Sheehan Chiropractic, serving Medford, Ashland, and Southern Oregon

February 15th, 2009

Happy belated Valentine’s Day!

I want to let my patients and friends know about a wonderful adjunct to my practice, Tracey Sage, who is a local Ashland therapeutic yoga instructor. Tracey and I have been working on each other lately, and I’ve been able to experience first hand how therapeutic koga differs from regular yoga. Therapeutic yoga is for people who are recovering from an injury or health challenge and need personalized instruction and a custom-designed yoga program to facilitate their healing.

Tracey has been studying various forms of yoga for over twenty years, specifically how to work with the injured. My experience with her was not for a particular injury as much as for postural correction and to design a general stretch routine to prevent me from getting old before my time! I realized during a recent massage that my hips were getting stiff and I hadn’t realized it. I knew I had to get in to see Tracey before it got harder to correct.

Her attention to detail, experience and skill at making folks feel relaxed, comfortable and welcome were all evident, and helped me lose my nervous jitters quickly. I learned just how off my posture had gotten over the years, and Tracey spent the entire first hour session helping me learn to correct it with a few simple poses and exercises. Since that first session a month or so ago we’ve been meeting weekly for an hour each session, and I’ve been learning to a series of easy and fun stretches specifically for my tight areas. And I’m improving! I can tell my posture is getting better, and I love doing the stretches, or “poses” as they’re evidently called in yoga. They feel wonderful, and it feels great to just spend some time only on me, no one else, and not think about anything else for an entire hour!

I can also see how important an addition to my practice Tracey is becoming. I’ve been referring a bunch of my patients to her to take the time to show them in greater detail what I don’t have the time to show them, and with much greater skill and patience then I have. She is also extremely picky and detail oriented, because she knows that the details to a pose make a huge difference in stretching properly.

Tracey will email you a set of the stretches you learn in your sessions, which makes it much easier to remember how to do them. (Remember how hard it is when I don’t have sheets to give you!)

In addition to yoga, Tracey is a very skilled herbalist, and makes custom tinctures and combinations for clients after taking a detailed consultation about your health history and lifestyle. I consulted Tracey about my adrenal fatigue and the herbs she prescribed are helping immensely. I feel like my old (young!) self again.

Tracey can be reached at 541-479-5128, and you can see her website at yogaforjoy.net.