What is Yoga Therapy?
Yoga class with students in a kneeling shape using supportive props.
"The success of Yoga does not lie in the ability to perform postures but in how it positively changes the way we live our life and our relationships."— T.K.V. Desikachar
What makes yoga therapy unique
Yoga integrates somatic body-based movement and shapes, breathwork, meditation and the lived exploration and direct application of foundational principles. It is the synergy between these interwoven elements that allows yoga therapy to offer a unique contribution to healing.
While any wisely chosen yoga practice has the potential to contribute to health, yoga therapy stands out in that the therapeutic effect is central. As a yoga therapist, I have specific and extensive training in how to offer personalized practices and educational resources integrated with current evidence-based research to support growth and well-being.
Just as important as the what of yoga therapy however, is the how. Yoga therapy is rooted in qualities and priorities that differ from many mainstream classes. Learning about the values guiding how we practice yoga therapy can offer reassurance and encouragement.
Yoga welcomes all of you unconditionally, just as you are, moment by moment and day by day.
Folks often share with me that they believe yoga is not for them because they are not flexible or have mobility challenges, their mind is too busy, they can't be still, or all of the above. A deeper additional fear is often vulnerability around what emotions might surface and be felt too keenly or expressed too publicly.
Personally, when I started yoga, I had a mind stubbornly tuned to anxious rumination, my loud inner critic and hyper-vigilence, a body that was not bendy, and a brain and nervous system fighting multiple battles rooted in neurodivergence and complex trauma.
It was hard to remain still, it was impossible to quiet my mind space, and closing my eyes at any point was simply not happening. In fact, whenever I was guided to pay attention to my breath I even had trouble breathing! Add to that being in a group put me on edge, and one to one attention was even worse.
Yoga offered me a space to show up as my anxious, fidgety, on alert, must-succeed-at-all-costs self, and to open to these challenges bit by bit. I was encouraged to deepen my understanding of my patterns rather than fixating on fixing them and — contrary to my belief system at the time and the culture I was raised in:
Self-awareness, mindful embodied practice and compassion led to greater and more genuine positive change than criticism, urgency and tough pushing through ever did.
Yoga is an invitation, a science and a practice.
Invitation
Yoga invites you to turn your attention inward and to explore all the layers of your inner world including the physiological, energetic, mental-emotional and meaning-making which together form your experience.
Yoga invites you into a space and a tradition where you are gently encouraged to risk acknowledging suffering and all of your reality with clarity and radical honesty. A space where you can compost the burdens your system puts so much energy into containing and resisting.
Yoga invites you to experience what life can feel like when your body, heart and mind are connected and communicating freely.
"A space where you can compost the burdens your system puts so much energy into containing and resisting."
Science
You lead the way through a continuous process of:
- Experimenting yoga practice
- Data collection mindful and embodied engagement with the effects of practice
- Analysis refining self-awareness and insight
- Integrating results change at physiological, mental-emotional and meaning-making levels
You may commit to trying a practice based on an informed prediction, but you enter into it with no expectations regarding outcome, practicing curiosity and compassion without clinging to a specific result. You learn to trust that you can express your needs and make changes that serve you along the way.
"You are the lead investigator and there is no concept of failure, only exploring and discovering what is true and effective for you."
Yoga as a science is empowering: rather than being told what to do, how it should feel, and being required to follow blindly, you are the lead investigator and there is no concept of failure, only exploring and discovering what is true and effective for you.
Practice
Practices by nature are ever evolving in tandem with your experiences, values and intentions.
Yoga is by nature an ongoing process that is shaped by deep listening to what would skilfully serve you best over time and on any given day.
When we frame our efforts as practice there is more of a sense of room for trial and error, an understanding that there will be easier days and more challenging ones, and more of a connection with the humanness of putting one's heart into something, of trying to change, and yet perhaps stumbling or fumbling along the way.
Practices are often greatly enriched when experienced alongside supportive mentorship or within community. In practicing yoga you become part of a movement, a community of folks actively exploring what it means to engage with this human life fully.
Practices often have ripple effects beyond the specific reason we had for starting them.
Anna is the founder of Take Heart Yoga Therapy, a trauma-informed practice in Toronto. She has been practicing yoga since 2001 and brings both lived experience and professional training to her work with individuals and groups.
