Judith Hanson Lasater explains how restorative yoga, and understanding your own human-ness creates the perfect atmosphere for healing.

When I began my career as a yoga teacher many years ago, most of my classes were on the vigorous side: lots of vinyasa, arm balancing, wheels, and upside down things. Then I began to teach classes at a hospital and I soon realized that just about everything I was used to teaching needed to be modified or eliminated.

Around the time when I was quickly running out of class ideas, I received a beautiful gift from the Universe—an opportunity to study with world-renowned teacher and author Judith Hanson Lasater. Her innovative Relax and Renew Teacher Training changed my perspective as a teacher and as a human being and because of what I learned, I became much better at both.

This year, Judith is one of the keynote speakers at the International Association of Yoga Therapists’ June, 2014, Symposium on Yoga Therapy and Research (SYTAR) in Austin, Texas, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to reconnect with the teacher who has so positively influenced me.

One of the first questions I asked Judith related to yoga’s growth within the medical community. “Recognition and acceptance of yoga by medical professionals, and a growing awareness of stress as a major catalyst for disease has made yoga a valuable part of the healing process,” notes Judith. Over the years, Judith has been involved in a number of studies involving restorative yoga. The results have always been overwhelmingly positive: Restorative yoga can help reduce many of the physiological effects of stress, including regulating high blood pressure. Simply put, setting aside small modules of time each day allows the intrinsic wisdom of the body to function naturally.

“It’s physically impossible to be relaxed and anxious at the same time. Being able to consciously rest takes the body out of fight-or-flight mode and triggers the parasympathetic nervous system or relaxation response, allowing the body’s natural ability to heal to kick in. When we teach restorative, how many times do people come up to you afterward and say, ‘Thank you so much, you made me feel so good,?’” asked Judith.

“It’s really so rewarding, but we know that all we did was make sure they were comfortable and well-supported, and then we shut up and let them rest! We don’t have any magic pose that addresses specifically what each student needs —we just give them the space to rest so that the body’s healing instincts can take over.”

I wanted to know if there were any particular practices Judith incorporated into her daily life. “You mean besides resting for 20 minutes each day?” she answered. “I realize that everything I say and do—the residue of all my actions—affects the world. Being aware of that helps me to live more authentically. I understand that what I do matters.”

Judith shared one more important daily mantra with me. One that I have begun to use every day since we had our conversation. “When I make mistakes or forget something like a friend’s birthday, instead of berating myself, I stop and say, ‘How human of me that I forgot my friend’s birthday.’ Reminding myself that I am a work-in-progress allows me to let go of those things I can’t do anything about and move on.”

Great advice from a great teacher and human being.

Rita Trieger is the former editor-in-chief of Fit Yoga magazine, and the author of Yoga Heals Your Back (Fairwinds, 2005). She teaches yoga therapy for both cancer and heart patients at Stamford Hospital, in Stamford Connecticut as well as several other studios in the Tri-State area. Ritatude.blogspot.com

Rita Trieger

Rita Trieger is a yoga therapist working in New York and Connecticut.

The post Yoga Therapy – The Nature of Being Human appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Over the ensuing years, Commonweal has served as the 21st century model for healthcare, education, and the environment, and supports a wide range of programs that include cancer support, health professional education, environmental health, yoga, healing nutrition, permaculture gardening, and juvenile justice.

As part of Commonweal’s continuing mind/body expansion, The Healing Yoga Foundation was founded in 2006 so that everyone—regardless of physical capability, health, background, age, experience, or financial means—could learn from yoga’s healing benefits.

Their innovative teacher training offers participants a unique skill set that includes observation, modification, and therapeutic applications, and currently stands alone as the most rigorous, in-depth training in the country.

Dr. Lerner will be one of this year’s keynote speakers as the International Association of Yoga Therapy (IAYT) celebrates 25 years at its June Symposium on Yoga Therapy and Research (SYTAR) in Austin, Texas. In anticipation of this always exciting event, we caught up with Dr. Lerner and asked him to share some thoughts on how yoga therapy can play a major role in our everyday lives.

LA YOGA: The theme of this year’s IAYT conference, “Where your talents and the needs of the world cross” by Aristotle, suits you. What was your original vision quest? Has Commonweal exceeded those initial expectations?

Michael Lerner: That is a wonderful quote from Aristotle. The complete quote is, “Where your talents and the needs of the world cross—there lies your vocation.” The second part is important because vocation literally means “calling.” So it is not simply a calculus of what we are good at and what the world needs. It is also, critically, a question of finding our calling.

In 1975, I was called to create Commonweal by a vision of a center where we would work to heal people and heal the earth. Forty years later, that vision is intact, with a dozen programs at Commonweal in health and healing, education and the arts, and environment and justice.

Each program is led by a strong visionary program director who has great autonomy to shape her work as she sees fit. Take Kate Holcombe’s Healing Yoga Foundation as an example: Kate has a passion for bringing yoga to low-income communities and to offer yoga for people living with cancer.

How has Commonweal impacted the acceptance of integrated therapies, like yoga, within the modern medical community? 

We clearly have contributed to the acceptance of integrative cancer care over the past three decades. When Bill Moyers produced his classic PBS series “Healing and the Mind,” the Commonweal Cancer Help Program was featured in the fifth and final segment. More than any other single event, that series moved integrative medicine into the mainstream. But we are only one slender thread in the national and global fabric of movement toward contemplative mind, yoga and other psychophysiological disciplines, healthy foods, exercise, and finding meaning in our lives and work.  We’ve done our small part, but we are simply one photon in a beam of light shining into the human dilemma.

Is the idea of integrating ecology, nutrition, mind/body wellbeing and scientific/medical breakthroughs becoming more widely accepted? Do you think that today’s doctors consider this approach to be essential in order for society to survive and thrive?

All these factors are gaining traction culturally and in medicine. But medicine is in crisis. Most physicians—with ten minute visits, electronic medical records, and all the other challenges they face—have little or no time to do lifestyle counseling, so most lifestyle work is done outside the medical community. There are important and growing exceptions. Dr. Dean Ornish’s work with heart disease is a notable example. Given that a central challenge of mainstream medicine is just to get the most basic medical care to everyone who needs it, I think that lifestyle work at present is often better done independently of the medical system—or at most, in parallel with it.

What are some must-have qualities for a yoga teacher or yoga therapist to cultivate in order to create an atmosphere conducive for healing and student/teacher relationship?

I think one of the worst qualities a teacher can have is an exaggerated sense of his or her level of spiritual attainment. Yogic pride is said to be one of the most difficult things to overcome. What I especially like about therapeutic yoga teachers Kate Holcombe and Jnani Chapman is that they are real; they know who they are.

None of us is without shadow. Every human being is a weave of light and shadow. Knowing that is of great assistance in nourishing one of the greatest virtues, which is simple humility. Humility, honesty, actually caring—those seem to me to be three good practices.

How do you incorporate the healing value of yoga into your daily routine?

My yoga and contemplative practice needs a lot of work right now. There were years when I practiced at least an hour a day. I truly hope to build my practice back up, but that isn’t the deepest impact yoga has had on me. My life was affected at a time of crisis in 1982 when I discovered Swami Satchidananda’s Integral Yoga. Integral Yoga has provided an accessible entry point to the great traditions of yoga for thousands of people around the world. The parallels between Satchidananda’s Integral Yoga and Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga have struck many observers.

What has been most important to me are the core spiritual and philosophical teachings of yoga in the Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita. The three great yogas of the Gita:  Bhakti, Jnana, and Karma Yoga—the work of the heart, the head and the hands—resonate down through the ages in all the great wisdom traditions.

Love, wisdom, and will. Bhakti, Jnana and Karma yoga. The work of our hearts, our heads, and our hands. These are the eternal instruments that human beings have been given. It is through love, wisdom, and will that we create meaning in our lives and discover ourselves and our vocations.

IAYT is celebrating their 25th anniversary at the Symposium on Yoga Therapy and Research (SYTAR 2014) in Austin, Texas, June 5-8: sytar.org. 

Rita Trieger is the former editor-in-chief of Fit Yoga magazine, and the author of Yoga Heals Your Back (Fairwinds, 2005). She teaches yoga therapy for both cancer and heart patients at Stamford Hospital, in Stamford Connecticut.

Ritatude.blogspot.com

Rita Trieger

Rita Trieger is a yoga therapist working in New York and Connecticut.

The post Yoga Therapy – Michael Lerner’s Vision Quest appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

John regularly lectures on Yoga and Yoga therapy and co-taught the course on complementary and alternative medicine at the University of Arkansas College of Medicine in 2002 and 2003.  His articles for The International Journal of Yoga Therapy frequently offer policy perspectives and he is the host of the Symposium on Yoga Research and the Symposium on Yoga Therapy and Research June 11-16. We are grateful that John was able to carve out some valuable time in a busy schedule to speak with us.

Rita Trieger: What do you think makes yoga therapeutic?

John Kepner: It is the student’s orientation to his or her practice.

For example, if you have lower back pain, you’re likely to attend a specialized class where the main focus is healing your back, so your orientation to the practice is for healing or wellness. Or suppose you are a heart patient and you are taking yoga as part of the Dean Ornish Program, a comprehensive program to reverse heart disease where yoga is plays an important role, then your orientation to your practice is on healing.

The great thing about yoga is that you can have multiple orientations at the same time. So even if you come to a yoga class for back care, part of your orientation may be for wellness and getting stronger and part of your orientation may be as a vehicle to become more spiritual.

RT: Can you walk us through the process that has helped establish a IAYT as a resource for the medical community as well as for yoga teachers?

JK: The medical community wants a conventional standard of evidence as well as a conventional standard of training. We have done that with IAYT.

The first step was establishing creditable professional publications. In the medical  world that means a peer reviewed journal. Peer review, along with acceptance in PubMed, is key. We started the peer review process in 2005 with Kelly McGonigal as editor, and we were finally accepted into PubMed in 2011, due in large part to Kelly, and the mini peer reviewers that took place in this process. Those authors worked really hard. And by the way, a peer reviewer can be tough and not always polite!

Then you need professional conferences for continued education, standardized just like the AMA does, and to further satisfy the medical field, you need evidence-based studies. To develop those studies, you need researchers that can connect, collaborate, and learn from each other. Conventional research is very extensive, and takes hundreds of thousands of dollars; IAYT doesnt have the resources to fund the research but we can have a specialized yoga research conference, and we did, to the credit of Sat Bir Khalsa who is the visionary and guru of yoga research conferences. Researchers can get lost in a regular conference but in a stand-alone conference you know the person next to you in line or in the hallway is also a yoga researcher.

We expected 50 people at our first yoga research conference. I knew how many members we had. We were astounded when 200 people showed up. Any medical community expects to have ongoing professional education. That is what SYTAR is about: ongoing professional education for practitioners.

The last but not least part of this set of pillars is standards. Standards for the training of practitioner or teacher and standards for credentialing practitioners. Standards in yoga are tricky because yoga comes out of the gurukula tradition. Unfortunately, standards, by their very nature, can be divisive. We had many meetings with our community for many years before we even started the standards process.

A resulting and important necessity for our standards was to develop a sense of community where one can know and trust one’s colleagues.

RT: Since 2005, what is the greatest change that you have seen in the acceptance of the standards you have begun to establish, and the greatest change you have seen in yoga therapy overall?

JK: One of major things I am seeing is full-time yoga therapists on staff at some major hospitals. In fact, one of our presenters at SYTAR 2013 is Judy Bar who is the yoga services manager as part of the Center for Lifestyle Medicine. They have yoga classes for 13 different diseases.

Another thing is the explicit acceptance of the Dean Ornish Program by Medicare, which was huge. That just happened a few years ago and it’s my understanding that the program is really starting to ramp up. A major yoga teacher behind that program is Susie Amadayla, who is presenting at SYTAR, 2013.

Yoga therapists have also become an explicit part of healthy care clinics. For example, Dr. Loren Fishman who is a well-known rehabilitation doctor has yoga therapists on staff. He has patients come in, he diagnoses the problem, and often recommends the patient work with a yoga therapist, and most people are delighted to have that option. There in the same room are the doctor, the patient, and the yoga therapist.

Things like this are happening all over the country, and there are many more we don’t know about.

Many doctors nowdays also practice yoga, and that may be the most important aspect. Dr. Dilip Sarkar, who is now the president of IAYT, teaches yoga for doctors. He has remarked that even though he is constantly relating scientic evidence, the best way to explain the benefits of yoga is to get doctors to practice. A major part of yoga’s acceptance in the medical community is due to younger physicians who are used to practicing yoga.

RT: Along with the basic yoga teacher training, I’m assuming you think that it is important to have some kind of certification process to become a yoga therapist. What is the plan for that? Do you have any kind of process in place?

JK:  Yes, we’re starting with the schools. The conventional process is to have accredited schools and credentialed practitioners, like with medical schools.

Schools are the future but we have limited resources so we’re starting with the process to accredit yoga therapy training programs.

When I started with IAYT in 2003 we had about five yoga therapy training programs listed on our website, now we have over 110. Over time we have seen more and more yoga therapy training programs develop, but they are teaching yoga in many different ways. In order to be creditable, you have to have standards.

For the last two and half years we invited ten very experienced yoga teachers from diverse backgrounds, to work with us and meet on a monthly basis to develop standards for the training of yoga therapists. We published those on our website last summer. The difference between our standards and the Yoga Alliance standards is that ours are based on competencies; all professional standards are based on competencies. I’m not critizing the Yoga Alliance, instead we think of this as an evolution.

We’ve established a set of competencies for entry-level yoga therapists, and our standards are roughly at the level of a professional masters degree, similar to where acupuncture started years ago. Colleges have approached us and now we can develop masters programs in part based upon these standards. In fact, there is one respected accredited university that is developing the first master’s degree in yoga therapy:  the Maryland University for Integrative Health, just outside of DC. This is a landmark step in our field.

On the west coast, Meridian University has a long history of incorporating somatic practices into psychology and they also offer both a masters and PhD program in yoga therapy via their psychology department. If people take yoga therapy training programs that meet our standards, they can incorporate that work into academic programs. The synergy is there. We think that is a win for everybody.

RT: What about established teachers who have been working in the medical trenches for years–will they be able to turn thier practical knowledge into a certification?

JK: The answer is yes we will do that. We have said that we will develop what is classically called grandfather or grand-parenting principles. These will respect the original training and experience and the continuing education of these people who are really the pioneers in the field. How you do that is tricky. It takes a lot of time to be fair, and there’s also a huge amount of administrative needed. When, is the open question because we have to first focus on the accreditation process because schools are the future.

The best way to explain this is if we put experienced practitioners in two boxes. One box is people who have been practicing a long time but may not have any formal certification, because in the past there wasn’t any certification, you just did it. But over the last 10 years there have been more and more yoga therapy certification programs. Most were 300 hour programs on top of 200 hour basic yoga therapy training programs and the total of 500 hours fit nicely into the Yoga Alliance standard. That was the structure. Two-thirds of our member schools started this way.

We have about 3,000 people out there with a certification as a yoga therapist. Many are recent graduates and our principles for grandfathering them, are more explicit. Those are also published on our website called emerging grandfathering guidelines.

RT: What are the three must-have qualities for a yoga therapist to cultivate in order to create the right atmosphere for healing and to cultivate the student-teacher relationship?

JK: First you should have a solid personal practice of yoga. You should have a fair amount of technical skills, an understanding of disease processes, structural pain, and some theory on how to apply those things. You also need the basic skill of how to take that general theory and apply it to an individual. For example, a person with chronic low back pain may be a young person who is very flexible or an old person who is overweight. There are all these differences and being able to apply the theory to each individual is fundamental. Yoga is not like a pill, the same protocol is not good for everybody. People are multidimensional beings and that is a big strength of yoga. Yoga is one of the few disciplines and practices that can address the multidimensional aspects of people in practice.

You also have to have a certain skills for a therapeutic relationship between the client and student. Its not just technical skills, or knowledge, but being able to develop this therapeutic relationship. All the healing processes that I know of place emphasize this in theory, but with yoga the actual relationship between the student and teacher is a tangible quality that influences the healing process. Its not a like a doctor that just gives a pill. People are coming to you for help and they are vulnerable, and they want to be their best. People come to yoga classes because they are trying to help themselves, and yoga reminds them to bring the very best of themselves.

RT: In the healing process where do you think yoga serves the person best: as prevention, after they have been diagnosed, or as an ongoing therapy?

JK: In any healing process it is always best to start with prevention. However, people are often not motivated until something happens. How many yoga teachers’ bios start with ‘I came to yoga because I was injured or hurt?’ Injury or sickness can be a great teacher and motivator.

Yoga can also be beneficial when somebody has lost hope and is dying. Think of the person who has been diagnosed with cancer and the chemo is not working — that person is wrestling with lots of things and yoga can help the process of accepting the inevitable.

RT: What is your favorite go-to practice and what helps you?

JK: I have a yoga studio at the back of my house, in a room that is surrounded by a garden. I’ll let you in on my secret, Rolf Slovick from the Himalayan Institute does these deep relaxation CDs. They are 15 minute relaxation practices with his wonderful, melodious voice. I often go into my studio around five in the afternoon, lie on my back in a supported savasana, turn on the CD, and take a 15 minute relaxation. I like to call it a savasana cocktail. It recharges me and in the evening my mind is more alert.

RT: What do you hope for the future for IAYT? What do you see and what is the time frame?

JK: Over the next five years we should have a good accreditation process and a good credentialing process started and ongoing. What I would like to see is a continuation of the cooporative relationship the IAYT, the National Ayurvedic Medical Association and the Yoga Alliance has established. These are complementary organizations with complementary missions, and similar goals and challenges. In some sense we are helping to organize and present these important Vedic or Indian practices to the West. Yoga and Ayurveda, in my not so humble view, have so much to offer the West. All three organizations are working together in their own way to meet the needs of the west. We can work together in a harmonious fashion to help people, and help yoga teachers and Ayurveda teachers to be their best and establish good complementary careers, and in a way that is not confusing for the public.

People love yoga; yoga is well established but it is not well established as a healing practice in the West, so we have a lot of good work to do to develop yoga as a recognized respected therapy. In my view it’s important to do that in a collaborative fashion.

One of the strengths of IAYT is that from the very beginning it has been respectful of all the different yoga paths. Let me tell you about one of my visions for this; it is a new vision for me. I read this quote by Aristotle, “Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, that is your vocation.” To some extent that is an inspiring quote for the work of IAYT to help harness all the tremendous talents of people to serve the needs of the world through yoga.

For more information about IAYT, visit: www.iayt.org

Rita Trieger

Rita Trieger is a yoga therapist working in New York and Connecticut.

The post Interview with John Kepner appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Chanting, yoga therapy, and must-have qualities for a yoga therapist

A teacher of Yoga and Vedic Chant for over twenty-five years, Sonia Nelson has been a student of T.K.V. Desikachar since 1975 and serves as Director of the Vedic Chant Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Sonia gives seminars and workshops nationwide and has released a number of CDs, including tutorials for learning Vedic Chant and the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali. She will be one of the keynote speakers in at the fifth Symposium on Yoga Therapy and Research (SYTAR) held in Boston, Massachusetts in June, 2013.

LA YOGA: In your opinion, what makes yoga therapeutic?

Sonia Nelson: When the tools of yoga are applied to a situation where healing is the primary goal, yoga becomes therapy.

LA YOGA: Chanting can be a powerful form of sound therapy. What are some of the most recognizable health benefits from this kind of practice?

SN: Mental focus, lengthening of the breath, pacifying  emotions, stimulating or calming energy, and confident communication are some of the benefits.

Chanting can be taught as a primary tool, or using asana or pranayama that supports chanting–especially Vedic chanting–as its own discipline and art. In a group yoga class, I would introduce more pure sounds, and very gradually introduce sounds from the Sanskrit language or sounds that come from the Vedas. We can also introduce the sound through movement; I often combine some asana practice with sound.

LA YOGA: What is the largest change you have seen related to the increased acceptance in the medical community of yoga’s therapeutic value? And what is the greatest change that you have seen in yoga therapy?

SN: As more individuals have turned to practices such as yoga to deal with chronic conditions that were not relieved through Western medicine, the medical community has become aware of the validity of yoga–not to supplant allopathic medicine, but to complement it. However, at this stage of acceptance, they need to see a certain level of education implemented in the training of yoga therapists before they will have confidence and whole-hearted acceptance of yoga as a complementary tool.

LA YOGA: There has been more and more evidence of yoga’s positive health effects, and people are also noticing the healthful benefits…do you agree?

SN: People who practice yoga over time have always noticed the benefits. Now that more people are using yoga as a therapeutic tool, there is the possibility for evidence-based research to provide the documentation that the medical, educational, and business communities will require before yoga therapy can truly become integrated into those areas.

LA YOGA: What are the three must-have qualities that a yoga teacher or yoga therapist should cultivate in order to create the right atmosphere for healing and developing a positive student/teacher relationship?

SN: An ability to listen and observe, an interest in the student/client, and an awareness of the possibilities and limitations of yoga practice in our culture. I believe there needs to be a real distinction between group classes and private work. I also think a lot more education is required than a 200-hour program if one is going to really devote themselves to being a yoga therapist.

LA YOGA: Are there any other things that you feel are important qualities of a good yoga therapist?

SN: Care for the student/client,  the ability to approach the student without an agenda, to know when you can and cannot help someone, and an ability to refer the care seeker to another practitioner.

LA YOGA: Do you think that it’s important to have a certification process to become yoga therapists?

SN: In order to use the term “yoga therapist,” it will soon become a necessity to be certified by an accredited program. This is why IAYT is currently using a significant amount of energy and resources to address this question.

LA YOGA: Where do you think yoga is most beneficial in a person’s healing process?

SN: Actually, I feel yoga is most beneficial as a preventive tool, applied to healing the small discomforts that arise in the course of a day. This is best expressed in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra 2.16 Heyam duhkham anagatam: The pain which is to come, can and should be anticipated, and avoided.

LA YOGA: What do you do in your own practice to help stay in balance?

SN: I do a practice that includes some form of asana, pranayama, meditation, and chanting.The content, sequence, and initial instruction were given to me by my teacher. Over the years, they have been adapted and refined by him and by me to remain effective and respectful of the changes and events that occur in my life.

LA YOGA: If someone wants to begin using yoga therapeutically, where would be a good place to begin?

SN: The practice of yoga helps cultivate awareness. When students have that awareness they will start noticing when they feel out of balance and can use that as a reference point. When the practitioner becomes aware that some change needs to happen, they act on it. Without that, we are teachers without students. We are therapists without clients. The orientation is the self-empowerment of the person so that they can carry on their lives in a balanced way, but that motivation has to come from them.

For more infomration about Sonia Nelson, please visit: vedicchantcenter.org.

For more information about the Symposium on Yoga Research (SYR) June 11-13, and the Symposium on Yoga Therapy and Research (SYTAR), June 13-16, both held in Boston, Massachusetts, visit: sytar.org.

Rita Trieger is a contributing editor of Find Bliss, and the author of Yoga Heals Your Back (Fairwinds, 2005). She teaches yoga therapy for both cancer and heart patients at Stamford Hospital, in Stamford, Connecticut. Ritatude.blogspot.com

Rita Trieger

Rita Trieger is a yoga therapist working in New York and Connecticut.

The post Sitting Down with Sonia Nelson appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Nischala spent over 25 years as a monastic disciple with the world-renowned, Sri Swami Satchidananda, where she received his direct guidance and teachings. She applies those teachings, along with her years of experience, in her cardiac and cancer certification course, Yoga of the Heart.

She is the author of The Healing Path of Yoga, and The Secret Power of Yoga, as well as the Abundant WellBeing Audio Series.  Nischala will be one of the keynote speakers at the fifth Symposium on Yoga Therapy and Research (SYTAR) in Boston, June, 2013.

Rita Trieger: In your opinion, what makes yoga therapeutic?

Nischala Devi: Having been teaching yoga for so many years, I think all yoga is therapeutic. Even without having that particular focus, yoga offers therapeutic benefits for the body and mind, and more importantly, it connects people to their spirit. There is a new wave in yoga that seems to place extra emphasis on the physical practice in an effort to get people to understand that yoga can be therapeutic, but in actuality it has always been so, without “therapy” ever being emphasized.

On the other hand, now that yoga is dovetailing with Western medicine, it’s become almost a necessity to include the word therapy or therapeutics. Doctors love the word therapy. But the fact remains that when the great masters were here, they never did anything “therapeutic,” they just taught people how to remember themselves and how to be with themselves in a higher way, which became therapeutic.

RT: Do you think that yoga in general has gained greater acceptance in the medical community for its therapeutic value?

ND:   In order to include yoga in the bona fide medical community we have to prove quantitatively that it works. That is, bottom line, what the modern medical mind is looking for — proof that it works.   I have been involved in many aspects of medical research and yoga.  When we were working on the Ornish program study, it was easy to quantify nutrition because blood sugar can easily be measured but when it came to yoga there were no absolute measuring devices. So, what they came up with was: Does a person’s head come closer to their knee after three weeks in forward bend, than it did at the beginning? That is what they wanted to do: Measure it by literal inches. I argued that achieving a deeper forward fold doesn’t prove that a person has understood that they are practicing yoga. It’s about how comfortable they are in their whole life. And honestly, that is what proves if yoga is working. They said, well there is nothing that we can do to show that!

Truthfully, yoga is a very mystical practice and tradition, and doctors try to turn it into a very left brain, quantitative science.

RT: There is more documentation of yoga’s health benefits and people are noticing. Do you agree? 

ND: Modern medicine is what we consider allopathic medicine, and allopathic means using drugs that have the opposite effect to the symptoms. For example, if someone gets a bacterial infection you give them an antibiotic. The structure in allopathic medicine is to take antibiotics three times a day, for a certain amount of time, and the results are supposed to be that you get better.

You can’t apply that same structure to yoga. Yoga is transformational. It’s something that works slowly, from the inside, and it isn’t always obvious what that transformation looks like. So I think we have to be careful about that when we move into the modern medical community. That is something that I was constantly brushing up against. We cannot compromise what we are doing because of what other people want or expect.

RT: What are three must-have qualities that a yoga teacher or therapist should have to create the atmosphere for healing and to develop a strong student-teacher bond?

ND: I came up with more than three. The first is that there needs to be a strong sense of humility. We need to realize that we are working with people at the most vulnerable time of their life–when they are hurting, scared, or maybe they have just been given a diagnosis. When we, as teachers, find ourselves in this kind of a situation, it’s not about what we learned in our training, it is about the energy that comes together when two people have their hearts open to each other.

There were a lot of times when I had no idea what to do with someone.  I might have approached them with a set idea but when I sat in front of them something totally different happened, and I felt humbled because I could see what this person had brought out in his or her self, and in turn, had also been triggered in me. Humility is very important.

The other side of that is gratitude: “Thank you for letting me be with you in your time of need.” Being thankful that this energy and knowledge are coming through me to help you, instead of owning it and saying, “Oh I did this; I’m such a good therapist.”

Knowing your limitations or what we call scope of practice, is another valuable quality. Knowing when someone is too sick to give them alternate nostril breathing or shoulder stand. This is something that is emphasized in Western medicine — everyone knows their limits.

For example, if you go to a good cardiologist with an earache they won’t look at your ear. They will tell you to go see an ear specialist. I don’t feel that deep enough yet in the yoga community. I think a lot of yoga teachers who have read books or are into  nutrition, might say to someone, “Oh, why don’t you take red yeast rice for lowering cholesterol?” They shouldn’t been saying things like that. Or, if someone is very depressed, a yoga teacher shouldn’t say, “If you do a few more inversions your depression will go away.” We have to know when we are out of the scope of our practice, and when we need to send these people to specialists.

We also need to be adaptable. It’s a fine balance and it requires going inside and saying, “Wait a minute what do these people need?” We may have planned to teach a particular practice but people may be too sick or weak, so we have to be able to tune into their needs, and change on a dime. And along with this we have to be willing to know when we are wrong. It takes humility to be able to say you made a mistake.

What makes a therapist great is compassion, and truly knowing what compassion is. Compassion is the catalyst that makes healing happen. People only really want to know that someone cares about them. It doesn’t matter if you succeed or not, what matters is that our hearts are together. That kind of compassion is really the pinnacle that holds all of this together. So much of that is missing in the medical community these days. As good yoga therapists, we need to bring that compassion back in, which is the main aspect of yoga. But how do we train someone to be compassionate?

RT: Do you think that along with traditional yoga teacher trainings, is it important to have some sort of certification process to become a yoga therapist?

ND: Absolutely. Most professions have a certification or licensing. You can’t have a profession and just let people go out and do what they want. There has to be specific certification training.

You can train someone in asana and teach them to adapt this way for heart disease and that way for cancer; I do that. But when it comes to training people to be compassionate and humble, that is difficult because it’s not something that can be quantified, so I think this is our real challenge in these certification programs.

I also think people have to spend time in retreat getting to know themselves before they can become a therapist. We need to go into ourselves and discover our hopes and fears. All psychotherapists have to undergo some kind of therapeutic analysis in their training. I think it’s important to have that introspection because essentially that is yoga.

We have to learn to teach the people in front of us, and that takes a lot of experience  — not 1,000 hours, not even 5,000 hours. It can take years to develop that intuitive sense. When we become therapists, we have to become therapists, not just yoga teachers that are learning a little about therapy.

I think continuing education is important in the certification process. Most people love asana because it is clear cut but it should not be the only focus. We are not only continuing our education to enhance our ability to be therapeutic but to continue to enhance who we are as our understanding grows. This is difficult to regulate, and each person has to find that within his or her self.

RT: Within a person’s healing process do you think that yoga is most beneficial as prevention, after being diagnosed, or as an ongoing curative therapy?

ND: Yes!  Of course, I always wish for people to come to yoga for prevention. There is nothing like it. There is nothing like having the ability before something happens. Even if the person has risk factors, you are still working with someone who has strong vital energy, and their course can be easily corrected at that point. Once they have the disease, it’s much more difficult because then the person is dealing with the shock of the diagnosis, the treatment or perhaps possible weakness of the body post-surgery. It’s difficult to give someone who is low on energy and already has a full plate more to do. Yet we have seen great results.

Take someone who has heart disease. They might resist or think they know better but that same behavior they are bringing to yoga class is the same behavior that got them heart disease in the first place. We just have to slow it all down and pull them back. I never put emphasis on that forward bend, my emphasis was about the ease in which a person moves into the forward bend and holds, and the ease with which he or she moves out of it. It’s not competitive, it’s just relaxation.

So the important thing is that people do yoga, no matter what the stage of healing. It can’t just be that they read about it —they actually have to do it, and then I think there is a health benefit at any stage.

RT: Where would be a good place for a person to begin if they want to use yoga therapeutically? 

ND: Do it now. And find the right yoga therapist, which can be tricky because anybody and everybody are calling themselves yoga therapists. Pairing up the therapist and the client is probably the most important thing.

My advice is to look for someone who is well-trained, though it’s not just about being well-trained, because lots of people are well-trained. It’s important to look for someone who meshes with your personality. True healing takes place when two people are in alignment with each other. Who do you feel most comfortable working with in such an intimate way?

Personality wise, a therapist should have the ability to go within themselves to get the answers. When I began with the Ornish program there were no role models; we had to invent it as we went along. What I had to do most of the time, was go inside and explore what felt right and then bring it out.

RT: What do you do in your practice to help you stay balanced?

ND: My favorite quick balancing practice is alternate nostril breathing. I would recommend practicing three to five minutes of it between clients. You can even breathe in a particular word, such as breathing in gratitude and breathing out peace. Or if you can’t do alternate nostril, just do full deep breathing. Make it an easy. It helps bring us back to who we are.

Often people will unknowingly pull us into who they are, and we need to be strong enough in who we are, at our very essence, in order to withstand that intense energy draw. Bring yoga back to the intuition. You know what you need: You may need more relaxation on any given day, or you may need more breathing.

Make sure that you are not taking on more than you can handle; you have to be realistic. If someone is really sick or you are teaching six classes of very sick people in one day, it’s too much. It’s not like teaching a regular class. We have to be aware that these people are needy and in order to give them enough we have to be well rested, well fed, and our practice has to be deep. It’s not just about asana practice; we have to develop the subtle practices: pranayama, meditation, journaling — things that take us into ourselves.

Make sure there is time between classes and clients, and be honest enough to say to yourself that taking on another very sick person may be too much, and then help them find another therapist.  The longer and the deeper your own practice is, the less you are thrown off, and the less you will feel the need to do too much. Have compassion for yourself and be grateful for the energy that is coming though.

One of my favorite practices is from the yoga sutras. It is called pratipaksha bhavanam, which means to cultivate the opposite, positive experience. Take in anything negative and change it into something positive. For example, if someone says to you, ‘I’ve just been given three weeks to live and I don’t know what to do about it,’ and you are left holding that image you can change the image by seeing the essence of spirit in that person and that take you out of the negative loop.

We tend to get sucked into negative loops which destroy a lot of our life force. Instead, see things in a positive light: a person has three weeks left to really remember who they are, and in that knowledge everything changes. This practice will help you to stay centered: I know what I know, and who I am. I am a good person. I am doing the best that I can, and that is all that I can do. Flip the negative into a positive.

RT: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

ND: We have to get back to the realization that yoga is not the practices.  Yoga is knowing who we are within ourselves, and then cultivating the ability to touch that spirit.

It will be interesting to see how it all turns out. We are entering into an unknown territory when we are certifying people. I like the old idea of mentorship, which is still used and important in hospital settings. Find someone who has been doing this kind of work, and watch them. Watch who they are, not just working with other people, but watch who they are as they live their lives. That is what is going to come across when you are a therapist. Who you are in your life — that is the magic in it.

For more information on Nischala Joy Devi, her training program for working with people with cardiac conditions (Yoga of the Heart), weekend workshops, and her books and media, visit: abundantwellbeing.com

Nischala Joy Devi will be a keynote speaker at the upcoming Symposium on Yoga Therapy and Research (June 13-16) by the International Association for Yoga Therapists (IAYT). The early bird deadline for the conference has been extended through May 13. For more information on SYTAR, visit: iayt.org.

Rita Trieger is a contributing editor of Find Bliss, and the author of Yoga Heals Your Back (Fairwinds, 2005). She teaches Yoga therapy for both cancer and heart patients at Stamford Hospital in Stamford, Connecticut. Ritatude.blogspot.com

Rita Trieger

Rita Trieger is a yoga therapist working in New York and Connecticut.

The post Sitting Down With Nischala Joy Devi appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Ask the Expert

We recently caught up with Dr. Vasant Lad, the eminent Ayurvedic physician, author, and professor, and asked him to share his knowledge and thoughts on good health, Yoga therapy, and what qualities he believes make for a good Yoga therapist.

Dr. Vasant Lad has authored numerous articles and books on the subject of Ayurvedic medicine and Yoga. He serves as the director of the Ayurvedic Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and this coming June, he will join other doctors, Yoga therapists, and Yoga practitioners to give one of the keynote speeches for the Fifth Symposium on Yoga Therapy and Research (SYTAR) in Boston, Massachusetts. 

RT: In your opinion, what makes Yoga therapeutic?

 Dr. Lad: Yoga has great therapeutic value because every Yoga posture carries the body’s energy. We are constantly pulled by gravity to the center of the earth; we rely on the qualities of ojas (heartiness) and tejas (intelligence) to channel the flow of prana (vital energy) into a proper direction. When a person does not regularly practice Yoga, their prana always moves in a one-way direction, resulting in accumulated chi in the kidneys, bladder, prostate, cervix, and ovaries. Problems arise due to this accumulated congestion, including maladies such as swelling, slipped disks, hernia, high blood pressure, and even lower back aches.

By doing Yoga according to the individual’s prakriti (constitution), the direction of flow caused by gravitational force changes, improving or eliminating congestion in the liver, joints, or the lower back. This directional change also improves the lymphatic, arterial, and venous circulation.

Yoga can improve circulation and nutritional absorption and overall has a great therapeutic value.

RT: What are some of the changes you have seen in Yoga therapy and the mainstream acceptance of Yoga therapy? 

 Dr. Lad: Just by doing Yoga regularly, a person’s blood pressure can return to normal.  Yoga can help reduce cholesterol and blood sugar. So many people are on medication to control these problems, but if, along with medication, one also practices Yoga, the medicine can be more effective. By doing Yoga asana, pranayama, and mudras, along with following a proper diet, the body will become more flexible. Cholesterol and blood pressure are stabilized, and the function of the endocrine system — the thyroid, parathyroid, and thymus glands – can become normalized. You can even see the individual’s blood and brain chemistry coming back to normal. That is why Yoga is becoming so well accepted by the medical community and by medical practitioners as well as healers in other modalities like chiropractors and acupuncturists.  Yoga aids all these therapies.

One other thing I should mention is that a person should not do Yoga on his/her own. A person needs the help of a Yoga therapist or Yoga instructor because improper practice can be injurious to the tissue. It is very important to have the appropriate guidance so things such as a slipped disk or any other misalignment that may cause pain can be avoided.

RT: What are the some must-have qualities that a Yoga teacher or therapist should cultivate to create an atmosphere for healing?

Dr. Lad: A basic knowledge of human anatomy and physiology, as well as comprehensive yogic knowledge of Yoga therapy and practice. Acquiring this basic knowledge of Ayurveda is a great help in transforming Yoga therapy into a science. According to Ayurveda, every individual has a unique prakriti, and every individual has a unique vikruti (state of dis-ease). Yoga therapy becomes a practical, clinical application of Yoga in our daily practice.

One should not take Yoga lightly:  “Oh, it’s so simple; anyone can do it.” No. There are some postures that are not good for certain prakriti. For example, holding headstand for a long time (5-10 minutes) is not recommended for pitta (fire element) people because it will increase pitta by increasing blood flow to the brain, which could result in a headache. Not understanding the individual’s prakriti and vikruti can create imbalance because of not being able to recognize one’s true relationship with a particular Yoga posture and prakriti/ vikruti paradigm.

According to Dr. Vasant Lad, camel pose is an asana that helps to balance the airy spacey energy of the vata dosha. Yoga practiced therapeutically helps to balance the energetic qualities of the body and mind. Tia Hobbs in camel pose at the Water Palace of Tirtagangga in Bali, Indonesia Photo by Fluid Frame Photography

RT: Besides the understanding of physiology and Ayurvedic energetics, are there other qualities you feel are important? 

Dr. Lad: Every individual has a unique body type. For example, some people have a broad pelvis, while others have a broad pectoral area. The way people stand and walk can further cause the development of a unique physiology.  If a Yoga therapist understands that, then it becomes easier to perform Yoga without any strain. As Patanjali says in the Yoga Sutras, Sthira sukam asanam, [1]which means while doing any posture there should not be pain, strain, or stress. Each posture should be easily achieved along with the proper breath. One should breathe deeply to bring about beautiful harmony between the body, mind, and consciousness. This is what makes a person feel happy, healthy, and energetic throughout the day. So perfection of asana and breathing is absolutely necessary in Yoga therapy.

RT: Do you think that it’s important to have a certification process for people to  become Yoga therapists?

 Dr. Lad: Absolutely. It is going in that direction. Here in America, a massage therapist needs a certificate to say that s/he is a massage therapist, and a barber needs a certificate to say s/he is a barber. Any healer needs a certification to authenticate that he or she has undergone a particular educational training, as well as to ensure his or her knowledge of anatomy and physiology, along with a little bit of an Ayurvedic perspective of the doshas. In ancient times, every yogi was a great physician, every yogi was a great psychotherapist, and every yogi had great knowledge of Ayurveda in order to choose the proper course of Yoga necessary to heal individual ailments. One has to have a thorough understanding of the human body.

RT: How is Yoga most beneficial in a person’s healing process?

 Dr. Lad: Yoga can be both preventative and curative. If we know that in a person’s family history there is diabetes, hypertension, or arthritis, then certain Yoga postures can be very beneficial. To direct this, it is necessary to have a thorough understanding of different regions in the body because each is energetically connected to particular asana, which help create internal harmony.

RT: What is your favorite go-to practice or pose that helps create healing and peace?

Dr. Lad: If a person has vata (air element) disorder then the person should do camel, cobra, spinal twist, and cow pose to help balance vata. If a person has high pitta (fire element), boat, bow, fish, and bridge pose are recommended, while a person with high kapha (earth element) should practice lotus, locust, lion, and palm tree to help balance the kapha dosha. There are many other postures but these postures should be emphasized for proper balancing.

The gravitational forces in these postures help us to redirect prana. This is the language of Yoga and Ayurveda, which are very concurrent and inherent. Each of these ancient modalities work together to elevate healing energy in the individual based upon his or her prakriti/vikruti paradigm.

RT: What do you do in your own practice to help stay in balance?

Dr. Lad: I am pitta-vata guy, and because my pitta is high, I do not practice headstand or shoulderstand for too long.  I do boat, bow, and bridge to balance my pitta, and to balance my vata I do camel, cobra, spinal twist, and cow pose. Then I practice savasana to relax, and include gentle, cooling pranayama sitali (cooling breath) to balance pitta, and ujjayii (victorious) breath, bhramari (bee humming) breath, or alternate nostril breath to balance vata.

RT: If someone wants to begin using Yoga therapeutically in their own lives, where would be a good place to begin?

Dr. Lad: One should begin with a gentle Yoga stretch to bring awareness to the body. If we do not bring awareness to the body and we are doing Yoga asana for a long time, then we are pulling and straining the muscles, ligaments, and blood vessels, and they will become sore. Soreness or pain is the body’s way of saying, “Hey, I can’t bear this. Stop!”

Doing Yoga helps us learn the language of the body, and helps us learn to listen to the body. We have to bring awareness to the physical, emotional, and mental levels as well as awareness on the conscious level. Yoga brings harmony to the body, mind, and consciousness.

RT: Is there anything else related to Yoga therapy you would like to add? 

Dr. Lad: Yoga is an ancient art of longevity of life and harmony in our relationships. It makes the body, mind, and consciousness work together; in that togetherness, we practice awareness.  When looking at trees, birds, the shape of the mountains, the beautiful color of the flowers, the flow of the river, and the shapes of the clouds, you are uniting with the beauty of all these things. The beauty of the cloud and the flower directly meets with you, and there is union between the observer and the observed. This union is the highest Yoga.

Yoga is a skill in awareness, a skill in action, and therefore Yoga can take us to that dimension where every moment becomes the moment of Samadhi, the moment of bliss, the moment of joy, the moment of love. These are the highest manifestations and flowering of life through Yoga.

For more information about the Ayurvedic Institute, visit: Ayurveda.com.

This coming June, Dr. Lad will join other doctors, Yoga therapists, and Yoga practitioners to give one of the keynote speeches for the Fifth Symposium on Yoga Therapy and Research (SYTAR) in Boston, Massachusetts.To register for the International Association of Yoga Therapists’ Symposium, visit: sytar.org. The early bird discount is in effect until April 12.

Rita Trieger is a contributing editor to Find Bliss Magazine, and the author of Yoga Heals Your Back (Fairwinds, 2005). She teaches yoga therapy for both cancer and heart patients at Stamford Hospital, in Stamford Connecticut. Ritatude.blogspot.com    

Rita Trieger

Rita Trieger is a yoga therapist working in New York and Connecticut.

The post Conversations with Yoga Therapists appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.