THE INDEPENDENT – A British dance teacher has won her fight for a payout after having a breakdown on a yoga course in India.
Melissa Revell said that self-exploration exercises on the £2,250 course, which she attended in Goa in 2019, triggered a meltdown which has left her unable to work.
The 35-year-old said she was “retraumatised” when memories relating to being adopted were triggered by unadvertised psychological exercises.
She was in good health both physically and mentally before the course, but now cannot look after herself or exercise and has gone from a size six to a size 16, she said.
Ms Revell sued the company behind the course, TYP International Ltd, for more than £200,000.
The company is run by British yoga guru Jamie Clarke, 59, and Mexican instructor Dulce Aguilar, 43.
Now, Ms Revell is in line for a payout after Mr Clarke told the London High Court that the company has dropped its defence over liability for what happened to her.
Ms Revell, from Richmond, London, says she has gone from fit, active and working to being “not able to care for herself” and leading “an extremely reclusive, impoverished and dysfunctional life” with “acute anxiety whenever she leaves the flat”.
Lawyers for the yoga company in a defence lodged with the court had previously insisted Mr Clarke, Ms Aguilar and its other staff did nothing wrong.
They denied there was any “psychological” element to the training or that the emotional collapse Ms Revell says she suffered was a foreseeable risk of a yoga course.
But Mr Clarke has now confirmed to the court that the company would no longer be disputing the issue of liability, having run out of funds and parted company with its lawyers and lost a key pre-trial skirmish meaning they were unable to adduce their own expert medical evidence …
