Knowledge.
What is yoga therapy?
"Yoga therapy is the process of empowering individuals to progress toward improved health and well-being through the application of the teachings and practices of Yoga." A yoga therapy session includes a formal assessment, goal setting, lifestyle management, and yogic movement and breathing techniques.
~International Association of Yoga Therapists, IAYT
When you are sick, your body is under stress.
Yoga therapy reverses stress.
Anything that causes mental, physical, emotional or spiritual stress---yoga calls "suffering."
A yoga therapist's job is to help relieve suffering.
Most people imagine headstands and twisted poses when they hear the word "yoga." Yoga is much more than that. And yoga therapy is even more still.
Western science recognizes that more than 95% of physiological and psychological diseases are either caused by or exacerbated by stress. Yoga therapy is a biopsychosocial-spiritual approach to wellness that is extremely effective at calming the nervous sytem, and therefore preventing and sometimes reversing the damaging effects of stress.
In addition to postures, breathing techniques and ways to focus the mind, yoga therapy includes yogic views on nutrition, sleep hygiene, and emotional and spiritual health. Reparing relationships and how to bring meaning to one's life are all under the yoga therapy umbrella.
A yoga therapist is also trained to work in conjunction with your other health practitioners, and to read and intepret medical records and reports. A yoga therapist certified by the International Association of Yoga Therapy (C-IAYT) will have at least 1000 hours of yoga training.
Yoga therapist Simone Palmieri, C-IAYT, has a unique body of knowledge. She has dealt with CFS/ME in her own body for 30 years and managed it with yoga therapy for the last 15.
It has also helped her manage cancer, anxiety, depression, dysautonomia, back pain, cervical spinal stenosis, and more recently long Covid.
Simone Palmieri now offers private yoga therapy sessions online and in the greater Sacramento area.
Sometimes, just having a person with time available to listen to how you are struggling can relieve an immense amount of stress, and be the catalyst toward healing.
