Yoga Butt…Yoga What?!

Many people think about yoga as a centering and healing practice and don’t necessarily think about the risk of repetitive motion injuries. Yoga butt, or the more medical term proximal hamstring tendinopathy, is an irritation or inflammation to the tendon that attaches the hamstring to the sit bones. 

I have personally suffered from yoga butt a number of times over the past 8 years. When I started yoga, there was a lack of focus on the engagement of the muscles that protect the tendon from this injury. 

In yoga we perform many poses that lengthen the hamstrings: forward fold (uttanasana), splits (hanumanasana), half splits (ardha hanumanasana), standing splits, wide legged forward fold (prasarita padottanasana) and even side angle (parsvakonasana)…the list goes on. However, we do not perform many poses that strengthen the hamstrings. 

If you’re wondering what it would feel like if you had this injury, it feels like a deep pain where the glute meets the inner-upper thigh. You’re likely to feel it in forward fold or when coming out of a pose like side angle as you begin to engage that muscle. 

It wasn’t until I really took a look at what I was doing in some of these poses that I understood why I continued to struggle with this condition. 

Let’s take a deep dive into uttanasana - forward fold. 

First, I realized that I had been taking the easy way out for a number of years by leaning back slightly. After I fixed that problem is when I really started experiencing an issue with Yoga Butt.

In uttanasana, I was doing the following: root down through all four corners of the feet, drawing the knee caps up to engage the quads, internally rotating the thighs to the back of the room, and drawing the navel in to lengthen.

What was missing? As I think about what protects the tendon at the sit bone, I realized that I was not engaging my glutes. The cue for this would be “hug your glute muscles to the midline”. This isometric action will not only protect the tendon but also build strength. 

If you find yourself with this injury, be sure to take it easy by bending your knees in forward folds to start. Don’t push yourself to your edge as you can continue to cause micro-tears and exacerbate the issue. Recognize when you are feeling the pain and be sure to modify. Ask your teacher for some modifications and if you find it isn’t improving, be sure to speak with your doctor. 

This is an injury that can take months to resolve and if you do not fix the root cause, it will continue to reappear.