Читать книгу Yoga Therapy as a Whole-Person Approach to Health - Lee Majewski - Страница 14

Swami Gitananda Giri claimed that yoga therapy is virtually as old as yoga itself—the “return of mind that feels separated from the Universe in which it exists” represents the first yoga therapy. Yoga therapy could be termed “man’s first attempt at a unitive understanding of mind-emotions-physical distress and is the oldest wholistic concept and therapy in the world.”19 To achieve this yogic integration at all levels of our being, it is essential that we take into consideration the multidimensional aspects of yoga: a healthy life-nourishing diet, a healthy and natural environment, a holistic lifestyle, personal and social behavioral ethics (yamas and niyamas), bodywork through asanas, mudras, bandhas, and kriyas, breath work through pranayama, and the cultivation of a healthy thought process through Jnana Yoga and Raja Yoga.

Swamiji has written extensively, from the point of view of both a medical doctor and an accomplished yogi, about the relationship between health and disease:

Yoga views the vast proliferation of psychosomatic diseases as a natural outcome of stress and strain created by desire fostered by modern propaganda and abuse of the body condoned on all sides even by religion, science and philosophy. Add to this the synthetic “junk food” diet of modern society, and you have the possibility of endless disorders developing…even the extinction of man by his own ignorance and misdeeds.20

He explained the root cause of disease as follows:

Yoga, a wholistic, unified concept of oneness, is non-dual (or adwaitam) in nature. It suggests happiness, harmony and ease. Dis-ease is created when duality (or dwaitam) arises in the human mind. This false concept of duality has produced all conflicts of human mind and the vast list of human disorders. Duality (dis-ease) is the primary cause of man’s downfall. Yoga helps return man to his pristine, whole nature. All diseases, maladies, tensions, are manifestations of divisions of what should be man’s complete nature, the “Self” (atman). This “Self” is “ease”. A loss of “ease” creates “dis-ease.” Duality is the first disease, the unreasonable thought that “I am different from the whole… I am unique.” It is interesting that the one of the oldest words for man is “insan.” A return to sanity, “going sane,” is the subject of real Yoga means of accomplishment (sadhana) and Yoga consistence spiritual practice (abhyasa). Yoga therapy is one of the methods to help insane man back onto the path of sanity.21

One of the specialities of the Gitananda tradition is the use of 12 diagnostic methods (dwadasha rogalakshna anukrama) in the process of yoga therapy assessment. These can be contemplated as a method of self-analysis (swadhyaya) that not only enables the therapist to understand the client better, but also enables the client to understand themselves better too. This is explained in detail in Chapter 4.