The First Principle of Therapeutic Yoga

The first and most important principle of working therapeutically with a yoga practitioner is not to cause harm, not to make things worse. Part of what you need to do to do this is to find out what will potentially cause damage and what is causing the damage in the first place. What makes this complicated is that it could be any number of things. It could be something the person is doing while practicing. It could be something the person does while they are sleeping or during any other daily activity. If all you do, in working with someone who has an injury, is help that person remove the source of the problem you have done something really monumental in leading that person towards the direction of health. With most injuries, if the source of the problem is removed then the person’s body will heal itself over time. If you figure out what is creating a problem, understand what that is, and change the patterns that are causing the damage, replacing them with something that will not cause harm, something positive, things will usually just get better.

Therapeutic work in yoga is usually more complicated than just the simple physical level of things, but this is really a good place to start. And it is interesting that sometimes this works with deeper emotional stuff as well. Finding your way to the root of a problem, understanding it, and replacing damaging patterns of behavior with useful ones can do amazing things.

Knowing what exercises will make a physical problem better without addressing the root cause of the problem can really end up being like putting a band-aid on a cut that needs stitches.

Of course this is my opinion but.... :)

Peace.

UpSideDownCarl