By Dani Wasson

Many yoga teacher trainings excel at creating dedicated practitioners and offering powerful experiences of personal transformation. However, they are not likely designed to promote clinical discernment, therapeutic adaptability, or relational responsiveness—the skills essential for working safely and effectively with diverse bodies and life circumstances.

This realization ultimately led me to found Pranayoga Institute in 2009 to focus on individualized care and nervous system health. Similar awareness prompts many of my yoga therapist colleagues to begin their own paths in this emerging profession.

Not-so-ancient origins

It is important to note that the asana (posture) practices most widely taught today are not ancient in the way they are often portrayed. This type of physical practice is largely the product of modern-era yoga shaped in the early to mid-20th century, most notably through the work of T. Krishnamacharya and his students.

Although Krishnamacharya drew from classical texts and ayurveda, he was also deeply adaptive, changing practices based on the individual—their health, age, and capacity. In contrast, many expressions of asana today have become increasingly standardized, performance-oriented, and disconnected from the relational context in which healing occurs.

At the same time, the rise of online yoga has dramatically expanded access. This democratization offers undeniable benefits yet raises an essential question, one the profession of yoga therapy can answer: What do we lose when practice is divorced from discerning observation, therapeutic relationship, and real-time adaptation? Without the capacity to see, respond, and attune to the person in front of us, yoga risks becoming more fitness modality than healing art.

Yoga therapy’s path toward wholeness

Yoga therapy offers a necessary alignment by restoring balance using all of the principles and practices of yoga. Throughout my training, I was drawn to teachers like Angela Farmer, Nikki Myers, and Marsha Pappas, who honored relational qualities such as listening, pacing, adaptability, and respect for lived experience. They consistently emphasized teaching to the individual rather than the idealized form.

This orientation aligns closely with what our modern-day nervous systems are asking for:

• Agency and choice in movement (or stillness)
• Sensory-informed pacing, for example, slowing a session down to provide more structure and allow the client the chance for increased internal organization
• Practices that allow space for vulnerability, pain, trauma, aging, and illness
• Slower rhythms that support nervous system regulation and integration
• The inclusion of rest as a therapeutic intervention rather than a reward

IAYT-certified yoga therapist Dani Wasson with a client

Yoga therapy centers these needs, recognizing that healing emerges through relationship, safety, and responsiveness.

The question, then, is not whether we abandon tradition, but how we relate to it. Yoga is relationship.

When asana becomes relational rather than performative and teaching is grounded in perception rather than prescription, the organizing principle of yoga returns to its essential purpose, supporting liberation through embodied presence—a state in which we can maintain awareness of bodily sensations, breath, and emotions while remaining oriented, engaged, and responsive.

Founder of Pranayoga Institute and author of The Path of Joyful Living: Cultivating Mindful Action through Yoga, Danielle (Dani) Wasson, C-IAYT, is a yoga therapist and educator. She is also program director of an IAYT-accredited yoga therapy training, where she specializes in individualized practice design, trauma-informed pedagogy, and the integration of ayurvedic psychology with modern therapeutic frameworks.