Yoga is touted as a cure-all activity; go to yoga to cure your aching back, fix your misaligned hips and straighten your spine… Sure, yoga can definitely help with all of these things but it’s important to note that just like any other sport or activity, you can be injured, especially if your practice is lacking form or you’re receiving instruction from an unqualified teacher.

Overall, yoga is very healthy for the body and mind and the very small risk of injury should not keep you from stepping on the mat. Read on to learn all about yoga injuries, how they happen, and how you can avoid them.

What are the 5 Most Common Yoga Injuries?

Overstretching

You may have heard your yoga teacher say “listen to your body,” or “find your edge” a gazillion times, but it comes with a reason, all these reminders are to help us prevent overstretching our muscles and ligaments.

Overstretching can cause significant injury and should be kept in mind when doing deep, long stretches.

Overstretching is when you push your muscles past their normal limit or range of motion, this can cause tears in the muscles or connective tissues.

You may be overstretching if you feel pain during or after stretching. Becoming overly sore after stretching can also mean that you may be taking it too far.

A good point of reference is this: stretching can be uncomfortable but it should not be painful.

How to Avoid Overstretching in Yoga

A good way to avoid overstretching is to start with a warm-up. This is a great way to literally warm up the body by getting the blood flowing into the muscles. This is especially important if you are getting into deep poses like Pigeon, Lizard, or Bow Pose.

Continue by stretching slowly, this will ensure we are not inadvertently pushing our muscles past their limit. Sometimes when we move too quickly we may accidentally injure ourselves.

Stay mentally focused on the area you are stretching so you are very in tune with what your body is telling you. Our bodies have built-in mechanisms that will protect our muscles and ligaments from overstretching, and these signals manifest in pain! So by paying attention we will immediately know when enough is enough, or when we’ve reached “our edge.”

Avoid stretching while distracted or when you already have an injury that is currently healing.

Injured Wrists

A lot of poses in yoga require putting our entire bodyweight onto our wrists, which can be a delicate area. Poses like Downward Facing Dog, Table Top Pose and Chaturanga requires weight on our wrists.

How to Prevent Injured Wrists in Yoga

A good way to prevent wrist injuries is by evenly distributing weight across the entire palm of the hand and keeping the hands just below the shoulders to maintain good form.

You may even want to practice wrist stretches and wrist strengthening exercises to help prevent wrist injury and sprains.

Injured Shoulders

Shoulders are another area that tends to be injured when practicing yoga improperly. Most of these injuries occur from improper form. It’s imperative to make sure you are not collapsing into the shoulder, which can look like letting your shoulder come up to your ear in poses like Upward-facing Dog, Lizard Pose, or Camel Pose.

How to Prevent Injured Shoulders in Yoga

Always keep the ears away from the shoulders.

Practicing Chaturanga improperly is another missive that many yogis commit. This pose done incorrectly over time can create a strain or even injury in the shoulder joint.

When practicing Chaturanga, make sure not to dump your shoulders forward which can bring all your body weight directly into the shoulders. Conversely, try to keep the shoulders upright.

If you do not have enough strength yet, try practicing with 8-points-on-the-ground and Cobra as an alternative. This variation of Chaturanga has much less of an impact on the shoulders.

Injured Hips

Yoga is very focused on “opening the hips,” which feels amazing and is very beneficial for the body as a whole. But with this focus just on the hips, injuries can occur from misalignment and overstretching.

How to Prevent Injured Hips in Yoga

When practicing hip openers, try to keep the hips square. Imagine there are lights or eyes just in front of each hip, always make sure the lights or eyes are looking directly forward.

Some poses are also just too deep for inflexible folks, so try lesser variations of these postures, or don’t attempt them at all until deeper flexibility is achieved.

Injured Knees

The knee is like the lever of the body, it’s constantly moving and taking a lot of impact. Many yoga poses require us to bend into our knee which if done improperly can overstrain the injure the knee.

How to Prevent Injured Knees in Yoga

The Warrior poses, Runner’s, and Low Lunge all require weight on our knee, the best way to avoid injury is by keeping a 90-degree angle between our ankle and our knee. This means the weight is dispersed down into our feet and up through our thighs. Knee directly over the ankle also helps balance.

Another mistake that can injure the knee is by letting it sink into the midline, it’s important to push the knee outwards from the midline of the body. This creates a perfect architecture of the body.

Related Post: 7 Reasons Why You Should Practice Yoga Daily

Common Mistakes in Yoga That Can Cause Injury

We’ve already talked about how maintaining proper form while practicing yoga can help prevent injury and build strong muscles and bones. Below are some of the most common yoga-specific mistakes that can cause injury to the body.

Tented Hands

One of the most important cues to follow when we have our palms on the mat in poses like Downward Facing Down or Cat-Cow is to make sure that our entire palm is in contact with the earth.

Tenting our palms, or allowing parts of our palms to break contact with the mat, can cause strain on our wrists and can cause injury. Whenever we have our hands on the ground, practice keeping your entire palm flat on the ground with your fingers gently grasping the mat.

Knee Not Over the Ankle

Letting our knee come over the ankle or pass over the midline is quite common in poses like warrior and crescent.

You can minimize impact load on the knee by making sure the knee and the ankle are always in a direct line above or below each other. Injury can happen when the knee repeatedly goes over the ankle, breaking the 90-degree angle.

Focus on keeping the knee and ankle at a 90-degree angle. Also, make sure that the knee isn’t falling inwards toward the opposite knee.

Locked Knees in Forward Fold

Forward Fold Pose can create a lot of strain on the lower back or even in the hamstrings in people who are not flexible, so it’s important to put a slight bend in the knees when bending over. Especially when warming up or if you are not flexible.

Locking the knees can also compromise balance because not all the muscles in the legs are active when the knees are locked. So this is another reason to keep a slight bend in the knees. This is important for people who are working on their balance or older yogis.

Bad Chaturunga Form

Chaturanga is one of the poses that people make the most mistakes in.

In Chaturanga, when we are coming down into a plank position, sometimes people’s arms are not strong enough so their torso lurches forward causing all your body weight to dump onto your shoulders. This can cause damage over time.

It’s important to focus on keeping your shoulder right above your hands and not dipping your head forward toward the mat. Also, if you lack the muscle strength to keep the shoulders high, you can try a modified Chaturanga with your knees on the ground and then come up into Cobra Pose instead of Upward-facing Dog.

Improper Inversion Form

Inversions are super beneficial for many different reasons, but some people should not be practicing inversions either at all or during specific periods of time. If you have recently had a neck or back injury, it’s important to refrain from inversions. Also, anyone with high blood pressure is not advised to do headstands.

Performing a headstand can also be dangerous because of the risk of falling. So if you are going to practice going upside down, make sure you have enough arm and core strength to hold you up. You can also practice with a friend who will hold up your legs.

In a headstand, form is the most important thing to prevent injury to the neck. Make sure your teacher can give you all the tools and answer all your questions about inversions before you start practicing them yourself.

How Can I Avoid Yoga Injuries?

Avoiding yoga injuries is simple, listen to your body, use proper alignment, practice slowly, and do yoga that is appropriate for your experience level.

It is also helpful to add some strength training to your exercise routine. By targeting certain muscle groups that tend to be injured the most, you will have a great and injury-free yoga career.

Having a Yoga Alliance-Certified yoga teacher that can help you use and find the best form for your body and offer cues or alternatives will be the most effective way to prevent yoga injuries.

Yoga For Injury Protection

Practicing yoga can prevent injuries by strengthening the body. Strength-training the muscles can prevent up to 50% of injuries. Being flexible also keeps the body from getting hurt by providing a larger range of movement. Being more flexible also increases mobility.

Additionally, it has been shown that stretching immediately before practicing a sport or a workout does not help prevent injuries immediately. It is only long-term stretching that can improve your performance in a sport or prevent injury.

Stretching with a daily or even weekly yoga class is a great addition to any athlete’s regimen.

How Much Yoga Is Too Much Yoga?

Too much of a good thing is always bad! There is almost no such thing as too much yoga, but if you are consistently injuring yourself or are beyond what is a normal amount of soreness, you may be doing too much yoga or you may be practicing improperly.

A daily practice of an hour or two is plenty enough to reap all the benefits of yoga and stretching. It is also true that after a long yoga session, we are very stretched out, so continuing to practice may make us more vulnerable to overstretching.

We may also become tired and careless with our form when we are practicing yoga too much, which again can cause injuries.

It’s best to practice yoga when we are alert and feeling good.

How to Recover from Overstretching and Other Yoga-Related Injuries

It’s no fun getting an injury no matter how small. If you find yourself injured from overstretching from a yoga class or otherwise, follow these steps to make a swift recovery.

• Rest – Make sure to get rest as that will make for a speedy recovery.
• Ice – Apply pressure and cold packs to the affected area
• Vitamins and eat well – Make sure to get plenty of Vitamin C to speed recovery of the joints and eat a healthy, balanced diet.
• Hydrate – The body needs water to recover, aim for at least 3 liters a day.
• Call a doctor – When your symptoms have not resolved in 2 days or if the injury is very painful, it might be a good idea to visit a doctor.

Have you ever been injured from yoga? Do you have any other tips or tricks for keeping good form during practice? Leave your comments below!

*This blog post is purely informational and is not intended to provide advice that should otherwise be given by a medical professional. All bodies are different and before starting any new activity or diet, check in with your medical practitioner.

Related Post: How to Increase Bone Density Naturally with Yoga