Cause the Kool Kids Are Doing It

Everybody's got their undies in a bunch over a certain gloom-and-doom NYT yoga article. I found it yawn-inducing, but a lot of pretty reasonable folks find it disturbing. I originally left this content as a comment, but will crosspost it here.

I just can’t take the article seriously – I giggle a little every time that I read about someone getting bent out of shape over it. It’s sensationalist dreck, which the Times likes to publish frequently to entertain their readers and drum up advertising revenue.

They profiled one or two guys who ended up with serious complications, and I’d bet money that they misquoted him or took segments out of context. That’s nothing, compared to the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people who have practiced for years and years and have reaped the quality of life benefits of the practice.

Of my skier friends, about a third have undergone knee surgery for blown ACLs and the like. One broke a leg in a fall and got choppered off a serious mountain. Another survived an unplanned night out due to the pure luck of a finding a fumarole-melted ice cave.

Of my climbing friends, about 80% of all who take it seriously have been taken out for months from tendon/ligament issues at one point or another. Personally I’ve strained ligaments, sprained ankles in nasty falls, pulled countless muscles.

Of my surfing friends, I know people who have blown ACLs, gotten speared by fins, and destroyed their rotator cuffs. I bashed my forehead open on a rail, have sprained wrists and ankles, been sliced open by fins, and pulled a muscle near my kidney that bothered me exiting trikonasana for about four months.

Swimmer friends suffer rotator cuffs injuries, torn labrums, and the like.
Cyclist friends get knee injuries; runners get shin splints, knee problems, achilles tendonitis.

There’s a trend here – you push hard in any deeply physical activity and you get hurt if you’re not intelligent and careful. I just took a week off from practice because my shoulder was getting overused between ashtanga and climbing. It’s the nature of life. Thinking you can avoid any and all injuries is like thinking that you can get through life without experiencing grief.

When I sit on the couch and don’t do anything I’m safe from injury. Too bad my mind and body suffer in other ways.

The Times article is crap. If you go through their archives you can find articles denouncing running, swimming, now yoga, as well as countless articles discussing how a negative lifestyle will kill you. Not to mention the millions of fad diet articles they’ve published over the years. They make money getting people to read their articles, and historically nothing draws a crowd like prophesies of doom.

Believing what supposed experts claim gets you nowhere. Historical knowledge combined with a keen experimental attitude tempered by caution and personal experience is the only way to progress.

Listen to your experience and the people you trust, not some self-proclaimed expert whose authority is based on having written a book. That holds for all subjects.
To quote The Matrix, they are, after all, “Only human.”