The Hot Yoga Doctor – Free Bikram and Hot Yoga Resources › Hot Yoga Doctor Forum › Injuries, Restrictions, Ailments, Pose Modifications › Injuries › Frustration!
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I’ve been doing bikram yoga for about five months now, and absolutely love it. However I’m getting frustrated about a number of injuries/pains.
I have an old knee injury from running that I thought this yoga might be able to help with. So far sadly I haven’t seen much improvement and I have to go easy on some poses (eagle and toe stand, and floor bow) to make sure I don’t aggravate it.
About two months after I started I pulled a hamstring doing yoga outside class, and it seems that now both hamstrings are even tighter than before, I am always having to be very conscious of them. Also this month I have started to get a pain in my lower back. My teachers all just say ‘back off’, they haven’t offered modifications. I have been doing your modification for separate leg stretch which I [em]love[/em] but getting some funny looks off some teachers!
I am trying to be patient, but I’m finding it frustrating to feel so limited when I had one month that felt so glorious, when I felt like I was making a lot of progress with no pain, taking things easy but going deeper. I find that I am thinking more about avoiding hurting myself now than anything else, which interrupts the meditation that I was able to achieve in the past. I suppose the ups and downs are all part of the journey, and I know I’m lucky to be relatively fit and starting yoga when I’m young and bendy but… I want another month like that to come along soon!
Anyway, just wondering if anyone else has niggling pains, and how they deal with frustration!
Hamstrings are tough to heal, and in my experience outside of yoga they require some real rest time. I would suspect that you are pushing too hard (even if you think you are taking it somewhat easy in class) and not allowing your hamstrings to heal. Maybe you need to sit out of the poses that stress it or take more days off for a bit? I know that’s never what you want to hear, but rest is important too.
How often are you going to class?
I would also say it requires patience. I’ve been doing Bikram 4-5 days a week for about 3 months and I’m nowhere near even attempting toe stand due to my previous knee issues. You just have to be patient with yourself. A few of the instructors at my studio have had knee problems and reiterate that our studio owner took 3 years of practice just to get his butt to the ground in fixed firm pose. I have a laundry list of knee problems and they are gradually improving, but I’ve found too that it requires patience. If I push too hard, hoping to improve rather than listening to and accepting where I’m at, I set myself back and it just takes longer.
Hi Connie,
Thanks for replying… I go to class 4 times a week normally. I think you are probably right and it is a matter of time and rest and patience. I just don’t want to have to stop altogether! I had a rest of a couple of weeks after I first hurt my leg so I thought that should be ok. One of the frustrating things is that it seems almost every pose is a hamstring stretch, once you are aware of them… It’s actually been quite an interesting lesson in how interconnected things are within your body (trying to find a silver lining!)
Hi bafferine – I’ll ask Gabrielle to escalate her reply to this one – in the meantime please use the “search” function at the top right (for ‘hamstring’) and you’ll see a ton of helpful posts.
In short, if you have a hamstring injury and there is inflammation or scar tissue, then simply pursuing more Bikram, no matter how modified, may not help fix it.
Gabrielle had a similar issue (with a REALLY funny cause!) and she did some physio exercises OUTSIDE of her yoga that made a huge difference … I’ll ask her to post before you inadvertently worsen your issue!
Namaste,
Robert
Hi Bufferine,
During my first year of practicing yoga, I have hurt my hamstring and back a few times. I still went to class but I don’t pull my hamstring and bend my knee a little. Also I use the muscle relief spray. Apart from that:
– identify which postures create the injuries because you might do it incorrectly
– always listen to and follow the dialouge very carefully because the wordings would include the tips to avoid injuries e.g. push your chest up, lock your knee, contract your stomach
– some postures are not about stretching hamstring but locking your knees and contracting your thighs
– listen to your body, back off from stretching or bending whenever you feel pain
– be patient with your body, yoga teachers take years to become a teacher
– search for tips and advices of each posture: online, teachers, blogsDon’t give up as yet if you love yoga. 🙂
Hi Catherine
Did you have any luck looking through the forum?
Here are a couple of links that will give you some good information and tips. Please read those, maybe experience the different techniques and then come back. I will ask more questions then!
Chronically Painful Hamstring and Hamstring, Glutes and SI Joint.
Hi Saowanit,
Thanks for your contribution. It may seem unlikely, but often the poses that are causing the problems are not really making themselves known!!! In other words the problem may show up in a different pose.
It is not possible to NOT stretch the hamstring when you lock your knee!!! It’s an anatomical principle. The problem is also that it’s NOT just an action confined to the leg. Muscles are all connected. We are beautifully designed machines. With hamstrings and quads, and in certain poses, you can’t use one and turn the other off completely. So it’s kinda more complicated.
Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂Well, I’m getting to test my patience right along with you today. My knees had been feeling so good, and then I went skate skiing this weekend and that apparently did not agree with them at all. Yesterday they were so swollen, stiff and sore, just walking hurt.
I did go to yoga this morning and just took everything that required flexing knees VERY gently and sat out a number of poses. I thought about staying home, but figured that if I could go, listen to my body and meditate through class, even standing still or lying in savasana if necessary, it would still be helpful. And that seemed to work well – I did have to fight off the disappointment of not doing what I wanted to be doing in class, but I committed to respecting where my knees were at today and this afternoon, just walking around is feeling somewhat better. And I know that patience and presence and such are probably more important for me in the long run than working on physical flexibility/strength/etc.
It’s interesting because I have a friend who was recently insisting that any yoga is very dangerous. She hurts her back whenever she tries it because she can’t help but push too hard and feel competitive with everyone around her. I had to agree – that attitude is a recipe for injury if I’ve ever heard one. But this practice has been teaching me to set my competitive nature and ego aside. And in that way, I have to look at it as a blessing to have those days when my body is not cooperating because otherwise I wouldn’t likely be inspired to focus my practice on those types of mental improvements.
I hope your hamstrings are starting to feel better. My husband had some issues with scar tissue and it took a good amount of physical therapy to get that healed up. Hopefully yours is not that bad.
Thanks Gabrielle. I have been using the hamstring modification for standing separate leg, which has been very helpful. Recently it’s my lower back that has been bothering me, so I have backed off leg extensions and am focussing hard on sucking in my stomach in/sitting out forward bends. I think it’s definitely the case that my core wasn’t strong enough to support me before, so I’ve been working on my core and aim to pull back in class until I feel stronger there.
Also your book should be arriving soon so I hope there will be lots of tricks in there to help me along!
Thanks again, Catherine
PS I just read a thread about sit up technique, the way you do it versus the newer way (which is the way I was taught). I think that probably has something to do with the pain in my back 🙄
I’ll try your way when I’m doing sit ups again!
Thanks Gab, it’s true our body is all connected. And definitely we can’t switch off one part of our body. I just have a feeling that whenever I lock my knees, I wouldn’t stretch my hamstrings as much as when I don’t (lock my knees).
What about warming up before class? Would it help to minimise the pain?
Hi lilieu
Are you talking all poses or just selected poses?
Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂 -
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