The negative effects of yoga if done carelessly

Yoga and its many benefits

Yoga has been practiced by many people in the world and has proven its health benefits. For example, yoga can improve mental health, reduce stress, improve heart function, increase strength and flexibility of muscles and joints.

Is it true that yoga is prone to causing injury?

Reporting from the New York Times, a senior yoga instructor, Glenn Black argues that basically yoga should be done by people with good physical condition. Or, yoga can also be done to treat certain conditions with special methods. Therefore, yoga is not for everyone.

Glenn himself admitted that he often missed or did not do the standing posture with his head down (headstand) or standing on your shoulders while practicing yoga.

Why so? Apparently, these postures are quite risky and dangerous. Usually, injuries occur due to poor physical condition or current health problems. Various yoga poses do require special abilities and flexibility, they cannot be practiced carelessly.

Instead of doing yoga right away, it is better to try light movements first to condition the organs. This aims to strengthen the weak parts of the body.

In fact, this opinion is reinforced by a small survey conducted in Finland in 2008. In the survey, it was found that 62 percent of survey participants who did yoga for more than a month admitted to having a muscoskeletal injury with a duration of more than one month. The survey is published in the International Journal of Yoga Therapy.

Various risks of doing yoga

Basically, the negative effects of yoga are very rare because usually the instructors have adjusted the difficulty level of the pose to your ability. However, here are the various risks that may occur if you are not careful when doing yoga.

Glaucoma complications

Glaucoma occurs when there is excess pressure behind the eyeball. This distraction can cause you to lose your ability to see. When you do certain yoga movements, such as movements that make your body upside down such as headstand and shoulderstand , the pressure in the eye will increase and can cause complications in the eye.

Increased blood pressure

Strong breathing techniques and an inverted posture can increase blood pressure. So if you already have a history of high blood pressure (hypertension), some yoga poses such as Breath of Fire will not relieve your condition and make it worse.

Back injury

Forced movement of bending the body forward when sitting can cause injury to the spinal plate which is indeed vulnerable, especially in the lumbar area. The lumbar is the lower backbone. Usually, what happens is lower back pain. This can also result from a lack of heating.

Muscle injury

About 27 of the 76 yoga injury cases reported in the journal PLoS ONE came from muscle injuries. This can be caused by insufficient warm-up so that your flexibility has not reached a certain stage, but is forced during yoga. The solution, make sure you can measure the limit of muscle tension so that it does not go to extremes and result in injury.

So, is yoga safe to do?

Yes, yoga is still safe for you to do. Basically, yoga is not dangerous. However, yoga is not a type of sport that can be intended for everyone with various health conditions.

Make sure you listen carefully to the instructions of your yoga teacher, follow the guidelines well, and warm up well. Perform light movements to accustom your limbs so that you can do certain astana. Doing yoga astana without proper warm-up increases the risk of injury and has the negative effects of yoga.

In addition, it is important for those of you who want to do yoga to know your current health condition to prevent the negative effects of yoga. If you have a medical history, such as back pain or high blood pressure, consult your doctor.

Also tell your yoga instructor what health conditions you have. That way, the instructor will adapt the exercises and poses to your abilities.