RETHINKING CARE THROUGH YOGA : Yogatherapy & Mindfulness between Authenticity, Authority, and Adaptation in Switzerland

This paper examines how yoga, through two of its modern distillations—yoga therapy & mindfulness—contributes to rethinking care within contemporary healthcare systems. Framed as paradigmatic practices of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM), yoga therapy and mindfulness articulate new logics of care that challenge, diversify, and enrich biomedical paradigms.

The research focuses on Switzerland, one of the rare countries where CAM is constitutionally recognized (art. 118a, 2009 referendum) and integrated into both hospital and outpatient care. This unique pluralist system provides fertile ground for analyzing how alternative logics of care emerge, negotiate legitimacy, and reshape medical authority.

Drawing on historical materials, policy documents, media debates, and interviews with hybrid practitioners working at the boundaries of biomedicine and CAM, the study traces how yoga therapy and mindfulness have been institutionalized. It shows how practices originally rooted in lineage and soteriological aims are translated into clinical protocols, outcome measures, and therapeutic frameworks. These processes simultaneously authorize and unsettle authenticity claims, redistribute authority among physicians, therapists, and patients, and drive continuous adaptation.

By situating the Swiss case within broader debates in the medical humanities, the article argues that yoga therapy and mindfulness do not merely supplement biomedical care. Instead, they make visible—and alive—the hidden dimension of care embedded in yogic practice, offering relational, experiential, and meaning-oriented models that expand what counts as therapeutic efficacy and ethical healing.