By Elena Voropay

You’ve heard about it for years—Yoga can improve posture, strengthen and tone muscles, and soothe stress away. You’ve watched friends with neon mats trotting off to class and dropping mysterious phrases like "downward dog" and "cobra”. But you, Yoga?

With different medical considerations, Yoga Therapy is more effective than general Yoga practice. It is used and advised by many doctors as a safe comprehensive approach to help treat many medical conditions, such as anxiety, low back pain, arthritis, hypertension, heart conditions, hyperventilation, asthma, irritable bowel syndrome, diabetes, multiple scelorosis, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. Yoga Therapy can also promote positive health for pregnancy and childbirth, mothers and babies, children, reproductive health in women and men, and the elderly.

This form of alternative medicine cultivates body/mind integration and a sense of harmony with life. It promotes the innate healing resources of the body, helping restore the proper functioning of the various bodily systems.

How Yoga Therapy Works

Have you felt frustrated after visiting a doctor when no-one could tell you what was wrong with your health? For most of us, there can be so many misinterpretations of the symptoms, so physical examination and correct diagnosis are the most difficult parts of the health professional. The reason is that the body functions as a unit and when the pain felt in one part of the body may actually mean that there is a malfunction somewhere else. This is where Yoga Therapy is excellent - it helps to restore and balance the entire system building up immunity to your current discomfort.

While conventional doctors simply treat the symptoms of your condition, which is great as it helps you get through the day, Yoga Therapy focuses on treatment of underlying roots of the sickness. The reason is that the human body is a union of many systems, one complete unit of Body, Mind and Soul. If any one of the systems is out of balance, everything else comes out of sync. Total well-being comes from the integration of Body, Mind and Soul and setting them on the path they meant to be.

Yoga grants you with an ability to listen to your body again and uncover what may be the real cause of your ailment.

Yoga is a unique path to changing your Body, Mind and Soul in a very interesting complete way. The increasing focus on the understanding of the union of mind, body and spirit has sparked many interests and ideas among scientists and researchers who now try to integrate Yoga practice into a wide range of medical approaches. This is encouraging as we are only at the very beginning of our breath-taking journey of exploration how Yoga can effect Body, Mind in Soul and open the doors to our terrific human potential.

Postures (Asanas)

The most widely known yogic practice is asana, (asana means "ease" in Sanskrit). It includes a variety of physical postures and exercises that create immediate changes in the body. There are two main types of asana today: meditative and therapeutic.
Meditative asanas bring the spine and head into perfect alignment, promoting proper blood flow throughout the body, and bringing the mind into a state of relaxation and stillness that facilitates increased concentration during meditation. At the same time, these asanas keep the glands, lungs, and heart properly energized.
Therapeutic asanas are geared toward improving health and physical well-being, and have been commonly prescribed for patients with back, neck, and joint pain. Originally, therapeutic asanas were designed simply to create a condition of ease in the body as a prelude to meditation, and were known as cultural asanas, or physical culture asanas. Only within the past fifty to seventy-five years have the postures been applied to specific physical disorders.

Breathing (Pranayama)

The connection of the breath and the mind is a basic principle of Yoga. As Yogis have known for centuries—and as medical science is beginning to discover—the breath has amazing recuperative powers. By controlling the breath, a practice called pranayama, you can alter your state of mind. Studies have demonstrated that the practice of pranayama can aid digestion, cardiac function, and a variety of other physical ailments. the mind is calm and focused, the breathing will be steady and rhythmic. If the mind is restless and agitated, the breathing will be restless and agitated.

A fundamental instruction in Yogic breathing practices is the elimination of any jerkiness in the breathing motion so as to maintain smoothly flowing breath.

This will then correlate with subsequent smoothness in the flow of thoughts, making Yogic breathing exercises very useful in calming the restlessness of the mind and creating clarity, focus, and heightened energy. Studies have demonstrated that the practice of pranayama can aid digestion, cardiac function, and a variety of other physical ailments.

Meditation

An integral part of Yoga, meditation is a practice which may help you achieve mental, physical and emotional balance. Meditation is the state of deep rest where you can rid yourself of stress, relax and centre your mind. As a result, you will find yourself making better choices and thinking more clearly. Researchers have found that people who started meditating regularly have improved their health, relationships, work efficiency, and generally are better able to fine-tune their priorities. There have been reports of higher self esteem in people who meditate.
Meditation has shown promising results in treating a wide variety of symptoms, including depression, hypertension, PMS, stress and anxiety. This is due to the fact that this form of practice and therapy has a splendid capacity to lower your heart rate and blood pressure by slowing down breathing which lowers the amount of oxygen needed for the body.
Many medical professionals reported that they use meditation as a wonderful tool for people with a variety of addictions, including smoking, alcohol and drug abuse.

Physiological Benefits of Yoga

Stabilising autonomic nervous system
Lowering blood pressure, heart rate, breathing
Improving cardiovascular function
Increasing joint range of motion
Strengthening muscles and bones
Normalizing digestion and elimination
Ameliorating postural alignment
Enriching sense of energy and well-being
Stabilizing circadian rhythms and sleep patterns
Improving balance, coordination, reaction, steadiness
Integrating functioning of body parts

Psychological Benefits of Yoga

Promoting better mood and subjective well-being increases
Increasing self-acceptance and self-actualization
Improving social adjustment
Lessening possibilities of anxiety and depression
Improving concentration, memory, attention and learning efficiency
Decreasing hostility, anger, negative self-thought

Biochemical Benefits of Yoga

Decreasing blood levels of glucose, sodium, total and LDL (bad) cholesterol, triglycerides
Increasing blood levels of HDL (good) cholesterol
Elevating metabolic rate by assisting thyroid function
Lowering stress hormone levels
Elevating Hematocrit and Hemoglobin necessary for good circulation
Boosting immunity
Minimizing inflammation through lowering total white blood cell count

Can you practice Yoga if you suffer from an illness which kept you from doing other physical activities? Absolutely! Using Yoga Therapy for your special condition will not only help you heal, but improve overall health and sense of well-being. The best part of it is that you don't need any previous experience in either Yoga or other physical fitness activities to engage in Yoga Therapy. A good practitioner should be able to tailor a program specifically to your needs and capabilities.

• Just by practicing for 30 minutes once a week appears to be an effective vaccine against stress.
• There is some evidence Yoga can ease the pain of carpal tunnel syndrome. 
• Through different asanas of Yoga you can strengthen your bones and muscles, improve joint mobility and easily reduce extra fat from our body – excellent for conditions such as arthritis, obesity, osteoporosis and age-related muscular degeneration.
• Yoga deep breathing helps in increasing the oxygen intake to the body cells and ease breathing for people with asthma.
  

As you practice Yoga, positive effects of begin to show in as little as five minutes. With regular practice, the sense of feeling good becomes so natural and so genuine that it takes over all your life perception. In this way it helps clarify deepest cravings, motivations and aspirations, restoring confidence, hope, meaning and rationale to life. We all like feeling good, peace of mind, being joyful, peaceful, animated and calm.

Choosing The Right Yoga Therapist For You

Yoga Therapy can be practiced in conjunction with any medical treatments you are already receiving, and also in tandem with other complementary therapies. Typically conducted one-on-one or in small groups, a session resembles an appointment with a physical therapist or rehabilitation specialist than it does a typical Yoga class. What sets this healing modality apart from others is the focus on linking movement to deep, rhythmic breathing. Another difference is the emphasis on relaxation. In fact, when someone is gravely ill, a therapist may suggest that the entire practice consist only of breath awareness and relaxation until the patient is ready to tackle more.

Yoga Therapists are experienced Yoga teachers, who have undertaken a further two-year Yoga Therapy Diploma Course which provides grounding in modern medicine and the application of Yoga to medical conditions. However, there is no universally accepted certification system for a Yoga Therapist. So, the type of training and number of hours a therapist has studied varies from person to person. For this reason, word of mouth and individual qualifications, as well your goals are still effective in quest of the right Yoga Therapist for you.

If you have a condition that requires knowledge of the physical body, like back pain or arthritis, find someone with substantial anatomy training. In case of a more serious medical condition—such as cancer, heart disease, or lupus—you'll need a therapist who understands the disease, the effects of medications, and contra-indications to practicing. Look for someone who has sought additional training in your specific condition or who has a background in a health care profession, like nursing or physical therapy.

Ask potential therapists how long they've been practicing Yoga therapy and how often they have worked with people who have your condition. As with most anything, the more experience someone has, the more equipped he or she will be to help you.

So, if you want to help your body heal, would like to harvest the fruits of Yoga Therapy, can stand up and take a step, then you should engage in Yoga Therapy. Every single benefit comes from being consistent. So, get up, take your first step towards Yoga Therapy practice, and repeat. We all have to start somewhere, and there is no better time than now.

The practitioner evaluates the client's body and finds where it holds stress. Then, using extremely light touches done through clothing, he uses fingers or thumbs stimulating two to eight points on the body, typically working from the torso outward. In your first session it’s usually points on the back, neck, shoulder, hamstrings, and knees that are stimulated; gradually additional points are added in areas where stress is discovered.

An unusual feature of Bowen therapy is that after applying small adjustments, he/she would leave the patient several times during a session. This time gives the body a chance to rest and contemplate on the changes that are happening in the body. As the body responds to the therapist’s skillful touches, it’s own neuromuscular reflexes begin to release stiffened joints, relax muscles, and improve the circulation of blood, lymphatic fluids, and energy.

Osteopathy is a system of manual medicine that uses a wide variety of "hands-on" techniques to treat conditions affecting the body's musculo-skeletal system and its organs. Although often regarded as a "complementary" therapy, osteopathy is widely accepted by the medical community - indeed osteopaths in the USA are also licensed medical practitioners. In Australia, osteopathy is currently one of the fastest growing of all the therapeutic professions.

Osteopathy is promoted as an alternative method to ease pain, improve quality of life, minimize the side effects of treatment, enhance other types of treatments, and extend the life of some cancer patients. Some proponents claim that people with cancer, heart disorders, high blood pressure, stomach disorders, and a variety of other conditions can benefit from osteopathy. When used along with conventional medicin, osteopathy may actually reduce the pain from arthritis, chronic fatigue, and some gynecological problems.