Yoga Therapy Course on Yoga in Healthcare

The growing interest in incorporating holistic modalities like yoga into mainstream healthcare presents a valuable opportunity for healthcare professionals, yoga teachers, and future yoga therapists alike. Expanding your skills with evidenced-informed yoga techniques - including Yoga Nidra, meditation, and mindfulness - allows you to offer more comprehensive care plans that empower patients with self-care tools, regardless of your field. 

Our comprehensive yoga therapy training Yoga in Healthcare provides numerous benefits for healthcare practitioners looking to complement their conventional treatment methods and for certified yoga instructors seeking rewarding work in healthcare settings.

Course Dates: October 2 - November 14, 2026*

*NOW with more flexible "study anytime" hours!

Online + with the option to study in person 10/10 2-4p at CLM Collective in New York City

*Integration Hours Meeting:
Thursday 12/3 5:00p - 6:30p ET (for Yoga Therapy Program students only)

Experience a 30-minute session of Yoga Nidra that guides you into a deep state of relaxation and inner exploration. Prior to starting, I recommend assessing your current energetic state or identifying an outdated belief you wish to release. From this self-awareness, approach the process with self-compassion, ready to craft a fresh energy or belief. Formulate a positive and presently stated mantra or affirmation that resonates with your intention for change. This will serve as your focal point during the practice, empowering your journey towards a renewed perspective.

Importance of Yoga in Healthcare

Over 36 million Americans practice yoga for its proven ability to reduce stress, improve fitness, and promote healing. An abundance of clinical research continues to emerge, demonstrating yoga and meditation's efficacy as evidence-based interventions for both mental and physical health conditions.

Offering yoga therapy provides immense value for patients across healthcare settings. As a complement to conventional medicine, yoga helps patients better manage chronic and acute conditions. It also gives them accessible tools to participate actively in their own healing and well-being.

Yoga can assist patients in addressing a variety of health challenges. For those suffering from chronic pain, the gentle movement and mindfulness of yoga can reduce inflammation and teach techniques for coping. Yoga's ability to relax the nervous system makes it helpful for patients with autoimmune diseases like fibromyalgia or IBS. The focus on breathing and movement benefits patients with hypertension by lowering blood pressure. For mental health disorders like anxiety, PTSD, and depression, yoga has been shown to be as effective as medication and psychotherapy in many cases. Even with neurological conditions such as MS, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's, yoga therapy can improve functioning and quality of life. Yoga also aids recovery from events like injury, surgery, or prolonged illness by slowly rebuilding strength and range of motion.

This diverse applicability makes the integration of yoga desirable for healthcare professionals across specialties and treatment settings. It offers patients a meaningful way to participate in their own healing actively.

Benefits of Yoga Training for Healthcare Professionals

Specialized yoga therapy education allows yoga teachers, healthcare professionals, and future yoga therapists to seamlessly incorporate yoga techniques into patient care plans. Key benefits of yoga training include:

• Learning to safely prescribe evidence-based yoga postures, breathwork, and meditation protocols to target health conditions specifically. Proper modifications for injuries, limitations, or disabilities are essential for providing customized yoga interventions based on each patient's needs.

• Gaining a deeper understanding of the anatomical and physiological effects of yoga. Knowing exactly how yoga alleviates symptoms and supports the body's natural healing abilities allows for proper application. This knowledge reinforces the safety and efficacy of prescribing yoga to complement other treatment modalities.
• Building skills for coaching patients in yoga techniques for self-care and empowerment. Giving patients the tools to independently and consistently practice yoga gives them a sense of autonomy in managing their health. Patients feel empowered to participate actively in their recovery or wellness maintenance.
• Expanding your professional treatment toolkit with a holistic modality that complements conventional medicine. Yoga therapy enhances multidisciplinary integrative care by offering patients evidence-based wellness support.
• Improving your own self-care abilities as a healthcare and/or wellness provider through personal yoga practice. In this module, in particular, you learn to practice Yoga Nidra and other mindful techniques to potentially reduce burnout and improve job satisfaction. The skills learned allow healthcare practitioners to manage their own stress more effectively.

Incorporating Yoga into Healthcare Settings

Yoga therapy integrates seamlessly into diverse healthcare settings to enhance patient care. In hospitals, integrative medicine departments provide yoga therapy to aid in healing and recovery from illness or surgery. Yoga can help cancer patients manage pain and side effects during treatment. Cardiac and pulmonary patients utilize yoga to improve fitness and breathing function.

In outpatient clinics, primary care providers prescribe yoga for preventive wellness and to address specific health conditions. Specialists like orthopedists, OB/GYNs, and oncologists incorporate yoga to support recovery from procedures. Under the guidance of neurologists, yoga aids concussion recovery for sports medicine patients.

Mental health professionals like psychiatrists, therapists, and counselors utilize yoga to address mood disorders, trauma, PTSD, and substance abuse. The VA healthcare system offers yoga therapy for veterans to manage PTSD.

In rehabilitation centers, yoga facilitates the physical therapy process to heal from injury, surgery, or illness. For patients with neurological conditions like stroke, MS, or Parkinson's, yoga improves functioning.

Yoga's adaptability makes it relevant across all kinds of healthcare settings and specialties. Ongoing research reinforces its safety and efficacy as part of integrative care programs. This is why more healthcare professionals are turning to yoga training to become teachers for their patients.

KAREN NOURIZADEH, C-IAYT, E-RYT 500 (MODERN MINDFULNESS, MEDITATION AND YOGA NIDRA)

Captivated by the science of stress in the mind and body, Karen presents a unique perspective, combining yoga philosophy, allopathic medicine, quantum physics, neuroscience and epigenetic to understand patterns around stress, the mind in the body and the various tools at our disposal to help regulate the body's inner systems.  Karen’s chapter on stress management was published in Cutting Edge Therapies for Autism to help parents of children with autism manage stress. Karen's meditations can be found on Insight Timer; wellness blogs on Mind, Body, Green and Elephant Journal and her teachings featured in Fitness Magazine, Harper's Bazaar, The New York Daily News and more.  Credentialed with an advanced meditation and yoga certification, E-RYT 500, Karen is a certified yoga therapist, credentials with I-AYT.

LOREN FISHMAN, MD 

Dr. Fishman is Medical Director of Manhattan Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in New York City, author of fourteen books and author or editor of more than 100 academic articles, and a world-recognized pioneer in the treatment of piriformis syndrome and rotator cuff tear and an expert in curing back pain. He is Associate Editor of Topics in Geriatric Rehabilitation, on the staff at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and a past president of the New York Society of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

Dr. Fishman has written five books about yoga and medical conditions. They are: Relief Is In the Stretch: Cure Back Pain With Yoga ( with Carol Ardman, WW Norton, 2006), Yoga for Multiple Sclerosis (with Eric Small, Demos Press, 2007), Yoga for Osteoarthritis (with Ellen Saltonstall, WW Norton, 2008), Yoga for Osteoporosis (with Ellen Saltonstall, March, 2010), and Healing Yoga (2015).

After graduating from Christ Church, Oxford, Dr. Fishman spent a year in Pune, Inda, studying Yoga with BKS Iyengar, attending every public and private class and taking daily instruction. At that time, Mr. Iyengar gave Dr. Fishman permission to teach his Yoga. Dr. Fishman then went to Rush Medical School, did a residency in a Tufts-Harvard program, and served as Chief Resident in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Throughout his career, when appropriate, he has incorporated Yoga into his medical practice and has watched its healing effects. He is also an enthusiastic practitioner himself and has been doing Yoga daily since 1973.

Dr. Fishman has been included in numerous “Best Doctors” lists and has lectured in the United States and abroad. He is an officer of the Manhattan Institute for Cancer Research,

Dr. Fishman lives with his wife in New York City. He has two granddaughters and is an enthusiastic advocate of peace.

"To his patients, Dr. Fishman is a miracle worker." – Jane Brody, NY Times
Loren Fishman is "... a Thomas Edison of yoga therapy." – William Broad, The Science of Yoga

ANITA VASAN, RYT500 (ADMISSIONS MANAGER)

Anita understood the transformative power of yoga while searching for peace and calm amongst the hustle and bustle of NYC life and working in the theater industry. Having experienced deep rooted stress and anxiety, she discovered that the simple practice of staying present provided immediate relief. She then discovered the practice of silent meditation and invested in the exploration of yogic practices. She also spent time studying and understanding the Yoga Sutras to reconnect with the fundamental roots of the practice, and understand the procedural elements of the practice. 

Growing up in a family of doctors, healing the mind and body was an innate part of her upbringing, and diving deeper into the practice of yoga teaching felt like her calling. 

Anita started her yoga teaching studies at Pure Yoga where she did her first 200 hour teacher training. Her studies furthered with Yogi Charu in his Level 1 & 2 meditation teacher training, and then again through his 200 hour Hatha course abroad in India. Her vinyasa studies continued with the Kaivalya Method and then later with Srivastava Ramaswami, in Vinyasa Krama (as passed down from Krishnamacharia). From there she furthered her studies with Ramaswami  in the Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita. Anita has  gone through the Yoga Therapy RX certification at LMU and also completed a 500 hour training through Modo Yoga. Anita has been fortunate enough to spend time at the Sivananda Ashrams around the world and in that time, she has completed a restorative yoga training course and started to study with Hasu Patel, her Hindustani music teacher. 

Anita's goal as a yoga teacher is to connect and honor the incredible roots of the practice to modern day yoga. She created a Yoga Sutra program for teachers to deepen their knowledge and currently teaches it at Modo Yoga LA where she also teaches asana classes. Anita also founded a program called Breathe Flow Meditate, a practice centered around Yoga Nidra.

Why Enroll at Prema Yoga Institute?

Prema Yoga Institute provides exceptional yoga therapy education designed for licensed healthcare professionals and yoga pros alike in an integrated setting with leading doctors and therapists. Their Yoga in Healthcare course offers:

• Presentation and course work from prestigious medical faculty like Dr. Loren Fishman on applying yoga to manage conditions ranging from back pain to arthritis.
• Course instruction in evidence-based yoga practices like meditation, breathwork, gentle movement, and yoga nidra to address both mental and physical health.
• Skills for motivating and coaching patients to independently and safely practice yoga for self-care with Dr. Chris Walling.
• 100-hours towards: 
• Yoga Alliance CE’s or 100 hours towards  300-hour Yoga Therapy training certification 
• And towards IAYT Yoga Therapy Certification upon completion (additional prerequisites may apply).

The curriculum is grounded in clinical research and ethical considerations for integrating yoga into medical settings. Small group classes allow for individual guidance and questions.

For healthcare professionals seeking more immersive yoga training, Prema Yoga Institute also offers an accredited 850-hour yoga therapy certification. This provides in-depth expertise in utilizing yoga to assist in healing from injury, illness, and mental health disorders, making you a trained yoga teacher for your patients.

As demand rises for holistic wellness modalities within healthcare, specialized yoga therapy education is invaluable for forward-thinking providers. Enrich your ability to support patients with comprehensive tools for self-empowerment, yoga training, and lasting well-being. 

Call or contact us today to learn more about enrolling in a yoga course to become a yoga teacher for your patients.