Movement Therapy: Yoga, Qigong And More

What is Yoga Therapy?

Yoga is a practice in which breath control, meditation, and the use of specific body postures is widely practiced for health and relaxation and to enhance your physical and emotional well-being. Yoga Therapy is the application of yoga practice with a focus on therapeutic relief from a number of conditions. It can help to prevent and enhance recovery from physical and mental ailments.

How is Yoga Therapy performed?

The stages of healing through yoga therapy use different techniques such as massage, stretching, or alterations of the circulatory patterns. Many who practice the Eastern forms of medicine believe that illnesses are directly related to energy blockages in the body. Promoting the flow of prana, or vital force, through yoga, it helps to release those blockages and restore the basic condition for health. Yoga poses will also enhance the muscles, joints, and organs and fix structural problems in the spine, such as misalignment or joint function.

What are some of the other benefits?

Yoga offers many different benefits throughout the entire body. These are:

Physical – greater tone, flexibility, and strength. Improves respiration and vitality. Helps to maintain a balanced metabolism, increases cardiovascular health, and relieves pain. The physical benefits of yoga can also help you to feel younger with more energy.

Mental – Increases relaxation, aiding in the reduction of stress. Allows you to quiet your mind and channel your energy. Encourages positive thoughts and self-acceptance.

Spiritual – Builds a mind-body awareness, allowing you to tap into the needs of your body, your feelings, the world around you, and the needs of others.

What is Medical Qigong therapy?

Qigong is a unique ancient Chinese energy healing art used to regulate the body, breath, and spirit. It is based on Meridians, Acupuncture points, qi and blood, and Yi and Yang theories. The focus of the practice is to prevent and treat disease, anti-aging, and to connect to one’s inner spirit. 

Qi (or chi) means life force or vital energy. “Gong” means work, self-discipline, achievement, or mastery.

Medical Qigong is a self-healing movement system that brings about a state of health and vitality and is based on Traditional Chinese Medicine theory.

Through a combined yoga and qigong practice, there's an energetic shift and a rearrangement and harmonization of the organs, tissues, cells, and meridians to make them function better. Depending on the different types of practice, there's a different reaction within the body to heal different types of illnesses.

What are the key benefits of Yoga and Qigong therapy?

Many individuals achieve stress relief, better health, and physical fitness. Yoga and Medical Qigong can be beneficial for everyone—at different ages and health status. Medical Qigong has successfully treated cancer and reduced the side effects of radiation and chemotherapy. Yoga and Qigong can help one fight virtually any disease.

Yoga and Medical Qigong is a system of energetic medicine that, through natural processes, allows the body to balance itself for optimal health. The body rids itself of unwanted imbalances to efficiently function in harmony.

What is a Yoga Therapy and Medical Qigong session like?

An initial consultation and first treatment generally lasts one and a half hours and depends on the patient’s medical history and health concerns and goals. Follow-up sessions are one hour in length, and most general treatment plans begin with weekly visits. As the patient progresses in his or her treatment, the frequency of visits changes accordingly.

After discussing health concerns, the practitioner works with the patient to energize the meridian systems or energy pathways of the body by facilitating free energy flow and movement.  This process moves along the same pathways, or meridians, as in acupuncture treatments.

The results vary from person to person, as with any treatment, but the more the patient puts into the discipline, the more they will get out of it. Regular practice of qigong between treatments and beyond treatment with a practitioner will help deliver long term, lasting results.