What makes yoga therapy or therapeutic yoga different from many physical therapies is that it focuses on a sustainable result. We work together in a process to help you get rid of your pain by learning new movement patterns that can arise through an increased awareness of your body and the movements you make with it. It is important that you learn to feel and understand the signals your body gives. Signs that the movement you are making does not feel completely pain-free or comfortable, or where you feel or hear cracks or snaps. Or that parts of your body tense up that do not necessarily have anything to do with the movement. For example, when you move your arm, your abdomen tightens enormously.
Often when muscles are tense and movement is not going well, we try to stretch it or massage it, because that often feels very nice to do. But the question is, does it really work? And especially in the long term. In the moment it can give relief, which is of course wonderful. But how nice would it be if it had a more sustainable effect and the pain doesn’t come back anymore?
As long as you keep moving in the same way, your body will keep doing the same. The tension that you have temporarily stretched away or the pain that you have massaged away will most likely return sooner or later.
If you want your pain or tension to change permanently, something in your way of moving and in your awareness of your body and movement, will have to change.
It tends to be a longer trajectory, not 1 session. Because changing a pattern from a place of relaxation and softness, and increasing your awareness of your body, often takes some time and effort. And where you feel the pain and tension is, is often not where your body lacks space or support. Together we’ll search for what works and what does not (yet) work in your body. Create the support that allows for more optimal movement where pain will decrease or disappear. So you don’t have to keep coming back, because you feel your body’s signals better. And if you have to push through, because life sometimes works that way, that you have the tools to create more balance again.
