Yoga has been practised in India for thousands of years as a method of supporting health and gaining spiritual growth, but the history of yoga therapy as we know it today is a more modern phenomenon.
Since one of the earliest introductions of yoga to the West in 1893, (when Swami Vivekananda spoke at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago), yoga has grown to become a staple of our culture, and with it, the practice of yoga therapy has also begun to flourish. But where did the concept of yoga therapy begin? While it may be difficult to identify its point of origin conclusively, the idea of using yoga therapeutically and particularly of integrating it into wider healthcare is one that has evolved over time.
Tracing the roots of yoga therapy
There are references to the therapeutic nature of yoga that date back to the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. These can be found in the literature surrounding hatha yoga, in particular the famous text Hatha Yoga Pradipika, where it is asserted that asana (the yogic term for body posture) practice will result in “steadiness, health and lightness of body”.
From here there is little overt evidence for the use of yoga as therapy, although it isn’t outlandish to imagine individuals using the practice throughout this time to support their health and wellbeing. Our modern understanding of yoga therapy, however, appears to have its roots in India during the 1920s, and most particularly in the pioneering work of researcher and educator Swami Kuvalayananda and one of the most important figures in the modern revival of Hatha Yoga, Shri Yogendra.
Swami Kuvalayanada set up a research centre called Kaivalyadhama, alongside its accompanying journal Mimamsa, which are both still active today. Through these means, he created the field of yoga research and was the first person to scientifically investigate yoga’s physiological effects. This had such an impact that esteemed scientists from around the globe accepted his invitation to study yoga’s discrete and combined effects.
In the estimation of most yoga professionals, the endeavours of Swami Kuvalayanada and Shri Yogendra (who also conducted his own research and founded The Yoga Institute, the oldest organised yoga centre in the world) built the foundations of yoga therapy, and marked a turning point in the history of yoga as it relates to therapeutic practice.. While yoga was and still is considered primarily a spiritual practice, their interest in its potential as a treatment for certain health conditions led to the phenomenon of yoga therapy as we see it today.
History of Yoga therapy in the West
After Swami Vivekananda translated yogic texts from Sanskrit into English and organised numerous world conferences on the subject of yoga, several Indian yoga teachers came to Europe and the USA, propagating the idea that yoga’s efficacy in supporting health and wellbeing was verifiable by science.
These teachers included:
- Former medical doctor Swami Sivananda, who authored over 200 books on yoga, Vedanta, and a variety of subjects.
- The founder of an individualised form of yoga therapy called Viniyoga, T. K. V. Desikachar.
- B. K. S. Iyengar, whose experience of ill health in early life led him to experiment with the practices of yoga, in order to manage his conditions.
Iyengar was responsible for developing an iteration of “remedial yoga”, working in private sessions with individuals in order to prescribe specific practices that suited their needs. While these sessions were not what we now think of as yoga therapy in the fullest sense, they were certainly a forerunner. In fact, his book Light on Yoga (published in 1966), goes as far as to attribute specific health benefits and possible contraindications to many of the two hundred yoga postures listed there.
The next pivotal point in the establishment of yoga therapy is often attributed to the US-based physician and researcher Dr. Dean Ornish. Throughout the 70s until the 1990s, Ornish took a leading role in research on how lifestyle factors such as diet and stress impacted people with heart disease. His resulting study “Intensive Lifestyle Changes for the Reversal of Coronary Heart Disease” and promotion of stress management techniques including yoga and meditation was a benchmark for the emerging field of yoga therapy.
The Ornish “Program for Reversing Heart Disease” was the result of his years of research, and became the first non-surgical, non-pharmaceutical therapy for heart disease to qualify for insurance reimbursement. While it is now accepted medical knowledge, the idea that heart disease could be reserved by lifestyle changes was ground-breaking, and galvanised the field of mind-body medicine.
Research has been conducted into yoga’s benefits for mental and physical health conditions for decades, but in the last thirty years, there has been a surge of scientific studies that have explored yoga’s potential and built upon the long history of yoga as a mind-body discipline. While further vigorous research is needed in certain areas, over the course of this time, the evidence base for using yoga in the prevention and treatment of illnesses from anxiety to cardiovascular disease has grown.
Some of the most promising areas in scientific study into yoga therapy include post traumatic stress disorder, addiction, insomnia, musculoskeletal issues and chronic pain. Specialised yoga therapy training allows practitioners to help people address their health problems in a calm and compassionate environment, where they feel actively listened to and are invited to take a leading role in their own health.
The rise of social prescribing and a greater focus on taking a holistic view of health has meant that yoga therapy is increasingly entering the mainstream of medical treatment, with yoga therapists on hand in environments as diverse as eating disorder clinics and palliative care. At The Minded Institute, we are proud to be a part of this growing area in therapy, and to offer world-beating, comprehensive training to those who wish to develop their practice and specialise their knowledge.
If you are a yoga therapist, yoga teacher or health professional who is interested in expanding your skillset, explore our online yoga therapy courses, which focus on the use of yoga therapy in specific health conditions.
