Occupational Therapy and Yoga
What makes them so compatible.
Occupational Therapy (OT) and yoga have SO much overlap. The short version is they both look at the whole person and how to promote function. Here are some examples with the OT perspective first in bold and the connecting yogic principle in parenthesis:
Promote health and well-being to enable participation in daily activities (eliminate, reduce, or manage symptoms that cause suffering)
Coordinate physical, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral to achieve highest level of function (mind-body-spirit connection)
Facilitate learning of skills and self-management (empower people to be their own best teacher)
Disability prevention and health promotion (prevent occurrence or reoccurrence of underlying causes of illness)
And honestly so much more.
Yoga, while being very emotionally healing, also has proven physiological health benefits as well. It has been shown to:
decrease stress and anxiety
decrease pain
reduce risk of cardiovascular disease and hypertension
improve recovery from stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s (and more)
decrease the flight or fight response therefore lowering blood pressure and decreasing cortisol levels (the stress hormone).
The asanas are various postures that can strengthen while stretching, moving you through functional movement patterns that can increase strength, flexibility, balance, and mobility for a number of musculoskeletal and neurological conditions. It really is a powerful physical tool. But it’s more than that. The physical postures of yoga are just one of the 8 limbs that make up the practice. Incorporating yoga into traditional rehabilitation allow us to improve the biomechanics while also calming the nervous system, cultivating joy, and improving movement.
There are several reasons that I choose to incorporate yoga into my occupational therapy. One of them is my own personal journey. I’ve touched on this in other blog posts, but yoga has had one of the biggest impacts on my life. In my teens and early (and if we’re being honest late) twenties, I had no idea how to slow down. And as a result, I had no idea who I actually was, what my beliefs were, and what my personal goals were. All of my validation was external, because I was incapable of providing it internally. As many of us know, this is not a sustainable mindset. Eventually, the external validation stops and we are left lost and unsure what we want and how to get there. Utilizing yoga can provide the space needed to set our internal compass that guides our decisions.
Secondly, the time I’ve spent working with patients. Spending time in different healthcare settings, I started to question the types of interventions I was providing. I know there is value in the services I was providing, but I started to identify gaps in “standard” rehabilitation settings. I wondered how much of what we were doing was carrying over into their actual lives? How often were they actually doing the exercises I provided for them? (I’ve been to physical therapy and I’m willing to admit I did little to none of the recommended exercises at home). Did they find value in what we were doing?
I reflected on patients that I really connected with. Those with whom I felt I was really making a difference. I thought about a session where instead of doing my planned exercises, I held my 90 year old patient’s hand while she cried and told me how frustrated she was that she couldn’t get herself dressed anymore since her stroke. A patient in her 30s who just lost her husband after taking care of him through a cancer diagnosis, who hadn’t addressed the limiting pain being caused by her rheumatoid arthritis because she had been taking care of him for years and now felt completely empty. A man who spent his life creating art, who could no longer paint due to a rare neuromuscular disorder resulting in weakness and tremors. All these people who lost a large part of their identity due to a condition, illness, or disorder.
They benefitted from an Occupational Therapist to give them objective information about their diagnoses, provide a biomechanical assessment of the problem and create a plan to address the deficits. But on top of that, they needed someone to listen to them. To ask them what was important to them. To tell them it’s ok to cry, it’s normal to be sad or mad or disappointed. To problem solve with them ways that they could get back to what was important to them under these new circumstances. A way to tap into their inner power, to find purpose and meaning in this “new normal”, to find peace and acceptance. Those are things that typically can’t be found in bicep curls.
It’s a journey. We are all going through something and both yoga and occupational therapy can provide the physical, mental, and emotional tools to guide us to participating in our lives in a meaningful way.
