The Four Quests
How to get better from a chronic illness or injury
As patients we have to get honest with ourselves about the toll our chronic disorder is taking on us, on those we love and those who depend on us. Secondly, we have to stop dwelling on what we lost by being injured or sick, and let the future life we want to take hold in our imagination. If we do that, we will know what actions we have to take to get to that distant shore. That might take some grit that is with non quitting.
Honesty. How has our disorder damaged normal everyday function and our regular pursuit of enriching activities? Did such a pursuit even exist before injury, or is it only that we are in trouble now that we are actually able to get real about what we are missing out on.
How have coping adaptations to the physiological aspects of our disorder prevented following through with life pursuits and obligations? There are obvious physical limitations and adaptations to being unwell. Being unwell is also accompanied by stress disorders and mental perturbations.
Honesty with self. Is our way of coping with our disorder doing anything beneficial to rectify – the progressive disease pathology underway that is the underlying conundrum of every chronic disorder, whether a back injury, other orthopedic issue, systemic ill or mental stress. That an easy one. The answer is No.
If wishes were horses, we could escape unwanted realities. The first and best, forward leaning thing we must do is, bite the bullet, shake our heads clear and keep going.
Becoming informed about what is known about our injury, illness or stress disorder. and its long term consequences is useful to us sorting out what actions to take. Coping adaptations – taking pills and getting injections or becoming dependent on effective short lived relief or chasing a carrot-on-a-stick hope of it is a dead end. In other words what price are we likely to pay if we do not use common sense and locate and partake of what is proven to get us better?
An abundance of metadata research is available on pubmed.com. When we patients pour over collected data related to our diagnosis, its severity and timeline, and what our specific symptoms and loss of function predict about future outcomes, we not only come to understand why we feel badly but also what will happen to us if we do not do what science has deduced will make a difference.
Sooner is better than later. Having an inner tantrum and pity party about not being as we want to be or hiding our heads under covers does not avoid the reality that only we can take charge of the situation, even when bad off. As long as we are alive we can do something. Knowledge saves lives. Seeking and finding knowledge in laypersons’ libraries in San Francisco saved me from spending my life in a wheelchair. They do not exist now but PubMed does
It is empowering to face reality, whereas make-believe thinking can steal away our time and useful involvement in charting our own course. Knowledge derived from dissected research data can strengthen our grasp on what is incontrovertibly true about our disorder. Science is always evolving but there is a plethora of info widely available to learn from. While uncomfortable, if not a bat to the head, facing the likely reality of the future detriment that is predictable for chronic disorders gives a launch pad to do something about our predicament. An illness or injury is not an end game … because … the future is not here yet.
Research puts us in the know about our prognosis, the usual outcomes of available healthcare options and accessible alternative treatments. All which are widely tested. In the here and now, before bad becomes worse, we can, with some regular effort, turn the tides in a favorable direction. I did it, s can you. We patients are the only voyagers who can set sail for what we hope to find.
Okay we are making some headway. Let’s keep going.
Metadata provides evidentiary conclusions about chronic disorders of all types. HGot it? Preliminarily, metadata is extruded from a compilation of research studies by panel of respected scientists who are seasoned practitioners and / or researchers in that area of study. These research docs wade through large data pools (a common pun) and eliminate, studies that orchestrated a misleading conclusion due to a biased affiliation, or those that insufficiently adhered to methodological protocols.
From that reduced body of literature, the scientists then extract the strongest studies from which strong evidence rises to the top. The public with a particular health disorder then has quick and easy access online to the bibliography of strong research publications that rose up in meta data reviews. More outstanding often, and much less of a head banger for the majority of the public unfamiliar with research data are the strong conclusions or summations scientists draw from the body of literature they are pondering.
The conclusions derived from large pools of select studies about chronic disorders are available online at the National Institute of Health (NIH), a clearing house for global research at the Library of Congress (shut down today 02/10/25 from continuing research along with other national, research institutions).
Research predicts with reliable certainty the future timeline of a pathology and the symptoms and loss of functional health that will unfold in time from a chronic disorder diagnosis – if pragmatic therapeutic resolutions are not sought, found and adhered to.
Strong evidence is critically important to patient’s understanding of their disorder, the future biologic degradation data predicts, the value and risks of available treatments (how one disease pattern can become two, then many, then one’s bothersome health conundrum or living nightmare.
Do we plan for the worst or seek higher ground to avoid unacceptable returns. Is higher ground possible? Hmmm?
So far we have covered Satya, the Sanscrit word that describes one of the restraints of the second limb or commandment of yoga: the niyamas: Not lying to ourselves or others. Standing in the light of truth. Yogins, thousands of years ago, came upon truths within themselves in quiet repose. That led to practices that enabled them to hold onto to truths. Practice makes perfect.
These practices needed support by commandments or rules to help us humans out. Commandments were derived over centuries of speculation and observation about what gets us humans into trouble and keeps us from it. The yamas are the everyday dos, and the niyamas are the restraints or what not to do reminders. When we practice yamas and niyamas in everyday life we protect ourselves and everyone else from us taking common pitfalls. The yamas and niyamas are our guardrails in everyday life, and correspondingly enable us to mature, tamp our egos and help us act in our own and others best interests.
Yoga commandments were born before Christianity. It may be that the Christian idea of commandments grew from Christ studying yoga and Buddhism in India. Truthfulness and restraints suspend magical thinking.
We patients live our decline on a timeline. A degradation of our health, lifestyle and wellbeing is underway when injured, ill or under extreme stress. Relative to our issue getting worse is predictable.
We have to think about what we can do to avoid the unwanted outcome. We are in the middle of a drama. Nothing is inevitable. Desperation is an energy. Procrastination and a reliance on wrong mechanisms will not work in our favor. Sticking to truth like a moth to the flame is the right fork to take.
Let’s take a pause here. We have landed, at a crossroad where I led you. Its a bit tricky to decide where to go from here. Both forks are unknown territories. Can you grab hold of the idea, if not vision, even if somewhat vague at the moment – of forging any path you choose to your most desired destination? Deciding what you want, what place you want to be and what is your heart’s desire let’s your vision of how to get there take shape. Let go.
Physical decline, whether an injury or systemic ill or a mental stress is never one-dimensional. Our mental and emotional health and outlook are immediately impacted and steer us aground. We are barred by physical stressors from living as we are accustomed and it can become the case that we lose an aspiring eye on our future. It sucks. However, what we can step back from and see objectively, we can gain both insight and independence from. better than avoidant and magical thinking any day.
Nonetheless, in the background of our thinking, when we are terribly unwell or injured and in pain or elsewise suffering, on bad days or in bad moments, we can get plunked or seemingly – inescapably trapped on a meri-go-round of either, and / or, both, wishful thinking, or catastrophizing. Both are time-wasting.
The clock is ticking, Future worse outcomes will come up to greet us before we know it. When I was at my worst as a patient, in excruciating pain for a long time, very weak and vertebrae were collapsing onto my spinal cord, my wonderful teacher deliberately got my rancor up. I felt like I was drowning after a battle to stay afloat I was not winning, but my Guru made me fight as one of his countless “hopeless cases.” Long afterwards when sparklingly and miraculously well, it was the forever running joke between us that we were the both of us perennially “hopeless cases.” Him, the King of yoga!
The fifth quest is in the ethers or spiritual realm of wisdom – which is seeing yourself as the protagonist in the middle of your story. You are the lead – the most powerful character in your own book. Every outcoe hinges on your every choice. What story do you want to tell? What ending do your want to live?
The carrot stick of ineffective treatments – by which we wish and hope that the next thing we try will be the one, or that “it takes time” – the common mantra of alternative medicine” leads us astray from the solutions that can mend our ailment at its core. To get better transforming the physical mechanisms of ill health or pathology is critical. Don’t be fooled otherwise. Hold out, no matter what, no matter how far down the scale that that’s possible. Severe patients should not find out the hard way by taking bad advice, I know whence I speak.
Usual treatments do nothing to make us better and stall our wellness efforts.They either allow or contribute to us getting worse, oft times irreversibly. Don’t cave. If you do wrong things like I did intitially that make you worse, forgive yourself. Get back up and try and try again. Don’t dwell.
The most available, insurance-covered, medical and alternative format is still a carrot stick leading nowhere: brief, ineffectual office visits, treatments that offer temporary relief and thereby dependency, pills, injections and more pills that mask symptoms or artificially render function, none which address the root cause of an ailment. All “treatments” and advice in this big bucket are equal in value as each evade benefit and facilitate health degeneration. Invasive and aggressive procedures are always linked high on the totem pole of risk and cause it.
Medical fear mongering forces older patients to succumb to unwanted and dependent strategies more than others, none which authentically fulfill their true aspiration to reset normal function, get better and get off the drugs that tinker with their biological function and make them feel unwell and unfit.
New anti-aging research proves regenerative health is possible. While long term benefits are not had by modern medicines and procedures they are nearly impossible to turn down when our bodies do not accommodate us.
Don’t get caught between a rock and a hard place. Lean on truths – proofs, science, rational thought and keep seeking higher ground with a better view and fresh air. Insist on better even when better is not in your sight line … yet. Turn facts over to glean from all their facets, a strong grasp of knowledge about your condition from which you can form practical decisions that suit you.
Ideally, once we patients get real about our predicament and that we are in fact “patients” and that we are not living the best version of ourselves or our best lives, but, we still, despite the turmoil of being unwell and unfit, keep seeking what will help us turn the corner in the direction we want go, we are thereby, still headed in the right direction. Got it? Keep going.
Not getting better is not a holding pattern that staves of degeneration until we land on the right treatment. This is hard to apprehend, especially when care has a positive, temporary effect, seems safe and, the practitioners who dispense it are knowledgeable, mean well and we like them. It may help to know that the word “effective” as relates to any form of care is a medical term that refers to short term benefit and is not associated with lasting benefit or efficacy.
The recognition that our health needs to improve much faster should take hold of us, before, not after, we patients do all the common, wrong things, because meanwhile, in the later case – we are getting worse … tick, tick, tick.
The veil of usual care: pharmaceuticals and medical advice and some alternative care such as offered in a university hospital like reductive PT, Yoga and acupuncture that insurance covers, including all that seem safe, lodge into the same category of ineffectiveness as the outcome is progressive degeneration. Again, this is hard to wrap our heads around Lifting the veil of ignorance associated with the promise but not a reality of medical and alternative medicines getting us better is especially difficult because doing so leaves us with a sense of misfortune. It seems there is nothing we can count on once injured or ill.
This is another stopping point. I know you know this page is titled “Iyengar Yoga Therapeutics.” I know you know you landed on and are reading through pages on a website that is about Iyengar Yoga. You may not know though that Iyengar Yoga has proven efficacy or that science has long posted it in a heap by itself.
Iyengar Yoga is classical. That means both that its evolutionary development over eons as a science and a medicine makes it the oldest therapeutic medicine in the world. Who knows why, but the time came in the world for a genius of untold compassion to bring forth a system of rare redundant truths about what cures ills of all kinds for the global society. But, can you imagine, that is only one of the many reasons Time magazine named him one of 60 most influential heroes of the 20th Century, maybe the most noteworthy century in all of centuries if its evolution.
If only Yogacharya B.K.S. Iyengar could have lived another 100 years to see through more growth of the subject! He kindly let those of us he trained it was our obligation to move the ball forward. Guruji Iyengar saved my life five times and said, due to that sum, even in effigy, he would continue doing saving my life for the rest of my life on earth. That means I have to make it have a value that is a benefit to others as my teacher asked – hence my studio, this website, this essay.
The word Guruji assigned to his medicinal ways was therapeutic after decades of development. Therapeutic means healing, health-giving, curative, remedial, reparative, medicinal restorative, good, corrective, ameliorative, salubrious, beneficial, saluatory. It is not treating format or a treatment as people get well, fit and happy.
We will land soon enough on Iyengar Yoga as a means to get well but here I return to the thesis of this essay.
A chronic disorder waits for no one. As best you can, don’t get accustomed to being its prisoner. Instead get a hold of and hang on tight, no matter what interference is in your way, to the insistent urger to get better. Do not let go of this compulsion until you read the meredian of all the way better. Ever. Think about it. What’s wrong with believing in getting better – for the rest of your life?
The ways in which a chronic ailment presents itself and seemingly takes possession of our health are countless – the level of severity of symptoms, the complexity of functional loss, the foregoing deterioration and theloss of will, confidence and control that accompany it, the body parts and systems involved, whether an organic system or injured spine, and the many ways we as patients succumb.
The human and the clinical ideal run parallel to one another. It is so infrequently thought of to mention by practitioners that it has gone by the wayside in patient relations but ever in the background thoughts of failing patients transitioning to chronicity,whether injury or illness, is the pathophysiological, death knell, so to speak. An ailment has entered an active, degenerative phase. Wear and tear is accelerating above the norm, sometimes incessantly, sometimes dangerously. Regardless the number of office visits, it becomes clear that no one is helping.
Just for that reason, and unfortunately, this transition is the norm. What’s more it’s transactional and offers benefit, but not to the patient. It’s benefit is remunerative and compensates only those offering the short end of a carrot stick – the delay of efficacious care, or, better said, its unavailability and inaccessibility. Most treatments, allopathic and alternative lead to dependent care that puts money into the coffers of insurance, medical and pharmaceutical companies. That aside, what matters is you The bottom line is that this suffering and this decline are unnecessary.
Most patients are unaware that short-term relief does not tamp down disease processes. Maybe, because it is a hard pill to swallow, we have to repeatedly say and hear again – that treatments that wear off are not a holding pattern that avoids degeneration.
The ideal treatment is one by which a patient gets better and is then no longer a patient. The sooner the better.
Yoga is the oldest, lasting, tried and true medicine. It evolved by hypothetical experiment, meticulous observation, the recording and collating of experimental proofs in detail, retrials and repetive and unbiased testing by both empirical and scientific objectivity that uniquely, by spiritual oath, evolved through time generation after generation. The predicate of yoga is to end human suffering by humane means human hands, and primarily by another sharing known ways that are without artifice in a manner that avoids self adulation or public praise.
A patient is a student. The dispenser of yoga medicine is a teacher, though often thought of as a doctor but primarily an instructor. A patient is engaged. Think about it. If the dispenser does not teach the patient how to get well, the patients is in thin air and can land no where. Feel about that. Isn’t that the same feeling you’ve felt when an MD gave bad advice or an an herbalist told you to drink beetle juice. No offense to either, all have to learn. That said, we should not feel shy or sorry for speaking truths that worldwide most all patients agree upon. Further, when practitioners are tied to a system fixed on corporate profit margins we have to wonder: if they knew better, would they do better by patients?
Doctors are leaving in hoards from university hospitals and clinics. Patients are having a horrific time finding a general practitioner, especially one who does not require annual fees in addition to the cost of medical care. Medical care, most patients feel is a waste of time. The medical industry fell apart. What shouldn’t is research.
It is the doctor-teacher’s alliance B.K.S Iyengar established [that his family, especially daughters, Geetaji and Sunita, and son, Prashant and now Abhijata the grandaughter that get patients better. When a patient is excluded from the framework of healthcare, which is the glaring current reality, they are still in free fall and a victim of disabling pathogenic processes. Other systems have countlessly proven this over ages.
Pathogenic processes are well understood by both Western medicine and Classical Yoga. but only does Iyengar Yoga insist upon a patient’s effort and mastering the means that improve their health. Patients adhere more to Yoga than allopathic ways because what they are asked to do makes perfect sense – their health improves fast alonside feeling better and better every day – yes everyday you take a dose of medicine.
Patients, when empowered by the acquisition of knowledge that is attained through experience [practice] take the helm alongside their teacher. Eventually they can steer themselves in the right direction of wellness (with parallel teacher guidance). Iyengar Yoga is not a lonely and hollow investment of time and energy. Patients pursue relief and health at the same time others are doing the same. That yields encouragement and more learning. Looking back we can see what putting one foot in front of the other turned baby steps and some falling down into upright carriage, poise, power. Hope became faith in the promise and potential of being a human being.
It is precient that we build up this economically sound structure so more can dip into the wellspring of benefits Yoga gives.
Treating the root cause of an ailment starts with the immediate changes and new development of the body, mind, intellect, emotion and energy on constructive ways that feel constructive if not positively attractive to a patient. Yoga is like a magnet – once we feel and se what it is doing to and for us we want more growth and wellness.
Positive change is upbeat and energizing. This has been and still is a medicinal premise of the yoga. Yoga cannot be dispensed as a rote pose series – a prescription. I called it such but my teacher kindly corrected me. It took me a long time to understand.The allopathic idioms do not apply wholly. “treatment is another.” Yoga is a flexible methodolgy within a corridor of proofs and protocols. My teacher required mentees to find the words that come closer to and explain what occurs in a therapeutic habitat. It’s awesome!
My teacher was guiding me for decades to understand how poses, in a combination, and by pose modifications relative to a person’s disorder, body characteristics, symptoms, functional loss, and so on must changes that correlate and accrue benefits. The interchange between a patient and a teacher is suspenseful moment to moment. What is given changes often. He taught me through my own body that with each positive milestone, poses change or are eliminated and new ones added to rectify a disorder.
Yoga is an subject that is new for each person.In the right hands, the effect of yoga is fast. A patient feels and knows they are getting better ad better is not one-dimensional but all encompassing. Improvements can be be backed up by medical testing such as BP, thyroid and vascular function. Change is viewable and often astounding on the outside by others.
Physical repair happens from the outside in and inside out creating harmonic systemic function. Practice is medicine. Doses must be regular. Patients are reared by a teacher to pay attention to the sensations providing feedback. Iyengar knelt before this emanation as there was no one who knew how to help him either. He was a very ill child from birth and destined to die young. The spark him in to live made him pursue the yoga to practice every day of 80 years and to unendingly grow into wellness and to be transformed as one of the greatest masters of yoga on par with Patanjali. He tuned in.
Patients learn to correlate mindful pose actions and movements to the pleasant sensations in the body that signal reverberations of health. In that way, they inure to doing only what makes them better in body and to feel better. Yoga is a human medicine, a science, an art and a personal discipline by which a patient gains surety and confidence in himself.
Patients learning yoga therapeutics become familiar with and absorbed by the actions and movements in poses from which emerge exhilarating and renewing, mind, body, brain and personality changes, as they transcend symptoms. Patients become a person who is gradually without, or, in control of their ailment.
Patients are taught how to prop themselves in multifaceted ways that both make possible staying in poses a long time and deriving the greatest benefit. This also enables their home practice.
A person’s brain and nervous system, in particular, the sympathetic nervous system, gets stuck in overdrive when we are afflicted by a chronic ailment. Correct yoga practices, apropos to a person’s ailment, judiciously quiet this fight-flight mechanism. Physiological benefit is thereby better assimilated in each dose of yoga practice. This therapeutic goal must be achieved to halt chronic degenerative processes.
When injured or ill, it makes sense to hear that disease processes are breaking down body tissues, organ function and quality of life. Showing up daily to carry out the fourth quest requires looking inward to the sensations emanating from the cells and attuning the body’s position and the rhythm and movement of our breath to a serene and still mental state. The notion that a pharmaceutical or psychotropic could put us instantly in the state I am discussing here is a missed point. The body knows what bio-chemistry to turn on when needed. The body and mind and brain have to enjoin that transfusion throughout. The effusion of chemicals that emanate from the brain by thought and desire to be more wholly our capital S self steers us to act in our own best interests and others – with the master within. This occurs by natural means not paid means. Thiugh not easy and certainly a test of faith we humans should not lose faith in ourselves to source a greater potential within to evolve.
Incentive, drive, will, desire, projection and urgency must be our propulsion. Any drug that is not generated by the body can cause gaps in DNA, mis-firing of nerve fibers, deformation of cells and lead to common, chronic, nervous system disorders.
The effects of yoga are within the body. With each practice by known rules and practices we can attain lasting and notable benefits that are more powerful and potent than any other treatment or zealous invention on the planet. The physical transcendence of disease patterns is clinically documented.
Yoga involves math.
My teacher told me I had keep my patients from getting worse. That meant I had to get them better. “What will happen if you don’t help them?” he constantly prodded. I had to compound all attributes of health by correctly combining poses for biochemical effect. Patients, had to be on board as a active partner to accrue benefits. That is efficacy.
To accomplish efficacy, a method must specifically adapt to the dissimilarities of symptoms amongst like patients. Is it a tall order for a patient to want to get better, feel better and stay better? No.
Anyone and everyone deserves to get and feet better by what yoga makes possible. Could it be, that the lull of inuring to not getting well by usual means is a systemic societal acceptance of a low bar of dispassionate ways. Every living being deserves the high bar of humane and efficacious care. What’s known that gets people better is not out of reach!
Yoga addresses mild to severe chronic cases and has helped countless millions. B.K.S. Iyengar reintroduced yoga medicine to society in the last and in this century. Its evolution lasted eons, not centuries. Its methodology is clinical and requires knowledge of the body. A patient is the central focus. Anything less is not yoga.
Snippets
The Einstein of Yoga Therapy
~Yoga~
is an experience-based science and an evidence-based medicine.
The Yamas and the Niyamas, the first two limbs of practice and the behavioral codes of Yoga are its guardrails. B.K.S. Iyengar developed yoga medicine as a tool of positive change in modern times. He helped millions and spread hope. His pragmatic methods adapt to an individual’s presentation of disease and symptoms, account for risk factors, make use of personal assets and critically, focus on the root cause of ailments. W. Science affirms its uncommon efficacy. None need inure to chronic health problems.
No Ailment is a Foregone Conclusion!
Let the Body Have What it Wants.
We humans can live with misery but why should we? Our bodies prefer mobility and freedom and are naturally amenable and adherent to the therapeutic actions that restore motion and bring resounding relief, even If a body has chronic changes. No ailment is a foregone conclusion. Let the body have what it wants! When a patient hankers for change, a teacher can guide the physical steps that repair injured tissues, joints and organ systems. The diagnostic and therapeutic tools of Iyengar Yoga pinpoint the exact measures to step back degenerative mechanisms. When a patient is stronger, they replicate their teacher’s adjustments, take on new poses and get to the finish line of better.
“Do not stop trying even if perfection eludes you.” ~ B.K.S. Iyengar
Guruji assigned me “hopeless cases” in the medical clinic at RIMYI to guide their individual pose prescriptions, and to source and put to use ‘the volumes he poured in my head.’ Six months earlier, I was his “lost cause patient ” with a spinal injury, no other but he could save me from. Guruji’s painstaking effort got me better than ever. To each thing I asked of the patients he gave me, all said: “I can’t.” Each time, Guruji popped-up beside us, nudged me exuberantly and acted as if he beheld a miracle. I scratched my brain.
To each thing Guruji asked of me when my body was frozen in pain, I said: “I can’t.” He said try.” We fought at those times. I was a big cry baby.
As I broke poses into tiny bits for a worst-case neck patient and said “try,” he said: “I can’t” as he did what I asked. I suddenly got why Guruji gave me these patients. He was beside me again right then.
I knew what would happen the next day and the days after. My hopeless patients would transform by the compounded benefit of yoga especially with my Guru at my side in right moments.
Let me try is a bridge from I can’t to baby steps of mastery! I’m so grateful to patients who made me find right words and to my pop-up Guru who made me constantly scratch my brain!
FAQs
I know little about yoga? Can I be a patient?
The expectation that we have to know something about yoga to be a patient is interesting by the fact yoga medicine was derived by studying every aspect of being human – body, psyche, emotions, intellect, behavior. Yoga is a medicine
Medicine is for people who are not well or injured. Yoga does not bar patients but students always ask if they should be fit first. While yoga makes us fit it is always for every person. Whatever is so about a person they can cross the threshold and pass through the gates of yoga
Many who sign up for Private Consults (PCs) or for Yoga Clinics (YCs) have not done yoga before. They arrive with a variety of ailments. A student need no prior experience. Besides. what good would that do if you are incapacitated compared to your norm?
While those with severe ailments and / or cannot attend the Yoga Clinics they can get the undivided attention and care they need in a private consult. Those with mild to moderate ailments can attend both therapeutic workshops and yoga clinics.
Workshops, clinics and consults are participatory and interactive. A patient by their explanations of how they feel each day and in each pose inform the teacher but are also in training to understand their dis ease pathology, whatever it may be.
All participants work at their pace and capacity. The poses each patient is given relate to their specific need / diagnosis and the presentation of their symptoms in the moment. Those poses are intended to change the disease or injury to a sufficient extent that new poses are warranted.
Changing poses regularly is cyclical. Poses, necessarily must correlate appropriate to patients’ current health, strength, fitness and well being. The aim of the yoga is to make patients’ health and life better and to build them up. Severe patients are given an abundance of help.
Evlaleah adapts pose shapes with props to make a patient comfortable and to put them at ease so they can stay an appropriate amount of time. A patient will not be able to stay if uncomfortable or tense. Poses often have a salubrious effect quickly. When this starts to happen a patient’s can better participate. Participation is the key to getting better and the missing link in most types of care.
A patient in a clinic who feels put upon or feels they are not keeping up with the group will feel they cannot get their needs met. Patients in a clinical environment require Senior level teachers who were mentored in the therapeutic arts of yoga and capable of teaching patients with different needs as yoga therapeutics can not be administered in a rote fashion. Patients must be constantly monitored, adjusted, taught and corrected.
Throughout a session (workshop, clinic or consult) a teacher educates the patient about the purpose and value of each pose, and tells them what is being done so they will get better, step by step, at doing the poses properly on their own. When they reach mastery of what they are taught – they must be taken further along.
Question:
I have a bad diagnosis. My MDs, friends and family say I must do this or that. I don’t like my options. Why should I trust yoga?
A tough place to be and a common scenario. My best recommendation is don’t rely on advice. Science shows it rarely pans out. Follow proofs – what you know about yourself and your body and, rely on science, where you will find concrete info about your disorder. You should find that either are true – that science confirms your experience or proves what you did not know and fills a gap.
While hard to wrap one’s head around, research has found medical advice to be harmful 80% of the time. The scientists who arrived at this finding assert that is a low estimate!
Science is made up of proofs. Our Library of Congress, the online clearing house for scientific publications has a (free) online e-version, PubMed. There you will learn to do good searches by doing bad ones that don’t lead to the results you are looking for and may require umpteen search reiterations. Be dogged.
Research literature is littered with biased, ghost written, marketing campaigns (for a product or service, to which an authority may have sold rights to attach his name), that masquerade as bonafide studies. You will lose the feel you are being sold a bill of goods when you stumble upon worthwhile literature that openly declares no affiliation, obviously followed scientific protocols and lays bare their study in numbers that verify the scientists’ conclusions.
Scientific reviews of meta data (s) relevant to patients’ diagnosis are life-savers. Reviews that report on years or decades of data based on a large number of participants’ long-term outcomes after conformity with treatments or procedures, provide need-to-know-now info about the predicted prognoses.
The dislike of advice is often felt in the gut of most patients when in the throws of an ailment with/without a diagnosis, and when symptoms and / or wear and tear from disease or injury pathophysiological process is likely severe and / or when suffering, and the fear of getting worse override everyday functions.
Logically in our short-term, in our seeking of relief and normalcy, and illogically, not seeing the bigger picture of long term outcomes, we succumb before being enough in the know about what we are up against with our ailment, much less the pros and cons of treatments and recommendations. How, though do we know good from bad?
I can speak for myself and for the common severe patient who has done what their doctor advised and the outcome failed to satisfy their expectation or who did nothing this eventually made impossible ignoring their decline. My patients, research and primarily my brilliant teacher guidance over decades when appointed by him to treat patients.
Providence squared made possible a leap of faith onto a road less traveled – whether I took MDs’ advice or did nothing, I was in peril of paraplegia. Spinal vertebrae dismantled and discs ruptured in a fall while running. Slipping vertebrae moved onto my spinal cord over nine months.I lost use of one leg completely; the other was on its way requiring hospital stays and morphine. No CAT or MRI scans existed. A myleogram revealed what lay beneath. Just before spinal fusion, my team of doctors entered my room, told me I would awaken paraplegic … would not do yoga, dance or walk again … but spend life in a wheel chair … my darling boy could not live with me. I would need constant care … life over in my 20s. Then they left.
I thought surgery would make me better. I now know of course surgery accelerates wear and tear that’s greater than normal. I felt desperate, in grief, shock and terror … until my thoughts lighted on my Guru.
A significant event occurred a few years earlier that made me pursue premeds at USF while completing my dance degree. For all of my life I was drawn to study human movement. This required learning the other sciences. One day after a morning class my teacher insisted I watch him privately take 10 ill or injured patients he called “hopeless cases” individually through therapeutic pose sequences. Some were weak and sick-looking; some in terrible pain. Each of them felt a tremendous overriding improvement with what he did.
We students, back then (70s) were not allowed to observe his medical yoga clinics at his Institute in Pune, India. He distrusted people imitating and thus hurting people. We were young. Nonetheless, we saw patients’ extraordinary physical and mental transformation each day at RIMYI. They were not allowed to share what my teacher did for them, but they boasted their improvements in their physical comportment and spoke with joy about the glorious feeling of wellness. My experience with my teacher that day is bigger than what I am telling. In sum, it transformed and humbled me and caused me to take premeds at USF so I could better understand the human body and hopefully, how yoga issues thorough correction of ill health. I never expected to be a patient. I was the picture of health.
At separate times, I was my teacher’s severely ill patient and his severely injured patient. I dodged bullets by not caving to stern advice. Information intervened – a memory from the past that sparked my realization that I hopeless case, knew the Einstein of yoga who could help me – lucky stars. When with illness, I was a yoga therapist, by my teacher’s assignment and mentoring and knew taking radioactive iodine would kill the organ causing my issue, the thyroid and expose me to a cacophony of numerous other health issues, nearly ensuring cancer(s) and death and awful treatments.
In both instances I avoided tragic outcomes then in both my teacher asked me to do for people who are severe. Think about what you really want as your best outcome for your mental and physical health. Don’t push aside a full return because like me you do not know yet what is possible.
Don’t back down. Don’t inure to a low standard of care. Don’t cave to bad advice that may lead to permanently disabling outcomes. It’s your body and your life. Stay in control. Decide what you want and don’t put anyone else in charge of your health. Find your people, who based by their real success helping others demonstrate capability and deserve your trust.
Trust your own common sense and intuition.
Regarding yoga, like all other options, only you can decide. Yoga is safe and leaves us feeling wonderful. As a medicine, it is tried and true. For eons, not centuries or decades, yoga has relieved bad symptoms associated with all the kinds of physical disorders, remitted countless diseases, repaired the range of injuries and relieved all the sorts of mental stresses. At the same time it gives countless benefits. It is safe and without risks to try as long as it is a very seasoned and trained teacher. Trust your gut.