DR Monro

Mano and I are very thankful to Dr Monro to talk to us so openly about yoga therapy.  It was the first time I was meeting someone with such a strong commitment to both yoga and scientific research at the same time.  There is something absolutely beautiful about instilling life into what one truly believes in.  And this is exactly what Dr Monro is doing. 

The Yoga Biomedical Trust (YBT) was set up in 1983 by Dr Robin Monro and has been growing from strength to strength ever since.  It operates from its North-London based headquarters.  The spacious premises include open-plan offices, a lovely and large studio where classes are run, a meditation room which also doubles up as a studio for small classes, a consultation room and another studio which can be hired out by like-minded people.  The whole centre is a haven of peace and tranquillity tucked away from the hustle and bustle of a fairly busy area, and is highly conducive to a meditative state. 

It is thanks to the relentless efforts of pioneers such as Dr Monro that mentalities are slowing evolving and that people are getting more and more informed about yoga therapy.  As a child, Dr Monro suffered from asthma and it was yoga which helped him grow out of it.  As a young man studying biochemistry, he saw the possibility of bridging the gap between medical matters and spiritual ones.  He has since dedicated his life to the pursuit of bringing the two together.  His selfless mission is to help those with health considerations and to provide them with the comfort they need to go through certain periods of their lives, whatever they may be.  Dr Monro’s approach is very altruistic and philanthropist with the aim of alleviating if not curing the suffering of others.  To-date, he has published several articles detailing the results of his research on various health issues such as diabetes, arthritis, asthma, etc., and about the effectiveness of yoga therapy.   He is currently doing some research on lower back pain.  He is also involved with setting up the British Council of Yoga Therapy and is seeking government endorsement for his work.  Dr Monro is warmly inviting contributions from anyone worldwide who might help further his research.

As we know, there exists in our Western societies a dichotomy between traditional and complementary medicines.  For most of us, when we are sick (dis-ease), we go to our GP and when we are not (ease), we stay away from him/her.  Not many of us seek the preventive benefits of therapies.  It is only when things start to go wrong that we get these little alarm bells in our head and we seek help instead of developing and adopting a healthy lifestyle from the start.   We are all responsible for our own health, but surely wouldn’t most of us think twice about engaging in certain activities if we were given the necessary foresight to do so?  Wouldn’t it be nice to first have the knowledge and then be able to make our own informed choice?  
We live in a society where when we develop a headache, instead of wondering first about what has caused it, we want to get rid of it immediately, so we take a pill, irrespective of what had caused the headache, irrespective of its deep underlying cause.  We act on the symptoms by suppressing them and most often they disappear, but sometimes they do not.  Pain is the only way our body has to tell us things are not what they should be.  So yes of course we want to get rid of the pain but we should also try to find out why and where it comes from to avoid a possible recurrence of the headache… People have the right to know that there may be other ways than to pop a pill in.  They may be interested to know why and how they have developed certain health considerations before doing something about them.  They may be interested to know that they are other ways which are natural, non intrusive, not expensive, which create no dependence and no side effects and which can be effective too.  There are ways which empower our own body to heal itself if shown how to; there are ways which enable us to undo and free ourselves from the harmful patterns we have integrated as our own when they are not.   For the body to heal itself we have to want to get better.  The body is helpless if the mind does not support the work, and the mind cannot heal itself if the body won’t allow it.

Yoga therapy, like any other therapy, is not an alternative to conventional medicine, its purpose is not to replace it but to work alongside it.  It aims at reinforcing its benefits by approaching the problem(s) from a totally different angle.   Especially as far as psychosomatic disorders are concerned, yoga therapy results have been very encouraging.  Unresolved or pent-up emotions manifest themselves as blockages or tensions in the body;  these are first felt on an energetic level.  They then sometimes make us “shut down” certain parts of our bodies and make us ill.  We are all aware one way or another of the havoc that anger, resentment, frustration and despair - to name but a few - can wreak in the body if left unchecked.  Sooner or later they will manifest themselves in the form of physical or physiological disorder.  And then of course the emotion will bury itself deep within us and be forgotten and all we are left with are its external manifestations which can affect any systems of the body.
Once we have developed for instance rounded shoulders and a sunken chest, we forget that they may have initially been caused by low self-esteem, a fairly depressive state, feeling rejected, etc.  All we are aware of now is the back pain, the poor breathing, the impaired digestion, etc., we are aware of a whole array of pernicious health problems which are secondary in nature.  But if we are given some chest opening postures, see the difference, see all the initial emotion come through, see how we feel when we are shown how to breathe properly and deeply.

Yoga therapy can help us go back to the source of our dis-ease and may help to eradicate it.  Yoga therapy brings awareness to each cell of our body, and with the support of restorative/healing breathing , gentle, and mindful opening posture work, it can empower us to chase the intruder.  Yoga therapy teaches us that we don’t have to put up with a life of restricted movement and it can help us to gradually reverse the process. 

Yoga therapy equips us with the mental, emotional and physical strength necessary to cope with life, simply because it is a life science.   Because yoga is union of body mind and spirit it helps with the reunification of the whole body. 
Most of us will have to go through the initial phase of working from the outside to the inside before being able to work the other way round.  Because we dissociate the body from the mind, we think that yoga will only bring us physical benefits.  We don’t see the connection.  We don’t see the body/mind as a whole, as a coherent piece.  When parts of us stop to function properly, we tend to forget about them for various reasons.  Yoga therapy tells us that the body can only operate fully and intelligently if all the parts work together as a whole, because each part is part of the big puzzle that is our body.  So even if something goes wrong as it probably will at some stage in our life, it is important to restore it as much as possible and as early as possible to its original state before the damage becomes too extensive and perhaps irreversible.  Yoga therapy helps us achieve just that.