From Injury to Insight: Robin Rothenberg’s Yoga Therapy

World-renowned Low Back Pain Specialist Robin Rothenberg is set to bring her groundbreaking back care course to Australia in August 2025. This exclusive training, hosted by Abhyāsa Yoga, offers a rare opportunity for yoga teachers, therapists, and health professionals to learn directly from one of the leading experts in the field.

Robin Rothenberg has been a dedicated yoga therapist for nearly 40 years. She is the current International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT) Board President and has been an active member since its beginning. Her journey into yoga started during a time when she was dealing with chronic pain and auto-immune issues herself. As with many, what began as a way to heal herself turned into a lifelong passion for learning and sharing the therapeutic benefits of yoga.

Initially trained as an Iyengar Yoga instructor, her eagerness to master the practice led to several injuries. Reflecting on those early days, she recalls learning tough lessons about pushing too hard without the necessary strength and flexibility. Seeking a gentler approach, Robin found her way to the Viniyoga tradition. Contrasting advice from each of these systems sparked her natural curiosity about the “why” behind different methods. She proceeded to study anatomy, fascia, and respiratory physiology. This opened up new ways of thinking about movement, breath, and healing.

Robin’s approach is rooted in tradition, and she is drawn to incisive introspection. For instance, she had to adapt Viniyoga breathing techniques to better suit her asthma. As a post-menopausal woman, she also champions the importance of strength training for overall health. In the early 2000s, Robin was invited to join a groundbreaking study on yoga therapy for low back pain. The results were remarkable—78% of participants saw significant pain reduction and improved quality of life, far surpassing many conventional treatments. The study was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2005, and follow-up research continued to support these findings.

Josh Pryor had a chat with Robin in advance of her visit to Australia, scheduled for August 2025.

Josh: Let’s talk about fascia. When Yin Yoga was growing in the 2000s, Gil Hedley’s revelatory videos were spreading through yoga studios. We saw a new approach: treating the whole body as one whole unit, with individual skeletons potentially vastly different from one another, and a generally reduced focus on medically-oriented anatomy.

Robin: I was sort of just on that front end of that curve, before all of the Yin Yoga hubbub. I didn’t know it was coming. One of my primary students at that time was a structural integrationist, and she said to me “Robin, I think there’s something you should see”. She started educating me on fascia, which led to Tom Meyer’s books and courses, and I got to experience how everything actually is connected. The whole body just made so much more sense through the lens of the fascial matrix. Seeing how everything really is connected helped me far more than learning origins and insertions of muscles, which never stuck in my mind.

I loved feeling for myself the connectivity and the relationship between the lines, and how the fascia holds or moulds our body in our patterns – these are samskara-s. By understanding how the lines relate to one another, we can then use the idea of an area or line being locked “long” or “short”, which sheds more light on the classical perspective a muscle being “weak” or “tight”. Understanding the web-like structure of fascia helped me take āsana out of the box of linear movement and I felt the benefit of moving in undulating, non-linear ways. It enables us to get into the nooks and crannies where the fascia is stuck, and literally rehydrate it to increase the glide. This restores balance, symmetry, and overall more ease to one’s structure – far more than repetitive linear movement focused on ‘stretching’ one specific muscle area as we often practice in asana classes.

Josh: I’m curious about your perspective on interoception. Also the phrase “lower back pain”, it is a trigger phrase these days. How do you feel about the idea that having some sensation in your lower back is not always a bad thing? It may be beneficial to have awareness in that part of the body.

Robin: Interoception is one of my favourite topics. Lots of studies that have been done on the relationship between proprioception, interoception and nociception.

• Proprioception is knowing where you are in space, it’s related to balance. If you raise both arms with your eyes closed, knowing where each arm is and being able to visualise which one is reaching higher or farther back than the other is a way of assessing your proprioception.
• Interoception is what you feel inside, under the skin. Raising the arms again, you may notice one arm is a little tighter than the other. You might sense a little pull on the underside, or maybe a feeling of constriction up around your neck. Those are interoceptive cues.
• Nociception, when it becomes conscious, is known as pain. There are many nociceptors in our body each with varying sensitivity. Like anything else, we get good at what we practice, so if we become tuned into pain receptors, we actually cultivate more pain receptors and then guess what happens – we experience more pain.

It turns out that the lower a person’s proprioception and interoception – the less “felt sense” they have of themselves – the higher their pain levels. The converse is true as well; when you facilitate students’ proprioception and interception, it decreases nociception. They begin to tune into other messages their body is sending, not just pain signals.

This the essence of yoga, isn’t it? I mean, the ultimate teaching is that avidyā, (not knowing), leads to duḥkha (suffering), and the way out of “duḥkhaville” is to become more self-aware. When I became aware of this study, I was astounded. It really says it all! Yoga is not about doing this posture or that posture according to pre-formulated cues. It’s about helping people to connect to themselves and be able to name and claim their experience, no matter the lineage or tradition.

So, my orientation is always to lead people in the direction of increasing interoception. It’s effective when working with back-pain certainly, but it’s not limited to that. On the surface it might look like my low back course is about learning specific movements and sequences coordinated with the breath, but really these are just tools to increase awareness. 

For example, a typical way I might lead a class through ardha-apanasa, (half-knee to chest pose) might sound like this:

1. Bring your right knee into your chest as you’re lying on your back.
2. What do you notice?
3. What do you feel? Do it a few more times.
4. What do you notice now? What’s changed?
5. What do you feel inside the groin area, the outer hip? How is the right side of the pelvis resting into the floor now relatively to when you started?
6. Pause for a moment with both feet on the ground and observe. How is your breath moving now?
7. Can you feel the asymmetry within your body? Where do you feel it?
8. Now do the same process on your left side.
9. How is it your experience the same as on the right? How is it different?
10. How does it change with each repetition?

It doesn’t even really matter how a student responds to those questions! As they are reflecting on the questions they’re building interoceptive pathways and in that, the nociceptors are quieting down. Mind and body begin communicating with one another, and as with any relationship, good communication is key to healing and health.

Josh: So much scientific work has been done on interoception from the point of view of education, and other relatively non-physical areas, like musicianship. For instance, studies looking at how one’s perception and management of internal sensation impacts anxiety and effectiveness in life.

Robin: Totally, what I love about yoga is that we have so many interoceptive tools available. There’s movement, there’s breath – there are all kinds of meditation practices. There’s yoga nidra, which is a wonderful interoceptive practice. There’s mantra and chanting which create vibration in the body, right? There’s guided visualisation.

As yoga teachers and especially yoga therapists we have so many tools to draw people inside themselves. A skilled yoga professional can mix and match these tools in specific ways to facilitate healing in a very customised way. That to me, is the magic of yoga therapy. Being able to work with a refined acuity and capacity to deploy the tools in appropriate combinations and titrated to just the right dose.

Josh: It’s that’s sort of flexibility that defines the leading edge right? I consider that evolutionary approach to be the real tradition of India! Robin, in your promotional material you talk about yoga teachers experiencing back pain as a result of teaching. When I teach yoga, I walk around the room talking to people. Sometimes I squat down or sit next to a student and give them a hand moving a body part or that sort of thing. But in different styles of yoga, teachers seem to do the āsana practice during the class they are teaching.

Robin: A lot of lineages train teachers to do that. And let’s be clear: nobody’s “doing their practice” while they’re leading a class. Where is the attention pointed? Yoga is about being present, and you cannot be fully present with yourself while you are demonstrating in a class. Your personal practice is personal – it’s for you and about you. When you’re teaching your job is to be present for the students.

If I demonstrate something in a class, it’s for a reason. For instance, for 10 years, I taught people with neurological conditions like MS and Parkinson’s. I sat in front of the class and had two assistants who were hands-on. I demonstrated all the movements, but that was because many of the students needed the visual cues because their brain to body connections weren’t working well. I was certainly not doing my practice.

So, there are times and reasons to demonstrate. However, in general I do not think it’s beneficial for yoga teachers to be up front of a room doing the entire asana sequence. It’s not supportive for themselves, for the health of their own body, or for their capacity to be fully present and see what’s going on with their students.

Ultimately, teaching methods are modelled, and if your teacher modelled that particular mode, then that’s what you learn and that’s what you do. If you’re not being given guidance about how to develop a vocabulary, how to develop your observation skills then it’s difficult to know how to cue and assess and support transformation in your students. From my perspective the job of a yoga teacher isn’t about leading a group through a set of postures like a fitness class. It’s to facilitate transformation of patterns, to take them out of duḥkha and into sukha. That’s your job. That is how I was taught. Unfortunately, many teachers have not received this kind of education.

I’ve been teaching The Essential Low Back Training Program since the study was published, and training yoga teachers since 2000. Every time I teach the low back training for yoga teachers and yoga therapists, more than half of the group admit they have chronic low back and SI pain – often for many years. I notice their lack of core stability, their hypermobility – the tendency to hang in their joints and not actively work their deep frontline and inner core. Through the program, they often realise that their regular āsana practice has actually been exacerbating their condition. By the end of the five-day training, they’re often smiling with happy tears saying, “I can’t believe how much better I feel!” What I share isn’t rocket science, but my studies in functional movement and functional breathing, have emancipated me from a set idea of yoga = āsana practice done in a prescribed way.

I believe this education is so important. If yoga teachers are practicing in ways that are harming themselves, then what is the legacy? What’s the lineage that they’re creating? We’re supposed to be in the business of reducing suffering, first for ourselves – and then using what we’ve learned to support others

I learned a lot from Gary Kraftsow who was my teacher for many years. He was known to say, “Every yoga teacher should be able to take their sequence to yoga court and verify why they’re choosing what they’re choosing. And “I just thought it would feel good’ is not an adequate answer or rationale.”

Exclusive Training with Robin Rothenberg: hosted by Abhyāsa Yoga

Jodie Lunn and Alicia Trevelyan from Abhyāsa Yoga are hosting Robin Rothenberg for her first visit to Australia, to bring her Low Back Care Teacher Training based upon the landmark USA National Institute of Health (NIH) study and years of experience training teachers and therapists.

Enhance your offering with this comprehensive training designed to benefit Yoga Teachers and Therapists from all lineages, providing them with the knowledge and skills to effectively and safely work with students experiencing back pain or related conditions. 

This 50 Hour workshop runs 17 – 22 August in Ballina, NSW.  Given the hands-on components, spaces are limited.

REGISTER HERE

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Advanced Assessment & Therapeutic Design: Develop skills to evaluate back conditions and design safe, customised yoga practices for specific back dysfunctions including hypermobility, sacroiliac destabilisation, scoliosis, pelvic misalignment, and disc issues;
• Functional Anatomy & Movement Integration: Master the relationship between pelvic girdle anatomy, functional breathing, and movement patterns, supported by evidence-based sequencing techniques for back care;
• Practical Application & Certification: Gain hands-on experience through workshops and an optional structured 7-week practicum, culminating in certification as an Essential Low Back (ELB) Trainer with complete curriculum, mentoring and teaching materials for use with your own clients.
• 50-hour equivalent CDP points.

COURSE FACILITATOR

Robin Rothenberg, Yoga Therapist (C-IAYT),  Board President of the International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT).  

Highly involved in Yoga Research since 2000, Robin co-authored the protocol and taught the classes for the landmark study Comparing Yoga, Exercise, and a Self-Care Book for Chronic Low Back Pain: A Randomized, Controlled Trial published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in Dec. 2005. A reported 78% of participants experienced reduced lower back pain and increased quality of life through Yoga Therapy. Using the same protocol, a follow up study was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine in Oct. 2011. The incredibly positive results from these studies formed the basis for The Essential Low Back Teacher Training.