After 26 years of devoted yoga practice and running regularly…I found myself with chronic back pain. Was I willing to walk off my yoga mat to heal?
Walked off my yoga mat
The pain was significant enough when getting out of bed, I had to put my hands on my thighs and push myself up to stand. The first few steps, I was completely stooped over. Every time I got out of a chair, car, couch, I had to support myself and slowly rise.
One day, I woke and thought I should try some Pilates and gentle weights. After a month of that and seeing no improvements, I decided to check out a functional fitness gym. I was never a fan of weight training (maybe the cause of my issues). The owners are anatomy genius’s and I surrendered my injured body to them.
The First Step
The first few months, I asked tons of questions. I love to be coached and love understanding the subtleties. My approach to yoga was always very anatomical! They survived my ongoing questions. What I discovered through their assessments, I had very little posterior strength. My traps and quadriceps were over-developed, lats and rhomboids were very weak. Lower back, gluts, hamstrings were all week.
I came home and was actually excited to hear all of this. My two boys thought I was crazy. They said they would find that conclusion depressing. I was excited because I now had hope that my back could get better.
5 months in and I can rise out of a chair, car, and couch with 95% of my pain gone. Some days, also dependent upon the previous workouts that I might be sore in my lower back. Overall, my back is 80% better than 5 months ago. 3 months in, a 2-week break set me back tremendously and caused a back flare-up. 5 months in, I had 2-weeks off and I was fine.
Is Yoga Enough?
The big message here is that yoga is fantastic and can make you strong and flexible at the same time. Even with all my understanding of anatomy, doing primarily yoga for the past 25 years, yoga did not give me the strength needed to keep my body balanced. I had to be willing to walk off my mat to heal my body.
I know yoga has worked wonders for so many people but those tend to be my students who incorporate all sorts of exercise into their routine. As yoga teachers, many of us love doing just yoga. It is our escape, meditation, dance, spiritual practice. I think we need to be willing to step back and be open to trying something new to balance out our physical experience.
In Conclusion
It was hard for me to walk away from my mat to allow my body to heal with something totally different. I, for the first time, got back on the mat this week, and the next day had no pain! That was a first. It is time, at the age of 49, to balance my yoga with some strength training!
Have you had to be willing to walk off your yoga mat to heal?
Core was strong, backed not!
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