Sciatica and Yin Yoga: one women's story

There are often many questions about Yin Yoga and specific spinal conditions. Feel free to ask your question here, or check out other posts or contribute input from your own experience.
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Bernie
Posts: 1293
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2006 2:25 am
Location: Vancouver

Sciatica and Yin Yoga: one women's story

Post by Bernie »

I received this email today from a woman who was suffering quite a bit from sciatica. Her story is quite inspirational!

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Just a note to say thank you for your generous web site. A rare gift for which I am grateful. Love the site and your wonderful sense of humour.

Being a woman and mother of four, I've experienced sacroiliac pain off and on to some degree over many years, I'm 58 now. These past three years it became worse as well as more frequent. I'm a Nurses Aide in a nursing home. It's heavy, fast paced work. This past year my S.I. problem, aggravated by stress & repetitive work, became chronic and immobilizing at times. Simple life was a challenge to enjoy. So much pain for so long can lead to depression! My carefree yoga practice, that previously had helped my low back issues, became so painful I thought of giving it up. Yoga should be therapeutic I thought..what was I doing wrong??? After a year of intensive & diverse research, I discovered Sarah Powers Insight Yoga book. Thank Providence, God...

I read (somewhere) that "Yinyoga" is not the same as therapeutic yoga. However, in the first week of following Sarah's sequence for Kidney and Bladder meridians, I've experienced tremendous relief from the sacroiliac "instability" problem that has racked me with chronic pain throughout my pelvis this past year. I'm at the end of my now third week of yin practice & I am, miraculously, just about pain free.

I do the "yin" asanas with a now more mindful practice of my other regular asanas which I'm slowly and gently reintroducing. It's also instilling a more mindful approach to how I move at work & to notice more quickly when the stress of it is building and to slow down. No job is worth pain.

I combine my yoga practice with a few contractions within chosen asanas for my particular problem which I found in, Trigger Point Therapy for Low Back Pain by Sauer and Biancalana. This combination is working for me - more so than all the physiotherapy, acupuncture, osteopathic and massage treatment (not to belittle the effects possible with these) that I've received regularly over this same three year span of time.

I came across your web site since Sarah's book in my continued interest in "yinyoga" and just had to let you know how much I enjoy it.

Thank you
Thank you
Thank you

Heather

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Heather - thanks for your email: it is great to hear how helpful yoga, and yin yoga can be. You are right: all yoga is actually yoga therapy, but sometimes people have in their minds that yoga therapy is a gentle, easy practice. Classically, "Yoga Therapy", is a gentle restorative practice and Yin Yoga may not be the best for people trying to heal deep damages. But, for others, Yin Yoga is just what their body needs. We have to be our own doctors and learn for ourselves. A doctor's first commitment is to "do no harm!" We need to honour that ourselves. Once we know that whatever yoga we have chosen is not detrimental, then we are open to healing.

Thanks again for your story.
Bernie

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Here are a few other posts on this topic: http://www.yinyoga.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=367
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