Is yoga "healing"? Is yoga therapy “traditional”?
”Yoga therapy is ancient Indian healing". “Yoga is a remedy for mind and body.” “Yoga has always had a unique power and capacity to cure.” It is not uncommon to hear these kind of (airy) claims around today's yoga therapy scene. As yoga therapists, I think, we should actually think about the wording for our work much more carefully.
What I am trying to say is, that when referring to yoga therapy as an ancient medicine, a yoga therapist doesn’t seem to perceive too clearly the position of therapeutic yoga in the historical timeline of yoga. Thinking / teaching like this might not hurt anyone, but it is not a very truthful expression, in the name of yoga, either.
I mean, that when reading the classical śāstras (literature/texts/treatise) we don't find the concept of classical yoga working "as cure" at all. The traditional yoga (āsana, prāṇāyāma, saṃyama) has never been a "treatment system" as such.
Yoga's techniques might restore and/or manipulate body-mind balance in certain ways, but yoga's traditional aim has not been curing. Yoga’s aim has been an utter transformation leading to a self-enlightenment.
“Healing”, for its part, is a very different thing.
AYURVEDA FOR THE BODY, YOGA FOR THE MIND
If yoga was traditionally introduced to people as a "tool for mind" (as a way for ultimate liberation, mokṣa), it was ayurveda (not yoga!) that had the role of treating sicknesses & inbalances of the human body (and mind).
This said, we see that today's idea of "yoga as treatment" (systemically, I’m not talking about individual asanas) is a fairly new kid on the block. This interpretation of yoga (made in the 20–21st centuries) was part of Indian's modernization project lead by many famous yoga teachers and devotial patriots deeply involved in India’s independence movement - such as Sri Aurobindo, Kuvalayananda, Sivananda and to a lesser extent patriotic yoga therapist Sri Yogendra.
Their life work did twist – and develop – the concept of yoga tremendously. For the good and for the bad, depends on who you ask! Later generations continued to implement tools and health paradigms of Western medicine into yoga. Gradually Westeners, helped by many Indians, began to see yoga mostly as a way to heal physical and mental imbalances - many transcendental and God-related aims and aspects aspiring systemically towards mokṣa had been dispelled successfully.
OLD DOGS, NEW TRICKS / NEW DOGS, OLD TRICKS
BUT. To understand/claim that yoga therapy is indeed a reasonably new invention, is not to say that we couldn't use yogic techniques for therapeutic healing or for restoring balance. Of course we can!
Yoga therapy's crucial contibution for today's world is exactly this: It can help us re-establish the body-mind connection. Yoga therapy at its best is a gateway to deeper layers and depths of yoga: Only a well-established body-mind-connection, gained for example via yoga therapy, is a door into the vast curriculum of ideas, methods and philosophical concepts & practical tools that yoga philosophy introduces to us.
To wrap up: If we as yoga therapists do not recognize today’s yoga's historical change (not everywhere, but in many traditions!) from a pretty radical "path to self-realization" into a non-invasive and complementary tool of health industry – influenced hugely by the worldviews of Western medicine and physiotherapy – we might not facilitate our students nor yoga at all levels, despite our own honest intentions...
A yoga therapist does not necessarily teach yoga philosophy, but he might. (By philosophy I mean much more complex concepts than “8 limbs” or “5 koshas” which are often, of course, present on a regular yoga therapy class). But a great yoga therapist knows how to cherish the both in her/his daily work; the ancient & modern aims and purposes of yoga.
Whatever the tools we choose to use, it is still worth pausing once in a while into a self-reflection: Is this serving my student? Am I confusing the map for the actual landscape around me?
As yoga teachers we are doing our jobs in the most ethical manner, when we aim to teach mostly as servants of our students and customers - not as servants of any lineage or a doctrine.
#knowyourhistory #atservice #yogatherapy