Yoga: Underestimated Risk of Injury

Christiane Fux studied journalism and psychology in Hamburg. The experienced medical editor has been writing magazine articles, news and factual texts on all conceivable health topics since 2001. In addition to her work for, Christiane Fux is also active in prose. Her first crime novel was published in 2012, and she also writes, designs and publishes her own crime plays.

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Yoga is considered a gentle sport. In fact, the associated risks are no less than with many other types of training. It can actually make existing injuries worse.

Used correctly, yoga can help with many muscular and skeletal ailments. Back pain sufferers and other pain patients around the world therefore rely on Far Eastern kinetics as an alternative therapy. But does this also involve risks?

Injury rate higher than previously thought

“Yoga can help with musculoskeletal problems, but it can also cause pain itself,” says Evangelos Pappas from the University of Sydney. The researcher and his colleagues had followed 354 yoga practitioners for a year. Ten percent of them had developed exercise-related pain during this time.

"This means that the injury rate is ten times higher than previously stated," says the researcher. It is therefore comparable to the injury rate in other physically active people. And the injuries are not trivial: more than a third of the injuries caused by yoga were so serious that those affected had to stop exercising for at least three months.

Risky yoga exercises

Pain in the shoulders, arms, elbows and wrists was particularly common. The reason could be typical yoga figures such as the “downward looking dog”, which shift body weight especially to the upper extremities.

Existing pain can also worsen rather than improve through yoga: This was the case in 21 percent of the cases, and here, too, it particularly affected patients who wanted to get rid of pain in the shoulder and arm area with the help of yoga.

Most patients benefit

But many pain sufferers also benefited: 74 percent of participants reported that existing pain had improved since they had started yoga.

Just don't overwhelm!

Pain caused by yoga can be avoided by performing the exercises carefully. Too much ambition is more harmful than helping. This is especially true for novice yoga practitioners and those who have stopped training for a while.

The researchers recommend that yoga students inform their teachers about existing pain and injuries so that they can take this into account. In addition, the treating physicians should also know that their patients want to take yoga lessons.

Tags:  anatomy vaccinations stress