Causes of Yoga injuries

Yoga practice should be gentle and considerate towards a body. Injuries happen when we do something in a wrong way or overstretch ourseleves. Sad but many people give up their Yoga practice due to the injuries.

Yoga injuries have become a common thing now a days. There can be multiple reasons for these:

• No proper warmup before stretching
• Not working in guidance of a proper teacher
• Not listening to your body and challenging it when not required

Let’s do a deep dive and understand more about it.

Causes of Yoga injuries

• Doing too much can cause Yoga injuries

If you use anything too much or overuse anything, it tends to break down after a while.If you are using a muscle too often, it gets strained.Repetitive strain injury (RSI) is defined as a condition in which the prolonged performance of repetitive actions, typically with the hands, causes pain or impairment of function in the tendons and muscles involved.

Yoga students want to master the ideal posture as fast as possible.Sometimes it is the ego and at the times going beyond the limits can result in overuse of any muscles or  ligaments.

Yoga Sutra of Patanjali talks about sthira-sukham asana which is commonly translated, “posture (asana) [should be] stable (sthira) and comfortable (sukha),”

With this in mind, we should move ahead in each asana.

• Not aware or ignoring the previous injuries or pain

There is always a precaution attached with each asana. It prohibits the practitioner suffering from certain conditions not to perform the asana. Some students generally ignore their lower back pain or previous injury and push themselves through all the asanas. This causes additional yoga injuries.

• Sometimes the teacher pushes you more than needed

It is sometime the Yoga teacher who tries to push you to challenge your boundaries. In most of the cases, the students leave their fates in their teacher’s hand and don’t object. However you know your body well. Stop when you feel discomfort.You body may not be ready at this stage.

• Sometimes it is our own ego

Do as much as possible. Yoga is not a competition, don’t worry if someone recently joined is doing better and mastering the poses better than you are. Yoga will come to everyone who practices. Just focus on your postures, your breathing and your alignment and your balance.

• Not enough warm up before stretching

It is the rule of the thumb.Proper warm up should be done before starting any exercise. The same applies with Yoga stretching also.If your muscles and joints are not enough warm up , you might encounter a muscle pull or strain in the joints.

As always said, Yoga practice should be comfortable and gentle. Don’t try to overstretch or push yourself. Give time to your injury to heal before starting again. You can start your practice again once completely healed.

Yoga will come to all who practice.

Happy Practicing.