132 Spirituality Studies personal practice in terms of a specific yoga style: “At home, I do cakra yoga, I think. Sometimes, very rarely, I have my own practice. More often, I turn on YouTube and watch foreign instructors, and I try to adopt some of their moves, like poses or transitions I like. But that I would just sit down like that on my own, that rarely happens.” Overall, participants described their engagement with yoga as a continuous negotiation between inherited tradition and contemporary trends. 5.3 Understanding Professional Responsibility and the Spiritual Dimension of Teaching Addressing RQ3, participants reflected on their understanding of professional responsibility, particularly regarding the spiritual and ethical dimensions of yoga instruction. Their accounts highlighted a significant pattern of hesitation regarding the boundaries of professional competence. Every yoga instructor may think of yoga in a slightly different way. As P3 observed, “if you want, you can fit it [the word yoga] on anything.” The interpretation of the word yoga as a connection gave rise to the trend of combining traditional yoga with other fields, including psychology (cakra yoga), physiotherapy (yoga for back pain, yoga for health), acrobatics (acro yoga, fly yoga), and watersports (yoga on paddleboards), among others. The interpretation of yoga as the connection between the East and the West often leads us to replace what we cannot grasp with what we are familiar with. Not knowing the traditional terminology may then be understood as an irrelevant and dispensable part of training yoga instructors. As P1 said to P2: “You may not complement it with Sanskrit, but you have other sources, which tell us the same things yoga does, after all.” Thus, it comes to pass that yoga is taught the way that the given instructor sees it, which the participants agreed can cause a great deal of variance. In P2’s words: “The same way I perceive it, that way I want to pass it on to others. I insert ideas in it from other fields that have stuck with me.” It is hardly surprising, therefore, that yoga is generally understood mainly as a discipline of physical exercises, and P2 confessed she does see it that way, too. In the traditional mindset, the physical body has never been such an important part of yoga as it is today, which also P1 acknowledged: “In yoga classes, we cannot stay just with the physical but have to also go into the psychological… Āsanas are just preparation for the higher level of the eightfold path of yoga.” In relation to RQ3, it was clear from the concerns shared in the group that, in terms of working with the mind, yoga instructor training is insufficient for instructors to use these techniques safely with their students. The ethical-relational dimension of the analysis was the most prominent here, as participants discussed the dangers of insufficient training. As P2 said: “It is dangerous in this way… I don’t do breath techniques with people at all, except for full yogic breath and switching nostrils.” Not every instructor knows the power of controlled breathing, and a client may become traumatized right in the class, as P1 described: “Teachers who go for breath techniques and deep meditation are sort of bursting with it and experiencing it fully. But they don’t have it fully anchored and under control themselves. And they don’t even know what sort of people come to their classes. And then they use the technique in the class and open somebody’s trauma through deep breathing combined with meditation. And in a person who’s not doing well psychologically, it may resonate badly, and they may fall to pieces right there and then, what can she [the instructor] do with them? I think it’s an enormous responsibility… It depends on the teacher, who often may not be quite top-notch, so it may turn into a big mess.” In P2’s opinion, however, the responsibility that P1 mentioned should be assumed by every client on their own: “You can’t let yourself get pushed where you don’t want to be. But it’s hard, yeah.” The Czech Ministry of Education does not require applicants to have a personal yoga practice to attend or complete instructor training. It is only an assumption, as P1 noted: “Ideally they go to these courses not as blank slates, but with something already in store, as it were.” All participants agreed that if they teach yoga as something more than a purely physical exercise, the basic training provided by the requalification course is insufficient for their vocation. P1 stated: “Well, it would not be enough for me to do just a single yoga course and nothing else. I just hope that people finish those courses with humbleness and the knowledge that it is a never-ending journey… It is not enough, but on the other hand, I’m glad that you don’t need much to be able to get the training your way.” P3 chimed in: “They [the instructors] should definitely develop further in yoga, so as not to get stuck in one place. But if they want to teach power yoga until they die, then in some ways no, but in some ways yes… It’s controversial.” However, as the participants shared, further development in their qualifications may be hampered by their familial situation, financial situation, or uncertainty in their
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