When you want to deepen your yoga practice, it is very important to take care of your own body and try to avoid common yoga injuries happen.
According to yoga experts, injuries can happen any time, in any sport, or even walking down the sidewalk. Most yoga injuries develop gradually over years of consistent over-stretching and misalignment . As with any physical activity, the safest approach to yoga is to learn how to practice the asanas correctly and stay in tune with your body to prevent overdoing it.
1) Wrists: Placing all of your body’s weight in the wrists when the hands are on the mat can lead to muscle and joint injuries. In any position where weight is placed on the hands (such as downward facing dog), putting your body’s weight through both palms by spreading your fingers wide and pressing firmly through the inner palms and fingertips especially big thumbs. In downward facing dog, push the hips back to decrease the angle of the wrists to the floor. In arm balances, such as Bakasana, look to see that the elbows are stacked directly over the wrists.
2) Elbows: Joint pain in the elbows can result from bending them out to the sides in poses like chaturanga(half plank). Most common mistake is lowering down with outward-pointing elbows which can stress the joint. When bending the elbows in a pose (particularly plank or chaturanga), keep the elbows tucked alongside the ribs as you bend them.If this is difficult, begin with the knees on the floor. Remember, you can always work up to the unmodified version through regular practice.
3) Shoulders: Beware the shrug. By raising the shoulders up toward the ears (like when moving into upward facing dog or cobra pose), yogis stop using the supporting muscles in the arms, shoulders, and neck. Shrugging also compresses the shoulders, which can cause muscle injuries. Be careful not to pull too hard on the shoulders in stretches, and always keep the shoulders held back and down away from the ears.
4) Ribs: Twists are awesome for releasing tension, but if done improperly they can overextend. When come to twisting, focus on lengthening upwards through the spine before twisting. Imagine that someone is lifting you up under your armpits very gently toward the ceiling. Twist to the point of feeling a stretch but not past it.
5) Lower back: Lower back pain is the most common yoga injury, and teachers speculate that it’s likely the result of rounding through the spine in poses like forward folds and downward facing dog. Rounding causes the spine to flex the opposite way that it’s supposed to, which can cause disc problems in addition to that achy feeling post-class.Before bending, imagine lengthening the spine up and away from the hips to avoid rounding. Still struggling to stay on the straight and narrow? Try bending the knees in poses like forward folds and downward facing dog, sometimes it could be caused by tight hamstrings. During seated forward folds, try bend knees and sitting on a blanket or block to take pressure off the lower back. Make sure to lengthen your spine and fold from your hips with flat lower back.
6) Hamstrings: Spend most days sitting down at the desk, in class, or in the transport? Many of us have tight hamstrings, so it’s easy to pull or over-stretch them in certain poses. Downward facing dog and lunges are best ways to stretch the hamstrings (just remember to go slowly and work at your own pace). If you have any kind of hamstring injury, try laying off poses that extend through the back of the body and legs until the injury heals.
7) Hips: It’s easy to over-extend the hips’ range of motion in splits, warrior poses and wide-legged forward folds, which might tear the muscles of the inner groin or inner thighs. Make sure that the toes are pointed forward in any pose where the hips are squared off in the same direction (like warrior I). Imagine there are headlights attached to the front of the hips and that you’re trying to keep the area straight ahead of you illuminated at all times.
8) Knees: A common pain is the cross-legged position and placing knees on the floor. Flexibility carries from the hips first; if the hips are tight in the pose, the knees will be the first place to feel pain or tension. For those regularly bothered by knee pain, avoid sitting in cross-legged position or knees down for long periods unless the hips are already very flexible. Placing a block or rolled-up blanket/towel under the knees can also help reduce strain. Any time the knee is bent in a standing pose (such as warriors I and II), look to see that there’s a vertical line from the bent knee to the heel, to make sure the body is bearing weight properly.
9) Neck: Head and shoulder stands can caused neck pain and injury. Repeatedly and incorrectly placing pressure on the neck in poses such as shoulder stand and headstand can compress the neck. It might be best to avoid full inversions if you are unsure, or attempt them only with close supervision. Practice inversions with clear instructions with step by step, using props that elevate the neck away from the floor. For those who already practice the pose without props, make sure the shoulder blades are drawn down and back so they’re safely supporting the body. Most importantly, stay focus and never move the head once you’re up in the pose, because it can destabilise the body, possibly causing a fall.
Proper alignment in poses is key, but it’s not the only factor in a safe yoga practice. To stay blissed out instead of stressed out over injury, here are some simple guidelines to follow:
- Leave ego outside. It can be tempting to rush into more advanced poses, but pushing our bodies before they’re ready is a recipe for injury. Yoga is about finding where you are, not trying to push to a place where your body may never be able to go.
- Warm up. It’s an important part of any physical activity, and yoga is the same. Basic stretches (like neck and shoulder rolls and gentle twists) help prepare the body for more challenging poses later on in a sequence. And remember to give the mind a chance to warm up to the practice: Take a few deep breaths to get centered at the beginning of class.
- Ease in. No one would expect to run a marathon the first time they lace up their sneakers. Don’t expect to do a headstand or even get the heels to the floor in downward facing dog the first time you are on the mat.
- Communicate. Get to know the teacher and be sure to share any pre-existing issues that might require modifications in certain poses. If you don’t know how to modify or use props, ask. And if a pose just isn’t working, don’t be embarrassed to simply… not do it. Instead, focus on the poses that provide benefit and release.
- Come out of postures slowly. This is particularly important if you’ve been holding a certain pose for several minutes. The best way is to work out of a pose as gradually as you moved into it.
- Use props and modifications. There’s no shame in not being ready to hold a pose completely on your own. If there’s tightness somewhere in the body, other parts of the body will have to accommodate it, which is why it’s so important not to push the body past what it’s able to do on a given day. Props and modifications allow the body to get a feel for a pose and gradually work up to its full variation.
- Never lock your joints. Hyper-extension is a sure-fire way to wear out joints and cause injury down the road. Focus on engaging the muscles around the joints to gain stability.
- If you do get injured, take care. If you tweak, pull, or tear something during a yoga flow, don’t be afraid to stop and rest. Care for it like any other sports injury.
- Stay for savasana. It’s easy to head for the door as soon as the instructor calls for savasana, the final relaxation pose of a yoga flow), but sticking around is good for your health. Savasana allows the body’s nervous system to slow down and brings closure to the practice. Even just two or three minutes can have an effect.
Listen to your body. At all stages of yoga practice, stay mindful. Really listen to your body so you can be sensitive to any tightness or strain. Just because you did a particular pose one day, it doesn’t mean your body will be able to do it the next. In our yoga practice, we are building a relationship with our bodies the same way we build them with other people: by listening.
Carmen Lee-Schneider
