What is Yoga Therapy?
Yoga Therapy (also known as Yoga Chikitsa) is not a new branch or style of yoga – it is yoga as yoga is meant to be: a therapeutic holistic healing discipline that offers a broad range of tools for supporting health, healing and personal transformation.
People are discovering that yoga has a powerful impact in helping individuals face health challenges to manage their condition, reduce symptoms, restore balance, increase vitality, and improve attitude.
Yoga means to yoke, or bring all things into union. Yoga therapy diagnosis takes into account the impacts on 5 layers of the human body when addressing a concern – the breath, the body, the mind, the emotions and the spiritual layer. The purpose of this diagnosis is to then customize a practice to bring the body into a state of harmony, of unity with itself.
The bodybeing functions optimally, only when there is a state of dynamic balance.
How Does Yoga Therapy Facilitate Healing?
- learn how patterns affect choices in life by examing the Yoga Sutras, and its teachings on samskaras and karma
- investigate how deep emotions and experiences are held in energetic patterns in the body and the chakras
- utilize pranayama (breathwork), meditation and asana (physical practice) to learn how to safely release energetic patterns from the tissues
- connect with the five elements and their effects on sleep, appetite, energy level, and mental clarity to attune with rhythms and cycles of our beings, the seasons, our greater planet and universe
- learn to “feel” poses from the inside and restore stabilization and strength to injuries
Yoga Therapy Sessions are individually tailored to your unique being, and are between sixty to ninety minutes long. A session may involve counselling, breath-work, physical movements & sequences, meditative practices, or visualizations to suit your specific needs, capabilities, goals, and life circumstances. A Personal Home Practice is given that can be done independently at home.
As a Yoga Therapist, I work with your family doctor, naturopath and other medical and therapeutic professionals to support your needs. I encourage students to get a medical diagnosis from their healthcare practitioners and/or doctors before coming to see me if there are therapeutic concerns. This medical diagnosis will help me better assess the root cause of the problem, and insure that you are supported by all levels of health care, and that we are working together towards balance and health.
It is my honour to be a witness on your personal healing journey. Together we will co-create a safe, nourishing and empowering space for your soul’s evolution.
Sarah Kane Wade 