The recent article in The Independent titled “Dance teacher wins payout after yoga course triggers emotional breakdown” has understandably sparked strong and mixed reactions in some yoga communities I am connected with. What I find particularly troubling is the amount of victim-blaming that has surfaced in discussion threads and forums, often from people who misunderstand the scope of what yoga is and, more so, what it is not. It is deeply inappropriate to place responsibility on a student whose emotional boundaries were crossed in a setting where they had every reason to expect safety, clarity and professionalism.
I believe this case is a good illustration of what can happen when yoga teachers introduce psychological processes they are not trained to handle, or are trained to handle but shun the responsibility to deal with the reactions they provoke. As someone who has taught Trauma-Sensitive Yoga Teacher Training courses for years and has written a book on the subject, I found the story unsurprising, but still deeply concerning. It mirrors patterns and cases I am familiar with within the yoga world, especially in the last five or six years, when teachers have crossed boundaries, misused practices, oversimplified the complexity of the human psyche, and ventured into terrain that belongs to trained mental health professionals. The result of this case of blatant disregard for professional responsibility and ethical boundaries was heartbreaking. I can only hope that the person in question will find a way to heal.
The Importance of Congruence and Expectation
One of the troubling aspects of the situation described in the article is the profound incongruence between what people expect in a certain setting and what they actually receive. When yoga students enrol in a 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training, they arrive prepared to learn topics such as yoga philosophy, sequencing, tools beyond asana, and teaching methodology. They do not come prepared to revisit childhood trauma, confront painful memories and practice forgiveness, or expose their emotional histories in a group setting. This mismatch between expectation and reality can be profoundly destabilising. Research in psychotherapy consistently shows that when a person’s expectations about the process do not align with what actually unfolds, they are more likely to feel confused, unsafe or dissatisfied, and that is within a therapeutic context where such material is anticipated and held by trained professionals. In yoga teacher trainings, where such preparation or containment is absent, the impact can be far more disorienting.
Human beings rely on psychological defences that help us stay regulated and safe. These defences adjust to the context. For instance, most people sit very close to strangers on public transport without distress, because the situation calls for it. If someone stood that close to us in an empty park, our defensive system would activate. Nothing about the distance changes; only the context does. We willingly let a doctor press into our abdomen or examine a sensitive area because the context is medical, and we are prepared for it. Yet if a stranger calling themselves a doctor attempted the same examination while we were standing in a supermarket queue, our whole system would react with alarm. The physical action is the same; the meaning changes entirely because the context does. Here's another example: closing your eyes during a guided relaxation can feel soothing because you trust the environment. Closing your eyes on a dark street at night would feel dangerous. The action itself hasn’t changed; only the setting has. This is what I mean by incongruent. The behaviour is identical, but the context makes it either appropriate, threatening or confusing.
The Vulnerability of Teacher Training Environments
Teacher trainings in particular create conditions in which students are more susceptible. Intensive programmes are physically demanding and mentally draining, and are often led in places away from home, which for many can be ungrounding in itself. Participants often experience emotional fluctuations due to fatigue and other factors, and when people are tired, their ability to self-regulate diminishes. Their boundaries soften, their resilience drops, and their capacity to access helpful coping mechanisms is reduced. In these states, even small emotional triggers can have an outsized impact. Introducing psychologically provocative practices into such a vulnerable environment is not only inappropriate but negligent. A yoga teacher training is a space for learning to teach yoga, not a space for therapeutic processing or emotional exposure. Anything presented as such belongs outside its scope. When students enrol in a 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training and expect to learn alignment, sequencing etc, they do not expect to have to confront their childhood memories, and they are simply not in a state to defend themselves against unexpected psychological excavation.
From what students shared over the years, I know that many of those who have suffered from these types of interventions in a yoga space suffer in silence, because they feel embarrassed, confused or ashamed, or worry they will be blamed for being 'too sensitive' or 'not ready' for the work. They often doubt their own perception, question whether their reaction was valid, or fear being dismissed by the very community they trusted. This silence only deepens the harm, and it is one of the reasons these practices continue unchecked. This kind of reaction is entirely normal. When someone is harmed in a setting where they expected safety, support or care, it is very common for them to turn the blame inward. It’s a well-documented psychological pattern seen across many forms of boundary violation: people question their own judgement, minimise what happened, or assume the problem must lie within themselves. Although the nature of the harm is different, the internal response is similar to what many survivors of assault or emotional abuse report. When trust has been breached, the nervous system often protects itself through self-blame, because it feels less threatening than acknowledging that a person or system you relied on failed you.
The Lack of Appropriate Qualifications
Another central issue is qualification. Supporting someone through trauma or deep emotional distress requires extensive clinical training. It demands an understanding of nervous system responses, stabilisation techniques, containment, and the ability to intervene safely if someone becomes overwhelmed and dysregulated. Yoga teachers are not trained in these skills unless they also hold separate therapeutic credentials. Without this training, they cannot responsibly lead students into emotionally charged territory or handle the aftermath. This matters enormously because the power dynamics in teacher trainings already place teachers in positions of authority. When that authority is misused to provoke emotional breakthroughs or personal disclosures, students may comply even when uncomfortable.
The teacher training team, in this particular case, defended themselves in court by saying that after the 'session', the student thanked the (unqualified) teacher who guided it. But what they fail to understand is that when a person feels overwhelmed, unsafe, or emotionally exposed in a power-imbalanced setting, their nervous system may default to appeasing the authority figure. This is known as the fawn response, one of the primary trauma responses. In a group setting, especially one led by a charismatic teacher, a dysregulated student might smile, thank the teacher, express appreciation and appear 'moved', not because they genuinely feel grateful, but because their nervous system is dysregulated, but trying to restore safety and avoid further threat or conflict. Fawning is very common in spiritual, wellness and yoga environments where there is pressure to be 'open', 'receptive', or 'transforming'. It is a protective mechanism, not an authentic endorsement of what happened. Group dynamics amplify this effect, as people often feel compelled to respond 'correctly'. This survival response often lasts long enough for the person to get through the immediate situation. But once they are out of that situation, the nervous system drops out of the 'appeasing' mode and into a space where it feels safe enough to let the truth surface. At that point, the delayed response appears and can include panic, shaking, crying, emotional flooding, intrusive memories, dissociation etc. This is not uncommon, and it is why trained trauma therapists never provoke deep emotional material without providing grounding, containment and aftercare.
Why Dismissing Distress Is Never Acceptable
What I found most disturbing in this whole scenario is that the only person who actually had some training, and could have used it, dismissed the student when she said she felt overwhelmed and emotionally dysregulated. When someone discloses emotional distress in a learning environment, and especially after a guided experiential exercise that forms part of the mandatory curriculum, there is an immediate duty of care. Even outside psychotherapy, any educator or facilitator has a responsibility to take such disclosures seriously, to inquire further, to ensure the person is safe, and to offer appropriate support or referral. To brush a student aside in that moment is not only unkind; it is a breach of the most basic principles of safeguarding. During our Trauma-Sensitive Yoga Trainings, we talk about this at length. TSY is designed precisely to avoid triggering someone, but if it happens despite our best efforts, the response must still be one of acknowledgement and support. Being met with presence in that moment can make an enormous difference.
When a teacher has intentionally led a group into psychologically charged territory, the ethical obligation becomes even stronger. You cannot provoke emotional material and then step away from the consequences simply because you did not expect them, do not know what to do, or have no time to deal with the outcome. Doing so leaves the student alone with a heightened nervous system, without stabilisation, grounding or informed guidance, a situation that is not only unsafe but potentially traumatising, which is unfortunately what happened in this case. In therapeutic contexts, containment and aftercare are considered essential. In educational contexts, at the very least, one must ensure that students are emotionally regulated before closing a session. Ignoring a student’s distress demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of power dynamics, of the vulnerability created by immersive trainings, and of the facilitator’s responsibility to safeguard those in their care. In short, creating emotional intensity without the skills to manage it is already dangerous; inducing emotional overwhelm and then dismissing the person who is struggling is indefensible.
The Myth of Catharsis and the Legacy of Harmful Methods
What is perhaps most striking about the approach described in the article is that almost no contemporary, evidence-based psychotherapeutic modality would ever do this anymore. The practices described are outdated and widely recognised as risky, destabilising and clinically irresponsible. These techniques belonged to a very specific era of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in the 1960s and 70s, when various confrontational methods were used. Most of these practices have since been debunked, abandoned or heavily criticised because they often produced more harm than good.
Modern trauma therapy looks nothing like this. Contemporary approaches, such as CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), DBT (Dialectical Behaviour Therapy), EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing), etc., emphasise safety, stabilisation, resourcing and consent. They focus on helping people stay within their window of tolerance, not blowing it wide open. They prepare clients carefully, monitor their responses, and move slowly. So when a yoga teacher, with no qualifications and no accountability structure, begins to imitate the outdated and unsafe techniques from the fringes of psychotherapy’s past, it's dangerous and reminiscent of the kind of quasi-therapeutic experimentation that was fashionable many decades ago, before we understood the neurobiology of trauma and the risks of emotional overwhelm.
The Misuse of Therapeutic Language in Yoga Spaces
I personally had not encountered either of the teachers from this school before, so I did my research before writing this. I came across an interview in which one of them speaks openly about wanting to “evoke and encourage (yoga) students to face their most emergent shadow aspects.” This alone should raise alarm bells. It reflects a belief that yoga teachers have the right to initiate psychological transformation. It suggests an agenda of emotional excavation and identity disruption framed as spiritual growth. When he goes on to describe yoga as a platform for trauma resolution and psycho-emotional integration, it makes me wonder what yoga lineage he is talking about. And if yoga is the platform, then doesn’t it make sense to use only yogic tools and techniques? Trauma resolution is a clinical process, not a yoga workshop exercise, and positioning oneself as a guide who can dismantle someone’s sense of self and rebuild it anew is not a mark of insight but a significant ethical risk.
This leads to a broader and crucial point: yoga is not psychotherapy, and the two should not be casually blended. Yoga can absolutely support healing, but it does so through its own tools and within its own boundaries. Asana helps people reconnect to their bodies, build strength and agency, and develop interoceptive awareness. Pranayama, when offered skilfully, supports nervous system regulation. Mindfulness and meditation have been shown to improve emotional regulation and reduce stress reactivity. These practices create conditions that can aid healing, but they do not directly involve re-entering traumatic memories or processing deeply held pain. No yoga lineage instructs teachers to guide students to relive traumatic events, unearth childhood wounds, or forgive their parents in a group circle. Such practices do not belong to yoga, yoga therapy (and as already said, not even to contemporary psychotherapy).
With all of my credentials, when someone with a more complex trauma reaches out, I refer them to those who are more experienced in trauma work. I am shocked to see how lightly people with no relevant education or experience dare to step into territory that requires such precision, care and clinical understanding. It is astonishing how confidently some will make claims about 'healing' and 'transformation' without recognising the depth of responsibility that comes with this work.
Vulnerability Should Never Be Exploited
Many people join yoga workshops, trainings and retreats during periods of transition, uncertainty or emotional sensitivity. They may already be navigating grief, identity shifts or major life changes, and they entrust the training environment with a degree of psychological openness. As I often say to the teachers: together with their jeans and trainers, your students will leave their defensive shields in that changing room because they trust they have entered a safe space. This vulnerability should be honoured and protected, not manipulated or mined for the sake of dramatic breakthroughs. When yoga teachers use therapeutic language, promise transformation or frame themselves as facilitators of emotional catharsis, they create expectations that they are not qualified to meet. Students can easily be led into panic, dissociation or emotional collapse without anyone present who knows how to navigate or contain the experience.
The saddest part for me is that a lot of times this is done for profit rather than from a genuine desire to help. In a crowded market, as yoga is right now, much of this is driven by a desire to stand out, to offer something different, and to tap into the current trend, which right now is around trauma work. If someone truly wants to support people in their healing and is trained to do so, there are established, ethical, and accountable ways to offer that work.
A Call for Ethical Clarity
Yoga has immense potential to support healing, empowerment and self-connection, but that potential is compromised the moment teachers inflate their role or confuse yoga with psychotherapy. When psychotherapeutic language is borrowed without understanding, when emotional processes are used without training, and when vulnerability is treated as a gateway to transformation rather than something to be held with care, people get hurt.
If we want teacher trainings, workshops and retreats to be genuinely safe and supportive, we need clearer boundaries, more humility about what yoga can and cannot offer, and far greater respect for the disciplines we are drawing from. There is no shame in referring out, staying within one’s scope, or acknowledging that another profession is better equipped for certain kinds of work. In fact, that is what integrity looks like.
Yoga teachers are not therapists, and they should not attempt to be. When they do, the people who trust them bear the cost. My hope is that this case prompts the broader yoga community to pause, reflect, and recommit to ethical practice out of duty and care for the students who place their wellbeing in our hands.
