Yoga Therapy: A Personalized Approach for Your Active Lifestyle Paperback – March 27, 2017

As a yoga practitioner for over 15 years and as a 'student of life', I have dozens of yoga books in my library. It was such a pleasure to read Yoga Therapy: A Personalized Approach for Your Active Lifestyle, and to begin applying the exercises to my daily life. The authors take theory and make it applicable; they provide philosophy and make it relevant; they introduce classical yoga principles and integrate it into daily life. This book is a must-have for yoga teachers, for the seasoned yoga practitioners as well as for new students of yoga; it is germane for the medical and health community and supports corporate wellness program objectives. I will be ordering several copies and providing a copy to my yoga teachers, yogi friends, and my coaching peers as Yoga Therapy offers tools and techniques for balancing mind/body/spirit.

I thought Yoga Therapy was verbose and repetitive, but it's intention was in the right place. The book centers around three main concepts: identification, differentiation, and integration. I found that my yoga instructor was already incorporating these ideas into our practice, so not much of the content was new to me. What I did come away with was a reminder to stay curious. A simple message maybe, but powerful all the same. Tiny changes can have a huge impact on our daily lives and how we interact with the world.P.S. I won this book through a goodreads giveaway!

One of the authors of this work, Staffan Elgelid, edited a previous book with a similar title that I also reviewed, Yoga Therapy: Theory and Practice. That short volume provided a solid foundation in the research demonstrating the effectiveness of yoga therapy, but it offered little in the way of practical applications. Yoga Therapy: A Personalized Approach for Your Active Lifestyle makes for a perfect follow-up that that earlier release. This stand-alone work targets yoga practitioners as its main audience, but yoga instructors will find a wealth of wisdom to enhance their teaching as well.In describing yoga therapy, co-authors Kristen Butera and Staffan Elgelid focus on the individualized nature of the practice, explaining how one’s unique characteristics can serve to create a tailored practice with personalized outcomes. They make distinctions between the practice of yoga therapy versus more “traditional” yoga, mainly as practiced in group classes. The emphasis of yoga therapy is on subjective, individual inquiry with an avoidance of absolutes.To teach customized attention to one’s body, the authors first provide a general overview of the body’s movement systems. While introducing basic information on the skeletal-muscular system, Butera and Elgelid also introduce the first “Exploration,” a series of exercises for self-examination which appear throughout the book. These simple inquires encourage the reader to examine the body in various positions, noticing how minor shifts and changes may make a potential impact. This basic process of what the authors call “Identification, Differentiation, and Integration” serves as the core of the book. Butera and Elgelid define identifying as being aware of what one is already doing, differentiation as recognizing options for changing movement patters, and integration as incorporating this new learning.The sections two and three incorporate these three key concepts into the practice of yoga therapy. “Part II, The Foundations of Practice,” goes into further detail regarding individual differences and reviews methods for creating a personal practice, such as using props, developing breath awareness, cultivating relaxation, and preventing injury through increased awareness. The final section of the book, “Poses for Lifelong Fitness,” more specifically addresses the use of yoga asana (poses) in the differentiation process. For each posture, the authors offer Basic Options, ways to adjust the standard pose to one’s body type; Mobility, targeted means to nurture range of motion within the joints; Strength, a variety of focused methods for activating muscular activity; Balance, fostering the ability to remain upright in both stillness and movement; and finally, Recovery, more passive/resting variations for practice.The postural movements cover all major areas of the body. A series of joint mobility exercises targets neck, shoulders, pelvis, spine, lower body (foot, leg, and hip), and full-body. Emphasis is also placed on the directions of spinal movement (forward bend, backbend, side bend, and twist) as well as poses promoting attention to the core, balance, hips. The last chapter, “Maintaining Fitness and Activity Levels,” provides useful suggestions for deepening one’s practice of yoga therapy, including applying the knowledge gained to movements off the mat.Yoga Therapy: A Personalized Approach for Your Active Lifestyle is appropriate for all levels of yoga practitioners—even if brand new to the practice—but it will have the most benefit for students who are dedicated to the practice of self-study (or svadhyaya in Sanskrit). This book provides a thorough, well-written guide for creating a completely customized and personally beneficial yoga lifestyle. As a long-time yoga practitioner and newish yoga teacher, I would definitely recommend this work.

Having had the privilege of studying yoga therapy under both of the authors, it's quite an incredible opportunity to now own their book. This book is a dynamic resource of yoga therapy education and movement practices, all of which are made accessible and hone in on mobility, strength, recovery and balance. The detailed instructions and photos are easy to follow and offer a variety of options to experience new movement patterns and determine how to adapt them to your personal goals. In the true spirit of Yoga, the authors do a beautiful job of incorporating exercises, breathing, and visualization techniques to bring a sense of calm and relaxation to the experience of moving your body. I also appreciate the section on injury prevention. As a yoga practitioner of 16 years, this book has been a game changer. It's refreshed my knowledge and given me new ways of experiencing my body in yoga poses. As a yoga therapist and teacher, this book is my new bible. I feel much more equipped to customize practices for my clients and have a book full of fresh ways to break down movements in my classes to teach to strength, stability, and flexibility of mind (openness to try new things). Understanding how to teach about and practice spinal movements and variations of traditional poses broadens my toolbox as a yoga practitioner, teacher, and therapist. I highly recommend this book to everyone, because, as to quote the authors: "As you become a student of your body and mind and fine-tune your discernment skills, self-awareness will morph into self-empowerment."

If you are looking for a recipe for that specific ache or ailment, this isn't the book for you. If you are looking to enliven and keep fresh your long term yoga practice, then dive deep into this unique trove of insights. The authors draw from their varied experiences and expertise to share many ways of sustaining a robust yoga program that addresses your whole person. Many of the strategies won't be found in other "yoga" books, but are consistent with what yoga has to offer our modern lifestyle. They are also beautifully simple in design, but powerful in effect. An alternative title could well have been, "Yoga to Avoid Therapy in Your Active Lifestyle."