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ABSTRACT
Context Yoga Therapy is an emerging complementary and integrative health practice for which there is increasing interest from both clinical and research perspectives. Currently missing, however, is an explanatory framework for the profession that provides practitioners, clients, and the public with an understanding of how various yogic traditions and principles can be understood in modern health care contexts.
Objective This study proposes an explanatory framework for yoga therapy, informed by phenomenology, eudaimonia, virtue ethics, and first-person ethical inquiry.
Conclusions These 4 philosophical perspectives- phenomenology, eudaimonia, virtue ethics, and first-person ethical inquiry-provide a lens through which to understand how yogic practices support the individual's transformation in the experience of illness, pain, or disability. We propose that this transformation occurs through facilitating a reharmonization of body, mind, and environment toward the experience of eudaimonic well-being. (Altern Ther Health Med. 2018;24(l):38-47.)
Yoga therapy is an emerging complementary and integrative health (CIH) practice that has recently grown in professionalization with the development and adoption of educational competencies, accreditation of schools, and certification of individuals. The International Association of Yoga Therapists defines yoga therapy as a "process of empowering individuals to progress toward improved health and well-being through the application of the teachings and practices of yoga"1
A growing body of research supports the effectiveness of yoga for a variety of health concerns.2-6 Furthermore, evidence exists that the general public is turning toward yoga as a mind-body practice to foster well-being and manage health conditions.7-9 Although this trend toward the professionalization of yoga therapy is promising, important barriers need to be addressed for it to become an understood and accepted CIH practice and for yoga therapists to become respected and included in integrative health care teams.
High heterogeneity among yoga practices and poor standardization and reporting of these practices in yoga research have been identified as significant obstacles to understanding the mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of yoga for health conditions.2,3 Various lineages, styles, and practices are often used in clinical and research contexts, without a clear justification or detailed description of the components they entail.10
Delphi studies have sought consensus on practices and guidelines from experts in the field to address this problem.11,12 For mental health conditions, consensus has been found on the inclusion of what was defined...