Yoga therapy integrates yoga with conventional medicine to promote physical, mental, and emotional well-being. It empowers individuals through personalized practices, helping manage symptoms, restore balance, and enhance vitality. As a proactive approach to health, it complements medical treatment and supports long-term wellness.

Yoga Therapy & Integrative Health: What You Should Know 

Health is the foundation upon which everything in our lives is built. Without it, our dreams, ambitions, and everyday joys are often out of reach.

What does it mean to be healthy? The word “health” comes from the Old English word hælþ, which means "being whole, sound or well," and has the same etymological roots as the words whole, holy, and heal. 

True health encompasses much more than the absence of illness; it’s a holistic state of physical, mental, and emotional well-being.

Health As A Spectrum: Why Yoga Therapy?

We can envision health as a continuum that extends from illness to optimal well-being. Dr. Jack Travis, one of the pioneers of the modern wellness movement since the late 1970s, calls it the Illness-Wellness Continuum.

^{Illness-Wellness Continuum adapted from Dr. Jack Travis. Source: Global Wellness Institute}

On one side of the spectrum, individuals with poor health rely on the medical system to address illnesses, engaging reactively and intermittently with doctors and healthcare professionals for treatment. On the other side, people take a proactive approach, focusing on prevention and enhancing their vitality.

They adopt behaviors and lifestyles that prevent disease, improve their health, and elevate their quality of life and overall well-being.

The healthcare system's medical paradigm typically follows a reactive approach, concentrating on identifying the causes, consequences, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases and injuries.

On the other hand, wellness embraces a proactive approach, emphasizing prevention, healthy living, and the pursuit of optimal well-being.

Integrative Health Care – The In Between 

Integrative healthcare occupies the space in between. It is an approach that combines conventional medical treatments with evidence-based complementary therapies to address the whole person—mind, body, and spirit.

In integrative healthcare, the focus is not just on treating symptoms but on improving the patient’s overall health, using a combination of strategies that may include specific therapeutic approaches and lifestyle changes. The treatment plan is often personalized to the individual's needs, and there is a strong emphasis on collaboration between the patient and healthcare provider. It's all about fostering a partnership and, together, developing customized strategies that lead to optimal wellness.

Yoga Therapy & Integrative Health Care – Where It Fits 

And this is exactly where yoga therapy fits in. Yoga therapy applies the principles and practices of yoga to help individuals facing health challenges manage their condition, reduce symptoms, restore balance, increase vitality, and improve outlook. 

Yoga therapists conduct personalized assessments, set goals, develop tailored therapeutic programs, and recommend lifestyle changes. When yoga therapists assess their students and chart the course for their work together, they must take into account all aspects of each student’s mind, body, and spirit, as well as the student’s family situation, work environment, socioeconomic status, and cultural context.

They must also consider each student’s habits, routines, values, beliefs, and rituals.

The International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT), an organization that has done extensive work on developing and defining the field of yoga therapy, describes the yoga therapist’s scope of practice as follows:

“The yoga tradition views each human being as a multidimensional system that includes numerous aspects—including body, breath, and mind (intellect and emotions)—and their mutual interaction. Yoga therapy is founded on the basic principle that intelligent practice can positively influence the direction of change within these human dimensions, which are distinct from an individual’s unchanging nature or spirit. The goals of yoga therapy include eliminating, reducing, and/or managing symptoms that cause suffering; improving function; helping to prevent the occurrence or re-occurrence of underlying causes of illness; and moving toward improved health and well-being. Yoga therapists draw from the principles of yoga and the full range of yogic practices and assessment skills, as well as familiarity with biomedical and psychological foundational knowledge.”

A qualified yoga therapist can help the student gradually move from the reactive medical paradigm toward the proactive wellness paradigm in their health management.