What is a Yoga Therapist?
I am a yoga therapist. No, I am not a psychotherapist or physical therapist. Yoga therapy is an emerging field in response to the popularity and effectiveness of yoga for healing. The most common question I get is: “Since all yoga can be therapeutic, all yoga is yoga therapy, right?”
My response is: chatting on the phone with my closest friend can be quite therapeutic, but that doesn’t mean she is practicing psychotherapy. Yoga therapists have additional and specialized training.
To be a yoga teacher, it usually takes 200 hours of training. To be a yoga therapist, it takes at least 1000 hours. Also, yoga therapy is usually done one-on-one or in small groups of people with similar conditions or life situations. For example, a group of people with anxiety or depression may go to an eight week course together with a teacher that adapts the practice specifically for them.
It is key that yoga therapy is adapted for individuals by a highly trained therapist. Despite a lot of hype in the media, research shows that because of these adaptations, yoga therapy is safe, even for those with compromised health. This is particularly true when comparing a therapeutic class to a more vigorous general class routine.
I must start by establishing a key point: No serious doctor who works with evidence-based medicine would recommend yoga as a first choice to any patient. This is due to the fact that double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials with sufficient statistical and clinical power to give an adequate recommendation have not been carried out in any pathology.
ReplyDeleteOnce this point has been clarified, it must be said that there is an extensive list of pathologies in which yoga has been used and some benefit has been reported, but, again, without sufficient statistical and clinical power to give an adequate recommendation.
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