Jessica Schein

Last night I read with interest an upcoming New York Times Sunday Magazine article about how yoga can “wreck your body.” As someone who has been injured by my own practice in the past I was eager to see how the author approached this delicate topic, as yoga is often celebrated as a way to overcome injuries.

I was disappointed. While I believe that the risks inherent in practicing yoga should be discussed more among teachers and students, in this article the author spent little time on who should most often be blamed when a shoulder pops or a back is tweaked: ourselves.

About five years ago, after dabbling on and off with Hatha yoga, I accompanied a friend to a vigorous vinyasa class. At the end of the hour, I was hooked. Part workout, part mental health voodoo, I couldn’t wait to go back and soon I was going three, sometimes four, times a week. I loved flowing through sun salutations and triangle poses faster than I could breathe. After all, hat’s why I was there—to shake off the day’s stresses through motion, not stillness.

Then six months in I began dreading corpse pose. My back rejected lying flat, and in order to be comfortable on my mat I would have to contort my hips and arch my spine in just a way that felt nothing like the “melting into the floor” my teacher spoke of. Was I overcompensating for my lack of core strength with my lower back? In short, yes, and when I started feeling achy outside of class I scaled back and then stopped going altogether.

Cut to about two years ago. Moving to a new city and starting a new job were pretty stressful changes for me I decided to give yoga another try. I tested a couple of the vinyasa studios near me but never felt the connection I’d had back in New York. Then I tried a new Anusara studio just a few blocks away from my apartment. Slower and with a focus on alignment, the classes were still challenging, although much less sweaty, and every time I left the studio I felt stronger—both physically and mentally. My connection to my mat was back!

What wasn’t back was what Glenn Black touches on in the NYT piece—ego—which I suspect got me in trouble in the first place. As a beginner I shouldn’t have pushed myself into wheel pose, upward dog, and headstand. I simply wasn’t ready yet. Now when I’m in class it’s easy to spot the students doing too much too soon. They’re grimacing when their back twists in triangle, shaking their heads out in downward dog, or rolling their wrists after plank pose.

That’s not to say that I don’t sometimes glance at the limber 25-year-old next to me and push myself a little more because I totally do. But then those memories of back pain float back and I try and focus on myself instead. If I feel stretched physically I do a mental check-in and remind myself that class isn’t a race.

If I could have a yogic do-over I wouldn’t start my mat practice with vinyasa. As a beginner one simply doesn’t understand poses well enough to correctly flow in and out of them quickly. You may not know so immediately but six months or a year later, you will. Instead I would have spent some time in basics classes training myself to relax my shoulders and spine in downward dog, keep my elbows back in baby cobra, etc. It’s not as easy as I’d thought.

You don’t have to listen to me, or Glenn Black, who admits that “if you do yoga with ego or obsession you’ll end up causing problems,” but you should listen to yourself if you feel pain.

I’m glad I did.