Are your mind, body and spirit out of tune? You might think about pulling out the yoga mat. Yoga is practiced by millions worldwide to reduce stress, increase flexibility and improve overall health, but some experts warn that all of those complex stretches and maneuvers could be doing serious damage to your body. Is yoga the secret to a healthy life, or could you just be kicking yourself?
Washington U School of Medicine
One of the main issues is that there is a wide variety of Yoga systems and a wide variety of instructors, thus some of my concerns are related to the directions that are being given to those performing Yoga. Next is that having high degrees of flexibility is not desirable. I have asked physical therapists around the world whether they would rather have a patient that is very flexible or one that is rather stiff and they all concur that stiff is better than flexible. Next there are not adequate guidelines in the lay literature about what is adequate range of motion about a joint versus excessive range of motion. In addition, for the most part professional training is necessary to know if an individual who is performing a stretching maneuver is really stretching the joint of muscle of interest or an adjoining joint, for example the low back versus the hip joint.
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