Isolated stretching will not heal your body
All styles of manual therapy from various health care practitioners and body workers have thier place and offer value. But in my opinion, mostly what they gave me when I had an injury were temporary fixes. This wss before I found the correct sytem of Yoga to rebalance my body.
Often as an Athlete I would visit a Physio, Osteopath or Chiropractor of some sort and they would perform some kind of manual adjustment to my body to get things back into place, whether from some kind of joint manipulation or releasing tension in the muscular system through massage or needling etc.
This would work to some extent and give me some pain relief or more stability, but it wouldn’t address the underlying issue that caused the imabalance and would generally look at specific parts of the body only. Whether it be tight hip flexors or weak glutes or an overused trapezuis muscle etc.
These specific areas of the body were generally only targeted during sessions and the pain would also come back quite quickly where I would be back with the same issue more often than not in a few months.
My imbalances remained in the body when working with health care workers who assessed the body in this way, until I found Yoga.
Often when a student comes to me and asks me about specific injuries or pain, I will prescribe Primary Series or The Element Series as the resolution. If there is a very specific issue at hand I might add or remove asana’s based on the students injury / imbalance. This requires commitment and work from the student and is not a quick fix, but this will lead to long term positive change.
In my experience of years of dealing with injuries in my own body and my students I would say that injuries mostly occur from whole body imbalances. Aside from anything such as a sudden imapct. Whole body imbalances are not fixed with isloated stretches or strength work to only specifc body parts.
A whole body system of Yoga is needed to bring balance back as you work on the whole body asymmetrically, bringing the body more back into symmetry as you progress through the system lengthening and stregthening both sides of the body equally.
None of us are symmetrical, or should plan to be, but we can bring our body back into balance
Isolated stretching of specific body parts will not heal the body, but will only provide temporary pain relief or a short term change. The body is a very complex organism and tension patterns are there for many reasons to keep the bodies skeletal system in a stable state. To change these tension patterns to make new long term healthier patterns the body must be worked on as a whole to give the necessary input so a new state is stable and balanced.
Short term daily input though Yoga creates long term healthy change
Yoga Works
As my own body became more balanced over the years, back pain, shoulder pain and years of various types of chronic pain dissapeared. It took some work, patience and discipline, but this is the only method I have found that works in this way to create permenant change to the bodies systems.
Unfortunately short terms fixes are literally just that, and they get us up and running again for a short period until the old patterns comes back.
The internet is full of various video’s showing you a thousand and one differnt ways to do various stretches, which in my opinion overcomplicate the mattter. It takes us into this reductionist mindset and seeing the bodies different muscles / limbs in this seperate way and over analyzing specific body parts.
When you see the body for what it is, a very complex organism that responds best to an holistic whole bodied method. Things start to reorganise and change for the better.
If you really want to heal your body and create a healthier more balanced, more calm, stronger, more mobile, less stressed and less injured you, then commiting to a long term Yoga practice is the answer. It works. It works on so many levels which is why I dedicated my life to practicing and teaching it as I have seen it heal and balance so many others over the years.
The work done on our mats, learning how to breathe properly and stimulate blood and oxygen around our body mobilising our tissues and joints is life changing, especially if you have been suffering from chronic pain and stress.
The mind and body are not seperate, the same way the legs and the shoulders aren’t. They’re intrinsically connected.
Working on the body / mind as a whole is what promotes health, brings our nervous system down, stimulating our parasympathetic nervous system so our immune system can functing properly so we can sleep and recover better so our cells regenerate correctly.
If you would like to learn a whole bodied system of Yoga to create a healthier you, please check out The Element Series Vinyasa sequence and become a member of The Better Mobility Guide to start today.
