How to avoid yoga injuries / Listen to your body to help avoid yoga injuries / Why it’s important to avoid overzealous yoga adjustments.
Choose a yoga practice that suits you, have fun and avoid injury!
In the past year I’ve had a number of conversations with people about joint pain and stiffness around the big joints like shoulder and hips when practicing yoga. This always leads to a story about the impact of the ripple effect through the body in the smaller joints, elbows, wrist, ankles, knees and vertebrae, which all end up taking on the larger load. A good analogy is when the foundations of the house begin to shift and you see the natural occurring cracks in the wall – it’s the same with our bodies. I was recommended a small book written by yoga & teacher trainer Susi Hately which focusses on therapeutic recovery and healing benefits of yoga and preventing injury to the body. Listening to the body is something my yoga teacher repeats and embodies in all his classes. It’s not something I was really aware of when I started my yoga journey, which began in a military style class.
Yes, the first yoga class I went to was in a busy school hall with stone walls and a rickety wooden floor. It had that urban New York loft vibe, edgy not minimalist or sleek. There was a little stage at the top where a svelte bendy yoga teacher guided us through a very strong Ashtanga practice. Back then I had no idea what Ashtanga was, nor did I realise there were so many styles and lineages of yoga. Her class was so popular that you had to arrive 10 minutes before and huddle in the entrance room in order to secure a place up front so you could copy the moves or at least place your mat beside the groupies in the front row, who knew every asana.
I wasn’t born flexible but I could throw enough shapes, to copy and mimic whatever instructions she belted out in Sanskrit like “Left foot forward in between the hands, Virabhadrasana II ,long body, gaze forward, rotate heel so arch of back foot in line with front heel….” I really enjoyed this form of exercise – it was fast, dynamic but it was also confusing and hard. However, I was seriously in at the deep end and although it opened the door to yoga, it was not a style that I could sustain without going back to learn the basics and avoid injury. At the time, I was pushing my body into hip openers and twisting my knees in directions that was not naturally possible for me. I was racing from one position to another, mimicking the person next to me and trying to make sure my arms didn’t smack them in the face during each sun salutation and being at least three seconds behind the flow. My approach was probably more to do with my own goal-set corporate, performance-orientated mindset at 30-something than to the Indian ashram trained yogi who as teaching. By the way, corporate mindfulness had not been invented then.
So, let’s get back to Susie’s advice, which I felt almost got me off the self-blame internal dialogue. In “Anatomy and Asana – preventing yoga injuries” (Susi Hately) she writes: “Sometimes instructors may use overzealous adjustments on students. These overzealous adjustments can actually cause the students muscles to contract more than release. One of the reasons lies in the stretch reflex. If the teacher moves a student’s body too fast or too far the muscle spindles stretch reflex will be triggered. Instead of further release through the muscle, the muscle resits by contracting”. (The muscle spindle* runs parallel to the muscle fibres and sense how far and how fast the fibres are stretching.)
I’ve learned through various teachers on my yoga path that we sometimes choose the practice based on where we are in time and what we need. Ashtanga builds strength, but I’ve recently discovered some amazing teachers who slow it down and work through the poses in a more gentle way. This means it’s not so intimidating and works with steady practice that’s a little more allowing. So, my advice is to choose the class that’s right for you and if in the middle of the class you decide it’s not for you, always move to child pose. Child Pose brings you back to when you were a kid; it’s playful, restorative and accepting – there is no potential for injury here. Enjoy moving guys.
Child Pose (Balasana)
Begin on all fours, spread the knees wide apart keeping the toes touching. Then glide the hips back to sit on your heals. At the same time reach the hands forward to the top of your mat. Rest the torso on the thighs and the head between the hands or alternatively you can support your head on a block which is a lovely restorative pose. Keep the arms long and extended with palms facing down or in prayer hands. Breath.
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