The New Wave of Yoga. ~ Kathryn Bruni-Young
My mom was one of the first female teachers in the country to have her own studio, which means I’ve essentially grown up in the yoga culture.
In high school I started practicing more seriously, not really knowing where I would end up. At the end of 10 years I’ve come full circle with my yoga practice.
I started out as wanting to learn and practice it all and went to perfecting what I was working on. Small injuries prevented me from growing my practice and led me back to the learning stages. I am now moving forward, practicing more yoga rehab and strength work. I’ve been teaching for just over seven years, and what I’m teaching right now is yoga for today.
Yoga has been formally practiced in studios in Toronto for about 20 years. That’s a lot of bodies going through the motions, meaning a lot of bodies we can learn from. I think the biggest truth we, as yogis, need to make peace with is that no one is immune to repetitive strain issues and/or injuries.
What I see the most in my students, friends and my own body is that some muscle groups suffer from over use while others are suffering from under use.
As modern yogis, it’s important that we take the information available to us and use it to better the practice and the bodies that we see in classes every day.
One example of this that I see all the time is the ever-looming hamstring tear. The hamstring tear is something that can happen when we either stretch the muscle too much, too fast or we stretch the muscle too much over the course of years, creating repetitive strain. This is something that happens a lot, though it’s completely preventable, given the right exercises using strength and resistance.
