Yoga injuries are on the rise. I’ll help you keep up to date and informed on subjects such as pain in general, back-pain, sciatica, sit bone pain, and knee pain.
My biggest issue with the current discussions regarding injuries in yoga is the desire to make things measurable and compartmentalized. I know, there is no way around this. We have to talk about the parts and pieces to some degree so that we can understand it all. The place where this happens regularly is in the mixing of yoga and asana as if they are the same thing.
Wrist pain in yoga is fairly common. There are many considerations when evaluating pain and/or injury of the wrist during a yoga practice. The first things to investigate are the student’s personal circumstances surrounding the wrist pain or problems.
In my last Muscle of the Month article I alluded to Trigger Points and wanted to give a brief explanation of what they were and how they occur. It is definitely helpful to know about them as you assess client or students who are complaining about chronic or recurring pain.
Here I discuss the recently published article by William J. Broad in the New York Times, titled Women’s Flexibility Is a Liability (in Yoga) which provoked a strong response from many in the yoga community.
I want to share with you an exercise that I regularly do with students who are dealing with achy hamstrings and/or mild sit bone pain. This could be as a result of an earlier hamstring “tear” or general aggravation due to muscular imbalances.
I have written about a number of the “lightning rod” muscles such as the piriformis, psoas, and transverse abdominis. I refer to them as “lightning rods” because they attract attention. Sometimes this is for good reason, after all, everyone should know about his or her psoas. However, every problem related to core shouldn’t be thrown onto the back of the psoas or the transverse abdominis for that matter.
There are other possibilities for hip pinching. Please also read Is Yoga Tearing Labrums? [/alert]
Hip pinching can show up in parvrita parsvakonasana, ardha matsayendrasana, marichyasana C, or other twists. The sensation is anything from mild discomfort to an ice pick sensation in the front and inside of the pelvis. The most common description however is that it seems as though something is getting “pinched.” Others describe it as a “stabbing” pain.
I was recently asked a question via email. Can yoga fix scoliosis? It’s certainly not the first time that I’ve ever been asked about scoliosis and I’m sure it won’t be the last. It’s a seemingly simple question but it bends in a direction that makes me wonder about our larger expectations for our yoga practice and our desire for a simple answer to what seems like a simple question. The truth is, it’s neither a simple question nor a simple answer.
Some time ago I threatened to write an article about pain showing up in the joint that connects the collarbone to the breastbone. I have had a couple of more recent requests to talk about this potential problem in Supta Kurmasana. As always I try to look at the anatomy, its function, observations about the yoga posture itself and perhaps some ways that information may inform the way we work in the posture or adjust it.
We can often gather information from the name of a posture. Sometimes embrace the quality or energy of the name, like Virabadrasana (Warrior). Sometimes the name is exactly what we should be doing. Shoulderstand comes to mind. It’s not neck stand after all is it?
