The Thinking Yogi
by Kerry Maiorca

April 2006: On the Fritz – Learning from Injuries

If you’ve ever been injured, you know that often an injury affects you not only physically, but also mentally and emotionally. When you’re uncomfortable in your body, the mind tends to go into overdrive. The thoughts come one after another, leaving no room for those moments of calm and quiet that you take for granted when you’re healthy. You may experience resentment towards your body (or the injured body part) and forget what it’s like to feel good. Your mind may even trick you into thinking that you’ll never feel back to normal again. But if you can keep some perspective, an injury can provide you a chance to slow down and change your pace for a brief period; it can teach you something you would never have been able to learn had you kept on at your regular pace.

When your body is injured, you must naturally alter the way you use it, both in your daily life and in your yoga practice. If you try to force yourself into the normal way of operating, you’ll set back your recovery and possibly do further damage to yourself. Instead, take this as a chance to have a vacation from your normal mode of operating. Instead of doing an active and invigorating yoga practice, slow things down and take your poses to a much lesser degree of intensity. See what you can learn by staying longer and paying attention.

A couple of years ago I tweaked my back in a forward bend. I knew that it wouldn’t be a good idea to abandon my yoga practice altogether, but I struggled initially to find a way to practice that didn’t bring on more pain. After some experimenting, I found that as long as I didn’t take my forward bends beyond a ninety degree angle, my back felt healthy and happy. So for a period of about six months I heavily modified my practice using lots of props to prevent me from going to deeply into the poses.

At first it was a challenge to hold back, because I had always subconsciously enjoyed the fact that forward bends came easily to me and that I could fold in half almost effortlessly. As I practiced I felt an itch to do more and go bigger so that I could experience that same sense of achievement in my poses, that feeling of being in the ‘final’ version of a pose. But as I explored forward bends in a new way I found that by not going as deeply into a pose I was able to focus on not only lengthening my hamstrings and getting a good stretch, but also on creating softness and stability throughout the rest of my body so that my back would continue to feel healthy.

After practicing this way for a while I began to enjoy not going to my maximum because it allowed me to step away from the competitive spirit of always going further.

Once my back began to feel better again, I was able to take what I had learned from months of modified practice and work with more of a sense of balance and humility. I no longer felt the need to go into the deepest variation of a pose, but rather became intent upon going only as far as I could without feeling even an inkling of strain or hardness in my body. I found that yoga poses became an opportunity for my body to experience joy, rather than simply a sense of accomplishment at achieving the deepest forward bend in the room. And ironically, after months of practicing poses at a lesser intensity with a sustained hold, my body felt more supple and flexible than it ever had before. The practice of not going to the maximum had allowed my body to increase its capabilities in a gradual, healthy way.

The experience of working with an injury is a wonderful way to bring you out of the ego mode of yoga and into the long view. Yoga is a practice I hope to do throughout my life, not simply an activity for when I’m young and limber. Yoga will be a tool to help maintain mobility and stability as I get older, a way to stay active and to observe the changes my body experiences with age. When you’re able to take the long view and see yoga as a practice for your life, it no longer seems important how many sun salutations you do, or whether you hold that warrior pose for an extra couple of breaths. Yoga is a way of maintaining a state of health in your body, a way of checking in, coming back to your breath and your ability to observe yourself. This way of practicing can connect you with yourself, no matter what else is going on in your life, whether your body is healthy or suffering from injury. Your yoga practice is the constant that can bring you into the moment and into a state of balance, regardless of the circumstances.