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A recently published ethnographic study40 asked, “Is yoga a possible vehicle for experiencing transcendence?” In Catalonia, Spain, in 2011, a yoga non-governmental organization (NGO) and the Department of Justice signed an agreement that opened the door for yoga classes and intensive courses for all Catalonian inmates. The research project was designed as a multiple case study at a number of prisons. A total of 54 inmates, male and female, engaged in intensive daily yoga practices for 2 to 3 hours over a 40-day period. Most of the participants who volunteered for the study already practiced yoga in weekly classes.

When the inmates were asked what they valued most about doing yoga, the majority referred to the possibility of transcending their constrained “here-and-now.” They described feelings of “connectedness,” “self-awareness,” and “flow.” Smith postulates that “encountering oneself” is the key component in such spiritual experience. This encounter with the “embodied self” brings about a moment in asana practice that practitioners identify as “spiritual.”41 Such acts of transcendence, singular to yoga, were seen as the most appreciated component of practicing yoga in prison.

Griera, however, mentions one more important factor—the social and intersubjective character of transcendence experiences.42 She noticed the importance of the group in favoring and sustaining the shift to another reality. That “collective energy” became a decisive factor for experiencing transcendence or, as the inmates describe it, “really doing Yoga.” “Yoga connects me with my divinity,” reports the practicing inmate. “Years ago I used to do drugs…and with yoga I have felt similar sensations… However, this comes from inside of me, comes from my own serenity and I feel happy with myself.” Based on the outcomes, Griera suggests that yoga is not only physical work but also, in some cases, a doorway to spiritual knowledge. For some inmates the practice of yoga can even be the starting point for a spiritual journey.

The importance of the group setting and intensity of practice was also stressed in another study that compared members of a yoga ashram with another group of non-ashram residents (the control group).43 The ashramites showed a higher percentage of positive responses on a number of factors, including “felt personality change,” “experience resulted in change in life,” “experience of oneness,” and being “in touch with divine or spiritual.”

Likewise, a study of yoga interventions in cancer patients reported improvements in measures of spirituality relative to the control group. In particular, the meaning or peace component of spiritual wellbeing increased within 10 weeks in the yoga groups.44, 45

More probing questions regarding intensive yoga practices and spirituality were asked in a study by Büssing et al.46—such as, what specific aspects of spirituality did yoga help to develop? The researchers looked at 160 students who had signed up for two years of yoga teacher training. They measured conscious interaction, compassion, lightheartedness, and mindfulness. The intensive yoga practice significantly increased these specific aspects of the practitioners’ spirituality, but the changes were dependent on their original spiritual self-perception. In other words, the intensity of change was dependent on the practitioners and their attitudes towards spirituality.

We see this confirmed at our retreats—Beyond Cancer and Chronic Solutions. Both incorporate six hours of yoga practice daily for 21 days. The protocol includes meditation, yoga nidra, chanting, mantras, mudras, pranayama, and asanas, and lectures on how these practices affect the body and mind (with an informal introduction to basic philosophy during lectures). Such intensity often produces dramatic and lasting transformations in the participants’ lives, when they are ready.

With time we noticed that the deeper the spiritual transformation in the client during the three-week retreat, the more profound the healing was on many levels—physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. One of the traits we noticed in retreat participants was the existence of a deep, often unconscious, negative emotion that was hidden and had not been dealt with in the past. Commonly this was anger or hurt or some kind of emotional pain.

Practicing yoga intensely over a three-week retreat tends to bring all these emotions to the fore. In order to heal, people have to become aware of the feeling, accept it, feel it, and by the sheer fact of being accepted, such feelings tend to dissolve. But it requires courage to face yourself and your own pain. The small group setting is helpful in supporting each and every participant in their journey—they become a family supporting and watching each other go through difficult transformations. The long-term follow-up with clients also attested to the sustained nature of these shifts. In general, they were able to exercise an increase in objective judgment, take unselfish action, and were willing to accept “what is.”

But we also noticed over the seven years of running these retreats that the more the participant was “closed” and “resistant” or even “defiant” in their attitudes, the lesser were the improvements in their healing. What is perhaps more significant is that it was more likely that the disease, such as cancer, would come back. As we watch our clients working (or not) through their issues during our retreat, it becomes clear to what extent the participant may (or may not) benefit from the retreat. We believe that our life attitude is indicative of the potential level of our healing. But at the same time, we, as yoga therapists, are never able to predict the end result of our intervention. We can only assist our clients at every step and facilitate the healing to the degree the client is ready and able to heal. As Hippocrates recommended, “Before you heal someone, ask him if he is willing to give up the things that made him sick.”

The benefits of intensive yoga therapy, which include a spiritual component in small group treatment, are illustrated by the following two case records taken from our retreats. The first one is about Harry, who was referred to us by a medical doctor only two days before we began the Beyond Cancer retreat.

Harry was a quiet 65-year-old man from Canada, of Indian descent, who had never practiced yoga before. He had Stage 4 lymphoma, and had just finished chemotherapy and radiation two months ago, which had proved unsuccessful. Doctors could give him no more treatment. Although he was in constant pain (for which he had morphine), he was determined to attend as much of the program as he could. Right from the beginning his will to live was very apparent.

The results of a test on the first day of the program showed much tension, depression, and anger. I was not surprised—he was told he had only six months to live. Sujaya, one of the co-participants, wrote: “We each had our stories but his was the most painful as his cancer had not been contained by traditional medicine. He was in debilitating pain caused by the spreading tumor. His eyes reflected the pain and hopelessness he felt and my heart went out to him. I could not imagine what it must feel like when you are waiting to die.”

Harry had great difficulties with asanas and yoga nidra because of the physical pain. But he faithfully attended all classes and did as much as he could. As we went on to the second week of the retreat, with each passing day Harry developed a definite sparkle in his eye and a lightness in his walk. He was changing his attitude to the medical prognosis. He began to talk about the future.

One day Harry asked me for a counseling session. He talked about his life, about those he loved and had hurt, and about his regrets. His guilt and shame was almost palpable. I asked him to put his story on paper for the next session. We met again after a few days and he read aloud to me what he had written on eight pages. It was a difficult read for him and he stopped a few times to hold the tears back. We then built a little fire and he burned page by page while we held hands, chanting “Trayambakam,” his favorite healing mantra we use at the retreat. The next day his smile became much bigger as he said, “I left a lot of burden in that fire and I feel much lighter!” Later on we heard him humming an Indian raga he remembered from his childhood.

By the end of the program the tests confirmed improvement on all fronts: his tension had gone down from 17 to 8 (on a scale of 0–36), depression down from 22 to 9 (on a scale of 0–60), anger down from 13 to 5 (on a scale of 0–48), vigor increased from 5 to 13 (on a scale of 0–32), fatigue went from 16 to 10 (on a scale of 0–28), and confusion from 13 to 7 (on a scale of 0–28). When we reviewed the results together, Harry said, “Yes, that’s about how I feel, at peace with myself and the world. And one more thing…when I came to the program I was afraid of death; now I am not. I will live as long as I can and spend as much time with my sons as possible.”

Four weeks later we learned that Harry had passed away peacefully, surrounded by his family and friends. The referring medical doctor commented, “This Beyond Cancer retreat was the best present we could give him before passing on.” A few days later, Harry’s family came to visit us and were grateful that we had helped Harry. He manifested peacefulness and a sense of acceptance at the time of his passing, which they attributed to yoga.

Such a deep transformation in three weeks was mainly possible due to intensive daily yoga practice and the client’s eagerness to apply himself to the program. Six hours of daily yogic practices in a small group for 21 days had, indeed, produced a deep spiritual transformation. At the end of his life Harry transformed his guilt, shame, and deep fear of imminent death into acceptance and inner peace. This is a good example of yoga as a deep transformational practice, which heals, but doesn’t always cure.

The second story is perhaps less dramatic but also speaks about profound spiritual transformation. As a participant in the Chronic Solutions retreat, this client’s situation was completely different—his disease and discomfort was of much lesser magnitude than Harry’s. The 72-year-old psychotherapist from England had never practiced yoga before, and knew very little about it. He also considered himself to be a sworn atheist. Here we quote verbatim, with his permission, the story as he wrote it, about six months after attending the retreat.

I had decided to attend the three-week course in October 2014 run by Lee Majewski at Kaivalydham Yoga Institute in India, [in the] South East of Mumbai, as I was recovering from some severe arthritis following a period of feeling really unwell after food poisoning in Sri Lanka. Well, that was one demonstrable symptom but perhaps also, just getting older was another, having passed my seventy-second birthday and deeply conscious that for the last lap of this race we all run, I needed to pay closer attention to my body and to my mind. I had at that stage not really thought about my heart.

The course was a daily program of very gentle yoga postures, pranayama breath routines, awareness, study, and chanting, not to mention lovely simple food day after day. A nice cocktail! The first week is of course always the hardest and I duly struggled while at the same time noting an almost immediate increase in general vitality, which I ascribed to pranayama. Looking back on the experience I now see just how deeply significant and necessary this practice of breath work really is. I had for years tried to meditate but it was not really until I started working with the breath that I realized that to watch the breath is to meditate.

The second week seems to be the week when “the stuff rises” so to speak, and in my case this was most certainly the case. It took the form of finding myself almost uncontrollably angry at our course leader…poor Lee. This exploded one day and I attacked her verbally, an assault in the face of which she stood calmly firm and looked at me with increased attention. We subsequently had a chat about it and I realized I was projecting an old hatred born of fear onto her, and having seen it, as is the way with these things…it collapsed and I was free of it, important in what was to happen next.

Kindly, I think partly as a result of this, Lee started in our meditation sessions to direct us to working on the heart center (heart chakra as it’s called in the Indian Tradition). This for me was the crowning experience of my whole visit and I came to realize just how helpful the whole chakra system really is in helping us to unblock old wounds. I suppose I have here to own that, on reflection, in spite of many attempts to be otherwise, my heart still remained closed. This is a terrible condition and one I suspect very common in the West, for if the heart is closed, then “loving” is not really possible. We may seek “love” as hard as we like but “loving,” loving life, loving people, loving all experience, eludes us. A most painful condition that arises I suspect from very early birth or childhood traumatic experience in which the heart closes in order to survive. And when the heart closes out of these traumatic contacts with the world it builds around itself a hard casing like an old walnut that has sat beside the fire all winter. Hard and very difficult to crack open.

Working with the heart center for us meant repeatedly bringing our attention to bear on the heart, imaginary breathing in and out of the heart, evoking in the heart positive emotions such as gratefulness, kindness, appreciation, mercy, and finally perhaps love itself. When I commenced this I have to say I was a bit suspicious. Was this just a new age dream? Did it actually do anything?

In one session quietly concentrating on my heart it suddenly burst into flame. I could not believe it; I suddenly had a veritable bonfire going in the area of the heart. Small to begin with, it began to flower until my whole interior horizon was ablaze. The session finished and I was left dumb with wondering, weepy, slightly shaken, unsure of what had happened but realizing something big really had happened. We dispersed for lunch and I wandered off on my own towards the kitchens.

As I entered the courtyard a clear intuition came over me that I had not quite finished this piece of work and so, seeking out a chair under a tree, I re-entered my interior world and brought my attention back to the fire in my heart. Almost immediately I saw the fire glowing deep down inside me and my attention was taken by one small specific coal that seemed to glow more brightly than the others. In my imagination I picked this glowing coal up in my fingers and stared at it deeply. In a flash I immediately vanished deep, deep inside myself, deeper than in any meditation I had ever done before and I swam around inside myself like this for some minutes, head “deep under water” so to speak. I suddenly popped out again and went and had lunch!

This experience has stayed with me when I returned to the UK and it’s as if a whole new dimension has arisen in my experience of being alive. I find it the most potent antidote to negative feelings and emotions. Should these crowd in upon me (as they are wont to do in grey old January London!?) I simply bring my attention to the heart and circle around it with positive affirmations of emotions such as joy, loving gratefulness for what I have, rather than what I do not have and lo and behold my negative feelings evaporate. As I usually do this in the early morning I come down to breakfast and my wife says, “Why are you so damn cheerful?”

Also I think once we re-open this center in ourselves a compulsion seems to arise, and it certainly did in me, to be more honest with ourselves and more straightforward and honest with others. I found myself being much more critical of myself in terms of relationships, wanting things straightforward, nothing concealed, a higher integrity as if the heart could not stand anything not quite right, not straight and authentic. Finally it seemed to me as if one other essential faculty was restored to me through this heart center work and that was that my gratefulness heart meditations turned into what I can only describe as praise. This did not seem to be praise to a specific God, or even an idea like it, but to something out and beyond my small self, something altogether larger and more powerful than myself, to which the only right attitude seemed to be praise. This has given my life a new sense of direction in this respect and it is a joyful thing.

So having completed this retreat and having been able to keep my practice going on my return to England my advice would be, chuck the anti-depressants away, stop rushing around trying to distract yourself with ever finer distractions, breathe, meditate and bring your attention to the heart again and again until it fills you up. You may be surprised!

NAMASTE.

Nick P.

This dramatic spiritual transformation opened “a whole new dimension…in the experience of being alive” for our client, changing his attitude towards life and “wanting things straightforward, nothing concealed, a higher integrity as if the heart could not stand anything not quite right not straight and authentic.” Although an atheist, Nick suddenly found something more—“something out and beyond my small self, something altogether larger and more powerful than myself, to whom the only right attitude seemed to be praise. This has given my life a new sense of direction in this respect and it is a joyful thing.”

This experience motivated him after going back home to dive deep into studying yoga and especially Patanjali’s Sutras. A few years later, Nick wrote to me:

I run study groups now on Patanjali because I think he, more than anyone else I know, articulates so well the difference between psychical and spiritual. The intense first priority is to get ourselves free from psychical enmeshment then we begin to get an idea of how it actually binds us and how we can become freer. Good psychotherapy! It seems to me this is the best way to deal with the various demons hanging on to our toes so we may get a glimpse of what the spiritual is…we do so love to take short cuts!

These two examples speak to the promise of true healing (but perhaps not always curing) through profound spiritual transformation, a promise that yoga therapy holds for our clients. Perhaps because of the intensity and duration of our program we witness many profound spiritual shifts in our clients after every retreat. Typically the attitudes are changed and the spark in the eye and spring in the step are back.

But not everyone goes through such profound transformations. Not everyone is ready or even sometimes willing to let go and risk exploring the territory outside their psychological and mental comfort zones. We, as yoga therapists, do not really know the deeper layers of our clients and their readiness for spiritual transformation. I found out how deeply Nick was transformed only after receiving his letter.

What is perhaps more interesting is that clients may not know themselves if they are ready for spirituality and transformation! This knowledge comes out only after they start intensively practicing yoga themselves. And either the client allows the new experiences to take them forward, reaping the positive effects, or they resist and hold on to the safety of the “known.” Here is the account of a 45-year-old female, an executive in a big financial firm in the US, with whom I worked over a few years:

I had a few different physical symptoms that were causing me unrest (vertigo, forgetfulness, anxiety, to name a few). Since modern medication wasn’t providing me with the relief and the best of doctors were unable to give me diagnoses, I decided to try a different path. At the end of 2012 I spent three weeks at Kaivalyadhama in Lonavala turning to yoga therapy.

I recall one of our early conversations and Lee asking me if the unrest in my body could be part of my spiritual journey to finding my peace. I was scared of the word “spirituality” and wanted to run from the conversation. To me it meant being religious, having blind faith, something to do with ghosts and after-life, general voodoo, and not taking things in my own control. I think in logic and purpose, and there was no room for something called spirituality.

Lee helped me uncover my fears, and my journey of being myself vs. living by expectations started. I returned home from my three-week trip with tools like breathing, meditation, and yoga practice that helped me deal with my physical symptoms. It was not like they disappeared—I was just not letting them control me. My family and friends noticed a sea change. I was calmer, nicer, took better care of my self, resisted situations and people that didn’t make me happy.

This is how my journey of finding myself, staying centered started! In 2015, I saw Lee again and told her that now I feel I’m on my spiritual path!… It is about being open to where life takes me, being comfortable with myself, being grounded and centered (and spiritual) that has helped me face life and its curve balls—fighting breast cancer, seeing my dad battle liver cancer and losing him…and so much more.

In this case we had daily two- to three-hour sessions throughout her three-week stay in Kaivalyadhama. She then went back home and continued to practice prescribed yoga techniques daily and regularly. I had sporadic contact with her in person and follow-up over the phone. But she was obviously ready to venture into transformation through her regular yoga practice (sadhana), as over time she made a great shift and progress in her spirituality and healing. Today she is able to understand why and when the symptoms re-appear, and is able to manage them accordingly.

The research data on yoga, spirituality, and health supports the notion that yoga enhances transformational processes, including spiritual and transcendent states. Furthermore, that these transformational states and processes may be singular to yoga practice and philosophy. Yoga is unquestionably a spiritually transformational discipline. It may also be the only secular science and complementary discipline offering a spiritual roadmap, which is beneficial and vital to the transformative healing of human beings.

Modern medical sciences have recognized the importance of the spiritual component in healing.47 In recent years, we have seen the emergence of tools for spiritual assessment, such as the FICA-Spiritual History Tool or HOPE-Questions for Spiritual Assessment.48 For those who are connected to religion, spiritual guidance is accessible through the chaplaincies available in many hospitals or through churches. However, those who are not connected to any particular religion usually have no means to improve their spiritual health as part of healing. Yoga therapy’s capacity to influence spiritual well-being presents a unique opportunity to offer the solution within a medical setting, where there is none offered to non-believing patients at the moment.

This data also points to the importance of a few other factors:

• The extended length and intensity of yogic practices seems to create more profound spiritual shifts.

• The social and intersubjective character of transcendental experience—the collective energy of the group—is helpful in creating and sustaining these shifts.

• The changes depend on the individual’s spiritual self-perception.

• It is necessary to revive spirituality in yoga by reinforcing the spiritual component of yogic practices such as yamas and niyamas, chanting, yoga nidra, use of mudras and bandhas, meditation, and understanding philosophy through yoga courses and discussions.

The ancient yogi knew that the intensity of practice over time speeds up the goal of furthering the development of the student. The gurukul system was based on the student or disciple staying with the guru for longer periods of time, with daily spiritual discipline and study, as per the guru’s direction. Today, only a few ashrams are left to fill this role, places where you can immerse yourself in longer intensive yogic practices. The role of the guru, however, became less accepted after revelation of the many power and sexual abuses around even the most respected names.

“The reason Yoga therapy is so effective in both preventive medicine and in assisting conventional treatment methods is because Yoga addresses all three aspects of wellness—physical, mental and spiritual.”49 This sums up the opinion of serious practitioners and students of yoga—yoga encompasses the art of self-realization, self-transformation, and self-healing.

Patanjali compiled the tools for such profound transformation in 300 CE in what is called “Ashtanga Yoga,”50 or the eight limbs of yoga. This first, most translated and commented-on classic Indian text, which organized and synthesized yoga—Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras Darshana—provides the roadmap to healing and spiritual transformation. The collection of 196 short aphorisms outlines the tools and results of practicing them, of which spiritual transformation is at the core. The Sutras clearly explain the process and practical methods of raising levels of awareness, gaining deeper wisdom, exploring the potential of the mind, and eventually going beyond the mind. If this is not spirituality, then I do not know what is… Sadly this has sometimes either been either ignored or misunderstood by the growing population of contemporary young yoga teachers and yoga therapists.

It seems that we have been so taken in the West by our need to be forever young and to have perfect-shaped bodies that the body postures (asanas) have completely dominated our understanding of yoga and anything else has fallen off the radar. Yet in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras only 3 out of the 196 Sutras deal with postures! Even the majority of research tends to be focused on the biomedical effects on the body, which excludes the much wider impact of yoga on human existence. With once- or twice-a-week asana classes, the deep transformative value of yogic science and the promise of spiritual transformation eludes us.

But new voices are beginning to point back to the richness of the ancient science. In their 2015 book, The Eight Limbs of Yoga: A Handbook for Living Yoga Philosophy, Stuart Sarbacker and Kevin Kimple point to the “great potential for self-transformation through Yoga” and its capacity “to transform one’s relationship with others and the world in profound ways.”51 As Michael Lee mentions in his recent article, “The gold nugget of Yoga therapy—its capacity to be a catalyst for meaningful and lasting transformational change—remains largely hidden.”52

We hope that the future can be changed in a positive way, and the maturing of professional organizations such as the IAYT in the US, Japan Yoga Therapy Society, or Yoga Australia can be the catalyst we need. These organizations must work towards the creation of a healthy and wholesome image of yoga and yoga therapy. Only by educating members as well as the public about the true essence of yoga and yoga therapy can we do this.