Safeguard your Zen today with these top insurance tips

Achieving Zen is the holy grail for many people practising yoga. You might not have realised that many Zen temples even set aside a specific exercise period, known as a “taiso”, for spending on the practice of Zen yoga, as Yogapedia explains. You could feel soothed even just reading about it… Imagine, for example, the participants following yoga postures and repetitive movements that, together, help to instill meditation, mindfulness and body awareness. You would get the valuable opportunity to practise such relaxation-inducing techniques regularly if you were a yoga teacher. However, just as you feel your stress melting away, you could be suddenly thrown back into a panic if you notice something going wrong in your yoga class. Perhaps a student could abruptly cry out as they suffer an injury, or it turns out that some essential supplies have been stolen from your studio. In situations like these, your Zen could quickly go flying out of the window – but you could recover that mental stability surprisingly quickly if you recall that you hold useful insurance. Here are some tips which you can follow to help yourself secure a yoga teacher insurance deal that is right for you. Don’t underestimate the risks to your students It would be reassuring to think that your students always leave your yoga classes with your same reinvigorating feeling of relaxation – but, evidently, this may not always be borne out. Each year sees over 5,000 yoga-related emergency room visits, as indicated on the LinkedIn SlideShare website. As the number of doctor visits resulting from yoga is probably even higher, you might not be aware of the full extent of the injury risk posed by your yoga classes. What is especially sobering is that, if a student is injured in your class, they could sue you even if you weren’t truly to blame for the slip-up. All of this sheds light on why public liability cover should form a core component of insurance you take out to reduce financial risks of your yoga-teaching responsibilities. Fortunately, we provide that particular type of cover automatically with each of our yoga teacher insurance policies. Source your own insurance, don’t just think about the studio’s While a yoga studio at which you secure work probably will have their own insurance, this isn’t an entirely foregone conclusion. Even if the studio does hold insurance, it might not cover you. With many studios insisting on teachers carrying their own policies, you should take notice. As for when exactly you should take out such insurance for the first time, during your teacher training wouldn’t be too early. Your inexperience would justify you holding the insurance, which could prove particularly useful if you often change jobs early in your yoga-teaching career. As you occasionally substitute for other teachers in your effort to gain experience, you could hugely appreciate not having to keep checking the terms and conditions of each studio’s insurance. Keep a close eye on your yoga equipment You might have invested in a range of equipment, including yoga mats and suitable clothing, for regular use in your yoga classes. If your expenditure in this area has gone into treble or even quadruple figures, you might not relish the prospect of having to replace any of that equipment… However, you could find that you have to if any of this equipment is misplaced or, dare we say it, stolen. After all, you could often transport those items between many different places, including yoga studios, gyms and maybe even your own home, in order to provide flexible services. When you often journey between different places in this way, some items could too easily slip through the net, so to say, and seem impossible to recover. If that does happen, you would be grateful if you had earlier added stock and equipment cover to your Fitness Gold insurance policy. Check that the type of yoga you practise is covered Yoga comes in many different forms these days; at the start of this article, we probably confused you by simply mentioning “Zen yoga”! With some disciplines on the edge of yoga, you could even struggle to tell where exactly the yoga part of it ends and, well, the other part of it begins. Gaiam, a yoga equipment retailer, acknowledges that some yoga styles, including Naam Yoga Therapy and Acu-Yoga, actually fall somewhere between yoga and medicine. Given the obvious room for confusion, you should check that your insurance will definitely cover you for the yoga practices you want to teach. You don’t want to turn to your insurance when you urgently need it only to realise that it can’t actually help you get out of your particular crisis. Compare your yoga insurance options This somewhat ties in with the previous point, as you can’t be certain that you are getting the insurance you really need unless you have researched that insurance carefully. This research should include looking at what other yoga insurance policies offer in comparison, as it wouldn’t be ideal to spend extra for cover you don’t truly require. Teaching yoga isn’t hugely lucrative, and limiting your insurance to essential covers can save you money to spend elsewhere. We make it easy for applicants to obtain tailored yoga teacher insurance policies from Fitness Gold. Through a series of online forms, you can provide us with a thorough picture of your insurance requirements, and we let you pick from a range of optional covers. Remember that prevention is better than cure For all of the advice that we have given, and remember that you can get more if you give us a call on 020 8655 0444, insurance remains, above all, a safety net. In other words, as comforted as you may feel to know that it’s there, it should really be used only in urgent situations. Hence, you ought to keep track of your students’ health in case some of their conditions could put them at risk on the yoga mat. Here’s to happy Yoga sessions ahead!