Chris Walling – Yoga Therapy Research

Yoga has always been heralded for its therapeutic and healing properties. Over the course of the last thirty years, it has evolved into specific applications of yogic tools (postures, breathwork, meditation techniques and more) to address individual physical, mental and emotional needs. Today throughout the world there are thousands of providers who identify as yoga therapists, and nearly two hundred schools that train them in comprehensive clinical yoga therapy education programs that certify yoga therapists.

The incorporation of integrative healthcare into modern medicine is ever the more dependent upon a shared understanding of how these ancient traditions may help advance the clinical outcomes of a number of health challenges which creates an urgent need to help advance the findings of an evidence informed practice of yoga. This endeavor is of course creating a need for research literacy within yoga practitioners who seek to serve within a more integrated continuum of care.

This course will help introduce students to the fundamentals of contemporary yoga therapy research, explore guidelines for yoga therapy research and practice, and survey the current and emerging body of knowledge within the peer-reviewed yoga therapy literature. Join us as Dr. Walling makes research inspiring and fun as we explore the intersections of scholarship and embodied practices.

What You’ll Learn In Yoga Therapy Research

• Module 1: Fundamentals of Contemporary Yoga Therapy Research
  Through a quest to help build a scientific evidence base for multi-disciplinary applications of yoga therapy, the student will compare and contrast the popular research methods employed by contemporary yoga therapy researchers, and evaluate the epistemic responsibilities of yoga therapy practitioners who seek to include often-subjugated types of knowledge into their research focus. This module will focus on redistributing epistemic power to agents that typically have been excluded from epistemic participation in contemporary yoga therapy research, while exploring the basics of research design and method.
• Module 2: The Multidisciplinary Mystic: Calibrating the HPA Axis
  Yoga based practices are multifaceted, multisensory interventions that involve a series of postures, movement sequences, breath regulation, deep relaxation and meditative techniques. This module explores the basic research behind the purported efficacy much of the theories that inform the yoga-based practices draw upon, and explores their impact upon allostatic and autonomic regulation of the human nervous system.
• Module 3: Applied Research: Yoga For the Brain Health
  Findings from a randomized controlled trial of yogic meditation will be explored as part of a comprehensive insight into the compounding effects of yoga therapy interventions within an overall “yogic” lifestyle framework. Studies will also be examined that employ more sophisticated measures such as neuroimaging studies and genetic biomarkers for examining pre and post effects in pilot studies.
• Module 4: Questions & Answers
  In this final module, students will engage in a summary dialogue of their first three modules, examine the numerous studies and journal articles read throughout the course, and discuss de-identified clinical case material.

About Chris Walling

Dr. Chris Walling, PsyD, MBA, C-IAYT, SEP is Associate Professor in the School of Professional Psychology & Health at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Research Chair & Past-President of the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy and is a Clinical Research Fellow at the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University. He is the Vice President of Education & Outreach for the Alzheimer’s Research & Prevention Foundation, and Dean of Faculty at the Embodied Philosophy Institute. Dr. Walling is a licensed clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst and maintains a private practice in Los Angeles, California.

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