Over the past year the pandemic has had a significant impact on all daily routines and work lives.
Ireland has had one of the highest rates of working from home in the EU. This change to working from home has resulted in many individuals sitting for longer periods of time.
Speaking to the Athlone Advertiser this week, Tricia Fleming, Proprietor, Hot Yoga Athlone, noted the benefits of hot yoga with many employees working from home (resulting in stiffening joints ) since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.
“Continuous sitting while working from home means employees tend to end up slumping and sinking into our lower back which in turn causes tightening of the hamstrings and shortening the hip flexors.
“Working from home is also accompanied by a lot more screen time on our phones, tablets, and laptops, which has resulted in ‘text neck’. This is the term used to describe the posture formed by leaning forward and stressing muscles while using our devices. This posture often results in cervical and shoulder pain, stiffness, headaches and thoracic hyperkyphosis or hunching. This increases pressure on the neck and shoulders and the lower back, closing the front of the body.
“As a result, there is a rounding of the shoulders, shortening and tightening to the muscles at front and back of the shoulders. Over the last year physiotherapists, physical therapists, chiropractors and amatsu therapists have all noticed an increase in demand for their services.
“An Irish chiropractic clinic has revealed almost half of people working from home are experiencing back or neck pain. New research conducted by Chiropractix in 2021 has found that 46 percent of people working from home due to Covid-19 restrictions are struggling with back or neck pains, or both.
“This increase in sitting and stressing our muscles has caused a significant number of people to suffer from tight hips and shoulders, which leads to back pain and discomfort.
“To help with pain relief Hot Yoga Athlone has created an online course entitled ‘Yoga for Hips and Shoulders.’ The ‘Yoga for Hips and Shoulders’ course targets and addresses all of these areas and problems through a 75-minute class as well as short video clips of each posture, going into more detail of the common mistakes that are made and possible modifications that may be needed.
“This online course is suitable for everyone from an office worker to a body builder. Hot Yoga Athlone, centrally located in the town, is a dedicated and purpose built hot yoga studio. Practiced correctly, hot yoga is proven to have a profound healing power on the body and is known to considerably reduce the possibility of injury and illness due to its systematic working of the body, inside and out,” Tricia remarked.
Tricia trained to become a hot yoga teacher in 2002 and she has been teaching hot yoga throughout Ireland and as far afield as Thailand and South Africa since 2003.
For further information please contact Tricia on 086 3763363 or email [email protected].
