When you hear the word “yoga,” you may start thinking about a bunch of people contorting and stretching their bodies into positions you’d never even dream of trying to get into, let alone out of! However, our approach to yoga at Enhance Integrated Wellness is very different than the typical “twist-you-into-a-pretzel” type of bodily movement you might be thinking of.

I’ve been practicing yoga since the 1990’s, and have been teaching yoga now for the last 15 years. The type of yoga that I teach in our classes here at Enhance is a combination of lyengar and Asthanga yogas. And what yoga is really all about to me is bringing about change in your thought process and body’s movement potential. What’s really exciting to see is how people get empowered when they start to see and feel those changes!

My focus within the practice of yoga is on the quality of the movements, safe spinal stability, and correct biomechanics that don’t cause undue stress and strain. The flow of postures help me and the participant to identify limitations in movement. Many of our patients take my class, and this can also help focus treatment and promote breakthroughs in limitations.

I keep my yoga classes small, so that I can really focus on how each of the participants are moving individually. We make sure that we’re not compromising the spine and other joints, and the class helps build endurance, strength, stability and awareness of posture—in other words, mindfulness of movement..

It’s really a natural extension of what we teach all day long in the office. We want to be aware of what we do with our bodies, whether that is how we think, how we move, what we eat or how we feel. We work to enhance and do all these aspects well.

Let’s say a patient comes in with an acute problem—for example, a shoulder or back pain issue. Once they’ve recovered from that pain episode, we like to transition them into an activity with some degree of supervision—putting them in a yoga class that I’m teaching is perfect for doing just that. I can watch their mechanics. It’s so important for the spine to be stable but mobile when moving from position to position, and I’m able to watch for that as they get into certain postures. If the patient were to instead attend a yoga class at a studio or a gym, they may hurt themselves, since the instructor wouldn’t necessarily know their clinical history.

Many times, typical yoga postures may put a person into sustained end-range positions. If asked to bend forward and twist when they’re already at the limit of what their body can handle, they can create stress and strain. In my classes, I avoid sustained positions at end range, because I know that’s where injury commonly happens.

And at the end of the day, what it’s really all about is making a change, embracing activity and moving well.

-Dr. Carol

Are you interested in joining a yoga session? Contact our office to see what’s coming up on the schedule.