Yoga as Physical Therapy

The roots of yoga have always been physical. With the upsurge of yoga as physical therapy, many say this is not traditional, not real yoga; that this is simply a reappropriation of the science of spiritual inquiry to suit our current body preoccupation.

But, hasn’t yoga as a therapy been the case for a long time? Certainly, a brief read of The Yoga Pradipika seems to suggest so. For, the mind is only as good as the body, and the energy it contains. After all, this is the basic premise of working with the body that yoga asana entails; the body stores the energy of the mind.

Furthermore, when challenges to our physical health preoccupy us, as anyone will tell you, it’s not the time to be able to focus on existential questions. So, the body is something we have to take care of before we can do anything else. This is just practical common sense.

But, regardless of theoretical explanations, in the first place, if we are experiencing practical proof of yoga as therapy working – as is the case when it is now incorporated in medical advice and treatment quite generally; who are we to say that something that increases the quality of life so greatly is not real yoga?

Even, so, some would have it, for some unknown reason, that a focus on the body contradicts that of the mind and metaphysical inquiry. It seems that we are still more influenced by the mind-body dualism which makes up the basis of Western reason than we might think; where it’s either one or the other.

Nevertheless, it is becoming clearer and clearer from our tradition of seeing the world, that the mind is a reflection of the body and vice versa. Indeed, the mind’s power to influence pain or lack thereof in the body is now fully accepted. So, with all this talk of the roots of yoga, why should we not assume that it has always been used to treat the body (and, hence, affect the mind)? Indeed, the roots of yoga may also be penance (basically, the discipline of holding the body still). But, first, we, surely, need a healthy body to do this.

And, the originators of modern yoga certainly took it that way; Shri Yogendra, BKS Iyengar, Swami Sivananda to name a few, started their teaching from the foundation of using yoga as therapy. Then, we might cast our mind back to the shadowy presence of Paramahamasa Madhavadasaji; the guru of Yogendra, Kaivalyananda, and, many suggest Krishnamacharya. He taught from what was a yoga as physical therapy rehabilitation centre in Gujarat.

To conclude then, what holism means is that every part of the body is related to a whole. So, if we are going to describe yoga as we do as holistic, whatever we do with the body is related to the deepest aim of yoga as self-understanding. This brings me to my only caveat with yoga as physical therapy; that it should not simply treat a part of the body as both cause and effect. Rather, it should expand the idea of cause as wide and deep as we can, until it takes in as much of our being as possible.