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Shatkarmas
(Cleansing Techniques) Yoga Asanas
(Postures and Exercises) Pranayamas
(Breath and Energy Techniques) Mudras and Bandhas
(Gestures and Energy Locks) Yoga Nidra
(Deep Relaxation or Psychic Sleep) Mantra Japa
(Meditation using a mantra)
Throughout the book I make frequent mention of yoga's application as a therapeutic healing modality. Yoga Therapy is simply a way of applying yoga techniques to "help alleviate" or "manage the symptoms of" any condition, illness or disease. Those phrases are in inverted commas to signify the broad recognition (amongst alternative health practitioners at least) of what are actually euphemisms for the term "cure". According to the law in this country, only registered allopathic medical practitioners are allowed to state that they can provide a cure - that is, only those modalities and those medicines which have been tested, researched and proven according to the randomised double-blind protocol are allowed to be called cures. (We won't go into just how many of these so-called "tested" "cures" actually do work, in comparison with the "untested" natural remedies of sciences like herbalism and yoga!). So, as a result of the legalities, all the other so-called alternative, complementary and non-mainstream healers have to say we know ways of "managing the symptoms" or "helping to alleviate the discomfort".
The very usage of the terms "therapy" and "healing" are even problematic nowadays. Therapy reminds many people of lying on the psychiatrist's couch (psychotherapy), or something required for a disability (physiotherapy). Amongst other things, bungee jumping and swimming with dolphins are now hailed as therapeutic. As well, anyone with a certificate of participation in any New Age weekend workshop can freely go home and on the Monday morning set up trade and promote themselves as "A Therapist".The word healing has also become so clichéd these days as to | |
mean very little,partly due to all the "therapists"running around requiring some word other than "cure" to describe their activities, and partly due to the trendy psycho-emotional weighting the term has acquired. A broken leg used to heal in a few months, but now we have people "healing" their past life traumas in just one consultation with a crystal therapist for only $45!
Whenever I use the words healing and therapy I always mean to indicate that it can take months and sometimes years, for physical and mental imbalances to resolve themselves fully and properly. It often takes many repeated efforts and much lifestyle reorganisation to fully resolve human traumas and, just like with a broken leg, it also takes patience and working in harmony with nature's own pace of evolution. Quick healing is rarely healing at all but often simply the realisation that a cause (be it true or false) has been identified. It can also be that a placebo effect has taken place. These situations lead a person to feel like the problem is no longer there (perhaps it never was!). Such problems can then recur in some other guise. For example, what good is giving up the smoking of cigarettes, if it only transfers into the taking up of something else to relieve tension, boredom, nervousness or suppression of one's feelings?
But in all true healing and therapy, it is not solely the outer symptoms nor solely the inner feelings which must be alleviated. It is the root causes of disparity between the inner and the outer life which need to be addressed and completely dissolved. Some wise person once said that there is only one disease, one illness in the world today - and that is spiritual anxiety or separation from our oneness. And I too believe, that to properly heal, to properly cure, we must address this separation, this non-unity (non-yoga) in our beings. This kind of healing cannot happen over night. It takes heaps of commitment, heaps of effort and heaps of time.
Sometimes alternative health practitioners call their work "preventative health care" and this is certainly true of yoga. Whilst cure of any condition is always a desirable outcome, prevention is certainly better - and cheaper! Since yoga, in any form, therapy or otherwise, is primarily a spiritual science, prevention and healing of physical and mental ailments are simply by-products of the practitioner's spiritual evolution. Yoga philosophy maintains that what we do today affects how we are tomorrow. It also states that for what we have done in the past, we can (to a great degree, but not always absolutely) repair with actions |
