To me, the entire article can be summed up in the second to last sentence: "if you do it with ego or obsession, you’ll end up causing problems."

And you know what? That's not just for yoga. That's for weight lifting, running, and for that matter, scientific research.

I don't at all mean to suggest that there isn't a chance of serious injury in yoga, or that sometimes even the best teachers miss something. But it seems to me this article has a tone I often see in NYT fitness articles - the idea that practitioners of whatever sport they're talking about are "outsiders" of some kind. There's an underlying tone of alarm and mocking in that yoga (unlike weight lifting) is supposed to take the ego out of the practice, and yet many practitioners can't help letting it slip back in. Well, duh. That's why we practice for years trying to take it out...

It also reflects a lot of the reason why I'm souring on group fitness, both as an instructor and a participant. Some teachers are MUCH better than others (and I count myself in the middle there), and obviously smaller and skill-tracked classes are easier, but outside of one-on-one, there's just no way for a teacher to closely monitor every participant's form every minute of every class. And then there are always the participants who insist on doing a move unsafely no matter how many times I correct them or how many different cues I use...