Is Your Yoga Safe?
Infrequent visitors to the yoga blogosphere may not be aware of the recent kerfuffle surrounding a NY Times article about how yoga will hurt you, but there also has been some mainstream media coverage on the safety of yoga.
While the article seems to have broken a few glass jaws in the broader yoga community, practitioners with a therapeutic orientation have been sounding alarms about questionable practice for years and getting nothing but flak in return. Those with the courage to take a stand and level public criticism of overly aggressive and guitar-hero-like approaches are usually written off as haters who are just jealous of the cool kids with their feet on their heads.
I’m not going to address the article directly. This has been done well enough already by voices more qualified than mine (I recommend watching Leslie Kaminoff’s three-part video response.) But I am interested in people questioning what they are doing and whether or not it is safe, even if it is a byproduct of a sensationalistic and irresponsible ploy to sell books.
Unfortunately, the subsequent conversation has largely been dominated by a reach for easy answers that avoid deeper issues. More often than not, injuries in yoga are being attributed to a lack of proper alignment or understanding of anatomy. It is said either that practitioners are not doing the poses in a technically correct way or that their teachers are not educated enough about anatomy to instruct students how to do the poses in a technically correct way.
When it comes to alignment, I find it curious to notice teachers who are are usually quite rigid in their instruction are now bending over backwards to explain how they respond to the needs of students. Specifically, I was reading an excerpt from a new book, written by a senior teacher in a classical tradition, who was considering the instruction to “straighten your leg.”
Without referring to any particular poses, the author asserts that the instruction is a “very coarse truth [that] new students need to hear” and that the way to accommodate different capabilities is to offer different “levels of truth” in the form of more detailed directives (i.e. lift the quadriceps, resist with the calf muscle, root the three corners of the feet, etc.) The suggestion is that different students need different details as they develop the fully realized truth behind “straighten your leg.”
The problem is that finding different ways of articulating the same arbitrary configuration is not an example of how to adapt to the needs of students and certainly will not make the practice any safer for the large majority of people who benefit from bending their knees. The concept of “technically correct” is open to interpretation and much of what is considered proper alignment in the classical forms is contraindicated for huge portions of the population. Thus, it is possible to have perfect alignment and still hurt yourself.
For those who are inclined to rely on science, I have written a full length article for Yoga Therapy Today magazine entitled: Does Studying Anatomy Make Yoga Safer? In the piece, I ask several prominent anatomy for yoga teachers to weigh in on the role of studying anatomy and science in making yoga safe. What I think most people might find surprising is that even the experts in the field do not agree that anatomy is the key to ensuring safety in yoga.
As Neil Pearson, clinical assistant professor at the University of British Columbia and the chair of the Pain Science Division of the Canadian Physiotherapy Association, put it: “In the end, it is not Western scientific knowledge of the human body that will make Yoga safer. Changing the students approach to the discipline of yoga and the practice of asana will create the greatest shift.”
Instead of looking to alignment and anatomy as a panacea for what ails the yoga profession, perhaps we would do better to foster a different mentality around the physical work of yoga practice that minimizes any potential risks and encourages smarter choices.
Most of the professionals I have spoken to agree that the key to safe yoga boils down to the sensitivity and adaptability of the instructor, his or her capacity for dialogue with and responsiveness to a student, and the humble confidence of knowing what you know and what you don’t know.
Yes, Jason, ” it is possible to have perfect alignment and still hurt yourself.” Yes! Because the very attempt to make your body conform to an idealized vision, however gently or subtly you try, is an imposition on the natural intelligence already existing in you, as you. The idea that yoga technique centres around isolated manipulations of the body’s musculature is a gross misunderstanding and denies Yoga’s real power.
You know this. What you haven’t put into words here is what the technology of Yoga is. So I will. The purpose of practice is full participation in the breath. We move in order to facilitate the long, slow movement of our breath. We move because the breath moves, not the other way around; we are not putting our body into positions and then breathing in them. An asana blossoms out of the breath and just as every flower is unique, so too is every person.
Joints are kept soft; the challenge is in the breath, not the muscles, but your core musculature is engaged by the breath (ujjayi) and this means you move as one integrated whole. Practice develops your strength to receive the breath and with it, your strength to receive Life. Asana is moving pranayama, working with the breath in a way that stimulates the movement of Life energy. This is the key! When Life moves, it heals and nurtures and we know Yoga as the ordinary, natural state of our being.
This knowledge is needed. It is absent in much of what is being practiced and taught as Yoga and it is absent in the flurry of mainstream responses I’ve seen to the New York Times article. Mark Whitwell has given it to me and I’m passing it on. It is a simple shift into the heart of things.
I agree with you about the fact that correct alignment and knowledge of anatomy is not a panacea and doesn’t necessarily prevent injuries. I have been practicing yoga for nearly two decades and the only two times i injured myself was because teachers didn’t look at my body (and congenital misalignment!) but insisted i follow their instructions even when they didn’t feel right.
I have a humeroradial misalignment in both arms, and they insisted on straight arms in Downward-facing Dog, despite the fact that keeping my elbows slightly bent was my preferred way of holding this pose, as it protected my elbows and wrists. As a result of this instruction, over time my misalignment became more severe.
Poses such as hand stands are not recommended for me, and yet if i joined a group class, you bet the teacher would talk me into doing it, as if my resistance to this pose was psychological and something to be overcome.
My legs are not straight either ( i have knock-knees) and my pelvis is unstable. Standing on one leg while fully extending the other leg and holding the big toe is something i can only do against the wall because the leg misalignment makes it very difficult for me to keep my balance. I was asked to do it in the middle of the room “like everybody else” and as a result my pelvis tilted, something happened to the SI joint and i was in pain for a week.
Now i know better, and disregard instructions that may work for most people but definitely not for my body.
Often injuries occur because students are not aware of what their bodies are capable of, teachers have a size-fits-all approach to poses and can’t give personal attention to students because most studios squeeze too many people in their classes.
“Changing the students approach to the discipline of yoga and the practice of asana will create the greatest shift.”
This is my new mantra.