Bhakti Yoga
The module on Bhakti Yoga (the path of yoga focused on cultivation of devotion, faith and trust) focused on how women have traditionally accessed the path of Yoga. To me, it represents most succinctly why Traditional Yoga is a powerful path to self-transformation and what Modern Yoga has lost as it focuses more and more on the body.
Bhakti Yoga is a yoga path focused on devotional love to the Divine as a way to united with Truth or Pure Consciousness. Women in India, due to their role in a patriarchal society that continues to exist today, “had no avenue to be independent or assert her freedom and self-reliance”.
Bhakti Yoga offered women an alternative way to connect to the Divine and live a spiritual life, going against social norms of the Brahmin hierarchy within religious and spiritual practices in the Vedic time. Women were not allowed in temple spaces, they were to worship their husbands and do household duties only. Women found they could integrate divine love practice in everyday life and did not need guidance from men. They used their voice to “liberate the divine from the shackles of Brahminical hegemony”. They “challenged norms.” They “inspired generations to come…giving new meaning to the roles of the feminine and raised the standard of women in the eyes of society at large.” They helped to show the depth and breadth of the path of Yoga and that it is accessible to anyone.
Traditional Yoga as a Lifestyle to Promote Positive Mental Health
I have found that Traditional Yoga perspective and practices have been a way for my clients to reclaim personal experience, feel empowered in the healing process, and learn to trust themselves. Just as Indian women throughout history have met life as it is and found their own way to connect with the Divine and Truth, I have found that supporting people I work with to accept where they are at and take action from there has been the foundation to healing and self-transformation.
Any path of Traditional Yoga is founded on self-transformation as an internal process to move from Asat to Sat or impermanence to permanence. This course emphasized that in the long history of Yoga, through many evolutions, the most important tool is oneself and one’s experience to find Truth was a consistent thread up until Modern Yoga. The tools and techniques are what have been different. The other consistent message was to stay committed and consistent with the tools and techniques that resonate with you and keep doing them – “We don’t need many techniques on the path.” Cultivating inner trust and faith is essential.
This perspective is a powerful and effective alternative lens to view ‘mental health issues’ and create a more empowering dynamic for people to heal and transform. It is a true ‘client-centered’ model: Meet yourself where you are at, find the tools that work for you, and keep doing them consistently over a long period of time.
Positive mental health is seen as a lifestyle, not something you do for a short-time or something that is outside of you.
TRADITIONAL YOGA – An Alternative to Modern Mental Health Treatment
(I’m defining Modern Mental Health Treatment as a system based on the medical model that seeks to diagnose and treat symptoms that present themselves currently and pharmacology being a main course of treatment).
Yoga-based Counseling is an alternative to traditional forms for mental health treatment. As a professional, I have found significant limitations to the modern mental health system, which can actually perpetuate symptoms of mental health. Modern mental health treatment is like snorkeling – staying on the surface and sometimes diving beneath for a bit. Yoga-based Counseling is like SCUBA diving – getting beneath the story to really see what’s going on below the surface at many different depths.
Modern Mental Health Treatment takes on a similar power structure that women of India (and the world) have experienced, where professionals, such as psychiatrists, psychologists, or other licensed professionals, are the “experts” and patients are to submit to the expert, even if it’s going against what they are personally experiencing. This patriarchal view also exists in modern medicine, which strongly influences modern mental health treatment.
Empowering people to go inward to listen to what their body and mind system are trying to communicate is more radical in modern times, yet historically in Yoga, a common part of the practice. The sister science to Yoga, Ayurveda, also stresses the importance to individualize concepts to meet our bodies where they are at.
If you have tried and tried modern mental health treatment and keep finding it doesn’t quite get you to where you are wanting to be, I encourage you to try other alternative methods, whether Yoga-based Counseling, Acupuncture, or many other paths that may resonate with you.
Cultivate Trust and Faith in your inner wisdom, which is connected to all consciousness.
(All quotes come from Chapter 4 of the ‘Yoga-Then to Now’ manual by Prasad Rangnekar, Yogaprasad Institute).