Why Yoga made my back pain worse

Did you know back pain is the most common yoga injury?

In 2017 I began practicing yoga 2-3 times per week to help my back pain and my experience taught me about what yoga can offer and how it falls short. The following is my experience and my recommendation to you.

How Yoga Helps Back Pain

If you sit at a desk for hours per day, yoga can really help. When I worked in finance I was sitting 12+ hours per day and my hips were very tight. Yoga helped me to mobilize tight areas like the hips and shoulders.

The yoga focus on breathwork and meditation is incredibly helpful to anyone with back pain related to stress. The deep breathing in yoga aids recovery by promoting blood circulation, and the low-impact exercise is mostly joint-friendly.

To this day, I still incorporate yoga poses into my practice like downward dog, the warrior poses, triangle pose, pigeon pose, and a few others. I've learned which postures and positions provide benefit to my body, and which do not.

How Yoga Hurts Back Pain

Unfortunately, yoga class is only as good as the instructor you have. If your instructor's body is very different from yours, it's more likely they will give poor advice.

Most yoga instructors are flexible females who have been flexible their entire lives, so as an inflexible male, I found they often recommended positions that were too difficult or impossible for me. If I could do it over, I would seek a yoga instructor with a body similar to my own for this reason.

A common fault of yoga is the belief that flexibility is great regardless of where or how much, which is not true. If someone has low back pain related to instability, yoga twists and forward folds would be the LAST thing they should do. Unfortunately, there's no way for a group class instructor to know about your body without asking detailed questions, and most fitness professionals are ignorant of back pain causes and solutions.

Most classes don't include sufficient instruction regarding how to bend forward, for example, which can seriously worsen back pain if a person is flexion intolerant. Moving mostly at the back instead of the hips trains a poor movement pattern that can lead to injury when trying to pick something up.

Often the yoga class is too large to provide individual feedback, which means you'll waste some time/effort and potentially hurt yourself. All classes come with greater risk than one-on-one training. Group classes are great for motivation, but when postures are too advanced for someone, yoga is likely to tighten them up more! If you're just starting out, I recommend yin yoga as this style allows you to open up your body with very low risk and great benefit.

How To Use Yoga for Back Pain

Get a yoga instructor with a similar body type to your own. Speak with them before class to let them know about your injuries with as much detail as possible. If something feels really difficult or slightly painful, raise your hand and ask for a variation. Some yoga instructors might get annoyed with your questions, but that means you need to find a different instructor!

If you have back pain and want one-on-one advice regarding identifying your unique cause of pain and how to become pain-free, send me a message or schedule a fitness consultation to get started today. Hope this helps!