Naturopathy and Yoga

1737 Words7 Pages
Naturopathy, whole medical system with a philosophy and principles, uses different modalities such as nutrition, herbs to treat patients. Yoga, from the Sanskrit root ‘yug’ ‘to join’, is a modality in natural medicine. This essay presents first, the origins and evolution of naturopathy and yoga. Then, it explores each philosophy of healing and how to define health and disease. Finally, it shows the similarities between each other’s. Firstly, naturopathy and yoga have different origins and both have changed over the years. The philosophical aspect of naturopathy comes from Hippocrates, “father of medicine”: “nature cures not the physician” (NCCAM 2012) and the term naturopathy was first used by John Scheel in 1895 (Jarvis 2001), meaning “nature cure” and not “nature disease” according to the Latin Greek etymology (NCCAM 2012). Soon after, Benedict Lust opened the first school of naturopathy in 1901 and obtained the right to use the term naturopathy in 1902 from John Scheel (O’Brien 1988). The other important name is Sebastian Kneipp who wrote the Water Cure book in 1886. Naturopathy continued to grow till the 1930’s before entering a period of stagnation due to World War II and the introduction of antibiotics: people being convinced by their positive effects. In the western world, naturopathy developed through Louis Kuhne, Adolf Just and Henry Lindlahr who wrote “Nature Cure”. In Australia, Maurice Blackmore opened his first shop in Brisbane in 1938 (Blackmores 2009). The growth took off again around the 1960s and 1970s, with increasing health awareness (Yoga and naturopathy 2011). More research and a better quality of education contributed to this development: opening of more colleges, two of which being Nature care College, Sydney in 1973 and the Bastyr University in Seattle in 1978 (Baer & Sporn 2009, p. 87). Finally the establishment of associations
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