Therapeutic Yoga Teaching, Clinical Service, and Practice (3 Book Series)
In three comprehensive volumes, the series “Therapeutic Yoga Teaching, Clinical Service, and Practice” elucidates the principles of therapeutic yoga guided by a strong commitment to wholism and integration, as well as accessibility, intentionality, and beneficence.
· Volume 1, Integrated Holistic Yoga Psychology, explores neurophysiological and psychological mechanisms underlying physical, energetic, emotional, cognitive, and relational patterns and habits, combining ancient wisdom about human nature with modern scientific findings. Relying on yoga psychology – ancient and modern, it dives deeply into mind and emotion, exploring the development and transformation of physical, mental, and emotional habits, based on the cultivation of compassion, awareness, and insight to serve personal and collective healing and thriving.
· Volume 2, Integrated Holistic Yoga Movement, reviews anatomical and physiological science as relevant to the teaching of yoga movements and forms, integrating ancient wisdom with modern anatomical and kinesiological research. A multitude of movement teaching principles and practice strategies are offered for supporting enhanced health and wellbeing through therapeutic yoga classes, yoga-therapeutically informed healthcare, and individually-tailored personal practices.
· Volume 3, Integrated Holistic Inner Practices of Yoga, offers scientifically-based and ancient yogic approaches to sense-guarding, concentration, and meditation practices. It offers scientific insights that guide applied inner practices (including mindfulness). Offered practices lead practitioners toward the cultivation of compassion, awareness, purpose, and wisdom, with deliberate implications for personal and collective wellbeing.
Therapeutic Yoga Audiences for the Series
The series “Therapeutic Yoga Teaching, Clinical Service, and Practice” is written for
· yoga teacher and therapeutic yoga training programs
· individuals seeking yoga teacher credentials,
· yoga teachers who seek to transform their current teaching to become more therapeutic and person-centered,
· dedicated yoga practitioners who want to deepen and tailor their personal practice, and
· healthcare providers seeking to integrate yoga therapeutics into their clinical practice.
The series is an excellent resource for yoga teacher training programs, carefully designed to exceed educational contents and standards required by Yoga Alliance, the association that registers yoga schools, programs, and teachers internationally. It augments current yoga teachers’ training by offering a unique therapeutic lens that allows yoga professionals to broaden their yoga teaching skills and understanding to serve populations of students and clients in community health settings and healthcare systems. The volumes in the series are an invaluable resource for healthcare practitioners who hope to integrate therapeutic yoga strategies into their extant clinical practice. They provide an in-depth exploration of how therapeutic yoga can serve patients in healthcare and mental health care and how it can be infused in clinical service delivery. The series is also appropriate for advanced yoga practitioners who seek to refine their yoga practice to be more person-centered, relevant to their unique biopsychosociocultural context, and tailored to their specific physical, vital, emotional, mental, behavioral, and relational needs.
Therapeutic Yoga Approach and Lineage of the Series
The series “Therapeutic Yoga Teaching, Clinical Service, and Practice” offers historically-respectful, science-informed guidance for therapeutic yoga practices and interventions development across all limbs of yoga – from asana; pranayama; mindfulness, concentration, and meditation; to ethical and committed lifestyle practices – emerging from a respectful context of tradition and science. The series focuses on yoga therapeutics, highlighting yoga as a transformative lifestyle and healing practice that is available to and appropriate for all humans.
The series is unique due to its embrace of the integrated holistic yoga (IHY) paradigm that is defined by accessibility, intentionality, beneficence, wholism, and integration. This unique approach to the teaching, clinical offering, and personal practice of yoga was developed by the author to create a system of yoga therapeutics that offer yoga to the very populations who can most benefit from, but often have limited access to, the practice.
The integrated holistic yoga approach offers a vision that honors the deep cultural traditions of transformative practices, such as yoga and Buddhism, that date back thousands of years. It integrates modern neuroscience with ancient psychologies and practices; it demonstrates the profound wisdoms from the original teachings that we are relearning and rediscovering every day, with research increasingly supporting their usefulness. The integrated holistic framework underlying all practices offered in the series embraces inclusiveness, access, diversity, health, wellbeing, and resilience for everyone. It is a practice of and for community; it honors interdependence and coregulation. Integrated holistic work embraces an honoring of traditional yogic practices – practices (grounded in the eight limbs of yoga) that are physical only to prepare practitioners for more important interior practices (such as concentration and meditation) and interpersonal applications of a thoughtful and deliberate code of ethics, lifestyle, and discipline.
The integrated holistic approach combines body, emotion, mind, spirit, and community through a comprehensive lifestyle with implications for individual and collective wellbeing. It promotes self-compassion, introspection, and community that lead to insights that alter human physiology and anatomy and – perhaps more importantly – emotions, cognitions, behaviors, and relationships. Integrated holistic practices are accessible to anyone who can breathe without assistance, almost anywhere, for little to no cost. They motivate practitioners to adhere to a complete practice that honors all human needs and experiences, more so than a unidimensional posture practice - freed from Western stereotypes that tend to limit who engages with yoga or other types of transformative work. The following central principles of IHY are interwoven throughout all volumes in the series and guide all teachings and practices.
• Integrated Holistic Yoga is a practice of intentionality – commitment to making the world a better place; to living and practicing with intention, purpose, and meaning; to helping all beings develop meaningful goals and life purpose
• Integrated Holistic Yoga is a practice of beneficence – commitment to facilitating mechanisms of change that do no harm and lead to positive health and mental health outcomes individually and collectively
• Integrated Holistic Yoga is a practice of accessibility – commitment to creating communities of healing that honor and practice diversity, inclusion, equity, advocacy, engaged action, and personal as well collective empowerment and evolution
• Integrated Holistic Yoga is a practice of wholeness – commitment to honor human complexity, biopsychosociocultural contexts, interconnection, and community
• Integrated Holistic Yoga is a practice of integration – commitment to offering a diversity of integrated practices, carefully tailored to individual and collective needs of each human being, interweaving science and soul, as well as interdependence and coregulation
In sum, the three-volume series “Therapeutic Yoga Teaching, Clinical Service, and Practice”
· uses an integrated holistic model that covers a multitude of yoga practices for body, breath, mind, and relationships;
· focuses on preparing yoga professionals who offer therapeutic applications of yoga, especially in healthcare settings; and
· is a perfect and unique accompaniment for therapeutic yoga teacher training, personal yoga practice, and self-study to adapt clinical services or standard yoga teaching to become therapeutic, person-centered, and individually tailored.
Please enjoy the three volumes in this series and the journey into self-discovery and thriving that may result. I wish you and your families, students, clients, and patients the wisdom, awareness, compassion, and joy that is inherent in an integrated holistic practice of yoga. May you and yours discover a practice that leads to individual and collective resilience, healing, and flourishing.
Gratefully,
Chris Brems