Doctor’s Prescription for Yoga!

More doctors—including those with traditional Western training—are prescribing the ancient practice of yoga to their patients. With a growing body of research proving yoga’s healing benefits, it’s no wonder.

Given rising health care costs and challenges, experts agree yoga is a safe, affordable complementary therapy. “Health care providers and the yoga community need to continue to reach out to people who suffer stress and high rates of lifestyle-related diseases,”. One important step would be changes in insurance coverage. It will be a great day when the health care institutions and insurance companies accept yoga as a reimbursable treatment for healing many health conditions.

Some doctors still think of yoga as vigorous exercise that would be inappropriate for people with health challenges, so be prepared to do some educating.

Practitioners’ and patients’ attitudes toward yoga are shifting. Many from both groups still view yoga as strictly a supplement to conventional treatment rather than a primary approach. However, increasing access to yoga therapy and a growing body of scientific evidence documenting its benefits are cultivating a sense of optimism among those of us immersed in this work.

The most powerful shift may be the one that happens within each of us—when we take responsibility for our own health, do our practice, and allow for transformation and healing to occur.

I see a bright future where yoga, breathing and meditation practices become more accepted within standard medical care, as our medical system moves toward a more enlightened wellness model of health.

Doctors may soon be telling their patients to “take a yoga class and call me in the morning.”

This post inspired by Yoga Journal article Feb 3, 2016.