Sore and Relief in Yoga


When you are involved in various sports in your daily life, especially the next day you know the feeling of sore in your body. You do not even want to move your body… This sore in your body arises from changes in the muscles after a certain period of movement. Similarly, your muscles are in a state of change and renewal in yoga and although yoga is a refreshing activity with stretching, breathing exercises, rest, and focus periods, you can feel pain during or after yoga.



So, do you have sore due to yoga? In yoga, your body is in varied poses with long and deep stretching while controlling your breath. During the dual process of breathing and harmony with your body, the movement of many muscles will make you feel pain during or after yoga, so the answer is yes, yoga can make you sore and this is quite normal because with the movements and poses you make during yoga, the muscles in your body grow, contract, recover and repair itself. Pain is the sign of this change and development in your body. Even though many people complain of sore, the process of development of the muscles along with these pains will make you both do yoga more effective and feel better yourself.



After a yoga exercise where your muscles, tendons, and ligaments are activated, the most common type of sore is delayed onset muscle soreness. It becomes after unusual or strenuous exercises. This type of muscle sore is like cramp and it occurs up to 48 hours after yoga exercise and then it decreases over time. It is important for your health that you manage the sore process in your body in the best way.


There are a few simple techniques you can use to accelerate pain relief and avoid increased pain in yoga. You should keep reading to learn about the techniques and to minimize your pain during the yoga process.


Techniques to decreased of sore from yoga

1-Massage

Applying the technique of massage in your body both before and after yoga is effective in reducing your pain. When you rub your body before yoga, your blood flow increases to those areas, and blood flow stretches your muscles. In this way, you can do yoga easier, next you can feel less pain. After yoga, massaging helps to dissipate the accumulated lactic acid in your body, and with the stimulation of endorphin hormone, you feel more relaxed. It also decreases your pain.



2- Nutrition

As in all sports, nutrition is very important in yoga. Throughout the yoga exercise, your body needs plenty of energy and after yoga, your tissues need to be repaired and renewed to decrease sore. A proper and healthy diet gives your body energy and power it needs. Related to this, many sports experts recommend eating protein-containing foods after yoga because the building blocks of proteins are called amino acids, and amino acids help to reduce muscle pain by repairing muscles. Also, amino acids strengthen your muscles. Foods such as eggs, meat, milk, and fish are very rich in terms of protein, and consuming them after yoga helps to reduce pain. 


3- Exercise

After yoga, doing light exercises so as not to force you to relax your body and help to decrease the pain caused by yoga. A few movements such as stretching and bending allow the muscles, tissues, and joints to move easier. In this way, your body feels more vigorous and painless. Besides, repeating some yoga poses to make you feel relaxed. For example, yoga breathing exercises are perfect for relieving a tired and sore body. Cobra pose, low lunge, child’s pose, triangle pose, and cat-cow stretch are also effective in reducing your sore of body.


4-Relaxation

Following the yoga session, taking time to relax your body is very important in terms of reducing your pain. The easiest way to relax your body is to fall asleep because tissues are repaired and renewed during sleep. Sleeping for 8-9 hours after yoga reduces your pain. Another way is meditation. When you close your eyes in a comfortable environment, empty your mind, feel the pain in your body and concentrate on it, you should only focus on neutral and pleasant sensations. Effective meditation can relieve you and your sore.



5- Hot shower

Hot water has a renovator effect on the body. After yoga, washing your body with hot water helps to relax your muscles. As your muscles relax, you feel relieved, and your pain decreases. Following the hot shower, you can start the next day painless with enough sleep.


6-Water effect

Drinking plenty of water before and after yoga keeps your body moist, regulates your breathing and helps to remove toxins from the body. Thus, your body gets lighter, your pain reduces and you feel better. However, in order not to interrupt your yoga sessions and prevent your movements by making bloating in your stomach, stopping to drink water for 30 minutes before starting yoga will be more beneficial in terms of your body and efficiency of your yoga session.



Techniques to avoid the increased sore from yoga

1-Alkaloids

Alkaloids are called nitrogen-containing substances such as nicotine, caffeine, and codeine. Generally, before or after sports to get energy, you can refer to drink alkaloid containing drinks like coffee or energy drinks but this is not a healthy way to get energy because such caffeine-containing substances have side effects such as headache or addiction and consuming these type drinks after yoga can increase your sore and damage your body’s healthy eating habits. Also, the sugar contained in many of these alkaloids can cause your body to have much sugar than you need to take and make you feel even more tired. Instead, you can choose to drink water to feel better and relieve your sore after yoga.



2- Analgesic

Taking an analgesic to get rid of the sore caused by yoga may seem like a quick and easy solution, but this is not a healthy solution. Analgesics are for the solution of more serious illnesses. The sore that occurs after yoga causes positive changes in your body and this case, trying to relieve sore with analgesics such as aspirin affects your body’s natural healing negatively. Besides, frequent use of these types of drugs can damage your immune system, organs, and tissues. You can try to avoid this technique as much as possible to reduce your sore.



3- Excessive Stretching

You can do stretching and bending movements to alleviate the sore caused by yoga, but you need to adjust the dose well. Excessive stretching of your body means that your muscles are stretched too much and this can damage not only regeneration but also repair process of your muscles and even cause muscle tear. To avoid such problems, you must progress step by step and be aware of your limits to stretch your body. If you think that you are used to doing intense stretching movements, you should make sure that your body is warmed up for it and ready to do yoga poses.  


With these techniques that I mentioned above, you can easily cope with sores caused by yoga. Then, how is the sore in other types of yoga?  You can read the following topics to find out whether yin yoga and hot yoga make you sore.  


Does yin yoga make you sore?

Yin yoga is a slow-paced, deep stretching exercise that rinses in the same poses for a certain period of time. It is paused about 5 minutes in each pose and when your body stays in the same poses for a long time, it stimulates the energy-carrying lines in your body called meridians. In this way, your body’s energy is balanced.



With the yin yoga, you can see overtly what is going on in your mind and you can clear your mind. Also, your problems that have psychological origins such as discouragement or fear get lighter and your life energy increases. Yin yoga is especially useful for those who enjoy staying in the same posture for a certain period of time, who feel the need to free their minds, and who have a tense and stiff body. It takes you to the level where you feel the best and most comfortable by stretching and bending your body. You will not feel sore after yin yoga because all movements are slow and careful. However, yin yoga stretches and flexes the ligaments and fascia to relax the body in addition to the muscles. After and during the yin yoga, you may feel the tension and tremble caused by these variations in your body, but this is not sore. Yin yoga that you practice correctly and regularly does not make you feel pain.


Does hot yoga make you sore?

Hot yoga is a kind of yoga, where the yoga place is brought to a special degree by heating and with the practice of various poses, it enables you to form of your body again and decontaminate from toxins by sweating. This means that if you love the heat, hot yoga is for you.



In hot yoga, the degree of yoga place is usually between 29 and 43, and in hot yoga, with the effect of heat, your blood flow to your muscles increases and your circulation accelerates. Besides, muscles in your body gain flexibility and oxygen reaches every point in your body. In this way, your body gets into shape and is filled with energy. After hot yoga, you will feel stretching in every part of your body. Also, hot yoga makes your body susceptible to dehydration, and it is known as a cause of muscle soreness. Therefore, the answer is yes, you may feel some soreness in your body after hot yoga. Related to sore, hot yoga experts say that with the effect of heat, muscles warm up quickly and they argue that this speeds up muscle tension. They also add that too stretched muscles can cause sore in your shoulders, so you do not have to worry, especially if you feel sore on your shoulders after hot yoga because your muscles are stretching quickly.  


Related Questions

Is yoga supposed to hurt? In yoga, pains emerge from both the vibration of the muscles and various stretching of the body, and this will make you and your body strong, so you feel better over time. Thus, the answer is yes, yoga is supposed to hurt you in a good way, but you may have pain when you force your body too much. At this point, it is important to know the limits of your body and not to push your body too hard because this is not the pain that supposed to be.


Can you tone up with yoga? Yes, you can tone up with yoga. This is because some of the yoga poses such as four-limbed staff pose and boat pose, strengthen your muscles by using the weight of your body. In fact, without lifting any weight, your muscle tone develops and becomes stronger thanks to your body weight. Gaining strength of your muscles and body means you strengthen with yoga!


How long does yoga take to tone? This depends on the answers to questions such as how often you do yoga, or how long you have been doing yoga. However, in general, you see a difference in your body’s both flexibility and balance after the 2 weeks. During the next 2 or 3 months’ regular yoga sessions, you feel your strength increase, in addition to improving your flexibility and balance.


How often should you do yoga a week? Yoga is a kind of practice in the body where you can get positive results very quickly. You can do one or half hours twice a week to get used to yourself and your body, and as time goes on, you will probably want to increase your frequency of doing yoga with the effect of good results from yoga. In this case, it is best to set and perform a realistic target according to your own time.

Savaş Ateş

I like meditation and yoga. I read a lot of books about them. I applied them in my daily life. I want to write about my experiences.

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