Beware of the Asana

By Alice Toler

Authors: Alice Bain

Can yoga hurt you? I’m a little annoyed at the tagline from this NYTimes article (“Popped ribs, brain injuries, blinding pain. Are the healing rewards worth the risks?”) – but the article does point out something valid. Yes, if you push it too hard, like anything else, you can injure yourself doing yoga.
I wish there had been more of an “all things in moderation” slant to the piece, but then that doesn’t make for a good headline. People injure themselves severely running, lifting weights, hiking, swimming, playing basketball…doing pretty much any kind of physical activity, and they do it in great numbers all the time. Yes, moving your body is dangerous, but sitting still is even more dangerous.
The takeaway here is simple: learn your body’s language of sensation, and then pay attention to it when it’s trying to tell you to back off on something. One yoga teacher in the article had pain in certain positions for 20 years before he wound up needing spinal surgery. He had almost two decades to pay attention to the messages his body was sending, and he consistently ignored them! Don’t be that guy.
How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body

This article was originally published on January 7, 2012.