What is Yoga Therapy?
Who Can Benefit and What to Expect
What is Yoga Therapy?
Yoga Therapy creates sustainable transformation in anyone who is committed to the process of a daily practice and an ongoing one-on-one relationship with a Mentor (certified Yoga Therapist). It is a holistic healing discipline that addresses the entire person and all their aspects (body, mind, emotions, behaviors, breath & spirit) in an interconnected way. It is an ancient discipline offering a broad range of tools for supporting health, promoting healing, and facilitating personal and spiritual transformation.
The goals of Yoga Therapy are to eliminate, reduce, and manage symptoms that cause suffering. We seek to help identify, reduce, or prevent the occurrence of causes of suffering as well as support overall physical, mental, and emotional health. This also includes supporting a healthier perspective and relationship to the condition of suffering.
“It is indeed true that by practicing yoga we gradually improve our ability to concentrate and to be independent. We improve our health, our relationships, and everything we do.”
T.K.V. Desikachar, The Heart of Yoga: Developing a Personal Practice
Who can benefit from Yoga Therapy?
Everyone can benefit from Yoga Therapy. It is a supportive structure of daily practice and mentorship that allows the individual the perspective to see themselves, their choices, their relationships, and their lives in a way that allows for better discernment and ongoing clarity.
Specific physical, functional, behavioral, and emotional conditions can be addressed using a range of tools in a regular practice in concert with the regular oversight of a mentor.
Yoga Therapy can be successfully used for (and not limited to):
- Inflammatory diseases
- Auto-immune diseases
- Terminal diseases
- Cancer
- Chronic physical pain
- Limited range of motion
- Breath limitations
- Sleep disturbances
- Trouble with appetite, digestion, and elimination
- Relationship to food
- Body image
- Emotional trauma
- Understanding yourself better
- Experiencing confusion, doubt, and lack of clarity
- Trying to change a deep-seated pattern or belief
- Connecting to something greater
And much more.
“Yoga Therapy is a self-empowering process, where the care-seeker, with the help of the Yoga Therapist, implements a personalized and evolving Yoga practice, that not only addresses the illness in a multi-dimensional manner, but also aims to alleviate his/her suffering in a progressive, non-invasive and complementary manner. Depending upon the nature of the illness, Yoga Therapy can not only be preventative or curative, but also serve a means to manage the illness, or facilitate healing in the person at all levels.”
A Broader Understanding of Yoga
Yoga is often associated with physical health, however, your overall well being involves more than just your body. Yoga Therapy addresses symptoms and causes of suffering that may be a mix of physical, functional, personality, mental, and emotional.
Based on a centuries-old tradition, our holistic approach is based in Yoga as an applicable philosophy, a way of seeing that aids in awareness of our patterns. Having a regular practice, a new pattern, that engages you in a very particular way combined with the experience of a consistent Mentor’s engagement assists in uncovering and changing the whole of our system (body, mind, emotions, behaviors, breath & spirit.)
Think Like A Yogi
“The success of Yoga does not lie in the ability to perform postures but in how it positively changes the way we live our life and our relationships.”
T.K.V. Desikachar
One-on-One Relationship
Your Mentor is a certified Yoga Therapist that is chosen to meet your specific needs and goals. We have a tradition of connecting students to teachers that is continued through our Mentor Matching service. Based on questions regarding your physical needs, personality, desires for engaging in Yoga Therapy, and more, we introduce you to a certified Yoga Therapist that we believe will be able to help you immediately and long-term
Your Mentor will craft a personal practice unique to you, an engaging and enjoyable practice in order to support your regular practice. For most people that starts with something that takes 15-20 minutes to practice. Even with a short practice, we find that people receive a great deal of benefit from this work. Depending on your needs and goals, there can be a mix of gentle movement, conscious breathing, meditation, sound and chanting, lifestyle recommendations, and dietary recommendations.
Change happens over time so staying committed to the process, doing your practice consistently, and sharing your realizations and outcomes from the practice with your Mentor will reap the full benefits.
“Having a point of reference is absolutely necessary. We need somebody who can hold a mirror in front of us. Otherwise we very quickly begin to imagine that we are perfect and know it all. This personal connection cannot be replaced by books or videos. There must be a relationship, a real relationship, one that is based on trust.”
T.K.V. Desikachar, The Heart of Yoga: Developing a Personal Practice
What Does a Yoga Therapy Look Like?
Expect your first session with a Yoga Therapist to be about 90 minutes. During this first session, you will share what you hope to get out of the experience, fill out an intake form, and discuss your health and lifestyle. Your Mentor will observe you doing some movements and simple breathing, coaching you to do some things a particular way and perhaps providing props for support. From this they will design a personal yoga practice specifically for you. Your personalized yoga practice will be given to you as a series of stick figures doing movements that change as your breath changes. Your Yoga Therapist will make sure you understand the series of movements and send you home with the diagram of your practice.
A follow-up session is scheduled for approximately one week after the initial consultation. This follow-up consultation is usually 60 minutes long. Your Mentor will talk with you about your experience with doing your practice daily. They will watch you practice and refine it accordingly. They may rewrite part or all of your practice. Once again, you will be given a diagram of your personal practice in stick figures to take with you so you can continue to do it regularly.
As you continue to do your practice daily, it is important to stay in contact with your Yoga Therapist. Hour-long meetings on a monthly basis are a support to encourage consistency of practice, adjust the practice as needed, and discuss changes that are happening.
Group Yoga Therapy
Group Yoga Therapy brings together a small group of people experiencing the same diagnosed pathology. Each participant will complete a private intake with the Yoga Therapist. Even though there is a common disease among the group, it can manifest differently for each participant. The unique situation, emotions, behaviors, and needs of each individual in the group is supported by the Yoga Therapist. The group is also facilitated as a support to one another where participants can share experiences about practice as well as personal thoughts and experiences happening outside of the group.