When yoga gets dangerous
For most benefit, don’t overdo it
Yoga has never been more popular in the West, with new classes and forms springing up seemingly on a daily basis, and the NHS now recommending it for a range of physical and mental conditions. Yet inevitably when an exercise trend hits the mainstream, scientists wade in, attempting to tease apart the health benefits and the harms.
In the past week alone, three studies have been published. The first two were positive, showing yoga improves back pain and can help stroke victims regain their balance and boost endurance.
But the third, from the University of Sydney, Australia, out yesterday, suggested that the ancient practice may be doing more harm than good, triggering musculoskeletal pain in more than one in 10 participants and exacerbating chronic conditions. The pain became so severe in one third of cases that participants were out of action for three months – prompting claims that far from being a safe activity, yoga was worse for injury than all other sports combined.
Where does the truth lie? Should the downward dog and sun salutation really come with a health warning?
Having spent three months training to be a yoga teacher, I have discovered that yoga, like any other physical activity, is as hard or as easy as want to make it.
If you are happy meditating serenely in lotus position, the worst thing you risk getting is cramp. However, if you are looking to master scorpion pose on an Aegean clifftop to impress your Instagram followers, then a trip to A&E is far more likely.
What the Sydney research does prove is that yoga should be taken
My sofa is still missing one leg from where I crashed on to it
seriously as a legitimate form of exercise. For too long it has been dismissed as “a bit of stretching”.
Even the NHS Choices website states: “Most forms of yoga are not strenuous enough to count towards your 150 minutes of moderate activity,” a statement all the more ludicrous when you realise the NHS defines “fast walking” and “pushing a lawnmower” as moderate exercise.
In reality, unless you choose a restorative practice, most yoga classes today will include a decent cardio workout as well as strength building, twisting, and some pretty tricky arm balances and inversions. The danger comes when you couple that with our “no pain, no gain” culture that encourages students to push themselves too far and too fast. The situation is exacerbated by the toxic need for selfvalidation on social media. Facebook feeds are riddled with injurious poses which may look impressive in silhouette and sundown, but make trained yoga teachers wince. For me the road to pincha mayurasana
– an advanced tricky forearm balance – was paved with bruising and tears. My sofa is still missing one leg from where I crashed on to it, while my walls are streaked with toenail polish from falling out of various handstands and headstands. Now I am a qualified yoga instructor, I realise the error of my ways. The postures of yoga, or asanasas, are just one part of the eight “limbs” of yoga, which include meditation and various codes of living, such as treating the world and yourself with kindness. That means taking things slowly, meeting your edge but not crossing it.
The aim is to find yourself in what athletes refer to as “flow”, a moving meditation in which past and future worries dissolve. Done correctly, slowly and mindfully over time, tough poses can become natural. You should float up into handstand, not hold on for dear life, which can happen without sufficient practice.
That said, the first time I held pincha for just a few seconds it felt like such a breakthrough that endorphins flooded my body, and my self-esteem rocketed. Likewise, mastering difficult backbends doesn’t and shouldn’t happen overnight. What you learn is not just the pose, but also a lesson in perseverance and control.
Headstands help overcome fear, so there is something to be said for pushing through your comfort zone. But the real magic happens off the mat. Yoga can be as helpful as medication for depression and anxiety and research has found that yoga can also lessen the side effects of chemotherapy, help alleviate asthma, relieve back pain, boost brain function in the elderly and be as good as aerobics, cycling and walking for cutting the risk of heart disease.
It may even help repair DNA, according to a study published last month by Coventry University. Ivana Buric, from the Brain, Belief and Behaviour Lab in Coventry University’s Centre for Psychology, Behaviour and Achievement, said: “Millions of people around the world already enjoy the health benefits of mind-body interventions like yoga or meditation, but what they perhaps don’t realise is that these benefits begin at a molecular level and can change the way our genetic code goes about its business.”
And when you bear in mind that 50 per cent of runners hurt themselves every year, suddenly one in 10 yoga injuries starts to look fairly low. Dig into the Sydney study a little deeper and you also find that 74 per cent of participants reported that existing pain was improved by their practice.
Put another way, you are seven times more likely to gain a positive impact from yoga than a negative one.
As renowned teacher Donna Farhi says: “We are practising to live, not living to practise. Yoga is less about standing on your head, and more about standing on your own two feet.”