Why can't I say no? All about consent — LIT Yoga

They allow students to protect personal space, withdraw consent non-verbally and with minimal disruption in a class environment, and ensure the teacher remains accountable. You can have consent tokens in place before students come into the room, or hand them out as they come in. This can form part of the set-up, so their use becomes the norm rather than an optional extra.

Wildcroft says: “In reality, mostly my students will use… consent cards as a way to tease me by flipping them over when I need a partner to demonstrate with. I’m happy with that. Even in that playfulness, there is a subtext that says: in our joking, we test a newly strengthened boundary, and that is healthy for everyone.

“This is yet another way for me to signal that I will continue to do my best to make each session safe for every person that comes into the space. In that, the issue of consent to touch becomes so much more than a legal duty – it becomes a sacred practice that I must honour when stepping into the seat of the teacher.” (23)

Times are changing: where once only Nina Jackson’s Yoga Flip Chips were commercially available (2012-present), now multiple suppliers exist, such as Molly Kitchen’s Yoga Consent Cards (24) or Eunice Laurel’s Movement for Healing’s Yoga Assist Tokens (25), while many others are making their own.

There is, of course, a case for and against. On the for side, yoga teacher and survivor Tiffany Shaddock explains: “Many sexual trauma survivors feel obligated to consent – we don’t actually feel as though we have rights to our own bodies. This is where things like ‘flip-chips’ are especially supportive – we don’t have to SAY anything.” (26)

An (anonymous) survivor points out: “I went back to the yoga studio where I started, the yoga teacher and I were comfortable with each other and she began to correct me with touch. I didn’t mind sometimes because I had gotten to know her, but on other days, it was a real trigger.” (27)

On the against side, consent tokens mean the teacher has to be willing to use them (not all are) and also to understand informed consent well enough to use them appropriately (not all do); see Anna’s experience with the classroom assistant, who ignored the consent token laid by her mat.

Donna Farhi makes a valid criticism: “I don’t think students can possibly know what they are saying yes to and what they are saying no to with an unknown teacher… a student can turn up the ‘yes’ side, but without knowing the teacher’s underlying assumptions, they may be consenting to being moved beyond a safe threshold.” (28) How safe are any of us, really?

This wariness is backed up by the fact that ashtanga-offshoot and vegan-anarchy focused Jivamukti has in recent times attempted to position itself as a front-runner when it comes to using consent tokens, but as mentioned above, it’s also settled a serious sexual harassment case out of court. Its own 2007 teacher training manual says of adjusting students, “your hands should almost never leave them,” and says a student should “become an extension of your teacher… Do what they say.” (29)

The manual, created by founders Gannon and Kirkpatrick, was contributed to by many, including the controversial Michael Roach, himself accused of sexual misconduct from his own devotees over the years (30).

On consent tokens, I myself agree with Wildcroft – in my personal experience, I have found that students are appreciative of them, and have verbally fed back to me about this after class. In my own history of taking larger group classes with consent-driven teachers such as Laurel and Catherine Annis, as Shaddock mentions, I have welcomed the opportunity to utilise them for a silent ‘no thanks’.

But, depending on the strength of the existing relationship between teacher and student, they may not always be necessary. I would suggest that initially their use (or careful use of language around consent) is key, showing the teacher’s intention from the start. In led classes, where you often get drop-ins and short-term students, they are very important, but as time goes by, and trust grows, perhaps they become less necessary in the case of individuals, where over years teacher and student really get to understand each other well on a more personal level. This also goes for 1:1s – when the teacher clearly communicates before and throughout the bodily autonomy of the student.

I don’t say this lightly; I feel that in led classes, they are super useful, but I myself, while using them as a teacher, do not use them in interactions with my own ashtanga teacher (the only teacher I will take physical assists from). I have known her since 2013, and our relationship has built over years of on-and-off working together and mentoring, created through classroom interactions, in-person and electronic discussions, honest, constructive feedback and a solid understanding of my body, mentality and injuries.

I know she knows my body well. I know she will never place her hands somewhere inappropriate. I know she will learn from her mistakes if and when she makes them. I’m not saying she’s perfect, but I’ve never seen her force an injurious adjustment or take a student beyond their natural range of movement. There’s no real substitute for that breadth and depth of communication. In the end, it all comes down to trust.

Devotional yoga and consent: let’s make a start

For the sake of safety for practitioners and teachers, we must move towards a consent-driven model across all yoga styles; we must do better at training teachers to understand this from the offset. This is particularly important going forward for guru-founded styles like ashtanga, as well as devotional styles like Jivamukti and Bikram with charismatic leaders who’ve already set the rules for participation, where it can be more challenging to step up and challenge the status quo. In Bikram teacher training, trainees are expected to learn a set script and sequence, while Jivamukti demands “total surrender”(31) (32).

Michelle Goldberg of Slate discovered: “Aspiring teachers at Jivamukti… [kiss] the feet of founders David Life and Sharon Gannon. ‘They walk in the room and you learn to get on your hands and knees. Everyone’s doing it, 100 people around you, from the very first day.’” (33)

Ashtanga, while not exactly a devotional style, is still guru-driven thanks to the presence of founder Pattabhi Jois’ grandson Sharath. He struggles to acknowledge historic abuses (despite his recent social media output, which in itself is problematic) and maintains a list of ‘authorised’ teachers who are ‘certified’ to teach ashtanga: it’s hard to get on, and you can be removed for nebulous reasons. Realistically, anyone can teach it if they want. As a foundation of the styles mentioned above, Ashtanga commonly teaches set sequences where students were historically only allowed to learn new poses once they had ‘mastered’ the previous one, uses no props (I have heard an ashtanga teacher say she doesn’t know how to help people in larger bodies, because ‘tradition’), and has hands-on assists as part of the furniture.

But change rarely comes from the top in these situations – it often needs to start with a groundswell of support from lower down. The tide is shifting. Yin and ashtanga teacher Norman Blair says: “It is the teacher’s responsibility to discourage the striving that is too strong. To encourage dialogue. To emphasise that it is good to say ‘no’ to adjustments, to say ‘stop’, to say ‘not today’, to say ‘that is too much’. It is the student’s responsibility to stand as best as they can in their power.” (34)

Popular ashtanga teachers like Gregor Maehle have spoken out against historic abuses, while Scott Johnson, Greg Nardi and others recently formed Amayu Yoga, described as a “cooperative of highly skilled, compassionate Ashtanga yoga teachers and practitioners, driven by consent and empowerment” (35). It remains to be seen what this means for the community, as their plans are not yet clear (36) and consent tokens are not yet used in Johnson’s studio Stillpoint, but it’s a start.

Footnotes

1 (Yoga Dork, 2012, Update: Sad Details of Kausthub Desikachar’s Psychopathic Abuse of Power,Sexual Misconduct and the Preserving of His Family’s Legacy)

2 (National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork, 2017, Standards of Practice)

3 (Research Support, n.d., Informed consent)

4 (NHS, 2016, Overview: consent to treatment)

5 (NHS, 2016, Overview: Assessing capacity)

6 (Barthel Combs, 2019, Interview: Jenny Barthel-Combs, yoga practitioner)

7 (Curtis, 2018, Practising consent: protecting personal space and encouraging autonomy in the yoga classroom)

8 (Wildcroft, 2016, Trauma Sensitive)

9 (Ezrin, 2018, Teachers, It’s Time to Adjust Our Hands-On Adjustments)

10 (Feldmann, 2018, Tim Feldmann on the value and pitfalls of yoga adjustment)

11 (Feldmann, 2018, Tim Feldmann on the value and pitfalls of yoga adjustment)