What is Unique about Minded Yoga Therapy?
The Minded Yoga Therapy approach combines the worlds of yoga, Buddhism, science, and psychology. We integrate yoga therapies with mindfulness, translate neuroscientific findings into practices, and offer the support of psychotherapeutic holding. Our unique yoga therapy training reflects our comprehensive, caring and cutting-edge approach to yoga for the treatment of mental health and stress-related disease. We address structural, physical, and mental health, thereby offering one of the most comprehensive yoga therapy trainings in the world.
Our pioneering approach to yoga therapy at The Minded Institute is truly innovative. In truth, our therapists offer much more than yoga therapy, as their training includes psychotherapeutic skills, mindfulness and a highly academic level of medical knowledge.
As the training is incredibly thorough, and occurs over a long period of time, our graduates are not only well-trained but undertake the program with the understanding that it is a substantial amount of personal and academic work. Many of our trainees are already experts in their field and apply to our certificate program to bring a cutting-edge approach to their work. In short, they are pioneers with passionate and compassionate spirits.
When you meet with a Minded Therapist you will feel the sense of support, understanding and knowledge that comes from true deep practice and insight. You will also feel the specialised approach that comes from well-honed intuition, the ability to really listen and to meet your unique and ever changing needs.
Some of the core areas that make Minded Yoga unique include:
- The extensive experience, seniority and academic backgrounds of our teachers.
- The content, structure and extent of our courses.
- Our commitment and focus on psychological conditions is above and beyond what is offered on other yoga therapy training courses, in addition to in-depth training on a variety of chronic health conditions.
- The in-depth knowledge our students acquire across a variety of disciplines.
- Our focus on compassion, which is both an ethical and proficient approach for addressing a variety of psychological and mental health conditions.
Yoga Therapy for the Mind: 8-Week Course
Another unique offering embedded within Minded’s Professional Diploma in Yoga Therapy is training in Heather Mason’s 8-week Course: Yoga Therapy for the Mind. This training will enable graduates to deliver a comprehensive and evidence-based program designed specifically for those looking to reduce stress, anxiety and/or depression.
The 8-week course combines specific yoga therapy techniques with research from the fields of psychotherapy and neuroscience to:
- Enhance the functioning of the nervous system to improve well-being
- Improve self-awareness through the practice of mindfulness
- Reduce rumination and eliminate unhelpful habitual patterns of thought and behaviour.
Participants of the program will meet once a week for two hours over an 8-week period. Each session explores how the mind, body and brain work together from a scientific perspective, offering practices that will promote well-being in all these aspects of self. Sessions include a 1 hour 10 minutes physical yoga practice, breath work, additional mind-body activities and a group discussion.
The first two weeks of the course focus on regulating breath as a mode to alter the functioning of the nervous system in order to manage stress with greater ease. Weeks 3 to 5 explore the relationship between body and mood, and weeks 6 to 8 focus specifically on the mind. To support home practice, participants are given a comprehensive manual and an audio set with eight tracks, coinciding with each week of the course. Most importantly, no yoga experience is required in order to join this course.
Both mindfulness and therapeutic yoga are well known to help improve stress, anxiety and depression, particularly since methods that focus just on the mind overlook the fact that mental habits are deeply connected with how the brain and body function. Without movement or breathwork, a person will struggle to use the power of the mind to change deeply entrenched patterns of thinking and reacting. Likewise, if we only focus on the body we may overlook the reasons why we are so tied to particular ways of reacting to our environment. The unique benefit of this course is that it focuses on the entire person as a whole, thereby promoting long-term and long lasting transformation.