Ep 96: Got Students with Hip Pain in Your Classes?

Hip pain is one of the most common conditions yoga students have, and for many teachers, it can feel overwhelming to know how to help without making things worse. 

In this episode, listen as I explain why all hip pain isn’t the same, how the anatomy of the hip joint (the femoral head and acetabulum) influences a student’s range of motion, and how nervous system regulation is just as important as physical modification.

This conversation will help you shift away from “one-size-fits-all” cues and give you confidence to support students with hip sensitivity while keeping the rest of your class engaged.

If you’ve ever worried about offering the wrong pose, struggled with creating inclusive sequences, or wanted more tools to support students with hip pain, this episode will begin to help you transform how you teach.

Transcript

Monica: 0:00

Hip pain is one of the most common conditions yoga students practice with in our classes, and for many teachers, it can feel overwhelming to know how to help without making things worse. In this episode, I'll focus on how hip pain shows up across different yoga class formats from. Vinyasa too restorative. Listen, as I explain why all hip pain isn't the same, how the anatomy of the hip joint, the femoral head and the acetabulum influences a student's range of motion, And how nervous system regulation is just as important, if not more than a physical modification. Welcome to the Essential Conversations for Yoga Teachers Podcast with me. I'm Monica Bright and I've been teaching yoga and running my yoga business for over a decade. This is the podcast for you. If you are a yoga teacher, you're looking for support. You love to be in conversation, and you're a lifelong student. In this podcast, I'll share with you. My life as a yoga teacher, the lessons I've learned, my process for building my business and helpful ideas, tools, strategies and systems I use and you can use so that your business thrives. We'll cover a diverse range of topics that will help you, whether you're just starting out or you've got years under your belt and you wanna dive deep and set yourself up for success. I am so glad you're here. Listen, I don't take myself too seriously, so expect to hear some laughs along the way. Now let's do this together. welcome back to the podcast. I'm Monica, and I'm so glad you're here. Here we talk about the anatomy, the injuries, the nervous system insights, plus all the real life knowledge you wish had been included in your yoga teacher training. This is the start of a three part series, and I'm gonna talk about some of the most common areas of pain in students that you might encounter pain in their hips, their knees, and their shoulders. These three areas come up again and again because they are highly mobile joints, they carry a lot of load in movement and they're often the places where. Students notice limitations or discomfort during their yoga practice. In this first part, we're gonna focus on the hips. Hip pain is one of the most common issues that students mention when they come to our classes, and it's also one of the most misunderstood. When a student says, I have hip pain, that could mean a feeling of tightness. It could mean that they feel pinching, aching, sharp pain, or even discomfort referred from somewhere else in their body, like their lower back. So our role as yoga teachers is not to diagnose or fix that, but to create conditions in which our students feel supported, safe and able to explore their practice without fear. One thing to understand about the hips is that they're a ball and socket joint designed for a wide range of motion, but every Hip joint is built differently. The shape of the acetabulum, the angle of the femoral neck, and even childhood movement patterns influence how someone's hips will feel in certain poses. This is why some students melt into pigeon pose while other students feel pinching before they even get close to the floor. It's not always about tight muscles. Sometimes it's about bone structure, and that's why it's so important to normalize pose variation in your classes. Now let's look at how hip pain can show up in different yoga formats, because I realize that we all teach different types of classes. So it doesn't matter what type of format you teach, you are likely to find students with hip pain in your classes. So first, let's look at Vinyasa classes. The challenge here often comes from repetition. Flow classes tend to cycle through lunges, warriors, and transitions that put the hips into deflection again and again, if a student. Already has irritation in their hip joint or surrounding tissues. That repetition can aggravate their symptoms as their teacher. One way you can support them is to create more variety in your sequencing and avoid practicing the same asanas and transitions repeatedly. You don't have to eliminate lunges or warriors altogether, but you can be strategic about how often you sequence them and how you balance them with neutral or other supported movements in the body. In Iyengar style classes, alignment and props are a large focus of the classes and instruction. This can be extremely beneficial for students with hip pain because props can offer them support and stability. However, the risk is that the rigid alignment rules that are taught sometimes pressure students to say, for instance, square their hips or tuck their tailbones in ways that don't feel right in their body. This is where your language matters when you encourage students to explore their personal version of alignment. Even in a prop heavy class, it helps to create more freedom and less fear. For example, let's take the pose tano or triangle pose, rather than insisting that the hips be in a certain position, You might invite your students to turn their pelvis down slightly to adjust their stance, maybe make it a little bit shorter, and to explore and find a place where their hips, their waist, and their torso. All feel as though they're in an appropriate positioning for them and them only. Now, let's talk about yin yoga. In these classes, the hips are centered to teaching and to the poses. Poses like dragon, swan, and frog ask students To sit with deep flexion or external or internal rotations for several minutes at a time. For some, this is tolerable, but for others it can be extremely aggravating and uncomfortable for students who already arrive with hip discomfort. If you're a yin teacher, you can remind your students that the goal isn't depth, but stillness and presence Also think about using props liberally exiting poses early, or choosing alternative shapes that can make yin accessible for students with hip pain without sacrificing the essence of the practice. And finally, restorative yoga, one of my most favorite formats to teach hip pain can creep in while students are lying in stillness, even in restful positions. If a leg isn't supported just right for an individual student, their hip joint might start to ache. Over time. This is why props are so crucial in learning to differentiate them between students so that each student is supported in the way that their body needs. Something as small as a folded blanket under one thigh can transform a student's experience. Another student might need the folded blanket plus a folded towel Or a folded blanket and a sandbag placed on top of them to offer a sense of connectedness and groundedness to help ease the flare of their hip discomfort. Restorative classes are particularly helpful for students with hip pain because of their impact on a nervous system. They remind students that rest is valuable and that safety and comfort are just as important as. So what are the big takeaways here? First, hip pain in yoga isn't just a physical issue. It's also about how the nervous system interprets and responds to movement Second. Our role is not to eliminate hip pain, but to help students feel safe enough to explore movement without fear of doing more harm. And finally, the way hip pain shows up and the solutions available will depend on the style of yoga being practiced, which means as teachers, we need flexibility and proven strategies for relief in our approach to helping students. Next week in part two of this series, we'll shift our focus to the knees. Knee pain is another issue that students present with constantly, whether it's from old injuries, arthritis, discomfort, imposes like Lotus or Heroes pose. We'll look at how knee pain shows up and what you can do to create supportive experiences for students without fear-based queuing. Then in part three, we'll look into the shoulders, which often carry the double burden of mobility and load bearing in yoga, especially in Vinyasa style classes. For now, as you prepare to teach your next class, remember this, if a student tells you they have hip pain, You do not have to panic. You don't need all the answers. You just need to create an environment where they have proven options that will help. Where variation is celebrated and where their nervous system feels safe. this in itself is powerful and transformational teaching, and that's exactly what I want for you. Understanding anatomy, biomechanics, and the effects yoga Asana have on the body helps you help your students If you've been enjoying these episodes, I know that you're a yoga teacher who's ready to teach with more intention and less fear around injuries. Let's continue to raise the bar for how yoga supports real bodies in real life. It's so important for us to have this conversation so that you remember that students of all shapes, sizes, alignment, and abilities come to your classes and you can serve all of them. You know that my goal is for you to love the yoga teaching life. It's important to understand movement and the issues students come to your classes with. Subscribe to the podcast so you're always in the know when a new episode drops, and share it with another yoga teacher who you think would love to be in on these conversations. And finally, thank you for helping to spread the word about this podcast. Alright. Thank you for listening. That's it for now. Bye.