You’ve probably heard a friend or two commend the virtues of yoga. Among the many possible benefits of yoga are improved flexibility, reduced anxiety as well as depression, lowered chronic pain as well as even lowered blood pressure.
However, if you’re not careful yoga can also cause injury, specifically to your wrists, lower back, shoulders, elbows, knees, hamstrings as well as neck. In fact, a 2016 study found that yoga-related injuries have almost doubled from 2001 to 2014.
Let’s have a look at the most common yoga injuries and how we are able to prevent them.
Most Common Yoga Injuries And Fixes
Wrists
When it comes down to your wrists, it’s all about leverage. Putting all of your weight in your wrists when your hands are on the mat can lead to muscle as well as joint injuries.
How To Find Relief
In any asana where you put weight on your hands, spread your body’s weight through both hands by spreading them wide and then pressing through your fingers.
In the Downward-Facing Dog Pose (Adho Muka Svanasana), push your hips back in order to decrease the angle of your wrists versus the floor. In terms of arm balances, such as Crow Pose (Bakasana), look to see that your elbows are stacked directly over your wrists.
Lower Back
Lower back pain is the most often-cited yoga injury owing to rounding through the spine in asanas such as forward folds and downward dog, or – alternatively – keeping the legs too straight when going into an asana.
Rounding results in the spine flexing in the opposite way it’s supposed to, which can lead to disc problems as well as lower back muscular problems. Over-stretching the chief muscle groups in your back, or pushing muscles into elongation, is a recipe for injury as well as irritation.
In addition, it can hurt your SI (sacroiliac) joint, which connects the sacrum as well as the bones of the pelvis. The SI joint supports the spine. People injure the ligaments around this area below the lower back in poses when one leg is floating in the air, behind your body, in moves such as Warrior III or half moon.
How To Find Relief
The key to avoiding this injury is to spread your toes out and then push the bone under your big toe joint away from your body. This draws all of your leg muscles towards the bones, taking the pressure away from the SI joint.
Elbows
Pain in your elbows can be the result of bending them out to the sides in poses such as Low Plank (Chaturanga Dandasana). While it may be simpler to execute, lowering down with outward-pointing elbows can put a lot of stress on both your elbows as well as your wrists.
How To Find Relief
When bending your elbows in an asana (particularly Plank or Chaturanga), make sure that you keep them tucked beside your ribs as you bend them. In addition, make sure your elbows’ creases face forward.
If this is challenging (yes, it’s a serious test of triceps strength), begin with your knees on the floor. Remember, you are able to always work up to the unmodified version through regular practice. This process of toning of the leg, while it is in motion, is responsible for developing inner strength, balance, and stability. Balance and stability translate to safety.
Contact Trifocus Fitness Academy
If you would like to deepen your yoga practice then you need to do our Yoga Instructor Course. Follow this link to find out more.
