Why I don’t Practice or Teach Cat Cow Anymore

It’s not the pose, it’s me…For me, yoga helped me in countless ways; posture, digestion, blood pressure, lengthening, strengthening, and it even helped settle down my worries. But the one thing it didn’t help was my low back pain. My low back pain would still flare up now and then…I thought maybe it was how I slept or I tweaked it picking up one of my kids. But then I tried something. I stopped doing cat-cow in my yoga practice…and my low back pain subsided. I had always practiced this pose mindfully-proper alignment with wrists under shoulders, knees under hips and pulling the low belly in to support the low back. After all, this is a tried and true yoga pose. Even during my yoga teacher training, one of our instructors was a chiropractor and she said everyone should do this pose every day. So where does that leave us? If it doesn’t hurt you, I think it’s great to practice-yogis have been do it for hundreds (or is it thousands of years?). If you suffer from low back pain, refrain from practicing for a while and see it if feels better. Let me know…