- Swami Satyananda Saraswati
On the news recently was a segment on the dangers of yoga practice and the growing numbers of injuries. It was based on a recent article in the New York Times called “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body” (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/magazine/how-yoga-can-wreck-your-body.html?_r=1). With increase of popularity of yoga there has been a corresponding increase in injuries attributed to yoga practice. However, the percentage of injuries per practitioner is far less than in many other popular forms of sports and exercise. As Eva Norlyk Smith, Ph.D. writes, “Indeed, the number of yoga injuries treated in emergency rooms or doctors' offices rose to 5,500 in 2007, according to the Consumer Products Safety Commission. The same year, the number of yoga practitioners reached an estimated 15.8 million. That pegs the number of injuries at 0.035 percent, or about 3.5 out of every 10,000 practitioners.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eva-norlyk-smith-phd/yoga-health_b_1191479.html
Overall it seems your odds of being able to safely practice yoga are pretty good. There is another problem issue lurking under the surface here though: “yoga” is not a term denoting physical exercise. Yoga is a spiritual discipline that takes many forms which fall into four main categories; devotional, intellectual, active and meditational. The physical practices of hatha yoga, referred to as “asanas” of “yogasanas,” are actually a subset of the meditative branch of yoga. Somehow they have become identified in the popular mind as being the entirety of yoga! If you go to the gym to practice yoga in order to become physically fit, good for you and be careful. You should understand though that strictly speaking you are not actually practicing yoga at all. You are practicing “yuppie calisthenics.”
Meditation is much more central to true yoga practice and to practice asanas properly means to adopt a meditative attitude. The poses must be practiced slowly with awareness. They are meant to do more than just improve health; they help open up the energy system of the body to allow for the acceleration of the development of higher consciousness. The asanas should be integrated with pranayama – breathing practices and with relaxation/meditation practices. This is the integral approach.
The practice of asanas should be approached systematically as well. Just as a first grader doesn’t jump into algebra, a beginning student shouldn’t start with major asanas. Begin with the series know as pawanmuktasana as outlined in Asana, Pranayama, Mudra, Bandha by Swami Satyanand Saraswati. They can be found here as well: http://www.healthandyoga.com/html/yoga/asanas/pawanmuktasana1.asp This series is complete in itself and you may never need to go further. Unfortunately many yoga teachers skip these altogether.
Yoga is ancient tradition which is here as a means of awakening our spiritual potential. It is antithetical to our competitive, material and superficial cultural mindset. Yoga is about developing transcendent awareness, a means of merging with the infinite. Injuries result when we reduce it to a form of physical exercise, when we are taught improperly and when we are not paying attention to the body’s messages. It is the opposite of fashion – it is more important to feel good than to look good.
