The practice should adapt to the person—not the other way around.
Yoga can be many things.
It can be exercise, meditation, philosophy, a spiritual practice, a way of working with breath, or simply a reason to move. Yoga therapy draws from that much larger tradition while asking a practical question:
That may involve movement or yoga postures. It may involve breathing, meditation, rest, attention, or exploring how you do something you already do every day.
And sometimes it may not look very much like what people imagine when they hear the word yoga.
You don’t need to be flexible.
You also don’t need to know any yoga.
There is no prerequisite level of strength, flexibility, balance, body awareness, or experience.
In fact, one of the things I find useful about yoga therapy is that we’re not trying to make your body better at performing yoga poses.
The pose is a tool.
If we’re using one, I’m more interested in what happens while you’re there: Where do you find support? Where are you working harder than you need to? What happens if we change the position slightly? Can you breathe comfortably? What do you notice? Does another possibility become available?
A movement can be very small and still give us a great deal of information.
More than stretching—and more than individualized yoga.
Yoga is often reduced to flexibility and physical postures.
But movement is only one part of the tradition.
Breathing practices, meditation, attention, rest, sound, visualization, philosophy, and other forms of inquiry have all been part of yoga for a very long time.
Yoga therapy gives us access to that much larger collection of practices without assuming that everyone needs the same ones.
That also means yoga therapy isn’t simply a private yoga class with exercises chosen especially for you.
Sometimes movement is central. Sometimes a practice may be almost entirely still. Someone with very limited mobility can work with yoga just as meaningfully as someone with an extensive physical practice.
The question isn’t “What yoga should you do?”
It’s “What might be useful for you?”
Someone dealing with persistent pain may need something different from someone who feels disconnected from their body. Someone recovering from an injury may need something different from someone who is exhausted, anxious, stiff, or simply curious about moving with greater ease.
There isn’t one practice that everybody needs.
How you move can matter as much as what you do.
Two people can perform something that looks almost identical from across the room and be having completely different experiences.
One may be comfortable and supported. The other may be holding their breath, gripping their jaw, pushing through discomfort, or concentrating so hard on doing it “right” that they barely notice themselves.
I’m interested in that difference.
Yoga therapy can give us a relatively simple environment in which to explore habits of effort, attention, movement, breathing, and response.
Sometimes changing the movement matters.
Sometimes changing how you are doing it matters more.
Yoga doesn’t have to be calming.
Yoga is frequently presented as something that should make us peaceful.
Sometimes it does.
But breathing slowly isn’t always calming. Closing your eyes isn’t comfortable for everyone. Being still can make some people more aware of pain, anxiety, agitation, or sensations they would rather not attend to.
There is nothing inherently wrong with those responses.
Rather than assuming a particular practice should regulate or relax you, we can notice what it actually does.
The practice can respond to you.
What people may explore through yoga therapy.
People come to yoga therapy for many of the same reasons they come to the rest of my work: pain, stiffness, restricted movement, stress, difficulty breathing comfortably, changes following injury, or a desire to understand their bodies differently.
Others already practice yoga and want help with something specific—a posture that consistently bothers them, an asymmetry they keep encountering, difficulty finding support in a particular movement, or questions about how their practice might adapt as their body or life changes.
Yoga therapy may involve developing practices someone can explore between sessions, but it doesn’t have to become homework. Sometimes what happens during the exploration itself is the useful part.
From yoga into the rest of my work.
Yoga was one of my earliest sustained ways of studying the body.
Over the years I’ve completed more than 2,000 hours of yoga training and became a Certified Yoga Therapist. But perhaps more importantly, teaching and practicing yoga led me toward many of the questions that eventually brought me to Rolfing®, somatic movement, craniosacral work, meditation, pain science, and the rest of what I study today.
What makes movement easier?
Why can the same practice help one person and aggravate another?
Why does understanding what we’re doing not necessarily change how we do it?
What happens when we stop trying to make a body conform to an idea of how it should be?
Those questions still inform how I work, whether or not we’re doing anything that looks like yoga.
Yoga therapy as I practice it.
I don’t have a standard sequence that I give everyone.
We might work standing, seated, lying down, or moving around the room. We might explore something recognizable as a yoga posture, modify a movement you already do, work with breathing, or spend time noticing something quite small.
My other work inevitably influences what I see. Structural Integration may shape how I understand support and movement. Somatic work may draw my attention toward perception and choice. Craniosacral and visceral work may change how I understand something happening through the ribs, diaphragm, spine, or pelvis.
Yoga therapy becomes another way of exploring the whole person rather than a separate system I need to impose.
You don’t have to become a yogi.
You don’t need special clothes, a yoga mat, flexibility, or a regular practice. You can come because something hurts, because a movement isn’t working the way you’d like, because you want something you can explore at home, or because you’re curious about your body.
The practice can begin with you.