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

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At one extreme, the general push for acceptance into existing healthcare systems and structures has created a reductionist definition of yoga therapy. Within the medical paradigm this results in yoga being limited to what fits neatly into such a system—working within a medical diagnosis and using asanas and pranayama to deal with the symptoms of disease in a prescriptive manner. This approach typically offers yoga for a certain symptom or diagnosis. It also often refers to meditation as existing outside of yoga, that is, yoga and meditation. For some, this is yoga therapy without the essence of yoga.

At the other extreme is the comprehensive definition of yoga therapy as a “psychospiritual technology,”1 based on the process of enhancing or promoting the healing through empowering the client. This paradigm deals with the whole person, where the disease is understood as the lack of balance in the multilevel existence of humans. With its own assessment tools, such an approach “creates a safe environment for enquiry by the client, to empower them to create new responses, free of their former reactive patterns of behavior.”2