Yoga has a reputation to help with flexibility, but it has so many benefits for mind and body. The focus on breathing helps calm the nervous system, lower blood pressure, and release stress. Movement during the practice increases blood flow, lengthens muscles, increases the release of toxins and provides increased blood flow to the organs. Yoga can not only help relax your mind and body but help you manage MS symptoms and the things that go along with it, like laying down and relaxing during an MRI for example.
Each person will experience different benefits from yoga, especially because each body and MS case is different. But studies have shown that benefits range from a decrease in fatigue, pain, anxiety, spasticity, and improvement in depression, weakness and walking.
Yoga and meditation have been shown to help manage pain and spasticity. By lengthening and engaging muscles during asana, the actual poses in yoga, and building in a meditation practice with each session, we bring attention to the body and rebuild neural pathways.
Yoga Nidra, or yogic sleep, a very deep relaxation form of yoga, incorporates meditation, relaxation, and body awareness to lessen stress, anxiety, and calm the nervous system. Yoga Nidra is a useful tool during relapses, painful days and as a way to steadily lower the sympathetic nervous systems response.
Yoga for MS can look different based on where you are each visit. If you need to be in a chair, then we can accommodate that. We can focus on anything you would like to see improvement in, for example, if you need to work on balance or getting up off the floor.
Private yoga classes give the flexibility to have them tailored to exactly where your body is, what you’re experiencing and how we can work together to improve the situation. This is the real benefit of yoga for multiple sclerosis, completely customized sessions for you and your body. We will always meet wherever you are and work together.
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