The 55-year-old client, a woman identified only as Hong, first sued the unnamed gym in February last year, three months after she broke the bone as the instructor corrected her in a seated pose called baddha konasana or cobbler pose.
Hong spent six days in hospital being treated for the injury.
In its defense in the Shanghai Pudong New Area People’s Court, the gym said Hong should have told the instructor to stop when she felt pain, the report said.
Yoga has become increasingly popular, with millions of Chinese having turned to the discipline for both fitness and mediation since the 1970s, when yoga was first introduced in China.
There are at least 10,800 yoga schools across the country, with some reporting thousands of members, according to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
In defense of yoga and that yoga instructor, cobbler pose is quite harmless and easy to do. However, if a woman has osteoporosis - bone weakness - then she has a high risk of breaking a bone while doing any activity.
(source: South China Morning Post)