Yoga

Fun and approachable yoga for Every-Body!

How does Yoga help improve balance?

Ninety-nine percent of people come to see a physical therapist for the same reason: It’s not just that their body hurts, it’s that the hurting is making certain activities unpleasant. Honestly, most of us can handle some pain. The part of being hurt that spoils the fun is that it keeps us from pursuing activities we want to do, or makes activities we must do intolerable.

Because we hurt, we become less active, and we develop compensatory strategies to protect our hurt part. The inevitable result is a gradual reduction of strength, decreased coordination, and stiffness around the injured area. It’s a bit of a downward spiral.

At Essential Physical Therapy we understand that the key to opening the door to recovery is to find some way to reduce or abolish the pain. It’s easy to imagine that once the pain is relieved, our job is done. But, in most cases, if that is all we did, we would soon see the pain return. Remember, pain causes its own problems: the aforementioned “downward spiral”. So, to get the injured area back to full health, it’s important to prescribe appropriate exercise.

This is where yoga comes in…

A physical therapist utilizes yoga postures to directly affect the secondary problems that a painful condition causes. Whether it’s knee pain left over from a medial meniscus surgery, or long-standing lower back pain from a herniated disc, once the pain begins to ease, it’s very likely there is still weakness, decreased coordination and stiffness that needs to be addressed.

The practice of yoga uses simple postures to challenge the body in various ways. It is both a joint mobility and muscle strengthening system. After doing a series of well-chosen yoga poses, you’ll have moved almost every joint in your body through its full range of motion stimulating joint lubricating fluids to be released in the joint capsule. And, while holding a yoga posture your muscles are being both stretched and strengthened at the same time, which has been demonstrated to be a very safe way to strengthen and lengthen muscle.

In addition to using yoga as part of the active physical therapy program, we also offer classes at Essential Physical Therapy. For more information, Contact us today at our Eugene, OR Center.