Photos by Tavits Photography

As this blog has previously highlighted*, a conference that brings together yoga therapy professionals is an event like no other!

The annual Symposium on Yoga Therapy and Research (SYTAR 2024) celebrates the field and its health-promoting promise while offering community building and continuing education opportunities for the professionals who provide these practices.

Long-time IAYT member Sharon Steffensen, who publishes Yoga Chicago magazine, offers a first-hand account of SYTAR 2024 here.

“The field has grown so significantly that the presentations, which once focused on yoga therapy’s validity, in 2024 addressed the many ways yoga therapy…enhances modern medicine,” writes Sharon.

For instance, speakers Ganesh Mohan, MBBS, C-IAYT, and Doug Keller, MA, C-IAYT, discussed contemporary applications of ancient wisdom, connecting traditional techniques with a modern understanding of health and well-being.

And retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. and mental health counselor Shaye E. Molendyke, MA, C-IAYT, provided neurologically informed exercises to illustrate the very yogic idea of how our perceptions can trick us—and how we can work with this knowledge.

Other conference sessions covered the importance of spiritual community as a component of enlightenment; health equity, trauma, and yoga’s effects on incarcerated men; bringing yoga therapy to the front lines in Ukraine; and disability-competent programming for individuals with physical disabilities.

Read more of Sharon’s SYTAR highlights on the Yoga Chicago site. Yoga professionals can find recordings of this year’s conference at iayt.org/sytar2024

*See this post about SYTAR 2021, for example.