By Emily Bruce – Yoga Therapist

Yoga, at its heart, was never meant to be fragmented. Rooted in ancient wisdom, it has always offered more than shapes made with the body. It is a system designed to meet the full spectrum of human experience — body, breath, mind, emotion and spirit — especially when we find ourselves strained by stress or worn thin by life.

As a yoga therapist, I meet people not as problems to be fixed but as whole, complex beings navigating pain, transition, illness, and transformation. The approach is not to treat a body in isolation but to offer a space in which all parts of a person can be seen, heard and supported.

Yoga therapy: more than modifications

Therapeutic yoga doesn’t begin with a diagnosis — it begins with curiosity:

• What is this person holding?
• What stories are housed in the breath, the muscles, the mind?
• How might breathwork, movement, philosophy and rest work together to soothe and support?
  
  

Rather than offering a one-size-fits-all solution, yoga therapy draws on frameworks like the five koshas to explore different layers of being — the physical, energetic, mental, intuitive and spiritual. It considers the gunas — qualities of energy — to sense whether someone is stuck in inertia, frayed by overstimulation, or inching toward clarity. This is not yoga that instructs; it is yoga that listens.

Stress as a proxy for suffering

In my research exploring yoga and stress, I was drawn to a question many of us share: What part of yoga is most effective at reducing stress? The findings were both illuminating and humbling.

Across multiple studies — including work by Gard, Matko, and Carmody & Baer — one message became clear: it is not the separation of yoga’s elements that offers the greatest relief, but their synthesis. Asana, pranayama, meditation, and philosophy each contribute something essential — but their combined effect is where the deepest healing resides. It’s the interplay of body, breath and meaning that creates the space for change.

Stress, in this context, becomes a stand-in for suffering itself — not just the daily pressures of life but the deeper weight we carry. And it is the whole of yoga that best responds to that depth.

Philosophy as a healing framework

Yoga philosophy is sometimes sidelined as abstract or “nice to have.” But in a therapeutic setting, it becomes essential. Applied gently and relevantly, it helps people reframe their experience: not as failure but as part of being human.

Concepts like Ahimsa (non-harming), Svadhyaya (self-study), and Ishvara Pranidhana (surrender to something beyond oneself) act as anchors. They offer a compassionate lens through which clients can see themselves not as broken but as becoming. When paired with breath and movement, these teachings become lived — not just studied.

This combination — physical, mental, philosophical — creates the conditions for re-regulation, clarity and reconnection. Frewen and Lanius describe how embodied movement paired with heightened awareness enables “adaptive reconsolidation” of emotional experience — a powerful process for those living with the scars of chronic stress or trauma.

Whole people need whole practices

Each of us carries a nervous system shaped by life — relationships, grief, illness, trauma. No one arrives at the mat untouched. This is why a therapeutic approach must be interdisciplinary, integrative and trauma-aware.

To work holistically is to welcome all of it. Not to separate mind from body or breath from belief but to draw the circle wide enough to hold it all. That’s what yoga, in its fullest form, does best.

From distillation to integration

The greatest insight my research revealed? That the very question — “What part of yoga works best?” — is too narrow. Yoga’s power lies not in its parts but in its wholeness. It offers integration, not isolation. Healing happens not through distillation but through reconnection to breath, body, meaning and ultimately, to self.

Stress and suffering often fray the threads of our selfhood — scattering our sense of coherence, safety and wholeness. Yoga, when offered in its fullness, becomes a way of weaving those threads back together — gently, respectfully and in relationship with the whole person.

It’s because of this holistic, interdisciplinary understanding that I’ve teamed up with two remarkable women: Lisa Stewart, a mental health nurse with deep insight into trauma and psychological care, and Susanna Edwards, a yin and restorative yoga teacher whose work centres around rest, embodiment and nervous system regulation. Each of us brings a unique lens — medical, philosophical, embodied — and together we’re exploring new ways of offering yoga that honour its full depth and relevance.

Our shared intention is to move beyond the idea of yoga as stretch or stress relief alone. Instead, we offer an approach that is inclusive, trauma-aware, and richly integrative — one that serves the complex, beautiful wholeness of those who come seeking support, clarity, and healing. We will be speaking on our approach at the 2025 Om Yoga Show. If this has sparked an interest do come and find us there.

Yoga has always had this potential. Now is the time to remember it — and share it widely.

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As part of my Yoga Therapy Diploma I completed a research project which informed this blog post. Here is a list of the studies I referenced in that research.

Bibliography

• Carmody, J., & Baer, R. A. (2008). Relationships between mindfulness practice and levels of mindfulness, medical and psychological symptoms and well-being in a mindfulness-based stress reduction program. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 31(1), 23–33. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17899351/
  
• Cramer, H., Lauche, R., & Dobos, G. (2014). Characteristics of randomized controlled trials of yoga: A bibliometric analysis. BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 14, 328. https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6882-14-328
  
• Frewen, P. A., & Lanius, R. A. (2006). Toward a psychobiology of posttraumatic self-dysregulation: Reexperiencing, hyperarousal, dissociation, and emotional numbing. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1071, 110–124. https://doi.org/10.1196/annals.1364.010
  
• Gard, T., Noggle, J. J., Park, C. L., Vago, D. R., & Wilson, A. (2014). Potential self-regulatory mechanisms of yoga for psychological health. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, 770. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4179745/
  
• Matko, K., Sedlmeier, P., & Bringmann, H. C. (2021). Differential effects of ethical education, physical Hatha yoga, and mantra meditation on well-being and stress in healthy participants — an experimental single-case study. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 672301. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8375679/
  
• Nagarathna, R. (2021). Yoga practice is beneficial for maintaining a healthy lifestyle and endurance under restrictions and stress imposed by lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12, 613762. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8257944/