Yoga carries many benefits, not only for those who are experiencing PTSD, but everyone who wants help in improving their quality of life.
Yoga life has captured a significant amount of benefits within your mind, body and soul when practicing yoga. Please see below:
GOOD FOR YOUR MIND
- Reduces stress
- Improves concentration and focus
- Increases emotional control
- Raises personal and external awareness
- Creates positive attitude
GOOD FOR YOUR BODY
- Improvement in cardiovascular and strength
- Improves balance and core
- Helps you lose weight
- Raises energy
- Improves immune system and organ function
- Increases flexibility
GOOD FOR YOUR SOUL
- Improvement in your relationships
- Increase inner strength
- Improve positive life perceptions and outlook
- Improve personal wellness
With people that are living with PTSD, practicing yoga can also increase your quality of life and sleep while decreasing, hyper-arousal symptoms, daytime dysfunction and state and trait anxiety.
There are many different forms for yoga that can be practiced:
- Hatha: Is a combination of different movements within breathing.
- Vinyasa: A series of poses that flow smoothly to one another
- Power: A faster, more high intensity practice that builds muscle.
- Ashtanga: A combination of poses and special breathing techniques
- Bikram (hot yoga): Is a series of 26 challenging poses performed in a room heated in a high temperature.
- Iyengar: Uses props, which can include blocks, straps, and chairs to help with moving your body into the proper alignments.
(Watson, 2020)
Below is a 30 day yoga journey with Adriene. The videos start off easy and progressively gets more difficult. Once they are too difficult continue repeating videos until you are comfortable to move on. Individuals who are not presenting with physical impairments should be able to complete all videos. For adaptive techniques please speak to a medical physician to implement safe modifications.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder 