Adaptive Yoga Can Restore You
by Dr. Howie Shareff
How often do you desire to “feel like I used to?" The adjustment to changes in your body, mind and spirit create a substantial challenge. Yoga is a life science that provides many paths for dealing with these challenges. Adaptive Yoga brings your practice to a calm, prop-supported, self exploring, and restorative setting. These modalities of Adaptive Yoga are available for you to explore.
Chair Yoga allows you to practice yoga anywhere. You begin by creating an awareness of issues with chair design and then develop a stable base for your feet, hips, shoulders and head. Props such as pillows, yoga blocks, and leg support are used as necessary. This helps breathing, free movement and builds strength and balance.
Yin Yoga delves deep into your muscle and connective tissue and changes the physical body on a cellular level. Yin Yoga opens your joints to their healthy limits by the use of long holds in passive postures and the use of props. Although the poses themselves are passive and require little physical strength or stamina, the long holds and deep muscle stretch release toxins that are bound up in cells. This helps relieve your muscle soreness and promotes faster recovery from injury.
Restorative Yoga turns on the healing relaxation response by combining gentle, supported yoga poses with conscious breathing. Relaxation specifically has been shown to be healing for chronic pain. It turns off the stress response and directs the body’s energy to growth, repair, immune function, digestion, and other self-nurturing processes.
Yoga Nidra or yogic sleep is a guided, self exploration that allows deep rest. You can relax to a degree that is more restorative than regular sleep.
Dr. Howie Shareff is the director of the nonprofit organization, You Call This Yoga. His ongoing mission is to help the public learn and benefit from adaptive yoga programs. These include gentle poses on a chair or mat with sufficient props and support. Learn more about Howie, You Call This Yoga and their services and products at www.youcallthisyoga.org.