Most people think grooming in yoga happens because of a few “bad teachers.” A Bikram here. A Pattabhi Jois there. A scandal once every decade. But I trained inside these systems — Bikram, Ashtanga, Satyananda, and here’s the uncomfortable truth:
If harm is happening everywhere, you don’t have a few bad teachers. You have a structure built for it.
This isn’t about personalities or isolated incidents. It’s about the conditions that yoga culture depends on, the same conditions grooming depends on.
Let’s talk about the architecture.
Table of Contents
Isolation: The Perfect Petri Dish
Yoga communities quietly pull students away. Every high-control environment begins by shrinking your world. Yoga does this in different ways depending on the lineage.
Some systems — like Ashtanga — use literal isolation:
- early morning practice
- dark, quiet rooms
- a closed community
- unspoken rules that say “your practice comes first”
- a schedule that cuts you off from normal social rhythms
Other lineages isolate differently:
- rewarding students who restructure their entire lives around the practice
- demanding total loyalty to the teacher
- discouraging cross-training or other practices
- framing outside feedback as “confusion”
- turning the yoga community into your primary identity
The method changes, but the outcome is the same: The studio slowly replaces your relationships, your routines, and eventually your sense of self.
When your world shrinks to yoga you become easier to influence, easier to monitor, and easier to control. Grooming doesn’t begin with touch. It begins with isolation — social, psychological, or structural.
Authority: The Teacher Becomes the Gatekeeper
Whether they admit it or not, yoga teachers are positioned as:
- spiritually evolved
- more embodied
- wiser
- superior in intuition
- the keeper of “secret knowledge”
- the one who decides when you advance
Students quickly learn:
- Progress comes through obedience
- The teacher knows your body better than you do
- Questioning is “resistance”
- Discomfort is “ego”
- Pain is “purification”
Everything funnels into one conclusion: Authority is sacred. Your instincts are not. This is grooming logic, not spiritual logic.
Obedience: The Nervous System Gets Rewired
Every yoga lineage teaches some version of:
- “Breathe through it.”
- “Don’t react.”
- “Stay with the discomfort.”
- “Your mind is lying.”
- “If it feels wrong, it’s your ego.”
Over time, students become conditioned to override:
- pain
- intuition
- fear
- boundaries
- self-protection
This is the same nervous-system compliance training used in high-control groups. Grooming doesn’t require force. It requires training people to say yes when they mean no. Yoga does that extremely well.
The Body Access Problem
(Nobody wants to talk about this one, but it’s the heart of the issue.)
As one of the few women certified in the Ashtanga lineage. I watched Jois sexually assault students under the guise of adjustments for years. We all did. And the system taught us to call it teaching. You can read about it here, and here, and here. Let me say this plainly: When a teacher has normalized access to your body, the line between adjustment and violation becomes very, very thin.
Adjustments give teachers:
- proximity
- physical leverage
- intimate touch
- the veneer of spiritual authority
- the permission to override your no
Students are trained to relax into someone else’s hands, even when those hands are careless, inappropriate, or outright harmful. And because “progress” depends on the teacher, students tolerate things they never would outside a yoga room.
The body becomes currency. Compliance becomes the cost of entry.
Belonging: The Hook
People underestimate how powerful yoga community bonding is. You sweat together, struggle together, breathe together. You show up tired, raw, emotional. Your teacher becomes the constant in your life.
Belonging becomes the reward. Loss of belonging becomes the threat.
Grooming thrives when you feel like:
- you owe the group something
- the teacher saved you
- you’re special for being chosen
- leaving means losing your people
This is exactly why people stay silent.
The Gendered Component No One Wants to Name
Most yoga lineages were built by men. Most systems reward qualities groomers exploit:
- softness
- surrender
- compliance
- trust
- silence
- self-blame
- devotion
Women are told that resistance equals ego, discomfort equals growth, boundaries equals spiritual immaturity, and speaking up means harming the community. The structure is patriarchal by design.
Yoga glamorizes the traits that make women easiest to control.
The ‘Nice’ Teacher Isn’t the Solution
Modern teachers think they’re different because:
- they smile
- they use trauma-aware language
- they don’t scream or shame
- they’ve replaced “guru” with “guide”
But the structure hasn’t changed:
- same hierarchy
- same adjustment culture
- same teacher-as-gatekeeper
- same student compliance
- same spiritualized obedience
- same gendered power dynamics
Changing the tone doesn’t change the power. And nice people can still groom. (And often do — because they’re more believable.)
What “Safety” Would Require (and Why Yoga Classes Can’t Actually Offer It)
People love to say, “Just make it consent-based.” As if safety is a checkbox and not a system. But here’s the truth no studio wants to admit: There is no such thing as real consent in a structure built on hierarchy, belonging, and bodily access — with or without physical adjustments.
Grooming doesn’t require touch. It requires power, compliance, and a community that protects both.
Hear me out…
Touch is only one access point for grooming. When you remove adjustments, you remove one door — but the entire house remains:
- the teacher still holds authority
- the poses are still standardized
- the student still seeks approval
- the group still rewards compliance
- progress is still defined externally
- belonging is still tied to obedience
- the system still interprets boundaries as ego
Even in classes that don’t use physical adjustments, the same dynamics remain:
- the teacher’s validation becomes the regulating force
- the student’s instinct is overridden by “alignment,” “technique,” or “good form”
- students who modify or opt out become visible outliers
- the environment quietly punishes nonconformity
- “listening to your body” is encouraged only when it aligns with the teacher’s expectations
So the absence of touch doesn’t equal the presence of safety. You can’t have genuine choice when the cost of declining — or even deviating — is social isolation, spiritual judgment, or loss of belonging. A student who says “no” in a touch-heavy class is othered. A student who deviates in a no-touch class is also othered. The mechanism shifts. The pressure remains.
Real consent would require:
- power neutrality
- no consequences for saying no
- no elevation of the teacher
- no gatekeeping of progress
- no spiritual framing of compliance
- no social penalty for individuality
You can soften the language. You can use trauma-aware phrasing. You can remove touch. You can hand out consent cards. But as long as the structure rewards obedience and isolates divergence, “consent-based yoga” is a performance — not protection. Yoga, as it exists, cannot provide this — because yoga depends on the opposite:
- hierarchy
- obedience
- teacher authority
- community conformity
- bodily standardization
- progress tied to compliance
Safety isn’t about intentions. It’s about power. And yoga so far is unable to restructure its power.
Grooming in yoga isn’t a deviation from the system. It’s an outcome of the system.
If you’re seeing it now, congratulations.
You’re not betraying yoga. You’re finally trusting yourself.
You’re not breaking the rules. You’re breaking the spell.
