Yoga Pain and Tight Muscles
Do you love to practice yoga? Do you feel energized after stretching your muscles? Or do you have yoga pain that prevents you from moving easily after your session is complete.
Why Tight Muscles Can Cause Yoga Pain
A muscle originates on a bone, merges into a tendon, crosses over a joint, and inserts into another bone. When the muscle contracts it pulls on the tendon, and the joint moves. However, if the muscle is strained either by repetitive use, or trauma, it becomes too short. Now you will feel pain when you try to lengthen it to it’s normal length. If you try to stretch it you’ll feel even worse pain, and you won’t be able to move properly.
Using this analogy, if you tied a rope between two trees and knotted the rope, the flexible tree would bend. If you then tried to force the flexible tree to stand up straight, the knots would get tighter. Also, the fibers outside of the knots would over-stretch.
This is what happens in your body when a muscle is shortened by spasms (knots). And in your body, the two ends are attached to a bone. As a result, when you try to stretch the knotted muscles, they put a strain on your joint. You feel pain, and you may have even injured your muscles.
It make sense to untie the spasms before you stretch.
How to Prevent Yoga Pain By Releasing Muscle Spasms First.
For over 15 years I have been helping people around the world via email and Zoom consultations. A person orders a consultation, sends me an email explaining the problem, and I send back some treatment ideas. Along with the consultation they get a copy of Treat Yourself to Pain-Free Living so they can do the treatments I suggest.
An amazing yoga instructor in Texas, named Ana, was having pain in her calf muscles. She was accustomed to yoga eliminating all pains, so she was frustrated that the pain didn’t disappear. She found me by doing an internet search and decided to have a telephone consultation.
Ana sent me the email describing her problem, and I told her which self-treatments to do. We then made an appointment to talk in two weeks.
It took Ana just two days to resolve her calf issue. Since she still had 12 days before we met, she decided to work on her hips. She was shocked to find her hips actually had a lot of spasms. She treated them as the book showed, and her yoga improved. Then she took a look at her shoulders that were also “fine.” Again, she was shocked to find they also had multiple spasms. She treated them as shown in the book, and again her yoga improved. She was thrilled!
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Wishing you well,
When we finally spoke, Ana had made the decision that this was information that needed to come out to yoga instructors everywhere. That was the beginning of Trigger Point Yoga. Ana and I worked together to create a product to teach how to release tight muscles before stretching.
Ultimately the product name was changed to Focused Flexibility Training so athletes would also release muscles before stretching.
It’s important to release the spasms that tie your muscles into knots before you stretch. Focused Flexibility Training shows you where to press, and how to best treat the knot. And the yoga stretching DVDs are truly first-class.
