Alignment and Balance: Iyengar Yoga for Chronic Pain

Posted on March 07, 2023 by Marlon Ram, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.

Let’s get to the point: chronic pain is anathema.

More often than not, the doctors say there’s nothing medically wrong with you. Your friends and family are tired of hearing about your complaints. Even your preferred spiritual guru is telling you it’s time to manage expectations and practice a bit of radical acceptance when it comes your aching back.

You, yourself, are wondering if the rest of your life will be spent frittering your hard-earned funds on acupuncturists, massage therapists, chiropractors and an endless array of reikis and shamans and the like.

For many, there’s still hope that things can get better.

Let me introduce you to Iyengar yoga, a specific yoga practice that emphasizes meticulous attention to balance and alignment through:

• detailed awareness of yoga asanas (i.e., physical forms and postures),
• precision in the execution of those asanas, and
• maintenance of asanas for extended periods.

Everyone has problems with “balance and alignment” in their bodies. This is because balance and alignment issues result from the natural, foreseeable wear and tear of everyday life.

For example, if your hip hurts because you’ve been sitting down too long, you may be having any one of the following balance and alignment issues: shortened, tight hamstrings; shoulders protruding forward; overactive trapezius muscles; and atrophied inner thighs.

As a general practice, all yoga practices (including Iyengar yoga) seek to use asanas (reminder: physical forms and postures) to re-align and rebalance the musculoskeletal system over time so that wear and tear does not evolve into (re)injury and chronic pain.

Most yoga practices involve many poses through which you move from one asana to the next in a relatively slow sequence.

Iyengar yoga is much more rigorously precise and slow-moving. Each pose can be held from 5 to 30 minutes. You might spend your Iyengar yoga practice in just two or three poses that are held for a long time with excruciating attention to correcting imbalances in your specific form.

It’s a great practice for:
• Newbies to yoga
• People who need or prefer to move slowly
• People with physical disabilities
• Elderly and aging people, and
• Anyone seeking to avoid recidivistic injury (such as athletes who are having the same types of chronic injuries).

When Iyengar yoga emerged, it also popularized the use of props, blankets, blocks and chairs to assist people in arriving at the correct form. Many other yoga practices now borrow heavily from Iyengar’s use of assistive devices.

Here are some of the benefits people report after an Iyengar yoga session. You may receive these benefits from other yoga forms, but we’ve placed an asterisk next to the benefits that Iyengar yoga most emphasizes.

• improve physical and psychological health*
• alleviate postural/structural problems and reduce chronic pain*
• release emotional tension and lower blood pressure
• increase focus and concentration*
• increase your energy levels
• align body and breath
• develop mindfulness relating to all parts of the body and mind.*

Note that you may receive these benefits from other yoga forms, but we have bolded the benefits that Iyengar yoga most emphasizes.

You may be wondering where to start such a highly specific practice. We have you covered.

Below, I describe an efficient way to begin your own exploration of Iyengar yoga – without having to do too much research.

Materials Needed:
• 1 yoga block
• 1 yoga belt
• 1 nonslip yoga mat
• 1 small pillow or 2 knee pads/sleeves (to protect your knees if needed)
• Bolsters (one or two)

The gold standard in Iyengar yoga practices for newbies are the videos below, which were produced by Patricia Walden in the 1980s. You can search for them on YouTube.

• Yoga for Beginners, Patricia Walden, 60 min.
• Yoga for Beginners II, Patricia Walden, 60 min.

Note that Walden does not remain in each pose for an extended period of time as would normally be expected of Iyengar yoga. That is because her videos are designed to explain proper form for a wider array of forms than you might typically experience in an Iyengar yoga session with an instructor. As a result, you will want to modify your practice to pause the video and use your own timer to hold the pose.

To get an approximation of the Iyengar experience using Walden’s videos:
1. Chose two or three asanas in Walden’s videos to practice.
2. Watch her explain the correct form for each asana every time you practice.
3. Then, pause the video after she has explained the asana and its specific form.
4. Extend the length of time that you hold the pose on your own, paying close attention to adhering to the proper form.
5. Use a timer to ensure that you are holding the pose for the same amount of time on each side of your body.

Step 4 is key: you must remain in the asana for an extended period of time in proper form. Otherwise, you might be doing a different kind of yoga (see below for further information).

A common question that Iyengar newbies ask is: for how much time should the pose be extended?
It depends.

• For beginners, start with a minute in each pose. Assess how your body feels after that minute.
• If your body tells you that it’s okay, continue in the same pose and deepen the length of time in each asana (anywhere from 5 minutes in the beginning).
• Gradually, after many sessions of practice, you can increase to 30 minutes per asana).
A second common question from Iyengar newbies is: how do we know that we are doing this asana with the right form? For greater, more specific explanation of the proper form required in each asana, I recommend that you check out “Yoga: The Iyengar Way: The New Definitive Illustrated Guide” by Mira Silva and Shyam Mehta.

This guide is an excellent companion to ensure that you are doing your yoga poses with exacting precision. That way, you can access the right benefits from Iyengar yoga and reduce the risk of (re)injury. Mira and Mehta’s guide has the most poses of any illustrated guide grounded in the Iyengar way that I have come across.

If you feel that you need an instructor or desire to find community as one component of your yoga practice, there are many Iyengar yoga associations.

At the institutions below, you can find referrals to instructors grounded in the Iyengar method or connect with other practitioners to form a local community.

• Iyengar Yoga National Association of the United States (national organization)
• Iyengar Yoga Association of the Midwest (example of a regional organization)
• Iyengar Yoga Association of Greater New York (example of a local organization)

Feel free to search for other organizations using Bing, which is the better search engine as of this post. I hope you will consider Iyengar for your next yoga practice.