To understand how yoga can help, first we need to exclude what can be harmful. Not everything in yoga is for everybody. 

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Starting from the beginning: some of very complex yoga poses [‘asanas’] are available only to a few practitioners who have an extraordinary range of motion (ROM) depending on their skeletal system, and more specifically - the shapes of their bones. Today we know a lot about human anatomy and physiology, and we know that certain practices are not the effect of any “hard work” or “regular practice”, but they come from natural predispositions and the shape of skeleton that we are born with.

There are many awesome materials that I share in my courses about that, but you can start from reading an amazing eye-opening book “Your Body, Your Yoga” by Bernie Clark.

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Just like in the Olympic Games - to be able to reach certain results you need certain predispositions and a genetic heritage. Training is not everything, even though it is extremely important and can change a lot. 

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Secondly: yoga is not about aesthetic. The physical aspect of yoga in the past was spectacular for many different reasons (actually similarly to some contemporary Instagram’s yoga representations, being a pure marketing and “who is the best” game) - one of the most important and pretty forgotten fact is that yoga helped India to get back their independence. Having strong and impressive bodies meant being a strong country which could shake off colonial rule. Showing off to the international audience some spectacular yogis who were able to go much beyond the human body’s normal capacity, together with influential Yogis and their teaching (Swami Vivekananda, Swami Sivananda, T. Kirshnamacharya, B.K.S. Iyengar, Pattabhi Jois) - it all became a strong shout out for bringing India back to its power and glory. And it seemed to work!

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Yoga that you may know from the famous pictures or stories about Indian yogis in fact had nothing to do with a yoga as a therapy approach or a regular, safe and well designed practice. Exactly like #yogisofinstagram can misguide you about yoga today. As we know better now what is good and safe, and we have scientific research on that - a modern yoga practice can be much healthier and balancing for everyone.

If - for example - the cause of your imbalances is a result of too fast and too intense pace of life - maybe a fast-paced “power yoga" with many challenging poses will bring you more harm than benefits - increasing your fatigue, a risk of burn-out, frustration or a self-judgment. Maybe you would benefit much more from a gentle and nourishing slow flow, grounding hatha or even yin yoga… And in contrary - if you suffer from a lack of movement maybe pure relaxation and only passive yoga stretches or ‘yoga nidra’ (‘yogic sleep’) - even if it feels nice -  will not help you feel better at all.

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If yoga is supposed to be a therapy it should bring to our life - on a physical or mental/emotional level - practices that compensate for what is missing or needs to be strengthened, not only what we like or feel comfortable with.

What I’m trying to point out here is - in order to find an effective solution we need to understand the nature of our problems, and find right ‘supplements’.

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Of course, our lifestyle and challenges are complex - your body can have different needs, your mind - different. Remember, yoga doesn’t always need to be “black” or “white”, “either”/“or”, it can absolutely be a mixture of various energies, many components - both yin (passive) and yang (active). In fact, mixing tools and styles can be so much more effective than sticking to one dogma!