AVOID YOGA INJURIES-NEVER JERK, STRAIN, OR FORCE YOUR BODY INTO A POSE!!
The other day a work colleague shared that he recently had been in touch with someone from our division who retired several years ago. This individual, a fairly active person (from what I recall), had apparently taken up yoga. As is often the case when learning new yoga poses requiring balance, he was unable to keep his balance. I don't know which yoga pose he was doing, but his impatience and frustration with not maintaining his balance got the better of him. So - what did he do? He jerked his leg up and attempted to force his body to balance.
Rip....!! Tear....! Ouch!!!! There went a major leg muscle. Guess what? He won't be able to balance at all in any pose for a while now!
Even if you do the type of slow, gentle yoga I practice daily - such as the ankle to forehead pose shown above, you MUST, you absolutely MUST go slowly! And, never jerk, strain, or force your body to do something new! You never win and only increase your chance of injury tenfold! (And, if you attend a yoga class and happen to have a yoga instructor who tries to persuade you to go farther that you feel comfortable, just say "no!")
When I began the ankle to forehead pose, I could only bring my ankle up about a third of the way. And that was back in high school. My body was not accustomed to moving into that pose. If I had jerked my ankle up to my head, I could have torn a thigh muscle or put my hip out of whack.
In my not always humble opinion, learning yoga is not just about learning how to place your body into a particular pose. It's also about practicing patience, transcending frustration, and listening to your body. If you do this, your risk of injury will be small.
Yours for practicing yoga with patience and caution,
Laura Venecia Rodriguez, the Beginners' Yoga at Home Coach
Wow!
Long before I felt I had the money for ANY kind of yoga teacher, and having been practicing yoga-cardio fusion at the time; I had been doing a freeform practice in the late evening when visiting my sister. I was bending from the hip into upavistha konasana, and feeling very frustrated with my lack of hip flexion... so, I wanted to try a dancer's trick with that forward bend ... my right hip joint made a loud "pop", and right from that moment, I had trouble sitting down without pain for 6 weeks. It had healed by itself, I used about half the formula of an Osteo-Bi-Flex (only in my late 40s at that time), given to me by my sister over that period of time ...
Posted by: Tina | May 14, 2012 at 09:13 PM