After nearly a year managing and teaching a group of women who were age from 35-58 years old, I started to ask myself this questions: why people only come to yoga after they got injured? and until today after running my own yoga studio, still, there are people comes to me everyday with pains or injuries in different part of their body, I can't stop asking myself the same question again. Why? Why can't we prevent it at the first place?
The other days, I was following up some clients see if they were interested to come and try some yoga class. and about 4-5 of them told me the exactly same thing: my work has been crazy busy and I don't have time to attend or there are company dinners or events to go to and we can't decide by ourselves etc…I wonder what make the society become like this that we kind lost the right or the freedom to choose to take care our own body/health?
Since 2002 I discovered the beauty of the human body or the moment I started to appreciating the beautiful human body that the universe has created for each of us, I always believe that our body/health is the most important investment. It's the simplest truth but seems that not everyone agree with it or they agree with it but not even trying hard to take care of it. I wonder WHY? When my clients came to me with their knees injures or lower back pains, especially for those who loves repeated workout such as running, cycling, weight training, HIIT, cross fit training etc, I asked myself two questions: 1) How can I help them? 2) How can I help to prevent that happening to other people basically how can I help to stop that happening? It's great to see there are so many fitness studios opening up everyday in Shanghai and knowing people's awareness about fitness or health start to really picking up. It's great! But how could we avoid injuries? Besides all the techniques you had to learn to making sure that you know what you are doing, what else can we do? I think we have to find a way to balance it, and yoga so far is the best. After trying different workout myself, I do highly suggest that to consider including yoga or proper stretching while you are starting a new workout, it's highly suggest to do that before, during and after the workout. I know some people don't like yoga, just like I don't like running but I still give it try… You don't lose anything to try something you don't like right but only to conquer that fear and found that what is like to actually had tried. Yoga isn't scary, if you don't want to enter the spiritual side of it, it's fine, physically, all the movements in yoga has it's scientific effect which help you from injuries.
If we have a choice to prevent something from happening, why don't we do it? and why don't we do it now? I always tell my clients that: You give it a try and see how your body, not your mind, feels, your body will know if it's good for it or not. Let your body speaks and we follow body. Don't come to yoga only after you got injured, yes, yoga can help to heal but let's stop injuries from happening at the first place :-) Same as now, begin today and now to take care your body/health by finding a way to keep the body fit and feeding the body with various nutrition food, you and your body will appreciate, espceicially when you are getting old. I know, for people lives in the city like shanghai, everyone is so busy, yes, for the things we can't control, we have to accept, but for the things we can control, let's take advantage of that to be good to ourselves.