Benefits of Using Yoga for Injury Recovery and Prevention

Every experienced yoga practitioner and yogi in the world claims that this Hindu philosophy is extremely beneficial to our health – both mental and physical. It is also particularly useful for preventing injuries, as well as for treating them. If you are one of those people who don’t believe in yoga, you will certainly change your mind in just a few minutes. Here are the most important benefits of using this marvellous practice for injury prevention and recovery.

• Why Yoga?
  

Staying healthy and active in any sport requires strength, balance, agility and flexibility, which is why many endurance athletes and runners often choose practicing yoga. It can assist with recovery from high-intensity training, since it gently treats all the spots and injuries you have developed from years of training. There are many types of this practice, and the best choice for endurance athletes is yin yoga – which is a more calming counterpart to high-intensity yang movements. Yin yoga focuses on the lower body. Maintaining a particular pose for five minutes or even longer has an amazing effect on the sore and inflamed muscles, tissues and joints that runners have. That will restore and rebuild their connective tissue, as well as the structure of skeleton.

• How to Prevent Injuries?
  

Practising yoga improves your flexibility – even though some poses seem impossible to you at the beginning, you will gradually do them with ease. That will help your muscles get rid of the pain, which will make them strong and flexible. Muscle strength prevents back pain and arthritis, and yoga will improve your athletic performance and enhance weight reduction at the same time. In order to avoid compounding your injuries, it is important to know what to skip and what to substitute in your yoga class while you are hurt. Of course, your yoga teacher should know about the injury, so that he or she does not encourage you to do some moves that will make it worse. Besides that, you should always consult your doctor before performing any physical activities. He certainly has a necessary knowledge on the subject matter, or even a recognised diploma or disability which qualifies him for that job. Education is crucial here, because it provides information on the prevention of injuries, as well as on treating them.

• How to Treat Injuries?
  

Pain should definitely be your motivation to learn more efficient movement patterns, better technique and healthy alignment. The ways of treating injuries depend on the nature of the injury itself. Yoga provides numerous healing benefits for people with different types of back issues. It heals injured back muscles, prevents re-injury, and helps your body recover much faster while maintaining a regular level of daily activities. Gentle stretching eases lower back pain, and it strengthens the muscles of the lower back and legs by increasing blood circulation, which brings healing nutrients to the injured tissue. An injured ankle requires single-leg balancing poses. If these get too challenging, you can choose seated postures, which are certainly your best friends in that case. Knee injuries are similar to the previous ones, so you should be cautious with single-leg poses, too. You can use hands to support your body when moving into those.

Every kind of injury demands that you ask yourself what your priority really is. If doing the ‘cool’ movements and pushing your limits is what motivates you to do yoga, you probably won’t find your inner peace the next time you aren’t able to do your favourite pose. This is exactly why you should realise the benefits of this magnificent practice, and figure out that it can help you a lot in the process of recovery. Just make some modifications and you will heal much faster.
(Contributed by Peter)