How Yoga Therapy Brings Freedom From Pain

No one wants to be in pain, yet so many of us go around with one or more areas of our bodies hurting, aching, or otherwise saying “Ouch!”

Here’s the thing: pain is your body communicating with you. It’s saying “Something here isn’t working, so can you please change it?”

The really helpful part about pain is that it gives you feedback. If you do one thing, say rounding your lower back, and your back hurts, you know something about that isn’t working. If you do it differently, such as lifting your lower back in and up to create the natural curve, and your back feels fine, you now know that change DOES work, and that’s what your body has been asking you to do (or at least part of it).

It isn’t personal – it’s not like you’ve done something wrong because you never learned how your shoulders want to be held so your neck doesn’t hurt, or that flattening your lower back can lead to serious discomfort.

On the contrary, it’s surprising how few doctors and body workers actually understand the principles of optimal alignment. I frequently work with someone who has exercises from their physio that don’t feel good. When they understand and apply optimal alignment to the same exercises, all of a sudden they feel good.

It isn’t necessarily the action or exercise that brings pain or relief, but the alignment itself that makes all the difference.

How Yoga Therapy Works

I love teaching Yoga Therapy, because generally the person I’m helping gets instant feedback from their body, and they’re grinning from ear to ear in the first five minutes of the private because we’ve already found the cause of the pain and they’ve had a taste of how simple it is to be pain free.

When you learn to identify the patterns of misalignment that cause pain, you can then create different patterns that bring optimal circulation, optimal range of motion and freedom from pain; when you change whatever isn’t working, your body responds by not hurting.

And that’s a very good thing.

In a Yoga Therapy private or semi-private, you learn which elements of your posture give you a hard time and how to change them. I help you see what you’re doing well, and also identify what you can improve.

When you know your tendencies you can watch for them – be aware of what habits aren’t working. And if you understand how to realign, then you have the power to change those habits into new patterns that support health and feel good.

Yoga Therapy in Kamloops

I’ve recently started a series of semi-private Yoga Therapy classes to make this incredibly effective approach more available to people. These sessions are limited to 4 people, and you get individual attention so you know exactly what patterns to watch for in your body.

When you attend a Yoga Therapy class with others, you not only discover your own patterns of mis-alignment, but you learn from seeing similar things in others. This deepens your understanding, and actually makes it easier for you to get the new alignment because you see it from a different perspective.

You also learn by seeing how I work with the others in the class, because I often do hands-on adjustments so your body has a kinesthetic awareness of what it feels like to be in alignment.

Each Yoga Therapy session comes with a sheet of simple exercises for you to do at home in order to create these new patters of freedom and avoid falling back into the habits that cause pain. These ‘homework’ sheets also have a review of the most important alignment elements, so if you forget you have something to refer to.

The sessions are focused on one specific area of the body. For example, I’ll teach a whole class on the shoulders and neck, which influence the circulation and health of arms, wrists, and conditions like headaches.

If you have back pain, you might want to come to both the lower back class, and the shoulders and neck class, because they support each other and you’ll get the fullest understanding that way.

Feedback from Yoga Therapy Semi-Private participants:

“This is my second yoga therapy class. They are so fantastic! I love the way you gently push us to work. There is just enough detail to get it, but not overwhelm. I find these sessions very motivating, making me want to do the work. Thanks!”

“I like the one-on-one personal attention, and the various ways of explaining a pose so everyone can understand. I also appreciate you making sure the pose is correct.”

“I liked the exact attention to body alignment and your honest assessments of all my positions. Even though I had done this class previously there is always a new detail to integrate.”

“I’m feeling great!”

Please visit my Kamloops Yoga Therapy page to find out more about these sessions and how you can participate.

• Feel free to leave a comment if you have questions or experience with this approach to freedom.