Good Pain or Bad Pain ?

Greater Baltimore Yoga Blog
A level 1 student reported that that he finally found out how to stop the pain in his thoracic spine. Chest openers. [See my article : Reawakening the Spine] When he lays over a bolster, there is instant relief. At night he will lay over an ice pack to backbend and add cold to an irritated inflamed area. He is convinced backbends are the answer, not only because of the instant relief but also, pain does occur when he bends forward. He has a diagnosed herniation [bulge] of some of his thoracic disks. More commonly, the cervical and lumbar disks bulge and cause inflammation, but the thoracic disks are obviously not immune from bulging and causing pain. [See my article : Low Back Pain]

He asked whether he should or should not tolerate the back pain when he bends forward. I told him: definitely not. Some intense sensations in yoga are to be tolerated because they are therapeutic. But the soft tissue and nerve root irritations from bulging disks cause intense sensations that are signals to stop and avoid whatever movement that caused this sensation. There is "good pain" like stretching tight hamstrings or backbending a spine skillfully. Eventually the stretching sensation subsides and one feels better for having gone through the intensity. But there is "bad pain" where the bottom line is that one continues to worsen afterwards. One is then perpetuating one's condition, and it becomes chronic in nature. One does not have to cause more soft tissue inflammation. The study of yoga helps one develop the skill in knowing the difference in the quality of sensations and therefore the affects derived .

Do you know if the sensations that you experience are telling you that your yoga pose is therapeutic or injurious?

S/I Pain in Standing Poses

Greater Baltimore Yoga Blog
Last night, I had a student who asked why warrior pose hurt his back. When he spread his legs wide, pressed more through his heels, He reported a pain in the back of his pelvis. I discovered that he had a sacro-ilial compression caused by sacral outflare. This means that when ever anyone rotates their leg outward [external rotation], the ilium [side of pelvis] has to move along with the leg in what is called outflare. The problem is that the ilium can compress and irritate the S/I joint on the back/ side of the pelvis. So, when he squeezed his front hip bones [ASIS] towards each other, the outflare was reduced by a inflare movement. He then could roll his legs out in external rotation as necessary in Warrior pose II, as long as he squeezed his hip bones together.

Another common compression problem is sacral compression from too much ilial anterior torsion [tilting pelvis forward too much relative to the spine].

Any comments? Review my article on Sacro-ilial compression problems.

Stan