Yoga in Healthcare - Asana and Meditation for Chronic Pain
Yoga in Healthcare - Asana and Meditation for Chronic Pain
In 2016, an estimated 20% of American adults reported having chronic pain and 8% of American adults had high-impact chronic pain, according to the CDC.
As you advance in your yoga teacher training and career, you are likely to encounter clients with chronic pain and other diverse needs. To better understand and serve clients with chronic pain, it is wise to seek advanced yoga teacher training in therapeutic yoga courses.
Understanding Chronic Pain
Chronic pain is one of the most common reasons why patients see a doctor according to the CDC. Due to the ongoing nature of chronic pain, it is often difficult to treat. Chronic pain can be described as pain that extends beyond the expected period of healing. Chronic pain may originate in the body, brain or spinal cord. Physiologically, however, all pain is output from the brain.
Beyond the chronic pain itself, sufferers may experience stress, lack of sleep, anxiety, and depression. Risk factors for chronic pain include age, gender (female), socioeconomic status, occupational factors, history of abuse, and genetics.
Chronic pain is a serious condition and remains difficult for the medical community to treat with %100 effectiveness. Often, doctors will initially recommend non opioid medication or psychological treatments like cognitive behavioral therapy. As the pain progresses, students often seek behavioral changes - like a yoga or a meditation practice - to support their medical care and participate in their healing process.
Yoga Therapy – Asana and Meditation for Chronic Pain
In general, integrating a yoga practice into one’s wellness routine will support the body and mind as it works toward a peaceful and comfortable balance.
When dealing with chronic pain, yoga therapy uses a transformational approach, unlike the current medical model of a symptom management approach. For example, Advanced YTT in Healthcare will teach you how movement and meditation techniques of yoga can powerfully complement Western medical care. Training in evidence-based mindfulness meditations, Yoga Nidra, and breathing skills for behavioral medicine and chronic disease management allows yoga teachers to seamlessly integrate these methods into conventional treatment models.
The medical community acknowledges that mindfulness and meditation are integrative and complementary practices and are important parts of a larger healthcare plan. Courses like Yoga in Healthcare and Therapeutic Yoga Essentials examine the research and clinical evidence behind yoga and mindfulness techniques.
Advanced teacher training should also enlighten teachers on the applications of asana - the yoga poses - to potentially avoid future discomfort. You will learn to listen to your client and understand what type of Asana makes sense for their pain. Determine how to deconstruct the flow of the component parts and how to re-assemble it. Experiment with different positions, such as seated or upside down and gradually moving to weight bearing.
Pain is individual to each person, and each movement and mindfulness plan must be different as well.
“Pain Care” is a Health and Wellbeing Issue
The term “pain care” was used in “Yoga Science and Pain Care” to illustrate that pain is not a medical issue, but also a health and wellbeing issue. And as a yoga teacher with advanced training, you will learn how to be sensitive to your client’s needs.
Advanced yoga teacher training for health care will allow you to determine when to focus on the Niyamas to help clients that struggle with self-doubt. Or when to use guided imagery or Yoga Nidra for clients that must think and visualize movement before engaging due to physical pain or mental resistance.
When pursuing advanced yoga teacher training in health care, teachers will train in peer coaching techniques, like Motivational Interviewing, to overcome client resistance in promoting healthy choices in wellness practices. Motivational Interviewing requires empathetic guidance and will build trust that allows for clients to safely communicate with you.
Learn More About Integrating Yoga with Health Care at Prema Yoga Institute
Yoga teachers can be an important part of a client’s larger healthcare plan. Choosing to advance your skills with advanced yoga teacher training will expand your career and allow you to support more clients in need.
If you’re curious to learn more about integrating yoga with health care, reach out to us at Prema Yoga Institute. In fact, we’d love to invite you to enroll in our online courses. Our Advanced YTT has healthcare in mind, for example, our Yoga in Healthcare includes meditation and mindfulness teaching skills, that empower yoga teachers to interface more effectively with doctors and health care professionals.
Visit Prema Yoga Institute to learn more about our training, which is now available online with interactive trainings through 2022! Courses count as CE Credits with Yoga Alliance OR towards your RYT500 at Prema Yoga Institute.
PYI is an accredited program based in New York city, teaching students around the globe through online classes. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you advance your yoga practice and teaching!
Prema Yoga Institute is longer limited to New York City and is now available online with interactive trainings through 2022. PYI is an accredited program based in New York city, teaching students around the globe through online classes. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you advance your yoga practice and teaching!
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Advanced Yoga Teacher Training - Learning Motivational Interviewing
Advanced Yoga Teacher Training - Learning Motivational Interviewing
Motivational Interviewing is a yoga professional's secret communication tool.
Becoming an RYT (registered yoga teacher) is not the end of your introductory training; it's the beginning of the learning experience. There is immense opportunity for continued education, advanced yoga teacher trainings, and niche coursework available to you.
Teaching yoga goes beyond simply directing asana and into developing relationships. Your influence on your students' journey can be powerful, compassionate, and healing. One way to start purposefully communicating with your students is with Motivational Interviewing (MI).
Advanced YTT: What is Motivational Interviewing?
Between intense listening and dishing out directions lies Motivational Interviewing (MI). Motivational Interviewing is communication to address indecision or ambivalence without giving advice or engaging in confrontation. The practitioner uses a specific skill set to engage the student and draw out strengths, concerns, and meaning. The student is then able to facilitate changes if they so desire.
Motivational Interviewing is a partnership that understands that people are autonomous and are the foremost expert on their minds and bodies.
Motivational Interviewing encourages exploration of priorities, goals, and the like to create change. MI practitioners remain without judgment, show empathy, and support all decisions made with the utmost respect shown to the student.
Learn The Fundamental Processes of Motivational Interviewing
There are several fundamental processes in Motivational Interviewing. The practitioner is there to listen and reflect on the experiences and perceptions of the student. The process of communication becomes focused after both parties agree on a purpose. Evoking is the process of helping the student determine their reasonings for change, with the student's thought process leading the way. Lastly, the planning stage of Motivational Interviewing looks at the tools needed to follow through with change and create success steps.
Motivational Interviewing is particularly effective when a student is ambivalent, lacking confidence and desire to change, and the pros and cons of change are muddled. These signs are seen when people confront lifestyle changes, mental health challenges, and illness and imbalance.
How can using Motivational Interviewing in Yoga enhance the teacher-student relationship?
The practice of yoga encourages inward reflection, listening to your body, and connecting to yourself during a yoga session. What would it be like if your teachings could have insights into your student's inward journey?
Joining yoga and Motivational Interviewing builds trust and opens up that inward journey. Students have a safe space to communicate, without commentary, about their yoga intentions, journey, or challenges. You become the teacher that is a trusted source of empathy and individual guidance.
Motivational Interviewing provides clear feedback from your students and allows you to adjust your teachings to meet your student's strengths. As ambivalence fades and students make decisions, they become the central character in their yoga journey. You are still there to ask open questions and receive information, but the "shoulds" that many students do not benefit from are gone.
Learn more about Motivational Interviewing with Advanced Yoga Teacher Training
The skills and understanding of MI come with training, practice, and experience. Choosing to advance your knowledge base with advanced yoga teacher training opens up a world of possibilities for your career and community. Imagine reaching your students and supporting their progress based on their words and thoughts, thereby overcoming ambivalence and uncertainty. Motivational Interviewing makes this happen.
If you’re curious to learn more and advance your yoga teacher training, reach out to us at Prema Yoga Institute.
In fact, we’d love to invite you to enroll in our online courses. Our Advanced YTT has healthcare in mind, for example, our Yoga in Healthcare includes meditation and mindfulness teaching skills, that empower yoga teachers to interface more effectively with doctors and health care professionals.
Visit Prema Yoga Institute to learn more about our training, which is now available online with interactive trainings through 2022! Courses count as CE Credits with Yoga Alliance OR towards your RYT500 at Prema Yoga Institute.
PYI is an accredited program based in New York city, teaching students around the globe through online classes and trainings. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you advance your yoga practice and teaching!
Prema Yoga Institute is longer limited to New York City and is now available online with interactive trainings through 2022. PYI is an accredited program based in New York city, teaching students around the globe through online classes. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you advance your yoga practice and teaching!
If you found this information useful, visit our Blog often or subscribe to our Mailing List for similar content.
How Teaching Mindfulness and Meditation Can Complement Healthcare
How Teaching Mindfulness and Meditation Can Complement Healthcare
What would it look like to parallel mindfulness and meditation with modern Western healthcare?
Yoga teachers are adept at noticing and guiding the human body and understand everyone is an individual. Humans are also unique in the imbalances that bodies carry from injury, stress, and disease. We do our best to support those bodies with healthy and appropriate asana guidance, sprinkling in various pranayama, meditation, and inspiration for the mind.
When there is an illness present, patients and their families rely on medical professionals for a diagnosis and treatment plan to bring the body back into balance. Their oath to provide care and compassion is unsurpassed, but managed care often has a singular focus on the body's illnesses, sometimes overlooking the emotional stress of illness or discussing prevention first.
Yoga teachers have the unique opportunity to support patients' mental health in conjunction with their physical healing. Mindfulness and meditation are the tools and coping strategies to create a holistic healing experience.
Mindfulness and meditation
Being mindful is simply about awareness. Being conscious of one's surroundings, emotions, reactions, and physical sensations is mindfulness. The present moment becomes the focus, not the never-ending stream of interruptions in the brain. Meditation is a training technique to find this peace and clarity, and can take many shapes. Moving meditations allow the mind to find a rhythm to match the body; seated meditations follow the rhythm of the breath.
Both mindfulness and meditation are evidence-based solutions to many health challenges. They work to overcome the stresses of pain, tests, waiting, possible treatments, and potentially bad news. The medical community calls mindfulness and meditation integrative and complementary practices, acknowledging their importance as part of a larger healthcare plan.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) outlines several appropriate circumstances in which mindfulness can work with several health challenges.(1) For example, cancer patients may use meditation to sleep better and experience less stress, menopausal women may use mindfulness to reduce their symptoms, and generalized anxiety/depression/pain may lessen with meditation practices.
Using spiritual support for the physical body to heal as a Yoga Teacher
Yoga teachers can use mindfulness exercises and techniques to support the mental health of students. Their bodies can then heal without the disruption of additional anxiety and uncertainty.
To compassionately teach meditation and mindfulness, consider additional course work to continue your yoga teacher education. Advanced yoga teacher trainings may include instruction and practice on pranayama, mental health, Yoga Nidra, Ayurveda, and more. You can teach yoga and work alongside Western medicine to serve your community.
If you’re curious to learn more, reach out to us at Prema Yoga Institute. In fact, we’d love to invite you to enroll in our online courses. Our Advanced YTT has healthcare in mind, for example, our Yoga in Healthcare includes meditation and mindfulness teaching skills, and will empower you to interface more effectively with doctors and health care professionals. Visit Prema Yoga Institute to learn more about our training, which is now available online with interactive trainings through 2022! Courses count as CE Credits with Yoga Alliance OR towards your RYT500 at Prema Yoga Institute.
PYI is an accredited program based in New York city, teaching students around the globe through online classes and trainings. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you advance your yoga practice and teaching!
Prema Yoga Institute is longer limited to New York City and is now available online with interactive trainings through 2022. PYI is an accredited program based in New York city, teaching students around the globe through online classes. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you advance your yoga practice and teaching!
If you found this information useful, visit our Blog often or subscribe to our Mailing List for similar content.
1 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (n.d.). 8 things to know about meditation for health. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Retrieved September 10, 2021, from https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/tips/things-to-know-about-meditation-for-health.