Is Your Forward Fold Damaging Your Hip Joints?

People come to yoga for various reasons, mainly to reduce stress, increase flexibility or to recover from an injury. But what if your yoga practice was causing you injury? If you ask someone who has done yoga for years if they still do the same practice that they used to, I bet you their response will be no. The general response is that their old practice was causing them pain.

The practice of yoga is thousands of years old, but not all of the poses are. Some have been added and adapted over the years. The popularity of yoga has put it in the spotlight and because of that a lot of studies have popped up. People are paying more attention to statistics. One alarming one is the amount of injuries. Pushing yourself in any athletic endeavor can lead to injury, but what if you were doing it right and still got hurt?

Michaelle Edwards, the founder of YogAlign, has been questioning the physical practice of yoga. She studied the poses and their affect on the body in relation to how they impact the spine, specifically the joints. What she found, is that the position that some of the yoga poses put us in, specifically forward folds, are damaging our joints. When we lengthen the spine or straighten the legs, we're pulling our hips and thigh bones out of their natural alignment. So when we fold forward the head of the femur is pressing into the hip socket causing damage to the joint.

Typical problems in our joints come from the joint being misaligned, either due to poor posture, excess weight or joint deformities. Femoroacetabular impingement or F.A.I., is a common injury popping up in yoga. It’s caused by the neck of the femur (thigh bone) swinging too close to the hip socket (due to hyper-flexibility or improper positioning of the head of the femur in the hip socket), damaging it every time it hits. This  damage to the cartilage in the joint eventually results in hip pain.

What Edwards found in her studies, is when we do a standard forward fold in yoga, with the spine and legs straight, the neck of the femur is forced into the hip socket. This repetitive impact leads to F.A.I. She says this injury can be avoided if we maintain the natural curve of our spine and position of the hips when we go into our forward folds. Below is a picture of how Edwards says we should do forward folds and how we typically do them. 

Notice in the first picture how the spine is retaining its natural curve. When the yogi goes into her forward fold she'll want to keep her knees bent and her spine curved. This will allow the rotation of the head of the femur to rotate naturally and not smack into the joint capsule. In figure two, notice how the head of the femur is already pressing against the joint capsule, so when she folds forward it will grind the joint, causing damage. 

This same consideration of posture should be done in all forward folds. To test the theory, come into a standing position. Bend your knees deeply while standing and begin to fold over fully into your forward fold. Slowly begin to straighten your legs. As you do so, notice where the stretch is and where it ends up when your legs are completely straight. You'll notice that it goes from the hamstrings to the low back and hips. You're no longer just stretching your hamstrings, but your connective tissue and this is not a good thing. Also notice in Edward's image below how the head of the femur is pressing into the hip socket.

If we stretch our ligaments and tendons, they won't be able to support our bone structure as well and we'll become unstable. Instability leads to our bones grinding the joints which will inevitably lead to pain. The problem is, we don't know that we've done the damage till the pain lets us know.

 

So if you are thinking, why should I change up my practice if I'm not feeling any pain? The reason you should, is to prevent more damage and the possibility of future pain. What you enjoy as flexibility now, could turn into pain later. If you try Edwards approach in your forward folds and find that you get no stretch at all, that is an indication that you have over stretched your hamstrings. A muscle only needs to stretch so much. If this is the case, you will need to work on strengthening your hamstrings. I'll write in later blogs on how to decrease hyper-flexibility.

Check out Edwards book, YogAlign, Pain-free Yoga from Your Inner Core (Book with DVD). Whether you're a teacher or student, it could prevent you from causing injury to you or your students joints. Her website is also an informative read. I've yet to decide how this will impact my teaching or personal practice, but I know I will read her book, adjust my practice accordingly and see how I feel. As is, I already have damage in my hip and shoulders and I believe that yoga is the cause. I love my practice and would never give it up, so I'm excited to try her theory and hopefully prevent more damage.