There is something slightly uneasy about the word therapy. Not because it is wrong, nor because it has not brought relief and understanding to many, but because it carries with it a particular orientation: one that can, at times, locate the problem within the individual and the solution in an intervention. When we bring this word into the world of yoga—especially when working with young people—I find myself wondering if something essential risks being lost. The field can narrow. The complexity of being human can start to feel as though it needs to be organised into something more manageable than it really is.
This is why I find myself returning, tentatively, to the Sanskrit word cikitsā.
Not as a replacement for therapy, and certainly not as something I feel I fully grasp, but perhaps as a way of widening the frame a little.
Cikitsā (चिकित्सा), often transliterated as chikitsa, is usually translated as treatment or care, yet even these words feel like approximations. Its roots seem to gesture toward attending, noticing, inquiring with care. There is a sense that the act of paying attention—of really seeing—is already part of what allows healing to unfold. In the context of Ayurveda, cikitsā is not simply a set of techniques applied to a condition, but an attempt to restore balance through understanding the person in their wholeness—body, mind, environment, habits, relationships. It is as much about how we perceive as what we do.
I have just come to the end of three recorded conversations with Harilalji, a deeply respected practitioner of cikitsā from Kerala. These now form part of the teaching content for our 400-hour Yoga Therapy for Young People course—less as something to be “delivered,” and more as something students are invited to sit with, return to, and learn from over time.
I went into these conversations hoping to better understand how the ancient texts speak about healing. I came away with the sense that what is being pointed to is both simpler and more demanding than our modern frameworks tend to allow. Again and again, the emphasis was not on technique, but on seeing. On the quality of attention brought to the person in front of you. On understanding that what presents as disturbance is not separate from the wider field of a person’s life, their rhythms, their relationships, their environment.
There was a humility in this that felt important to acknowledge. A recognition that the practitioner is not the one who fixes, but the one who learns, slowly perhaps, to perceive more clearly, and to respond with care. It is a lifelong refinement, rather than a set of competencies one can fully master.
I find myself drawn to this, particularly in the context of young people. By the time many adolescents arrive in front of us, they may already carry a story about themselves—sometimes shaped by labels, sometimes by systems trying their best to help, and sometimes by experiences that have not yet been fully understood. To then offer something called therapy can, at times, unintentionally reinforce the sense that something is wrong with them.
Cikitsā seems to offer a slightly different starting point.
It does not deny distress, nor does it minimise the real challenges young people face, but it seems to hold them within a broader view. It allows for the possibility that what we are witnessing is not a fault in the individual, but a system trying, in its own way, to find balance. The work then becomes less about correcting and more about reconnecting. Breath becomes a way back into the body. Movement becomes a way of re-establishing communication. Attention becomes something that is gently cultivated rather than demanded.
In the light of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, this feels resonant. Suffering is not described as pathology, but as a kind of misperception, avidyā, a forgetting of our deeper nature. The practices of yoga are not imposed as fixes, but offered as ways of clearing the ground so that clarity might arise. When agitation settles and heaviness lifts, there is a natural movement toward sattva, toward balance and coherence. In this sense, cikitsā is perhaps less something we do and more something we participate in, something we try to hold with care.
And so the role of the practitioner shifts, or at least it seems to. There is less emphasis on fixing and more on witnessing, less on applying methods and more on creating the conditions in which something can reorganise itself. We begin to ask not only what needs to be treated, but what is trying to be expressed, and whether it has been fully met. This is where the principle of ahimsa begins to feel very practical. To meet someone without rushing to change them is, in itself, a form of non-harming.
As yoga continues to find its place within schools, healthcare settings, and youth services, language begins to matter in ways that are not always immediately obvious. It shapes expectations, relationships, and the sense a young person has of themselves. There is, of course, a place for the word therapy. It allows us to communicate within systems that require shared terminology, governance, and evidence. It helps build bridges into professional contexts where clarity is essential.
And yet, I wonder if there is room alongside it for words like cikitsā.
Not as something to replace what already exists, but as something that might gently remind us of the orientation behind the work. That what we are offering is not only intervention, but attention. Not only treatment, but relationship.
Because if there is anything I am continuing to learn—perhaps especially through listening to these teachings—it is that young people are not problems to be solved, but systems that, given the right conditions, often begin to move toward balance in ways that can surprise us.
Cikitsā seems to point, however imperfectly, toward that possibility.