I love Yoga, but am not an expert. I want to recommend some Yoga for my Dad, who has nerve damage due to a snow skiing accident (fused discs in neck) followed 18 months later by a motorcycle accident (ripped tendons in shoulder). I love it that we just can’t keep the man down- but the nerve damage affects his balance and dexterity (drops items he’s trying to hold, misses what he reaches for, etc.) and causes rounds of numbness, tingling, and often aches and pain in his hands, arms, legs, and feet. Can anyone recommend some Yoga for him that is beginner-level, and explain them to me so I can help him learn them (or use the proper names so that i can look them up)? Any help is greatly appreciated. The goal is nerve regeneration, or at the very least decreased pain, tingling, numbness… Thank you.
Goodness. With all of that, the first place I would start is finding a doctor who performs prolotherapy. From there, find one hell of an experienced yoga teacher as he’d need to be evaluated in person.
I think yogatherapy would be suitable for this case and can bring improvements. But you have to find experienced yoga teacher, who is willing to do private classes with your father. After some classes, if he finds improvement, he can switch to a normal class with other students. But for the beginning he should receive careful instructions how to do the yoga postures, by someone who knows his health issues.
If you can’t bring him to a yoga therapist, I wonder if some kind of easy chair/seated yoga DVD might be a good start. I can’t recommend any because I don’t do chair yoga but there seems to be quite a few on Amazon at least. Perhaps your library might have a chair yoga dvd to look at.
Welcome Teachme.
I have three focused thoughts relative to your post.
The first is that the student of yoga actually has to want to engage the practice, go, be open, willing, receptive, and have an urge to change. It is for this reason that it is so very difficult to bring someone to yoga, market yoga, or proselytize the practice. Mohammed must come to the mountain.
The second is that administering yoga therapeutics is to be done by someone appropriately trained to do that very thing. Just as a neophyte would not start on an expert slope at Whistler nor jump over 10 cars on a Kawasaki…much the same way you would not go to a hardware store to have vascular surgery, or a pet store to have a tooth removed. It requires care, training, assessment, observation, reaction, intuition, and about ten years of practice.
Third, if you are proximal to Clayton you can contact Catherine Eberhart at Purna Yoga East. She owns and operates the studio there, is certified at the 2,000-hour level and I trained with her personally and cannot recommend her more highly.