Osteoarthritis affects 30 million adults in the USA, causing pain, severely restricted essential activities such as walking and other daily movement, and fear of exercise.
Ironically, while arthritis tends to limit movement, movement is also the best antidote against arthritis – if it’s the right type of movement. Yoga enhances coordination and flexibility, the very antithesis of the limitations that arthritis brings.
While many sports and aerobic workouts may be damaging to arthritic joints, yoga provides the most beneficial kind of movement, with low impact and high range of motion. Arthritic joints have cartilage damage from a number of causes, yet mindful, careful movement is the best remedy for almost all of them.
In this course, Dr. Loren Fishman and yoga therapist Ellen Saltonstall offer guidelines for a safe and healing yoga practice for any stage of arthritis. This is the first course in a series of courses on arthritis addressing the different joints of the body. The focus in this course is on keeping the hips healthy, with anatomical details and sequences of poses using props such as walls, chairs and blocks to retain mobility in the hip and reduce wear and tear. We’ll give advice on how to minimize the risk factors for arthritis, and amplify your natural strengths that resist it.
You will learn how yoga induces some of the body’s powerful natural anti-inflammatory substances and enhances the body’s natural means of repairing and rejuvenating tissues affected by arthritic processes. Yoga both reduces the incidence and severity of arthritis and heals some of its most distressing effects.
Dr. Fishman and Ellen Saltonstall show how to structure a practice for those who already have arthritis and do yoga along with appropriate cautions. You will also learn movement and yoga poses that can help prevent arthritis, whether new to yoga or not. This course will be valuable for those who wish to help prevent arthritis or slow its progression, as well as for yoga teachers who will do all they can to preserve the good health of those without it.
What You Will Learn
- The anatomical structure of the hips, and why the hips have both tremendous strength and vulnerability in yoga
- How the structure translates into movement in walking, sitting, lying down, and in yoga
- Common soft tissue changes preceding arthritis and what this means for prevention
- Best yogic practices for prevention of arthritis
- The warning signs of the early stages of arthritis
- Ways you can minimize the stresses that initiate and perpetuate arthritis
- How yoga works to minimize hip arthritis, and maximize function when arthritis is already there
- Best yoga poses to practice and which poses to avoid
- How to offer alternatives for students in a mixed class
This Course Also Includes:
- Yoga Practice Video: Enjoy a yoga practice video created for this course.
- Recordings of All Webinar Sessions: It’s generally acknowledged that many people only retain 10-20 percent of what they learn in a workshop. You will get access to the recordings of all webinar sessions (both MP3 – downloadable and MP4 – streaming online), enabling you to go back and listen to the workshop as many times as you like.
- Transcripts of All Sessions: Ever wanted to refer to a certain part of a course? Even the best note takers miss a point every so often. With the transcripts of the webinar sessions, you can go back and refer to particularly important passages or clarify sections you were in doubt about.
This course qualifies for 2.5 CEs with Yoga Alliance.
