What is integrative yoga therapy?
There’s a big difference between a yoga teacher and a yoga therapist, and integrative yoga therapy (IYT) puts you on track to become the latter. It’s an entire teacher-training program based on the therapeutic use of yoga. Graduates are prepared to teach yoga one-on-one or to groups with specific needs or challenges, such as prenatal, seniors, cancer, and heart disease.
Health professionals are already seeing yoga accepted into mainstream wellness approaches at hospitals, businesses, and universities. Since yoga is taking on a wider role in modern life, IYT takes yoga beyond the classroom and into the community, promoting wellness and personal transformation. This transformation is one of unity, healing at physical, emotional, and spiritual levels.
The IYT approach is an authentic representation of yoga, including asana, pranayama, meditation, yoga nidra, mudra, and mantra. Even at the beginning level, students are taught how asanas work physically, emotionally, energetically, and spiritually. Students at the higher level learn in-depth how each of these facets of yoga can be used to heal all levels of being.
The man behind the method
IYT was founded in 1993 by its present director Joseph Le Page. Then a yoga teacher of 20 years, Joseph wanted to create a more spiritual approach to yoga therapy that was no less applicable in the Western world.
“I wanted to create a training program with the focus on yoga as a healing art which would be student centered, non-dogmatic and in alignment with the latest approaches to teaching, while remaining deeply rooted in the vast treasury of wisdom within the yoga tradition.” —Joseph Le Page
Bringing together Joseph’s insights through travels in more than 100 countries, IYT connects healing arts with creative education.
With his wife, Lilian Le Page, Joseph directs one of South America’s largest yoga centers, the Enchanted Mountain Yoga Center in Brazil, and teaches yoga classes in Spanish, Portuguese, and English.
How to get certified
IYT offers several levels of yoga teacher training, beginning with their 200-hour Therapeutic Yoga Teacher program. The course is offered in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Spain with both residential and non-residential options. After completing the course, you’re eligible to register with Yoga Alliance as a 200-hour RYT.
The next level is their 300-hour Advanced Teacher of Therapeutic Yoga program. IYT also offers an 800-hour Professional Yoga Therapist program.
And for students who want to deepen their understanding of yoga from a therapeutic angle, IYT also offers a one-year Yoga Home Study program.
These teacher-training courses provide an array of assessment tools and yoga techniques to develop balance at physical, energetic, psycho-emotional, intuitive, and spiritual levels.
Accredited by the International Association of Yoga Therapists, IYT can help students who want to learn how to teach yoga with a special focus on healing. Study the five koshas, join Joseph and Lilian for a yoga vacation in Brazil, or unify the mind, body, and spirit. Whatever path you decide, the journey awaits.
Welcome to the future of yoga.
Reference: “Training Programs”. Integrative Yoga Therapy. Integrative Yoga Therapy. Web. 9 Nov. 2014.
