The art of healing – a matter of importance

It would be wrong if therapies were portrayed merely in terms of administration of medication or psychotherapeutic interventions. Although adequate treatment and assistance are necessary in acute cases of illness, healing first takes place when the development of the human consciousness sufficiently comes into force and future possibilities for strengthening the self arise.

The key to any healing actually lies in right self-becoming, self-knowledge and ultimately progressive self-realisation. An illness always fits into the logic of an individual’s biography and challenges human consciousness to overcome certain previous habits by learning new skills of a high moral character. False forms of self-assertion, which find expression in egotistical and egocentric aberrations, and one-sided loss of self with tendencies towards despondency towards life, or escape into religious ideologies attract individual and further down the line collective forms of illness. How these forms of illness take on their significance in a karmic, that means in an overall causal, process over many incarnations, and how these get carried over in collective transferences among different people and groups of people, is likely to remain a major area of research that can only be partially resolved. Even so, illness always requires, as a remedy, sufficient, healthy self-becoming with a progressive idea of development, that is both constructive for the individual and beneficial for everyone in society.

The book of healing through yoga activity has actually become a very big book and addresses the topic of how a healthy self-activity can stimulate and build health through yoga exercises, progressive development of the breath, foundations for meditation and, in general, through a holistic study of various ideas on the topic of development. In 270 pages with numerous pictures and drawings, it was possible for me to collect a kind of summary of the various courses I have taught on the general topic of health and spiritual study. The exercises are very simply demonstrated and described step by step in various degrees of difficulty. This book provides a good basis for both easier and more difficult approaches to the practice. The graphic design has come out very well and, as a whole (even though a mistake was noticed with the inclined plane after printing) I can happily recommend this book to everyone, both to people who want to integrate the question of development in a therapeutic sense with the help of some exercises as well as practitioners who would like to broaden their perspective with the possibilities provided by mental pictures that build awareness.

A synthesis, i.e. how an exercise can be carried over from practice into everyday life, can be found in the explanations and descriptions. The price of the book could be set reasonably low, at just under 30 EUR. This was made possible by helpful and productive collaboration with a wide variety of people. Many artists enjoyed creating drawings, graphics and photographs for the book.