How Yoga helps Students recover from Chronic Illness or Surgery?

It's very important  to alter the practice so that you can match the intensity level to the current ability of each student, particularly if you're a yoga instructor teaching more than one student, recovering from surgery or living with a chronic illness. The awareness and application of therapeutic Yoga asanas, contemplative practices and breathing exercises can be greatly healing to students working towards regaining their health. Your inner attitude towards your student's efforts in yoga class can also considerably impact the healing effect of the class on your students. In fact, when you're teaching a yoga class in yoga school in Goa, mentally holding the image of your students in your conscious awareness as whole and vibrantly healthy will help to support your students in seeing themselves with a state of strength and well being. This internal shift from a negative to a positive perspective about their bodies will also help to offset depression, which so frequently accompanies serious illness, injury or a lengthy recuperation from a major surgery.

As a yoga teacher, it's also vital to be aware of and uproot any of your own negative thoughts about your students, particularly those students who might be struggling with some health issues. Thoughts like “ It's unbelievable that she is still doing the yoga asanas while seated in a chair. Her knee seems strong enough now to support her weight” Thoughts such as these will energetically sabotage your student's sense of themselves as healthy yogis or yoginis who are temporarily healing from an illness or injury, instead of students who are chronically physically unwell.

The same effect holds true for the inner attitude of each yoga student. If a student feels weak, heartsick and unhealthy and continues to focus on those negative states of being, he/she will sabotage their own efforts during yoga class. If, on the other hand, you gently and compassionately remind your students to focus on the fact that they made it to class, the surprising effort they're making to regain their own health and the parts of their bodies that are strong and healthy, their spirits will be uplifted and a sense of strength, purpose and mastery will begin to fill their bodies, which will deeply support them during the healing process.