The benefits of yoga for alleviating medical and psychological ailments is gaining respect from mainstream health professionals. Yoga techniques are being incorporated into physical and psychological treatment programs. Strengthening the mind-body connection has positive results for individuals, but boundary issues are a pitfall for mental health professionals and yoga teachers. Yoga therapy training helps practitioners navigate the sensitive terrain of healing with yoga.
Yoga Therapy
Yoga therapy is becoming integrated with professional medicine practices and emerging as a major component of treatment programs. Yoga has an ancient tradition of practice in pursuit of healing, with a philosophy rooted in unifying the physical, psychological and spiritual aspects of the self. Western medicine recognizes the value of adapting principles of yoga to the health program for individuals. The holistic approach that yoga brings to healing produces benefits for the physical and emotional well-being of patients, and encourages people to take responsibility for their health.
Physical Therapy and Yoga
Yoga practitioners have long emphasized physical healing from illness as an essential element of achieving mind-body integration, and yoga therapy has its roots in that tradition. Physical therapists incorporate yogic techniques, such as targeted stretches and deep tissue massage, into treatment programs for back pain and shoulder, neck and hip pain, and spine misalignment. Yoga methods also help manage high blood pressure, symptoms of HIV and the effects of cancer treatment.
Psychotherapy and Yoga
Yoga encourages self-exploration, and psychotherapists also believe that individuals are transformed through a process that includes periods of intense introspection. Stress or trauma can trigger physical responses, Many psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers include meditative breathing and yoga poses into sessions, supported by studies pointing to positive effects of yoga on stress response and anxiety. Yoga teachers sometimes find poses can trigger emotional responses in students and find it helpful to maintain a network of health professionals for consultation and referral.
Yoga Therapy Training
In 2009, more than 50 yoga schools in the United States offered yoga-therapy training. Members of Harvard University faculty are associated with the multi-disciplinary Division of Integrative Therapies at the Cambridge Health Alliance. Yoga is the core discipline of DIT in combination with other forms of physical and psychological treatment, with the focus on treating the whole person. DIT embodies a philosophy that encourages collaboration between medicine and yoga for curing and healing the whole person.
References
- Yoga Sagar; Yoga Therapy: Unlocking the Hidden Vitality; Antonio Sausys; April 2006
- Harvard Health Publications: Yoga For Anxiety and Depression
- Krishnamacharya Healing and Yoga Foundation; Harvard University Welcomes Yoga Therapy; Danielle Tarantola; December 2005
- "Time Magazine"; Psychotherapy Goes from Couch to Yoga Mat; Alana B. Elias Kornfeld; April 2009
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