Yoga Injury Prevention: Why Experienced Yogis Still Get Hurt

0:00 One of the important things to know, if you haven't heard me, say it before, is that about 30% of people who practice yoga do get injured at some point in time in their life and that could be either a new injury, which is around 10 percent or around, 20% is aggravating or exacerbating an old injury.

0:19 Welcome to the going pro yoga podcast, nugget series. My name is Michael Henry, and I'm Byron de Marseille and he's short 15 minute episodes. We're going to be answering some of the most common questions in the yoga industry.

0:31 So you can walk away with the answers in a short period of time. That's right. Michael with each topic, that we choose will be discussing it from two different perspectives, the teacher, and the student. I'll be approaching these questions as a physiotherapist or physical therapist with over 10 years experience, treating some of the most common and complex injuries.

0:49 And my guidance will be from the perspective of having taught 7000 classes, roughly 10,000 hours over 10 years. Welcome to our podcast. Yo, yo, yo, what's up? Everybody? Welcome to the going pro, yoga podcasts. My name is Michael Henry, with an. I not a y and across the table from me. I have mr.

1:10 Byron de Marseille. How do you do? How do you do? How do I don't, is the question? How do you don't thanks everyone for joining us today. We are talking about how and why, and how to prevent or support? Why yoga teachers still get injured even though, you know, their yoga teachers, why is it?

1:32 Why is that still happening? Why do I still get injured as a yoga teacher? What is Byron still, get injured as yoga teacher? If your yoga teacher? Or if you're not, you've probably been injured to some degree with regards to, or related to yoga, whether you know, it or not. And just before we start to dive into this topic, one of the important things to know, if you haven't heard me, say it before, is that about 30% of people who practice yoga do get injured at some, It in time, in their life

1:58 and that could be either a new injury, which is around 10% or around. 20% is aggravating or exacerbating an old injury. So you would think okay, yoga teachers, they go do a training, you know, they get a little bit more experience.

2:14 They understand the practice more. They should be probably better equipped to not get injured, right, you know, even myself, I have background Beyond just that and I would still potentially get injured from practicing yoga or Or something along those lines.

2:28 So why does that happen? That is the question? Well, I'm going to go ahead and just dive into this topic because it's something I've become passionate about because I have injuries and its really relatable. So the first thing that comes to mind is a lesson that I've learned and I think a lot of us have learned and many have not and we know people who have not learned this lesson and that's you know, if something is in Period, look into the wild, look

2:58 at primitive life. And if, if an animal gets, if a deer gets hit by a car and it's not necessary going to kill it, it goes in lays down until it heals and then it goes back to its life. So it has a strategy of reserving preserving energy. Prana as we call it and through that preservation of energy, they heal themselves.

3:22 So the first thing that comes to mind is that we're overdoing it. We're thinking that we need to Stretch something, or touch it, or massage it, whatever the case is because we've been trained to do to fix. Like you said, how do you do?

3:37 How do you don't? Maybe you don't need to mess with it for a minute? Obviously, you have to consider your own self. Know yourself, feel out the injury. Look at both sides of it experiment. Notice how you feel after certain activities, certain know, even if it's acupuncture?

3:55 Something like That's notice how you feel after a yoga class and massage and that's where I would start with this. How about you Michael? Yeah, and in the part of the you said about, well, I'm not necessary, not being patient, but human nature, is that we like that instant gratification of things to be fixed quicker or healed faster.

4:15 Yeah, and that's why we go to. People are specialists in hope that they can, like, sort us out fairly quickly. Yes, and while sometimes that can be true, where you can get, Get an acceleration towards your healing process.

4:28 Generally speaking the body as amazing it is and it can regenerate and heal itself, it requires time. So I really like the example, use of the deer where they basically just chill until they're back on their feet. Right? We don't do that as humans.

4:41 We push ourselves. We say. Oh, yeah. It's going to, he'll be fine. I'll have some resilience. I got some masculine energy. I'm just going to go go go and keep going, and push and push. And that's the society that we were created.

4:50 In 2000, necessarily individual a unique fact of yoga teachers itself. So that's just something that we need to deal with as being humans on this Earth, that go go and then instant gratification of being healed quickly. So a lot of yoga teachers that have come to me with injuries.

5:07 That's usually the case is that they'll have some sort of wrist injury, or shoulder injury and almost all the time. I have to tell them what you need to take a break. You need to rest. You need to stop doing handstands, you know, you just stop putting pressure and strain on that area. And it's the question is always looking for how long depends depends on how well, you.

5:26 Avoid aggravation of that injury and the example, or the metaphor that I like to think about is very simply if you have a scratch on your arm, or you have a cut on your arm. It's not going to heal very quickly. If you keep pitching at it, you keep scratching it, you keep interrupting the healing process.

5:41 You, you know, gets itchy. You rub it. Yuri brush up against things. Now, all of a sudden it's not going to go through that whole hearing process is going to take longer. Whereas, if you didn't touch it, you left it alone. You let it do its thing.

5:51 It's going to heal a heck of a lot faster. It's the same principles that applies to any joint injuries that Lot of us face when we practice yoga, right? Remind me of the actual title of this there were talking about Why is it so common or why is it that yoga teachers still get injured? Thank you.

6:10 And how do we help them and prevent them from re-injuring themselves, or just taking better care of themselves so that they can continue to do what they do. Right? Well, that means makes me want to talk about neural programming or just conditioning in general because this might be the reason why people can continue to do the same shit over and over and over without really.

6:35 Seeking finding the result that they were seeking. So then I'm going to go just take that a little deeper. So if programming or conditioning over years of Habitual Perpetual, I guess you could say without malicious intent but Behavior, that's not helping.

6:54 Then how does that happen? And I believe it's the rigidity of people in a we are just we've if we find some resistance somewhere we might Not be aware of it, but it's pushing up against our ego and it's challenging us to a degree.

7:09 Like wait, who am I without chaturanga? And yoga? Who am I? Like, I've only experienced, that's my favorite pose. You know, I'm just speaking to like I left chaturanga for instance. But if my wrist or my shoulder was an issue. Should I be doing it?

7:22 Well, I'll tell you from experience. I've done it. And does it help the injury. No, doesn't. What does help? It is usually time time seems to help with the most Bodywork does seem to Help. My wrist does Bodywork. Help my spine injuries in my lower back.

7:39 Mentioned that on several podcasts? No, it didn't it? Depend on the timing. I should save the massage, it would help temporarily if I was just going to get a massage spontaneously, but if I was like, oh my gosh, I'm hurt. I gotta go.

7:54 Get rubbed, and then it would be worse than next day. So the rigidity of people going with the flow. Think that's massive. Just know that this is a journey. It's part of you right now. And this is, this is kind of the cycle that we need to go through in this life to learn a lesson and figure it out instead of just wishing that it would go away except it know that it's here. And if you look at it and see it that way, then your relationship with pain will be different.

8:26 It will be more rewarding. I should say might sound a little confusing for those of you who haven't quite turned. Corner with your relationship with pain. And I know this because I was there and I've seen others go through it. You can kick and scream all you want, but you know, at a certain point, you are, this is your journey. This is your journey to figure out. So those are the things that kind of come up when I start to think about why we keep doing

8:52 it. Hmm. Yeah, and what I heard was a little bit of well, I heard a lot of things but the thing that kind of spoke to me is that just our ego. So, walking into the class or just saying going into your yoga practice and And for me, it's like, you know, I got some garlic, some some good arm, balances that I've developed over the last few months that I've just kind of come through. So obviously, you know, you do some arm balances. It looks kind of cool, you feel

9:14 strong, your egos going to like that. Now, all of a sudden I'm walking into class and I have a shoulder injury or a wrist injury, and part of me is like, ah, but like those aren't balances or part of who I am. It's part of my yoga. And if I can't do those that, I'm not practicing yoga. It's like, well, that's not true. It's like I should go to yoga anyway and just practice for all the other good.

9:34 And that yoga can provide for me not just the fact that I can do an arm balance, right? So if you think you're going to go to yoga class and do less and get less out of it than that's not true. If anything sometimes doing less you get a lot more and if that allows your body to heal and it gives you that patient time for that scratch to go through its regenerative process then fantastic.

9:55 You're going to be better off for it. It's like we're it's back to the conditioning, right? It's like, oh I'm going to feel this way if I eat this food. Well, if you eat that food, 12 times in a row for meals, you're going to feel differently. So all of a sudden your conditioning, you've learned a lesson that way we probably all had to learn that lesson but we still have our comfort food and we still have our things like in yoga that make us feel adequate

10:18 like we're practicing. So, here's my advice. I'm going to encourage each and every one of you that's listening to this podcast and anybody I can influence in any way about this topic, to let your practice shift. This is the universe speaking to you.

10:34 This is God, you know, whoever that is to you pay giving you signs. It's a sign. How can you practice yoga now without your fancy attached arm, balance that you can do so wonderfully, but then all of a sudden you can't is that yoga. So look at it like that.

10:52 Yoga is Union but the nature of how to Achieve Union, how do you get there? And that's the equation that we wake up every day and have to solve right? It's a it's an ongoing equation. It's like you wake up. New equation equals Union at the end.

11:16 How do you change the variables? That just came up? I like that. Yeah, that's good. That's good. And the word that came to mind to me and I think I say this right is a party Haggadah, which is an attachment. Yes. If you start to get attached to the way that you practice or the way, you can do certain poses moves, whatever.

11:35 However, whatever that attachment is, to the yoga practice. And that, that thing gets taken away from you temporarily because of an injury. Like how does that land on you? How does that affect you does that tear you down? Or is it just like, okay.

11:48 I'm going to, I'm going to change my direction. I'm going to go a different way. I'm going to take a different route, maybe temporarily, maybe permanently and being okay with that and recognizing that you don't necessarily.

11:59 Uh, Sara Lee need to be all one thing or absolute, you can change and shift, people change and shift all the time. And even though some people don't like it or it's uncomfortable. Sometimes you never know, maybe that other direction that shortcut can lean to even better things. And you don't even know what that is until you walk the path. Yes, and if you heard that word non-attachment and it rang some sort of I guess, friction, or trauma came up. It's not the kind of

12:28 non-attachment where Don't care. Okay, it's it's not unattached. It's non-attachment. So a pair of growl ha is all about like Michael said, basically, but it's all about releasing the emotional, the emotional energy around a certain topic that way. It doesn't influence you and your decision making as much doesn't mean you don't care.

12:59 You can absolutely care about each and every one of your students. But understand that at certain points, it's going to be smart to direct your energy where you want it to go. Yeah, so it's kind of like stoicism in a way or I mean it's being stoic.

13:16 It's kind of like not allowing not be careful with my words here. Jokes tricky. Yeah, so excited. Facial thing to it to me in the other thing that came up and maybe it's a combination of both. Those things is just reacting versus responding. Like are you allowing yourself some time and patience to be able to respond or is there a reaction going on? So, ultimately, the meditation is doing this for us. If you sit in meditation, maybe I'm hoping That's where the shift goes for people is.

13:42 Okay. I can't do physical yoga. I'm going to meditate. Hmm. What does that look like? Oh, wait, all the sudden. I'm realizing sitting in meditation. I'm really removing relieving softening. That emotional Discord around a specific, shutter unga that I mastered that I can't do. And obviously, I don't care.

14:02 All right. So yeah, I think it's really important to let it shift. Let you practice shift. Yoga doesn't have to be Western. Crazy Vinyasa all the time. If that's speaking to you, of course, not for everyone. That's listening. Yeah.

14:17 So one thing that came to me in this will probably be the last piece as we're coming towards the end of this episode and it's a bigger topic but the the idea of emotion being trapped in the body and this is going to be on mild cases of let's just say like, mild trauma. So if you have an injury Some sort of traumatic, possibly injury when you're younger.

14:36 There's usually an emotional Association to that injury. That can be stored in the body now, even though we're older and adults and, you know, mature, some of us and yoga teachers, having an injury and having emotional, having some sort of emotional aspect, be a part of that injury can still cause us to store that emotion in that body part.

14:57 Let's just say, so if you injure something and you have some undesirable Oceans that kind of surround that injury because you're frustrated that you can't do this thing or you're upset or you're angry. And those emotions aren't necessarily felt reflected meditated on properly.

15:14 They might be suppressed, pushed, and stored in the same area of the body that you injured. Therefore making it a little bit more challenging to recover and heal from now. This is going a little bit more to the energetics of the whole thing, but it's true and it's it happens. The body does store emotional energy that is not processed or Managed well, and it's stored energy is to touch on that and we're almost done.

15:36 But that stored energy comes out provoked as a accelerated emotion, so it could be like, I'm going to do chaturanga, even better even harder, you know, it could come out as I'm even worse. I'm depressed now because I'm so in, my worth is, so my self-worth is so low, so that accelerated motion gets kind of dangerous.

15:55 So I love this topic. So I know we need to save it for another time. That's a big topic and since we're coming to the end, we'll we'll leave it at that. You guys can percolate with that one. And perfect opportunity to sign off.

16:04 And say, if there's anything that kind of stuck out or you feel like this was an unfinished business podcast because we talked about a lot of great things. At least, I think we did, you can reach out to us like always send us a voice note on the website or you can set his up with a DM email, All That Jazz. Otherwise Byron anything else you want to add before we I love you guys so much.

16:26 Yeah. We love you, guys. We were just talking about before this episode, how much we appreciate the fact that there's people that listen to us talk in their ear for 15 minutes at a time. We think it's super cool. Yes. Keep sending in the messages, any requests all that beautiful stuff, and we'll even cite your messages and questions if you want. Of course.

16:49 Cool. Alright. Thanks so much again, and we will see you next time. Take care.