OT (somewhat) and Long (very): Hatha Yoga and Pilates--Risks of Injury
DeRayMi
after some sinus problems that took away much of my energy. (I let a
sinus infection go for a long time before seeing a doctor, not ever
having had a sinus infection before; and a while after the sinusitis
was cleared up I had trouble breathing at night, thanks to sinus
polyps. Again, it took a while before I went to an M.D. about that
problem.) Anyway, I took an Integral Hatha Yoga class partly because
it seemed like a gentle way to ease back into physical activity. I
enjoyed the class and its effect on my mood, but I found that I would
feel a lot of pressure on my sinuses after the class, so I stopped.
Based on a little bit of reading, I think some of the partial
inversions we were doing were putting excessive pressure on my
problematic sinuses. I continued to do some yoga on my own, but
eventually I did something that caused some mild back pain, so I
decided it was time to try another class, so that I could have someone
else to supervise me. I took a Bikram (hot) yoga class. Again, I
enjoyed the class; I felt incredibly relaxed afterwards and it seemed
to be doing me some good, but once again, as I recall, the partial
inversions seemed to be leaving my sinuses feeling worse, and
eventually I switched to Pilates. (All of these classes were taken in
a relatively small studio, though they were group classes.) At this
point I had also been doing some Latin dancing and one night I hurt my
back while out dancing. It seemed to be while I was doing merengue.
In retrospect, it probably was caused by using incorrect posture while
dancing. I went to a Chiropractor and he got things under control,
and also told me some things about my body that made sense to me based
on my experience. I went over the Pilates moves that I was doing and
he recommended that I eliminate several of them, at least until my
back was a little better. Ultimately I decided that even a modified
version of "The Hundred" didn't feel very good to me, and that as much
as I had enjoyed Pilates there were certain things about it that
didn't make sense to me. In the mean time, I started doing some
reading about excercise, and I found a lot of contradictory advice.
I found some very interesting ideas in a book called "Stretch &
Strengthen" by Judy Alter. She writes:
Some excercise systems derive from ancient practices, and their
followers believe unquestioningly in their value. Proponents of yoga
and gymanstics often cite long tradition as a reason to continue using
the entire system even when some of the excercises are known to
produce serious injury. "Look ay my teacher!" is a common argument.
. . .What is ignored is the unknown number of once-active teachers,
leaders, and students who have suffered disabling injury from these
excercise practices.
Furthermore, hereditary and cultural factors contribute to the
unusual success of leaders in specialized activities like yoga and
gymnastics. People in twentieth-century America may not have
inherited the body type or live in a manner that enables them to
participate easily in these activities and come away with the same
benefits. [She gives examples of differences between sitting and
squatting or kneeling.]
. . .
The lotus sitting position in yoga is most easily done by people
whose bodies have flexible hip joints. Joint flexibility is usually
due to the length of the ligaments that hold the bones together.
Hypermobility (misnamed "double-jointedness"0 is a hereditary
characteristic. Yoga and gymnastics were developed by people for whom
these positions and strenuous moves were easy. [She was there. She
knows. ;) ] Many of the positions and moves in these activities can
permanently harm people with a "nomral" range of motion in their
joints. . . . [End of quote.]
In the book "Stretching for Fitness, Health and Performance"
co-authored by two chiropractors, the authors have a chapter
specifically devoted to "Dangerous and Harmful Movements." Funny how
many of these look familiar from yoga classes I have taken. My
chiropractor was particularly opposed to any "Full Neck Extension,"
especially for me, based on an x-ray of my neck. The Bikram yoga
class I took began with a pranayama excercise that employed full neck
extension.
I read an article about a couple "cutting edge" yoga schools in New
York, in New York Magazine (2/2/98). It raised the issue of injury:
"All but one of the six Jivamukti students I spoke with said they had
been injured as a result of the center's work-through-the-pain
philosophy. Several other students were hurt because of aggressive
hands-on assisting when teachers trying to correct their posture had
pushed them beyond discomfort. Another student confided that she had
damaged her back: 'I was so addicted to that place, it destroyed me.
You want to know something really psycho? I went back and reinjured
myself. The whole time, I was in pain, looking like an idiot, with
these people who could be in the circus.' And, she says, she can't
wait to go back. . . . That attitude is, in fact, part of Jivamukti
culture; danger, Life [the name of one Jivamukti's founders] tells me,
is what Jivamukti is all about. 'The practice of yoga is intended to
be extreme,' he insists. 'It's not intended to make the body more
healthy. The intention is to put your personality at risk.'" This
school is at one extreme end of the scale, perhaps, but I think it is
worth remembering that yoga did not develop primarily as a system of
physical fitness.
It's not just Yoga or Pilates (probably not as risky), of course.
I've taken a jazz samba class where the instructor continues to use
movements considered dangerous by most physical therapists, during his
warm-ups. Ideally, an excercise program would be tailored to the
individual, but of course that is going to cost more money than a lot
of people can afford (and I wonder how many people are really
qualified to do the tailoring). I'm sure that if I had gone to my
doctor before starting any of these programs, he would have given me a
clean bill of health and not warned me to stay away from some of the
things that created problems for me.
avid_dancer
Excellent post and definitely not off-topic. We certainly know of
dance professionals of all disciplines who have health problems because
of prolonged use of poor technique or over-dancing.
The important point you make is that everyone is different physically
(and mentally) and what may be a piece of cake for one person may
be life-threatening for another. Unfortunately, often only the person
him/herself can notice that injury is imminent. It's not to say that
practice and conditioning that may cause minor injury should never
take place because we all know that the body/mind only improves through
stimulation and minor trama. The tough trick is knowing where to
draw the line and what constitutes bad advice (which may only be bad
as far as that person is concerned).