The Art of Yoga Therapy
“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
What is Yoga Therapy?
Yoga therapy is a holistic approach that meets you on multiple levels simultaneously. When we experience physical limitations or pain, healing often requires addressing the issue from various angles—through physical movement, mindfulness practices, examining our beliefs, and supporting nervous system regulation. We can touch on all these aspects of ourselves in one session, and even profound change has been known to occur in one session.
Educational and Healing Approach
Yoga therapy is as much educational as it is healing and therapeutic. Often, we're learning or relearning fundamental skills: how to move with awareness, how to breathe effectively, and how to find ease in daily living. We explore our belief systems and discover how they influence our choices and actions, creating opportunities for meaningful transformation.
Individual Focus vs. Group Classes
While most people associate yoga with group classes, yoga therapy typically involves one-on-one sessions. This raises an important question: what separates yoga from yoga therapy? Isn't all yoga therapeutic? Under the guidance of a skilled teacher, the answer is yes—you could attend general group yoga classes and experience immense benefits for years.
However, yoga therapy offers specialized tools for transformation that cannot always be facilitated in a general yoga class. Yoga is vast, with seemingly endless resources to draw from. A skilled yoga therapist can develop a unique, individualized practice plan tailored specifically to your needs. Since we are all different, what serves as perfect medicine for one person may not be appropriate for another.
Therapeutic Yoga, Just for You
Yoga therapy offers the ability to see and support you in real time—exactly as you are on any given day. This personalized approach addresses both the physical symptoms that cause pain and disease in the body, as well as mental and emotional patterns.
Sometimes a shift in perspective about what keeps us stuck can be a monumental step toward creating a more solid foundation from which to live. One seemingly small change in viewpoint can make the difference between something feeling doable or impossible, opening pathways to healing and growth that seemed unreachable before.
Yoga’s Tools
Body movement geared towards creating strength, flexibility and ease in the body - A comfortable body allows for a calmer mind. We work from the most gentle, all the way up to playing the edge of possibility.
The breath - Most of us don’t know we are not using our breathing capacity to its fullness, and how that limited capacity restricts our life force (our vitality!) And as we age, it can diminish more and more leaving us with reduced life force to play with. And our posture, energy and sense of self suffers as a result.
The mind - through little bits of philosophy and a lot of practice we slowly tune towards the more subtle and we can start to see how the mind creates the world we live in. How we blindly believe, and how we can use this practice to wake up! Come to this moment, which is the only one we have.
Who Benefits from Yoga Therapy
People wanting to improve mental health - suffering from chronic pain - recognize the need for a practice of self care to support a lifetime of wellbeing - anxiety - depression - feelings of worthlessness - grief - nervous system dis-regulation - digestive problems - fatigue - feelings of being scattered in all directions - STRESS - Addiction recovery - menopause and perimenopause - PMS - people who want to remember who they are, at their core, and live from there.
Yoga Therapy uses evidenced-based techniques that work with your body’s natural healing. These techniques are used alongside your conventional medicine as part of your integrative wellness plan. I work to support your healthcare team's recommendations through therapeutic yoga.
