Yoga Therapy as a Whole-Person Approach to Health. Lee Majewski
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rel="nofollow" href="#litres_trial_promo">24 as: “a dynamic balance of the elements and humors, normal metabolic activity and efficient elimination coupled with a tranquil mind, senses and contented soul.”
Unless we aim to treat the whole individual on all levels, as per pancha kosha, doshas, and vayus, including underlying psychosomatic disassociation and ignorant perception of reality, we are not practicing real yoga therapy. Therefore, in the application of yoga therapy it is vital that we take into consideration all the following aspects that are part of an integrated approach to the problem. These include the code of personal and social ethics (yamas and niyamas), diet, environment, attitude, lifestyle, bodywork through asanas, mudras, and kriyas, breath work through the use of pranayama, and the management of a healthy thought process and attitudes through the higher practices of yoga nidra, chanting, and meditation.
However, we must remember to look for and assess the root cause of the problem because if not, we are practicing yogopathy, and not yoga therapy!
Contemporary trends and thoughts on the future
The limitation of modern medicine in managing stress-induced psychosomatic, chronic illnesses is the strength of yoga therapy. Hence a holistic integration of both systems enables the best quality of care for clients. It is imperative that advances in medicine include the holistic approach of yoga to face the current challenges in healthcare. The antiquity of yoga must be united with the innovations of modern medicine to improve quality of life throughout the world. This approach is becoming more acceptable with time, and a great proponent of such a method is Dr Dean Ornish, who has just published, with his wife Anne, UnDo It! How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases.25 They describe in detail lifestyle medicine that they have been practicing and researching for the last 40 years, which is based on such an integrated approach, and has successfully reversed cardiovascular disorders and other NCDs.
Lately, Dr Bhavanani has actually begun to question the very scientific research itself that makes up the foundation of “evidence-based” yoga therapy. Many excellent scientists are researching yoga and its effects on different populations and in different conditions, yet their understanding of yoga is too limited to produce meaningful results. This is because they try to fit the grand design of yoga into the limited box of scientific methodology, and end up not studying “yoga” at all. The research that is published is excellent from a scientific perspective, but truly very limited from a yogic perspective. We need to continue working on keeping the yoga in yoga therapy, and especially in yoga research, where it tends to get lost in the tight limitations of “standardization” and “study protocols.” Yoga therapy, by its definition, cannot be standardized or limited, as it is carefully crafted to the need of each client.
A brief qualitative survey on the utilization of yoga research resources by yoga teachers found a general lack of awareness of yoga research among practicing yoga teachers and therapists.26 Although a majority of respondents agreed that research was important, few were seriously updating themselves on such research findings through scientific channels. Most were updating themselves through general articles on the internet, and in most cases such information seemed to have minimal influence on their day-to-day teaching and practice.
At the individual level, when we acknowledge that yoga demands consciousness in every moment, we need to be living yoga in its highest and truest sense. Unless we live a life of yoga, or at least attempt to do so, how can we understand the inherent spirit of “wholeness” that joins all things together? Unless we lead by the example of our lives, how can we convince others to follow us? A good teacher teaches more by example than by words, and so does a good therapist, who heals more by “being” the therapy than by just assessing and prescribing techniques. The acquisition of a degree in yoga does not guarantee that the therapist will be a good yoga therapist. Conversely, someone’s lack of an academic qualification doesn’t mean that they will be a bad yoga therapist. Intelligence, empathy, compassion, and understanding are not necessarily by-products of an academic career or institutional status.
The need of the hour is for a symbiotic relationship between yoga and modern science. To satisfy this need, living human bridges combining the best of both worlds need to be cultivated. It is important that more dedicated scientists take up yoga and that more yogis study science, so that we can build a bridge between these two great evolutionary aspects of our civilization. Yoga is all about becoming “one” with an integrated state of being. Yogopathy, in contrast, is more about “doing” than “being.” When viewed from this holistic perspective, yoga can never really be an intervention, as this role must be left to yogopathy. We, as yoga practitioners, teachers, researchers, and therapists, must make a sincere and determined attempt to strengthen that one important link in the chain of yoga, the link of our personal, “every moment practice” (sadhana). This is imperative, for the very strength of the “chain of yoga” depends on it. We write about this further in Chapter 5.
A note of caution
As yoga therapy starts to be introduced into mainstream healthcare, we must not fall into the dangerous trap of claiming that yoga is a miracle that can cure everything. Such statements do more damage than good—this “puts off” the modern medical community more than anything. They then develop a stiff resistance to yoga instead of becoming more open to this health-restoring science. As the use of yoga therapy in medical centers is still in its infancy, we must be cautious with our conscious and unconscious thoughts, words, and actions.
This is not to downplay the potentiality of yoga because it does have a role in virtually each and every condition. We must realize, however, that although yoga can improve the condition of nearly every client, it doesn’t necessarily translate into words such as “cure.” Modern medicine doesn’t have a cure for most conditions and so, when yoga therapists use such words, it creates a negative image that does more harm than good.
The need of the modern age is to have an integrated approach, one that is open to using the best from all traditional and modern forms of therapy. We must try to integrate concepts of yoga in coordination and collaboration with other systems of medicine such as traditional, complementary, and integrative (TCI) medicine, allopathy, Ayurveda, siddha, and naturopathy. Physiotherapy, osteopathy, and chiropractic practices may also be used with yoga therapy, as required. The advice on diet and adoption of a healthy lifestyle is very important irrespective of the mode of therapy employed for the client. US longitudinal research confirms this.27 Eleven thousand people were tracked for over 20 years, concluding that a healthy lifestyle can give women an additional ten years and men seven years of life free of cancer, heart problems and type 2 diabetes.
We need to always be rational and sensible in our approach to health, and realize that yoga therapy is not a magic therapy! It is not “one pill for all ills.” There should be no unsubstantiated claims made in this field. Yoga therapy is also a science and must therefore be approached in a scientific, step-by-step manner. It should be administered primarily as a “one on one” therapy that allows the therapist to modify the practices to meet the needs of the individual. It is not a “one size fits all” or “one therapy fits all” approach!
As human beings, we fulfill ourselves best when we help others. Yoga is the best way for us to consciously evolve out of our lower, sub-human nature into our elevated human and humane nature. Ultimately, this life-giving, life-enhancing, and life-sustaining science allows us to achieve in full measure the Divinity that resides within each of us.
In summary, yoga therapy is much more than a common yoga class. We have looked at the principles and modalities of yoga therapy and discussed its applications. We have touched on the yogic assessment of a client and how this differs from the medical model. Finally, we have pointed to the spiritual component of this ancient science. Spirituality today is still generally misunderstood as belonging to religion, and is an aspect of yoga therapy that is often underestimated or even neglected in a client’s journey to health. We feel that it is very important to start the discussion on the role of spirituality and the promise of