abelanger26

Hi Matthew,

I am a physical therapist and I couldn’t agree more with Gabrielle.

I once had a similar lower back problem. Even though I am a physio, I decided to have someone’s advice. I have an instability in my lower back. I can go really deep in postures. I was aware of that instability and was contracting my core while doing postures. I got a really big spasm and was not able to move at all last year. When I saw my coworker, we checked the core muscles. I had no problem contracting them but as soon as I was going to far in the posture I would lose the contraction. That’s when my spasm would show up to protect my lower back.

I would highly recommend to get it checked out. My physio checked my core while I was doing some postures in front of her. She saw the problem right away. Took me a while to control it and I’m still very tempted to go in my instability to go further in my postures but I know I’ll end up hurting myself again.

Good luck with everything! Hope it gets better fast!

Ho, I’m totally not offended 🙂

You are right, I meant the abdomen and that’s only when I can see my foot up my head. Before that I don’t even move my torso that much.

The back pain I’ve been experiencing is when I get to the standing splits. I find my back extension is only coming from an L3 instability and that’s when I feel it a lot… I’ve been working a lot on this instability. ( Basically my back extension is pretty much coming only from this vertebra…) I can cheat in postures and go very deep but then I hurt the next day. I’ve been working on it with the physio.

Oh and another quick tip my teacher tells alot. They tell us to kick for the first 3 sec when we start the posture and then start lowering when we feel the need to go down (mostly when I see my foot up my head) This way we’re more focus on kicking 😉

Hi!
What do you mean your triangle is not deep enough or tree stand could be better. Can you tell us what you do. It would be easier to give you some advices on your postures 😉

Totally not religious. If you look at the poster of the advance series it’s pretty much the first row. Trust me you warm up fast with theses! 8 seconds count for each If I remember right.

In advance we do the salute to god series but I haven’t heard anything for the beginning series. I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to do it before class though.

Hi!

Seems to me that you are probably unstable in your lower back. I would go see a therapist. I have it too. Basically when we are very bendy in back extension, we do sometimes get all that extension from only one vertebra. I had to learn to control my extensions by contracting my transverse. (core muscle+++)

My best advice is to check it with a therapist. Show them the postures and how you do them. They will be able to analyze your back movements.

You might also want to check with your teachers.

Hope I helped a bit. I know how you feel though!

Hey!

my teacher once told me this and I thought it made a lot of sense! yoga is a mix of balance, strength, flexibility and endurance. We have a dominant one and one that is usually more of a problem. With time it will come.

I wasn’t able to bend forward and touch my toes. Now I’m like a wet noodle. Since I’m very flexible now I have a tendency to collapse in some postures. That’s when I know I have to work on my strength!

Hows your range of movement and the forward bends? Do you feel weaker in that leg? Back extension is the best for herniated disc.

Heres a good site to find out what to do. http://www.sportsinjuryclinic.net

Might also be a piriformis syndrome : see two post below

Do you mean, locust or lotus? If it’s locust… has a lot to do with core, back strength. You might also want to bring more weight into your shoulders (yes you need some good flexibility in your shoulders. They will open up with the practice too). It is much easier to come up with the legs slightly bent and feet separated. I don’t recommend it though. Just means your core is not strong enough and you are mainly not ready to do the pose. My main focus was to go as high with my legs super straight. Worked my alignment and my strength. When I got strong enough, I did lift up. Takes a while.

Since when have you started doing the advance class. I imagine you have a great regular practice to do the advance after one year!

Don’t push so hard. Your body adapts very quickly and the strength will come with practice. Like my teacher said, you’d rather do a posture gracefully with great control than doing it all wrong. You don’t want to hurt yourself. If you do not feel ready to go up then work of every little details to go up.

For your core strength it’s mostly the transverse of the abdomen and the multifidus that will help you. They are deeper muscles compared to the abs and back extensors that are more superficial. I’ll post a link about it when I get the chance. Theses muscles are much harder to contract but are responsible for most of the core strength. I still have a hard time using them in most of my postures.

Good luck!

Agreed!

Hi James,

I’m also quite a “wet noodle” or so my teachers call me like that 😉 I’ve been doing the 60 days challenge and my flexibility was so bad in the end. It got me to focus more on my strength in my postures. Feels like I was letting go everything to do the postures. It was so easy before. Now I can seriously feel a difference. When we are super flexible, it’s much more harder to contract our core. Focus on that. It helped me with my back injuries.

You might want to ask a teacher if they can guide you a bit. Ask them if you are doing it correctly, if you are targeting your core.

Hope i helped a bit.