What Is Yoga Therapy?
Yoga therapy is both an art and a science, used to enhance health and wellness at all levels of the person: physical, psychological, and spiritual. As a highly trained yoga therapist, Joy seeks to create a journey of healing by selecting, adapting, and modifying yoga practices that are most beneficial for the individual or group in respect to age, culture, and specific physical challenges. In this manner, the art and science of yoga therapy enables students to tap into the wisdom and healing inherent within themselves.
Yoga therapy can be done sitting in a chair or using a yoga mat. The emphasis is not about “doing” the perfect posture, but rather “undoing” the places within where restriction, loss, and trauma are stored.
Yoga therapy is:
- highly applicable within a group setting, or with an individual to address specific health challenges, life changes, and transitional states.
- seeing each person as an expression of infinite possibilities and intelligence.
- a journey of remembrance, coming home to one’s self within a safe learning environment where students can tap into their own innate healing resources.
- An application of ancient techniques that can be used on physical, mental, and spiritual levels.
Using breath work, accessible poses, and meditation techniques, yoga therapy is used to relieve various conditions, such as:
- chronic pain
- depression
- anxiety
- Attention Deficit Disorder
- insomnia
- grief and loss
- obsessive compulsive disorder
- bipolarity
- symptoms associated with Multiple Sclerosis
Joy Bennett writes:
“I believe we find our calling when our Life Experience intersects with a viable Learning Path. A deep depression in 1998 led me to discover the healing benefits of yoga, clearing a direct path to my life’s work, first becoming a yoga teacher, and eventually a yoga therapist. It has become very clear to me that yoga therapy is an important adjunct to the traditional treatment of talk therapy and Western allopathic medicine. When used together, an effective, compassionate approach to wellness is brought to Life!
In recent years, I have worked closely with my husband, Irwin Bennett MD, in understanding the value of his psychiatric expertise and the management of medication. I now embark upon a new venture, in collaboration with the able team at Swansea Center of Psychotherapy. I’ve opened a second, larger studio within the spacious location of Swansea Psychotherapy and the able therapists on staff. . .the group programs at my new studio are available to all, and the doors are open to everyone. My profound wish is that ‘Joyful Breath Yoga Therapy’ will be an oasis of healing and self-discovery to all who enter.”
