Does this sound familiar: no matter how much you’ve stretched your hamstrings or how flexible you get in your forward bends, they have felt “tight” or even sore? Over time, has the soreness increased in intensity and frequency, particularly up at your sit bone? You may have already been told you have, “Yoga Butt,” which sounds much cuter than a proximal hamstring tendinopathy. This is a common condition affecting flexible folks with certain postural patterns and movement habits. 

Surprisingly, the antidote isn’t simply more stretching, but how we’re stretching. 

Here’s what our Happier Hamstrings Program offers: 

In the early stages, we’ll focus on mindful realignment and movement repatterning that will help you heal those tendons.

Strengthening the hamstrings is also key. However the amount of strengthening will be appropriate for where you are in your recovery. We’ll ease into it at first. Further along in your healing process, and once you’ve solidified the mindful realignment, we’ll add in more strength work which will help you prevent future reinjury. 

How to use this program: 

We recommend that no matter what phase of recovery you are in, that you start at the beginning. 

The best way to determine how often and how many times to practice these classes is to gauge your level of pain and assess how well you’ve been able to incorporate the principles of mindful realignment and movement re-patterning into your practice and everyday life. 

Healing tendinopathy is a marathon and not a sprint. Slow and steady is the way to go. Be consistent, and you’ll be able to go the distance to your goal: being pain-free. And know that there can be setbacks, and that is ok! Better to revisit the Early Recovery class for a while rather than continue to push through the Late Recovery classes and hinder your healing.  

General Guidelines: When should you progress to the next class?

If:

• You feel like you can perform the moves and techniques well with minimal instruction
• The moves or techniques feel easy to you now
• You can maintain breathing at a steady rate and can connect to breath
• You feel the connection between your mind and the moves/techniques you are doing. 
• You are ready to try something new!