Therapeutic Yoga: Tips to Staying Motivated in Your Therapy Goals

Yoga. We’ve all heard the term and have basic knowledge of its use of diverse breathing, stretching, and meditation to perform exercise. However, yoga has been used for centuries in cardiovascular at-risk patients to reduce body weight, blood glucose, total cholesterol, and triglycerides.[1] Throughout the past few years, yoga has become one of the most popular forms of exercise. Yoga is especially popular for musculoskeletal issues like lower and upper back pain, sciatica, shoulder, neck and hip pain.[2] Yoga has proven to be effective in preventing chronic diseases by improving the quality of life in adults by treating and managing high blood pressure, helping cope with the effects of cancer treatments, and treating symptoms of HIV, depression or anxiety.[2]

One of the best qualities of yoga is that it can be done anywhere and anytime at one’s own convenience. To aid with progression of poses or routines, helpful yoga videos used for stress, anxiety, and depression, such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nq_SkQHmvA, can be found at the click of a button. This makes yoga therapy easily accessible from one’s own home.

When using yoga as a therapy technique, one will be strengthening the mind as well as the body. As an older patient or therapy patient, there are times that may prove to be difficult to stay motivated with exercise. Yoga gives these patients a chance to improve their overall quality of living and allows them to reach their maximum potential. To stay motivated in yoga therapy, one can try these three simple tips:

1)   Make a personal mantra. As simple as it sounds, having a word or phrase that one can use to keep them concentrated on holding a pose or motivated as they progress through different poses can relate directly to real-life situations. They can use this mantra when they experience stress at work, need to concentrate on a difficult task, or feel the pressures of the outside world weighing down on them emotionally.

2)   Pick reasonable poses. Yoga is about being your best you and improving yourself at your own pace. It’s important that one picks poses that they are physically and mentally capable of doing. They can always progress later on in their yoga routine as their body becomes more accustomed to the movements.

3)   Start! There are times when the stress, pain, or motivation can keep one from achieving their fitness and health goals. The most important part of any exercise routine is to just start. By keeping to a schedule and sticking to a routine, one will improve their overall physical and mental health. Believing you can is the first step to being able to do so much more than you ever thought possible.

Yoga has bountiful health benefits as a therapy technique, that can be accessed by people of all ages and skill levels. Through persistence and motivation, health risk patients can improve their overall quality of life by experiencing all that yoga has to offer.

References

[1] Ramos-Jiménez, A., Hernández-Torres, R., Wall-Medrano, A., Muñoz-Daw, M., Torres-Durán, P., & Juárez-Oropeza, M. (2009, December 2). Cardiovascular and metabolic effects of intensiveHatha Yoga training in middle-aged and older women from northern Mexico. Retrieved January 25, 2015, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2934576/

[2] Yoga Therapy: The Next Wave in Yoga. (2015, January 1). Retrieved January 25, 2015, from http://life.gaiam.com/article/yoga-therapy-next-wave-yoga