Question:

After my weekly yoga class I always have sore hamstrings, yet I can do a pump class and feel no pain afterwards. Is overstretching causing this pain?

Answer:

A new student to yoga will often feel pain after a class that is intense in stretching and range of movement. In the same way you rip muscles during weight-lifting, stretching deeply with the muscle under load will cause tiny tears in the muscle. This is very normal for growth, as the torn muscle then swells and irritates the nerve ending causing the feeling of pain.

A lot of actions in yoga classes are eccentric movements, meaning lengthening the muscle under load rather than contracting it. This is not the way most gym training focuses and may be very new to your training regime. If you are new to it, then your body will not be conditioned for this type of movement and you'll likely experience the cycle of muscle tears, swelling and pain initially.

When practising any type of yoga it is important to listen to your body before and after the practice, and design the intensity of your practice around what your body is telling you. If you practise hard one day and end up with pain for a week then it is obvious that you pushed yourself too much during that session and need to back off and let your body build up the conditioning to handle that level of intensity.

This brings a whole other world into our training where we start to look at our inner practice and motivation for training hard and pushing ourselves to the limit. Are we being driven by the ego's goals at the expense of the body? This is a great question for any new practitioner to consider. Yoga, in its many forms, aims to quieten the fluctuations of the mind to bring about peace and ultimately transcend our little selves and connect with a power far greater.

The practice of asana (postures) is really a vehicle to do this and the by-product will be a healthy, strong and flexible body, but the process is to quieten the mind and rid us of its constant chatter. Sounds deep, right? It is, but yoga will transform your life in positive ways, every day you practise. Listening to your body is the first step towards enlightened living. Namaste.

Duncan Peak — yoga expert
www.powerliving.com.au