Can Yoga Help Parkinson’s Disease?

Can Yoga Help Parkinson’s Disease?

Yoga has recently proved to be helpful in visibly reducing tremors and in bringing improvements in the gait steadiness of a person. Yoga is obviously a beneficial and a complementary therapy to deal with Parkinson’s disease. It helps in boosting flexibility, improvement of body posture, loosening of painful and tight muscles build or rebuild confidence and thereby, improve the life quality.

Can Yoga Help Parkinson's Disease?

Types of Yoga Practices Beneficial for Parkinson’s Disease Patients

Seated and assisted body postures are relatively more accessible for all individuals, who have limited mobility or feelings associated with unsteadiness. In addition, musical therapies are effective in case of gait training by simply providing a steady rhythm for both stride and gait. Simple rhythmic body movements across a room, shifting from a foot to other one and alternating swings of arms at the time of sitting in chairs are staples associated with parkinson’s disease yoga sessions.

Body movements associated with music has proved to display a drastic improvement in exact motion range, endurance, coordination of hand and physical strength. These effects enhance significantly, when body movements cross the body’s midline, which include self-hugging, think eagle arms, crossing hand to the opposite knees in the form of seated twist and touching of opposite ears because of the coordination of brain hemisphere required in each of the mentioned actions.

Rhythm awareness involves working with the breath ratio and movement of the breath rhythm in patients. In this case, specialists recommend for orkriyas i.e. yogic actions with specific intentions performed usually to various repetitive mentioned tempos. This may involve alteration in the breathing of nostrils with inhale 3: hold 3: exhale 3 ratio, movement of arms in upward direction to get a count as four, out for counting four and downward to obtain a count of four again.

You may perform various movements over any floor or in your bed to help with stiffness in your body, especially during the morning time. Lateral stretches reach from each side, such as reclining crescent and gentle hamstring warm-ups with apanasana and pose from knees towards the chest are excellent ways to start with the day.

Common Yoga Poses Helpful for Parkinson’s Disease Patients

Mountain Pose or Tadasana Yoga Pose

In this pose for parkinson’s disease, you have to stand on your feet by joining, keep your arms across sides and roll down as well as back your shoulders. You have to stay for your 5 breathes and observe the distribution of your body weight on each of your foot. You have to lean back or forward or may even get more weight on your single foot than another one. You should place all four corners present in your feet evenly in the earth for next 5 breaths.

Trunk Circles

In this yoga pose, Parkinson’s patient should stand with feet by keeping them in about shoulder-width distance, knees as bent slightly and hands resting on the waist. Whenever you feel steady, you should bend in the forward direction at your hips to keep your torso as parallel to the ground. You should sweep the torso towards right and upward to achieve a nice stretch on the left side. Moreover, you should continuously move upward until and unless you stand almost upright. Later on, you should sweep downward towards left for stretching the ride side. You should make sure of maintaining a continuous circle and complete 10 circles in both anticlockwise and clockwise directions.

Standing Forward Bend or Uttanasana Yoga Pose

In the uttanasana yoga pose for parkinson’s disease, you should make sure to stand with the feet together, keep your arms in your sides and in relaxed condition for about 5 breaths. On exhalation, you should bend in a gentle way in the forward direction at your hip joints and allow your head to hang from the root of your neck. If possible, you should keep knees as straight and drop the hands to floor to give support. You should put efforts to release tension in your hips and lower back with each of your inhalations. Finally, you should hold your breath for 10 numbers.

Standing Forward Bend or Uttanasana

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Team PainAssist
Team PainAssist
Written, Edited or Reviewed By: Team PainAssist, Pain Assist Inc. This article does not provide medical advice. See disclaimer
Last Modified On:December 5, 2019

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