, twice a week, and it’s much easier to do stupid things in Bikram than it is in the other types of yoga I’ve tried.
The hot room makes it a lot easier (for me) to stretch - so I tend to push farther than I could in a normal room. And I have pushed farther than I should have a few times.
Plus, the way that it gets taught is that the instructor yells the instructions from the back of the room. If they notice something really wrong, they might say something - but they frequently don’t notice. It’s very possible to re-inforce bad habits, especially when you’re repeating. In other types I’ve tried, the instructor demonstrates (so you have a model to work from), moves about the room, and then will physically move you into place if you’re doing something wrong. While I like many of the things about Bikram (I have no desire to become one with the universe - I just want to stretch my hamstrings), I feel much more confident that I’m doing the poses right and in a way that won’t hurt me everywhere else.
Well, on one side, doctors are human and have human follies and flawed beliefs like anybody else.
On the other side, I wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand. It might be good for YOU, or you might have been lucky so far. Being a doctor he may see a lot of people injured doing that type of yoga.
Personally I wouldn’t ever do the 30 day challenge, but the yoga sounds fun and all things in life have some risk. I can’t imagine more people get hurt doing yoga than by weightlifting or running, yet many doctors strongly recommend it.
At my studio, all of the instructors walk around the room and correct people who are doing the poses incorrectly as well as praise people who are doing well. Most of them will also do occasional demonstrations.
This has been my experience also, with around 20 different instructors and several studios (including the headquarters in L.A.). Yelling the dialogue from the back of the room? Odd.
At my studio, the instructor is generally up at the front on the little stage thingie. They will give demonstrations, particularly if there are new practitioners, and they always praise and correct as needed. I remember once when I got a particularly difficult pose after I healed from a pulled muscle, and the look of surprise on the instructor’s face and the praise he gave. Still makes me smile.
That sounds much more informative and less conducive to injury. The places that I’ve tried around here don’t do demos. I ended up with the one where that best fit my schedule. (They do say if you’re doing something well or not (if they catch it) but they’re vague on what makes it look good or not).
If there are new people, they’ll have a person in the class demonstrate deep breathing at the beginning, and tell them to watch during the first round of rabbit pose (instead of doing it), but that’s as close as I’ve ever seen to an official demo. (As opposed to noticing in the mirror that some guy has his foot 80 feet above his head in standing bow and trying to figure out how he does that).