Yoga Therapy as a Whole-Person Approach to Health. Lee Majewski
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of non-communicable illnesses which account for approximately 80 percent of deaths: chronic respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes mellitus, and cancer. This section provides evidence-based descriptions of what a holistic yoga therapy approach to these problems can offer. The most beautiful part of this section of the book is the personal account of Majewski’s experience with her cancer treatment, which was effective in a medical sense, but which left her without a map for many of the exhausting, painful, and debilitating sequelae. This is important material for medical professionals to read because it details the patient experience of being left resourceless at the conclusion of the medical treatments, just when a person is at their most exhausted, depleted, and dis-spirited.
This inattention to the psychological side of illness, to the dis-ease which is the relationship every patient has to their illness, is a problem that appears wherever clinicians’ fear starts running the show from the sidelines. It is very tempting in these circumstances to simply throw science and technology at the illness. This writer saw many similar examples of this in the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It may seem surprising to some that fear of cancer still exerts such an influence on treatment, but the fear of disembodiment, as Patañjali tells us, is ubiquitous in humans and the ultimate source of all our fears. The yoga system, which is about healing relationship at every level of practice from the first item in the list of limbs of yoga, non-violence, provides the ultimate permanent freedom from fear (for both patients and clinicians).
In the third section of the book, the authors provide a small-group residential retreat format that addresses each level of embodiment in the yoga system, which has never separated mind and body as medical systems have done in Western allopathic medicine. The three weeks of these retreats are packed with practices that refocus peoples’ awareness of their mind-body and bring the whole person back together, as it were. Then there is a regular follow-up to help people to maintain the changes they have made. The measurement of these follow-up sessions to date validates the long-term effectiveness of the retreats.
The retreat format includes detailed descriptions of the practices used, so that the design is reproducible. These are taken from versions of hatha yoga and pranayama practice which come largely from the teaching of Kaivalyadhāma, one of the oldest modern yoga institutions in India and the first to conduct scientific research starting in the 1920s, from Richard Miller’s version of practices for yoga nidrā (iRest) and from the Sikh tradition of Kundalini yoga. This creates an invitation to test these practices both in scientific experimentation and in personal experience, which is always the true test of any yogic practice. It also provides the opportunity to test practices from other traditions in which a given yoga therapist may be trained. My own guru, Swāmī Rāma, always encouraged us to test everything he gave us. “Don’t just believe what I say—be a scientist!,” he would say.
In summary, this is valuable reading on many different levels, providing a grounding in a traditionally yogic perspective on diagnosis and treatment, personal accounts of lapses in medical treatment from both retreat participants and the authors, the specific outline of a pair of residential retreats with first-hand accounts of participants, and a detailed account of the practices used. It is a work embodying careful thought about the nature of yoga therapy, a generous-hearted sharing of an approach that worked, and it shows a way of moving healing back towards the whole and holy person which, after all, is the goal of yoga writ large.
Stephen Parker PsyD, Licensed Psychologist and C-IAYT,
Adjunct Assistant School Professor of Counseling and Psychological
Services, Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, and author of
Clearing the Path, the Yoga Way to a Clear and Pleasant Mind:
Patañjali, Neuroscience and Emotion (Ahymsa Publishers, 2017)
PART 1
UNDERSTANDING YOGA AS THERAPY
As with any emerging field, yoga therapy is going through growing pains. The International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT) in the US, Australia Yoga Therapists, and other local organizations are doing valuable work in defining the scope and direction of this professional field, but there is still much confusion among the public about what yoga therapy is, and what it is not.
At one extreme, the general push for acceptance into existing healthcare systems and structures has created a reductionist definition of yoga therapy. Within the medical paradigm this results in yoga being limited to what fits neatly into such a system—working within a medical diagnosis and using asanas and pranayama to deal with the symptoms of disease in a prescriptive manner. This approach typically offers yoga for a certain symptom or diagnosis. It also often refers to meditation as existing outside of yoga, that is, yoga and meditation. For some, this is yoga therapy without the essence of yoga.
At the other extreme is the comprehensive definition of yoga therapy as a “psychospiritual technology,”1 based on the process of enhancing or promoting the healing through empowering the client. This paradigm deals with the whole person, where the disease is understood as the lack of balance in the multilevel existence of humans. With its own assessment tools, such an approach “creates a safe environment for enquiry by the client, to empower them to create new responses, free of their former reactive patterns of behavior.”2
And in-between these two extremes are all kinds of different shades and grades of approaches, depending on the yoga therapist’s training, level of personal development, and professional experience. In other words, there is still much confusion and uncertainty or debate within this emerging field. For instance, I am often asked if spirituality and yogic counseling are within the scope of yoga therapy practice! Perhaps the biggest challenge for yoga therapists as well as for the public is to break out of the cultural paradigm of our understanding of what it is to heal and how to go about it. Therefore, in this first part of our book, we attempt to clarify the misconceptions around what yoga therapy is, and offer our understanding of the essence of yoga therapy.
Outline of Part 1
Chapter 1 begins with a brief overview of modern yoga therapy in traditional and contemporary models. We review the major living traditions of yoga therapy in India, since this is where this science first came from to the West. We also outline the different traditions. This is not a comprehensive presentation by any means, but it should give an idea of the major yoga therapy lineages.
In Chapter 2 we proceed to discuss the modalities of yoga therapy and its applications as a preventive measure, and outline its principles. We look at what yoga therapy is and what it is not, introducing the concept of “yogopathy” versus “yoga therapy.” We also discuss a big concern of many contemporary therapists—how to keep yoga in yoga therapy, which includes the promise of spiritual transformation as a necessary part of the healing process.
Chapter 3 is dedicated to discussing the spiritual component of yoga therapy. In India this chapter would be unnecessary, as its cultural background is, in its essence, spiritual, with spirituality permeating the everyday life of the population. So quite naturally, the science of yoga is understood as the spiritual science. Unfortunately, the West still tends to treat spirituality exclusively as part of religion and not as part of everyday life, and there is much resistance, even fear, as we will see, in openly talking about it. (Perhaps this is the reason why yoga is often misunderstood as a form of religion.) There is also much misconception within the ranks of yoga therapists about spirituality, which many perceive as being outside of their scope. However, the body of research on spirituality as separate from religion is growing, with some researchers noting enhanced healing when the spiritual component is included. Even traditional healthcare systems are beginning to recognize the importance of the spiritual component in treating patients. Chapter 3 therefore looks at the