Yoga Therapy (YT) is the emerging field of using traditional yoga concepts and techniques to achieve a targeted therapeutic effect. It uses and adapts the philosophy, art and science of classical yoga techniques in order to treat people’s physical and mental distress. It can be used to promote or enhance healing and well being and/or to bring ease for incurable health-related challenges.
The basic tenant of yoga and the YT approach is that the human being is an integrated body-mind system, which can function optimally only when there is a state of dynamic balance. As such, YT is an individual based approach (as compared to a disease/ condition based approach of western medicine) which seeks to balance all of the areas necessary for health.
Medical Therapeutic Yoga (MTY) is a specialized form of yoga therapy. It is the practice of yoga therapy by licensed health care professionals who have had specialized training in the YT area. It blends YT with contemporary western therapeutic practices in order to promote healing, optimize health and prevent disease. MYT can be used as a stand alone approach, or it can easily be combined with other therapies and medical interventions to achieve faster and more pronounced results.