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.
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.
