Every year more people start doing yoga to help with back pain, hip pain, shoulder pain etc. And while yoga feels good, leaving you feeling relaxed. All too often it does little to nothing improve painful, limited range of motion. What's going on? Why does yoga seem to work for some people while other students continue to struggle with their pain for months or years?

The nature of chronic musculoskeletal pain

Yoga teachers, physical therapists and other professionals are fond of saying that they have a solution for addressing the 'root cause' of pain. But we know from numerous studies that chronic muscle pain is not merely a matter of poor posture or muscle imbalances. Chronic musculoskeletal pain is a multifaceted problem. Stress, sleep quality, metabolic health and numerous other lifestyle factor contribute to how vulnerable we are to physical stress. Most healthy people can withstand the physical stress of having less than perfectly balanced posture. 

The kind of yoga practice best suited to resolving chronic muscle pain, therefore, is not one that tries to correct your posture, but one that challenges you to adopt a pain-free lifestyle and create health. A rising tide lifts all ships and creating all-around health improves pain-resilience.

Practice for a Pain-Free Lifestyle

A yoga practice that asks you to challenge yourself off the mat is more involved than showing up to a studio a few times a week, but it doesn't need to be excessively complicated. Here are the six steps to building a pain-free lifestyle.

1) Find a short-term solution

It's hard to be proactive about your health if you are reacting to pain. The goal here is to get some temporary relief so you can focus on more long-term solutions. There are plenty of treatment options, many you can do on your own. I recommend trigger point massaging for tight, painful muscle knots with a tennis ball or similar. Is it a perfect solution? No. But it doesn't need to be. This is like changing out a flat tire for a spare. It's enough to get you going again... but the place you should be going is a garage to get fixed, not back on the freeway.

Download the free trigger point guide for all the major muscle knots.

2) Nutrition and Recovery

Training with poor nutrition and recovery is like trying to fill a bucket with holes. Don't get lost in the maze of fads, supplements and nonsense. There is nothing wrong with ice baths, red-light therapy, specialty diets, fasting or any of the other 'game changing' treatments you've heard about. But none of them are going to help if you don't have the basics in place. 

• Get 7-9 hours of sleep a night. - Download the free guide to better sleep
• Eat the right amount of calories and protein. - Download the free guide to nutrition planning
• Include fruits or vegetables with every meal. 

Just having these in place you'll be giving your body what it needs to repair itself, reduce inflammation and have stable energy levels all day. Until you're doing these, don't waste your time or money on the bells and whistles.

3) Resistance Training

Resistance training means exercising your muscles against resistance. That could be dumbbells, weight machines or bodyweight exercises etc. The good news is that your muscles don't care where the resistance comes from. So if you find the idea of going to the gym to be overstimulating and unenjoyable, you can get everything you need from home. But it is essential that you practice resistance training in some capacity. Contrary to what you may have heard, resistance training is good for reducing chronic muscle pain. 

• Work at a level of intensity and range of motion that is available to you and gradually increase them over time.
• Prioritize dynamic compound movements over holding static poses
• Focus on the fundamental movement patterns: squatting, lunging, hinging, pushing, pulling, twisting

Begin by choosing three days a week for resistance training.

4) Endurance Training

Too often we associate endurance training with running so hard you puke and spending hours on a treadmill. But cardio doesn't need to be a dirty word. It's one of the best things you can do to improve pain-tolerance and create health. The goal here is to get used to maintaining a minimum level of daily activity.

• Meet an average weekly step goal.
• Focus on light to moderate effort. Working at a pace you can have a conversation is great.
• Sustain an elevated heart rate for 30 minutes a couple time a week.

Walking is another fundamental movement pattern. If you want to be able to continue to walk as you age, keeping it as part of your daily routine is a good idea. However, there are plenty of other ways to maintain heart health if you prefer cycling, swimming or rowing to running.

5) Skill Training

Doing inversions, backbends and other challenging poses is not essential to building a pain-free lifestyle. But motivation is. If you've ever been in class and wished you could practice more exciting and demanding poses if not for the pain in your shoulders, seeing yourself develop the strength, flexibility and coordination to do these poses without pain can be the motivation that keeps you consistent.

• Choose one or two skills to practice at a time.
• Spend at least 15 minutes practicing each skill.
• Take as much time as you need to warm up and rest between each attempt.

Classes with 'a little bit of everything' may be fun, but they are not the most effective way to master a new skill. Practice for the poses and changes you want to see.

6) Reflection and Planning

Staying committed to your practice requires planning ahead and reflecting on your behavior when you stray off track. Often we are too busy to add something new to our lives and in order to dedicate ourselves to lifestyle changes, we have to give up old habits and relationships that no longer serve us.

• Keep track of the things you want to change. A daily record of your practice, your sleep or your nutrition is a good way to make sure that you stay on track.
• Reflect on your success and challenges every night/ week. Thinking about what kinds of things keep you from being consistent will help you plan ahead for how to deal with them next time.
• Identify your habit cycles. All of our habitual behavior begins with a trigger, that produces a desire. Pay attention to what triggers your habits and you will have better control of them. 

Of all the possible skills necessary for developing a pain-free lifestyle this is probably the most useful and most difficult to master. 

Download a free guide to planning and reflection for more consistency.

Go Beyond Stretching and Breathing

What is a yoga practice? Is it showing up a couple times a week to practice poses? If you want a yoga practice that changes you from the inside out you need to take your practice off the mat and think about how it applies to your whole life. Building a pain-free lifestyle is not all there is. But establishing habits for health and fitness make it easier to continue building habits for better emotional health, better relationship health and better spiritual health. 

Rising Tide Protocol

The Rising Tide Protocol helps yoga students in their 40s-50s who are managing slowly declining health resolve muscle pain and improve their strength, endurance and flexibility in 6 weeks. We work one-on-one to change your training, recovery, nutrition and mental health from the inside out. 

Find out more