Who Owns Yoga Therapy?


Yoga therapy often weaves together with other healing arts partly because they are often programmed alongside one another in yoga studios. They also share common roots, such as ancient texts, practices and models of transmission. For example, it’s common for yoga therapy to be provided along with sound healing, energy medicine, and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practices such as tai chi. But while these practices might have once been called “therapeutic,” that description and the specific word “therapy” are now restricted in a yoga context to only apply to instruction from certified yoga therapists. Studio owners and healing arts practitioners now struggle to describe the therapeutic qualities of their classes that don’t fall under a yoga therapy umbrella despite shared attitudes and end goals for their work and their clients.

Thus, the use of the word “therapy” to refer to a type of care or class offering has become highly restricted among yoga professionals. The International Association of Yoga Therapy (IAYT) has placed restrictions upon its use and other professional organizations limit how it can be used as well. The Yoga Alliance, another dominant governing body for yoga teachers and yoga schools, bans the use of the words “therapist” and “therapy” in its online directories, for example, unless a teacher has specific yoga therapy training through a registered school. Tzipporah Gerson-Miller, C-IAYT, E-RYT 500, and the founder of Southern Yoga Therapy Association, says that because yoga therapy is not a regulated profession, “anybody could call themselves a yoga therapist with very little accountability.” She notes, “I think we [still] have some work to do in terms of further refining that term.”

Because of these restrictions, studio owners and other healing arts providers who might want to use the word “therapy” for what they do feel challenged by what they can program and provide. These limitations affect everything from marketing to hiring choices to what classes and workshops are offered.

Kim MacPherson, RYT 200, the founder of Crossroads Yoga Studio in Milton, says she’s very selective about who she hires and careful with the marketing language she uses. At Crossroads, “we don’t actually use the word ‘medicine’ or ‘therapy,’ but we use ‘healing,’” she says.

Marti Yura, E-RYT 500 and co-founder of Vista Yoga, explains that in lieu of “therapy,” she uses descriptors such as “accessible,” “energetically balancing,” “healing,” “relaxing and releasing” and so on. For her, these words help describe the effects of the practice, helping her to get around the restrictions on saying “therapy.”

MacPherson takes a similar approach. “As a studio owner,” she explains, “the distinction between therapy or medicine, it doesn’t matter; to me, if the people feel [the therapeutic benefit], that is what’s most important.” Yoga teachers who aren’t certified but have similar levels of training as certified yoga therapists, along with sound- and energy-healing providers, also feel the pinch as they can’t call themselves “therapists” or their work “therapy.”

Shared Approaches

Despite not being able to use certain titles and qualifiers any longer, sound and energy healers working beside yoga therapists in Atlanta share common attitudes and approaches with roots in ancient yogic lessons.

First, yoga therapists and others working in the healing arts want to serve as many people as possible. Regardless of their training or background, serving the whole community is their primary concern. Those with whom Natural Awakenings spoke also expressed the need for the greatest level of inclusivity possible and a fervent desire to meet the diversity of needs in front of them.

Studio owners are also increasingly leaning toward programming with as wide a variety of healing arts offerings as possible. “It keeps things fresh,” says Yura, “and very often helps to bring in individuals that may have not been to your space.”

For example, Vista Yoga’s studio programming includes regular sound baths and immersions because of the similar healing effects to something like yoga therapy. Yura explains that “for anything to be therapeutic, it must address the nervous system, facilitating a calming vagal response to reduce stress and anxiety.” She welcomes a diversity of practices that elicit calming responses. “Mindfulness. Pranayama. Meditation. Studies now show that sound and appropriate hands-on work can have a similar effect. Many of the programs we offer are a combination of these modalities with the intent of lowering cortisol levels and supporting the nervous system.”

Like Vista Yoga, Crossroads’ programming is also wide open, offering sound baths and immersions. “Between classes incorporating energetic work, energetic-focused workshops, a regular qigong offering and sound baths—people can come and get that kind of energetic re-boot.”

Biofield tuner Rebecca Carner notes the therapeutic importance of resonance and sound for moving energy, and Shane Orfas, an energy medicine healer, includes kirtan, a singing devotional practice, in his work. At the core of Carner’s work is the therapeutic benefit of resonant energy. “The science behind its efficacy relates to central nervous system regulation, somatic experiencing and tissue stimulation and manipulation,” she says.

According to Carner, biofield tuning facilitates a state of inner awareness, a practice yogis call svadhyaya.

Shared Attitudes

Those I interviewed also demonstrated a shared attitude of openness and detachment that is fundamentally grounded in the therapeutic yogic principles of equanimity and compassion. They stressed the importance of meeting each client with deep empathy and being present for whatever arises. They feel strongly that their methodologies are not so much prescriptive techniques or tools as they are pathways leading students home to themselves.

Carner says her biofield work is fundamentally rooted in empathy. “Regardless of individual or group application, biofield tuning demonstrates the power and efficacy of people being with people as medicine.”

Gerson-Miller refers to a “kinesthetic empathy,” a skill she honed in dance movement therapy, while Orfas describes this empathy as a kind of modeling a relationship to the Self. “If someone is being authentic with whatever is coming up—physical, mental, emotional—we are trained to be present with that, without any judgment of good or bad,” says Orfas. “Through being present with those conditions, you can shift into compassion through holding a space of tremendous empathy.”

A Shared Goal

Finally, the therapeutic goal shared by healing arts practitioners is a yogic one: to rest in one’s true Self. This is the fundamental lesson of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, delivered right at the beginning of the first of its four books.

Carner emphasizes the capacity for energy healing and biofield tuning to lead a client into a state of attunement with their true Self, whatever that may be. “Biofield tuning has the potential to mitigate and heal any number of physical and/or emotional maladies. The body’s innate wisdom can be activated, and when coupled with self-awareness, beneficial belief and behavioral changes, the sky is the limit in terms of healing potential.”

Orfas reports a similar openness of approach and beneficial effect from his energy medicine.

“I began to see people shift in significant ways,” says Orfas. “They’re back on their own personal path. Whatever path they’re on, I am the advocate of their soul. It’s not about a direction I think they should or shouldn’t go [in]; I listen, and I become present with what I think their soul is trying to tell me.”

Patanjali taught that yoga quiets the turning of the mind, at which point the student is able to rest in their true Self. This is the ultimate therapy of yoga, comprising its shared roots with other healing arts. ❧

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Patricia Schmidt, C-IAYT, E-RYT 500, YACEP, is a certified yoga therapist specializing in pelvic health, accessible yoga and yoga for cancer support. She is a Franklin Method trainer, Roll Model method teacher and somatic movement specialist. To learn more, visit PLSYoga.com.

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This article is one of three in a special section on The New Frontiers of Yoga Therapy. Here are the other two stories.