Yoga for mind, body and emotions

The Iyengar Center offers a particular type of therapy.

By ORNAT ABADI
Yoga cartoon 370 (photo credit: Pepe Fainberg)
Yoga cartoon 370
(photo credit: Pepe Fainberg)
Every human being aspires to be healthy. But when we say healthy, what do we really mean? The World Health Organization defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease. We are surrounded by countless offers of ways to become healthier or happier or younger, and sometimes it is almost impossible to know what really works.
One of the most popular methods that can bring us health and happiness is yoga.
Thoughts of yoga can conjure up a group of people sitting, breathing and gently stretching. All of this is done in complete harmony, while the teacher softly helps the students to correct their posture or quietly relax their backs. With this fantasy wellrooted in my mind, I walked into one of the therapy classes at the Iyengar Yoga Center of Neveh Tzedek in Tel Aviv. My fantasy, as fantasies tend to do at some point, went up in smoke. It was hard to stay indifferent – a dozen students were in a dozen different postures. All of them were using yoga props; such as belts, chairs, planks, stools, ropes – and there were five teachers walking around to assist and correct the students.
Iyengar Yoga is the best-known and practiced yoga method in the world, named after B.K.S. Iyengar, a 95-year-old master who still lives and teaches in Pune, India. In over 80 years of study and practice, B.K.S.
Iyengar has developed a yoga method that emphasizes the importance of physical precision in the yogic postures. This is achieved through detailed instruction, intricacy and actively working the body in the posture, in order to reach physical alignment.
“Through practicing yoga while maintaining this alignment, a healing process starts to take place – on all levels: the physical, emotional and mental,” explains Gabi Doron, one of Israel’s senior Iyengar Yoga teachers, and an expert in yoga-therapy. Doron is the founder and owner of the Neveh Tzedek yoga center. Iyengar Yoga therapy is different from other types of yoga, as regards correct body alignment, the duration of each posture, the sequencing of the various postures in order to increase their effect; and the use of yoga props, allowing everyone, regardless of their physical condition, to derive the benefits of yoga.
These special props, developed and designed by Iyengar, were a great innovation that made the practice accessible to many, whether young or old, healthy or ill.
A lot of people think that yoga is no more than a series of different stretches that help maintain fitness, but that is an inaccurate concept,” explains Doron. “Any person can benefit from practicing yoga – as long as they receive the proper guidance that will help their physical condition.”
Efrat Gurman, a successful public relations executive, came to yoga after she was diagnosed with two slipped discs.
“I tried different alternative treatments, including acupuncture and a cupping glass. I tried heating my neck with scarfs and cooling it with ice, went to the best masseur money can buy, and applied all sorts of ointments – the pain was reduced, but then a new problem appeared: I could not move my left arm and hand. It became weak and did not respond to my attempts to move it independently.”
At this stage, the doctor expressed his opinion very firmly: surgery, and the sooner the better.
She went for a second opinion. The second doctor explained that the operation would not make her arm move again, and advised physical therapy for at least two months before doing anything else.
“On the verge of desperation, I was referred to Gabi Doron. After a diagnostic private session, she told me, ‘Give me two months.’ So I did.”
After two months of consistent yoga practice, Gurman went back to her doctor.
“He was amazed.
The pain in my neck, shoulder and arm was gone, and I could independently move my left hand. He said I was a medical miracle,” smiles Gurman.
“People come to the medical class for many reasons,” says Doron, “We have students with minor injuries in the joints, complicated orthopedic malfunctions, chronic illnesses, infertility and psychological problems.”
For the past few years, Western medicine has started to investigate the effects and benefits of maintaining regular yoga practice. Recent studies have shown that the steady practice of yoga has a beneficial effect on the skeletal-muscular system, the hormonal system, the immune system, the digestive system, the reproductive system, the neurological system and mental and psychological states.
Despite yoga’s many advantages, it is important to stress the significance of receiving proper guidance, says Doron.
“Unlike other methods of yoga, Iyengar teachers are required to study for many years in order to become certified. In our method, only teachers that hold a senior certificate are allowed to give medical classes.
Teaching yoga as therapy requires years of training, including annual trips to study with B.K.S. Iyengar at the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute in Pune, India,” she says.
Iyengar teachers have to be assessed and certified in order to teach, and if yoga therapy is involved, training can take anywhere between 10 to15 years.
“Yoga therapy is not a substitute for medical treatment, and the teachers are not doctors; we are all yoga practitioners, and our job is to help the students, no matter what their physical condition is, to practice Yoga in a way that will help them come closer to physical, psychological and social well-being,” says Doron.


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