How do I know if the pain in my body is bad for me and I should stop, or if it is good for me and I should just push through it?

Yoga offers the opportunity to developer a deeper, more meaningful relationship with your body and this is exactly the place to start.

First I really don’t think of sensations as being ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but they are sensations our body is making in order to communicate something to us, and Anusara yoga teaches us to interpret these sensations and have a conversation with your body.

Feeling, or ‘listening’, so you can tell the difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad pain is really the first step in this relationship. In general, any pain in a joint is not beneficial and ‘pushing through it’ could cause real damage. It is a signal that there is a misalignment where the bones are meeting in that joint. Your knees, ankles, shoulders, neck and low back, should never hurt, ever.

When the bones are not lining up the way they are meant to, the tissue that attaches the muscles and bones together are being pulled in a way that is doing damage, loosening attachments that are supposed to be firm. Pain in the joints is a signal that one of the bodies bio-mechanical principles had been overlooked. If you are an Anusara practitioner and know how to heed this warning, adjust and add the Anusara principle that is missing.

For example, if there is pain in the knee, there are 2 sets of principles that address knee issues: Principle 1: Shins In/Thighs Out or Principle 2: Calf Loop and thigh loop. Instead of ‘stopping’ the practiced student would come out of the pose as necessary in order to perform the action of the missing principle. Realigning the knee and relieving the pain could be as simple as the flick of a pinky toe!

Learning the Anusara principles and how to apply them to all the poses is the key to dealing with pain in the joints. If you have an existing injury I highly recommend taking a private lesson with an Anusara teacher so that you can learn which principle you need to practice to address your pain.

‘Good’ pain is generally referred to the pain in the muscle bellies caused by it’s stretch or it’s contraction. Again, first determine of the pain is in the muscle, or at or near a joint.

If you are stretching the muscle when it is painful, it may be due to pulling on the muscle too hard. Forcing a muscle to stretch, ‘pushing through it’ will backfire! It is gentle tension and patience that triggers the mechanisms in a muscle that will allow it to stretch. Pulling too hard actually just makes muscles, and you, more tense, and in pain!

If a muscle is painful when you are contracting, using or ‘firing’ it, it may be one of 2 things. Muscle strain may occur when you are forcing a muscle that does not have the strength to perform the action the way you want. The way to address this again is to firm the ‘weak’ muscle, more gently, over time and it will strengthen healthfully. Also learning to employ other muscle to aid in the desired action is essential for balanced action.

The other, and most common, ‘pain’ in muscles is the soreness that occurs after practice. This can indicate the use of muscles that have not been used in a long time and/or perhaps that you are ‘over-efforting’ and need not squeeze so hard the next time. Remember it is gentle tension and breath that strengthens and stretches muscles properly.

If you are focused on purposefully strengthening a weak muscle, you may experience gentle pain in the process of building the muscle. What is hard to judge here is what is ‘gentle pain’, the sole beneficial pain. What I always tell students is if you are trying to build muscle, hug your muscles with gentle firmness so that while you are doing it , it takes effort, you can breath but there is no pain. Then the next test will come the following day. If there is excessive soreness, you were definitely squeezing too hard the day before!

We want strength AND mobility. Muscles that are hyper-contracted are the main cause of immobility, not muscle weakness!

If you are not sure how to address the pain, please ask you teacher, they are trained to help you in creating a great relationship with your body. ‘Pushing through the pain’ is a way of conditioning yourself to ignore your body, not interpret its signals.