Are you having trouble doing all those crazy yoga poses on your list? It might not be just your balance or flexibility that’s holding you back – it could be that your joints are subluxated. (Ouch!) 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

When the muscles around a joint tighten up, you may go to physical therapy to try and loosen those muscles up. But the reality is that oftentimes, your muscles are tense because the joint itself is locked up and pressing your nerves – especially in your spine.

Chiropractors call this joint state subluxation, and 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’s essentially an unstable joint. But by restoring a full range of motion to subluxated joints, it can help loosen up really tight muscles.

So if the joint is moving, and the muscle doesn’t have to be as tense anymore, it doesn’t have a job to do – 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 joints. That’s why it’s so important to focus on musculoskeletal repair, which provides care for muscles and joints alike.

Notes from a Yoga Instructor

We asked our friend and yoga instructor, Nicole, to share her thoughts on the benefits of combining your yoga practice with chiropractic care. Here’s what she had to say:

Yoga practice addresses the mind, body, breath and spirit. Uniting these four vehicles offers balance and presence. 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 yoga, chiropractic care is another way to 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.

How Erin Walks the Talk

For many years, I’ve combined yoga with chiropractic care. In doing so, I found that I had become more flexible and limber over time. Joints that were typically stiff were now lubricated and moving more easily because I was getting adjusted regularly. Once I began increasing my range of motion through chiropractic care, yoga poses that I used to force myself into doing soon became a little more fluid to move through. Now I find my yoga practice to be that much more fun and fulfilling!

Over to You

How has chiropractic care enhanced YOUR yoga practice? Share your story with us in the comments!