Can You Avoid Being Injured by Yoga?
When not taught or performed safely, yoga can cause all manner of joint and soft-tissue injury. I’ve seen it time and time again when students, usually new to yoga, come to me for joint rehabilitation because they have been injured during a yoga class.
Injured during a yoga class? Does anyone else see just how ironic that is? And silly?
A recent post at one of my favorite professional web sites, ACE Fitness, addresses this topic by covering several ways in which students can “regress” four common yoga poses. I love the author’s suggestions, especially because there seems to be a trend in this society to “push everything to the max.” It’s as though we’ve learned that we are not doing something correctly—even a yoga pose!—unless we’re doing it to a certain ideal standard. How refreshing to read detailed instructions and rationale for pulling back from a full-on yoga pose that may do students more harm than good.
My mantra during workshops is always “Listen to your body and do what it tells you it’s comfortable doing today—never push.”
As a fitness professional and yoga teacher, the safety of my clients/students is always my first priority. It’s evident in my back-care program, the Hauber MethodTM, and my mantra during my workshops is always “Listen to your body and do what it tells you it’s comfortable doing today—never push.” If more teachers made a greater point of putting safety and moderation in yoga poses first, maybe I wouldn’t see so many disheartened people lamenting the day they tried a yoga class and got injured. I want people to try and to love yoga the way that I do, not have their experience spoiled by an unnecessary injury.
So tell me: Have you ever been injured due to a yoga class? What were you doing, and how did you heal?