Yoga and Rheumatoid Arthritis

Arthritis sufferers are often caught between a proverbial rock and a hard place. The rock is that they are in pain, the hard place is that exercise – while often painful to do – can help with arthritis symptoms. So, what is one to do? Enter yoga.

Over the years, a number of studies on the health benefits of yoga have been conducted. In general terms, yoga has been found to help reduce stress, relieve anxiety, and improve cardiovascular health. With respect to arthritis, yoga has been found to decrease inflammation. To understand why this is important, one must first understand what arthritis is.

In its most simplistic terms, arthritis can be understood as joint inflammation. The most common form of arthritis is osteoarthritis or OA. According to the Arthritis National Research Foundation, OA is the “‘wear and tear’ arthritis or degenerative joint disease.” Another common form of arthritis is rheumatoid arthritis or RA. The American College of Rheumatology states that “Ra is the most common type of autoimmune arthritis…caused when the immune system (the body’s defence system) is not working properly.” Like other forms of arthritis, RA results in pain and swelling.

So, if yoga can help reduce inflammation, it makes sense that it is often recommended for those dealing with RA. One arWhat is yoga good for? While yoga is good for many conditions and life challenges one particular condition that benefits from a regular daily yoga practice is Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA).

Low impact strengthing exercise – like yoga – has many key benefits to dealing with RA. According to Susan J. Bartlett, PhD, associate professor of medicine at McGill University, keeping muscles strong so that they can support the joints while incorporating movement to reduce stiffness, is key to dealing with RA.  In her article, Why Yoga Can Be Good for Rheumatoid Arthritis,  Kara Mayer Robinson suggests that yoga:

1. Creates strong muscles to support joints and improve mobility

2. Reduces stresses and improve mood which is especially important for people experiencing chronic pain

3. RA is linked with diabetes and heart disease and yoga benefits the healing of both of those diseases

While there are many benefits to practising yoga – including helping those dealing with RA symptoms – it’s always important to first consult your physician prior to beginning a new exercise regimen. If you believe that yoga could be right for you, we also suggest you let your instructor know about your condition and the joints that are most affected. This will enable your instructor to provide you with modifications to ensure you continue to get all the benefits of yoga without causing further injury or a flare-up of your RA. And yogis, remember to always, ALWAYS, listen to your body. If something doesn’t feel right while in a posture, take a recovery pose (savasana and child’s pose are often good) and speak to your instructor after class.

Yoga has a number of health benefits, including reducing joint inflammation – which is key in dealing with arthritis symptoms, especially RA.

Postures to help alleviate RA symptoms

• Vrkasana (tree pose)

• Setu Bandha Sarvangasana (bridge pose)

• Savasana (corpse pose)

• Viparita Karani (legs-up-the-wall pose)

• Reclined supine twist

• Sun Salutation

Fast Facts on Rheumatoid Arthritis

• Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disorder that causes chronic
  inflammation

• The cause is unknown and it can affect people of any age, but is more common in
  adults 40-60 years old

• People suffering from RA go through periods of inflammation and periods of remission

• Inflammation with RA affects the joints by swelling, redness, stiffness and pain, but can also occur in tendons, ligaments and muscles.

Physiology of normal vs. arthritic joints (Source: Medicine Net. Inc)

Intro to Ayurveda: Matthew Remski

Matthew Remski

What we know about ayurveda we have learned from Matthew Remski and the sources that he has pointed us to.  Any awareness that I had before meeting Remski has been tainted by his broad and informed viewpoint.

Matthew suggests that the “best evidence shows that the holy trinity of preventative and supportive health consists of proper diet, adequate exercise, and stress reduction. ayurveda focuses on how these three can speak most efficiently through the medium of a person’s constitution. Constitution cannot be concretely defined, but gleaned from the holistic analysis of physique, drives, social context, development, and emotional and mental patterning. Assessing what a person needs begins with beginning to understand who a person is and is becoming.”

In contemplating the usefulness of the ayurvedic body of knowledge Matthew suggests that “stress reduction is the broadest category.” Ayurveda addresses all stressful relationships: to food, to time, to family, to culture, to technology, to the earth, to one’s self-narrative.

Matthew goes on to explain that “underneath the technique, ayurveda performs the important function of speaking to a recently-buried layer of consciousness. Its lore arises from the majority experience of our history: the hundreds of millennia prior to books and science, when we relied on intuition, mythology, and dreams to forge connection of balance and meaning.”

Ayurveda reminds the postmodern person of a time when her internal climate mirrored her external climate in a language she could intuit and add to. A time when she was, in a word, possessed by nature and its evident rhythms. This experience is still within us, but is now starved for attention. Ayurveda treats the ancient person within.

As for yoga — it occurs whenever the wounds of consciousness provoke conscious action. Today, yoga is primarily a mode of re-embodiment. Expressed through whatever tools work, yoga is the will to reveal our latent inter-subjectivity, and to sense our shared flesh — to use the term of Maurice Merleau-Ponty — with the world.

When Matthew Remski teaches Ayurveda, he begins with the following reduction:

AYURVEDA IN 7 STEPS

1. Each person is two: a conscious part prone to alienation from self, other, and world, but also gifted with integrative capacities; a perceptual part, autonomically attuned to time and the environment, already and naturally resourceful and supported.

2. The latter is a unique combination of elemental qualities and movement patterns we may call “constitution”. It is the basis of the former.

3. Constitution can harmonize or clash with its natural and social environment, whether by conscious choice or by circumstance.

4. Inattention to sensual feedback, internal rhythms and environmental changes prematurely weakens first vitality, and then immunity.

5. As immunity weakens, the natural strengths of structure, metabolism, and coordination express their shadows: congestion, inflammation, and disorganization.

6. Good digestion is the root of somatic and psychic health.

Pleasure and equanimity are its flowers.

http://matthewremski.com/wordpress/view-of-ayurveda/

* Matthew Remski teaches an Ayurveda workshop for Atlas Studio. Contact us for more details: [email protected]