What is Therapeutic Yoga?

Therapeutic Yoga uses the principles of Yoga to relieve stress and promote recovery of injury and illness.

Therapeutic Yoga is particularly helpful for recovering from, or living with, injury or illness. 

Modern life can over stimulate us, creating anxiety and stress, leading to stress disorders like fatigue and insomnia. Combining the healing of Therapeutic Yoga and the quiet awareness of meditation to slow down, we can find our own personal levels of good health. Therapeutic Yoga focuses on working with mental and physical conditions. It utilises yogic techniques including posture, breath work, meditation and pose variations created for a unique need and/or individual.

Sessions are modified sequences specifically fit to the needs of the individual.What might be appropriate for one individual might be injurious or ineffective for another.  What and how we practice can vary depending on day, season, emotional stability, illness, injury, or if we are stressed, lethargic, depressed or anxious.  All variables need to be considered in choosing appropriate techniques to apply them beneficially.

Therapeutic Yoga uses physical assessment, observation of movement, posture, breath and non-verbal communication, to determine the needs and goals of an individual. Helpful techniques can provide the physical benefits of strength and vitality in muscles, bones, connective tissue and organs. It may also effect the psycho-spiritual benefits by decreasing anxiety, improving concentration or developing a sense of purpose and connection. 

Yoga is a holistic practice that promotes overall wellness and self healing. Yoga stimulates the internal body systems and provides proprioceptive input to keep them healthy. Muscles and joints are a vast network that stimulates and nourishes the brain. Different structures within the brain assist motor functions, and to work so we respond appropriately, the senses must work together. When they work together they provide a balanced diet for the brain. A well brain operates well, and when the brain operates well, our bodies respond in wellness. 

Therapeutic Yoga is highly adaptable to accommodate the needs of different conditions and physical abilities. It can be used to treat someone in a wheelchair with adapted poses, as well as active teens with sports injuries. Therapeutic Yoga is a blend of supported restorative poses, mindful movement, pranayama breathwork, and meditation to relieve the body from the fight-or-flight response caused by physical, emotional or physiological trauma and modern life stress.

Our senses give us information to function in the world, and they receive information from stimuli both outside and inside, so it is not poses, but connecting mind and body that helps us heal.

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