The Autistic Yogi Reflects on Extreme Yoga Practices

Through the last decade of peering into the yoga community and as a practitioner and teacher I have noticed that there is a massive emphasis on extreme practice which has produced a lingo in many teachers that is similar to what I would expect drill sergeants to act like, with all the 'you must do this' or 'doing that is cheating', and all the other cues that have become axiom to the westernized practice. But the basis of this lays in the very reaching and wanting more depth and more extreme variants, especially in the aesthetic look of posturing.
There is a strong tendency for small tutorials about a posture done by a very capable bendy and strong teacher to tell students who are ill-equipped that the extreme variant of a posture is the right way to do the posture and anything else is cheating. Most of these individuals I have to question if they have put much thought into concepts like;
Bone structure differences from one person to another?
How does holding an extra 20lbs of adipose affect one's ability?
How does compression of a joint differ from one to another?
How does tension differ in the muscles, tendons, and ligaments differ from one body to another?
Nerve length and ability to move through extreme ranges of motion?
Repeated rapid fascial distension and long term effects?
Repeated long-term slow fascial distension and its long term effects?
The bone length and muscle strength and biomechanical concepts like moment arm?
How much does proprioception come into the ability to execute postures and how do we go from a simple to a complex pattern of movement that keeps our body safe on all levels?

Consider that most people that get injured do not divulge their injury to others. Often it is simply due to embarrassment because an injury might show us as being incapable, weak, or whatever else people might think. So as teachers or observers of the world of fitness it is safe to assume that you have left some people injured and they just refuse to confess its nature.

The most common complaint of pain I see in yoga is the wrist because so many of the typical westernized flow practices require an excessive amount of hand on floor in an extended pattern and there is little done to balance this joint in its other movement directions.
Secondly, I see shoulders as being a very common area that is insulted in the duration of practice, which I suspect is more about the practitioner's shoulder complex being tired but they try and execute complicated postures that require good technique and good strength and maybe even endurance if there are long holds in things like arm balance sequences or heavy amounts of downdog and chaturanga variants.
I see an increasing amount of rib subluxations and hip issues coming out of the practice as well.

What all this tells me is that there is a huge emphasis on extreme practice even in gentle flow classes, because of the tendency to want to be deep in a posture or look as much like a celebrity yogi/yogini as one can.  
If I am a testament to what the problem is then it lays in our being ignorant to the fact that we are even practicing or teaching an extreme form of yoga until something is injured. More often than not there are little warning signals about a deteriorating part of practice which we attempt to push through rather than an honest assessment as to what contributed to the deterioration in the first place. And its even harder if you have a tremendous following like our Instagram and Youtube Yoga Stars.

The Autistic Yogi Reflects on Walking Stride, Tight/Short Hip Fllexors and Things

  Over the last couple years, my flexibility in my hip flexors decreased due to how much time I focused on acro yoga, which increased my pant size from a 32 to 34 just in muscle. I  use to think myself as a lanky guy but that all started to change first with yoga and then especially with the acro. On average I would have 120-150 lbs held up in the air on my feet anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours daily over the last couple years, but do to a back injury that I neglected to focus on healing and GERDs (Gastroesophageal reflux disease ) I was unable to focus any attention on yoga the last few months, which caused quite a dramatic increase in my fat content haha. Now that I have managed to get the GERDs under control with a medication I am able to once again resume my yoga practice and walking.
  Walking has caused me to analyze my stride and how tight my hip flexors are and my lack of hip extension, and how those combine to aggravate my back. What I noticed is that I have always had a fairly long stride as I like to get from point A to point B fairly quickly. What the long stride does to my back is hellish now. When my leg that moves into extension can no longer extend at the ball socket joint it makes my whole pelvis slightly move into anterior tilt which drives force up into my lumbar. What it does in my SI joint I can only imagine but the most pronounced is what is happening in my lumbar.
  I will have to shorten my stride and either learn to enjoy a slower walk to my destination or learn how to properly speedwalk without wreaking havoc on my back and hips.
  I use to attempt to train with harder depths to force tissue distension in quickest gains possible, but over the years I have come to believe that this is more detrimental over the long term than good. So my approach is to work tissue distension slowly over a longer period of time, instead of gaining attempting to gain a centimetre I will try for 1 millimetre or just enjoy my baseline and focus on maintaining movement instead of increasing range of motion, especially when rom doesn't really matter in the long term.

The Autistic Yogi Reflects on Depression and Metldowns

  So it has been a while since I posted, due to spiraling into a depression and a meltdown.
Just to put you on the same page as me about what I see a meltdown as.  There are meltdowns and there are tantrums.
  Tantrums are the freak outs normally associated with infants and often autistic individuals continue to have tantrums throughout their lives.
  Meltdowns are when the individual retreats into themselves and there is next to no association with others.
  Due to some unforeseen events in my life, I started to spiral into a depression which then made its way into a meltdown. Typically what happens when I have these meltdowns is I pretty much no longer answer calls, look at emails, use social networks. I become a room dweller, a neckbeard. A friend once accused me of believing myself to be a vampire because I wore long shirts and avoided daylight, (I assume this was because we had played vampire the masquerade together). Also if I had a job at the time of a meltdown, I would just stop going, wouldn't call or do anything about it. It was like I was in a full blown freeze state. I honestly feel frozen, unable to make decisions, even simple ones like showering or brushing teeth, making proper food choices, or proper amount of exercise. It was like I waited for death to come. When I was younger I was actively suicidal.
  Yoga was the main thing that had helped me to stay away from these meltdowns through my 30s. But due to an injury, gerds, and some other events in my life, my practice slowly diminished till it was nonexistent for a couple months. By this time I was once again in full blown meltdown. I put on a bunch of weight which made the gerds even worse and made all forward folds immensely uncomfortable. My doctor finally put me on an acid blocker, which has been working very well. And I am once again attempting to claw my way out of a deep depression and meltdown. I feel every bit the beginner yogi I was years ago, just with a lot more knowledge on movement ( I don't need anybody to lead me through what to do, I have a ton of movement ideas). But dang do my shoulders ache after doing a few sets of sun salutations
  With the extra weight on my belly and legs, I have to do my forward folds with my feet about shoulder width apart so that flow is effective. There is no way I could bring my foot from a down dog in between my hands, cause the tissues prevent it from happening. I also find wider hands in down dog to be far more comfortable for my shoulders, which I suspect is due to the added adipose and the effects it is having on my bone/tendon/ligament structure in the shoulder.
  While I don't think I am yet wanting or able to do a full hour of flow yoga, I am halfway there. A handful more sessions and I should easily have brushed off my neurons and figure out a good format of practice to get myself back to a comfortable hour of movement and start to emerge from my neckbeard habits or room dwelling and being asocial.