The Hot Yoga Doctor – Free Bikram and Hot Yoga Resources › Hot Yoga Doctor Forum › Injuries, Restrictions, Ailments, Pose Modifications › Injuries › new to BIKRAM – will it help my injuries?
The Hot Yoga Doctor – Free Bikram and Hot Yoga Resources › Hot Yoga Doctor Forum › Injuries, Restrictions, Ailments, Pose Modifications › Injuries › new to BIKRAM – will it help my injuries?
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Hello
I’ve been doing yoga for about a year – not religiously, but when I’m feeling unbalanced, tight or stressed I find yoga to be better than a massage! I love it.
Through a combination of smart diet and training I’ve lost 9kilos (7KG in 10 weeks) – but as I’ve put myself through the extra physical activity… some annoying injuries have popped up.
I’ve always had an issue with my right knee – I dislocated it at 19, I’m now 31 years old and occasionally it feels like it pops out/locks up. I’ve been told by my PT that I need to work on my core strength… what I want to know is will HOT YOGA help me? My HY instructor told me the more I push through the pain (it’s not excruciating – just ridiculously tight) the more blood flow increases to my injured area… I figure this must have some truth to it, as tonight was my 2nd class and I found myself stretching past my pain threshold just that little bit.Sorry this is long winded…
So I’ve also recently strained my back. I’ve got no idea what I’ve done. My boyfriend believes that after a good two week break from exercise – I’ve thrown myself back into it, and hurt it (lower back). My Personal Trainer has now banned me from doing weighted squats and high impact stuff – so I’ve turned to Bikram to hopefully get some relief….
I’ve also got RSI in my wrists….
Will Bikram really help me? how can I make it work the BEST for me? will I need to keep it up after my little 10day pass I’ve bought at my local yoga joint? I guess I just a more honest answer instead of someone trying to sell me a 3 month membership. Will just standard yoga do?
hope you can help me…
another thing…… why is Bikram yoga the same poses every class?? I’ve been to one hot yoga class in NZ called ‘power vinyasa’ that had a whole heap of different poses etc. Don’t people get bored of the same poses every day?Hi Shazastar!
I am new to this forum, but I discovered Bikram last summer and was going steadily without interruption until now. I have done two months without a break when I joined Bikram and then I was going steadily 4-6 times a week, and then, again, I completed my 30 days challenge… So I am somewhat familiar with B.
If you would ask me your question a month ago, you would hear from me big YES. Yes, it would help you. However now I am more cautious. The reason is the injury I received through B. Definitely one learns from those. Now I would tell you that Bikram Yoga alone is not enough to heal you. YOU are the most important part of this healing. You see, I was trusting BY blindly, sort of submitting myself to it, signing off the responsibility for myself, all I would do is to show up and do the best I can. And it was working until I hurt myself (pulled back of my leg).
Now you can say I am in the same place as you are: trying to heal from my injury. It is not easy and Bikram is not the answer. I have to think now “outside the box”. I discovered that gently running on the soft grass helps with the pulled leg and BY exacerbates the pain, especially from all this standing on one contracted leg. When I put all my body weight on the injured leg and hold it for a minute, it doesn’t feel good after class.
Building your core muscles is essential as a preventative care for injuries, this is very true. You say you have lower back issues. Often it can be elevated by developing good working stomach muscles. By contracting those we release the pressure from the lower back when we do forward bends for example. Will BY help you to build stomach muscles? Not without your active participation. I was doing BY for almost a year and did not build any stomach muscles until I started deliberately doing crunches every morning. In two weeks I progressed further at that than ever doing BY.
There is another thought. If you are already injured and you are attending hot yoga, then in the hot room your injured muscles would perform MUCH better than normally – because heat relaxes them and stretches become much deeper without giving you a feedback “stop, this is enough”. So I would say if you have injury, you have to stop before your muscles cry for help, otherwise you can re-injure them again.
As for the knee, it would definitely help to build muscle mass around the knee to protect it. Will BY help you with this? Sure it will. However I am not sure how effectively it will do it in case there is already injury. May be there are other specific exercises that help to build the muscle mass around your knee without straining the knee itself (in BY as you know all standing series put a lot of pressure on your knees, especially for beginners who do not have enough developed muscle/strength to concentrated all the contraction on the top of the leg).
Basically my main advice in your situation is to take responsibility and do not seek for the ultimate solution. I doubt if there is one. I would recommend building a plan of what do you need: build strong abdominal wall, build muscle around the knee, that type of a thing. And then research what type of exercise would more effectively solve those mini-goals without re-injuring.
This is just my experience. Pushing through pain…. I would not recommend that to anyone, but what do I know…
Dear Shazastar,
I am at Gabrielle’s (aka Hot Yoga Doctor) Teacher Training at the moment and because we keep her very busy she gave us the permission to reply to forum inquiries.
So I am taking the liberty to reply to your message…>> Pushing through the pain is not a solution.
>> Yoga is about a connection between mind and body, and who knows your body better than you?
>> To my knowledge yoga should not ever cause pain or make you struggle and nobody has the right to instruct you to hurt yourself.
>> Of course you can work hard and discover your own edge but it is very important that you recognise when discomfort turns into pain.
>> You have to be even more mindful if you practise in the heat, because your body is “looser” and it is easier to stretch beyond your its limits.If you are working with conditions (lower back, knee, wrist or any kind of injury) then it is very important that your teachers know about that and they offer you modifications.
As to the core strength,yes it is very important that you have good core muscles but that builds over time.
Also I would like to take this opportunity to express, that I do agree with Sweatheart, however I think it is important to say that there is a difference between core and abdominal strength.
Just because you don’t have six packs, it doesn’t mean that you do not have strong core muscles. The abdominal muscles have different layers.
The rectus abdominus (aka six pack abs) does not protect the spine as oppose to the core muscle, that is a different layer close to the spine.In answer to your other question, yes, other types of yoga can help to heal certain injuries too.
Whether you go back and to the same studio (or to another)and buy another pass…well that is entirely up to you.
I would not trust an instructor who tells me to stretch until it hurts but that doesn’t have to keep you away from hot yoga generally.Repeating the same poses has its beauty.
It gives you a chance to see how your practice progresses because you are doing the same poses. Some people love that and do this for years.
Everyday brings you a different challenge and you may find this type pf yoga more interesting if you focus on your own body or practice or set yourself a different goal each class.
I wonder if you hear the same instructions over and over again?I hope this helped and that you will discover the beauty of practising yoga.
Namaste,
AndreaHi Shazastar
Any updates? I would love to hear from you.
Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂 -
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