Interview: You should avoid these yoga poses

Ronja Magdziak

26/12/2025

Translation: machine translated

With increasing knowledge about the human body, not all traditional yoga poses are recommended one-to-one anymore. I spoke to yoga teacher Sankey Kumar Sharma and asked him which yoga poses are guaranteed not to end up on his mat.

Do you also know these athletic «yogis» on social media? And have you ever wished you could do the same? Forced into a pose with clenched teeth just to fit into the desired shape. But does that have anything to do with yoga? At the same time, it gives the impression that you have to be extremely flexible to practise yoga. A myth that we urgently need to dispel.

First of all, yoga is a millennia-old practice consisting of meditation, pranayama (breathing exercises), philosophy of life - and also postures (asanas). In fact, you can practise yoga without ever having touched a yoga mat. Meditation and a life full of compassion and devotion are far more important in yoga and on the path to self-knowledge. Apart from that, yoga poses are designed to increase your own mobility. It is not important that you master particularly difficult poses, but that you go as far into a pose as it feels good for your body.

With increasing anatomical knowledge, however, the view of some of the traditional yoga poses has changed. Sankey Kumar Sharma is a yoga teacher specialising in Hatha, Iyengar and Ashtanga yoga. In this interview, he explains what a healthy practice can look like for every body and which poses he vehemently advises against today.

Sankey Kumar Sharma

is an experienced yoga teacher from Rishikesh in northern India at the foot of the Himalayas, the yoga capital of the world, and a student of the renowned Swami Rudradev Goda Ji and Raju Batra Ji. He obtained his Master's degree in Yoga from the Uttarakhand Sanskrit University and is intensively involved in the correct alignment of the body in asana practice.

What advice do you have for people who are new to yoga practice?

Many people think that you have to be particularly flexible to practise yoga. That's not true. You can start with poses that warm up and mobilise the joints and then continue with simple standing poses. Many people want to stand directly on their heads, but they can't even stand properly on two legs. Problems with the knees, shoulders and spine are common these days.

It is important to adapt the practice to your own body. This starts with standing: If you have knees that fall inwards (knock-knees) or a wider pelvis, a hip-width stance should be favoured over closed legs. It's about feeling what feels comfortable for your own body. Asana means stable and comfortable.

Some poses don't look comfortable from the outside. You have to be pretty fit for that, don't you?

No. The first and most important step is to combine movement with breathing. You don't need to be particularly flexible, but you do need stability. To find calm and comfort in a posture, you need your breath. If you can't breathe freely, you need to adjust the alignment of your body. Our breath is the bridge between mind and body. We want to strengthen this bridge, which is the most important thing that asana practice teaches us.

Some of the traditional yoga poses are no longer recommended today in view of increasing knowledge about the anatomy of the human body. What do you think about this?

There are poses in which sensitive bones are supported directly on the floor. In headstand (Shirshasana) or the knee in half moon (Ardha Chandrasana), for example. These poses should always be practised on a soft surface. From my own experience, I recommend practitioners who already have pain in their knees to use a support that supports the knee and prevents hyperextension. If you permanently hyperextend your knee, the ligaments will become looser and looser and the risk of injury increases.

With more anatomical knowledge, some things that once seemed correct are no longer quite right. In modern yoga, the correct alignment of the body has become much more important. The correct distance between the legs so that the knee never moves in front of the ankle, for example, or pressing the entire foot into the floor to take pressure off the knee are important measures for a healthy practice.

Asanas that Sankey Kumar Sharma advises against:

Setu Bandhāsana

There are several poses in Ashtanga that I don't teach. In the advanced variation of Setu Bandhāsana (the bridge), the head usually lies on the floor and there is a lot of pressure on the sensitive cervical vertebrae. I recommend the variation with the shoulders on the floor or the hands under the hips. Wrestlers also use this exercise to strengthen the neck, but they also have different muscles in their shoulders. Wrestling is an extreme sport. We don't have to imitate that.

Marichyasana D

I also don't teach Marichyasana D (the twisting pose). In my opinion, perhaps 20 per cent of practitioners are able to perform this pose cleanly and with a straight back. The chest should be open and breathing should be possible. If this is not the case, the pose has no benefits.

Janushirasana C

I do not recommend Janushirasana C (head-to-knee pose) due to the rotation of the knee caused by the rotation of the shin. The goal of this pose is a forward bend and hip opening, which can be achieved just as well in Janushirasana A and B.

Points of view

In Ashtanga, specific directions of gaze (drishtis) are practised. This sometimes causes a lot of stress in the neck. In Downward-Facing Dog (Adho Mukha Svanasana), the arms should be strengthened and the back stretched. The aim of upward-facing dog (Urdhva Mukha Svanasana) is to open the chest. There is no benefit to hyperextending the neck in either pose. The neck is already flexible and does not need any additional stretching. In Hatha and Iyengar, we look straight ahead and thus relax and protect the cervical vertebrae.

Thank you for the interview!

Rules of thumb for a healthy practice

From the interview with Sankey Kumar Sharma, I took away five rules of thumb:

• Adjust your body in the yoga poses so that it feels good for you. Every body is different and so a pose may look completely different for you than for the person next to you.
• Make sure that your breath can flow freely. The same applies here: if your breath is restricted, adjust your posture.Your knee and ankle should always point in the same direction to ensure that your knee is protected and not twisted unnaturally.
• If there is direct pressure on sensitive bones such as the knees, head or pelvis (when sitting), place a cushion underneath or fold your mat in half.
• The spine has difficulty making several movements at the same time. For example, make sure that your back is really straight when you are sitting in a twist chair, so you can twist backwards much better.

Ronja Magdziak

Freie Autorin

ronja.magdziak@gmail.com

Freelance writer, biologist and yoga teacher. Fascinated by nature, body and mind, I love spending time outdoors and being active. More than anything, I enjoy writing about things that make us feel good!

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