Читать книгу Yoga Therapy as a Whole-Person Approach to Health онлайн

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The word “-pathy” is the postfix to stress “feeling” or “suffering,” and is used in words such as antipathy or sympathy. In modern language it is often used with the meaning of morbid affection or disease, such as neuropathy, psychopathy, or arthropathy, and hence it is also used in the names of systems of treating disease symptoms—allopathy, homeopathy, hydropathy, osteopathy.22 Yogopathy describes the use of yogic techniques in treating the symptoms of the disease. It is based on pathogenesis, focusing on dealing with symptoms.

Modern yoga therapy’s focus on the physical symptoms can be useful at times. If facilitated skillfully, the client will experience to a certain degree the transformative power of yoga. This can be a stepping stone to motivate the client to accept more encompassing applications of yoga therapy, rather than simply recommending yogic techniques following the philosophy of “a pill for every ill.”

Managing and suppressing the manifested symptoms with yoga techniques is just as good or bad as modern allopathic medicine managing symptoms with pharmaceuticals. In such cases the focus is primarily on symptomatic management without ever getting close to the “real” cause of the disorder. How many doctors look at the emotional and psychological issues that are the primary cause of the problem in so many of their patients? The concept of psychosomatics in modern medicine is no older than a hundred years and few doctors think about how the mind induces disease in the body.