This video explains what actually happens inside a yoga therapy session, including the intake process, how assessment works, how a practice is built for an individual, why yoga therapy is fundamentally different from private yoga, restorative yoga, or modified group classes and the type of training that is required.
Most people who are unfamiliar with yoga therapy come in with an assumption that it is stretching or gentle yoga. That assumption is understandable but not correct.
Real yoga therapy is individualized, therapeutic, adaptive, and grounded in a whole-person assessment of who you are, what you are experiencing, and what you actually need. Two people walking in with the same diagnosis may need completely different approaches.
Before getting into what yoga therapy actually involves, it is worth being direct about what it is not.
Yoga therapy is not:
Each of those things has value, but none of them is yoga therapy.
Real yoga therapy involves:
The techniques matter, but the thinking behind them matters more.
There are four stages that we move through over a series of sessions when working with clients.
The first thing that happens in a yoga therapy session is a conversation. We don’t start with any movement or yoga techniques.
The intake is a thorough exploration of who you are and what you are experiencing.
A yoga therapist will look at:
Notice that the diagnosis is part of the picture, not the whole picture. A yoga therapist is not just treating a condition, they are working with a person who has a condition and understanding how that person experiences their life within it. That distinction shapes everything that follows.
Once the intake is complete, assessment begins. At Breathing Deeply, this assessment draws on Ayurvedic and yogic frameworks combined with modern clinical understanding of how body patterns, stress, and mental patterns contribute to pathology.
A yoga therapist will observe and assess:
All of this is then viewed through a yoga therapy lens to develop a picture of what is actually happening in this person’s system, not just what their diagnosis says should be happening.
This might happen in the first session, or it might take until the second or third. The timeline depends on what the assessment reveals and how complex the picture is. When it does happen, building the practice is a collaborative process.
A yoga therapy practice can include:
The goal is a practice that feels sustainable, achievable, and genuinely therapeutic. Not overwhelming but effective.
The aim is always to find the least amount of work needed to produce the most meaningful change, and then to refine from there based on how the individual responds.
One of the things that makes yoga therapy distinct from many Western medical models is the ongoing, adaptive nature of the relationship. There is no single protocol applied.
A yoga therapist is continuously observing. Do the symptoms shift? Does the practice feel manageable? Did what worked last month stop working? Is there a different approach, a different technique, a different entry point that might serve this person better right now?
This requires a specific set of skills, including clinical reasoning, where a yoga therapist will assess why they are recommending this, and what the evidence is that it is appropriate and effective. Yoga therapists also have keen observation, where they observe what the client is telling them directly and what they notice without words. Critical thinking is another essential skill where yoga therapists are able to refine the process with their clients to get real and tangible results.
That kind of ongoing, responsive, individualized work is what yoga therapy is built for. It is also what takes genuine training and supervision to do well.
Yoga therapy is not memorizing techniques. It is not applying the same sequence to everyone with the same diagnosis. It is a whole-person clinical model that requires people to develop specific skills over time, through real supervised client work, not just coursework.
Every yoga therapist at Breathing Deeply has permanent access to senior teachers and experienced mentors. There is no point at which a graduate is expected to figure out difficult cases entirely alone. That ongoing support matters because no yoga therapist, regardless of experience, can know everything about every condition. Supervision and consultation are built into how effective yoga therapy practice works.
What Breathing Deeply trains for is the ability to think critically about the person in front of you, using a consistent clinical method, and to keep refining that thinking as the therapeutic relationship develops.
The outcomes that follow from that approach are reflected in the numbers. Across the Breathing Deeply supervised practicum, an 86% positive client outcome rate has been recorded. That figure reflects what becomes possible when clinical thinking, not just technique, is at the center of the work.
If you are considering yoga therapy for yourself, here is what you can realistically expect from the process:
Your practice will be adapted over time based on how you respond. And the goal throughout will be finding the most efficient, sustainable path to meaningful change, not giving you more to do than you can manage.
You will leave with a starting point and a relationship with someone who is invested in refining that starting point until it genuinely works for you.
If you are interested in working with a Breathing Deeply Yoga Therapist, find out more here.
If you feel called to support others through complex physical and mental health challenges, our professional Yoga Therapy Training provides mentorship, clinical thinking skills, and whole-person education.
If you are navigating physical and/or mental health challenges, Breathing Deeply Wellness offers accessible programs rooted in yoga therapy principles to support meaningful change.
Breathing Deeply is a Yoga Therapy and Meditation School co-founded by lead teacher Brandt Passalacqua in 2011. Breathing Deeply offers two levels of certification: Foundations of Yoga Therapy and an IAYT-accredited Advanced Program, offering C-IAYT eligibility.
Other offerings include Breathing Deeply Wellness, a service-driven community of Breathing Deeply Yoga Therapists dedicated to helping the public optimize their physical, mental, and spiritual health, an annual online meditation teacher training certification, and specialized yoga therapy courses. Breathing Deeply is an active and thriving community of meditators and yogis, caregivers, therapists, teachers, medical professionals, parents & children with the same intention—to serve others, lessen suffering, and co-create a new paradigm in wellness.
Brandt talks about common questions applicants have about the Breathing Deeply Yoga Therapy Program. Tune in to get the full program details.