It should not be confused, however, with repetitive strain injury, which is a much sharper pain and represents damage being done rather than adaptation. However, if you experience severe pain, joint pain, or swelling, it could be a sign of an injury, and you should seek medical attention. Delayed onset muscle soreness is a sign that your body is adapting to the new stresses to which it is being subjected. If you experience delayed onset muscle soreness in that area, you can be assured you have got it right. Of course, if you use this muscle a lot already, you may not experience delayed onset muscle soreness. Some find ice exacerbates soreness initially, so stick to heat if that’s the case. In the case of Padmasana, it’s important to understand that a perceived lack of "openness" in your hips may not be related to soft tissue inflexibility. Just remember icing for too long can cause tissue damage, especially on the fingers and toes-think of frostbite. Sprinting may cause this, but yoga not so much. RELATED: Are You Exercising Too Much?

When icing, never put the ice directly on the skin unless you are going to keep it moving (such as with an ice massage), and restrict the time of application to 20 minutes for more fleshy areas (e.g., thighs) and 10 minutes for bony areas like the feet and hands. If you have really given yourself a going over, it may last five to seven days, but typically, two to four see the back of it. Hopefully, as yogis, we are more sensitive to what’s going on in our bodies and more easily notice imbalances, tension patterns, and pain, but this is only possible if we take heed. If you ignore this pain, which may start out as more of a niggling irritation, the injury is likely to worsen, become chronic, and start to hurt not only when you’re forward bending but also when you’re sitting and walking. Some people feel more muscle soreness after yoga than others. Muscle soreness, tenderness, and stiffness permeate your body, and you feel like anything but a bendy yogi. It increases blood flow to your entire body, vital to speeding up your recovery.

Choose a heating pad or a hot water bottle to help loosen up the muscles and improve blood flow, which is perfect for speeding up healing. The icing, in particular, will reduce inflammation in the area and help lessen the amount of damage, and the sooner it is applied, the better. Repeated stretching near your limit of flexibility may stress these areas, causing damage to the tendon fibers and resulting in inflammation. Hypertension is one of the most dangerous physical effects that chronic stress can have on your body. This is not the same situation as purposefully placing mild stress on the joints to elicit a positive response, such as with Yin Yoga. It’s entirely possible that inhibited external rotation is due to the construction of your hip joints. Feeling hip pain after yoga (or even hip pain during yoga) is extremely common. If your hip joints do not easily externally rotate, you are more than likely to experience pain in the knee (either medially or laterally) and/or the ankle (normally just below the front edge of the lateral (outside) ankle bone). If you are feeling pain in a posture, you need to back off until it does not hurt.

Okay, you have a nice practice, and then the next day, or the day after, you get that feeling like you’ve aged ten years overnight. Feeling achy after a yoga session is common, especially if you are a beginner or resume yoga after long breaks. So, how do we interpret what our bodies are saying? Every time we step onto the mat, Muscle Pain After Yoga we are asking our bodies to move into positions that may present the potential for soft tissue damage. It is easy for the presence of endorphins and the distraction of the practice to mask the true extent of the damage. Ligaments are only mildly elastic, allowing for perhaps only a six percent stretch before tissue damage happens, and they do not mend readily due to a minimal blood supply. Stretch bands. Stretch bands, also called resistance bands, look like giant rubber bands. Like most modern yoga styles practiced today, Bikram stems from Hatha yoga -- an umbrella term that simply means the physical practice of doing poses, or asanas. As a result, lactic acid ends up being synthesized as a consequence of the metabolic waste produced by this means of energy production.