Thank you once again for your thoughtful and thorough response in "Reflections on the Future of Yoga Therapy"! I have been wrestling with the idea of this new designation and as a woman of color and as someone who is a C-IAYT with many gifts and talents as a yoga therapist but not one who came to yoga, or yoga therapy through the healthcare stream, I am always worried about where we are going and if we are remaining true to these masterful teachings of yoga by positioning them always and forever under the white and Western world gaze. AS one who does not live in the United States, but in the island of Bermuda, I am always concerned that our tendency is instinctively to follow the U.S.'s lead, so it concerns me this Q-IAYT destination and what it will mean for those of us in Bermuda currently working as yoga therapists. Doctors and health care professionals (most of them) do not understand or care to be informed about us, except through the Western healthcare lens. This new designation appears to give them the permission structure to continue to do what they always do while further isolating and disregarding the expertise and nuance of the work of the yoga therapist.
I too have worked with the IAYT Administration on another issue to do with Yoga Therapy over a course of about a year. They listened and welcomed our group's (Spirituality in Yoga Therapy) input and made space for us to share our views and concerns, so I too remain hopeful. But boy does this make everything messier now and have the capacity to turn heads and hearts and pull us further apart, not together! My heart goes out to those just coming into this field!
Thanks for developing a space for sharing and an avenue to posit common ground. We need this!
Hi Joanne, Thank you for taking the time to comment, and as always, for the thoughtfulness of your reflections. I remember hearing about you reaching out to IAYT and am heartened to know that they received you open-heartedly. I agree fully with your concerns about the U.S. influencing other countries' yoga therapy evolution (let alone other social structures), and have seen people from other countries echo this. Of particular "danger" to my mind is the U.S. system of healthcare and the way it fully drives a profit-based managed care model here. Should licensure be the goal, in my opinion this would change the nature of yoga therapy forever, by both diluting it and bringing it under the direction of a colonial care model in which people have to follow the directions of "utilization reviewers" who will tell us to add more asana, or make other reccommendations, in order to be "reimbursed." I'm glad you and your voice are part of this profession, and hope our international cohorts can form an alliance that offers alternative models.
Hello Bo,
Thank you once again for your thoughtful and thorough response in "Reflections on the Future of Yoga Therapy"! I have been wrestling with the idea of this new designation and as a woman of color and as someone who is a C-IAYT with many gifts and talents as a yoga therapist but not one who came to yoga, or yoga therapy through the healthcare stream, I am always worried about where we are going and if we are remaining true to these masterful teachings of yoga by positioning them always and forever under the white and Western world gaze. AS one who does not live in the United States, but in the island of Bermuda, I am always concerned that our tendency is instinctively to follow the U.S.'s lead, so it concerns me this Q-IAYT destination and what it will mean for those of us in Bermuda currently working as yoga therapists. Doctors and health care professionals (most of them) do not understand or care to be informed about us, except through the Western healthcare lens. This new designation appears to give them the permission structure to continue to do what they always do while further isolating and disregarding the expertise and nuance of the work of the yoga therapist.
I too have worked with the IAYT Administration on another issue to do with Yoga Therapy over a course of about a year. They listened and welcomed our group's (Spirituality in Yoga Therapy) input and made space for us to share our views and concerns, so I too remain hopeful. But boy does this make everything messier now and have the capacity to turn heads and hearts and pull us further apart, not together! My heart goes out to those just coming into this field!
Thanks for developing a space for sharing and an avenue to posit common ground. We need this!
Hi Joanne, Thank you for taking the time to comment, and as always, for the thoughtfulness of your reflections. I remember hearing about you reaching out to IAYT and am heartened to know that they received you open-heartedly. I agree fully with your concerns about the U.S. influencing other countries' yoga therapy evolution (let alone other social structures), and have seen people from other countries echo this. Of particular "danger" to my mind is the U.S. system of healthcare and the way it fully drives a profit-based managed care model here. Should licensure be the goal, in my opinion this would change the nature of yoga therapy forever, by both diluting it and bringing it under the direction of a colonial care model in which people have to follow the directions of "utilization reviewers" who will tell us to add more asana, or make other reccommendations, in order to be "reimbursed." I'm glad you and your voice are part of this profession, and hope our international cohorts can form an alliance that offers alternative models.