What is Healing Yoga
Healing Yoga is a method of paying attention to the things that make yoga a healing practice, one that removes the obstacles to healing and experiencing our wholeness.
The Yoga Sutras mention obstacles to enlightenment called klesas, also called “the primal causes of suffering” by Mukunda Stiles in his translation of the Yoga Sutras. The klesas are as follows: not knowing who we really are, mistaking ourselves for our activities, clinging, aversion and fear of death. In other texts, other obstacles are listed. In health and well being, where there is dysfunction there is an obstacle. Yoga, in general, works not to build but to reveal - not to add but to simplify. Healing is a process of revealing the underlying wholeness of the being and helping them to experience that, to feel that. No yoga pose is a cure for anything, except inactivity. But practice of combinations of postures over time can reveal and resolve our experiences of ourselves in transformative ways.
I’ve organized my research into how yoga does this into 6 categories, the principles of Healing Yoga.
The mechanisms that allow yoga to remove obstacles to healing, transforming us and our very desires slowly, over time, are what make yoga different than a “work out.” Together they have enormous transformative capacity.
Yoga as a practice. This requires repetition and regularity. A little each day is actually preferable to a lump all once once a week. This is called “dose dependent effect.” In addition, practicing energetically, in a yin fashion and in restorative fashion are all necessary and complimentary ways of engaging the postures — asanas — of yoga and have their place in our practice. Energetic practice engages muscles and produces warmth in the body. Yin practice is a practice of surrender and exploration of intense (not painful) sensation. Restorative practice is a practice of fully supported rest.
Yoga Asana (poses) are containers for exploring our sensory awareness of our internal landscape. Sensation heals — not our words and stories about sensation — actually sensing our present moment, ever changing experience. Interoception — sensing the inside of your body — switches the brain from stress to healing responses. Furthermore, yoga asana are meant to compliment one another in sequences that proceed by counter-pose — like counterpoint, but in your body. Nearly every joint is moved in its natural planes of motion in a full yoga practice. Forward folds are followed by backbends and visa versa. Twists counter backbends, too, and they are their own counter poses.
Breath inspired movement: Your breath does so much more than integrate oxygen and offload carbon dioxide. Your breath moves lymph, massages your digestive tract and organs — now considered a second brain by functional doctors and theorists, triggers your nervous system, interacts with your cardiovascular system, and more. Krishnamacharya instructed that knowing how to breathe is like being able to do surgery without instruments.
True Core: yogis figured out millennia ago that there are only 3 lateral soft tissue structures in the body and that they are key for balance, integreation, movement, spinal decompression and even locating ourselves in space. They named these bandhas, or locks — like on a river, raising or lowering a boat from one level to another. These are the foundation of core movement and the foundation of all true yoga asana. You can work your “abs” all day long and never once move from or sense your true core. But when you start with the bandhas — true core — you not only rewire your nervous system, let go of stress habits, but your “abs” are automatically engaged.
Uniqueness: This is really part of practice, but it’s worth singling out after understanding the intervening 3 principles. The breath, core activation and asana that are appropriate for you are specific, and specific to time and conditions. Your practice in the morning is different than your practice in the evening, today is different than yesterday. This seems obvious but has profound consequence when taken seriously. You’re likely to share what you benefit from with others, so group practice is possible, but its best when it is at least in part tailored to you, your time, your conditions. Find teachers who are skilled at doing this.
Rhythms: the 2017 Nobel Prize was given to a team that found the first part of the mechanism for our circadian rhythms: the mechanism that allows our bodies to resolve inner and outer forces seamlessly all day long, with nature’s most profound and intricate pharmacy: your psycho-neuro-immuno (PNI) system. Yogis understood this millennia ago and created a whole system of health maintenance around it: Ayurveda. Taking the seasons, time of day, our own constitutions and rhythms into account allow our yoga practice to support our bodies’ natural healing response.
A Healing Yoga Practice is accessible to every body, adaptable to every ability, supportive for your entire spectrum of experience. Start to practice daily and cooperatively with the rhythms of nature, learn to sense and engage your True Core, breathe for your entire body and with attention to present moment sensation and feel the difference in well being, purpose and freedom.
