Are you having trouble doing certain yoga poses on your list? It might not be just your balance or flexibility that’s holding you back – it could be a sign of a structural shift in your spine. Read on to learn how regular chiropractic care can enhance your yoga practice and have you saying “ohm” in no time.
Restoring Health and Balance
Your body craves alignment. When we are properly aligned – our bones – not our muscles, do the bulk of the work to support our weight, reducing effort and strain.
When the muscles around your spine tighten up, your first instinct may be to stretch or try things like yoga to loosen those muscles up. But the reality is that oftentimes, your muscles are tense because the joint itself is locked up and affecting your nerve roots that supply those muscles.
Chiropractic adjustments help to improve posture, range of motion, and flexibility. These are all very important parts of a strong yoga practice, so one can see how routine adjustments are beneficial to practice. When the spine shifts out of place it can cause your muscles to hold themselves in tough positions in order to cushion what lies beneath. It’s your muscles’ way of protecting what is essentially an unstable joint.
When movement and alignment are restored, the muscle doesn’t have to be as tense anymore – that is, it doesn’t have to work to protect an unstable joint by holding everything locked into that position.
In this way, we find that chiropractic is complementary to restorative yoga. You can combine them to help you recover from injury, or even if you’re just trying to get yourself into positions that don’t seem to be working for your body. The problem may lie in your muscles, but it could also lie in your spine.
Yoga Practice
Yoga practice addresses the mind, body, breath and spirit. We live our lives through our nervous system, constantly assimilating and responding to internal and external stimuli. Whether our responses can be controlled or not, becoming aware of our body and mind stuff offers a means to take the reins and steer toward balance. Removing impediments to the body’s natural flow of energy (whether it’s through movement, chiropractic care, breath, meditation, diet or otherwise) engenders vitality and a balanced state of health.
Like chiropractic, yoga is another tool to help realign the body.
What’s more, postural awareness is an important practice within yoga, both on and off the mat. Posture has an obvious impact on spinal health, but it also impacts our emotional and bio-physiological health. Through awareness, we can shift ingrained movement and holding patterns within our bodies (such as hunching over cell phones and computers), as well as learn to respond to external stressors in a more mindful way. Chiropractic care is one such way to realign the body and its nervous system thereby offering balance and health.
At True Health, we have countless patients who have combined yoga with chiropractic care. In doing so, they’ve found that they have become more flexible and limber over time. Joints that were typically stiff were now lubricated and moving more easily because of regular adjustments. Yoga poses that were once forced into completing have become more fluid to move through. Most importantly, their yoga practice has become that much more fun and fulfilling!
How has chiropractic care enhanced YOUR yoga practice? Share your story with us in the comments!
