Yoga for Arthritis – Gentle Ways to Support Your Joints with Yoga

If you’re living with arthritis, you’ll know how it can sometimes feel like your body is working against you. 

The stiffness, swelling, and pain may make you want to avoid movement — but, the right kind of movement is one of the best ways to support your joints and ease discomfort. This is where yoga comes in.

Yoga is not about forcing yourself into shapes or striving for perfection. It’s about meeting your body with aroha, listening to what it needs, and moving in a way that brings relief and balance.

🌿 Why Yoga Helps Arthritis

Yoga offers more than stretching. It can:

 • Ease stiffness by gently moving joints through their natural range.

 • Build strength to support and protect joints.

 • Improve circulation and bring nourishment to tissues.

 • Calm the nervous system, helping with both pain and inflammation.

 • Enhance balance and coordination, reducing the risk of falls.

💭 What to Keep in...

Ngā mihi o te tau hōu ki a koe! - Happy New Year to you!

And welcome to Kohitātea - or the eighth month ( January at the time of writing ) according to the maramataka māori.

The Maramataka is the moon phases that māori lived by pre-colonisation, and also today many māori and non- māori are turning back to it's wisdom, for planting crops, fishing and hunting, and doing other activities such as hui, or resting verses being active. 

To me, as a wahine, it makes perfect sense to be in tune with the moons subtle yet powerful energy and flow. That energy which effects our environment, the oceans, the plants and animals, us,  as we are a part of the environment, and so it is natural to be in rhythm and harmony with it.

So whether you consider it to be the 1st month of the year, or the eighth, a way that I like to combine the two systems (because we are all living within the Gregorian calendar too), is to think of this time as a time to take stock, reflect and see what needs to be...