Precautions for Yoga Professionals in the Flu and Viral Season
The physical practice of yoga tends to attract people seeking who are actively seeking to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Unfortunately, like any place where human beings gather, a studio can easily become a breeding ground for pathogens. The added considerations of heat, perspiration, on-site locker rooms, and shared resources such as mats, blocks, and blankets, further contribute to the challenge of maintaining hygiene while practicing yoga in a public space.
While most studios are fastidious about cleanliness, there are additional personal precautions yoga teachers and students can take to reduce the risk of infection or transmission. Below are five tips for protecting yourself and your students in cold season, flu season, or during a state of heightened alarm concerning public health.
1) Wash Your Hands Properly and Often
According to the Centers for Disease Control, hand washing is one of the most effective ways to prevent the transmission of germs, provided it is done properly. Just as important is when you wash your hands. The yoga student and the instructor should always wash hands before and after a class, as well as before and after handling any kind of food or drink, or using the lavatory.
Are you washing your hands correctly? Most of us don’t realize that effective hand-washing requires a full 20-30 seconds of your time. To truly minimize the transmission of infection, follow these steps from the CDC:
Wet your hands with clean, running water (warm or cold), turn off the tap, and apply soap.
Lather your hands by rubbing them together with the soap. Lather the backs of your hands, between your fingers, and under your nails.
Scrub your hands for at least 20 seconds. (Tip: hum “Happy Birthday” two times, all the way through.)
Rinse your hands well under running water.
Dry your hands using a clean towel, or air-dry them. It’s extremely important to dry your hands completely, as bacteria colonize more readily on moist surfaces.
Use a Paper Towel to turn off the sink, as well as to open the door of a lavatory in a public space, then immediately dispose of it in a waste bin.
It’s also important to use hand sanitizer, especially in a yoga studio. We’ll cover that below. However, hand-washing hygiene raises and additional, often overlooked point:
2) Avoid Wearing Jewelry To The Yoga Studio, And Keep Fingernails Short
As PYI’s Pain Management and Clinical Yoga Therapy instructor Beret Kirkeby, C-IAYT LmT, points out it’s best to keep jewelry extremely minimal at a yoga class, and to keep nails trimmed short and clean. Jewelry that is not regularly cleaned can have bacteria levels up to ten times higher than those on the skin, even immediately after washing hands. Jewelry that is not worn on the hands, such as necklaces and earrings, is sanitized even more rarely. Moreover, long nails, both natural and artificial, are breeding grounds for bacteria, and most people do not sufficiently clean their nails when washing their hands. While they may look attractive, by wearing your nails long, you create more surface area on your hands where pathogens can lurk.
3) Use Hand Sanitizer In Addition to Proper Hand-Washing
While washing the hands with soap and water is always indicated at obvious times, such as before and after a class, handling food, or using the lavatory, proper use of hand sanitizer can also qualify as effective hand-washing (or a follow-up to hand-washing), provided that the hands are not visibly soiled, or that you haven’t come into contact with another person’s bodily fluids.
According to Ms. Kirkeby, an alcohol-based rub is the preferred method for hand sanitation. To sanitize hands properly, ensure that you dispense the recommended amount of product (written on the container) into the palm of one hand. Rub hands together, making sure to cover the surface area of both hands completely, including the undersides of the fingernails, until hands are dry. Hand sanitizer can also be used a second step after washing with soap and water.
While some yogis may be resistant to hand-sanitizer because of beliefs that it is “not organic,” contributes to antibiotic resistance, or is ineffective, it is important to note the CDC’s guidelines during flu and virus season. While proper soap and water hand-washing is more effective than hand sanitizer on certain germs, such as norovirus and C. diff, alcohol-based hand sanitizers are the preferred method used by healthcare providers to prevent the spread of disease, provided they are at least 60% alcohol.
During a public health alarm such as an infectious disease outbreak or a flu epidemic, yoga professionals and their clients can wear disposable medical gloves when doing any work with students that requires physical touch, discard the gloves immediately upon completion of the session, then wash hands. Hands-on adjustments should be avoided in classes of more than one student during periods of concern about contagion or in high-risk settings, as it’s not practical for the instructor to change gloves for every student.
This excerpt from our Yoga Therapy Certificate course covers the standard precautions yoga professionals should take to print the spread of disease and infection. Yoga Therapists working in clinical conditions may have additional precautions to take to keep clients, coworkers and themselves safe and healthy. Thanks to Beret Kirkeby, C-IAYT, LmT for her content and narration.
4) Consider not Teaching or Attending Class When You Are Sick
Even a minor illness, such as head cold, is a legitimate reason to cancel a class during a period of heightened risk of contagion. We’re not always aware of the immune health of those around us, and even seemingly healthy people can unwittingly spread infection. For someone who is immune-suppressed, a minor infection such as a cold can lower the body’s resistance to more serious disease. It is far better to cancel a class or reschedule an appointment than to risk contracting or transmitting pathogens during a public health alarm. If you do find yourself teaching or attending class when sick, make sure to follow the guidelines above, and if you need to cough, cough properly: use the vampire cough method, maintain a three-foot barrier between yourselves and others, and wash hands properly immediately after coughing.
5) Avoid Sharing
The yoga community is a generous one, and the average yogi is happy to share: a snack, some essential oil, even a sip from a water bottle! But this laudable virtue should be curtailed during a public health alarm. While sipping from the same water bottle is obviously unhygienic, sharing a bag of Pirate’s Booty or passing around a roller of essential oil might seem benign under normal circumstances. But unless everyone present has undertaken proper hand-sanitizing methods immediately prior, several (or even two) people dipping their hands into a common bag and then touching their mouths is a superb way to spread germs. Anything applied directly to the skin, such as an essential oil roller or a towel, should ideally not be shared, as many bacteria can live on the skin - including serious pathogens such as MRSA. As a rule, for everyone’s health, if you love to share, keep individually wrapped candies or bars on hand. But in general, if it touches your skin or your mouth, keep it to yourself. This is doubly true in the locker room.
No one enjoys enduring the stress of cold or flu season, or the heightened anxiety of a public health alarm. But with proper preparation and rigorous adherence to some basic hygiene guidelines, we can make considerable strides in the effort to keep ourselves and our students and clients healthy.
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Molly Goforth is a yoga and meditation teacher and a student at Prema Yoga Institute. She specializes in accessibility and trauma-informed yoga teaching and practice.
