When the Headlines Fade: Abuse, Power and Accountability in Yoga

When the news about Deepak Chopra broke in February, I saw a lot of “I’m so shocked” responses.

I understood why people reacted that way. When allegations about a well-known and widely respected figure become prominent in the news, shock can be a natural first response.

I wrote a social media response at the time, but I knew I would return to write about it again more fully. Partly because I wanted to think carefully about what I wanted to say, and partly because the rush of reactions at the time was so loud.

Several months later, when the headlines have largely faded, this feels important to return to.

Because survivors were speaking long before February. And they are still living with the impact now.

The news was new. The accounts were not.

Survivors have been speaking out about powerful and famous teachers for years. Their accounts are often minimised, doubted, dismissed or quietly moved out of sight.

Then a story reaches the mainstream press and the wider community discovers it, as though it is entirely new.

The news may have been new to many people in February. The experiences being described were not.

I think that’s partly why declarations of shock can feel uncomfortable. Shock places the emphasis on the moment of public discovery, rather than on the years in which people have been trying to speak and weren’t heard.

The important question isn’t only, “How could this have happened?”

It’s also, “Why did it take so long for so many people to listen?”

“That’s not real yoga”

Another response I saw repeatedly was: “That’s not real yoga.”

I understand the impulse behind this too. We want to separate the teachings and practices we value from behaviour that causes harm. We may feel that abuse is so fundamentally opposed to yoga that it can’t possibly belong within it.

But “that’s not real yoga” can also be a way of distancing ourselves.

It can protect our idea of yoga, or our identity as a “good yogi”, rather than asking us to stay with the much more uncomfortable truth: harm can and does happen inside yoga communities.

It can happen in spaces filled with language about compassion, healing, transformation and spiritual growth. It can happen around teachers who are charismatic, knowledgeable and widely admired. It can happen within organisations that genuinely believe themselves to be doing good.

Saying that abuse is “not yoga” doesn’t help us understand how it was able to happen in a yoga space, who enabled it, or why people who tried to speak about it weren’t heard or even listened to.

Philosophy is not a safeguarding policy

I also saw the suggestion, first from a prominent teacher training organisation and then repeated by many others, that if yoga teachers and students studied yoga philosophy more deeply, and if it formed a greater part of yoga teacher training, this kind of harm wouldn’t happen.

But that is not how power works.

People can quote the sutras, teach the yamas, lead beautiful practices and speak eloquently about compassion while still misusing their power.

Knowing ethical principles doesn’t automatically make someone ethical. Being spiritually knowledgeable doesn’t remove the capacity for manipulation, exploitation or abuse.

Philosophy is not a safeguarding policy.

Ethics are not a personality trait.

Individual morality matters, but it is not enough. Harm is also enabled by systems: status, money, institutional loyalty, fear, community silence, and the ways studios, training organisations and professional bodies respond when concerns are raised.

When one person is treated as uniquely wise, gifted or spiritually advanced, it can become difficult to question them. When livelihoods, reputations and communities depend upon that person, it becomes harder still.

This is why the conversation cannot stop at whether an individual teacher was practising “real yoga”. We also need to look at the culture surrounding them.

Who was believed?

Who was protected?

Who benefited from remaining silent?

Who didn’t benefit from silence, and yet stayed silent, and why?

What happened to the people who raised concerns?

What meaningful change looks like

If we actually want change, it looks less like purity statements and more like practical, sustained action.

It means:

• listening to survivors, especially when what they say is inconvenient

• taking disclosures seriously the first time

• creating clearer boundaries and meaningful accountability for teachers and organisations

• providing safe, independent and accessible reporting routes

• improving working conditions for yoga teachers

• addressing cultures in which charisma, seniority or commercial value place someone beyond challenge

• ensuring there are real consequences when abusive behaviour takes place

It also means resisting the temptation to treat each new story as an isolated scandal.

Abuse doesn’t continue simply because one person behaves badly. It continues when the surrounding systems make disclosure dangerous, accountability unlikely and silence rewarding.

What happens after the news cycle moves on?

Writing this now, rather than in February, has made me think about what happens after the first wave of shock and outrage passes.

The headlines move on. Social media becomes occupied by something else. Organisations may issue statements. Communities begin to settle back into familiar ways of operating.

But the people who have experienced harm don’t simply move on because the story is no longer prominent.

This is the point at which commitment is tested.

Will survivors continue to be listened to when public attention has gone elsewhere?

Will organisations examine the conditions that allowed harm to happen?

Will reporting systems, safeguarding practices and working cultures actually change?

Or will the yoga world quietly return to business as usual?

Support, signposting and collective action

If you are in the UK and want to challenge the systems that collude in abuse within yoga, you can join the Yoga Teachers Union, part of the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain, and support its Safety and Dignity at Work campaign:

https://yogateachersunion.co.uk/safety-and-dignity-at-work

And if reading these stories has brought something up for you, you don’t have to hold it alone.

The Yoga Teachers Union’s Safety and Dignity at Work campaign offers information and signposting for people who have experienced harm, boundary violations, sexual harassment or abuse in yoga spaces. This includes guidance about where support may be available and what steps someone might take if they wish to raise or report a concern.

These are my words, not those of the Yoga Teachers Union or the IWGB. But I trust their commitment to ongoing, survivor-led support and campaigning because they stay with the work when the headlines fade, when people are still living with the impact, when systems would rather return to business as usual, and when the commitment to change is being tested.