The Hot Yoga Doctor – Free Bikram and Hot Yoga Resources › Hot Yoga Doctor Forum › General Hot Yoga Discussion › Weight Loss and Hot Yoga › Six months of hot yoga and still feeling stiff ?
The Hot Yoga Doctor – Free Bikram and Hot Yoga Resources › Hot Yoga Doctor Forum › General Hot Yoga Discussion › Weight Loss and Hot Yoga › Six months of hot yoga and still feeling stiff ?
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Hello
Firstly just wanted to say I love this forum – it is so helpful, thank you. I have been doing Bikram Yoga for 6 months now and love it. However I do have a question about flexibility. I am 47 and each time I do the yoga I am stiff somewhere else – I am OK with that as I assume I have stretched to new places that day. However – perhaps naively I thought I would have had more flexibility in general – however I feel stiff just picking something up off the floor as example. Or I played tennis the other day and found I felt stiff doing that. I had kind of thought that doing this yoga might have given me some of the flexibility I had in my younger years. My expectations are perhaps out of whack and I just wondered what your thoughts were on that! Thank you in advance.
Namaste
Hi Jeanette!
You know, after six months I would expect overall flexibility to have improved quite markedly. It does depend however on how many classes per week and what other activities you are participating in. Obviously tennis 😉 but how often for these other sports etc? I can then ascertain whether we should go down the specific techniques route and where else to direct you on your journey.
Fill me in before I give my 2 cents worth!
Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂Aha, just read the other post and you say 4 times per week! 😆
Hi – yes I go 4 times a week and generally too tired to do other sports 🙂 so yoga pretty much it! Many thanks for your help.
I too have been practising bikram yoga for just over 6 months now too – on average 4 times a week. I have come to the conclusion that a) my body is transforming – flexibility has improved and that b) as long as I’m practising, I’m sore. I guess I figured that like any good workout, I get sore afterwards. That’s a good sign, I guess. But, when we’re practising 4 or more times a week, it seems as though my body just stays in that sore state.
And, then I went on holidays and didn’t go to yoga for a couple of weeks. and I felt great! Once the soreness was gone, I felt strong and loose and limber.
My back pain was gone.
Kinda a Catch-22, isn’t it? lolHi Jodi and Jeanette
I have a problem with the pain thing! I would want to know the nature of the pain, location, what brings it on, when and how. Specific poses? Certain movements? General ache in the lower back, the shoulders? A stiffness?
It COULD be you’re approaching poses in a way that is NOT good for your body. And the great feeling you get from the yoga is enough to keep you going, so you ignore that it could be creating risk for you.
Do you describe the pain as muscular soreness? Please give me some details. Maybe there’s something that can drastically change that for you when you know what to focus on. It could be a minor change or 2 in really ‘getting’ the pose mechanism.
It also could be that stuff is changing in your body. For me I was NOT in pain in the way I imagine you are describing but I could really feel my back straightening out (from scoliosis). It felt good. But it was never a disconcerting soreness. There was ease, strength, flexibility but a sensation of change and of muscles I wasn’t in the habit of using to support me.
Maybe it was word choice – whatever the case, I thought I would check in with you.
Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂For me, it is not pain but a feeling of stiffness. After Yoga at the moment I am stiff around the hip area and so I feel stiff when for example I have been sitting awhile and then get up and start walking. But I am OK with that as I figure that I am just stretching new parts of my body as I get better alignment in the poses. My quqestion was a more general one – I had expected to feel overall more flexible and to be able to regain one’s childhood flexibility and for example be able to bend down and pick things up with ease and generally bounce around. Instead I just feel stiff all the time! Many thanks
I’ve kinda resolved that the pain comes from the backbends – and a lifetime of never having done one. I’m getting pretty deep into the backbends, so know that I’m transforming my body in a way that it is not familiar with.
However, I suffer from pretty severe endometriosis which has attached itself to my bowels and the outside of the organs in the lower left quadrant of my body, so I’ve always experienced some uncomfortableness in this region because of the deep compressions and stretches. Because of the nature of the disease, it affects me more at certain times of the month than it does at other times. So, perhaps some of the pain that I describe is stemming from the endo, too?
What’s your opinion on this? I see that nobody has ever asked you about endometriosis before ( or at least it didn’t come up in my search ). I’m never sure that what I’m doing is helping or hurting the situation. At times, I do stay away from my practise because of it. When the endo is flared up and I can feel the area swollen and sensitive, it feels great while I’m in the room and throughout the 90 minutes, but I have more pain in the day or two following.
Thanks GabrielleJodi
I have been practicing hot yoga since Nov 09 twice a week. I am still not flexible. I can’t do the second and third of standing head to knee and some other poses. I wonder if yogabody helps in that regard..
In relation to standing head to knee (part 2 and part 3)… my experience is that this can take a long time to develop depending on where you started from. Years of running meant my hamstrings, glutes and lower back were super tight – I have been practicing for just over 18 months, and I am just starting to move into part 3 (I only started getting into part 2 with good alignment in the past 6 months). What has really got me there has been stepping up my practice from about 2-3 sessions a week to 4-6 sessions a week (and mixing it up – the Bikram series with power/vinyasa).
Hi Jeff
I would also look to increasing the number of classes per week. You would be surprised how much difference even one extra class will make to you. Just remember: Stick to the basics and that means don’t do anything fancy. Just work on the right pose mechanisms and it will happen for you.
Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂 -
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