If you are working through the challenging affects of a traumatic brain injury, chronic illness or Long Covid you may be wondering how yoga therapy can help.

That’s understandable. As an emerging field, yoga therapy can be confusing to the general public. 

Acting much differently than just a yoga class, yoga therapy is a healing modality that works hand in hand with Western Medicine. Looking at the individual and their specific health concerns, a yoga therapist works in tandem with medical doctors, mental therapists, chiropractors, acupuncturists as well as other healthcare professions.

What to expect

When meeting with a yoga therapist, the initial intake and appointment is very reminiscent of meeting with a physical therapist or nurse practitioner. Time is spent discussing the unique health concerns of the patient. After the initial assessment, a yoga therapist will sculpt an individualized wellness plan that includes a variety of healing tools. This includes — but is not limited to — yoga postures, breathwork, relaxation techniques, postural assessment, meditation, visualizations and fascia manipulation. Using a patient assessment, these tools are sculpted into an easy-to-implement, at-home plan that the client uses daily, helping to peel away the layers of dis-ease and allowing the client to regain a thriving life.

Another way to look at it…

Yoga therapy helps through healing the individual, where yoga heals the societal whole.

But what does that mean exactly?

What are the benefits? 

Continue reading to learn five benefits of yoga therapy that help heal traumatic brain injuries, Long Covid and that pain that just won’t to go away…

Yoga therapy regulates the nervous system.

Certain tools within the yoga therapy tool box are magicians at bringing the sympathetic and parasympathetic into balance. As a culture that tends to live in a state of fight or flight, our sympathetic nervous systems are taxed. This leads to a whole host of health issues. By bringing the nervous system into balance, we eliminate the myriad of symptoms created by stress, illness or pain.

 

Yoga therapy develops the ability to control one’s emotions.

Maybe one of the greatest gifts of having a customized yoga therapy plan is that it touches on your specific challenges. If you have problems with regulating your anger, sadness, or frustration, yoga therapy has the tools to empower you. You are more than your emotions. Yoga therapy offers a way to climb above the fog that can linger from too much anger, sadness or frustration.

Yoga therapy allows us to pause. 

Oftentimes a health challenge comes into our life to force us to pause. This demand of stopping our life can be abrupt, harsh and, sometimes, debilitating. Even in the midst of intense injury or pain, yoga therapy can be a support system to lean on. It helps create an inner sense of ease, comfort and, even, joy. Just the tool of meditation, alone, can shift our relationship with our illness. In the words of Pharmahansa Yogananda, “By the practice of meditation, you will find that you are carrying within your heart a portable paradise.” In other words, by using tools like meditation, you can learn to control the mind. This shifts the focus so that healing may occur. Learning that all that we experience is created by the mind, is a huge step for empowerment. 

Yoga therapy reduces inflammation. 

Many of the chronic pain and illness challenges that many are suffering is connected to inflammation in the body. Yoga therapy is rich in tools that release stagnant energy and inflammation. Through pranayama, asana and tools that regulate the nervous system, we help the body to release that which no longer serves us.

Yoga therapy brings the body back into proper postural alignment. 

As a yoga therapist, I find it incredible that many of my clients find relief from body pain by coming back into their neutral, healthy alignment while standing and walking. When we are injured or ill we oftentimes, without knowing it, start to create a postural compensation. This irregularity develops into what is known as an “overuse injury”. Because the body is slightly out of alignment, it causes wear and tear on the joints and bones where it shouldn’t be. By correcting these slight postural misalignments we can alleviate not only pain throughout the body. We also achieve mental clarity we didn’t previously have, while finding it easier to breathe and having more energy.

These are just five small ways that yoga therapy helps you create the healthy and happy life that you deserve.

Are you ready to thrive?

Let’s chat! I’m ready to support you.