Yoga practice is not an exercise class and it’s not a workout. Sure, it’s vigorous and physically challenging, but that’s just the means rather than the end. However, as with any physical endeavour, aches and pains are unavoidable and injuries can happen.
If one gets injured practicing yoga, the yoga practice is the best way to heal and rehabilitate. Also, if one gets injured doing some other activity, yoga practice is the best way to heal and rehabilitate. Finally, if one begins yoga practice with a preexisting injury, the yoga practice is the best way to heal and rehabilitate. From my experience, yoga practice is an amazing healer.
Healing an injury with Ashtanga Yoga is possible and requires daily practice. Taking days off regardless of how one’s feeling is ultimately detrimental to the healing process. Unlike working out, the effects of yoga practice are cumulative. The body’s natural reaction to injury is to contract and armour. Yoga encourages the afflicted area to move when it wants to petrify. Taking days off between practices just makes the body stiffer under normal circumstances, but even more so with an injury or chronic condition.
Students often wait until their aches and pains are gone before returning to class. They’ll disappear and return saying they needed to rest their injury. The truth, however, is that the pain is not gone and the injury hasn’t healed. The problem simply went underground while they were resting and was patiently waiting to return. Whatever imbalance or bad habit caused the pain or injury hasn’t been addressed or corrected. The pains and injury return as soon as the student is back on the mat.
It is a shame that some students who aren’t willing to follow the prescription for daily practice end up quitting and saying that “ashtanga yoga doesn’t work” or “yoga made my pain worse.” This just isn’t true.
The first thing a student must do when using the practice to heal and rehabilitate is adapt. It is necessary when injured to scale back practice so that it’s appropriate as therapy. That very often means having a very basic and short practice for awhile where the level of sensation to the injured area is deliberately kept at zero.
Both Rachelle and I have had pain and injuries over the years and we both used ashtanga yoga as a means of healing ourselves. Some days, I would do only a few slow and difficult sun salutations before needing to stop. It had it’s moments of frustration and I often felt impatient and frankly pissed off. It wasn’t much fun, but I slowly healed and was back to 100% over time.
So, first off, a student needs to adjust practice to reflect the injury or pains being experienced. There’s no reason to power through or ignore the problem. In the case of an injury caused by bad habits or poor breathing, taking things slowly and scaling back helps to pinpoint where there’s a problem and re-learn how to practice correctly without causing chronic pain. One of the added bonuses of using practice to heal an injury is that we find practice is stronger once we’ve healed.
In the case of a student who starts ashtanga yoga to heal a pre-existing injury, the best advice I can give is to look at practice as medicine and follow the prescription.
If I were to develop a chest infection and went to a doctor, I would likely be prescribed antibiotics to treat the infection with instructions to take three pills every day for a week. If I follow the prescription, I will no longer have my chest infection However, if I do NOT follow the prescription and I take the medicine every few days or only once per day, I really shouldn’t be surprised if my problem hasn’t been cured.
Practice daily. Do what you can. Don’t push. Maintain zero sensation in the injured area. Be patient and have faith. Talk to your teacher when you’re frustrated. This is the prescription to heal injuries using ashtanga yoga. Students who follow this prescription heal their injuries and rehabilitate chronic problems. They transform their bodies and blow their minds in the process.
AYS News: » Healing Injuries with Ashtanga Yoga
Sep 23, 2012 @ 06:17:43
Sep 24, 2012 @ 08:34:14
I am going to have to disagree with you on one point that resting an injury does not help. The problem is not that the student rested the injury, the problem is that when they came back to practice, they continued to do the same thing that got them injured in the first place. That is why the injury came back.
Healing of injuries depends on the type of injury and the student. Some students are type A pushers or have a high tolerance for pain. These people don’t know how to back off. They will tell their teacher that they feel fine and keep practicing when really they don’t. These people may benefit from just taking a break so that they don’t hurt themselves further.
Also, the type of injury matters. I had a student whose pelvis was unstable from years of dancing and child birth. She had an injury in her pelvis where even modified poses caused pain. I told her to lay off. She traveled to an authorized teacher who also agreed that in her circumstances, she needed to lay off it for while.
Something we have to remember is that yoga is not just physical. A student can come to their mat & do simple deep breathing, mantras, study the sacred texts and meditation until their injury is out of the acute phases and they are still doing yoga.
Also, yoga teachers are not doctors. Telling students with pain that they shouldn’t take a break, even if they want to, is treading on thin ice. Without a through examination, which most yoga teachers are not qualified to do, we are just guessing at what the problem is. I would never tell someone not to take a break when I don’t 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt know what is wrong with them.
In essence, you can definitely continue to practice through an injury….depending on the injury and the student but it is not always recommended.
Sep 27, 2012 @ 07:44:22
Hi Shanna.
Thank you for taking the time to reply. I love your comments. I’ll give my reply in the next couple of days. Thanks again. P
Sep 29, 2012 @ 17:21:56
I think we are in agreement that a fundamental problem is students don’t learn what got them injured in the first place.
Where we diverge is on the value of practice vs. rest where injury is concerned.
Where A-Type personalities are concerned, my rhetorical question is how are these students going to learn to practice properly? By definition, the Pushers are not pre-disposed to backing off or taking things slowly. If such a student rests when feeling pain or when injured and doesn’t return to practice until feeling better, this student is never going to take it easy. This student will dive headlong back into practice believing everything is ok until they feel awful later in the day or the next morning when the alarm clock rings. Having to learn to practice properly when faced with pain or injury is the only way I’ve seen A-Types learn and start practicing safely in the long run. Looked at another way, the mat is only place we can possibly learn to practice properly. Anywhere else is theoretical. Where else is an A-Type personality going to intimately learn the limits of determination and will-power than when faced with the incontrovertible truth of bodily pain or injury. I’m not saying that we want pain or injury so A-Types can evolve. If we can avoid pain, great! However, that’s not often the case especially when doing a practice that brings up our “stuff”.
I agree that there are cases when a student should not be practicing with an injury. Broken bones. Eye infections. Fevers.
I have also told students who aren’t healing that a visit to a doctor is recommended to make sure nothing is broken, etc. We once had a student that suffered from spondylolisthesis (refers to the forward slippage of one vertebral body with respect to the one beneath it) for whom we recommended taking a break in order to heal. The majority of students’ pain and injuries, however, are minor and benefit from daily practice described in my post. It is also the case that a student will think they have pulled, cracked or dislocated something when they are only feeling deep muscle stiffness. It really depends and my wife and I have been teaching long enough that we trust our instincts and experience.
I agree that yoga is not only physical and the best way to learn that lesson is to practice. To a large degree, yoga practice is mental and learning how to practice when there are obstacles and when it’s difficult helps students break barriers beyond the physical. Practicing only when one doesn’t feel 100% is the best way to experience how holistic ashtanga yoga is. Sure, if a student has injuries that require resting, I recommend any and all the avenues you suggested in the interim. My point however is that the majority of students do not have injuries that require taking time away from practice.
It could also be said that doctors are not yoga teachers. Doctors do not know how ashtanga yoga works. I’ve never heard of a doctor giving a student advice other than stop practicing. Perhaps it’s because they are in a very litigious profession and malpractice is a risk. So, in most cases, sending a student to a doctor is always always a last resort except in obvious cases (i.e.- they fell off their bicycle; twisted their ankle; etc.). I am always tell a student to just see what they can do on the mat. It might be a little. It might be more than they expected. Pain or injury is a time for lowering one’s expectations. In most cases, when students continue to practice, they see their pains and injuries subside and heal.
Sep 28, 2012 @ 12:21:41
Sorry mate – you could not be more wrong – when you have a muscle tear caused through stretching too far in ashtanga you should not try and “HEAL” yourself by doing more ashtanga. I disagree entirely, my wife who is a yoga instructor injured herself when another instructor pushed her too hard in an adjusted ashtanga position and as a 30 year old female, it took her 18 months to get back to where she was before.
Sep 29, 2012 @ 10:36:10
Hey Mitchell.
Your comment is an expression of anger recalling what must have been a very trying time for you and your wife.
I’m truly sorry to hear that your wife was injured as a result of an adjustment. It’s unfortunate when that happens. I don’t know the details of what happened to your wife. I don’t know which asana she was doing or which teacher was helping her and went too far.
There are some asanas that I don’t often adjust because students are too vulnerable in my experience. I also measure my adjustments based on the relative flexibility of a student. It’s often the case that a more flexible student risks over stretching and injury far more than a stiffer student. My teaching style has never been based on only deep adjustments. There are some instructors who make a name for themselves in that way, but it comes with inherent risks as your wife learned.
I’m going to have to disagree with your comment, though. Here’s why.
Your comment is a logical fallacy. You propose that if one gets injured practicing ashtanga yoga then one cannot heal oneself doing ashtanga yoga. This is 100% incorrect from the standpoint of logic.
In addition, citing the length of time it took your wife to heal is not at all relevant to the ability of ashtanga yoga to heal injuries regardless of their cause. As a result of suffering an injury doing the ashtanga practice, she and/or you may have chosen never to practice ashtanga yoga again. That’s fine and maybe reasonable under the circumstances particularly if the teacher involved wasn’t able to restore your trust in him/her and the practice itself. However, it still doesn’t alter or weaken the point of my post.
My wife suffered from wrist and knee pain in the past and used ashtanga yoga to heal herself. It took her about eight months to heal her knee and about a year and a half to heal her wrists. During this time, she had to back way off in her practice. It wasn’t easy and she had her doubts at times about whether it was ever going to get better. Both injuries healed as a result of practicing ashtanga yoga.
I want to again offer my regrets that you and your wife had to go through her injury. That completely and utterly sucks. I hope she and you are still practicing yoga regardless of method or lineage and are finding it useful and beneficial to your well being.
Sep 29, 2012 @ 10:42:19
Got injuries? Reimagining the Ashtanga practice to help injuries healYogaRose.net
Oct 02, 2012 @ 22:06:23
Oct 03, 2012 @ 14:41:13
Dear Paul, thank you very much for your words. they helped me a lot. i felt I am no longer alone thinking the same as you. I daily practise, when I feel pain and when I feel good. pain is not a problem if you practise ashtanga. it becomes your teacher as the practise as well. Discipline, devotion and faith. Ciao!
Oct 03, 2012 @ 16:41:49
Hi!
Just want to chime in. At 18 I ripped my ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) in my knee. Apparently my leg muscles were so strong that the doctors thought it was only torn. I had it surgically repaired 7 years later. At the age of 30 I tore it again while playing soccer and pregnant (I know, save your breathe). Second ACL surgery. Somewhere along the road I also dislocated a disc in my lower back. At 35 I found Ashtanga, and even with at the beginning a once a week practice things got better. But the REAL results showed when I started a daily Ashtanga practice. Four years now, knees and back have never been better!
Nov 03, 2012 @ 01:29:21
I got hit by a car and had to deal with horrible back pains. Neither physical therapy, nor chiropractors were helpful. Temporary relief was the best I could hope for . Two years of back pains came to a finish line when I started practicing yoga.
I let my body tell me when to push back or when to keep challenging myself. The important thing here is to listen to your own body and keep practicing.
Nov 03, 2012 @ 07:01:53
Thanks for your comment!
Dec 20, 2012 @ 04:58:09
Hi. Your article is inspiring for a newbie like me. I’ve been practicing primary series 6-7x a week since May of this year. I especially got inspired to go deep into Ashtanga when an authorized teacher came to Manila and taught with his wife for 1.5 months. Honestly, I felt like I got better, doing primary almost everyday, despite the pains (wrist, ankle, etc). However, the worst pain happened in August when I could barely lift myself up and jump back just when I was starting to learn how to do the lifting and jumping. I had extreme pain in my lower right part of my ribs. For about 3 weeks, I had this pain but I tried to practice everyday with some modifications. After August, I felt like I got even better. But now (just yesterday actually), the same pain came back which prompted me to go to a chiropractor the second time around (the first was when had the same pain in August). It’s frustrating since for me the jumping, lifting, and floating are an integral part of my practice. I’m hoping I can heal by continuing my daily practice.
Ps – i hope a yoga studio here invites to have mysore classes and workshops here in manila
Feb 01, 2013 @ 01:13:32
Hi. Ive read your post and it has given me a little hope of recovery. A year and a half ago i fell and broke my ankle and 2 crucial midfoot bones in my right foot. i was wheelchair bound for 8 months and had to go through a lot of physiotherapy…however Im still in horrible pain every day and recently have been experiencing really bad pain in my left foot(non injured foot) due to over-compensating….frankly im loosing faith of healing and am scared for what is in store for me….im wondering if you think yoga can really help me? how do i know what to look for in a class/teacher, im scared of making it worse…
thank you
Feb 06, 2013 @ 05:50:02
Hi Andria.
Without having met you in person, it’s almost impossible to make any specific recommendations in your case.
In theory, however, I don’t see why some yoga wouldn’t be useful in your recovery. It might be prudent to continue physiotherapy to improve the mobility and strength of your ankle and foot while looking for a yoga teacher.
I would try to speak to any prospective teachers personally and trust your gut as to whether they know what they’re doing.
It will be difficult but I keep up your spirits and hope. It may take a long time to heal; so, go slowly.