5 Common Yoga Injuries Plus 6 Ways to Avoid Them

Nothing interrupts the peaceful flow of a yoga practice quite like an injury. While yoga tends to be a strengthening and restorative practice, sometimes it can result in injuries. Here are 5 common yoga injuries and 6 easy ways to keep them from interrupting your practice.
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Lower Back Injuries

Dr. Fishman, medical director of Manhattan Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, has published dozens of papers on yoga in medicine, including a survey of 33,000 yoga practitioners, teachers, and therapists on yoga injuries. One of the most common yoga-related injuries involves the lower back, according to Dr. Fishman. They happen during forward bends “done too intensively by beginners” or backends “when dramatically overdone.”
Shoulder and Wrist Injuries

Shoulders and wrist injuries are another common area. According to Annelise Lonidier, certified yoga instructor and owner of Atlanta’s Sacred Thread Yoga, if something is even slightly out of alignment, it can cause serious injuries, especially in downward dog positions.
Rebecca Weible, certified yoga instructor and founder of New York City’s Yo Yoga!, recommends using the knees on the mat during chaturanga “to avoid unnecessary strain on the shoulders, especially if chaturanga is still new or feels really challenging to lower down correctly without dropping the hips.”
Neck Injuries

According to Dr. Fishman, yogis tend to develop neck injuries in the form of herniated discs. Usually, neck injuries occur during sirsasana (headstand) and salamba sarvangasana (shoulderstand). Practitioners developed injuries due to poor head placement “either too far forward on the forehead and especially too far back.”
Knee Injuries

Injuring the knee is common in virabhadrasana (warrior I and II) and virasana (heroes pose), according to Dr. Fishman. This is due to over-flexion of the knee. Putting too much pressure on the knees during balancing poses, and even the lotus pose, hurts the knee.
Pulled Hamstrings

According to Lonidier, pulled hamstrings are often a result of “pushing too deep into forward folds or splits.” As Weible puts it, “People do not always understand that sometimes less is more when it comes to stretching.”
A simple fix for this? Weible recommends bending the knees in forward folds to prevent excess muscle strain.
1. Let Go of Your Ego

According to Dr. Fishman, the most common cause of yoga injuries is overdoing it, “whether from ego, perfectionism, or over-enthusiasm.” One of the easiest ways to avoid injury is to let go of your ego. Understand your limitations and focus on improvement and correctness of poses, rather than competition.
2. Take Your Time

As Lonidier notes, “People are human and in general we want to ‘do’ something but don’t always have an interest in ‘learning how to do’ something. Yoga is an exercise in delayed gratification… and that means that to get some of the most complex or challenging postures, you have to turn in and begin to understand how your body moves.”
3. Find a Guide

While there are plenty of yoga videos available online, Lonidier strongly recommends “a flesh and blood teacher,” unless a home practice is a necessity. Look for a teacher who pays attention to your practice, gives you direction, and takes the time to work with you. Don’t be afraid to ask for help or suggestions.
4. Be Wary of Hyperflexibility

While it’s exciting to become increasingly flexible as a part of your yoga practice, it is easy to take it too far. As Lonidier notes, “If we exploit these excessively open areas it creates a bigger imbalance, and that is a dangerous spiral.”
5. Adopt a Yin Practice

A slow-paced yin practice is restorative in that it targets connective tissue, not muscles. While Lonidier knows a slow practice isn’t always appealing to everyone, she says to view yin like flossing: even if you don’t like making time for it, do it anyway because it’s good for you.
6. Listen to Your Pain

Our default mode is to think pain equals bad. But according to Dr. Fishman, there is “good” pain and “bad” pain. And you have to listen to both. While good pain develops gradually with stretching, bad pain is abrupt, severe, and sharp. As soon as you feel bad pain, you need to stop ASAP.
While it’s always important to be mindful in your practice, Dr. Fishman reminds us of how safe yoga typically is. As he puts it, yoga injuries “aren’t so common.” Statistics suggest that less than 1 in 1,000 yogis ever end up in an emergency room!
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