Stretching is always helpful for the body.  Yoga is a great way to calm your body, stretch your mucles.  Even better, it’s accessible to people with disabilities.

Yoga Helps All Disabilities

The gentle stretching of yoga and its centered-breathing discipline can benefit people who may have arthritis, multiple sclerosis (MS), Parkinson’s disease, or osteoporosis as well as those who have had a stroke. The “asanas,” or poses that make up a yoga practice can also help with balance and strength while helping you find a calming emotional space that helps not only with healing, but also with the day-to-day challenges of life.

In addition, notes the National Center on Physical Activity and Disability (NCPAD), yoga aids your:

• Digestive system, as the bending and stretching poses stimulate the digestive system
• Cardiovascular and cardiopulmonary systems (also known as your heart and lungs!), as the more active poses increase heart rate and lung capacity through aerobic activity.
• Lymphatic system (essentially, the primary component of your immune system), which needs strong muscles and active interaction among the lungs, diaphragm, and thorax to stay strong.
• Skeletal and muscular systems, which benefit from yoga’s focus on proper alignment, flexibility, and muscle-strengthening

Yoga Improves Activities of Daily Living

Besides leaving students with improved virtues such as confidence and patience, yoga has practical applications for everyday living. In his book, Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence (Rodale, 2008), Matthew Sanford mentions one of his students who has cerebral palsy, which caused the man to have frequent falls and resulting injuries. After becoming a regular student in Sanford’s yoga classes, the man fell in the shower one day but was able to use his improved body control to land in a way that spared him from injury.

Sanford said that in his own life, yoga has given him the strength to easily transfer in and out of different wheelchairs, as well as produced noticeable improvements in balance and flexibility.

Learning More About Yoga for People with Disabilities

One of the best free sources of information regarding yoga and its benefits is the NCPAD’s website section, “Yoga for Individuals with Disabilities.”

Included among its overviews, articles, videos, and online demonstrations are information about yoga’s benefits, yoga equipment, what to expect in a yoga session, demonstrations of specific exercises, a resource list, a directory of yoga organizations (definitely needs updating/expanding), and a relatively current (2005 is most recent publication date) list of books and articles about yoga for various conditions.