Yoga for Chronic Pain Treatment
Each one of us is fighting some form of battle with our health that may include a stiff neck, a sore back, stomach cramps, arthritis, or any other type of nagging pain that often triggers anxiety. Chronic pain brings about several changes in the brain structure that can result in anxiety, depression and even cause impaired cognitive function. But there is still hope. Research shows that yoga for chronic pain management works well, having the opposite effect on the brain as opposed to pain.
Yoga for Pain Management
If you suffer from chronic pain and have been looking for an alternative to pills, yoga can help. Performed under the supervision of a licensed yoga practitioner, gentle yoga postures can help inflamed, painful joints glide over one another, without hurting or causing pain. This helps improve strength and mobility without too much tissue wear and tear, as yogic poses strengthen the muscles around joints. In fact, gentle yoga poses are a safe alternative to weight-bearing exercises, which risk worsening joint health.
Research conducted by Duke University Medical Center claims that yoga can help in pain management for fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis, arthritis, and carpal tunnel syndrome. The study subjects experienced significant relief from muscle stiffness, joint pain, and physical discomfort from different yoga poses, which also helped improve flexibility, muscle strength, and range of motion.
How Does Yoga for Pain Relief Work?
When you are in pain, you cannot think of exercise, right? But working your body with yoga can have a pain-releasing effect. In fact, it can have a pleasing, relaxing effect that takes away the stress and anxiety associated with pain.
Research suggests that yoga helps relieve chronic pain. For people suffering from lower back problems, practicing yoga for pain offers significant relief from pain, depression, and disability.
Many studies show that yoga can help ease fibromyalgia pain symptoms and joint pain. It provides relief from inflammation and arthritis symptoms. Restorative yoga postures provide deep relaxation and pacify the nervous system, helping your body relax and begin the healing process on its own.
Various yoga stretches boost blood flow and ease stiffness of muscles. Since stress is often blamed for most painful symptoms in the body, practicing yoga can help lower the levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the body.
When yoga for pain management is practiced under a licensed yogic trainer, you will learn how yoga teaches awareness of the body alignment and posture. The mindfulness training of yoga provides you with tools to understand your body and engage with pain in a way you can listen to it and encourage self-healing.
Yoga Teaches Resilience of Nervous System
Research outlines how yoga supports the resilience of the nervous system. Body-based yogic poses, such as breathing exercises, can help your physical and psychological health and wellbeing. Breathing exercises and meditation can activate the autonomic nervous system that further helps foster changes in the mood and emotion.
In scientific terms, people who practice yoga are likely to have more gray matter in different regions. You tend to lose gray matter with age, but this is not the case with those who have made yoga a way of life. Research suggests that yoga has a neuroprotective effect and that yoga practitioners have better pain tolerance compared to those who do not practice yoga.
Regular practice of yoga for pain management can play a significant role in helping manage pain symptoms, whether related to an injury, inflammation, neuropathy, cancer, or pathological. No doubt, yoga promises to provide immense relief from pain linked to different ailments and conditions, but if any of the yoga asanas (poses) are done wrongly, it can trigger pain or even cause an injury. Therefore, it is advised to always perform yoga under the guidance of a licensed practitioner so that you achieve the benefits of yoga without injuring or hurting yourself.