Explore Adaptive Yoga For MS At Any Ability Level

Introduction to Yoga Moves and MS Summit 0:00

Welcome to another interview for the M.S. and Autoimmune Summit. I'm here with Mindy Eisenberg, who is the founder and director of Yoga Moves. Ms.. Which is a nonprofit organization that is really doing wonderful, wonderful work for all of us here with M.S., which is why I invited her to come talk about her wonderful organization. Mindy, welcome, welcome, welcome. So let's thank you. Yeah. Let's start with why yoga is such a powerful tool for all of us who have M.S.. Well, there's so many reasons, but I like to look at yoga as an umbrella for lifestyle.

There's a sister science to yoga called Iron Veda. And if you put the two together, what you get is looking at diet, nutrition. How do you spend your day? Meditation and of course, yoga, which some people might get a little fearful of the word yoga, but you can think of it as mindful movement, moving with breath work.

Why Yoga Helps People with MS 0:58

And you put that all together and you have a holistic model for how do you live your most healthy life? Yeah. Again, to all of you who are listening, I do periodic reviews of the exercise studies, and M.S. in yoga is consistently demonstrated to reduce fatigue, improve balance, improve overall quality of life. So a lot of science supporting what Mindy just said. Yoga is super beneficial for all of us. So what do your students say is the most important reason that they started yoga? And then we have, and why they continue it?

Because we started a lot of things and we dropped them off. But what's your experience about people starting and staying? So that's the interesting thing. Many of the students say that it serves as a motivator and a structure for them. They know that they have a group that they're coming together with on a regular basis. So they love the yoga, but they also are motivated outside of the room, the yoga room or yoga zoom to do other exercise modalities. And we always say the more you do it, the better you feel.

The other main reason is community, because they come together, and that is one of the strongest reasons.

Community, Accountability, and Staying Motivated 2:29

The ability the yoga room provides a place to share in many different ways concerning different type of care. They're receiving different modalities. They're looking at how they're feeling that day. It's a nice kind of an intimate environment where you can get into all different kinds of topics and that sense of community, again, to all the listeners, that is so profound. Again, multiple studies reinforce the benefit of a community, and having an exercise class, whether it's yoga or dance, water aerobics in a classroom, super, super, nourishing and supporting to us, they feel accountable.

People feel accountable to this group. Like if they're missing. People want to know where are they? What happened? Exactly. And they will check on them and they talk outside of the class before or after they they develop support groups around it. Okay. So a lot of listeners might be feeling like, okay, you know, I'm pretty stiff. I'm sort of old. I never really exercised. I'm sure I don't know that I can do yoga. So for the listeners who are maybe

Getting Started with Adaptive Yoga 3:49

feeling hesitant, what are the first steps to get started? So the first steps to get started are to realize that this is adaptive yoga. And really the whole purpose is to adapt the poses to your body. So we're not looking at a pose and saying, oh, we got to fit that body into a pose. No, we're working with the student to reap the benefit of the pose. And so know that we're going to work with you. I think there's a lot of fear around it, but really, I haven't met anybody in the 20 years I've been teaching adaptive yoga.

Now we have all kinds of resources for people, including videos on Intro to Yoga, being our adaptive yoga for our and really any body caregiver's a lot of time like to join. We have resources like adaptive yoga cards where people can look at what are the different types of variations in a pose. Talking to other people and looking at the resources we have on our website is a great place to go to. We have an on demand, so nobody a system where people can look at, in practice with classes that are for beginners.

And like you said, some people don't have an hour to get. So we have differing, durations like 10 or 15 minutes. One of the greatest benefits of yoga is the breathwork. So if people don't feel like they have to do the movement, they could choose and just kind of sit and breathe for 5 to 10 minutes. There's so many resources out there, including our on demand library, where you can just practice a few breathing exercises for a few minutes or more a day. That's a great place to start. And again, to all of you who are listening, when I've looked at these meta analyzes that combine

Yoga for Severe Disability and Mobility Aids 5:49

all these studies of exercise in terms of what is the most beneficial. I was shocked to see just how high, yoga was in in some of these meta analyzes. Yoga did better than strength training in aerobic training. And I think that's because of the breathwork, the balancing, at least that that was the theory that the authors had. So again, yoga, I just want to endorse that there's so much science supporting Mindy's wonderful work that this is so beneficial. Now, we may have some listeners who are severely disabled needing a walker or perhaps scooter dependent and, are struggling to transfer to the toilet independently, to bed independently.

Are you telling our listeners that those individuals would benefit as well? Absolutely. Absolutely. I would say we have a I would say at least 50% of our students use a walker or a scooter, a wheelchair, because, like you said, the breathwork is a way to tap into your strength. Several of these poses, like a warrior pose, the rooting down the activation of the muscles. You're becoming more aware of your body and what it can do. People are often very surprised. Excellent. Excellent. Again, I want to reinforce all everyone who's listening.

Where to Find Yoga Moves Resources 7:22

Whatever your current physical capabilities are, there is room for you to benefit from yoga. And those of you who may be scooter dependent, wheelchair dependent. I certainly want to encourage you to investigate yoga and try that out. Where where do people find? Find out more about yoga moves. So yoga moves me. We have a website, Yoga Moves Ms. dot org and that's probably the best place to find information. We do have an Instagram and Facebook page all at Yoga Moves. Ms.. And like I said, we have all kinds of resources, including things like our cards in the book.

This is a pretty hefty book with all kinds of variations on poses, but start out by taking one of their free classes online. We offer daily zoom classes where there's no charge, and the teachers are available before and after class to answer any questions. To take what someone like say, you know, I really want to work on how do I work on my set to stand? And so we we focus on some of that during the class. We take we take ideas and read them in. This is wonderful. I am so glad that you agreed to come and tell us about your organization.

Everyone who's listening, I really encourage you to go, to Mindy's website. I think it's also fun to follow her on Instagram and see what's going on there as well. Mindy, one more time, could you tell our listeners the website? Yes, the website is yoga Moves. Thank you so very much. Thank you so very much. Namaste. Namaste.