Yoga and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (Y-MBCT^©): Use of Yoga in Its Entirety

Abstract

Psychotherapy (psychological therapy; popularly known as the talk therapy) is a general term that refers to the psychological interventions executed by a trained professional to decrease distress and/or improve functioning in a client, patient, family, couple, or group. Applied psychology or psychotherapy is the study of the mind and mental states that focuses on the various mental phenomena that will facilitate or hinder one’s progress toward mental well-being. Psychotherapy in its varied paradigms and delivery models consists of an exchange of information, dialogue, and interventions directed toward eliciting change in the clients. As mentioned in chapter three, all experiences including psychotherapeutic experiences are representations in the brain, and achieving the psychotherapeutic goals (e.g., insight, affect modulation, decreased relational conflict) depends on some degree of modifications to these representations by causing changes into the perceptual, memory, and emotional systems that work both ambiently and enduringly within the brain. It is important to understand that memory is state dependent in the sense that there is a relationship between encoding cues and retrieval cues and that retrieval is a reconstructive process, not an actual replica of experience (Pally 1997, 2005).

Yoga is nothing but practical psychology (Aurobindo, twentieth-century Indian philosopher)