Be Careful!
Many people around me know that I've practised yoga for many years.
Recently, concerned friends reminded me to "be careful" and not to "practise yoga too much".
Huh?
Isn't yoga supposed to be good for you? Can there be too much of a good thing?
Practising Yoga Could Be Bad for Women?
They had read an article in The Straits Times (Singapore), originally published in The New York Times. The writer, Mr. William J. Broad, claimed that there is evidence that practising yoga could be bad for women.
Mr. Broad cited statistics from orthopedic surgeons. Amongst one surgeon's patients who needed surgery to mend or replace their injured hips, roughly 100 a year were practising yoga. Another surgeon performed 10-15 hip replacement surgeries a year on people who do yoga. 90% of these cases were women.
He postulated that, women's flexibility causes them to be more susceptible to hip injuries when practising yoga.
At first glance, that's really bad news for me.
All is not lost
The Sample was Skewed
As Mr. Paul Grilley responded in an online post, Mr. Broad merely showed the correlation between people who needed hip surgery and doing yoga. There were no information as to whether the patients would have avoided hip surgery if they didn't do yoga.
Moreover, they had started with "hip surgery patients", then looked for people who "do yoga" amongst them. Selected this way, 100% of those who do yoga would be hip surgery patients!
If the universe were defined as "people who do yoga", and we look for people who underwent hip surgery, the story would be *slightly* different. Yet, it would still not prove any causal relationship between the two, only a correlation.
They were Doing it Wrong
Furthermore, if the women were practising in an unsafe manner, the risk of injury would be high. (Not only to the hips!)
Unsafe could be any of the following:
- Not taking care of alignment (subjecting the joints to unnecessary or excessive strain).
- Over-emphasising on a single aspect e.g. focussing solely on stretching to increase "flexibility" without attempting to improve the strength of the muscles.
- Focussing only on certain groups of muscles (e.g. "working on the abs") rather than working complementary and antagonist/opposing muscles and looking at the body as a system of interconnected, interrelated parts.
- Ignoring the body's limits, and "forcing" one's way to try to achieve the "yoga magazine photo" depiction of a pose.
In more technical language...
Mr. Grilley explained in his response:
Range of Motion: How much one bone moves relative to another. E.g. bending at your knee to bring the heel to touch your buttocks (the femur/thigh bone almost parallel to the tibia/shin bone and fibula) and straighten the leg completely (the above-mentioned bones forming 180 degrees to each other).
Tension ("Stretching"): Limits range of motion due to resistance of ligaments or muscles.
Compression: Limits range of motion when bone contacts bone or pinching tissue between bones.
Skeletal Variation: Recognizing that all skeletons are different and that the final mechanical limit to range of motion is when bones contact (compression).
Mr. Grilley emphasized the importance in yoga to discriminate between the sensations of tension and compression.
If a person cannot perform a pose in an aesthetically pleasing way, they consider themselves “too tight to do the pose”.
(a) Their fascia or muscles might be too tight.
(b) It is also possible their bones are compressing. If they try to push through it, they will eventually become injured.
The Bottomline Is
Do everything in moderation. (Applicable to most situations!)
Stay aware of your body.
If you're looking at practising yoga:
1. Don't emphasise on only one aspect (e.g. flexibility), at the expense of ignoring other complementary practices (strengthening, balancing).
2. Pay attention to your body while you're practising.
3. You will know when you can try to stretch further or if you should stop, if you can tell the difference between tension (stretching) and compression (bones contacting bones or bones pinching tissues). So, learn how to do so.
In any case, because everyone's body (skeletal structure, muscles etc) is different, everyone's expression of a pose would be different. Yet, the mere act of doing the pose would already yield benefits. It's not necessary to do a pose "picture-perfectly" in order to derive its benefits.
The Articles
If you'd like to read the articles, they are:
1. The piece in question by Mr. William J. Broad:
Women’s Flexibility Is a Liability (in Yoga)
2. An earlier piece by Mr. William J. Broad:
How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body
3. The response by Mr. Paul Grilley:
Paul Grilley’s Response to NY Times article on Women’s Flexibility
