Value of Yoga
Articles on the value of Yoga. Articles posted here have been collected from other websites, journals and magazines
The Man Behind Modern Yoga
Tirumalai Krishnamacharya
Discover the True Beginnings of Yoga
Nearly 40 million people practice yoga in the United States alone. It’s fair to say that yoga has become a way of life for many, many people in the West. But, how many know that the yoga form they practice has been influenced and even some may say, invented, by just one man.
Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, born a hundred and thirty years ago in a tiny South Indian village, was the major teacher behind today’s most popular yoga styles, including the refined form of yoga that became Iyengar, along with Vinyasa form of Viniyoga, the dynamic series of Ashtanga, Indra Devi’s yoga and many other methods.
This sage is often refferred to as the father of modern yoga due to his expertise, unique approach to yoga and widespread influence on so many yoga masters. His four most famous disciples- Pattabhi Jois, B.K.S. Iyengar, Indra Devi and Krishnamacharya’s son T.K.V. Desikchar- played a huge role in popularizing yoga in the West.
Krishnamacharya received his hatha yoga training during seven years spent with his guru, Ramamohana Brahmacharya, who lived in a remote cave in the Himalayas. Krishnamacharya also spent many years as a scholar, immersed in studying, and then teaching Sanskirt, Vedic rituals and philosophy.
A Student’s Perspective
Author, yoga teacher and long-time student of Krishnamacharya, Mark Whitwell, describes Krishnamacharya’s teachings as being brought forth from the great tradition of authentic yoga.
The hallmark of Krishnamacharya’s work is that there’s a right yoga for every person no matter who the person is. Anyone who wants to do yoga can do it. He used to say if you can breathe you can do yoga. So in his teaching, we adapt yoga to the individual. We don’t adapt the individual to yoga. We dont create standardized, stylized systems and then push the person to try to attain that standard in a linear effort, that can be sometimes be a struggle, trying to get to this presumed superior place as if they’re not here already in this moment as life itself.
Krishnamacharya believed yoga was for anyone, no matter who they are.
Interestingly, Krishnamacharya not only brought yoga to Western people, but revived this ancient practice in it’s own home. The resurgence of yoga in India, after it had died down under the colonial imposition of the British, owes a great deal to Krishnamacharya’s lecture tours and yoga demonstrations conducted all over India in the 1930’s.
Krishnamacharya’s Personal Journey
Biographical notes made by Krishnamacharya give us an insight into his personal life and journey into yoga. According to these notes, which he made in the final decade of this life, he was initiated into yoga by his father at the age of five, learning Patanjali’s sutras. His father told him that their family was descended from a ninth century yogi by the name of Nathamuni. Krishnamacharya wrote that he learned 24 asanas from a swami from the temple of Sringeri Math, which birthed the Sivananda Yoga lineage, while still an urchin’. His father died when he was in his early teens and at age 16 Krischnamacharya embarked on a pilgrimage to his ancester’s shrine where he encountered him in an amazing vision.
During his seven years with his guru, Krishnamacharya memorized the Yoga Sutras of Pantanjali, studied asanas and pranayama, as well as the therapeutic aspects of yoga, and claims he mastered an incredible 3000 asanas. His guru asked him to return home, start teaching yoga and become a householder. His teacher wanted him to teach yoga that was not for renunciates, but was for everyone. Krishnamacharya returned home and started teach yoga in his spare time on the days off from his job as a coffee plantation manager.
Krishnamacharya promoted yoga throughout India for over 20 years
Krishnamacharya’s initial teaching style was a strict version of hatha yoga, but before long he became one of yoga’s famous reformers. In 1931, he received an invitation to teach at the Sanskrit College in Mysore. The Maharaja of Mysore, a long time champion of Indian ancient arts, supported Krishnamacharya for the next 20 years to promote yoga throughout India, financing demonstrations and publications.
He gave lectures and yoga demonstrations along with showing the ‘siddhis,’ or exceptional supra-normal abilities of the yogic body, only attained by great yogis, in a bid to grab people’s interest in a dying tradition. Some of the siddhis he demonstrated were the suspension of his pulse, performing complicated asanas and using his teeth to lift heavy objects.
Bringing Back Krishnamacharya’s Wisdom
Unlike many modern-day yogis, Krishnamacharya believed yoga belonged to God and never took ownership of yoga. Mark Whitwell believes that his wisdom
and what he brought forth from the great tradition has been bypassed in modern yoga. Mark is passionate about bringing these back and developing an authentic yoga practice for the individual, as based on the teachings of Krishnamacharya and his son Desikachar, with whom he enjoyed a relationship for more than twenty years.
I went to America for the first time to look at yoga and I was shocked at what I saw. Because it was not at all what Desikachar and Krishnamacharya had been teaching me … It looked and felt entirely different.
When you put the principles of Krishnamacharya into these forms of yoga that have been popularised it turns it into actual yoga. It makes it very powerful… It makes it safe.
Mark Whitwell is the author of Yoga of Heart and The Promise of Love, Sex and Intimacy, and is the editor of TKV Desikachar’s book The Heart of Yoga – written to help bring Krishnamacharya’s principles and the purity of his yogic wisdom back into the world of yoga today.
Krishnamacharya described all the different yoga categories as belonging together as an integrated holistic approach to be adapted to the needs of each individual. He insisted that it was a wrong approach of Western thinking to split them apart as if they could be isolated from each other.
Mark describes Desikachar’s profound teaching on his father’s lineage as, “the heart of yoga is the relationship between the teacher and student,” and is interested in aligning Western yoga with its ancient roots.
Indians in India are now susceptible to Western teachings on yoga, and although it reflects a fusion that began in the
19th century, it’s kind of a ‘re-colonization’ of India that these commoditized ideas are being popularised there. So we do have to put in the principles of Krishnamacharaya. What needs to happen is that the full spectrum of yoga be practiced and understanding be provided and put into these popularized systems that have been going on for the Last thirty or so years. Then, people will be playing with a full deck of cards and have yoga in all its aspects.
Krishnamachary’s potent legacy lives on in some way all around the globe, through yoga’s influence in people’s daily lives. Yet, it’s time to fully embrace the true power of yoga through his ancient wisdom and integrate that into the yogas we all love.
The problem is with the way the west has popularised asana as just this muscular effort, that’s just male, male, malewithout the female aspect. Of course, life is both equafly feminine and masculine and in perfect union. That is why the breath is such a central teacher and even the purpose for doing asana. This knowledge has been Left out. It’s kind of curious that we’ve ignored Krishnamacharya, even though he is publicly acknowledged as the guru to the gurus. In the West, we honour our lineages, we want to know what the teachers taught. But in this instance, for some reason, we’ve popularised yoga and ignored these basic matters, especially when there’s such power in it for each individual. – Mark Whitwell.
This article was written by Azriel ReShel and published on the web site UpLiftConnect.com
Yoga Therapy- How can it help mental health
Yoga can strongly and positively influence one’s mental health. To find out just how Yoga Therapy can help to improve ones mental health click : mental health
Yoga Therapy- New Beginnings
YOGA THERAPY
Facilitating New Beginnings
BY LINDA KRESS, BA,C-IAYT
People often ask: “What is the difference between yoga and yoga therapy?” That can be a hard question to answer. After all, most yoga is therapeutic, as long as it includes safe and effective postures, some breath awareness or instruction and some meditation, right? The International Association of Yoga Therapy (IAYT), the organization that sets the educational and certification standards for yoga therapy training programs/schools and for professional yoga therapists, describes yoga therapy as “the process of empowering individuals to progress toward improved health and well-being through the application of the teachings and practices of yoga.
That may not clarify much. Furthermore, though anyone may advertise their class as yoga therapy or therapeutic yoga—certified yoga teacher or not—IAYT is currently the only organization that has a yoga therapy certification process, so be sure to look for the C-IAYT designation.
Following are some of the differences between what you might expect, and what you might not, in a therapeutic yoga class or private session.
Yoga Therapy Brings Healing and Adapts to Many Conditions
Yoga therapy starts with an intake process consisting of more detailed questions about what brings a person to yoga therapy. Most people are looking for healing from a condition such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress syndrome, musculoskeletal injuries, back, neck or knee pain, sciatica or ongoing chronic conditions such as arthritis, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, cardiovascular disease or fibromyalgia, just to name a few. Clients may also be recovering from pregnancy, accidents, injuries or surgeries, or even treatment for cancer.
Yoga Therapy is Personalized
A yoga therapist will gather information regarding health history, goals and health habits and will consider common symptoms or side effects of the condition, as well as the latest treatment/ medication for the condition. This may require additional research so that things that might impact practice, such as dizziness or elevated blood pressure, are addressed.
Often, the yoga therapist meets or speaks with the client before the first session to help set up a safe and effective program designed to help heal what may be impacting the client’s health and happiness. An assessment is usually done to include postural, breath, movement, ayurvedic dosha and more to uncover imbalances.
Classes are kept small, ideally a maximum of 6 to 10 people (and sometimes one-on-one), to allow for a personalized approach—this is not a cookie-cutter yoga plan.
Yoga Therapy Approaches Healing from Many Aspects
Yoga therapists design practices that include all of the limbs of yoga and many other modalities that speak specifically to the condition of the group or individual being addressed. The imagery, affirmations, meditation and more are tailored and used as necessary, dependent on the group focus. There is usually an educational component about the condition or challenge and what a student might want to do (or avoid) to assist in finding relief. Additionally, there is always a back up plan to the back up plan, understanding that not everyone is the same and some may have multiple challenges that need to be considered.
Yoga Therapy Provides Support
In workshops, students may find emotional support, make some friends and build a community of like-minded individuals that are working with the same or similar challenges. Students will also have the support of the yoga therapist through handouts, feedback, homework, email, phone or even Skype, if necessary. Once the sessions are complete, individuals can always come back to “fine-tune” any modifications or practices.
Yoga Therapy Provides Feedback and Empowers
Assessments toward the end of the program allow clients and therapists to see what progress or transformation has been made. Clients are empowered by the end of the sessions or workshop to continue to bring healing to the condition through a continued practice designed exactly for them and through the awareness they develop.
What Yoga Therapy Is Not
Yoga Therapy is not designed to diagnose a condition. Yoga therapists are trained to work in partnership with physical therapists, physicians or other health care providers and to take into consideration any imbalances that may be found as a result of approaching the client holistically, but they do not diagnose and they do not treat. They do, however, work within the parameters of what is safe and effective for a specific condition, drawing together the many “limbs” of yoga practice to bring relief to the practitioner.
Yoga therapy is a bridge, or transition, for individuals coming out of treatment or physical therapy into the world of yoga or fitness.
Linda Kress has over 15 years of experience and is currently teaching private yoga therapy sessions and weekly therapeutic yoga classes at Soulful Journeys in Nazareth on Tuesdays at 6 p.m. and Thursdays at 9:30 a.m. Call 610-653-3971 or visit SoulfulJourneysHA. com.
Doctors Recommend Yoga Instead Of Opioids
Why Doctors Are Recommending Yoga Instead of Opioids for Chronic Back Pain
The vast majority of American adults will experience lower back pain at some point in their lives, and now a major organization is recommending that doctors treat it in a new way. On Monday, the American College of Physicians released updated guidelines that urge doctors to avoid medication as the first-line therapy for lower back pain—a departure from its previous guidelines.
Instead, the organization says doctors should urge patients to use alternative therapies, like yoga, heat, exercise, acupuncture, massage therapy, low-level laser therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, or spinal manipulation under the guidance of a medical professional before they try medication. Physicians should also tell their patients that lower back pain typically improves over time, regardless of the treatment they use.
If a patient wants medication, the organization says over-the-counter pain relievers like naproxen (Aleve) and ibuprofen (Advil) could help, as can muscle relaxers, but it notes that steroid injections and acetaminophen (Tylenol) have not been found to be helpful.
Since opioids have such a high risk for addiction and accidental overdose, the ACP says they should be considered a last option for treatment. Even then, they should only be considered for patients who haven’t had success with other therapies.
Lower back pain is one of the most common reasons why people visit a doctor in the United States, the ACP says, and about 25 percent of all American adults report these aches lasting at least one day in the previous three months.
These new guidelines just “make sense,” David N. Maine, M.D., director of The Center for Interventional Pain Medicine at Mercy Medical Hospital in Baltimore, tells SELF. “Most people do get better from acute low back pain, so most treatments do not need to be pharmacologic or invasive,” he says.
Morton Tavel, M.D., a clinical professor of medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine and author of Snake Oil Is Alive and Well: The Clash Between Myths and Reality—Reflections of a Physician, agrees. “Since most episodes of back pain resolve spontaneously, any measures employed will be credited with its ‘cure,’” he tells SELF. That’s why he says it’s so important to avoid opioids—they can be addictive and won’t speed recovery anyway.
While the ACP listed several options that people with lower back pain can try, Dr. Maine says that no particular type of therapy has found to be better than another. Acupuncture may be just as helpful for your back pain as yoga—it just depends on what you prefer. These methods may even be helpful due to a placebo effect, i.e., if you think it helps ease your pain, it can, Dr. Tavel says.
However, Santhosh Thomas, D.O., medical director of the Center for Spine Health at the Cleveland Clinic, tells SELF that yoga in particular can help with conditioning, which can improve flexibility and core strength. “These things are often lacking in people with chronic pain,” he says, adding that moving more and building strength can also help prevent future back pain.
Of course, if you’re suffering from lower back pain, you shouldn’t simply write off your symptoms and hope they’ll go away. While you could go straight to a yoga class or masseuse for therapy, Dr. Maine says your doctor may be able to provide some additional guidance.
It’s important to note that the new guidelines should be used for chronic back pain, not a sudden injury that you get from, say lifting something heavy, Dr. Thomas says, or lower back pain that radiates into other areas of your body. That’s why Dr. Maine says it’s important to see a doctor if you have any weakness, the pain is radiating into your extremities, you still have pain after two to three weeks, or the pain is quickly getting worse.
Therapeutic Viniyoga is designed for each individual. It should be used instead of the physical exercise geared yoga.
Gary Kraftsow: Leading Teacher of Viniyoga Yoga Therapy
Gary Kraftsow – American Viniyoga
Meet Gary Kraftsow. The first American yoga teacher to be certified by T.K.V. Desikachar and is now one of the leading proponents of Viniyoga Yoga Therapy.
Gary Kraftsow was the first American yoga teacher to be certified by T.K.V. Desikachar and the only American authorized to train teachers in that lineage. Kraftsow is founder of the American Viniyoga Institute in Oakland, California and one of the leading proponents of Viniyoga yoga therapy in the United States, a method known for adapting practices to suit the individual.
Kraftsow went to India in 1974 at age 19, where he studied for three years with Desikachar and his father, T. Krishnamacharya. His book, Yoga for Wellness, is a course in therapeutic Viniyoga, including asana sequences for common physical and mental complaints.
“Yoga has tended to be reduced to asana practice in this country,” Kraftsow says. “But the yoga therapy tradition incorporates not only asana but Pranayama, chanting, mantra, meditation, prayer, ritual, textual study, and Ayurvedic insights about diet and lifestyle. My prayer is that we avoid trivialization and dilution of this profound tradition in the well-intentioned effort to be inclusive.”
Originally printed in Yoga Journal
Fibromyalgia and Yoga
The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health has recently published scientific studies indicating that yoga, among other therapies, may be helpful for treating patients suffering from fibromyalgia.
In general, research on complementary health approaches for fibromyalgia must be regarded as preliminary. However, recent systematic reviews and randomized clinical trials provide encouraging evidence that practices such as tai chi, qi gong, yoga, massage therapy, acupuncture, and balneotherapy may help relieve some fibromyalgia symptoms.
To read the full article, click NCCIH
Transcending Trauma: How Yoga Heals
Initial study results revealed that participation in trauma-informed gentle yoga leads to a significant reduction in symptoms of post-traumatic stress.
Elaine breathes slowly, in and out, for a few rounds of simple pranayama before she has to stop. Images too scary for her to describe race in and overwhelm her. After a few moments, with Jocelyn Jenkins, her therapist, sitting next to her, Elaine tries again. Several sessions later they move on to very basic, very slow sun salutations; she becomes aware of her muscles, noticing any resistance in her body, stopping when she gets too agitated.
Although these postures and breathing exercises sound easy and soothing for most of us, they represent enormous progress for Elaine (not her real name), who cut herself off from any connection with her body or her emotions years ago. Jenkins remembers the first time she met her. Elaine was very agitated, in a constant state of hyper-arousal, “alert to every movement in the room, every sound, even the rise of my eyebrow,” Jenkins says. But when it came to talking about her emotions, Elaine shut down.
Here’s why. As a young girl, Elaine was brutally raped. Unbelievably, no one in her family noticed—not even when she came to the dinner table covered from head to toe in bruises.
Without anyone to guide her or help her make sense of what had happened, Elaine tried to rid herself of any residual sensations she felt—she binged and purged, used laxatives, and finally severely restricted her calories in an attempt to numb the pain, be invisible, and “yet at the same time,” Jenkins told me, “get someone to notice.” But no one did. Elaine felt alone and abandoned by the people she thought would protect her. By the time she checked into the Eating Recovery Center outside of Denver, Colorado, where Jenkins met (and noticed) her, she had a history of unsavory relationships with men, self-destructive behaviors, and no idea how to move forward.
Elaine is a survivor of childhood trauma, and her inability to control her emotions, trust her body, or form meaningful and loving relationships is a common cluster of side effects associated with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (complex PTSD), according to Judith Herman, professor of clinical psychiatry at Harvard and author of Trauma and Recovery, who coined the term. This particularly insidious form of PTSD affects those who suffer from chronic childhood abuse.
While we often think of PTSD as the intense and unexplained symptoms military men and women experience coming home from battle, this anxiety disorder can take many forms and touch a much wider population. Being raped, getting hit by a car, witnessing a violent crime, being in a war zone, losing your best friend to cancer, or even being scared of the possibility of something bad happening can all contribute to PTSD. How you deal with how you feel in the aftermath of such events determines the level of trauma that gets lodged in your cells.
Yoga can make a big difference for trauma survivors like Elaine, and we are beginning to see more research that backs up her experience. A three-year NIH-funded yoga and trauma study conducted at the Trauma Center at Justice Resource Institute in Brookline, Massachusetts, with women who have treatment-resistant complex PTSD, has shown promising results. Bessel van der Kolk, MD, the study’s principal investigator, and his colleagues presented preliminary findings at the 2010 International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies conference in Montreal last November. Initial study results revealed that participation in trauma-informed gentle yoga leads to a significant reduction (over 30 percent) in symptoms of post-traumatic stress, including fewer intrusive thoughts and less dissociation from the body. By the end of the study (after only 10 weeks of yoga) several women in the yoga group no longer met diagnostic criteria for PTSD.
Other smaller studies show yoga increases heart rate variability (HRV), a measure of how robust the brain’s arousal systems are. It appears that traumatized people have unusually low HRV, says van der Kolk—who is also founder and medical director of the Trauma Center—which could explain why they are “so reactive to minor stresses and so prone to develop a variety of physical illnesses.” Yoga’s ability to touch us on every level of our being—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual—makes it a powerful and effective means for trauma victims to reinhabit their bodies safely, calm their minds, experience emotions directly, and begin to feel a sense of strength and control.
To read the entire article go to Yoga International
Science Behind Yoga and Stress
The Impact of Bending your Body in Yoga Poses on the Brain
There are two functional parts of the brain that play a key role in stress. These serve the functions of emotion and cognitive function. So I am calling them the ’emotional’ brain (amygdala and its connections and medial forebrain structures including the medial prefrontal cortex) and the ‘logical’ brain (the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, other parts of the prefrontal cortex, parts of the cingulate cortex and parts of the hippocampus).
The emotional brain is able to initiate a ‘stress response’ via the sympathetic nervous system which culminates in adrenaline and cortisol racing through our circulation.The logical brain is always trying to ‘turn-off’ this stress response and it is also trying to restrain the emotional brain. The stronger our logical brain, the better it becomes at doing these two things. When the stress response is ‘turned off’, our parasympathetic nervous system signal is ‘turned on’. This signal ‘relaxes’ the body. So a strong logical brain goes hand in hand with relaxation.
The stress response and ‘relaxing’ signals travel through the body along a particular route and parts of this route have little ‘switches’ which we can physically manipulate to turn the signals on or off. The neck is an example of where such switches are located (by the carotid arteries). Continue reading
Why Do People Do Yoga?
The health benefits of yoga are quite real, but few people understand the how it can affect the mind.
After my last weekend of yoga teacher training, a friend asked me at dinner, “Why do you do yoga? So you can learn to do what, headstands?”
Why do people do yoga?
More than 90% of people who come to yoga do so for physical exercise, improved health, or stress management, but for most people, their primary reason for doing yoga will change. One study found that two-thirds of yoga students and 85% of yoga teachers have a change of heart regarding why they practice yoga—most often changing to spirituality or self-actualization, a sense of fulfilling their potential. The practice of yoga offers far more than physical postures and headstands—there is self-reflection, the practice of kindness and compassion, and continued growth and awareness of yourself and others.
To read the full article go to: Psychology Today
Spiritual Approach to Yoga Therapy
As more and more doctors are recommending yoga for a variety of health conditions, the physically therapeutic benefits have become indisputable. However, Yoga Therapy can also be approached from a spiritual rather than physical standpoint, addressing holistic needs in mind and soul as well as body.
Through the spiritual approach, the entire science of yoga as written about in the Yoga Sutras is employed, not just the physically restorative postures. All practices undertaken, from postures to pranayama to meditation, are for the purpose of liberating consciousness from the limited identification of self as strictly human, to a more expansive one of the Divine Self having a human experience. It is natural to connect first through the physical body, as it is the vehicle we operate on a daily basis. And certainly if we have an injury or suffer from chronic pain, the body must be addressed. Similar to physical therapy, yoga movements can significantly decrease pain and suffering, and help one regain vital energy and at the same time that we are doing so, we can begin to change our perception from being the body to being in the body.
Once the body’s demands have been reached, yoga’s mental practices help us deal with internal struggles such as emotional change, loss, indecision and anxiety. Correlating to a branch of psychology called psycho-neuroimmunology, that studies the interaction between the nervous, endocrine and immune systems, we see how the body reflects our internal state of thought and feeling. The application of yogic techniques to affect specific changes in vital functions of the body’s organs and systems allows us to shift from unconscious response to a chosen response in tense circumstances. For example, if we experience anxiety or panic attacks, we can utilize balancing breath exercises (Pranayama) to reset the parasympathetic nervous system’s fight or flight response and gain a more mental equilibrium.