Welcome, @cierann. You are so right. Everyone is different. While some yoga postures may be right for one person with EDS, they may not be right for another. EDS is as individual as the person themselves.
Dr. Munipalli agrees and underlines:
"If a person with hypermobility is practicing yoga, they should avoid prolonged passive stretching at end range, avoid positions that could cause shoulder dislocation and remember that the focus on practicing yoga is more for the inner experience than performance. Yoga supports patients with hypermobility by providing calming to the nervous system, mind-body focus, self-care, stability particularly with smaller and slower movements. It also helps patients with hypermobility to be conscious of not stretching excessively which promotes injury."
As the blog post states, Mayo Clinic uses "the physical therapy guidelines (https://connect.mayoclinic.org/blog/ehlers-danlos-syndrome/newsfeed-post/exercise-for-heds-and-hsd/) to prevent joint injury, just as we do for any exercises. Low impact is better, and yoga is included in that category with swimming, walking, elliptical, etc”
Any physical activity can be dangerous to a point, even “low impact“ activities. So if anyone feels like they need more individual guidance, they should consult a therapist who is familiar with treating hypermobility.
Personally, I do not regard meditation as removing myself from the world, but rather connecting with it. Again, this underlines how everyone is different as you said. 🙂
Ann, I like to get to know more about you? Do you live with EDS? If yes, how long? What activities do you like to do?
As an old lady who grew up an athletic Tomboy, and practiced Yoga for about 10 years at maybe age 55-65, I have to say that Yoga must be done with extreme care by those of us with hypermobile joints. I was the only person in the Yoga class who could easily do most poses, and I believe doing those poses helped lead to the issues I have had since.
Yoga's ability to teach deep relaxation is terrific, but I would not suggest doing the poses unless your musculature is terrific and even so .... be careful!