Image Source - Pinterest (lowdensitylifestyle.com)
I had posted this a while back on Instagram. A few additions to this - I see a surge of Yoga Practitioners propagating the benefits of Yoga, and we have some vouching for Yoga to be the fix for any back pain.
Well - Yoga has benefits - Yes. It helps many - Yes. But a guarantee Yoga would be a fix to any back pain or for that matter any ailment (Yes we have a few Dhanwantri trainers around) - Big NO. What amazes me is the promptness with which they replace a 'back pain' with a 'Spine Issue'. Is it the common knowledge that the back and spine happen to have more or less the same placement on a human body or is it something else which gives them this astuteness, I am yet to figure.
Getting back to my point - It's on the Trainers, who people tend to believe blindly once you have a 'Certified Yoga Instructor' tag, to judiciously make such promises. Actually, why make promises at all? Do you know for sure how one's body would respond?
Lest I am misunderstood, I would like to share my experience - I had been suffering from back pain a few years back and I went for Yoga under the guidance of an Instructor (Obviously, I liked to believe he knew what he was making me practise). My decision to do so was bolstered by the fact that Yoga had really fixed my knee pains about 12 years back. But, the back pain only got worse and I visited a Senior Spine Surgeon in the city. (I got lucky - he made no promises, did not jump to a conclusion on my issue to be spine related just because I had gone to him and just because he had 'MBBS, FRCS - General Surgery, MS - Orthopaedics, M.Ch - Orthopaedics' attached to his name and just because he had 35 years of experience in the field). He insisted on a series of tests and on deep examination he figured the cause of the pain was completely unrelated to any 'Spine issue' and was fixed by an invasive surgery on some other part of my body.
I am not saying Yoga was necessarily the cause of deterioration, but on hindsight I think I should have not wasted my time and should have right away gone for a proper clinical examination before attempting anything at all.
So folks - Too bad there is no 'One size fits all'!
Comments