Injured Yogi Problems

The Image

Those who do not practice yoga see us as majestic ninjas. We are the chosen few who can balance their body weight on their head (with or without the use of hands). We are the beings that bend but don’t break, that can stretch our legs high to the sky and still be well rooted to the earth. In pictures, we appear ethereal.

But not everything is picture perfect, and our poses don’t come without some cost. Just as any other physical activity, we practice to get where we are. However, this is a special practice. We can accomplish a pose one day and not be able to do it again the next. Or the next. Or the next. Or only a few seconds again. Yoga moves and flows aren’t always constant; they have their good days and bad days. The worst part isn’t when we can’t do a pose a certain day, because although disappointing we become aware we’ll eventually be able to do it again soon; the worst is when injuries hinder or set back our practice.

The Injury

We get injured from practicing a new skill and even from doing our favorite poses. We fall into furniture, strain muscles, and face plant into the floor. Getting injured is how we learn how to listen to our bodies more, even if sometimes injuries sneak up on us despite the precautions we take in our practice. People think that of course novices in the ways of yoga will injure themselves since they’re still learning. However, even yogis seen as experts have days where they just can’t get into their handstand or it takes them a bit longer to slip into their splits. Those pictures everyone admires of us doing handstands weren’t without many falls, whether straight to the floor or into other objects. Sometimes the body really just says, “Not today,” and forcing ourselves into something our bodies say no to isn’t ideal. Injuries can also occur even when we’re listening to our bodies, but it doesn’t help the feelings of frustration and disappointment we feel when the move we used to be great at is now something we have to learn post injury.

The Recovery

When I injured my hip flexor, I continued my yoga practice but avoided anything that needed the use of my hip. This was a lot harder than I expected because anything that involved forward folds or leg extensions caused me pain, and they were my best areas of flexibility. That left arm balances and backbends for me to continue but at one point I paused my practice for some time for two reasons; the first was to attempt to heal and the second was because my practice felt empty having to take out a main part of it. Across my yoga Instagram I noticed I wasn’t alone in feeling this way. One yogi expressed how her Type A personality made feeling a little better make her push herself a little too far. Another said how it felt like she’d never done yoga in her life. Patience is a hard virtue to keep, and the healing process can either be short and sweet or long and tedious; but no one, even the cool and badass looking yogis, is perfect and we just have to trust the process. Even when it feels like we can’t do our beloved poses anymore, we can still find enjoyment in practicing the basics that got us to where we are. Setbacks are learning experiences and ways to humble us. We learn to be patient, we learn to listen to our bodies, and we learn that failure is a stepping stone to greatness.

Written by Anjé McLish

IG @yoga_tapdancer