How Yoga & Chiropractic Care Work Together For Optimum Health
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Yoga and chiropractic care have a lot in common. Both use a mind-body approach to holistically improve your health. However, while yoga focuses on muscular flexibility, chiropractic care hones in on body alignment. Together, these two therapies go hand in hand to make your body healthier and more in balance. [This post contains affiliate links]
Strengths of yoga and chiropractic care
Yoga and chiropractic care each have their strengths. In general, studies show that yoga improves flexibility, range of motion, cardio strength and stress reduction. It’s a low-impact option for keeping your muscles fluid and your joints moving.
Chiropractic care takes a more musculoskeletal approach. Most chiropractic care focuses on fixing body alignment, using manual adjustments. It also looks to balance the spine by straightening out defects or misalignments, or properly restoring skeletal positions in the back, shoulders, knee, and neck.
Together, yoga and chiropractic take care of your body’s musculoskeletal system by boosting muscular mobility and maximizing alignment.
Benefits of combining yoga and chiropractic care
There are plenty of benefits to doing yoga and seeing a chiropractor. These advantages are mutual between yoga and chiropractic, and make them stronger together.
1. Yoga and chiropractic help prevent injury
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A chiropractor ensures that your body’s strength, flexibility and alignment is maximized. When you go to the chiropractor, he/she can evaluate your musculoskeletal system on a regular basis to make sure that your body is well-aligned. In turn, this makes yoga more effective, as your muscles are applied in the best position possible.
In addition, the most serious yoga-related injuries include the lower back, shoulder, knee and neck. A chiropractor specializes in these areas and can help look for problematic areas that aren’t being addressed during a yoga class.
Generally speaking, a chiropractor can look for overstretching, muscle damage and torn cartilage - and more importantly, if these injuries are occurring because of a misalignment in the body that limits or minimizes you.
Meanwhile, yoga works to build muscle flexibility and range of motion. This kind of boost can really help your muscular groups strengthen over time, which helps keep your spine strong.
If you suffer a back condition, such as scoliosis, yoga also helps with this imbalance. For example, when you create flexibility in your lower back and build your lumbar muscles during yoga, this only aids your chiropractic session to reduce pain and check for misalignment.
2. Yoga and chiropractic identify physical weaknesses together
A chiropractor will also check that any misalignments aren’t the result of an imbalance in your muscle groups. This evaluation helps to determine if you have an underlying physical weakness that you may want to strengthen or improve. In turn, you can return to yoga to build these groups and improve your spinal balance.
In this way, chiropractic is used to fix spinal weaknesses, while yoga boosts muscular weaknesses so that in the end, your body is maximized. Sometimes the weakness identified can be resolved with chiropractic adjustments, while others will need muscular conditioning, or both, to improve.
3. Yoga and chiropractic determine unhealthy movement patterns
During your yoga class, you use movement patterns to build flexibility and range of motion. These patterns are essential to creating the right kind of flexibility that relies on multiple muscle group. (This also helps prevent injury.)
As you learn these movement patterns, a chiropractor can help ensure that they’re being done correctly and by using the right muscles. Chiropractic tools that measure joints, bones and muscular strength can help determine if you’re building flexibility by engaging or relying on the wrong muscles.
For example, if you’re trying to build strength for a yoga headstand, you’ll want to make sure that you’re engaging your abs, back, thighs and buttocks in the right proportion. If you depend on your lower back muscles to do the headstand, for instance, you will have trouble balancing, as your lower back takes on too much of the burden.
In this case, it would be ideal to build your abs and lumbar muscles with a chiropractor-approved program, as well as check for misalignments to better maximize your position.
4. Yoga and chiropractic reinforce each other for maximum improvement.
Chiropractic will reinforce what you strengthen in yoga, and vice versa. That’s because when you both do yoga and see a chiropractor, you’re maximizing your improvement and making your muscles and alignment “moldable.” Similar to the idea of cross-training, chiropractic can work to unlock new positions and mobility that directly feed into the power of your yoga poses.
This concept of “unlocking” goes both ways. Many chiropractors recommend yoga because it helps boost flexibility and strength in order to undo tense areas and, in turn, enhance the chiropractor’s adjustments.
5. Yoga and chiropractic are aware of the body
Both yoga and chiropractor are practices that look holistically at your mind and body. In this way, they’re complementary therapies that really look for underlying issues and to find strength from your own body.
If you’re struggling to stay stress-free, for example, yoga and chiropractic look for the ways to reduce stress, while finding tense areas in the body to relax. The mind and body are extremely connected in both practices. That’s another reason why chiropractors will recommend yoga: to be aware of imbalances in your body and your mind, and to find ways to release that tension.
Find a chiropractor near you
If you’re a yogi looking to try chiropractic for the first time, make sure you look for a professional chiropractor near you, such as our top-rated Alaska chiropractic clinic locations. Typically, a chiropractic clinic will offer a range of services, including chiropractic, massage therapy, and complementary therapies. You’ll find that chiropractic and yoga are extremely well-suited to work together to optimize your health and get your body running smoothly every pose along the way.
About Dr. Brent Wells
Dr. Brent Wells, D.C. founded Better Health Chiropractic & Physical Rehab in Alaska in 1998 and has been a chiropractor for over 20 years. His practice has treated thousands of patients from different health problems using various services designed to help give you long-lasting relief.
Dr. Wells is also the author of over 700 online health articles that have been featured on sites such as Dr. Axe and Lifehack. He is a proud member of the American Chiropractic Association and the American Academy of Spine Physicians. And he continues his education to remain active and updated in all studies related to neurology, physical rehab, biomechanics, spine conditions, brain injury trauma, and more.
5 benefits of combining your yoga practice and chiropractic care to optimize your health, wellness, and ongoing yoga practice