Chiropractors

To provide the spine with adequate support, we need to make sure our postural muscles are strong. How do we do this? By the proper forms of exercise. Weightlifting exercises like those you do in a gym are excellent for building muscles in general. However, our postural muscles need not only to bear weight but also to move freely and fully. Strength plus flexibility is the goal. And weight-bearing exercises don't necessarily provide the correct kind of stretching and moving required to promote flexibility of the back. Luckily, there are a couple of forms of exercise that are great for both flexibility and strength of those postural muscles. Specifically, we like to recommend hatha yoga and tai chi.

The benefits of hatha yoga and tai chi go beyond just flexibility and strength, however. You have probably heard about the information our nerves transmit to the spinal cord and brain. A large part of this information is sensory datawhat we see, hear, feel, taste, touch, and smell. But we have a couple of other senses that are less commonly known, and one that is very important to our overall health is our sense of balance or proprioception, which tells us where our bodies are oriented in space and how we are moving. If our sense of proprioception is off, we can lose our balance and fall more easily. Infants and very young children don't have very good proprioception; it takes a while for them to develop a sense of where they are in space and how their muscles function. And we often see deterioration in proprioception as people age, which is one of the reasons old people lose their balance and fall more frequently. Because it improves the communication between the brain and body, regular chiropractic care actually improves proprioception in many people. Many kinds of exercise are also beneficial in improving proprioception, balance, and coordination, but few are more effective than yoga and tai chi.

Why? Both systems of exercise focus on balancing the body as it moves into and out of certain postures. The physical principle involved is called co-activation of muscles. When you go into and out of yoga postures, or flow through the sequence of movements of a tai chi exercise routine, you're using all sorts of different muscle groups at the same time. The muscles on both sides of the body are activated equally, and in conjunction with many other groups of muscles. This creates an ideal integration of muscle and balance function to support the health of the body in general, and the spine in particular. Making yoga or tai chi a regular part of your fitness routine will improve your balance and coordination, cause your muscles to work together smoothly, and stretch your spine and the supporting muscles through their range of motion, allowing them to maintain optimal functioning.