AVOID PAIN
Avoiding contact with pain is fundamental to growing in yoga. It is not fun or productive to be repeatedly injured from the practice. Nor is it motivating to continually practice with an injury. Most long term practitioners have experienced that ball and chain at some point. If you are carrying a ball and chain of injuries from yoga then ask yourself honestly. Do you ignore pain signals during your yoga practice? If a certain part of your body is injured are you adjusting your postures? In other words are you practicing accordingly to accommodate that part of the body that is hurt?
Practitioners and especially the complete beginner that does not listen to pain signals from their body will become a candidate for pulled muscles, pinched nerves and ruptured discs. Keep it in mind that it takes time often months and years for tendons, ligaments and muscles to adjust to the postures. The first step to initiating such adjustments is to let the practice pass through the mind before the body. It is important to mentally understand the direction of a practice before pushing strong. For beginners the first few lessons are only to acquire a bearing on what are the postures and sequences. Once these are mentally understood then only can we start to feel deeply into the body.
After creating such a minimal familiarity, it does not mean we start pushing the practice at full throttle. That is exactly how we get hurt. Our bodies are like machines and we must conserve the machine we are housed in. If you take a car for a drive but avoid slowing down for bumps, take every turn at the fastest possible speed then what are the results? You not only may get a police citation but the car will also develop mechanical problems. The likelihood of an accident to damage the car or kill you will also increase. It is the same for our bodies. If we are pushing it in every practice to the maximum level we will more than likely develop an injury.
So do not push your body to 100% but instead remain at the 80% level. As long as we practice no more than 80% of our maximum possible level then the chances of injuries along with wear and tear of the body will dramatically reduce. At the same time you will make steady progress when practicing regularly. There are also so many who were top athletes when younger. Then after college they were lead to focus on career, marriage and kids with years perhaps decades passing with neglect of the body. Finally after 5, 10 maybe 20 years or more of a sedentary lifestyle the idea of taking up yoga is ignited. These former athletes often fly into yoga classes like rockets especially after experiencing an invigorating class. They start with much enthusiasm and flair. But the body after a sedentary lifestyle has changed. Apart from obvious changes such as a loss of strength, endurance, flexibility and weight gain there is another more hidden issue.
Tendons which connect muscles to bones have weakened. They receive less blood compared to the muscles they attach to. For this reason muscles grow faster than tendons. So starting a practice after a sedentary period easily leads to injuries since the load on the tendons comes about to quickly for the tendons to adapt. Again this is when the tendons do not keep up with the growth of the muscles. For this reason progressing slowly in the beginning is important to let the tendons catch-up with the muscle growth.
Always pursue a yoga practice with the idea of avoiding contact with pain. Remain patient take as much time as needed and do not be pushy and bouncy with the practice especially if there are injuries. Practicing correctly should not only avoid pain during a lesson but also for 24 hours after the lesson. Approach the yoga practice slowly and diligently. Do not be in a hurry to become good. In yoga there is always tomorrow.
Traditional yoga is not hurried or competitive. Otherwise injuries will be created leading to a state of fear. The nervous system may store pain memories which will cut the best efforts to repeat a posture pain free. Yoga teacher Baron Baptiste explained in his book, “Journey into Power” that practicing yoga is comparable to an onion. He explained that when practicing yoga we must treat the practice like an onion. Only peel the onion layer by layer to make your way to the core. Do not chop through the onion. So approach the practice in stages like the layers of an onion but do so slowly. By being snappy and pushy with our yoga practice in other words chopping the onion we would create injuries. Stay mindful of pain and you will have a safe, enjoyable and long life of yoga practices with all the benefits that come with it.
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