So You Want to Be a Yoga Therapist…

I’m willing to bet you remember the first time you realized the healing benefits of yoga. Maybe you came to the practice to build strength or gently restore movement to an injured body part. Maybe you noticed how it can help to alleviate the aches and pains many of us accept as part of life, or you noticed the deep sleep or calmer mind that came after a yoga class. Whatever it is, most yoga practitioners can identify healing properties of the practice. 

That feeling is the gateway to the practice of therapeutic yoga. Therapeutic yoga aims to maximize these benefits and apply them consciously when an imbalance or injury is present. It is a way of applying the eight limbs of yoga in support of mental and physical wellness.

Who are Yoga Therapists?

Above all, a yoga therapist must embody the belief that yoga can be used in support of healing. A yoga therapist never takes the place of a doctor, nurse, or other licensed medical professional, but should be open to working with these individuals as part of a client’s team. Yoga therapists do not diagnose, but instead use our skills to help support healing.

A yoga therapist may work privately with clients, such as those who are recovering from an injury or dealing with a mental or physical health condition that makes practicing in group environments not possible. Increasingly, you can also find yoga therapists in clinics or hospitals. Of course, many yoga therapists also teach in yoga studios, often blending therapeutic principals into their hatha yoga classes. It’s always a great idea to practice with a yoga therapist, as you’ll likely minimize your chances of being injured through uninformed instruction or touch.

Some of the populations yoga therapists work with include: seniors citizens, individuals struggling with addiction, incarcerated individuals, cancer patients, cardiac patients, individuals suffering from PTSD and other mental illnesses, survivors of sexual assault, athletes recovering from injury, and more.

How to Become a Yoga Therapist

Most yoga teachers in the West have completed a 200-hour accredited training program. These programs vary widely in depth, lineage and quality. To become a yoga therapist, however, is a far more in-depth process. Yoga therapists start out with a 200-hour certification, and then continue their studies with a program overseen by the International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT), the governing body that works to promote the practice of therapeutic yoga and establish and maintain standards for yoga therapists.

IAYT requires that students undergo an additional minimum 800 hours of education in therapeutic aspects of yoga. These hours can include education in topics such as Ayurveda, anatomy, yoga for trauma recovery, meditation and more. Most students will also complete a practicum in which they study individually with a teacher in a specific area of therapeutic yoga and produce a thesis or other observation that supports the work they are doing. 

There comes a point when many yoga therapists in training – myself included! – realize the immense commitment an IAYT certification requires. Many of us juggle families, jobs and a loaded teaching schedule, all while making the significant commitment of time and money to complete this training.

That said, we yoga therapists are a unique and committed bunch. We’re pioneering to bring an ancient Eastern practice and apply it in a context of Western illnesses and treatments. We are the holders of a healing tradition that is just in its infancy in terms of being recognized as a complimentary healing modality in the U.S. The field of therapeutic yoga is small but growing; yoga therapists are increasingly being accepted as part of patients’ care teams, and physicians are increasingly prescribing yoga to patients of all kinds.

Next Steps

If you feel called to contribute to healing through yoga, here are some steps to take:

• Get clear on your “why” – have you experienced yoga healing yourself or someone else? Is there a particular population you feel you can help as a yoga therapist? It is helpful to have this front of mind as you move through your training.

• Take stock of your resources – we all come from unique backgrounds, and we all have experience that can help us as yoga therapists. Perhaps you’re a doctor who works with a certain population that can benefit from yoga, or you’re a social worker, or you’re the parent of a child with special needs. Know what you have going for you so that you can apply what you learn.

• Make the commitment – Becoming certified as a yoga therapist is a big commitment – I like to think of it as an alternative master’s degree – and most schools require that you complete the required courses in a couple years’ time. Be sure you are in a place in your life where you can reasonably make that commitment.

• Find a yoga therapy school – There are yoga therapy schools throughout the world, with most in the United States, Canada and India. At the time of publication, there were only about 50 schools worldwide that have earned the prestigious IAYT accreditation – the gold standard of university-level education. You can learn more by contacting us at Prema Yoga Institute, or you can start here. 

In the words of T.K.V. Desikachar, who is widely thought of as the founder of therapeutic yoga, “Taking an intelligent approach means working toward your goal step by step.” Will you join the rest of us on this intelligent approach to becoming yoga therapists?

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Hannah Slocum Darcy is a yoga teacher and a student at Prema Yoga Institute. She specializes in accessibility and adaptive practice for many life stages and scenarios.

A Yogi's Perspective: COVID-19

The United States diagnosed its first COVID-19 victim in early January 2020. My concern and curiosity for this person still exist today.

The CDC confirmed the United States has the most massive death toll in the world. More than 45,000 have died in the U.S. due to the spread of COVID19, and growing (at the time of publication). The once, mysterious pneumonia that sickened dozens in Wuhan China is a pandemic and has literally taken our breaths away. 

Behind every documented number, there is a name, a person, a death. Health-care workers, teachers, our precious elders in nursing homes, athletes, politicians, police officers, grocery store clerks, transit workers, parents, and their children, our grief has had no boundaries. We are living in unprecedented trauma.

As yogis, we know our yamas (social restraints) and niyamas (self-discipline). In the Yoga Sutras, our definitive collection of 196 Sanskrit texts, written between the second century BCE and the fifth century C.E., outline the eight limb paths of the purification of mind and body for yogis.

The Eight Limbs, including the yamas and niyamas, are asanas (postures), pranayama (breathe work), pratyahara (sense withdrawal and non-attachment), dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation) and samadhi (the realization of the true self).

These fundamental philosophies are our guides to relate and make our way through the world. They are a yogi’s path to cultivating a steady mind and calming bliss. We share these spiritual, areligious philosophies with our students through lessons of mindful meditation, the physical practice of our asanas, and the instruction of conscious breathing.

Yet never in our lifetime have our challenges been so grave. Here, we know pratyahara, the conscious withdrawal of the senses — has profound meaning beyond its simplistic translation of detachment from life. As this pandemic unfolded here at home, we've responded, not with rigidity of emotion. On the contrary: We pushed aside our fears of closed studios, loss of sole proprietor incomes, canceled events, and most significant the fear of COVID-19.

We've rallied. As we found solace in our teachings, the practice of pratyahara enabled us to make space between the world around us and our responses to it. It didn't mean running away, because we don't get to exist in this world without the pain and discomfort that comes with it, but we do get to choose how we react to it. 

Like nature, we have found a way – through our cell phones, Facebook, Instagram, Zoom, on our balconies, we found a way -- and we made yoga available to everyone! Black, brown, white, low-income, and affluent communities, we choose how to respond.

The images. We all have them. They play over and over again in my head. Sometimes closing my eyes just for a few seconds breaks my heart. A bus driver, an average guy, responsible father, dedicated employee, merely doing his job, dead, COVID-19. One man, times 41,000+, and counting. Debating how and why we got here doesn't respond to the crucial need for yoga practitioners at hand. 

Our yoga challenge is embracing our intentions while learning to be uncomfortable with our fears, offering calm when we all need it most. Let's continue this conversation. How are you sharing your light?

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Renee Harriston is Yoga Therapist Candidate at Prema Yoga Institute. She teaches Therapeutic Yoga at Kula For Karma, a stress management program to those recovering from mental health, trauma, and addiction challenges. Renee is a Graphic Artist and former Journalist for CBS and NBC News.

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Feeling Anxious? How to Breathe your Way to Calm

In these challenging times, when anxiety can seem to hit us like a wave, it can be difficult to know where to turn for relief. The options for relief can feel overwhelming, expensive, unavailable or time-consuming. But of the most accessible and effective ways to bring calm is already within us – our breath.

Each of us takes as many as 30,000 breaths in a single day. Most of those breaths go unnoticed, but in fact, they can be a key tool to optimizing our health and wellbeing.  As one of the eight limbs of yoga, breath work, or pranayama, is itself a practice just like asana or meditation, and it can take different forms – from simply breathing deeply into the belly, to more advanced manipulations of the breath. Each pranayama practice serves a purpose – whether to calm anger, bring in more energy, or reduce anxiety.

So how does it work? Breath is tied to the nervous system. When we inhale, we activate the sympathetic nervous system, or the ”flight or fight” response. Think about when you are startled by a noise outside your home at night, and gasp. When we exhale, the parasympathetic nervous system is activated, enabling us to calm and enable healing. Think about the deep sigh of relief when you realize that what startled you is just the wind.

To function optimally on a daily basis, we need both aspects of the nervous system to operate in tandem to keep us safe and well. However, when anxiety is high, we need to focus more on turning on the parasympathetic nervous system and eliciting a relaxation response to bring balance.

Here are some pranayama exercises you can try to help bring calm when anxiety is high.

1:2 Ratio Breath – Perhaps the most straightforward way to use the breath to trigger the relaxation response is to emphasize the relaxing aspect of the breath as described above – the exhale. If you feel yourself getting anxious, but don’t have the space or time to sit down for a more involved pranayama practice, you can easily welcome in calm simply by extending your exhales longer than your inhales.

For several breath cycles, try inhaling deep into the belly for a count of four, and exhaling fully for a count of eight. You can do this for as long and as often as you need to help bring a sense of calm.

Nadi shodhana – This breath, also referred to as alternate nostril breathing, works to balance the subtle energetic channels of the body – the ida and the pingala, which intertwine and spiral as they move up through the central channel of the body, representing the opposing forces of light and dark, night and day, energy and rest. Just like with the inhales and exhales, we seek to bring these two forces into balance for optimal wellbeing.

To practice nadi shodhana, bring the second and third fingers of your right hand to rest at your third eye center. Rest the right thumb on the right side of the nose, and the right fourth finger on the left side of your nose, tucking the right pinky finger in. Exhale all the air out the nose. Press your thumb against your nose, blocking the right nostril, as you inhale through the left nostril. Hold at the top of the inhale, then release the right nostril and block the left for the exhale. Hold at the bottom of the exhale. Keep the left nostril blocked as you inhale through the right, hold, then switch and exhale through the left nostril. Repeat for several minutes.

Sitali – Sitali, or the cooling breath, can help pacify some of the fiery pitta energy that largely corresponds to the sympathetic nervous system being switched on. Practice this and see if you feel more of a sense of cooling and calm. 

To begin, roll your tongue and bring it just outside of your lips, so it creates a kind of straw. If you cannot roll your tongue, bring it the roof of your mouth, where your palate meets the back of your front teeth. Inhale through the “straw”, drawing the air in through the mouth, and exhale the same way. Practice this for several minutes.

Healing Breath – This is a more advanced practice for which you’ll need a partner. One of you will take the seat of the healer, and the other, the seat of the receiver. The receiver should lie in a comfortable position to enable relaxation, while the healer sits next to them, as still as possible, maintaining a neutral mind. The healer will then gently rest their second and third fingers gently on the receiver, and mirror their breathing. Stay like this for up to 10 minutes.

This can help the receiver feel connected and supported. If the receiver works to breathe through the left nostril only, and the healer through the right nostril only, the two sides are balanced and healing can take place.

The ability to simply notice the breath and be more intentional about how it nourishes you is a hugely important step in calming your mind and body. Taking that a step further and implementing these pranayama practices can be transformative in helping manage during these anxiety-ridden times. Try them for yourself next time you feel overwhelmed or worried.

Interested in PYI's COVID19 response initiative - including breath exercises to prevent and manage the disease?  Please join our mailing list today.  

LINKS:

Calm with Yoga – Pranayama for Anxiety: The Ancient Drug-Free Solution
Kripalu – A LifeForce Yoga Breating Practice to Ease Anxiety and Depression

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Hannah Slocum Darcy is a yoga teacher and a student at Prema Yoga Institute. She specializes in accessibility and adaptive practice for many life stages and scenarios.