Yoga as Therapy By Marilyn Lindgren
Yoga for wellness is booming! Over 17 million Americans practice yoga for its well known benefits of improved strength, flexibility, balance, and stress reduction. Athletes and entertainers use it to increase their concentration and performance. Corporations sponsor yoga to lower their employees’ stress levels, increase productivity, and ultimately, lower health care costs. For some people it is primarily a form of exercise. For others it is a spiritual practice, although yoga is not a religion.* For a growing number of people, yoga is therapy, and their doctors are recommending it to manage pain, recover from surgery, or deal with other health challenges. However, although all yoga may have therapeutic value, yoga therapy is different from simply taking yoga classes.
So, what’s the difference between yoga and yoga therapy? Yoga classes rarely have a specific therapeutic intent, whereas yoga therapy targets three areas: structural problems (bones, muscles, joints), physiological disorders (systemic illness, disease), and psycho-emotional issues. A yoga therapist uses the tools of yoga (movement, breath, relaxation, meditation) to reduce, reverse, or manage conditions that interfere with everyday functioning and quality of life. A certified yoga therapist, in addition to learning adaptive yoga techniques, has had extended training in anatomy and physiology, Western medical perspectives and Ayurvedic principles, as well as clinical practice in dealing with a range of conditions.
| How do we know it’s effective? Yoga has been practiced successfully for medical purposes alongside Ayurveda** for over 5000 years. Today, evidence-based studies are proving yoga’s effectiveness in the treatment of conditions as diverse as heart disease, osteoporosis, chronic low back pain, migraine headaches, fibromyalgia, COPD, cancer, arthritis, anxiety, and depression, to name only a few. As new research results appear in prestigious medical journals, doctors are recognizing modern yoga therapy as a complementary healthcare modality and recommending it to their patients. See the International Association of Yoga Therapists website (www.iayt.org) for more information about yoga therapy.
*Yoga is not a religion. It is non-sectarian and poses no conflict with our Western religious traditions. Yoga predates Hinduism and Buddhism, although these and other Eastern religions incorporated various aspects of yoga. ** Ayurveda is the medical science that developed in ancient India. It is still practiced today around the world, in the U.S. by some Western physicians and by licensed Ayurvedic practitioners. |