Listen to Your Body!!!
This is a very interesting article from MSN health and fitness sent to me by my friend and fellow yogini, Janese, about yoga injuries. The author discusses suffering from a pinched nerve, which I can relate to since this also happened to me last year as a result of over-ambitious practice… and while it was horribly painful, it was nothing compared to some of the other stories in the article!
“As it happens, I’m not the only one feeling done in by my practice: Nearly 4,500 people ended up in the emergency room after yoga injuries in 2006, slightly fewer than the year before but still up 18 percent since 2004, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (which tracks sports injuries even when they don’t include equipment). Most often, the damage includes strained muscles, rotator cuff tears in the shoulders, exacerbated carpal tunnel syndrome in the wrists, torn cartilage in the knees, and lower-back and neck injuries such as herniated disks. “In my practice, I’ve seen a significant increase in yoga injuries in the past five years,” says orthopedic surgeon Jeffrey Halbrecht, M.D., medical director for the Institute for Arthroscopy and Sports Medicine in San Francisco and a specialist in knee and hip problems. And it’s not only those in the recent wave of newbies who are getting hurt, Dr. Halbrecht says: “I’ve treated more experienced yogis than rookies.”
Overall, yoga has far more potential to heal than to hurt: Studies suggest it can help relieve chronic lower-back pain, depression and anxiety. And students tend to think of yoga as gentle and healing, even when done rigorously. But the fact is that the most basic of yoga poses—as with dance, gymnastics or any type of physical activity that requires strength and flexibility—call for a certain amount of skill and training to do properly. And when strength isn’t a necessity, proper alignment is; sometimes the most benign-seeming poses, or asanas, can cause injury if hands, arms or legs are placed incorrectly. Devotees are even more vulnerable if they go through poses more quickly than their body can handle or push themselves too hard in an effort to keep up with the teacher or compete with other students. “Yoga is marketed as such an innocuous thing,” says Loren Fishman, M.D., assistant clinical professor of rehabilitation medicine at Columbia University in New York City. “But without care, injuries can absolutely happen.”
Click here to read the full article…. and please, BE CAREFUL!
Related posts:
- NY Times: ‘How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body’ | A Yogi’s Response
- Listen to your Gut! (a reminder to trust your inner voice)
- Should You Give Up Yoga Altogether? | How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body via NY Times
- Yoga Tune Up® Video | ‘Core Strength Will Protect Your Back’ by Sarah Court
- Yoga for Kids – the Benefits and the Controversy
