Online Therapeutic Yoga Series - Healing is For Everyone

My main intention is around helping people understand that yoga is for everyone,” says Amy Wheeler, PhD, the facilitator of the Bakken Center’s Online Therapeutic Yoga Series.

Wheeler has served as a Professor of Kinesiology and yoga educator for 25 years, and is an emphatic believer that yoga can meet people where they are and translate lifelong skills without centering the values of aggressive, fitness-focused self-improvement.

Yoga can be gentle, supportive, and fold into a person’s existing life and routines easefully.

From April to October 2024, Wheeler is leading a series of online yoga workshops that focus on specific areas of the body and patterns of regulation in order to support overall wellbeing for participants. Each series consists of four sessions that are held online and last an hour; topics include reducing low back and hip pain, reducing upper back and neck pain, and pacifying insomnia and anxiety. These issue areas were chosen because they arise most often from patients as concerns, and have wide-reaching effects on an individual’s day-to-day life and capacity to thrive.

For Wheeler, success in this program is based on the understanding that a person is a whole system – a person’s wellbeing is not just based on their physical body, but on the health of their relationships and the ease and comfort through which they are able to engage with their daily life. Her thinking is in alignment with the Bakken Center’s approach towards improving community health outcomes through holistic education that values the broadest base possible.

Mary Jo Kreitzer, PhD, RN, FAAN, FNAP, is director of the Bakken Center and notes that lifestyle factors are an important determinant of our overall health.

“Lifestyle factors that play large roles in our overall wellbeing include decisions that we make each day — what we eat, how much we move, the adequacy of our sleep, and how we manage stress and our emotions. Taking charge of our health and wellbeing has never been more important. This is why we invest in community education. We want people to have the knowledge and tools that will help them make good decisions that will lead to meaningful and sustainable change.”

“If you can breathe, you can do yoga,” stresses Wheeler. Her approach suggests that simple, pragmatic, and accessible skill-building helps improve resilience and strength not only for an individual, but for a community as a whole.

“When we are inclusive and increase life experiences in a space, we grow stronger as a community. We can withstand trauma through the inclusion of a variety of perspectives,” states Wheeler. Her perspective finds purposefulness in the intentional offering of this series on Zoom. By offering this series online, participants living with disabilities and chronic pain are able to participate and enrich the program with their own experience without creating additional strain in their lives. Additionally, participants are able to have their cameras off and have the freedom to modify the practices to their own needs. The practices are easily accommodated for someone sitting in a chair, or for someone who lives with myriad forms of disability that make physical movement difficult. Disability and pain is often seen as a barrier to yoga, but here, those lived experiences are valued, and belonging rather than striving, is emphasized. “The pandemic made us isolated and immunocompromised, and workshops like these can be a lifeline for people to find community,” notes Wheeler. She emphasizes valuing the experience of the participant who is completely new to yoga, and who may face hurdles while accessing this life-sustaining practice. Her model centers on carefulness, offering the opportunity for participants to “dip their toes in,” and for the practices to be complewmentary with an individual’s existing routines, rather than a total overhaul or interruption that becomes difficult to sustain.

Wheeler’s farther-reaching vision encourages subtle systemic transformation. She hopes to offer therapeutic yoga in every University of Minnesota health clinic, and directly impact patients in need, in what is called the salutogenic, rather than diagnostic, approach. The salutogenic approach focuses on promoting health and wellbeing rather than combating disease. This subtle, but fundamental, paradigm shift has a transformative effect on both individuals and communities. She gives the example of an individual who has back pain. With the diagnostic approach, a doctor might treat the patient with shots or other remedies that immediately alleviate the back pain. With the salutogenic approach, a patient is asked to consider their daily life, perhaps how much sitting or strain they put on their back, and introduce practices that weave into their ordinary routines. For Wheeler, the combination of approaches is key, and a diversity of care practices builds agency and support in a way that is empowering and sustainable.

Strategically, the Bakken Center hopes that this Online Therapeutic Yoga Series attracts newcomers to the practice of yoga, and supports people who are looking for a reason to refresh their practice or work on specific health issue areas. With Wheeler as the steward, and Zoom as the means of delivery, the Bakken Center is committed to closing the gap between health and wellbeing expertise and the wider community.

Her focus on this simple tool of self-regulation is a powerful way to think about how simple it can be to meet people where they are to get them to the next step of their own personal health goals. And in meeting people where they are, the Bakken Center strengthens its relationship to our community and makes healing a practice, not a theory.