How Yoga Supports Health & Physiology
Anatomy & Physiology
Overview
In this lesson, we explore how yoga supports health from multiple angles — preventative care, symptomatic relief, complementing western medicine, and addressing underlying imbalances in the body's major systems.
Objective
Gain understanding of the physiological mechanisms through which yoga promotes health, and how to articulate yoga's role alongside conventional medical approaches.
What You'll Get
A clear-eyed look at what yoga actually does in the body and why it works. You'll learn how practice impacts major physiological systems, how to distinguish between preventative and therapeutic applications, and how yoga fits into the broader picture of health care. Whether you're deepening your personal practice or building credibility as a teacher or therapist, this material gives you the grounding to speak about yoga and health with accuracy and confidence.
Lesson Overview
In this lesson, we specify the general and specific ways that yoga techniques support health, including its impact on various bodily systems.
Objective
Become competent in specifying the ways that yoga supports health from various perspectives.
Description
Describe four perspectives from which yoga can be described as supporting health. Explain ways that yoga can serve a preventative role and examples of providing symptomatic relief. Understand how yoga techniques can be used along with western medical treatment and how they can help to address imbalances related to health conditions. Specify multiple categories of bodily systems that are supported by yoga practices and the ways in which yoga supports health of those systems.
How Yoga Supports Health
There is an understanding in many healthcare settings that, when all else fails, yoga works. – Joseph LePage
There are different perspectives from which we can discuss how yoga supports health. For a long summary list of health benefits, see Timothy McCall MD’s list of 38 benefits here.
Here we examine yoga’s impact from the following perspectives:
- Prevention & symptom relief
- Support along with other treatments
- Balancing stability & ease
- Impacting bodily systems & processes
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