YOGA
THERAPY
AS A WHOLE-PERSON APPROACH TO HEALTH
LEE MAJEWSKI AND
ANANDA BALAYOGI BHAVANANI
FOREWORD BY STEPHEN PARKER
Contents
Part 1: Understanding Yoga as Therapy
1. Beginnings of Modern Yoga Therapy
2. Yoga Therapy and its Application
3. Yoga Therapy and Spirituality
4. Yogic Tools for Assessment and Health Evaluation
5. What Makes a Good Yoga Therapist?
Part 2: Chronic Disease and the Role of Yoga
6. Chronic Respiratory Diseases
10. Coping with Cancer—A Personal Journey
Part 3: Application of Yoga Therapy
Appendix 1: Guided Meditations
Appendix 4: Home Plan, Template
Appendix 5: Sample for an Individual Asana Sequence
Foreword
This work has been written by two authors with a profound respect for both scientific validation and for the depth and complexity of the yoga tradition, beyond what science can measure. Lee Majewski MA C-IAYT is a long-time yoga teacher and certified yoga therapist and a visiting faculty member of Kaivalyadhāma Yoga Institute, Lonavla, Maharashtra, India. Her personal experience of living with her cancer treatment provided the impetus for the design of the retreats described in the book. She is a frequent presenter in international conferences and has trained many therapists and yoga teachers in the conduct of the retreats. Ananda Bhavanani MD is a physician and certified yoga therapist who is also the successor of a venerable yoga lineage through his father, Swāmī Gītānanda Giri and their guru Kanakānanda Bhrigu, more familiarly known by his pre-monastic name as Ram Gopal Majumdar, “the sleepless saint” of Paramahansa Yogānanda’s Autobiography of a Yogi. Dr. Bhavanani directs a yoga therapy training program, the Center for Yoga Therapy Education and Research of the Śrī Bālāji Vidyāpītha, a deemed university and medical school in Pondicherry in South India.
This book serves a number of important purposes. The first part of the book is an excellent introduction to the philosophy of yoga therapy from a yogic perspective. As such it is much-recommended reading for those with a general interest in yoga therapy. It serves as a corrective to the drift of this budding profession towards becoming a sub-discipline of medicine and physical therapy, where yogic practices are applied prescriptively, solely according to a medical diagnosis. This is what Bhavanani calls “yogopathy.” Majewski and Bhavanani give a detailed account of what a “whole person,” yogic process of diagnosis would look like. It is not enough to simply criticize, and these authors have gone the extra mile to fill out how a yogic perspective might approach the work of healing. It is significant to remember that in English, as well as many other Indo-European languages, the word “heal” comes from the same root as “whole” and “holy.”
In addition to holding a respect for the depth of the practices of yoga, the book also maintains respect for the ancient Āyur-vedic medical system, authored, in part, by the same Patañjali who codified the yoga science. (This is the opinion of the oral tradition of yoga through my preceptors, Swāmī Rāma of the Himālayas and Swāmī Veda Bhāratī, not necessarily of Indological academics.) The practices of yoga have always been an important part of what an Āyur-vedic physician (vaidya) would offer people in addition to dietary prescriptions, herbal treatments and more. By looking at the whole person in context, the system provides not only holistic treatment, but, even more importantly, given the prevalence of chronic (habit-based) lifestyle illnesses today, a preventative focus that promotes long-term changes and improvement in the quality of life, particularly the cultivation of a resilient and joyful mind and heart.
One of the critical issues the authors tackle convincingly in conceiving holistic yoga therapy is the frequent disinclination of scientifically oriented yoga therapy to embrace the importance of spirituality to healing. This occurs despite a considerable body of empirical evidence which demonstrates that spirituality strongly potentiates healing. Here spirituality is understood as practices which facilitate a relationship with the highest levels of consciousness, rather than confusing it with religion,
