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If you are suffering from back pain, the most likely reason for it is hiding in plain sight. Like most people, including your medical and complementary health professionals (!), you are just not trained to see it. The root cause of most musculoskeletal problems, whether it be lower back pain, a frozen shoulder, neck pain, plantar fasciitis, or a knee issue, can usually be detected in your posture and your resulting movement patterns.

I’ve been doing therapeutic bodywork and massage for 25 years. One of my clients, who owns the garage that services my car, had trouble with his hip—I did what I could to help. About a month later he came back, and was walking much better. I asked him what had happened—and he told me he had taken some Gokhale Method® classes. Intrigued, I ordered Esther Gokhale’s book.

In 2014, at age sixty-four, I began to experience pain in my left hip that eventually became quite debilitating. For the first time in my life, I went to a chiropractor, which resulted in relief that lasted a couple of years. By 2015 I had consulted first one, then a second orthopedic surgeon, who recommended a hip replacement due to osteoarthritis. 

This blog post explains how some common yoga injuries occur and how applying the principles of healthy posture to yoga postures replaces this scenario with movements that are good for your body. Yoga postures and back pain Growing up in Mumbai, India, my Dutch mother was a student of BKS Iyengar and the Satyananda yogis, and keen for me also to learn yoga asanas, or postures. I practiced, and, being reasonably athletic as a child and already trained in Indian classical dance (Bharata Natyam), did not find it particularly difficult to choreograph the back bends, forward bends, and twists that were asked of me. I became a yoga model, demonstrating postures alongside visiting swamis’ presentations to induce the audience to sign up for upcoming yoga courses.