Having consistent, joyous practice over a long period. This is every yogi’s intention, but at some stage everyone will experience barriers to Abhyasa in the form of a plateau in their practice, discomfort somewhere in the body or even an injury.
At Human.Kind studios, the purpose of a Yoga Tune-Up session is to provide support for people as they work through these challenges and to cultivate Abhyasa in a fun, playful way under the keen eye of a trained physiotherapist.
Zooming in on potential discomfort and injury; a few of the hot spots we see in our Adelaide yoga studio and Adelaide CBD physio clinic are;
– high hamstring or butt
– front shoulder
– lower back
We’ll break down and practically work through these challenge zones, but first, let’s get some perspective. Consider the context from which yoga originated…
Your average yogi in India a century ago would have a highly labour-intensive job, sit on/off the floor throughout the day, would walk for transport, or ride a bike if they were lucky and was probably slim with long limbs.
Now consider the context in which most of us practise yoga…
We may sit in front of a computer for a decent chunk of the day, sit on chairs to eat meals, drive or bus to/from work and have long torsos with short limbs.
Ok, so I’m sure the yogis of the past also experienced injury and discomfort from time to time, but it is clear that our general daily physical activity and subsequent strength is not comparable to those times. In our Yoga Tune-Ups, we seek to cultivate and refine the strength and stability we need off and on the mat to overcome these inevitable but surmountable plateaus.
So how do we retain the richness of a yoga asana practice and adapt this to the modern world? That’s the Holy Grail right?!
Let’s chunk it down to the hot spots listed above.
A hot spot in this context is an area of high load – a particular structure or tissue of the body that is being repetitively stressed.
There are two ways that we can refine and customise the poses so that discomfort isn’t experienced:
Modify the movement to reduce the load.
Strengthen this zone to have the capacity to manage the load.
High hamstring pain
This is burning or discomfort at the sit-bones or butt when in forward folds, fingertip lunge, long pyramid, triangle, aeroplane etc…
Modifications will look different for each person and range from utilising blocks and straps, taking a more manageable expression of a particular posture, or simply tweaking a joint position. In the case of high hammies, we’ll take particular attention to ankle, knee, hip and pelvic alignment.
Strengthening, a daily exercise that can make a huge difference is the drinking bird – also known as single-leg deadlift or arabesque.
Front shoulder pain
Commonly seen in chaturangas, high planks, lower planks and upward facing dogs.
Commonly modified by broadening the shoulders through engaging the back muscles and may require planks to knees and a cobra instead of up-dog for a while while this new movement pattern properly lands.
A nice exercise to strengthen these back muscles is prone shoulder W’s.
Lower back soreness
Does your back ever hurt doing an Upward Facing Dog, Camel or Wheel?
It’s often due to core weakness/disengagement in a back-bend and thoracic (mid-back) stiffness relative to lower back hypermobility.
To modify, we will look at pelvic, spine, shoulder blade and shoulder positioning to more evenly distribute the backbend along the vertebrae of the spine.
Strengthening will target the shoulder blades – like the Prone W above as well as the core.
To target the core, try tall-kneeling lean-backs.
We can all work through challenges in our yoga practice with the right observations and modifications complimented with a bit of strengthening. The process is insightful, fun and leads to great satisfaction and self-trust when stepping on the mat. Abhyasa is the goal and we’re here to help! Have a chat with one of our wonderful facilitators, physios or receptionists or jump right into a Yoga Tune-Up to learn more. Check out our Tune-Up information here.
