Skip to main content

Practising yoga with injuries. No pain, no gain?



I am out of action at the moment. I have a hip impingement which has been going on for a quite a while. I've seen all the great and good in the London hip scene (pardon the pun) and have continued my yoga practice the best I can whilst working around the injury site and not taking myself into a point of pain. A recent stint which had me sat at a computer for more hours than I care to count has aggravated the impingement and the steroid injection I had in August has started to wear off.

One of the problems I now have is pain and inflammation causes muscle inhibition. As I currently have pain,  I have been advised to rest to see if the pain subsides. Continuing to work through the pain inhibits the muscles around the injury site and stops them from working efficiently; therefore doing more damage than good. Once I  am relatively pain free, I will work the muscles (in this case the glutes and other core stabilisers) in isolation to try and gain back the strength that has been  lost around the pain site. So the old saying "no pain, no gain" definitely does not apply to injuries. It might be worth remembering this if you are practising with pain and inflammation, as you may be adding to the problem.


Labels:

Comments

  1. Globie26 November, 2013 22:03

    It's really hard to judge when it's right to start practising again though. There seem to be a lot of false dawns and just when you think things are improving it bites. The effects of your injections have lasted a lot longer than mine

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yoga Mama27 November, 2013 08:42

    I agree its hard to judge when to go back to practising again. I think the injections either work or don't and 3 months + is quite a common time frame to see symptoms return. In my case impingement is not going to go away or completely recover so I have to find a way to manage it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unknown16 March, 2014 16:39

    My shoulder is screwed more from carrying my terminally 8 year old daughter than my Ashtanga Practice. I've always found rest to be the best healer which is what I learned years ago playing organized sports. When you play through injury you tend to do lasting re occurring damage. Once the initial healing stage has been moved through then I start my practice again. When I have an injury like i have now I look at it as a chance to really ramp up my meditation, mantra and pranayama practice; Injury is a gift this way.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

All comments are moderated. If you would like to leave a comment, you can do so below.

Popular posts from this blog

Neti pot

When I was training to be a yoga teacher, one of the 6 purification techniques taught to us was Jala Neti ( also called Neti or Jaaneti). Purification techniques are sometimes performed as a way of preparing the body for a yoga practice. Whenever the neti pots came out, I disappeared, always needing to be somewhere else at that moment in time… I had many techniques to avoid it: the bathroom, the water fountain, the shop, anything but the Net. Pouring a saline solution up my hooter was really not for me and I have avoided it right up to today. I have got a steaming cold and, as a result, I now have sinus pain, so I have decided to give it another go. Talk about waiting until your back is against the wall! I rushed to the Sivanada yoga studio nearby and bought myself a ceramic neti pot and salt. I had to follow the one photographic image as the instructions were in German!!! Although I did not find it as unpleasant as some people describe, it was not as bad as I remembered. So I will us...
1 comment
Read more

Sharath Jois in London 2013

Sharath Jois will be in London teaching a week of primary and intermediate ashtanga yoga From 25th-30th of August- in a central London location. Booking for this will open mid May. Through  http://www.astangayogalondon.com/index2.cfm A rare and wonderful treat to have Sharath in my home town-A big thank you to  Hamish Hendry  and ashtanga yoga London for organising this. Going to have to set an alarm on my phone- as there will be a lot of takers for this....
Post a Comment
Read more

All about the balance

A snap from inside my fridge this week. The mix of wine, beer and Vita Coca sort of sums up my family really. The ones that drink wine and beer don't go in for the coco water, and the coco water drinker doesn't go in for wine or beer. In summary, none of us need worry about the other nicking all the drinks. :-)
Post a Comment
Read more