I have fielded this question a few times from people once I mention that I treat patients using movement. The difference lies mainly in the fact that I treat patients using a specific movement or two based on the patient’s individual issue. Yoga, on the other hand, includes many different movements. Yoga, additionally, is not meant to be medical intervention.
 
Do some people’s aches and pains go away with yoga? Of course. However, many people’s do not. And some people’s get worse. Certain movements within the course of a yoga class may be beneficial, some may be harmful, some may be inconsequential. When many movements are thrown one’s way, it is often difficult, if there is a change, to know what produced the change.
 
I appreciate yoga for getting people to adopt different postures and movements, apart from its other attributes. It is quite obvious that our daily movement lacks the variability found in a yoga class. I advocate any initiative that gets people to move more, especially in diverse patterns. I therefore believe yoga offers a wonderful form of exercise or self-care. In contrast, I do not believe it offers a wonderful form of therapy for a musculoskeletal problem.
 
I find the large majority of patients’ problems come from joints being slightly misaligned. These problems are commonly misdiagnosed, however, since out-of-whack joints can send signals along nerves to soft tissue. The soft tissue is then frequently deemed to be the culprit when it is not. I treat faulty joints by using movement to help them sit right again. This requires a movement with a specific direction, force, and time. I determine those variables as I assess the patient. That movement is then tweaked based on the patient’s response. Generally, within 5 visits, the headache, shoulder pain, sciatica, leg tightness, foot numbness, or low back pain is relieved.

Lastly, what I do is different from yoga simply because I am trained to diagnose and treat musculoskeletal disorders (also known as orthopedic disorders). That means I know how much joints should move, how much strength is normal, how bodies should move, and so on. Importantly, I understand when pain is a temporary necessity for therapeutic purposes and when pain is a warning sign and needs to be avoided. A large part of my job is teaching patients what is normal so they can self-monitor and prevent symptoms from returning in the future.
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So please keep moving - in circles, up and down, side to side, and especially backwards. Its benefit cannot be overstated. But in the presence of a problem, remember that your problem is unique and thus requires a unique solution tailored to you.  -- Laura

​Tendon issues are unfortunately incorrectly diagnosed all the time. That is, issues that are not tendon problems are diagnosed as tendon problems. “Issues” and “problems” refer to tendinopathy, tendinosis, tendonitis, and tendon tears. We have hundreds of tendons in our bodies; they are pieces of tissue that connect our muscles to our bones. Those that get an unfair share of the blame are the four rotator cuff tendons in the shoulder, the two main tendon groups at the elbow, the Achilles tendon of the ankle, and the patellar tendon at the knee. This frequent misdiagnosis happens for two chief reasons.

One, tendon problems are common on images such as MRI so, in the absence of an expert clinical mechanical exam, the tendon is identified as the culprit simply because of a picture. The concern with this is that tendon problems are common on images such as MRI in people with NO pain or other symptoms. So if Sarah has a large supraspinatus tendon tear on her MRI and no shoulder pain and John has a large supraspinatus tendon tear on his MRI and does have shoulder pain, can you assert that the supraspinatus tendon tear is causing his pain? Not from that information alone, you can’t.

(Say your car starts acting funny. You open up the hood to take a quick look. You see a lot of leaves around the engine. Can you assume that the leaves are causing the problem? Or would your mechanic need to run some diagnostic tests? After all, we know that there are plenty of cars with leaves stuck under the hood that run just fine.)

The second reason for this misdiagnosing conundrum? Lack of expert clinical “mechanics.” When I first began as a physical therapist, if a patient came to me with shoulder pain (with or without an MRI report), I performed the orthopedic shoulder tests I learned in school. While there are several tests aimed at diagnosing a rotator cuff tendon problem, these tests are actually not very good. They can regularly be positive when something other than the tendon is at fault. If physical therapists, orthopedists, general practitioners, surgeons, chiropractors, athletic trainers, etc. are still basing their diagnoses (and subsequent treatment) on these tests, they are missing a lot of crucial information.

Once I learned during my post-doctoral coursework that other problems can mimic tendon problems, I began looking for these in the clinic. And, lo and behold, most of the time it is something else causing the patient’s problem. The top two problems that mimic tendon problems are misalignment in the spine joints whose nerves send signals to the area of the tendon (eg the neck) and misalignment in the extremity joint closest the tendon (eg the shoulder).
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How do I diagnose a tendon problem then? These are my top two criteria:

1. I have ruled OUT a spine misalignment or extremity joint misalignment that refers pain to the area of the tendon.
2. I have ruled IN that the patient has a clear pattern of consistent, local pain when the tendon is being used. That means that each and every time, when that tendon undergoes a certain workload, it hurts in the same place. The pain does not vary from day to day, week to week, or from morning to night. The pain does not radiate far from the source. Unless the injury is brand new, the pain is not constant.

In closing, don’t jump to conclusions based on an image or the location of pain. A lot of shoulder pain is coming from the neck or from a shoulder joint that is not sitting properly – not a rotator cuff tendon. Likewise, a lot of pain on the outside of the hip is coming from the low back or from a hip joint that is not sitting properly – not the gluteal tendon. Our bodies are beautiful in their intricacy and nuance, making my job as a mechanical therapist exciting. It is the ability to understand this nuance that makes a clinician effective at diagnosing and treating. --Laura