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Asking about injuries in a yoga class — is it necessary, or is there a better way? Michael talks it through this week.
He suggests offering modifications and cues to avoid potential discomfort, rather than asking about injuries directly.
He furthermore talks about variations to accommodate challenge. The goal is to take care of the entire class without fixating on individual injuries, but to observe students’ needs. Michael offers an example by addressing lower back sensitivity in yoga poses.
The IN Movement Podcast was formerly the Going Pro Yoga Podcast — and before that, the Yoga Teacher Evolution Podcast and the Rat Race Rebellion Podcast. Same mission, evolved name.
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And if you teach in a way like this throughout an entire yoga class, where you're teaching to all levels, you're basically teaching to anyone who might be new and anyone who might want, you know, more challenging variations.
This is how you can take care of the entire room with not even necessarily knowing about anyone's injuries. Welcome to the Going Pro Yoga Podcast. If you love yoga as much as I do, then this podcast is for you. We talk all things yoga related for teachers in order to supplement and complement and even support after a 200 hour Yoga teacher training.
Or if you've never done a training before, this podcast is all about just learning more about yoga in an authentic way. Together with Paul Tioto and Byron De Marseille, we put together this podcast to provide you with a free resource to learn more about yoga. Whether you want to share yoga or teach yoga or just practice yoga, this podcast is talking all things yoga related. And we're trying to talk from the teacher's perspective and also the student's perspective
to make sure we get a full 360° angle on what yoga is all about and how it's evolved in the modern world. Welcome to our podcast. Hello, and welcome back to the Going Pro Yoga Podcast. Michael here. And today is a solo episode, shorter episode.
We're going to talk about injuries, injuries in yoga. But more specifically, do we talk about injuries in yoga? Do we ask the questions? Hey, does anyone have any injuries today? So this is something that has come up in a couple trainings recently as a point of discussion and I thought it would be a great time to do a podcast about it. Just talking about whether or not it's good or bad, quote UN quote good or bad, to talk about injuries or ask your students or the people taking your class
about injuries. So let's talk about it from a general perspective to begin. And that is, generally speaking, if we are teaching yoga class, Let's just talk about what actually happens. Teaching a yoga class. People are coming into the room. You know, they're thinking about I'm going to do a workout, I'm going to stretch a little bit, maybe I understand that, you know, there's some breathing, maybe there's some meditation or something like this, right?
They're coming in. Maybe there's a little bit of a social thing happening. And maybe some people are new, right? Some people are new. They're coming in. They don't really know anyone. They're just like, oh, this is yoga thing.
I'm not really sure what it's about, but like, I'm excited to like, learn more about it by just practicing when we start to bring in the question. OK. So hello everyone. Good morning. How are you? Does anyone have any injuries today that I should know about? So when we asked this question, what do you think is going to happen for the people who are listening to that question? Well, the answer is, is they're going to start to think about their injuries, right?
Obviously the question was asked, so they're going to start to think like, oh, do I have any injuries that are important at the teacher should know about. Now, generally speaking, you know, if there's something that is quite severe of a of an injury, I would assume chances are that student, the student didn't come actually to class. You know, for them to actually show up and know that they're about to participate at an exercise class, so to speak, that they came in willingly
knowing that that there's going to be some movement and whatever injury or whatever, you know, sensitive parts of their body that it might be dealing with in this moment. Wasn't it wasn't a concern or wasn't a problem for them to actually enter the class if they didn't bring it up to you before actually beginning the class. I would also say it's not something that's top of their mind, right?
It's not a big concern for them, top of their mind. If it was something that was that, they probably would have brought it up before that. So now that the questions been asked to the students, they're thinking, OK, So what injuries do I have? They're probably doing a little body scan. Like is there something?
So even if there's like a little niggle, little niggle, even if there is something small, like the wrists are a bit sore, maybe my knee is, you know, I woke up and my knee was a little bit sore this morning or my back's a little bit sore this morning.
Now the student or students are thinking about that injury and that now becomes the focus for them. It's now top of mind and so that's something to be considered. Is that what you want to do when you begin the yoga class? Do you want your students to be focusing on their injuries, to be thinking about their injuries? Or do you want them to be focusing on, for example, their breath or going inward or connecting to themselves or relaxing their body?
No tapping into their parasympathetic nervous system versus actually thinking and worrying about the injuries that was just brought up in the beginning of class. So this is just something to, you know, consider for yourself and answer the question for yourself, is that important to you? Now that's just an in general conversation. At least this is my perspective on it. I mean, spoiler alert, I don't typically ask that question in a yoga class, you know, and being
one of the most qualified people to ask that question and then support the people in the room about their injuries, I again, I don't do that. But it is really important to make sure we take care of our students, isn't it?
We want to make sure that we are teaching in such a way that if someone does have any slight injuries or discomforts that we can accommodate that. So before we go into that conversation, let's just talk about some other types of situations. So like small groups, small groups, small classes versus big classes, so small classes.
When you first start teaching, chances are you're going to be teaching anywhere from, you know, one to, let's say 7-8 people, maybe 10 people. And at the beginning of your yoga teaching career, it's a great time to actually start to build relationships with your students.
You know, building a community, building a reputation of someone who actually is attentive and wants to, you know, support the people that are coming to the class. So in those types of situations where it's a smaller number of people actually think it might be pretty beneficial to ask that question personally. But again, it's up to you because of what we just talked about before.
But how now that would be top of mind for people. However, you know, let's just say there's one person in class or two people in class, that's a great thing to just to kind of check in. You know, is anybody dealing with any kind of sensitivities today that I should know about?
Right. Maybe someone says, oh, my knee's been bothering me, Oh my, you know, my shoulder, my wrist or something. OK Now you can probably more easily remember who is dealing with what versus a larger class. Let's say there's now 15 people, 20 people, And then you ask that question, let's say 30 people, and then you ask that question, Does anyone have any injuries? And then you have 6-7 hands go up and they're all saying my knee, my shoulder, my wrist, my
back, my foot, my toe, my pinky, right, my neck. Now you have to be like, Oh my God, oh, am I going to remember all this? Right. So it becomes a bit of an overwhelming situation as their class starts to grow and also very difficult to live up to the expectation of, oh, now the teacher is going to know about my injury, so they're going to take care of me throughout the class, which is a great thing that you want your students to be aware of. But now is the conversation of
how are you going to teach differently, knowing that somebody has, you know, some of these discomforts or slight pains possibly in certain areas of their body? So I mean there, there might be some ways that we teach differently, OK. But what I would start with before we get into that is when we're teaching yoga, ideally, we've learned in a way that teaching yoga, we provide options, options for modifications or possibly variations. So let's just talk about
modifications and variations for a second. So typically modifications are indicating a change of the posture or possibly a different posture or asana that is going to be more accessible or easier for the student to do. OK, so for example instead of doing you know plank, you could do a plank with your knees down right for example.
Or even tabletop would be even an easier modification versus a variation of variation is typically seen more as something that's more. It's a different style, but it could be equally or slightly more challenging of a pose.
So let's just use the plank example again. So we can make the plank harder by lifting 1 foot off the ground and hovering it off the ground, and then maybe even harder. Then you lift the opposite hand across, so you lift your right foot off the ground, then you lift your left hand off the ground. So you're kind of loading a little bit. That would make the pose a lot more challenging, right? That'd be considered like a variation, for example. So when it comes to teaching
yoga poses, it's really important to offer modifications and variations for poses depending on what the risk or what the challenge in the body a particular pose might be providing. So for example, as we've been learning yoga poses, there are certain yoga poses that would can possibly contribute to some. You know, there's like there's like not high risk. I don't know why I want to say this. There's there's typical behaviors that people will do in certain poses that could result
in, you know, discomforts in the body. OK. So like lower back pain is one of the most common sensitivities in people's bodies or injuries, let's just say. So in a lot of situations where there might be someone who is feeling lower back pain, hopefully that hopefully you have been trained in such a way to know when those lower back pain sensitivities might be aggravated. And I'll give you some examples.
If you haven't learned that. If you studied with me, then you definitely learned that. So if you, if you, if you're wondering and you're like, do I know this. Yes. If you learned it from me, you know it. OK, Now I know that not everyone has studied with me, but I'm assuming that whoever you did study with, you probably learned certain elements of, you know, these types of things. But for example, rounding of the lower back, So a rounding of the lower back, let's say in a
utanasana forward fold, standing forward fold or even a seated forward fold would be an example of this rounding of the lower back causing a certain pressure on the lower back, which obviously if there's a sensitivity there, wouldn't feel so good, right? So giving permission to relieve some of that pressure, there's a couple ways you can do that.
Bending the knees, which would actually release the pelvis because of the tightness of the hamstrings, which would allow the pelvis to roll forward a little bit more to get more length in the spine right. And to take that rounding out of the lower back, which would then take out some of that lower back discomfort or sensitivity. And then there's other things as well, Different poses, I mean down dog would be another example, similar, similar conversation, any rounding in
the lower back, tightness in the body, you know, someone's legs are really, really straight and there's this kind of puffing of their lower back, Same thing, you know, bend the knees, release the pelvis, allow the hamstrings to kind of release as well, which would allow you to find length in the downward facing dog. These are the, these are the common ones. These are the ones that I usually start with. And then any type of seated forward folds would be similar examples where the lower back
would be, you know, possibly a little bit more, a little bit more stress or pressure there. And these seated forward folds, same conversation as the down dock and the standing forward fold. Now if someone has sensitive lower back and these positions, this rounding of the lower back is something that can be addressed very simply in certain poses by providing modifications or just cues to allow people to, you know release certain tightness.
The other thing would be is to to to support that area of the body, so actually engaging using muscles. So again lower back pain since it's one of the more common ones. It would be things like you know, keeping the belly engaged, you know the lower abdominals lifting up slightly or the navel drawing towards the spine.
This would be what we would call the pelvic loop, the spirals of energy, but ultimately stabilizing the pelvis, all right, stabilizing the core, which is generally going to provide stability for the lower back and usually maintain some sort of neutral position of the spine, natural curvature of the spine. This is going to be very supportive to lower back sensitivity, lower back pain.
So you don't need to necessarily know if someone has lower back sensitivity or lower back pain to be able to accommodate those needs. So hopefully this is making sense. You know, if you, if you, if you like. I said if you studied with me, I'm sure you're understanding this.
But you know, you don't need to ask the questions of if someone has injuries. Because if you're teaching in such a way to be inclusive to understand that, you know, a lot of people do have lower back sensitivity. So you could just assume that someone in the class does, especially if it's a big class, you know.
So if it's a big class, you can just assume someone has lower back sensitivity. So as you're cueing one of these poses, you can say, OK, you know, bend the knees and focus on lengthening in the spine to minimize any pressure on the lower back or to or to protect the lower back or something like this. Right.
So then the person in the room who, you know, they're not thinking about their injuries, but they're thinking, yeah, I do have a little bit of a sensitive lower back, they're going to listen to that cue and that instruction a little bit more specifically, right? Plus they're going to help.
They're going to feel seen and heard a little bit as well. So there are many different ways you can do that for different parts of the body as well, if we were talking about the knees and the shoulders or the wrists. So what I'm trying to say is, if you are going to ask the question about injuries before yoga class, consider the size of the group, the small groups versus big groups. If it's a small group, great.
You know, that's going to help people feel like, oh, this teacher really cares. You know, they're going to pay a little bit more attention to me, which you can totally do in a smaller group because you'll be able to remember specifically who said what in which area of their body was a little bit more sensitive. So that's great.
You'll build a bit more relationship with these people. They'll start to come back to your class. Your class will start to grow amazing. Then all of a sudden this works really well. And then you have, you know, 15202530 people now starting to come to your class. And it'd be a lot more difficult to ask that question and actually remember genuinely who said what you know. And to be honest, people aren't stupid. You know, you ask that question in a group of 30 people and, you know, a bunch of people put
their hands up and you're just kind of nodding along. OK, knee problem, KK, shoulder problem. OK, wrist problem, lower back problem. They're going to look at you like you. You're not going to remember any of that. You know, because you're not. It's too many people.
There's too many things to remember in such a big group. And like, you know, you, unless you know everyone's face already because they're regulars, you know, that would be a different situation if they're regulars and they come back all the time because then you could associate, Oh yes, I know this person. But if new people are giving you new information, it's going to be really hard to keep up with all that new information, isn't it?
So I mean, listen, if you're someone who wants to ask these questions, that's totally fine. Just just trying to highlight some of the truths behind the conversation of asking injuries in a yoga class. So what I do or what is something that I think is the best approach, in my opinion, is that if you don't necessarily ask about people's injuries, so you're not bringing it up into the top of their mind.
So they're not thinking about all my injury. You know, like, oh, is this going to be a problem in yoga? Now all of a sudden, you know, they're focused on that versus teaching your yoga classes at all yoga classes in such a way to be able to monitor the room, first of all.
So if you see anyone looks like they're struggling or they're having a hard time where they look uncomfortable, you know, in a pose that might be slightly more of a, you know, you know, for example, the the rounding of the lower pack, but that might be a little bit more uncomfortable for them.
You know, I'm not talking about uncomfortable from like holding plate right or holding chair pose, because those, those discomforts are safe, right? But maybe like twisting or, you know, sitting on the knees and they look like they're uncomfortable sitting on their knees.
This is the time to actually try to take care of those people because then you can genuinely go over to them and, you know, give them a modification. Give them something to make the pose easier, a little bit more accessible, so that they're feeling more comfortable, right. That attentive care can happen in the moment. Now, when you're teaching the class overall, like I said, if there's, you know, 2025 thirty people, it's always good to just assume that someone in the class
is going to need the cues for those modifications. So if you learn modifications from your teachers on ways to help support people, in particular postures and not assume that everybody can handle the the full, full expression of a yoga pose, And, you know, you don't go directly to the harder variations, but you assume there's someone in the class that's going to need the modification, it's great to just offer it to the whole room because then the person that
needs it will take it possibly. Right. And you don't need to know about their particular injury at the beginning of class in order to do that. So if throughout the entire yoga class you're considering. Oh, OK well, you know, down dog, some people roll around the lower back. Oh, I see this person rounding the lower back. All right.
You bend your knees and really focus on prioritizing length of the spine. Now that person made that adjustment. Maybe you're sitting on you're sitting on your knees in Vajrasana or Thunderbolt pose which is an opening posture, right?
You can start like that and you can say, hey come to come, come to a seated position Vajrasana. Now if this if this pose is uncomfortable for you, you can sit cross legged or you can sit on a block, boom. Anyone that has sensitive knees or someone who doesn't feel comfortable in that pose because of, you know, whatever type of tightness in their ankles, possibly. Now they have a modification to be able to deal with any sensitivities or discomforts
they have in their body, right? And if you teach in a way like this throughout an entire yoga class where you're teaching to all levels, you're basically teaching to anyone who might be new and anyone who might want, you know, more challenging variations. This is how you can take care of the entire world with not even necessarily knowing about anyone's injuries, right? And this is something that I do.
This is something that Paul does, something that Byron does. A lot of our students do. If you're one of our students, you're probably already doing this. And I think it's a great strategy to help make sure that the room is not focusing on their injuries, but they're still being taken care of and they're feeling that care.
Because of the modifications that are being offered throughout the yoga class. So this is basically how most of us in our school feels about asking about injuries in the yoga class, particularly at the beginning. Unless you know you have your own style in the way that you do it and it works for you, that's great.
You don't, don't, you don't need to change what you're doing. So as a summary, I will say generally speaking, you know, you don't have to ask people about their injuries. You know, if you think it's something that you need to do and it makes you a better yoga teacher, it doesn't necessarily do that. But what does make you a good yoga teacher is just being attentive to people's needs, right? And you don't necessarily need to know about every single injury that people have in order
to tend to their needs. You just need to pay attention to, which actually means sometimes, you know, looking at them, like pay attention to them. So when you're actually teaching the class, you're not demoing the entire class. So you can actually have eyes around the room to see, is anyone uncomfortable, Does anyone look like they need a modification or they need some props or something to be able to, you know, support whatever type of discomforts they might have in their body?
That's going to go much further, I would say. And it's going to be received much better as well because it's kind of more of a one-on-one like, oh, this person's actually like cares. They notice. You know, they notice at least that that's, you know, my opinion on it. So you guys can take take for what you want from this episode. Hopefully there's something valuable here for you. Otherwise, thank you so much for listening. I appreciate you.
I hope you had a great 2023. Now it's 2024 and you know, setting some goals for the year, vision board, whatever type of thing that you like to do. And I'll also ask and request that if you haven't done so already, it would be super, super supportive to give us a star review on either Spotify or Apple podcast just to support this podcast.
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