HOW TO BE SAFE DURING YOUR YOGA PRACTICE

Recently working on my PhD. related research work, I read many articles about injuries and how these injury arise in athletes and in general population. While many articles report the injury incidents, surprisingly, only a few talks about ‘how to be safe during your practice’.

Yoga is to heal you from ‘inside out’ and brings you more close to yourself, and you will become more connected to your mind and inner-self and will be able to prevent from injuries. Where other exercise routines are meant to prepare you from outside giving importance to your physique and how do you look. Furthermore, there is a saying “No pain, No gain”, which I completely disagree with. If, you are experiencing any pain while doing yoga, you should stop and asked the teacher if she/he can help you in reducing it.

Yoga helps you to be more into yourself to feel more connected within and develop ability to understand when something is wrong happening. If someone is encouraging you push through the pain and continue your training, that's not okay. Since you are the best teacher for yourself, listen carefully to your mind and body and guide them through the journey of yoga practice.

Here are a few tips to prevent yourself from hurting or getting injured.

-Breath deep and slow – While performing any posture think more about breathing into the pose. Use your inhalation to lengthen your body and exhalation to relax a bit.

-Hamstring Tears or pull – When you try to bend forward avoid quick or jerky movements.to go into a pose deeper doesn’t mean that you should be forcing yourself. Instead, you should start working slow and with persistent effort to achieve your goal.

-Pain in shoulders and back of the neck – When you are going do any posture that needs you to lift your upper body (such as Boat pose) try to relax your shoulder and lift more of your chest region simultaneously keep your neck backwards.

Yoga is not about competing to others, it is an art of developing yourself as a better human being.