Yoga at Home for Beginners: Practice with an Injury?

"Many people give up their yoga practice entirely when they are injured.  However, in my mind, this is not the most effective way to work with an injury.  When an injury is not severe, you can find a range of motion within the yoga poses that can help you heal from your injury and rebuild your practice.  Even if an injury prevents you from doing the full pose, this does not matter.  Minimizing yoga poses while still understanding their general direction of movement is a significant practice..." Rodney Yee (the famous yoga instructor) in his book Moving Toward Balance:  8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee.

I could not agree more! And, this is what I intuitively did when I fractured my left foot 3 years ago!
A few days ago I received an email from, Annette, a woman in Australia (aah - I so want to travel there) who, like me, had broken the 5th metatarsal bone in her foot and was missing her yoga practice.  She had read one of my blog postings from a while back which explained that I continued doing some yoga poses while my fractured left foot was healing in its space-age looking boot.  That old cliche, "where there's a will there's a way," however trite it may seem and however jaded we may be in hearing it, is true.

When I broke my foot (jumping barefoot on my mini-trampoline - something I never do anymore!  I always wear athletic shoes now!), my first concern was how was I going to avoid turning into a couch potato. I had read Rodney Yee's book the year before, but I didn't consciously remember his statement above. But,  I thought about it and realized I could make some adjustments and continue to practice some yoga (of course, not the standing pose you see above), and I could do a sitting bounce on my trampoline to keep me in shape aerobically.  So - I did.  Recognizing my foot's need to heal, I continued to allocate daily time to yoga, practicing with great care and caution.  And, I felt so happy being able to do that!

Of course, some injuries may preclude doing any yoga practice.  One piece of advice that Rodney Yee gives if you have to give up yoga completely for a given time that I absolutely love is the following:  "In these times, practicing through visualization, working with your breath, practicing restorative poses, and meditation are all very beneficial."

That's right!  It reminds me a the story of a U.S. soldier who was a prisoner during the Vietnam War. Alone in his cell, he practiced playing golf over and over in his mind.  He played out every detail of his swing repeatedly.  Guess what? When he was released and returned home and took up golf again, to his friends' shock, he played like a master.

So, no matter what your constraint you may have because of an injury, you CAN maintain some form of yoga practice.

Yours for practicing yoga regularly and safely, no matter what,

 

Laura Venecia Rodriguez

Comments

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