Applied yoga practices to alleviate health conditions by focusing on your specific needs.
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Yoga is the orginal mind-body medicine.
The term Yoga Chikitsa translates as Yoga Therapy and is synonymous to the eight limbs of yoga known as Ashtanga. These series of practices were designed to purify and heal the body. Of these 8 practices, postures account for only one aspect of this deep science. Today, yoga therapy is still based on those traditions but the postures have become more tailored to conditions and the individual. In my training in India I witnessed a Yoga Therapy Hospital with 250 beds treating a variety of health conditions through targeted yoga and Ayurvedic medicine. There were many profound and exhilarating stories of recovery and cure, and the deep spiritual mindset of this hospital would most certainly have contributed to this. Self-care is a daily practice.
Yoga therapy is a committed practice and a change to routine, and good health requires this level of commitment. We have a remarkable and generous NHS, yet it has also become the mechanism by which we have lost responsibility for self-care. |
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The NHS is always there for us no matter what we do to ourselves or feed ourselves. To look after our health system we need to look after ourselves.
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There is much evidence to demonstrate the effectiveness of yoga to normalise physiological and psychological functioning. Yoga's therapeutic application can be seen to help in:
Yoga Therapy may be used in an individual, one-to-one session or in small therapy groups and will include practising a series of postures specifically designed around the health needs. |
Once you grasp the joy of a calm mind and conscious breath, you begin to harness the power of introspection to elevate a stagnant body to a self-healing part of nature. |
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Yoga therapy can complement and optimise other therapies.
If you currently take medication for the condition, I have found that yoga therapy can help optimise the beneficial effects of your medication while reducing side effects. The bridge between your perception of the health condition and how the body responds to treatment is an extremely important junction that I will investigate with you, and guide you across. Working closely with our breath, we develop a body awareness and deeper understanding of the mechanisms within that can help correct an imbalance. The breathing techniques are an essential part of the practice and bring calm to the mind and softness to a tense body. |
Mindfulness Based Yoga Therapy [MBYT] I developed a 10 week course for young adults on the Autism Spectrum that brought together mindfulness, meditation, yoga postures and Ayurvedic lifestyle advice. This was one of the most rewarding experiences teaching this cohort of school kids and you can read more in the ‘Projects’ tab. Please get in touch if you wish to see the research paper that summarises the outcomes of my 10 week MBYT course. |
