Advanced YTT: “Using Yoga Therapy as an Adjacent Therapy for Depression and Anxiety”
Advanced YTT: “Using Yoga Therapy as an Adjacent Therapy for Depression and Anxiety”
Modern lifestyles and stresses create issues, such as depression and anxiety. There is a way to help stave off these increasingly common imbalances with yoga.
Paired with western medicine and therapeutics, the yoga teacher (with proper advanced teacher training from a RYS-300 school) can work alongside health care professionals to alleviate the burdens of mental health disease.
Understanding Depression and Anxiety
Depression is described as a state of constant sadness and despair to the point of interfering with daily life. Overwhelming negative thoughts and self-loathing are frequent symptoms of depression.
Related to depression and malaise is anxiety, the brain that won't stop spinning. Anxious people experience nervousness, extreme unease, and sometimes bouts of panic attacks. Both conditions are associated with the mind, and both negatively affect the physical body via the nervous system.
The human nervous system is vast and complicated, and the autonomic nervous system (ANS) guides our organs and holistic systems to keep going without our direct influence. Within the ANS is the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), the portion of our body that creates the fight or flight response. Organs and muscles prepare to keep you safe in the face of stress. Blood, oxygen, and other resources divert from rest, digestion, and calmness to create an escape route from danger.
The body's counterpart, the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), relaxes the body's primary functions and maintains a peaceful existence. The body becomes free to carry on with digestion and calmed circulation and breathing. Stressors and challenges, like depression and anxiety, stir up the sympathetic nervous system, throwing off the body's balance and creating a continuously stressed state.
How Yoga Can Support Mental Wellness
Using yoga in a health care setting is advantageous because it naturally stimulates of the parasympathetic nervous system. The primary components of yoga - pranayama, meditation, and asana - influence the mind and the body by tipping the scales in favor of the parasympathetic system. This is why the reactivity created by depression and anxiety will often subside with the help of a yoga teacher that has advanced teacher training in health care settings (RYT300).
With thoughtful instruction and spiritual guidance from a trained Yoga teacher (an RYT300 with a focus in healthcare) or certified yoga therapist, the client will practice yoga to experience a mind free of judgment, negativity, and doubt. Mental health challenges involve how we perceive ourselves, and yoga is the path to a more realistic and loving view of ourselves.
Furthermore, physical movement through asana, either active or restorative, works on the body's literal balance, strength, and healing.
Together, these aspects support transforming depression and anxiety into healthier lifestyles, and intrusive thoughts are no longer welcome.
Consider Advanced YTT from an RYS300 school or Yoga Therapy school that trains in teaching yoga managing depression and anxiety in a healthcare setting.
As a yoga teacher, enrolling in advanced yoga teacher trainings (at a certified Yoga Alliance RYS300 school) will help you gain experience in making yoga accessible, even when students experience depression and anxiety.
Practicing yoga for mental health is more than offering heart-opening poses for combating depression and folds and inversions for constant worry. Enrolling in advanced yoga teacher trainings will help you gain expertise and experience with teaching different styles of yoga, such as restorative, therapeutics essentials and yin. Advanced YTT courses (at an RYS300 school or IAYT-accredited yoga therapy school) will help you understand more about the physical manifestations of depression and anxiety and modify yoga asana for improved mental wellness.
Additionally, learning nuanced language and meaningful sequencing will improve with further yoga teacher education. Mindful communications and motivational interviewing between yoga teacher and client allow the client to form their plan. The teacher also has insights and information to create a positive experience, including phrasing and guidance to coax incessant and destructive thoughts into oblivion.
There are opportunities to broaden your yoga teacher education further, perhaps working towards advanced yoga teacher certifications. Learning more about Ayurveda, yoga therapies, anatomy and physiology will help one understand wellness from new angles. Yoga is a powerful force that has many benefits alongside traditional treatments for mental imbalances.
We Invite You to Enroll in Advanced Yoga Teacher Training Online at Prema Yoga Institute (RYS300 | IAYT-accredited)
We hope this article gave you some insight on how a yoga teacher can pursue advanced teacher trainings in healthcare to better serve clients. We’d love to take this opportunity to invite you to consider enrolling in Online Advanced YTT at Prema Yoga Institute (RYS300). Prema Yoga Institute is a certified Yoga Alliance RYS300 and offers many valuable trainings for yoga teachers interested in utilizing yoga in a healthcare setting. Visit PYI’s website to begin or continue your journey to better serve your clients.
Enrollment Now Open for “Yoga for Cardiac Care”
Teaching stress management and body awareness to cardiac patients is now approved by the American Heart Association’s official guidelines. As yoga professionals, we can translate ancient, evidence-informed techniques to help the students enforce a heart healthy lifestyle, adhere to regular physical activity, increase post-surgical mobility, and reduce anxiety and depression. Perfect for yoga teachers, psychologists, physical and occupational therapists. This is an in-person course with an online option; featuring teacher, Sonja Rzepski, C-IAYT and guest faculty Dr. Millie Lee.
In this course:
Explore how a yoga & meditation practice can significantly support students at risk or living with heart disease.
Learn the cardiac science and physiology behind the "down-regulating" aspects of chair yoga, Yoga Nidra, meditation and pranayama. • Learn the risk factors of heart disease.
Review cardiac anatomy, types of coronary artery disease, testing, procedures, surgeries, and contraindications, with a cardiologist.
Teaching the spectrum of students from - at risk to post-operative recovery.
Adjusting the appropriate yoga for chair or supported supine positions.
Adapting the practice for weight management, depression, and anxiety. • The science of correct pranayama for the cardiac student.
How the Ashtanga 8 limb path and the Yoga Sutras are applied to the cardiac student.
Nidra Meditation specifically for the cardiac student.
Adjustments and sequencing for the cardiac student.
Meditations for recovery, heart healthy lifestyle adherence, and mental balance.
How to use the doshas (body/personality types) diagnostically in teaching cardiac students.
*Students may take this course as an online option; please see pricing below.
Enroll in Online Advanced Yoga Teacher Trainings at PremaYogaInsitute.com
Prema Yoga Institute is longer limited to New York City and is now available online with interactive trainings through 2022. PYI is an IAYT-accredited program based in New York city with a certified Yoga Alliance RYS300, teaching students around the globe through online classes. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you advance your yoga practice and teaching!
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