How to Enhance Your Yoga Experience While Recovering From Injury?
We all need to deal with some major injury, disease or pain from time to time. There are two ways we can react. Either suffer and whine about the painful situation or try your level best to be as cheerful as possible and turn it into an opportunity to learn new aspects about life. Although it sounds easy and ideal to be positive about a negative condition or incident, it is not that easy in reality. At the same time if we really look forward to learning something new during the recovery from the problem we can definitely use that knowledge in future and take positives from the injury.
While traveling on vacation to Puri, a city situated on the eastern coast of India last week of December 2008 I injured ligament on my left knee. It was very painful to say the least. On top of that I felt more pain because I was unable to practice near the sea side as was my wish while I was looking forward to the trip.
Best time to improve self knowledge
Human body is tremendously complex system of muscle groups, bones, ligaments, tissues and cells which form the various body parts and organs but mostly our awareness remains is skin deep or till the major muscles. Injury to any body part increases the awareness about that part as well as the connected muscles, ligaments and bones. My knee injury gave me time and opportunity to explore the knee problems which can happen to us.
Internet is a tremendous medium to gain knowledge, but we do not dig for the right kind of information. Almost all the information which we need to understand our body and the pain is available on the internet. It contains more information your doctor will ever care to tell you. There are some excellent books on Physiology and Yoga which provide information on the affect of various asanas (poses) on the different parts of our body. Injury rehabilitation is the right time to know more about ourselves as we will have better understanding about self and also remember them.
Best way to understand the pain and about rehabilitation is of course through your Doctor, but try to read and gather as much information as you can. One of the ways to gain more knowledge is by asking lots of questions to your Doctor, and once you have done some research and reading you will automatically get the right questions to ask.
This is going to stand you in good stead in future.
Use this knowledge in future Practice
Pain in the injured area helps us to identify the body movement which affects a particular part of body and this helps us develop what I call muscle intellegince.
Although some of the pain may be due to inflammation and all muscles which have pain may not be the ones which are actually injured. Many nearby muscles also become tense during injuries and recovery and they also start paining. Due to this, sometimes it leads us to wrongly conclude about the extent of the injury. But the bigger point which I want to make is at least we are aware about the major muscles in that location, which is very useful. For example, whenever I practice now after my recovery, I am clearly aware about each of the muscles in my legs. This has heightened my awareness and I use this knowledge to experiment and see the affect on each muscle. This awareness is going to be very useful as this will also provide more insight on how to control the muscles correctly while practicing a pose. This will lead to muscle intelligence & I will also be aware in case I am doing a pose incorrectly leading me towards perfection in the pose.
Find out alternatives
There are numerous aspects of Yoga and we can be surprised by the option of activities which can be in front of us if we explore them. Lot of people who practice Yoga are not even aware that asanas(Poses) which we practice is only one of the eight limbs of Yoga defined by Patanjali. Try to learn more about the other seven limbs and see how we fit there. Apart from asanas there are other things to learn like Mudras, Bandhs, Pranayama etc.
After my injury I took up Jal Neti seriously and have added a new dimension to my practice.
Recovery based asanas
Along with regular treatment like physiotherapy we can also go for therapeutic Yoga, for example for shoulder pain we can practice Tadasana. But before you start you should consult a qualified and experienced yoga teacher.
Apart from all the above injury also provides opportunity to appreciate the gift of good health once we realize how people are suffering while facing life threatening conditions or illness. It is time to feel blessed. One philosophy is, God gives suffering so that we remember him. It is also brings out the idea that impermanence is the only truth which is what Yoga also tells us.
Other Yoga Tip Articles
How to improve body posture with Yoga?
Advantages of Practicing Yoga with a teacher
Breathing techniques to master forward Bending yoga asanas
While traveling on vacation to Puri, a city situated on the eastern coast of India last week of December 2008 I injured ligament on my left knee. It was very painful to say the least. On top of that I felt more pain because I was unable to practice near the sea side as was my wish while I was looking forward to the trip.
Best time to improve self knowledge
Human body is tremendously complex system of muscle groups, bones, ligaments, tissues and cells which form the various body parts and organs but mostly our awareness remains is skin deep or till the major muscles. Injury to any body part increases the awareness about that part as well as the connected muscles, ligaments and bones. My knee injury gave me time and opportunity to explore the knee problems which can happen to us.
Internet is a tremendous medium to gain knowledge, but we do not dig for the right kind of information. Almost all the information which we need to understand our body and the pain is available on the internet. It contains more information your doctor will ever care to tell you. There are some excellent books on Physiology and Yoga which provide information on the affect of various asanas (poses) on the different parts of our body. Injury rehabilitation is the right time to know more about ourselves as we will have better understanding about self and also remember them.
Best way to understand the pain and about rehabilitation is of course through your Doctor, but try to read and gather as much information as you can. One of the ways to gain more knowledge is by asking lots of questions to your Doctor, and once you have done some research and reading you will automatically get the right questions to ask.
This is going to stand you in good stead in future.
Use this knowledge in future Practice
Pain in the injured area helps us to identify the body movement which affects a particular part of body and this helps us develop what I call muscle intellegince.
Although some of the pain may be due to inflammation and all muscles which have pain may not be the ones which are actually injured. Many nearby muscles also become tense during injuries and recovery and they also start paining. Due to this, sometimes it leads us to wrongly conclude about the extent of the injury. But the bigger point which I want to make is at least we are aware about the major muscles in that location, which is very useful. For example, whenever I practice now after my recovery, I am clearly aware about each of the muscles in my legs. This has heightened my awareness and I use this knowledge to experiment and see the affect on each muscle. This awareness is going to be very useful as this will also provide more insight on how to control the muscles correctly while practicing a pose. This will lead to muscle intelligence & I will also be aware in case I am doing a pose incorrectly leading me towards perfection in the pose.
Find out alternatives
There are numerous aspects of Yoga and we can be surprised by the option of activities which can be in front of us if we explore them. Lot of people who practice Yoga are not even aware that asanas(Poses) which we practice is only one of the eight limbs of Yoga defined by Patanjali. Try to learn more about the other seven limbs and see how we fit there. Apart from asanas there are other things to learn like Mudras, Bandhs, Pranayama etc.
After my injury I took up Jal Neti seriously and have added a new dimension to my practice.
Recovery based asanas
Along with regular treatment like physiotherapy we can also go for therapeutic Yoga, for example for shoulder pain we can practice Tadasana. But before you start you should consult a qualified and experienced yoga teacher.
Apart from all the above injury also provides opportunity to appreciate the gift of good health once we realize how people are suffering while facing life threatening conditions or illness. It is time to feel blessed. One philosophy is, God gives suffering so that we remember him. It is also brings out the idea that impermanence is the only truth which is what Yoga also tells us.
Other Yoga Tip Articles
How to improve body posture with Yoga?
Advantages of Practicing Yoga with a teacher
Breathing techniques to master forward Bending yoga asanas
