Yoga therapy utilizes poses, breathing techniques, and meditation to benefit and improve overall health.
While any type of yoga can bring health benefits, yoga therapy involves employing a variety of yoga practices to try to improve a health condition or to ease a natural process, such as pregnancy or menopause. Among the yogic tools used therapeutically are asana (the physical postures), Pranayama (breathing exercises), meditation, and guided imagery. Although many people don’t realize it, yogis also consider diet an integral part of yoga and therefore of yoga therapy.
Why Yoga?
Therapeutic yoga is an inherently holistic approach, simultaneously working on the body, mind, and spirit. Various yoga practices systematically strengthen different systems in the body, including the heart and cardiovascular system, the lungs, muscles, and the nervous system. Yoga practices can improve function of the digestive system, foster psychological well-being, and improve oxygen delivery to tissues. Yoga also can help the body more efficiently remove waste products, carcinogens, and cellular toxins.
One Step at a Time
While yoga is strong medicine, in general it is slow medicine. The key to successful yoga therapy is an incremental approach, which tends to be safer and more effective than more aggressive strategies. It is best to begin yoga [therapy] as medicine slowly and ramp up the intensity and duration of practice only as circumstances allow. For some students, particularly those with serious medical problems, therapeutic yoga might begin with only a posture or two, or a single breathing exercise, until the student is ready for more.
One Size Does Not Fit All
Probably the most common misconception I see regarding yoga therapy it that there is one particular pose or sequences of practices that is therapeutic for a condition. People often ask me, for example, what pose they should do for lower back pain or for Parkinson’s disease. The answer is that it depends.