Author: Yoga Therapy

An example of applying that from my experience is managing pain. Pain is worse the more afraid you are. Naturally Pranayama helps greatly and if you can suppress the activity of your sympathetic nervous system sufficiently even extreme pain becomes just an unpleasant sensation.

For most people, walking freely on two legs is basic to being human, so basic that they never think about it. Losing that ability is devastating and has profound psychological effects as well as physical ones.

I spent a very long time alone in a hospital bed in extreme pain and it was by far the best yoga lesson that I have ever had. The Yoga Sutras, as well as common sense, tell us that of all the ways of knowing something direct experience is the best. Now that I have the experience of successfully applying the science of yoga to that extreme situation I feel I have a responsibility to teach others what I learnt as well as I can.

After a class at Glenunga I had a Bill Clinton moment. While everyone in the class did as well as they could I wasn’t satisfied that I was getting the magic of traditional yoga across.

I looked into my early practices in hospital and asked myself, what was I doing that was so effective. How was it that I was strong enough to get up and walk in my first prosthesis with no trouble? How did I really reduce pain and deal with the storm of negative emotions that threatened to engulf me? What was it that was so unobtrusive that I could do it comfortably in a room full of strangers?

The answer wasn’t long in coming, ‘It’s the breathing, stupid’.

There is little doubt that Sri T Krishnamacharya is the most influential yoga teacher of the last century. Often called

Extending the length of your exhalation is a fundamental element of yoga practice. Regulating the breath so that it is

When doing breathing or asana practice it is important to count repetitions to make sure that you don’t just drift