Being Healthy Human Beings
Feb 15, 2017
Excerpted from the "Introduction" to Yoga Therapy: Foundations, Methods, and Practices (712 pages, forthcoming November 2017, North Atlantic Books/Penguin Random House)
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Yoga is now part of the zeitgeist of most Western societies just as these societies are undergoing tremendous challenges to advances in health, wellbeing, and life expectancy. Amid fast paced lives and increasing socio-economic pressure, stress is a leading cause of illness and a leading motivator for doing yoga. We also live in a global environment beset by rapid climate change, resistant infectious organisms, and social dislocation and alienation that reflect and are exacerbated by the very globalizations in which most of us actively participate. Yet human beings are naturally healthy. According to the World Health Organization, being healthy means βa state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.β The alternative definition given by Andrew Weil, M.D...
About This Book
Feb 15, 2017
Excerpted from the "Preface" to Yoga Therapy: Foundations, Methods, and Practices (712 pages, forthcoming November 2017, North Atlantic Books/Penguin Random House)
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Many people come to yoga classes with acute or chronic conditions of compromised health, or ordinary conditions such as pregnancy, that indicate the value of a specialized or adapted practice. In any given large yoga class there are usually students who have at least some minor ache or condition that suggests modification of postural and breathing practices. What are those modifications? How might you best communicate with, assess, and guide students with any one (or more) of a number of different conditions? How can yoga be part of healing? How can it support a feeling of wholeness and greater vibrancy in oneβs life? How can you go further in offering yoga as a therapeutic tool β yoga chikitsa β as a yoga therapist working with private clients?
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These are a few of the motivating questions at the heart of this book....
