mikedoc

Dear Rebecca,
I completely agree that forward-bending postures are important once you realize the correct way to do them, and that’s where yoga definitely helped me. From my point of view, I would say forward and back bending sort of complement each other.

In general, after starting yoga (I do not actually practice hot yoga at the moment, but both “generic” hatha and kundalini so far), I had noticed that keeping my lower back constantly in motion, routinely bending it in all possible directions on different asanas (from lesson to lesson) was the best policy. I have enjoyed months with no pain at all.

Lately (last spring), though, I got stricken by severe pain again when doing something supposedly harmless like bending forward (correctly, I hope :-)) to grab my briefcase on the floor before going to work. This was most disappointing, since I had been doing my yoga just as always in previous days, and had absolutely no hint of pain or discomfort.

I have come back to my asanas after a couple of weeks, and I am still sort of recovering, although desperately slowly (I had lost almost all the flexibility I felt I had gained in my back in months of practice). Moreover, what scares me most is the thought that this pain “out of the blue” means that I can be doing something wrong even when I think I am doing just great.

I haven’t lost heart in yoga though, surely not. Maybe I should just make sure to get me a teacher who knows his stuff really well: I have recently bought the excellent book “Yoga Anatomy” by Leslie Kaminoff, which is full of hints on how many wrong ways there are to mess it up when performing asanas. I just wonder how many yoga instructors out there are lacking that anatomic knowledge.