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| First of all I want to say hello and introduce myself as I am new to the forum. I am a 30 year old yogi who lives and practices in DC. I hope to become and teacher some day and recently started an apprenticeship with my teacher.
I am writing to see if anyone has had experience with physical pains and injuries. Twice now I have received an injury in part due to my practice. I don't know if the injuries were directly caused by my practice or if the weakness existed before i attempted certain poses. My frustration arises when I get these injuries and then feel impatient with myself because I am not "progressing" in my practice. I know that this is a lesson in how to treat myself better - not just so that I won't receive injuries in the future - but also so that I can allow myself to heal as injuries will happen. But I can't help but feel frustrated with my own limitations. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is also a lesson in being able to be flexible (not just physically) and adapt my practice to suite the needs of my life - not just my wants. As I write this I can see that the frustration is in being stuck in the middle of my strong desire to be achieving more in my practice and seeing clearly that I have a different option as far as my attitude is concerned.
What do you all have to say about this? Any experience, strength and hope?
Namaste |
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| Just laboring on a irritated nerve in my right foot that put me out of hatha practice for almost 2 weeks now I also feel a growing frustration and impatience. I know I desperately want to go on. But it's surely interesting to see this involuntary break as an opportunity to work on the "mind yoga", learn to be more patient and don't allow the frustration to take over.
Thanks for reminding me  |
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| Stefan--it was all that time you spent in a state of debauchery in Germany that has you all screwed up. And welcome Aaron. There's always hope and especially if you have a good teacher/ My Bikram teacher's keep yelling push, push, push, while more learned hstanga teacher's talk you through the asanas explaining where to note your limits to avaoid injury. |
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Expert Yogi
Posts: 2479
  
Location: A Blue State |
Bruce --- I've noticed the same thing in my Ashtanga classes. They have tons of
modifications, freely offered, and the usual statement is something like "if you're
not ready to A do B, or if not B do C". I've never heard anything remotely like the
Bikram "push-pull-gogogo" |
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| aaron I find it helpful to remind myself what asana practice is about, when I get frustrated with not being able to do a pose or when I get sick ( sprained ankles, infected insect bites ) and can't do asana practice. I get the impression that asana practice is not an end to itself, it is a preparation ( with pranayama ) for meditative practice. The point is you have a healthy body that can cope with the rigours of meditative practice. So I don't get so stressed when say I can't do a handstand when everyone else in class can, because it is something I can slowly work towards, and it is not the ultimate goal anyway. And when I get sick I just sit on a cushion and chant and tell mysslf I am still doing yoga ! |
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| hey ya'll...thanks for the replies. My injuries (both physical and mental) have been my biggest teachers in some ways. It would be nice, I think, to be able to have the awareness before the injury occurrs. It's a nice metaphor for other areas of my llife where I am suffering because of my attitudes which need adjustment.
Now, as I let my shoulder recover, I am trying to spend more time opening the books and working on self study and the other limbs of yoga, not just asana. When the urge comes up to feel frustrated with my perceived lack of physical achievement, I try to let the feeling wash over me, feel it and let it go. Then remind myself that I have a have a choice in which attitude to apply to this situation. All that's on a good day!
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| Well, I, like Aaron, have to say hello, as it is my first appearance here.
My body is 57 years old, I've been doing yoga in some fashion for about 35 years. I've had _many_ injuries in yoga practice, in both flexible and stiff parts of the body. This answer to Aaron is, it seems, an open letter to myself.
First it seems that growing pains in asana practice ARE physical pain. (Some yoga teachers talk about the psychological pain that is released by poses. I have heard hip-opening poses cited most often. In that regard, growing pain might be separate, in some sense, from physical pain.) "Growing pains" probably involve some mild injury to connective tissue, but the injury would be repaired in the process of building a better tissue structure. I think it is mainly the long-term course of the pain that distinguishes "growing pain" and "injury."
Injuries may appear unpredictably, but I've also been foolish more than a few times. For prophylactic purposes I'm testing a theory that "injury" tends to announce itself, at least subtly, as it happens, while "growing pain" tends to show up hours later. I'm trying to be more sensitive to incipient injury, if I can figure it out.
The way the pain feels during asana practice seems to be the most helpful clue in avoiding serious injury, but there are many kinds of "pain" and the differences are hard to categorize. Words can help, but it takes some experience.
"Learning by experience" requires making mistakes, but the mistakes don't all have to be big ones. You don't have to injure yourself badly to learn something.  Be sensitive to early signs of injury, and quickly to let go of the ambition to perfect that particular pose -- you have to work around you limitation by trying a variation of the pose, or leave that part alone and work with poses that stretch related tissues.
I still don't know perfectly how to follow my own advice. I'm working on some recurring pains that I tend to think of as growing pains in recalcitrant tissues and that they MUST yield sooner or later. I think this because they come on the day after I work the part and they don't last a long time, and I've made some progress (over many months), but maybe they are simply injuries, and doing me no good.  |
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physical pain vs growing pain
