Have you ever felt sore in your muscles after a yoga class? Is this good or bad?

Have you ever felt sore in your muscles after a yoga class? Is this good or bad?

Sometimes it's more about the burning sensation at the back of the thighs, am I supposed to feel this way?

Well let’s take a look at what yoga teaches us:

• To learn about our body - muscles, tendon, nerves, joints, etc.
• Do not be too enthusiastic (Rajastic), not too lethargic (Tamasic) but to find the balance (Satvic)
• To let go. We learned how to be comfortable in letting go things in life that doesn’t serve us well anymore.

Therefore we first have to determine:

Is this is a muscle soreness or pinching pain in the nerve? Muscles soreness is fine as we have worked on the muscles we probably never use or don't even know of. If it is a pinching pain or sharp pain, hence, we have to rest. Some of us strive to be very enthusiastic and we push ourselves to the limit we can barely take. That’s when the injuries occurred. Listening to the instruction is very important in order to avoid injuries. Some students were not listening - they pushed harder to show off. Incorrect alignment causes pain and that is when the students have injured themselves.

Each of us is unique; we have different body capacity. Some of us may never be able to do a certain pose due to the limitation of our body capacity. Hence, it makes sense pushing and trying to achieve a perfect asana (posture) as we may end up injuring ourselves.

In a nutshell :

Learn about your body and try to distinguish what kind of pain you can handle: nerves pinching pain, burning sensation, pain in the joints. BAD Soreness of the muscles is totally acceptable but do not push until the muscle fibres tore or are over-pulled.