Hip-Healthy Asana ― The Yoga Practitioner's Guide to Protecting the Hips and Avoiding SI Joint Pain

The yoga practitioner's essential guide to understanding, preventing, and relieving hip pain in asana practice.

The mind-body benefits of daily yoga practice are unquestionably positive, but as yoga has become more popular, an increasing number of yoga practitioners of all ages are suffering from hip and lower back pain and intense sacroiliac joint (SI) discomfort. The urge to push yourself too far, too fast can result in hip pain or injury. The key in protecting your joints and maintaining healthy hips for the long-term is to cultivate strength and stability rather than focusing primarily on flexibility.

Hip-Healthy Asana is the yoga practitioner’s essential guide to fully understanding, preventing, and relieving hip pain in asana practice, along with practice tips, modifications, and sequences that enhance hip strength and stability for a sustainable practice that can last through every age and stage of life.

CHARLOTTE BELL has been practicing yoga since 1982 and began teaching in 1986. She has established and taught regular classes along Utah's Wasatch Front, and in California and Hawaii. She has also taught workshops, teacher trainings, and yoga for cancer patients and their families at the Cancer Wellness House in Salt Lake City. She has taught at national yoga conferences and international yoga teacher trainings and on women's river trips on the Green and Colorado rivers. Certified in 1989 in the Iyengar style of yoga, she enjoys learning from teachers of many different yogic perspectives. Vipassana meditation practice has had the most profound influence on Charlotte's work. She began her practice in 1986, and she has conducted vipassana retreats annually since 1997, including annual retreats combining yoga and vipassana meditation.
Charlotte writes feature stories for several publications, including Catalyst and New York Spirit magazines. She has modeled and served as editorial adviser for Hugger-Mugger Yoga Products catalogs since 1986 and currently writes and edits their blog. She has served as editor of the Intermountain Iyengar Yoga Association's newsletter. Her second book, Yoga for Meditators, was one of 10 books recommended in Yoga Journal magazine's "Yoga Books of 2012" list.