Yoga therapy has many dimensions.
Firstly is how we understand yoga. What does yoga give to us? People will answer completely different the same question because they see yoga from their own unique perspective. This is a great question to see how yoga is influencing our lives.
Many participants in my classes, started yoga for different reasons . A lot of people came because of the pain on the physical body such as knee problems, back pain, hip problems, wrist issues etc. Everyone that came to my yoga classes felt better and all these different aspects of pain disappeared.
Others came because of the stress into their lives. They felt better too. One of my students, Eva, comes to my classes for years, she once told me that now she sees life in a different mental way than she did before. These are only a few recognitions from people that saw a change into their lives but there are many more.
We can observe that yoga influences physical, emotional and mental body. There is no specific definition about yoga therapy because yoga goes deep into our souls to rejuvenate all of our bodies ( physical, emotional and mental ).
I practice the methodology of yoga to all the matters in my life, I just choose the right tools for every matter; if I have an emotional issue I usually use asana that opens my heart and I do meditation so that I can clear out all the negative feelings and fill in with new positive ones. That really works.
Yoga is therapeutic, you just need to use the right tools to get the results you need. The methodology is a great friend to guide you through the path to health.
Will we follow the path and for how long? This is a personal question that refers to each one of us. With respect to ourselves and a little step forward we can witness changes into our lives that can make us feel happy, more relaxed or whatever our goal is.
A lot of people concern about how to choose the right therapist or concern that some Yoga therapists may be making exaggerated claims of the effectiveness of what they are offering. We can use our tool from yoga “the observer”, to see the effectiveness into our matter.
Did we feel better? Did we feel that something is changing inside of us even if the issue didn’t disappear and it won’t, until we get into the bottom of the issue. Use your intuition and your common sense. Love in a combination with knowledge.
Fotini Dimitriou