You know that physical therapy is an essential part of your recovery after an injury or surgical procedure. However, you aren’t sure what you need to do to get the maximum results from physical therapy sessions. Adding Yoga and Mindful Movement into your schedule is an excellent way to improve your results.
Here are a few ways that Yoga and Mindful Movements can enhance your physical therapy sessions.
Yoga Improves Strength and Flexibility
One of the goals of physical therapy is to strengthen weak muscles. Imbalanced muscle strength often contributes to injury. Even though weights aren’t part of a yoga session, yoga poses strengthen your body by using your body weight to exercise your muscles.
For example, the Warrior II pose uses your legs, glutes, core muscles, and arm muscles to balance and stabilize your body. Another objective of physical therapy is to stretch tight joints and muscles. Improving your flexibility helps you expand your range of motion and decrease your risk of injury. Stretching can also prevent the accumulation of scar tissue.
Since yoga stretches your muscles, it’s an effective way to increase your flexibility and range of motion.
Regular Yoga Sessions Encourage Psychological Healing
Yoga doesn’t just involve physical exercises; it also incorporates mental exercises.
Throughout your Yoga and Mindful Movement session, you’ll focus on being more aware of your breathing. Increased mindfulness is one of the benefits of regular yoga sessions. Improving your mindfulness allows you to better regulate your emotions and improve your response to stressful situations. It’s known that high stress levels encourage excessive amounts of inflammation in your body that make it difficult for you to recover after an injury. Yoga gives you the tools you need to reduce your stress levels. Deep breath is incorporated into most yoga poses. You’ll also learn how to breathe more effectively during your yoga sessions. Taking deep, calming breaths decreases your stress levels and helps improve your body’s overall functioning.
Meditation is another component of yoga with multiple psychological benefits. Your brain releases endorphins during a meditation session; endorphins are natural pain relievers.
When you’re relaxed (as you often are after a yoga session), your pain levels are more likely to be less intense.
There are Multiple Tools to Adapt Yoga Poses to Your Ability or Unique Needs
During your Yoga and Mindful Movement session, there’s an option to incorporate yoga props and accessories into your movements. These yoga tools make it easy to adapt a yoga pose to your abilities and specific needs. For example, adding a yoga block to a pose can deepen the stretch or make it less intense, depending on how you use it. Yoga straps are helpful for adapting a pose so that it’s suitable for your limitations. A yoga wedge is useful when you’re working to improve your body strength. The wedge changes the angle of your hands or feet. It allows you to perform weight-bearing poses while keeping proper body alignment.
Ready to integrate yoga into your physical therapy?
Contact AmeriCare today!
