This vital benefit may not immediately come to mind, but yoga can aid you in maintaining healthy joints. As we age, our joints begin to deteriorate. Cartilage breaks down, arthritis kicks in, and stiffness can morph into pain. Even if you’re still in your twenties, vigorous sports and even genetics can leave you feeling creaky and inflexible.
What’s in a joint? A joint is the point where two bones meet. Think your vertebrae, knees, elbows, wrists, shoulders, and ankles. Bones connected to other bones with ligaments and attached to muscles with tendons. Add in some cartilage as a buffer or cushion and synovial fluid to provide lubrication in the joint cavity. Ways Yoga Can Help Keep Your Joints Healthy
1. Yoga increases your range of motion.
In a well-rounded yoga practice, you work your joints through their full ranges of motion. In our daily lives and in specific sports and activities, we usually don’t. Physical asanas include twisting, lateral bending, as well as backbends and forward bends. Working this way helps prevent sports-related injuries, as well as relieving everyday aches and pains from sitting too long at your desk or driving a car.
Because yoga exercises ligaments and tendons it causes your joints to be more effectively lubricated, which in turn, may support joint comfort. Yoga encourages circulation of not just your blood and lymphatic fluid, but also the movement of synovial fluid inside your joints. The synovial fluid keeps the cartilage lubricated and comfortable, instead of feeling grinding or rubbing of bone on bone.
2. Yoga strengthens muscles that support the joints.
Many yoga asanas strengthen your muscles. Think holding Warrior 1 or Extended Side Angle—where you strengthen the muscles surrounding the knee and offer greater support for the joint. Muscles affect joints range of motion. Yoga increases spinal flexibility and core strength, which can help support the lower back and increase overall strength. If your muscles are weak, your body will bypass using them and rely on joints to stabilize during activity. This process leads to accelerated degeneration of the joint and often injury too. Strengthen the muscles surrounding the joint and enjoy greater stability and reduce injury risk.
3. Yoga increases bone strength.
Weight-bearing exercise, like standing and balancing yoga asanas, increase bone strength and in turn positively impact the joints. Bones are living tissue and respond to exercise by growing stronger. Standing on one leg in Tree Pose, for example, can give you stronger knees and hips. We’ve got four new classes this week and an older classic from Shy Sahar to aid you in getting the healthiest joints for you.
1. Shoulder Strengthening Flow - Channing Grivas
2. Yoga for Healthy Knees - be sure to also check out Shy's Therapeutic Yoga for Wrists, Shoulders & Neck if you haven’t tried it before. 3. Yoga Therapeutics for Shoulders & Upper Back - Deb Rubin
4. Reset the Sacrum: Tips for a Stable Pelvis - Alanna Kaivalya