Zoe is a Yoga Therapist and is dedicated to the art of combining the best of Yoga, Ayurveda and Recovery.
Leadership – Education – Integrative Medicine
Yoga Therapy is a helpful form of healthcare that helps people self diagnose and manage their health problems, using yoga techniques and principles. It focuses on looking at all areas of the whole person instead of just a specific condition. Tools used are the specific doshas – Prakrit and Vikruti; the gunas dominance – sattva, rajas or tamas and the kosha’s – annamaya kosha, pranamaya kosha, manomaya kosha, vijnamaya kosha and anandamaya kosha.
Known as Yoga Chikitsa, Yoga Therapy has been an important part of yoga passed down through many years. Its main goal is to promote wellbeing by using yoga tools along with healthy eating, breathing and natural lifestyle choices.
What is Yoga Therapy?
Yoga Therapy can be used alongside regular medical treatment to help a person deal with procedures and outcomes, ease symptoms, manage illness, and identify causes.
Yoga Therapy can be preventative, restorative, curative and palliative.
“Yoga Therapy is the process of empowering individuals to progress towards improved health and wellbeing through the application of the teachings and practices of Yoga” The International Association of Yoga Therapists.
What does a Yoga Therapist do?
In a private and therapeutic setting a qualified Yoga Therapist will:
- ask questions related to your presenting condition and past medical history
- observe and check your spinal alignment, a range of movement and condition of major joints and muscles
- design a personalised home practice to address key presenting concerns
- assess progress in follow-up consultations and adjust the practice where necessary towards reaching your goal
- refer to, and work with, other medical and complementary health professionals as required.
From Yoga Teacher to Yoga Therapist
Increasingly Yoga Teachers are seeking to improve their skills and increase their knowledge from the healing wisdom in the ancient art and science of Yoga Cikitisa.
Experienced Yoga Teachers know that yoga is intrinsically therapeutic at all constitutional levels. However, without adequate training and experience, there can be unintended adverse physical/physiological results.
Yoga therapy applies the ideas and methods of Yoga, modified to meet individual needs and achieve specific healing effects – Dr N Chandrasekaran, AAYT Board of Advisors
The strength of Yoga Therapy lies in the daily practice recommended by your Yoga Therapist – Karine Shellshear, AAYT President, 2017.
