In Yoga practice there are three teachers: your actual teacher, yourself and injury. Your teacher transmits you knowledge and experience. You teach yourself using your intuition and innate wisdom. And injuries teach you by giving you perspective.
Many think Yoga should never hurt unless you are doing something wrong. They also think that Yoga only leads to bliss and peace and never to any negative feelings / situations.
This couldn’t be further away from the truth.
Our Yoga practice reflects life and life is unpredictable and full of surprises. Not all of those are pleasant. Injuries, accidents and pain are part of life and can also happen during Yoga, in the same way they can happen during our daily life, out of the blue.
And like anything in life, they are only “negative” if we decide to label them as such. If we keep an open mind there is so much we can learn, not just about the injury itself, but also about ourselves.
Below are some of the most valuable lessons I learned from over a decade of practicing, falling, and standing up again.
1. The body has a tremendous capacity for self-healing
When I first started practicing, I had minor pains and injuries very often. This was normal as my body was slowly adjusting to the practice and going through deep transformation.
I know this now but I didn’t know it back then. Whenever I would feel pain or a discomfort I could not explain, I would call my osteopath, chiropractor or massage therapist. I wanted the pain to go away immediately. More than this – I wanted answers. I wanted to know why the pain was there. In the absence of a clear response I would get mad, frustrated and start catastrophizing. I always expected the worst case scenario to materialize.
It took me many years to learn to trust my own body with healing itself. I thought I had to interfere and fix things. But most of the time this was not necessary.
Our body is wiser than our mind and knows exactly what to do and how to adjust. All it needs is for us to listen, give it time and not interfere too much. Yoga practice - especially Ashtanga - is a very powerful practice with a great healing potential. It will slowly take care of most imbalances due to lifestyle and make us strong again.
So the occasional pain here and there, even small injuries, should not be alarming. In most cases they will resolve themselves within a couple of days or weeks. Too much interference, too many treatments and manipulations often have the opposite effect. They can disrupt the body’s energy and even aggravate symptoms.
2. There is always something you can do
I remember I used to freak out about the most minor things because I worried I wouldn’t be able to practice. I love asana practice so much, that the mere thought of not being able to do it would drive me crazy. I just didn’t know how to live without it.
Not once were my paralyzing fears founded in reality. And this is yet another proof of how the mind can be our worst enemy by worrying too much and distorting reality.
With pain or injury I often had to modify my practice for a few days or weeks. It could be that I had to omit a few asanas. But never, not once, did I find myself incapacitated or bedridden as I thought I would be. There was always a portion of the practice I could do.
The rule is simple: if it hurts, either don’t do it or modify it. Do a lighter version of the pose until you heal and build strength again. All the rest, you can do. Your body won’t benefit from not moving at all and lying in bed the whole day. Practicing, moving the energy through the body and breathing consciously helps with healing more than anything.
The other thing I learned is that asanas don’t go anywhere. Even if you don’t do them for a while, they are still there. Muscle memory is a wonderful thing and proves once again that the human body is nothing less than a brilliant powerhouse.
3. You can’t control everything
Because I didn’t want to get injured (and as a result be exposed to my fears), I was always overly cautious in my approach to the practice. And this is a good thing, except that it doesn’t guarantee nothing bad will ever happen. I used to be mad at myself because I thought I was doing something wrong. And sometimes I did. We all make mistakes, especially at the beginning.
But injury and pain do not always result from our actions. Sometimes things happen for no apparent reason. For most of my injuries, I never really figured out the cause. This tortured me more than the injuries themselves. I didn’t want to relinquish the control I thought I had over how my body responded at any given time.
It took me a while to understand that many things are outside our control. That it’s ok not to know and to simply accept and move on. The need to know why things happen was something I had to learn to overcome. Practice helped me with this much more than anything else.
4. When you’re forced to slow down, it’s because you probably need to
Not every injury has a reason, but the reason for many injuries is bodily fatigue. When the body is tired from practice, bad quality of sleep, too much work or a combination of those, injury can happen. This type of injury happens to people who - just like me - don’t know how to slow down and are overly ambitious. Wanting to do too much of everything might feel rewarding for the mind but undermines the body.
These injuries showed me that slowing down and taking rest is not something I should be ashamed of. For many years, I never took two rest days in a row. I was afraid I would get stiff. The truth is that I didn’t know how to deal with the extra rest.
To admit that we need to slow down, do less and honor our body’s need to rest and recharge, is to accept our vulnerability. Ashtanga practice appeals to people who like to feel like superheroes, so this is one of the most difficult things to let go of.
5. “Injuries” bring to the surface underlying issues that need to be addressed
More often than not, Yoga itself is not the cause of pain. The issues we find ourselves facing don’t happen because of the practice. They preexist and practice just brings them to our attention.
I’ll give you an example: one day a few years back, my pelvis got so locked up on one side, that I could barely get up from bed or bend over to load the dishwasher. After thorough investigation, it turned out it was a classic case of Sacroiliac (SI) joint dysfunction because of my scoliosis and my tilted pelvis.
This is something that preexisted, because of how my body is constructed. Through practice I had the opportunity to work on making the two sides of my pelvis more symmetrical and my body more balanced. No other pain episodes occurred since then.
This is another reason to be grateful for our Yoga practice. If it wouldn’t be for it, these imbalances would go unnoticed for years, until they started creating many issues in older age. But then it is much more difficult to address them. The sooner we realize our weaknesses, the more chances we have to turn them into strengths.
6. Conclusion: Nothing lasts forever - a lesson in impermanence
We were designed to always want to prolong pleasure and avoid pain. When pleasure comes, we do everything in our power to make it last forever. When pain comes, we are so consumed in the effort to make it go away, that we forget that eventually it will, on its own.
Every single time I was injured or in pain, it felt as if I was stuck in this situation forever. I couldn’t see any light until the moment the pain started to fade away. To this day, I still need to remind myself that this too shall pass, as nothing in the realm of our material world is made to last.
Without pain there is no appreciation for pleasure and joy. Without disease, health is being taken for granted. Pain is part of life and the sooner we embrace it the less suffering we will inflict on ourselves.
My grandfather, one of the greatest “yogis” I know - even though he never practiced - used to say: “Pain and disease are part of life. They come and they go.”
And so the next time you find yourself in the midst of pain, remember that it is not forever - and that with patience, self-love, and a willingness to learn from your experiences, you can emerge stronger, wiser, and more resilient.
