Yoga is more popular now than ever. The benefits are recognized worldwide, and athletes and therapists rely on the practice. Yet its appeal is as varied as those who practice it. Regardless of your activity level and fitness background, yoga is truly for you. Yoga Therapy: A Personalized Approach for Your Active Lifestyle will help you see your daily activities in a new light by giving you a new understanding of movement. Whether playing sports or exercising for fitness, you’ll recognize your movement and identify the poses to make them more efficient. With detailed instructions and photos, you’ll be guided through the exercises, breathing, and visualization techniques to improve your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Comprehensive and accessible, Yoga Therapy demonstrates the most effective poses for mobility, strength, recovery, and balance as well as techniques to aid relaxation and help with stress management. No matter your age, experience, or desired goal, Yoga Therapy will empower you to create personalized approaches that are as unique as you are and learn how to adapt your practice to your changing needs and goals throughout life.

Yoga therapy holds the key to effectively addressing stress and lifestyle diseases. Conventional medicine is useful for alleviating symptoms, but yoga therapy that is grounded in traditional theory identifies and addresses causes deeper than the physical body. Yoga therapy practices build resistance to stress and increase resilience. Kazuo Keishin Kimura is a Raja Yoga Acharya who has devoted himself to making traditional yogic wisdom accessible in Japan. With this English translation of his book, he hopes to contribute internationally to yoga therapy's development as a respected modality. In this book, Kimura points out how traditional yoga theory is missing from modern-day yoga instruction. He then explains traditional yoga's view of the mind-body complex as five koshas (sheaths), each with specific functions and attributes. Just as medical doctors examine patients before deciding on treatment, yoga therapists must obtain informed consent and assess the conditions of all koshas. Understanding yoga's horse-drawn chariot metaphor for human structure and function is also helpful to see beyond symptoms and to identify root causes of disease. Kimura skillfully guides readers to understand these two theories of human structure and function, and illustrates how they can be incorporated into both yoga therapy assessment and practice.

Yoga Therapy: A Personalized Approach for Your Active Lifestyle is a comprehensive and practical guide for identifying and incorporating yoga movements into a new or existing routine. This detailed resource offers descriptions and images of awareness exercises and proven poses as well as providing techniques to help you create a personalized practice for better health and performance.

Understanding Yoga Therapy offers a comprehensive and accessible perspective on yoga therapy as a complementary, integrative route to promoting whole-person well-being. Readers will come away from the book understanding how the philosophy, texts, and teachings of yoga benefit a wide range of health conditions. The book is split into three helpful sections: Part I discusses foundational texts and their interpretations; Part II outlines the biopsychosocial-spiritual and neurophysiological model of integrative health pertinent to yoga therapy; and Part III focuses on practical applications separate from the more familiar diagnosis-driven models. Experiential activities and case studies throughout the text illuminate how yogic practices can be incorporated for optimal health. Bridging the ancient and modern, philosophical and scientific, Understanding Yoga Therapy offers a clear explanatory framework for yoga therapists, physicians, allied and complementary healthcare providers, and their patients and students.

Yoga for Trauma Recovery outlines best practices for the growing body of professionals trained in both yoga and psychotherapy and addresses the theoretical foundations that tie the two fields. Chapters show how understanding the safe and effective integration of trauma-informed yoga and somatic psychotherapy is essential to providing informed, effective treatment. Uniting recent developments in our understanding of trauma recovery with ancient tenets of yoga philosophy and practice, this foundational text is a must read for those interested in the healing capacities of each modality. Readers will come away from the book with a strong sense of how to apply theory, philosophy, and research to the real-life complexities of clients and students.

In this book, Lee Majewski and Ananda Bhavanani define yoga and yoga therapy as a whole person practice, demonstrating how it can help the individual to heal through their own mechanisms. The authors bring yogic concepts from theory into everyday life, exploring how yoga therapy can work with all levels of a human being at the same time (physical, energetic, emotional, intellectual and spiritual) and demonstrating that, when applied correctly, it can assist healing and facilitate an improved quality of life. The book covers deep yogic work and how it applies to cancer patients, as well as a range of other chronic conditions including respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. For each of these conditions the authors explore how yoga therapy can go beyond alleviating symptoms and work to heal the whole person.

While yoga was originally intended to be practiced for spiritual growth, there is an increasing interest in applying yoga in all areas of life. It is important to understand this ancient science and way of life through as many perspectives as possible (e.g., based on biomedical engineering). As its popularity and interest grows, more practitioners want to know about the proven physiological effects and uses in healthcare. The Handbook of Research on Evidence-Based Perspectives on the Psychophysiology of Yoga and Its Applications provides research exploring the theoretical and practical aspects of yoga therapy and its physiological effects from diverse, evidence-based viewpoints. The book adds in-depth information regarding the (1) physiological effects of yoga; (2) neurobiological effects of yoga meditation; (3) psychological benefits related to yoga, such as mental wellbeing; (4) molecular changes associated with yoga practice; and (5) therapeutic applications (for lymphedema, mental health disorders, non-communicable diseases, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and trauma, among other conditions). Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as pain management, psychotherapy, and trauma treatment, this book is ideally designed for yoga practitioners, physicians, medical professionals, health experts, mental health professionals, therapists, counselors, psychologists, spiritual leaders, academicians, researchers, and students.

Uncover fearlessness through yoga's methods and disciplines with this guide. This book offers a medically-proven approach to help students and clients uncover their own radiance that is hidden by fear and anxiety. Yoga offers a readily-accessible system for courageous living, and this book explains how to use simple and quick yoga therapy methods for accessing the vagus nerve, resulting in instant relief from symptoms of fear, including depression, anxiety and rage. It offers asana, pranayama and dhyana exercises that help to eliminate 'worry chatter', directly affecting the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for fearful thoughts. Addressing many components of fear, the book explains when fear is useful and when it is not, and teaches how to reprogram responses to uncertain circumstances so that they can be dealt with in a healthy way.

Once you have learned the basics of yoga, where do you go? This book has been written for teachers and serious practitioners who want to use yoga to bring complete balance to the body. Stiles provides a comprehensive overview of the spiritual philosophy of yoga and its many branches, and discusses everything that a beginning student needs to consider when choosing a practice, including how to find a yoga teacher. Then he shares his solid understanding of anatomy and kinesiology (how specific muscles and bones react during movement) so that you can understand how each asana affects your body.

Introducing practical, yoga-based tools for working with a wide array of common injuries and ailments, from ankle sprains to vertigo—by the bestselling author of Teaching Yoga With asanas, pranayamas, and meditations specific to each health condition, this is the ultimate guide for yoga teachers looking to adapt their classes to the diverse needs of their students. Surveying historical writings on yoga, ayurveda, and scientific medical approaches to health and healing, Mark Stephens distills this received wisdom of ancient and modern practices for more insightful and practical application in today’s world. He applies these insights to healing musculoskeletal injuries; promoting a healthy reproductive system; and addressing mental, emotional, and behavioral difficulties. With each health condition, Stephens applies yoga to the most recent evidence-based practices for healing, offering an integral place for yoga in integrative health practices. Yoga Therapy is a practical manual with a systematic approach of considering the nature of each health condition and the specific asanas, pranayamas, and meditations most helpful in healing it. Rather than adopting a narrow medical model of healing as the reduction or elimination of symptoms, Stephens invites yoga therapists, teachers and students to relate to health as a continuous, dynamic process of self-care in which the qualities of personal experience and social connectivity matter. Stephens illustrates that how we live our lives—including our emotional states, nutrition, sleep, relationships, and sense of purpose—is reflected in our sense of balance (or imbalance) and well-being (or disease). Comprehensive, accessible, and informed by decades of deep study, practice, and teaching, this is an indispensable reference.