What My Hip Injury Taught Me About Yoga — and About Myself
- Yoga Instructor
- May 16
- 3 min read
Sthira Sukham Asanam. — Patanjali, Yoga Sutras 2.46
Posture should be steady and comfortable. Not perfect. Not extreme. Steady. Comfortable.
I have taught this sutra many times. But there was a period in my life when I truly had to live it — not on a mat, but in the slowest, most humbling way possible.
The moment everything stopped
I injured my hips. For a yoga teacher, the hips are everything. When my hips gave out, my routines stopped. My movement stopped. In some ways, for a little while, I felt like I had stopped.
Growing up in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, on the south coast of India, yoga wasn't a class I signed up for. It was woven into daily life — how we sat on the floor, how we breathed, how we ate. My family taught me Padmasana and Tadasana before I knew they had names. Sitting cross-legged every day connected me with the earth. I didn't know it was opening my hips. It was just how life was.
Years later, living in the UK, playing sports, injuries found me. A quiet, persistent inner voice kept calling me back to the mat. I listened. I trained. I studied under Sharath Jois in Mysuru. I deepened my practice in Rishikesh. I became a certified RYT teacher through Tish Hegel Yoga in Idaho. Yoga became not just what I did, but who I was. And then my hips gave out.
What I did — and why I'm sharing it
I started with the basics — ice packs, heating pads. Then I got onto the mat. Not to practice. Just to be there.
I began with one or two simple seated poses, supported entirely by yoga blocks. I tried Legs Up the Wall — Viparita Karani — with a pillow under my sacrum, staying for five to eight slow breaths. That was it. That was my entire practice for the first few weeks.
What I was doing without realising it was Sthira — creating steadiness. Building muscle memory not through effort, but through presence. Each breath was a small signal to my nervous system: it is safe to be here.
Then slowly — over weeks and months, not days — I worked through what I know from my anatomy training. I focused on the hip flexors first, used blankets under my sacrum, blocks under my hands, bolsters for support. I didn't treat these props as a compromise. I treated them as intelligence.
Blocks are not a limitation. They are an acknowledgment of where you are. And that acknowledgment — that acceptance — is not weakness. It is the beginning of real strength.
The deeper lesson: give your body what a plant gives itself
A plant does not force itself to grow. It does not strain toward the light and injure itself in the effort. It simply creates the right conditions — water, soil, warmth — and then it waits.
Your body is the same.
I recovered well. Better than I expected. But the most important shift wasn't physical — it was the practice of patience. Of giving my body time and space without demanding results. Of accepting that the hip that could do Padmasana at 25 in Chennai needed something different now. Honouring that change is not giving up. It is the deepest form of practice.
If you are returning to yoga after injury
Start with breath. Before any pose, lie down, close your eyes, and take five slow breaths. Let your exhale be longer than your inhale. You have already begun.
Use props without apology. A block under your hands in Low Lunge is not the 'easy version.' It is the correct version for where your body is today.
Think in weeks and months, not days. The body's deepest tissues change slowly. Give them the time they are asking for.
Find your Sukha. Patanjali did not say posture should be perfect. He said it should be comfortable. The moment a pose stops being comfortable, it has stopped being yoga.
A final thought
Part of how I teach comes from Chennai — from the floor, from the breath, from my family's instinctive understanding that the body knows things the mind hasn't caught up with yet. Part comes from Mysuru and Rishikesh. And part comes from that period on the floor with my blocks and my bolster and my five-breath practice, slowly learning to trust my body again.
That is what YogaStayFit is. A place to begin. Again, or for the first time.
— Raj Krishnamoorthy, RYT | yogastayfit.com
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