What is Therapeutic Yoga?

By Judi Spears

What is therapeutic yoga? It is a very good question and one that may mean different things to different people. All yoga practice is therapeutic in a sense. It is intended to free us from our own conditioning. This includes physical, mental and emotional. Yoga has the ability to lead us to the deepest dimensions of ourselves. One way to think of therapeutic yoga is the culmination of ancient techniques and contemporary understanding blending together to aid in healing a particular individuals condition. The ancient model offers a system that relates to all facets of the human experience. It is founded in the restoration of health by integrating all human dimensions. It may be the earliest approaches to what we are now calling "holistic health."

The transmission of the practices and wisdom of yoga is the responsibility of both teacher and student. The teacher must be skilled, but also the student must be willing to receive the information and practice what is given. This relationship is essential to success in healing through the use of yoga therapy. Yoga therapy is designed in a way to embrace the whole of what yoga has to offer. Some students request a practice that is strictly physical in nature. Even a practice given on a physical level can reach deeper dimensions of the persons' experience. Working on the physical level can change our awareness, create calmness and alleviate physical discomfort.

The teacher student relationship is an interesting phenomenon in my personal experience. I have discovered that I may be teaching one minute and the next I may be learning from the students. My awareness changes throughout our sessions together. This indicates that the practice is alive. I must be awake to the present moment to best serve the students. Awareness is a big part of what yoga therapy is all about. Yoga therapy is a deepening of our awareness of how the body works, how the emotions function, and of our inherent spiritual nature. Deepening our awareness also means learning to listen in the present moment. Listening is an attitude that allows what is needed to unfold. In the words of Ram Dass "in the clarity of a quiet mind there is room for all that is actually happening and whatever else might be possible."

Teaching yoga therapy has sparked my memory of why I became interested in yoga. It has given me another opportunity to witness yoga's enormous healing effect on both the mind and the body. It gives us a way to use our medical challenges for our own inner growth. In the words of Hippocrates "A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings and learn how by his own thoughts to derive benefit from his illness." Yoga can help us to do that.

As I continue my study of Yoga therapy and its application I hope to bring the best of what Yoga can offer to this community and to the lives of those who find themselves at the door of the Athens Regional Mind/Body Institute. I invite you to join us on Tuesday mornings at 10:00 am to get started on a journey into wholeness through the use of Yoga therapy.

Yoga at MBI