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.
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