20/06/2025
It was an honour to present yesterday at the Integrative and Personalised Medicine Congress (IPM Congress 2025) in London with Paul Fox, CEO of the Yoga in Healthcare Alliance (YIHA), and Dr. Rupal Dave, consultant psychiatrist and co-director of YIHA, on the value of yoga in health.
I opened with the case for why yoga belongs in healthcare—not because it’s trendy, but because it supports the nervous system, improves self-regulation, enhances interoceptive awareness, and offers a biopsychosocial approach to health that is accessible, scalable, and deeply human.
Paul traced the evolution of YIHA, beginning in 2018, when the organisation was commissioned by the NHS to develop a yoga-based social prescribing programme. This led to Yoga4Health, a 10-week intervention for patients at risk of long-term physical and mental health conditions. The programme has now trained hundreds of yoga teachers and is being delivered in GP surgeries and in areas of significant deprivation.
He also introduced Yoga4NHS, which supports the mental health of NHS staff through structured, breath-led, therapeutic yoga—developed in response to widespread burnout across the workforce.
Dr. Dave then brought the clinical lens into sharp focus. As a psychiatrist, she made a compelling case for why yoga should be prescribed, grounding her perspective in both published evidence and her experience supporting marginalised and neurodiverse populations. Her message was clear: we need more options in mental healthcare, and yoga—when delivered safely and professionally—offers something vital.
It was a pleasure to be part of this conversation and to contribute to the growing recognition that yoga, when appropriately integrated, is more than relevant to healthcare: it is necessary.
If you want to read my full talk, please head to the latest blog post on our website: https://themindedinstitute.com/medicine-understands-why-yoga-is-important/
