Have you ever considered yoga therapy if you have a physical injury, such as chronic lower back pain? Now, you may already be familiar with the fact that today's yoga therapy is rooted in the teachings of yoga master T. Krishnamacharya. His advanced students went on to become the most influential teachers of therapeutic yoga in the West. Among these are his son TKV Desikachar as well as the famed BKS Iyengar.
As a result, yoga therapy has come to be used for treating medical conditions including high blood pressure, AIDS symptoms, dealing with the negative side effects of cancer treatments, anxiety, and clinical depression. But in recent years, yoga therapy has come to be utilized ever more in the treatment of sciatica, upper and lower back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, and hip pain.
What's happening here is that due to the fact that yoga emphasizes the intertwined relationship between body, mind, and emotions, yoga therapy can address issues of physical debilitation or pain in ways that physical therapy can't. Physical therapists use and emphasize techniques and different pieces of equipment in order to treat patients.
But yoga therapists use various yoga positions. It would definitely seem that since holding yoga positions requires more mental concentration and bodily awareness than deep tissue massage, stretches, and the use of equipment such as bobbleboards does, many people suffering from physical pain or injury are getting more highly effective treatment with yogic techniques than they do with just physical therapy.
There are circumstances where physical therapy is the perfect answer. However, there are many other circumstances wherein the element of the mind has to come into play for there to be true healing. For this, a person needs yoga therapy.
Janice Gates, who is the president of the International Association of Yoga Therapists and a published author of writings about yoga, says "Yoga therapy is very much about the whole person. It is complementary to physical therapy, but we take into account that back pain may be related to an emotional element, or it may be from lifestyle, some pattern that is not serving them, physical movement patterns, or other patterns."
But herein lies a problem. There are people who are calling themselves "yoga therapists" or CYTs who, well, just shouldn't go there. Julie Gudmestad, who is an authentic yoga therapist as well as physical therapist in Portland, Oregon, cautions us that "Anybody can hang their shingle and say they are a yoga therapist. Buyer beware. I've seen some strange things done in the name of yoga therapy."
Santa Monica yoga therapist Leslie Bogart, who also has a nursing background, says "Everybody should be seen by a medical professional first, without question" before they decide that they should engage in physical therapy with a yoga therapist.
Nevertheless, yoga therapy and Western medicine seem made for each other. Loren Fishman, M.D., who is the director of the Flushing Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in New York as well as the co-author of Relief is in the Stretch: End Back Pain Through Yoga, says that yoga therapy is able to help pain and injury patients steer clear of unnecessary medications, invasive surgery, and suffering.
So, check your prospective yoga therapists' credentials first, but otherwise if you have what seems like "incurable" injury or physical pain, give a serious look into yoga therapy.
