My new year exercise regime of daily yoga and occasional jogs hit a few road blocks this week.
The first was that I started a new job. I like to do yoga in my lunch break during the week but my new work is further away from my gym. The extra distance means I will be hard-pressed to fit a 45 minute class into my lunch hour (and I haven't yet worked out whether I have the flexibility for my lunch "hour" to be a lunch "hour and a bit" so long as I make up the time elsewhere).
But that is easy enough to fix - there is always before work or after work to fit in some yoga goodness. And given that I use YogaGlo, I can do great classes at home whenever it suits me.
What isn't as easy to sort is my stupid lower back. It has been giving me grief for a few days now. Kind of a dull ache across my sacrum. I ignored it for the first few days in hope that it would just sort itself out and I kept up my usual routine, including strong, vigorous vinyasa classes and bouts on the treadmill.
Imagine my surprise when this kind of just made it a little bit worse.
Have I seriously learnt nothing?
Once I came to my senses though, I gave my body and my poor achey back a nice break from all forms of exercise. And that certainly improved things.
I was concerned, though, that maybe there was something that I had been doing wrong that had caused the pain in the first place. (Although, it is also very likely that it was just a sign that my body was tired and wanted me to just stop for a little while. Bodies are so wise - I should really listen to mine more often!) So I Googled my symptoms to see what the likely causes could be and, more importantly, what I could do differently to avoid it in the future.
Apart from a few nasty causes that I quickly dismissed (spinal stenosis or herniated disk anyone?), the most likely cause was a strain from overuse. Oh, and let's not forget that I am getting old. And what did most of the websites I looked recommend to prevent it from reoccurring?
Yoga!
I had been so caught up in thinking of yoga as a workout that I had forgotten all about its amazing therapeutic effects. Unlike most of the other things that you can get up to in the gym, a yoga practice actually has the ability to heal your body and to prevent injuries.
This was such a brilliant realisation as, after two days rest, I was itching to get back on the mat. So that I didn't run into the same problems though, I have done a couple of classes that have been specially designed to care for and strengthen the lower back. The great thing about these classes is that they usually set you up with some great tips that can then be applied to any class so that you can get your alignment right and prevent any future aches and pains.
Yoga IS therapy. You just need to adjust your approach slightly to address whatever concerns your body is telling you it is having.
The first was that I started a new job. I like to do yoga in my lunch break during the week but my new work is further away from my gym. The extra distance means I will be hard-pressed to fit a 45 minute class into my lunch hour (and I haven't yet worked out whether I have the flexibility for my lunch "hour" to be a lunch "hour and a bit" so long as I make up the time elsewhere).
But that is easy enough to fix - there is always before work or after work to fit in some yoga goodness. And given that I use YogaGlo, I can do great classes at home whenever it suits me.
What isn't as easy to sort is my stupid lower back. It has been giving me grief for a few days now. Kind of a dull ache across my sacrum. I ignored it for the first few days in hope that it would just sort itself out and I kept up my usual routine, including strong, vigorous vinyasa classes and bouts on the treadmill.
Imagine my surprise when this kind of just made it a little bit worse.
Have I seriously learnt nothing?
Once I came to my senses though, I gave my body and my poor achey back a nice break from all forms of exercise. And that certainly improved things.
I was concerned, though, that maybe there was something that I had been doing wrong that had caused the pain in the first place. (Although, it is also very likely that it was just a sign that my body was tired and wanted me to just stop for a little while. Bodies are so wise - I should really listen to mine more often!) So I Googled my symptoms to see what the likely causes could be and, more importantly, what I could do differently to avoid it in the future.
Apart from a few nasty causes that I quickly dismissed (spinal stenosis or herniated disk anyone?), the most likely cause was a strain from overuse. Oh, and let's not forget that I am getting old. And what did most of the websites I looked recommend to prevent it from reoccurring?
Yoga!
I had been so caught up in thinking of yoga as a workout that I had forgotten all about its amazing therapeutic effects. Unlike most of the other things that you can get up to in the gym, a yoga practice actually has the ability to heal your body and to prevent injuries.
This was such a brilliant realisation as, after two days rest, I was itching to get back on the mat. So that I didn't run into the same problems though, I have done a couple of classes that have been specially designed to care for and strengthen the lower back. The great thing about these classes is that they usually set you up with some great tips that can then be applied to any class so that you can get your alignment right and prevent any future aches and pains.
Yoga IS therapy. You just need to adjust your approach slightly to address whatever concerns your body is telling you it is having.
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