Yoga Therapy as a Whole-Person Approach to Health. Lee Majewski
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to the fore. In order to heal, people have to become aware of the feeling, accept it, feel it, and by the sheer fact of being accepted, such feelings tend to dissolve. But it requires courage to face yourself and your own pain. The small group setting is helpful in supporting each and every participant in their journey—they become a family supporting and watching each other go through difficult transformations. The long-term follow-up with clients also attested to the sustained nature of these shifts. In general, they were able to exercise an increase in objective judgment, take unselfish action, and were willing to accept “what is.”
But we also noticed over the seven years of running these retreats that the more the participant was “closed” and “resistant” or even “defiant” in their attitudes, the lesser were the improvements in their healing. What is perhaps more significant is that it was more likely that the disease, such as cancer, would come back. As we watch our clients working (or not) through their issues during our retreat, it becomes clear to what extent the participant may (or may not) benefit from the retreat. We believe that our life attitude is indicative of the potential level of our healing. But at the same time, we, as yoga therapists, are never able to predict the end result of our intervention. We can only assist our clients at every step and facilitate the healing to the degree the client is ready and able to heal. As Hippocrates recommended, “Before you heal someone, ask him if he is willing to give up the things that made him sick.”
The benefits of intensive yoga therapy, which include a spiritual component in small group treatment, are illustrated by the following two case records taken from our retreats. The first one is about Harry, who was referred to us by a medical doctor only two days before we began the Beyond Cancer retreat.
Harry was a quiet 65-year-old man from Canada, of Indian descent, who had never practiced yoga before. He had Stage 4 lymphoma, and had just finished chemotherapy and radiation two months ago, which had proved unsuccessful. Doctors could give him no more treatment. Although he was in constant pain (for which he had morphine), he was determined to attend as much of the program as he could. Right from the beginning his will to live was very apparent.
The results of a test on the first day of the program showed much tension, depression, and anger. I was not surprised—he was told he had only six months to live. Sujaya, one of the co-participants, wrote: “We each had our stories but his was the most painful as his cancer had not been contained by traditional medicine. He was in debilitating pain caused by the spreading tumor. His eyes reflected the pain and hopelessness he felt and my heart went out to him. I could not imagine what it must feel like when you are waiting to die.”
Harry had great difficulties with asanas and yoga nidra because of the physical pain. But he faithfully attended all classes and did as much as he could. As we went on to the second week of the retreat, with each passing day Harry developed a definite sparkle in his eye and a lightness in his walk. He was changing his attitude to the medical prognosis. He began to talk about the future.
One day Harry asked me for a counseling session. He talked about his life, about those he loved and had hurt, and about his regrets. His guilt and shame was almost palpable. I asked him to put his story on paper for the next session. We met again after a few days and he read aloud to me what he had written on eight pages. It was a difficult read for him and he stopped a few times to hold the tears back. We then built a little fire and he burned page by page while we held hands, chanting “Trayambakam,” his favorite healing mantra we use at the retreat. The next day his smile became much bigger as he said, “I left a lot of burden in that fire and I feel much lighter!” Later on we heard him humming an Indian raga he remembered from his childhood.
By the end of the program the tests confirmed improvement on all fronts: his tension had gone down from 17 to 8 (on a scale of 0–36), depression down from 22 to 9 (on a scale of 0–60), anger down from 13 to 5 (on a scale of 0–48), vigor increased from 5 to 13 (on a scale of 0–32), fatigue went from 16 to 10 (on a scale of 0–28), and confusion from 13 to 7 (on a scale of 0–28). When we reviewed the results together, Harry said, “Yes, that’s about how I feel, at peace with myself and the world. And one more thing…when I came to the program I was afraid of death; now I am not. I will live as long as I can and spend as much time with my sons as possible.”
Four weeks later we learned that Harry had passed away peacefully, surrounded by his family and friends. The referring medical doctor commented, “This Beyond Cancer retreat was the best present we could give him before passing on.” A few days later, Harry’s family came to visit us and were grateful that we had helped Harry. He manifested peacefulness and a sense of acceptance at the time of his passing, which they attributed to yoga.
Such a deep transformation in three weeks was mainly possible due to intensive daily yoga practice and the client’s eagerness to apply himself to the program. Six hours of daily yogic practices in a small group for 21 days had, indeed, produced a deep spiritual transformation. At the end of his life Harry transformed his guilt, shame, and deep fear of imminent death into acceptance and inner peace. This is a good example of yoga as a deep transformational practice, which heals, but doesn’t always cure.
The second story is perhaps less dramatic but also speaks about profound spiritual transformation. As a participant in the Chronic Solutions retreat, this client’s situation was completely different—his disease and discomfort was of much lesser magnitude than Harry’s. The 72-year-old psychotherapist from England had never practiced yoga before, and knew very little about it. He also considered himself to be a sworn atheist. Here we quote verbatim, with his permission, the story as he wrote it, about six months after attending the retreat.
I had decided to attend the three-week course in October 2014 run by Lee Majewski at Kaivalydham Yoga Institute in India, [in the] South East of Mumbai, as I was recovering from some severe arthritis following a period of feeling really unwell after food poisoning in Sri Lanka. Well, that was one demonstrable symptom but perhaps also, just getting older was another, having passed my seventy-second birthday and deeply conscious that for the last lap of this race we all run, I needed to pay closer attention to my body and to my mind. I had at that stage not really thought about my heart.
The course was a daily program of very gentle yoga postures, pranayama breath routines, awareness, study, and chanting, not to mention lovely simple food day after day. A nice cocktail! The first week is of course always the hardest and I duly struggled while at the same time noting an almost immediate increase in general vitality, which I ascribed to pranayama. Looking back on the experience I now see just how deeply significant and necessary this practice of breath work really is. I had for years tried to meditate but it was not really until I started working with the breath that I realized that to watch the breath is to meditate.
The second week seems to be the week when “the stuff rises” so to speak, and in my case this was most certainly the case. It took the form of finding myself almost uncontrollably angry at our course leader…poor Lee. This exploded one day and I attacked her verbally, an assault in the face of which she stood calmly firm and looked at me with increased attention. We subsequently had a chat about it and I realized I was projecting an old hatred born of fear onto her, and having seen it, as is the way with these things…it collapsed and I was free of it, important in what was to happen next.
Kindly, I think partly as a result of this, Lee started in our meditation sessions to direct us to working on the heart center (heart chakra as it’s called in the Indian Tradition). This for me was the crowning experience of my whole visit and I came to realize just how helpful the whole chakra system really is in helping us to unblock old wounds. I suppose I have here to own that, on reflection, in spite of many attempts to be otherwise, my heart still remained closed. This is a terrible condition and one I suspect very common in the West, for if the heart is closed, then “loving” is not really possible. We may seek “love” as hard as we like but “loving,” loving life, loving people, loving all experience, eludes us. A most painful condition that arises I suspect from very early birth or childhood traumatic experience in which the heart closes in order to survive. And when the heart closes out of these traumatic contacts with the world it builds around itself a hard casing like an old walnut that has sat beside the fire all winter. Hard and very difficult to crack open.
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