Amrita 6: Asana through the ages - Magazine - Page 57
I AM A HUGE fan of yoga and have dedicated most of my
adult life to teaching it! Let’s remember what’s so great
about yoga – it makes people more flexible, improves posture, improves joint health and joint lubrication, increases
spinal mobility, lowers blood pressure, improves mood, decreases stress responses, decreases blood sugar levels, creates better sleep, boosts immune function, improves self-esteem and contributes to a generalised sense of well-being.
And it’s drug-free, easily available to all and incredibly cheap.
However we also contribute – usually unknowingly – to
hip inflammation, hip labrum tears, hip impingement, lumbar spine compression, spinal facet joint fractures and anterior shifts, knee degeneration, meniscus tears, thoracic-lumbar inflammation, stenosis, instability, shoulder joint
instability, rotator cuff tears, wrist compression issues and all
kinds of ankle overstretch and instabilities.
The above is the injury list associated with yoga – not the
injuries that people already have before starting a yoga practice – but the chronic injury pattern associated with those
who practice yoga. Every physical practice has an associated injury profile – from rugby to ballroom dancing – and
yoga is no different in that sense. All physiotherapists will
have a good working knowledge of this because they see it
in their patients and read the literature1
So what’s going on here? Firstly the idea that yoga is
completely safe is just not true and we need to acknowledge this. It may not have as serious an injury profile as rugby, but then again no-one ever said that rugby is safe or
good for your body. Secondly, all too often we are teaching
asana based on a shape and a set of instructions we have
learned – without really understanding how human bodies
work or what is happening to the bodies we are teaching. If
you want to feel really dismayed, a survey of yoga teachers
in America and Canada (admittedly in 2009)2 reported high
levels of in-class injuries (almost 20% had witnessed a lower
back injury, 17% a shoulder injury and so on) and 68% stated
www.yogaallianceprofessionals.org
“All too often we are teaching
asana based on a shape and a set
of instructions we have learned
– without really understanding
how human bodies work or what
is happening to the bodies we
are teaching.”
the reason for this as ‘inadequate teacher training’. And they
are the teachers. I teach a functional anatomy course to experienced yoga teachers and we start at absolute basics, every time. No wonder yoga gets a bad rap with the medical
professions.
So let’s get practical. I’m going to take a fictionalised Warrior 1 and let’s deconstruct what it does to a human body
(based on a generalised form of teaching it) and then reconstruct it so that it better helps our students. I’m choosing Warrior 1 because it turns up in many yoga classes, is damaging in
relatively unobvious ways (unlike say forcing students into
lotus which is obviously damaging to students’ knees), and
there has been loads of discussion about it over the years so
you may well be familiar with changes in approach to teaching it. For the sake of brevity I’m going to concentrate on the
lower body, and this list is in no way exhaustive.
AMRITA Issue 6 / Spring 2021 55
