Finding support in your body

When you experience (chronic) pain, there is support missing in your body. Your (movement) patterns no longer work. Yoga therapy can help you.

In (chronic) pain, there is a lack of support in the body.

During my training in 2021, it became increasingly clear to me that when there is pain during movement or compensation, there is support missing in the body. As I always say, everything is connected and so there are always more parts involved in movements. The parts (muscles, bones, connective tissue, etc) that make the main movement, like lifting your leg for example AND the parts that need to support this movement. Without this support, the body gets creative and starts creating support, to help you. This is then often support that will cause problems in the long run. So the idea of continuing with a movement that doesn’t work, doesn’t work, because it lacks support from other areas of the body. And this is where the yoga therapy approach comes into its own. With yoga therapy, we look and work at where the support is lacking in order to improve functionality.

Yoga therapy = functional movement = less pain.

In my own body, I notice that things are constantly shifting. By this I mean that I have been able to experience parts becoming active that were not helping my movement. By now being able to release tension with movement and go back to very basic movements to get the right activation AND actually start to feel it in my body, the compensations that were there diminish and there is a strength that feels lighter. Which makes sense because I don’t have to work through my tensions/compensations, leaving more power in the movement itself.

I also notice that working on the contact of my sole of my feet with the ground, for example, is affecting the space for my breathing. My body stacks up differently, more spatially. The tension I was holding in my belly can ease and soften. This is also revealing that there is more tension in my neck and shoulders than I could feel before. Thus, slowly the different compensation patterns are coming to light, which have been supporting my body. And now this compensated support may slowly shift to actual support with a sense of softness, lightness and space.

What does yoga therapy for you?

Just as yoga therapy continues to help me move better, I can of course help you do the same. I always think of it as a big ball of wool tangled up. When you pull it hard and fast, knots appear that are difficult to untie. If you do this carefully and thoughtfully, following the threads, you can get the knots out of the ball. With a ball of wool you’ll be done at some point, but with the body, as far as I’ve noticed, not necessarily. Now, fortunately, you always decide what you want to work on and what you don’t.

With yoga therapy, we start with you. Your body, how it is now and from there we will look at where your movement works for you and where it doesn’t. Where are you holding tension or using it to create support as compensation? Meaning; how is your functional movement? Where do you experience pain or discomfort and what movement influences that? So it involves communication between us. What do I see in your body/movement and what do you feel? In this way, we can increasingly find out what works for you and how you can move more freely and feel more comfortable in your own skin. The body, mind and emotions are totally connected, so yoga therapy works on all these levels to support you.

Curious about what yoga therapy can do for you? Then book a free consultation via the link below or send me an email!