Pain

Pain issues and injuries in yoga

This page is all about trying to understand the things that can help prevent or reduce the risk of getting an injury or pain and what to do if you get one. It’s not just about being broken but also about good ways of practicing, engaging, aligning and balancing. Lots of these posts have been spread across the website so hopefully with everything in one place you can learn and research what will be useful for you. It’s fair to…

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Healthy Wrists

Healthy Wrists Melanie Cooper

Wrist pain can be an issue for a number of yoga students and office workers. Melanie Cooper demonstrates in this video some great exercises for keeping the wrists strong, mobile and hopefully injury free.

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Interpertation of pain and injury in context of Ashtanga Yoga practice

System thinking pain and yoga injury

Foreword from Stu Girling First of all I want to say that I really love the way Iain writes and that he has the conviction to always say exactly what he is thinking. For this particular post I felt it was necessary to put a little bit from me up front as the views put forward are so opposite to mine. So why am I posting it you may ask. Well the answer is very simple. As a resource site…

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Dark Night of the Meniscus

Knee flexed anterior

Knee injuries are unfortunately too common with yoga practitioners. Karen Kirkness explains some of what might be going on with meniscus tears and how to prevent it. So many yogis are dealing with knee issues. I’ve heard these maladies described as: clunky, dodgy, sore, noisy, tight, overstretched, tender, and painful. One of the common sources of these sensations is the meniscus. The meniscus of the knee is a fibrocartilaginous disc whose name is derived from the Greek “meniskos” or crescent, for its crescent-shaped appearance on the tibial plateau.

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Becoming Animal: Cultivation of Organic Intelligence

Symbiotic by Edward Foster

Using Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga and Meditation as Embodiment Practices for the Cultivation of Organic Intelligence A practitioner in my Mysore program recently asked me: “If one side of a posture is more open than the other, and I feel like I can keep going deeper in the more open side, should I hold back to try to even it out with the less open side?” My response drew from what I feel is one of the most beautiful aspects of…

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Starting Third Series: Reflections on an 11 year relationship

Iain Grysak Visvamitrasana

Starting with Advanced A I first began to practice the third series (Advanced A) of the Ashtanga Vinyasa system in early 2005, shortly after relocating to Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory of Northern Canada. I had learned the primary and intermediate series from Mark Darby in Montreal the year before, and following a period of travel and then settling in a very remote and isolated corner of the world, I was far away from anyone who could offer me guidance…

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You Stop There, Part 2: Reflections on my second trip in Mysore

Iain Grysak Karandavasana

I recently completed my second three month trip practicing with Sharath Jois at the KPJAYI in Mysore. Last year I wrote two blog posts about my first trip, “A New Chapter” and “You Stop There”. These articles expressed my perspective of the experience of starting over as a beginner with Sharath, after having had a daily Ashtanga practice for 12 years

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What’s the Problem with Your Shoulder?

Shoulder Arm Balance

Our shoulder is a precision instrument that simultaneously has a vast scope in its range of motion. With pinpoint precision we can synchronise our shoulder muscles to maneuver our arm to point our finger precisely at our object of choice – an action that requires the coordinated recruitment of numerous muscles that surround our shoulder joint like a clock.

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Putting the Curve Back in Your Neck (Saving Your Neck 3)

Monica Gauci parsva janushirsasana

Although we usually think and talk about muscles as being weak or strong, closer to the truth is that muscles are usually inhibited or facilitated, respectively. Inhibition is when neural input (from our nervous system) to the muscle has been down-regulated. Facilitation is the opposite, when neural input to a muscle is excessive or up-regulated. Facilitated muscles are often those muscles compensating for the loss of input into a movement pattern that should come from the muscle that is inhibited.

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You Were Born to Gaze at the Stars (Saving Your Neck 2)

Cervical spine

In Part 1 we looked at some of the biomechanics of neck problems and especially how to eliminate unnecessary tension in our neck when weight-bearing on our hands. In yoga asanas we commonly take our head back, extending our head and neck. Students are often cautious and hold back with this movement, concerned that it may hurt their neck. However, our necks are perfectly designed that we can gaze at the stars with wonder and delight!

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