So… what exactly is Yoga Therapy?

Most people have heard of therapy. Many people have heard of yoga. But the two together? Not so much.

While it’s still a relatively new concept in the West, yoga therapy - or Yoga Chikitsa, in Sanskrit - has been practiced in India for thousands of years. However, modern yoga therapy as an individualised practice for specific health and emotional concerns has become most widely practiced in the last 100 years.

The U.S. is a little ahead of us here in Australia - yoga therapists are working with hospitals, with palliative care centres, with rehabilitation centres, and there are even a couple of yoga therapy degrees that you can get from university!

When you go to a psychologist, you sit still and talk. You’re addressing your concerns from a mental and an emotional viewpoint. When you go to a yoga therapist, you’ll be moving and breathing as well as talking and sitting, so you can address these same concerns from a physical and energetic viewpoint as well.

You may have heard of Bessel van der Kolk and his theories on trauma - he talks about the importance of “top-down” therapy (talking) and “bottom-up” therapy (moving). It’s thought that only so much can be solved by each, and so by combining them it’s possible to get a greater effect.

To sum it up, yoga therapy uses the ancient teachings of yoga to address health concerns - whether they be physical, energetic, mental, emotional, or a mix of all of the above. It is a holistic practice that acknowledges each person not as a sum of their parts, but as a whole.