A healthy lifestyle, including moving the body and taking time for self-care, can support heart health. About 80% of heart disease and stroke events are preventable. Awareness of your risk factors, knowing your heart health numbers like cholesterol and blood pressure and making healthy lifestyle choices can reduce your risks. Your efforts can also lower your risk for other diseases like diabetes and cancer.

Studies have also shown that yoga may have some benefits for heart health. This mind-body practice can improve strength, flexibility, balance and relaxation. As part of an overall treatment plan, yoga may help manage blood pressure, blood cholesterol and blood glucose levels. It can also manage your heart rate and reduce stress.

Some yoga practices include what are sometimes referred to as “heart openers.” These movements and postures often include lifting and expanding the chest and rib cage, and can support our posture and mood. If you spend a lot of time sitting at a desk, hunched over a computer or typing on your phone, you may be able to picture or imagine that slumped, hunched-over position. In addition to supporting your posture, some people find that lifting and expanding the chest and rib cage can help them feel more open, confident and happy than when they are hunched over.

Join Danielle Olauson, yoga instructor and Whole Health Employee Well-being Coordinator at the Portland VA Medical Center, in this 12-minute heart-centered chair yoga practice where she guides participants through awareness of breath and uniting the breath with movement.

To learn more about yoga and other complementary and integrative health (CIH) services that may be available at VA, visit Complementary and Integrative Health – Whole Health (va.gov)

To talk more about your heart health or other conditions, or to find out which CIH services are available locally, connect with your local VA facility.  

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One Comment

  1. Bill Whalen May 8, 2023 at 18:05

    Please tell me that you have watched someone with an SCI attempt to do these movements.

    Just watching, I found myself commenting “Nope,” “That’s gonna hurt,” and “That’s what I do every morning — thank heavens I only have to do it once a day.” I admit that I have not tried seated yoga. I live in an independent/assisted living facility which offers seated yoga and I have watched the sessions.

    The yoga instructors here have no experience with SCI, and other wheelchair attendees are rare.

    I’m bolted together from C5 to T3, C-6 was crushed, my accident was in 2018. Up until then I played tennis 3 days a week, kayaked for hours, and spent an hour in the gym 4 or 5 days a week.

    I need more convincing.

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