August 23, 2024 • 36 mins
Welcome to Get Your Happy Back, hosted by Nina Lockwood, where we explore stories and insights to inspire happiness in your life. In this episode, Nina sits down with Zaidee Bliss, a yoga teacher, health coach, and Ayurveda counselor, to discuss happiness and well-being from a physical and embodied perspective.
Zaidee shares her journey of 20 years in teaching yoga and her recent graduation from the Kripalu School of Ayurveda. They delve into how functional movement and pain-free living can contribute to a deeper sense of well-being. Zaidee emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and self-understanding over external accomplishments.
The conversation touches on how chronic pain affects behavior and thinking, and the role of yoga and Ayurveda in managing discomfort. Zaidee offers practical tips on becoming more self-aware and how sensory experiences can help regulate the nervous system. She also discusses the importance of taking small, mindful actions to improve well-being, and how to integrate these practices into daily life.
Find Zaidee here:
https://www.facebook.com/zaidee.bliss
https://www.instagram.com/zaidee-bliss-livin-yoga/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This is Nina Lockwood. Welcome to Get Your Happy Back, stories and insights
that will inspire you to find new sources of happiness in your own life.
Hello and welcome to Get Your Happy Back. And today I get to talk with Zadie Bliss.
Hi, Zadie. Hi, Nina. So Zadie, I will let her tell you about herself,
(00:22):
but she's a yoga teacher, a health coach, an Ayurvedic practitioner,
and oh, so many other things.
And this conversation is going to be a little different, because we're going
to be talking about happiness and
well-being from a more embodied physical standpoint. Zadie, over to you.
(00:42):
Well, thank you. So just clarification, I'm an Ayurveda counselor.
There are different levels. The practitioner is another level of study,
which I will be doing, but just to clarify.
And yes, I've been teaching yoga for 20 years. In fact, it's my 20-year anniversary
from graduating from Kripalu, like any minute now, right about now.
(01:06):
I didn't look at the date. I should have looked it up, but yeah, 20 years.
Congratulations. Thanks. And then I just graduated from the Kripalu School of Ayurveda in May.
And I've been a health coach through the Institute for Ingrane of Nutrition
since before I graduated from Kripalu for yoga.
(01:27):
So that's been 20 years as well. So I've been in this world for a long time.
I get so many insights in the middle of teaching a class that it's kind of, wow, this is amazing.
Isn't that saying true that the giver receives as much as the one to whom it's being given? Yes. Yeah.
(01:48):
Talk a little bit more about the fact that you are basically interested in helping
people find peace and joy through functional movement and pain-free living,
because that is part of the package of a deeper sense of well-being.
It kind of starts with watching people in chronic pain. I mean,
(02:09):
just the concept of chronic pain and being in pain makes you unhappy.
There's just no getting around that. And in my early years of teaching,
I kind of thought it would be possible for me to fix everybody and get everybody out of pain.
And if you do the yoga in just this right way, and you do these positions with
this right alignment, that you're going to be pain free for the rest of your life.
(02:29):
And that's not what happens. It's not reality.
And I have come come to find that it's really more about how we manage ourselves while suffering.
And you know, the Buddhism saying that we're all suffering.
Suffering is part of life, but how we suffer is up to us.
(02:52):
And we're going to experience pain and discomfort, but how we experience that is our choice.
So yoga has really taught me how to live in that place of being okay with with
what is happening. Contentment.
Santosha is contentment. And that doesn't mean not pursuing and not trying.
(03:13):
So that doesn't mean not trying to get out of pain because you never know.
It could be just put a block between your upper inner thighs and squeeze it
and your back won't hurt.
I've seen that happen too. We're also going to be in pain and we have to manage it in some way.
So one of the things when we were talking the other day that I was struck by
and thought that we need more of a discussion about this in general is that
(03:37):
one of the things that I so appreciate about you is that you're not talking
about happiness and well-being as external accomplishments,
but more self-awareness and self-understanding.
Part of our recipe for happiness is often this accomplishment and that kind
of a family and this kind of a house and so on and so forth.
(04:01):
But this fact that many people live with chronic pain,
whether it's arthritis or bunions or just general aches and pains,
and I don't think they realize how much that influences their behavior and their
thinking on a less conscious level.
I wonder if you could speak to that.
(04:22):
I think people don't always realize the extent to which being in pain affects
their thinking and their behavior.
And I wonder if you could speak to that because so many people,
as we were talking earlier, are focusing on doing, doing, doing,
not on how we're doing and what's influencing our doing. Right.
(04:44):
Right. When I'm teaching people who are in chronic pain, when I'm teaching them
yoga or even working with them in Ayurveda,
I've been a health coach for a while, but Ayurveda really addresses certain
things that are if your stomach hurts, it affects how you go about life.
It affects how you talk to people and how you get out in the world in interacting with other people.
(05:07):
So I think that if you become more aware in a yoga practice or in a eating practice
or just a meditation practice,
if you become more self-observant, then you can see the places that you react
badly because you're in pain.
I think people do know that they're reacting badly because they're in pain.
(05:30):
I think they realize that their life is affected because they're not addressing their discomforts.
I think it's the more subtle discomforts that people don't realize.
The dissatisfaction with life or the settling into a particular mind chatter, mind story.
(05:53):
I think those are the ones that people are really not sure about or not knowing
how they're, it's hard to say, they're not aware of how that is driving their behavior.
Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, it does. And from your perspective,
in terms of yoga and Ayurveda and all of your health expertise,
(06:14):
how does one go about becoming more self-aware?
Yeah. So that's the fun part. That's the part I really like.
When I first started teaching, as I mentioned before, I was really focused on
the alignment and how everything had to be perfect because it would get you out of pain.
But what I came to realize is that as I was teaching all this self-awareness
(06:35):
about where your pinky toe is and how your legs are lined up with each other,
it became more of an exercise of developing awareness of,
yes, where your body is.
And if you know where your pinky toe is, you're not going to stub it.
And if your mind is focused for this short period of time that you're in a yoga
(06:56):
studio, if your mind is focused on just those little minutiae,
you're not focusing on this constant mind chatter.
If for a minute you get a break and that break is so essential to our nervous
system and helping us settle down and then you're able to be even more aware,
(07:17):
then it kind of builds itself like a cycle.
What would you say to the people, and probably mostly women in this context,
who have a challenge going from very organized and strategic and very left-brain sequential,
which doesn't actually allow for a lot of opportunity for self-reflection?
(07:41):
How do you make that shift?
What kind of recommendations would you have for people who are that kind of type A personality?
Again, the yoga that I'm teaching and that other people teach, that really intricate,
really thoughtful, really technical, like I love talking body parts and using
(08:01):
muscles, names and stuff like that. And it stimulates the intellectual brain.
It creates that, it gives a structure to people who are very organized.
It is a very organized practice.
And because the body is sort of, the body doesn't lie to you.
Like the body is just going to have its experience.
(08:23):
It feels what it feels. And yes, it might trigger stuff in your brain and your
brain turns it into, you know, like talking about PTSD and trauma and all that kind of stuff.
Your body can trick your mind into thinking something's wrong,
and then your mind wanders with it.
But the body is generally really compliant and willing, and it just wants to be better.
(08:46):
And it's sort of, I don't want to call it dumb because it's an incredible,
intricate machine, but it's very willing.
And it's actually the part of us that can change. It changes slowly, but we can change it.
We can work with it. We can play with it. Our mind is a little tricky.
(09:07):
Our mind can fog us. Our mind can tell us stories.
It can tell us all these kinds of nonsense things that make it really difficult to change our mind.
But we can walk into a yoga class and have a migraine or have a sore back and leave without it.
And that's just miraculous. And that feels like progress.
(09:30):
And it gives us a sense of real accomplishment and a sense of controlling our
world in a different kind of way that we don't usually feel in the rest of our
life. That makes a lot of sense.
We were talking the other day about becoming more aware of our sensory experience.
(09:52):
Because so often during the day, we don't pay attention, you know,
we just kind of shove our food into our mouths if we eat at all.
You know, it's constantly staring at computer screens.
Talk about this idea of being more aware, using your senses to get out of your head to...
Regulate your nervous system. Yes. So a few years ago, I worked at a community
(10:17):
residence for people who were suffering from substance use disorder and mental health disorders.
And every week or so, we would have to write a service plan.
And it was actually monthly. We have to write a service plan with the residents
to come up with ways for them to manage their anxiety or their depression or
whatever it was that they were, the triggers that would make them want to go use.
(10:40):
And most of the things that we talked about were notice the trees.
Notice what color the rug is, notice your hand sitting on your lap.
It was all of these sensory things.
And then studying Ayurveda a few years later, your senses are everything that
we take data from the world into us. It's through our senses.
(11:01):
And our senses are the way that we connect to everything else around us.
So if we're not looking at things, if we're not listening to things,
if we're not tasting our food or smelling our food, we're not connecting to
it. And so we feel disconnected.
I mean, it's kind of, duh, you know, in a way.
(11:22):
And yet it's also really easy to get caught into the, I ate a cupcake not long
ago that I got for my lunch and I was driving and I I ate it in the car while I was driving.
And I realized when I finished the last bite, I didn't taste any of that cupcake.
And I was so disappointed because it was a really yummy cupcake. How did you know?
(11:44):
Yeah, like, well, because I've had them before where I've sat and eaten them.
This one, I didn't sit and eat. And I missed out on the whole cupcake and it
made me want another one, which is where the problem is.
So our five senses are where we take in information.
And if If we're not connecting, then we're missing out on so much.
And if we're not connecting, I don't know, I really think that nobody can look
(12:07):
at something beautiful and not feel good.
There's nobody in this world, unless there's something actually not functioning
right in the brain, literally not chemically working, or there's some other
thing that happened in the brain.
To look at a beautiful flower, I think it is meant to help us feel like,
(12:29):
okay, everything's fine. It's why we stop to smell the flowers.
It's why that saying has meaning to it. But then we can overdo our senses too,
which is, I work for a catering company sometimes and I work at weddings and
the music is so loud that it's hard to fall asleep when I get home.
It's just too much. and and everybody feels that way so you can overuse and
(12:51):
misuse your senses as well.
I've found, this was years ago, someone gave me this suggestion,
and it works for me anyway, is that if I'm at an event where there are lots
of people and coming and going and a lot of activity,
that if I take a shower when I come home, that is like a little miracle because I can go to sleep.
(13:16):
Otherwise, I'm still jazzed up from all the energy of the different people and
the environment and the activity that's going on. month. So this makes a lot of sense to me.
Yeah. And if I may, can I talk a little Ayurveda with that? I was going to ask. Yeah, it's so fun.
So all of that stimulation, that overstimulation is considered vata.
(13:39):
And vata is the dosha. And it's a long explanation of what these things are
in a way, but doshas are what can go wrong in us. It's what can get messed up.
It's the stuff that kind of tries to mess us up. And they have their qualities.
So the qualities of the Vata dosha, it's made up of ether and air,
and movement and sound are part of ether and air.
(14:03):
It's what's most dominant in them. It's their specific quality.
So if you go to a concert or you go to a party, there's a lot of sound and movement.
And so going home and putting water on that, hot water because Vata is also
cold and so we might feel hot in this situation its
effect is sharp and cold and so we take a shower and we take this hot shower
(14:28):
and it's heavy it's water it's dry it's it's weighing us down and it's.
Making all of that sensory overload that's up in here in your head go down and out.
And so that's kapha, the water is kapha, and it comes to the rescue all the
time for us. It makes a lot of sense to me.
(14:50):
The other trick that I learned through practicing energy medicine is if you
just move your hands through your energetic field close to your body,
that also It also has a similar effect of getting rid of any sort of energetic
debris that you may have picked up as you go along throughout your day.
(15:11):
Yes. Really simple things that most of us wouldn't think of because who's told
us how to really take care of ourselves in a way other than therapy of one kind or another. other.
Talk a little bit more about Ayurveda and how you see that as being really important
(15:31):
to well-being without getting too technical.
Yeah. And it's a lot. It's a lot to throw the Sanskrit around.
But one of the things that Ayurveda focuses on right from the beginning is health
maintenance and preventing disease.
So we like to say that when the dashboard, the light on your dashboard goes
off, like the oil light comes on, we get oil, put oil in your car or if the
(15:55):
gas light goes on, you put gas in your car.
So these little warning lights that our body has, it helps us become more aware
of these little things that happen. You might have a little cough.
And the cough happens certain times of the day or certain times of the year.
And the Ayurveda counselor and practitioners, all of them can do this,
(16:19):
but they can kind of figure out what might be causing the cough.
And it might be something that's significant and you need to go to a doctor to see about.
And I always recommend going to a doctor as well because there's a lot going
on in there that you want to be careful about.
But it could be just the early, early signs of heartburn. It could be the all
you have to do is stop putting cream in your coffee and it would stop.
(16:41):
So there are little things that we can do to have a little more control over our health.
And it also is about working with the Western, more Western medicine,
the modern medicine, because it
stops us from having to go for a little something that we could fix easy.
Or we also encourage people to go to the doctor if it's something that,
(17:04):
But well, cream in your coffee, you're still coughing, you know,
like these things aren't fixing it. Maybe you really need to go get it checked out.
And then the definition of health in Ayurveda is swasta, which is to be seated
in oneself or situated in oneself.
And I love that because no matter how your actual health is,
(17:29):
if you're situated in yourself, you're healthy.
So you could be going through cancer treatment and still be healthy,
even if you're weak as a kitten and not getting around or you're throwing up
or losing your hair and it feels tragic.
If you're still somehow situated in yourself, then you're healthy.
And to recognize that you're healthy and not sick is so important to getting healthy again. in.
(17:56):
So talk more about that because I think most people would say,
well, if I'm sick, I'm sick.
They are not aware that beneath the symptoms, there is that well-being and groundedness
that you're speaking of.
Yeah, that's a really, I mean, I guess that's the key to all of this.
(18:17):
It's almost the great mystery.
It's almost really what I'm seeking in my whole journey with this.
So I might not even have an ability to speak to it. How do we be content?
How do we be grounded? How do we be centered?
How do we be okay when things are falling apart, or you're not feeling good
(18:41):
for a long time, or things are really scary, or there's chaos in the world? How do we do that?
And I know that really trite comment of being present, it just seems like, of course, be present.
But that's the only thing.
It's the way. And so looking at the world through our five senses,
(19:03):
being able to look at things that are beautiful, smell beautiful things,
taste food with all your senses.
Ayurveda is all about cooking. And I don't cook with measurements.
I cook with my sense of smell and my hearing and the way it looks.
Making ghee is the perfect sensory experience. And it's part of the medicine
(19:26):
of ghee is the cooking of it.
For people who don't know, tell people what that is.
So ghee is clarified butter, basically. It's just one step. It's not browned
butter. It's not clarified butter. It's right in between.
And it's this magic elixir from India that helps with all things.
It's good for your digestion.
It's good for soothing too much vata, too much air, good for making food taste good.
(19:50):
It smells good when you're cooking it.
So yeah, I mean, I think that those things and then knowing where your pinky
toe is in space and having half an hour practice where you're really,
really just thinking about,
wow, if I move my rib cage in just like a fraction of a...
(20:11):
Centimeter in, I feel better in this pose. And it suddenly feels like,
oof, my eyes just opened a little bit more.
That's where the answer to that question is.
That's where you find being situated in oneself is in those moments.
I don't know. So it sounds like what you're talking about is a dance between
(20:32):
taking in what our senses are
showing us, as well as our own physical sensations that we're taking in,
and yet knowing and using that information,
but not in a way that contributes to our suffering, but increases our own self-awareness.
(20:57):
So there's this external experience, including our sensations and perceptions and so forth.
And then there's that internal sense of well-being.
So it seems like there's a dance between embracing what we have coming into
our senses and yet not making that the be-all and end-all.
(21:19):
Ultimately, if we don't have that sense of groundedness, we could get lost in
the sensual experience.
You know, does that make sense? Yes, it does.
And the intention is to find as many things to experience that make you feel good.
And I mean, that's the beauty of Ayurveda that I love. A lot of the practices
(21:43):
that I give to people feel good.
They're pleasant. If it's not like you have to take yucky medicine,
sometimes you do have to take yucky medicine.
And sometimes there are foods that you really need to stop eating.
Like I might say, coffee's not good for you.
Maybe you should stop drinking coffee. And some people hate that.
And so I won't say it right away. But when they realize that drinking coffee
(22:06):
creates a certain experience in their body, and they have the ability to prevent
that from happening, it's very empowering to be able to do that.
And not drinking coffee would be okay then, you know? Sure, I won't drink coffee anymore. more.
Looking at things that are beautiful, experiencing, going to the river,
(22:27):
I tell people a lot to go swimming, go for a swim.
And most of the people that I tell go for a swim, they want to go for a swim.
It's like they're like, oh, I have permission to go for a swim in the river. I've wanted to do that.
And now I have permission and it becomes medicine for them to do that.
So I guess the idea is to find the experiences that are not painful and suffering
(22:52):
so that you realize that it's not all pain and suffering or that life isn't all chaos.
Like taking a shower. I take a shower too. When I get home from those events, I'll take a shower.
And it's just this moment where not everything's noisy, not everything's chaos,
not everything's moving. It's good.
(23:13):
Moving your pinky toe maybe isn't painful.
It's the thing that's like, this is really interesting. It makes me feel like
I can concentrate on something else besides the pain in my back.
So it's really almost not letting yourself get caught in the uncomfortable ones and the yucky ones,
realizing that there are other experiences out there that you can have even
(23:34):
in snippets that are beautiful and good and hopeful and necessary.
And I've been kind of picturing in my mind as we talk about this,
going back and forth between regular people,
women going through your 50s and 60s, the life changes that are like,
what is this? This is weird.
(23:56):
I'm 53 and someone said, I'm in the freshman year of being old.
There should be classes in how to do this because I'm like, I don't know what's
happening. There are weird things that happen to my body and there are weird
things that are happening to my brain.
And my dad is getting old and parents die and things happen that are strange.
(24:17):
And so thinking about that kind of person, as opposed to somebody who's really
suffering with real great, giant, serious issues. Yeah, I'm thinking about them too.
But like I said, I kind of go back and forth between those two images in my mind.
And I think that most people are the sort of life is just really weird and we have to figure it out.
(24:39):
And so it's a little easier for me to say.
Go look at a tree and find its beauty. I can do that.
So I don't want to speak for people who are in really significant chronic pain
and suffering to go look at a tree and feel better.
I suspect they can, but I don't feel like I can say that because I don't have
that experience and I don't want to diminish anybody's experience who are suffering
(25:04):
kind of great sufferings.
Having had this experience myself, I would love it if you would speak to how
to get beyond just thinking, I'm just going to ignore this right now because
I have other things to do.
You know, so we put something, a sensation of pain, we put it away.
We just start to ignore and figure, oh, it'll clear up by itself.
(25:27):
And yes, the body is miraculous.
And we all have heard this a thousand times.
This idea of putting things off
because we think, oh, they'll just solve themselves, I think is a real,
can be so detrimental to our well-being because, Because, you know,
it's like the old saying about, you know, when you're on the airplane,
if you don't put the oxygen mask on first,
(25:47):
you're useless to anybody else and you're useless to yourself.
So can you speak to that a little bit? How do you stop and pay more attention?
How do you become more aware in the moment?
Well, it takes a regular practice of awareness. I just don't think that anybody can conjure that.
I know there's some people who are just weirdly good at taking on a new habit
(26:12):
and they're just like perfect at it and they exist and I'm not that.
I need constant reminders and I guess my constant reminder is that I'm teaching
yoga classes and I'm watching women, mostly women, men do it too,
but I have mostly women in my classes.
And they'll lie down in Shavasana and I'll repeat again and again,
(26:33):
Shavasana is supposed to be comfortable.
It's supposed to be relaxing. You're not supposed to feel any pain.
If you're feeling any pain or discomfort, you know, wave a hand at me, I'll help you.
And I see people not waving their hand and I know that they're in pain and discomfort
and I have to remind them, you're allowed to be, you're allowed to ask for help.
You're allowed to say, I'm uncomfortable. comfortable. It's okay.
(26:56):
And I think that there's a great stigma, not just a forgetfulness of being taking care of yourself,
but a stigma for asking for help or admitting I'm tired or I don't feel good
or this isn't comfortable.
And most of the time, it's so easy to fix.
(27:16):
It's just like, oh my gosh, you know, it makes you feel silly.
But once you get a couple of those under your belt, it's easier to do.
It's easier to ask for help. It's easier to... It's funny, I write in a journal
and I kind of set up every year a new brainstorm of what I want in my life and
how I want to feel. And I want to feel...
(27:38):
More resilient this year. It's more in 2024. That's my little thing.
And so more resilient is one of my things.
More steady is another thing that I want.
And there are a few others. But anyway, the more resilient, one of my little
offshoots is ask for help.
And I've highlighted it and I go into my journal and I look at it every once
(28:00):
in a while and I've decorated it, made it look pretty so it captures my attention.
And asking for help is one of them because I don't know how to do everything.
So I think that's a big one. And then just realizing that having a husband that
I can be honest with is really helpful,
but there are definitely times where I've had to tell him, I'm not,
like, I can't do certain things right now because my body's being bizarre.
(28:25):
And so, or my brain is not okay.
I'm angry for no reason. Just maybe walk out of the the kitchen quietly,
alone, you know, before the pots start flying. Exactly.
Yeah. So I mean, I think that being able to be honest, and but that comes back to the self awareness.
So it really is just about starting some kind of practice starting some thing.
(28:51):
It could be I sometimes say take three breaths before you eat your food.
And then how do you remember to eat take the three breaths before you eat your food.
Sometimes a lot of people in the spiritual world will wear jewelry or something
that reminds them of their mission, of their practice.
So getting something that feels
good, it's pretty, you can wear it or you can put it in your kitchen.
(29:15):
If you eat at the table, set the table and set it with something that you think
is just exquisite and it'll draw you to it and it'll remind you of your practice.
And if you don't do it, like you don't take these three breaths before you eat and you realize like,
wow, I haven't seen that picture of my nephew that I sat on my kitchen table,
(29:36):
or I haven't seen that pretty bowl that I wanted to use for my food because
I'm not paying attention, you'll remember that.
Better than you'll remember, I need to take three breaths before I eat my food.
Or the deadly, I should do this.
Yes. I think you're right about the reminders. We live in an age where we're so easily distracted.
(29:56):
You swipe left, you hit the remote, or whatever it is, you move on to the next thing.
There was recently a very interesting article in the New York Times where people
were given the instruction to look at a piece of art for 10 minutes,
and many people couldn't do it.
And people who could almost do it, as well as the few that could do it,
(30:20):
said it was eye-opening because they made space for an experience that affected
them on all different levels.
But the fact that we're so easily distracted...
Got to do this, got to remember that, you know, multitasking,
which supposedly women are better at.
But also there's a downside to that, right?
(30:42):
Yeah, I feel like we're kind of up against a little bit of a monster that's
bigger than, it's not bigger than what yoga and Ayurveda teaches, but it's a big thing.
And that the addiction to phone, I feel it in myself.
Like I feel myself flipping through things and just scrolling through and not paying attention.
(31:03):
If a video is too long, I won't watch the whole thing.
I won't listen to a whole song on the radio because I want to just go on to
the next song. It's bizarre.
So I have to force myself to do it. And I think that that's where if you're
going to say should at any point in your life, it's I should put my phone in
the other room for an hour or so.
(31:23):
And that's the should that maybe is an okay should because it's a really important
thing. And it's a tough one.
And I think of all of the, I don't like to tell people to stop doing things,
but stopping scrolling on your phone, I think is really important.
That Bob Newhart edict, just stop it.
(31:44):
I don't know if you remember this, but back in the 50s and 60s,
and maybe even 70s, I don't really know when this started to switch,
but But movies would have very long takes.
If you look at like Kurosawa's film, The Seven Samurai, they're long, long, long takes.
(32:05):
Or if you see Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing, they don't do three seconds
and then go on to the next thing.
It's like 30 seconds. These dance routines go on for a long time before the
camera switches to another angle.
And all of those things just detract from the quality of our lives yeah we're
(32:26):
we're in an interesting time and you watch those movies and kids are bored to
death like they can't watch anything that's older than just a few years ago
really and and it's hard to watch even for us.
Because we're not used to those long folds so this is you know meditation is
that meditation Meditation and yoga and, and cooking your own food.
(32:49):
And like, it's a thing.
It's like a 20, 30 minute project and you have to be there.
You have to be there because butter burns so fast. So you have to sit with your
ghee, and it's a whole pound of butter that you have to sit with your ghee.
Yeah, we have to do these practices, these slowing down, smelling your food,
(33:12):
going for a walk and looking at the trees and smelling the trees and listening
to the birds and the bugs and any chance you get, even if it's for a couple of minutes.
There's some study done. And I don't know the studies, but Michael Easter talks
about it in one of his books.
I think it's The Comfort Crisis is the book that I recently read.
(33:35):
And he talks about going out in nature for just like 15 minutes without your
phone or 20 minutes without your phone lowers your blood pressure,
but you have to be without your phone.
So as we draw to a close, and thank you so much for sharing all of your experience.
It's just so helpful to be reminded of what you've been sharing.
(33:56):
Any last tips that you can share?
And then beyond that, where can people find you?
Yes. So last tips, stop and smell the flowers.
Really, in yoga, in Ayurveda, kapha, that dosha of heaviness and groundedness,
it's also related to smell and taste.
So it's smelling your food, tasting your food. And kapha comes to the rescue
(34:18):
in so many ways, but it also in that way can make us unhealthy.
And it's too much. You want it to come to the rescue in good ways,
not in the ice cream ways.
So we talked about that. Like ice cream is medicine.
It is. In the proper dosage. Exactly. Exactly.
And it's really hard for us to just take it easy on that kind of stuff.
(34:40):
So instead, when you make a meal, smell it, chew it.
Taste it. When you're getting up in the morning, look around your room,
appreciate what's there.
If you don't have a neat house, I'm not very neat.
I have a hard time keeping things neat, but I have little places where I put
flowers or I have a little statue that I love so I can look at it.
(35:04):
And so I have a website. It's my name, zadibliss.com.
And I also teach yoga classes This is in Greenwich, New York,
and in this cute little studio right now that I'm sitting in.
Yeah, that's where you can find me. Are you in any of the social media platforms?
(35:26):
Yeah, Instagram, Zadie Bliss Yoga. And then I'm on Facebook.
Also, you can find my personal profile. And then I have a fan page.
Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate everything that you've shared and
your wisdom and your dedication to well-being.
And for those of you who are either listening or watching, thank you so much.
(35:48):
We appreciate you being here and we'll see you on the next episode. So bye for now.
Music.
This is Nina Lockwood. Welcome to Get Your Happy Back, stories and insights
that will inspire you to find new sources of happiness in your own life.
Hello and welcome to Get Your Happy Back. And today I get to talk with Zadie Bliss.
Hi, Zadie. Hi, Nina. So Zadie, I will let her tell you about herself,
(00:22):
but she's a yoga teacher, a health coach, an Ayurvedic practitioner,
and oh, so many other things.
And this conversation is going to be a little different, because we're going
to be talking about happiness and
well-being from a more embodied physical standpoint. Zadie, over to you.
(00:42):
Well, thank you. So just clarification, I'm an Ayurveda counselor.
There are different levels. The practitioner is another level of study,
which I will be doing, but just to clarify.
And yes, I've been teaching yoga for 20 years. In fact, it's my 20-year anniversary
from graduating from Kripalu, like any minute now, right about now.
(01:06):
I didn't look at the date. I should have looked it up, but yeah, 20 years.
Congratulations. Thanks. And then I just graduated from the Kripalu School of Ayurveda in May.
And I've been a health coach through the Institute for Ingrane of Nutrition
since before I graduated from Kripalu for yoga.
(01:27):
So that's been 20 years as well. So I've been in this world for a long time.
I get so many insights in the middle of teaching a class that it's kind of, wow, this is amazing.
Isn't that saying true that the giver receives as much as the one to whom it's being given? Yes. Yeah.
(01:48):
Talk a little bit more about the fact that you are basically interested in helping
people find peace and joy through functional movement and pain-free living,
because that is part of the package of a deeper sense of well-being.
It kind of starts with watching people in chronic pain. I mean,
(02:09):
just the concept of chronic pain and being in pain makes you unhappy.
There's just no getting around that. And in my early years of teaching,
I kind of thought it would be possible for me to fix everybody and get everybody out of pain.
And if you do the yoga in just this right way, and you do these positions with
this right alignment, that you're going to be pain free for the rest of your life.
(02:29):
And that's not what happens. It's not reality.
And I have come come to find that it's really more about how we manage ourselves while suffering.
And you know, the Buddhism saying that we're all suffering.
Suffering is part of life, but how we suffer is up to us.
(02:52):
And we're going to experience pain and discomfort, but how we experience that is our choice.
So yoga has really taught me how to live in that place of being okay with with
what is happening. Contentment.
Santosha is contentment. And that doesn't mean not pursuing and not trying.
(03:13):
So that doesn't mean not trying to get out of pain because you never know.
It could be just put a block between your upper inner thighs and squeeze it
and your back won't hurt.
I've seen that happen too. We're also going to be in pain and we have to manage it in some way.
So one of the things when we were talking the other day that I was struck by
and thought that we need more of a discussion about this in general is that
(03:37):
one of the things that I so appreciate about you is that you're not talking
about happiness and well-being as external accomplishments,
but more self-awareness and self-understanding.
Part of our recipe for happiness is often this accomplishment and that kind
of a family and this kind of a house and so on and so forth.
(04:01):
But this fact that many people live with chronic pain,
whether it's arthritis or bunions or just general aches and pains,
and I don't think they realize how much that influences their behavior and their
thinking on a less conscious level.
I wonder if you could speak to that.
(04:22):
I think people don't always realize the extent to which being in pain affects
their thinking and their behavior.
And I wonder if you could speak to that because so many people,
as we were talking earlier, are focusing on doing, doing, doing,
not on how we're doing and what's influencing our doing. Right.
(04:44):
Right. When I'm teaching people who are in chronic pain, when I'm teaching them
yoga or even working with them in Ayurveda,
I've been a health coach for a while, but Ayurveda really addresses certain
things that are if your stomach hurts, it affects how you go about life.
It affects how you talk to people and how you get out in the world in interacting with other people.
(05:07):
So I think that if you become more aware in a yoga practice or in a eating practice
or just a meditation practice,
if you become more self-observant, then you can see the places that you react
badly because you're in pain.
I think people do know that they're reacting badly because they're in pain.
(05:30):
I think they realize that their life is affected because they're not addressing their discomforts.
I think it's the more subtle discomforts that people don't realize.
The dissatisfaction with life or the settling into a particular mind chatter, mind story.
(05:53):
I think those are the ones that people are really not sure about or not knowing
how they're, it's hard to say, they're not aware of how that is driving their behavior.
Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, it does. And from your perspective,
in terms of yoga and Ayurveda and all of your health expertise,
(06:14):
how does one go about becoming more self-aware?
Yeah. So that's the fun part. That's the part I really like.
When I first started teaching, as I mentioned before, I was really focused on
the alignment and how everything had to be perfect because it would get you out of pain.
But what I came to realize is that as I was teaching all this self-awareness
(06:35):
about where your pinky toe is and how your legs are lined up with each other,
it became more of an exercise of developing awareness of,
yes, where your body is.
And if you know where your pinky toe is, you're not going to stub it.
And if your mind is focused for this short period of time that you're in a yoga
(06:56):
studio, if your mind is focused on just those little minutiae,
you're not focusing on this constant mind chatter.
If for a minute you get a break and that break is so essential to our nervous
system and helping us settle down and then you're able to be even more aware,
(07:17):
then it kind of builds itself like a cycle.
What would you say to the people, and probably mostly women in this context,
who have a challenge going from very organized and strategic and very left-brain sequential,
which doesn't actually allow for a lot of opportunity for self-reflection?
(07:41):
How do you make that shift?
What kind of recommendations would you have for people who are that kind of type A personality?
Again, the yoga that I'm teaching and that other people teach, that really intricate,
really thoughtful, really technical, like I love talking body parts and using
(08:01):
muscles, names and stuff like that. And it stimulates the intellectual brain.
It creates that, it gives a structure to people who are very organized.
It is a very organized practice.
And because the body is sort of, the body doesn't lie to you.
Like the body is just going to have its experience.
(08:23):
It feels what it feels. And yes, it might trigger stuff in your brain and your
brain turns it into, you know, like talking about PTSD and trauma and all that kind of stuff.
Your body can trick your mind into thinking something's wrong,
and then your mind wanders with it.
But the body is generally really compliant and willing, and it just wants to be better.
(08:46):
And it's sort of, I don't want to call it dumb because it's an incredible,
intricate machine, but it's very willing.
And it's actually the part of us that can change. It changes slowly, but we can change it.
We can work with it. We can play with it. Our mind is a little tricky.
(09:07):
Our mind can fog us. Our mind can tell us stories.
It can tell us all these kinds of nonsense things that make it really difficult to change our mind.
But we can walk into a yoga class and have a migraine or have a sore back and leave without it.
And that's just miraculous. And that feels like progress.
(09:30):
And it gives us a sense of real accomplishment and a sense of controlling our
world in a different kind of way that we don't usually feel in the rest of our
life. That makes a lot of sense.
We were talking the other day about becoming more aware of our sensory experience.
(09:52):
Because so often during the day, we don't pay attention, you know,
we just kind of shove our food into our mouths if we eat at all.
You know, it's constantly staring at computer screens.
Talk about this idea of being more aware, using your senses to get out of your head to...
Regulate your nervous system. Yes. So a few years ago, I worked at a community
(10:17):
residence for people who were suffering from substance use disorder and mental health disorders.
And every week or so, we would have to write a service plan.
And it was actually monthly. We have to write a service plan with the residents
to come up with ways for them to manage their anxiety or their depression or
whatever it was that they were, the triggers that would make them want to go use.
(10:40):
And most of the things that we talked about were notice the trees.
Notice what color the rug is, notice your hand sitting on your lap.
It was all of these sensory things.
And then studying Ayurveda a few years later, your senses are everything that
we take data from the world into us. It's through our senses.
(11:01):
And our senses are the way that we connect to everything else around us.
So if we're not looking at things, if we're not listening to things,
if we're not tasting our food or smelling our food, we're not connecting to
it. And so we feel disconnected.
I mean, it's kind of, duh, you know, in a way.
(11:22):
And yet it's also really easy to get caught into the, I ate a cupcake not long
ago that I got for my lunch and I was driving and I I ate it in the car while I was driving.
And I realized when I finished the last bite, I didn't taste any of that cupcake.
And I was so disappointed because it was a really yummy cupcake. How did you know?
(11:44):
Yeah, like, well, because I've had them before where I've sat and eaten them.
This one, I didn't sit and eat. And I missed out on the whole cupcake and it
made me want another one, which is where the problem is.
So our five senses are where we take in information.
And if If we're not connecting, then we're missing out on so much.
And if we're not connecting, I don't know, I really think that nobody can look
(12:07):
at something beautiful and not feel good.
There's nobody in this world, unless there's something actually not functioning
right in the brain, literally not chemically working, or there's some other
thing that happened in the brain.
To look at a beautiful flower, I think it is meant to help us feel like,
(12:29):
okay, everything's fine. It's why we stop to smell the flowers.
It's why that saying has meaning to it. But then we can overdo our senses too,
which is, I work for a catering company sometimes and I work at weddings and
the music is so loud that it's hard to fall asleep when I get home.
It's just too much. and and everybody feels that way so you can overuse and
(12:51):
misuse your senses as well.
I've found, this was years ago, someone gave me this suggestion,
and it works for me anyway, is that if I'm at an event where there are lots
of people and coming and going and a lot of activity,
that if I take a shower when I come home, that is like a little miracle because I can go to sleep.
(13:16):
Otherwise, I'm still jazzed up from all the energy of the different people and
the environment and the activity that's going on. month. So this makes a lot of sense to me.
Yeah. And if I may, can I talk a little Ayurveda with that? I was going to ask. Yeah, it's so fun.
So all of that stimulation, that overstimulation is considered vata.
(13:39):
And vata is the dosha. And it's a long explanation of what these things are
in a way, but doshas are what can go wrong in us. It's what can get messed up.
It's the stuff that kind of tries to mess us up. And they have their qualities.
So the qualities of the Vata dosha, it's made up of ether and air,
and movement and sound are part of ether and air.
(14:03):
It's what's most dominant in them. It's their specific quality.
So if you go to a concert or you go to a party, there's a lot of sound and movement.
And so going home and putting water on that, hot water because Vata is also
cold and so we might feel hot in this situation its
effect is sharp and cold and so we take a shower and we take this hot shower
(14:28):
and it's heavy it's water it's dry it's it's weighing us down and it's.
Making all of that sensory overload that's up in here in your head go down and out.
And so that's kapha, the water is kapha, and it comes to the rescue all the
time for us. It makes a lot of sense to me.
(14:50):
The other trick that I learned through practicing energy medicine is if you
just move your hands through your energetic field close to your body,
that also It also has a similar effect of getting rid of any sort of energetic
debris that you may have picked up as you go along throughout your day.
(15:11):
Yes. Really simple things that most of us wouldn't think of because who's told
us how to really take care of ourselves in a way other than therapy of one kind or another. other.
Talk a little bit more about Ayurveda and how you see that as being really important
(15:31):
to well-being without getting too technical.
Yeah. And it's a lot. It's a lot to throw the Sanskrit around.
But one of the things that Ayurveda focuses on right from the beginning is health
maintenance and preventing disease.
So we like to say that when the dashboard, the light on your dashboard goes
off, like the oil light comes on, we get oil, put oil in your car or if the
(15:55):
gas light goes on, you put gas in your car.
So these little warning lights that our body has, it helps us become more aware
of these little things that happen. You might have a little cough.
And the cough happens certain times of the day or certain times of the year.
And the Ayurveda counselor and practitioners, all of them can do this,
(16:19):
but they can kind of figure out what might be causing the cough.
And it might be something that's significant and you need to go to a doctor to see about.
And I always recommend going to a doctor as well because there's a lot going
on in there that you want to be careful about.
But it could be just the early, early signs of heartburn. It could be the all
you have to do is stop putting cream in your coffee and it would stop.
(16:41):
So there are little things that we can do to have a little more control over our health.
And it also is about working with the Western, more Western medicine,
the modern medicine, because it
stops us from having to go for a little something that we could fix easy.
Or we also encourage people to go to the doctor if it's something that,
(17:04):
But well, cream in your coffee, you're still coughing, you know,
like these things aren't fixing it. Maybe you really need to go get it checked out.
And then the definition of health in Ayurveda is swasta, which is to be seated
in oneself or situated in oneself.
And I love that because no matter how your actual health is,
(17:29):
if you're situated in yourself, you're healthy.
So you could be going through cancer treatment and still be healthy,
even if you're weak as a kitten and not getting around or you're throwing up
or losing your hair and it feels tragic.
If you're still somehow situated in yourself, then you're healthy.
And to recognize that you're healthy and not sick is so important to getting healthy again. in.
(17:56):
So talk more about that because I think most people would say,
well, if I'm sick, I'm sick.
They are not aware that beneath the symptoms, there is that well-being and groundedness
that you're speaking of.
Yeah, that's a really, I mean, I guess that's the key to all of this.
(18:17):
It's almost the great mystery.
It's almost really what I'm seeking in my whole journey with this.
So I might not even have an ability to speak to it. How do we be content?
How do we be grounded? How do we be centered?
How do we be okay when things are falling apart, or you're not feeling good
(18:41):
for a long time, or things are really scary, or there's chaos in the world? How do we do that?
And I know that really trite comment of being present, it just seems like, of course, be present.
But that's the only thing.
It's the way. And so looking at the world through our five senses,
(19:03):
being able to look at things that are beautiful, smell beautiful things,
taste food with all your senses.
Ayurveda is all about cooking. And I don't cook with measurements.
I cook with my sense of smell and my hearing and the way it looks.
Making ghee is the perfect sensory experience. And it's part of the medicine
(19:26):
of ghee is the cooking of it.
For people who don't know, tell people what that is.
So ghee is clarified butter, basically. It's just one step. It's not browned
butter. It's not clarified butter. It's right in between.
And it's this magic elixir from India that helps with all things.
It's good for your digestion.
It's good for soothing too much vata, too much air, good for making food taste good.
(19:50):
It smells good when you're cooking it.
So yeah, I mean, I think that those things and then knowing where your pinky
toe is in space and having half an hour practice where you're really,
really just thinking about,
wow, if I move my rib cage in just like a fraction of a...
(20:11):
Centimeter in, I feel better in this pose. And it suddenly feels like,
oof, my eyes just opened a little bit more.
That's where the answer to that question is.
That's where you find being situated in oneself is in those moments.
I don't know. So it sounds like what you're talking about is a dance between
(20:32):
taking in what our senses are
showing us, as well as our own physical sensations that we're taking in,
and yet knowing and using that information,
but not in a way that contributes to our suffering, but increases our own self-awareness.
(20:57):
So there's this external experience, including our sensations and perceptions and so forth.
And then there's that internal sense of well-being.
So it seems like there's a dance between embracing what we have coming into
our senses and yet not making that the be-all and end-all.
(21:19):
Ultimately, if we don't have that sense of groundedness, we could get lost in
the sensual experience.
You know, does that make sense? Yes, it does.
And the intention is to find as many things to experience that make you feel good.
And I mean, that's the beauty of Ayurveda that I love. A lot of the practices
(21:43):
that I give to people feel good.
They're pleasant. If it's not like you have to take yucky medicine,
sometimes you do have to take yucky medicine.
And sometimes there are foods that you really need to stop eating.
Like I might say, coffee's not good for you.
Maybe you should stop drinking coffee. And some people hate that.
And so I won't say it right away. But when they realize that drinking coffee
(22:06):
creates a certain experience in their body, and they have the ability to prevent
that from happening, it's very empowering to be able to do that.
And not drinking coffee would be okay then, you know? Sure, I won't drink coffee anymore. more.
Looking at things that are beautiful, experiencing, going to the river,
(22:27):
I tell people a lot to go swimming, go for a swim.
And most of the people that I tell go for a swim, they want to go for a swim.
It's like they're like, oh, I have permission to go for a swim in the river. I've wanted to do that.
And now I have permission and it becomes medicine for them to do that.
So I guess the idea is to find the experiences that are not painful and suffering
(22:52):
so that you realize that it's not all pain and suffering or that life isn't all chaos.
Like taking a shower. I take a shower too. When I get home from those events, I'll take a shower.
And it's just this moment where not everything's noisy, not everything's chaos,
not everything's moving. It's good.
(23:13):
Moving your pinky toe maybe isn't painful.
It's the thing that's like, this is really interesting. It makes me feel like
I can concentrate on something else besides the pain in my back.
So it's really almost not letting yourself get caught in the uncomfortable ones and the yucky ones,
realizing that there are other experiences out there that you can have even
(23:34):
in snippets that are beautiful and good and hopeful and necessary.
And I've been kind of picturing in my mind as we talk about this,
going back and forth between regular people,
women going through your 50s and 60s, the life changes that are like,
what is this? This is weird.
(23:56):
I'm 53 and someone said, I'm in the freshman year of being old.
There should be classes in how to do this because I'm like, I don't know what's
happening. There are weird things that happen to my body and there are weird
things that are happening to my brain.
And my dad is getting old and parents die and things happen that are strange.
(24:17):
And so thinking about that kind of person, as opposed to somebody who's really
suffering with real great, giant, serious issues. Yeah, I'm thinking about them too.
But like I said, I kind of go back and forth between those two images in my mind.
And I think that most people are the sort of life is just really weird and we have to figure it out.
(24:39):
And so it's a little easier for me to say.
Go look at a tree and find its beauty. I can do that.
So I don't want to speak for people who are in really significant chronic pain
and suffering to go look at a tree and feel better.
I suspect they can, but I don't feel like I can say that because I don't have
that experience and I don't want to diminish anybody's experience who are suffering
(25:04):
kind of great sufferings.
Having had this experience myself, I would love it if you would speak to how
to get beyond just thinking, I'm just going to ignore this right now because
I have other things to do.
You know, so we put something, a sensation of pain, we put it away.
We just start to ignore and figure, oh, it'll clear up by itself.
(25:27):
And yes, the body is miraculous.
And we all have heard this a thousand times.
This idea of putting things off
because we think, oh, they'll just solve themselves, I think is a real,
can be so detrimental to our well-being because, Because, you know,
it's like the old saying about, you know, when you're on the airplane,
if you don't put the oxygen mask on first,
(25:47):
you're useless to anybody else and you're useless to yourself.
So can you speak to that a little bit? How do you stop and pay more attention?
How do you become more aware in the moment?
Well, it takes a regular practice of awareness. I just don't think that anybody can conjure that.
I know there's some people who are just weirdly good at taking on a new habit
(26:12):
and they're just like perfect at it and they exist and I'm not that.
I need constant reminders and I guess my constant reminder is that I'm teaching
yoga classes and I'm watching women, mostly women, men do it too,
but I have mostly women in my classes.
And they'll lie down in Shavasana and I'll repeat again and again,
(26:33):
Shavasana is supposed to be comfortable.
It's supposed to be relaxing. You're not supposed to feel any pain.
If you're feeling any pain or discomfort, you know, wave a hand at me, I'll help you.
And I see people not waving their hand and I know that they're in pain and discomfort
and I have to remind them, you're allowed to be, you're allowed to ask for help.
You're allowed to say, I'm uncomfortable. comfortable. It's okay.
(26:56):
And I think that there's a great stigma, not just a forgetfulness of being taking care of yourself,
but a stigma for asking for help or admitting I'm tired or I don't feel good
or this isn't comfortable.
And most of the time, it's so easy to fix.
(27:16):
It's just like, oh my gosh, you know, it makes you feel silly.
But once you get a couple of those under your belt, it's easier to do.
It's easier to ask for help. It's easier to... It's funny, I write in a journal
and I kind of set up every year a new brainstorm of what I want in my life and
how I want to feel. And I want to feel...
(27:38):
More resilient this year. It's more in 2024. That's my little thing.
And so more resilient is one of my things.
More steady is another thing that I want.
And there are a few others. But anyway, the more resilient, one of my little
offshoots is ask for help.
And I've highlighted it and I go into my journal and I look at it every once
(28:00):
in a while and I've decorated it, made it look pretty so it captures my attention.
And asking for help is one of them because I don't know how to do everything.
So I think that's a big one. And then just realizing that having a husband that
I can be honest with is really helpful,
but there are definitely times where I've had to tell him, I'm not,
like, I can't do certain things right now because my body's being bizarre.
(28:25):
And so, or my brain is not okay.
I'm angry for no reason. Just maybe walk out of the the kitchen quietly,
alone, you know, before the pots start flying. Exactly.
Yeah. So I mean, I think that being able to be honest, and but that comes back to the self awareness.
So it really is just about starting some kind of practice starting some thing.
(28:51):
It could be I sometimes say take three breaths before you eat your food.
And then how do you remember to eat take the three breaths before you eat your food.
Sometimes a lot of people in the spiritual world will wear jewelry or something
that reminds them of their mission, of their practice.
So getting something that feels
good, it's pretty, you can wear it or you can put it in your kitchen.
(29:15):
If you eat at the table, set the table and set it with something that you think
is just exquisite and it'll draw you to it and it'll remind you of your practice.
And if you don't do it, like you don't take these three breaths before you eat and you realize like,
wow, I haven't seen that picture of my nephew that I sat on my kitchen table,
(29:36):
or I haven't seen that pretty bowl that I wanted to use for my food because
I'm not paying attention, you'll remember that.
Better than you'll remember, I need to take three breaths before I eat my food.
Or the deadly, I should do this.
Yes. I think you're right about the reminders. We live in an age where we're so easily distracted.
(29:56):
You swipe left, you hit the remote, or whatever it is, you move on to the next thing.
There was recently a very interesting article in the New York Times where people
were given the instruction to look at a piece of art for 10 minutes,
and many people couldn't do it.
And people who could almost do it, as well as the few that could do it,
(30:20):
said it was eye-opening because they made space for an experience that affected
them on all different levels.
But the fact that we're so easily distracted...
Got to do this, got to remember that, you know, multitasking,
which supposedly women are better at.
But also there's a downside to that, right?
(30:42):
Yeah, I feel like we're kind of up against a little bit of a monster that's
bigger than, it's not bigger than what yoga and Ayurveda teaches, but it's a big thing.
And that the addiction to phone, I feel it in myself.
Like I feel myself flipping through things and just scrolling through and not paying attention.
(31:03):
If a video is too long, I won't watch the whole thing.
I won't listen to a whole song on the radio because I want to just go on to
the next song. It's bizarre.
So I have to force myself to do it. And I think that that's where if you're
going to say should at any point in your life, it's I should put my phone in
the other room for an hour or so.
(31:23):
And that's the should that maybe is an okay should because it's a really important
thing. And it's a tough one.
And I think of all of the, I don't like to tell people to stop doing things,
but stopping scrolling on your phone, I think is really important.
That Bob Newhart edict, just stop it.
(31:44):
I don't know if you remember this, but back in the 50s and 60s,
and maybe even 70s, I don't really know when this started to switch,
but But movies would have very long takes.
If you look at like Kurosawa's film, The Seven Samurai, they're long, long, long takes.
(32:05):
Or if you see Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing, they don't do three seconds
and then go on to the next thing.
It's like 30 seconds. These dance routines go on for a long time before the
camera switches to another angle.
And all of those things just detract from the quality of our lives yeah we're
(32:26):
we're in an interesting time and you watch those movies and kids are bored to
death like they can't watch anything that's older than just a few years ago
really and and it's hard to watch even for us.
Because we're not used to those long folds so this is you know meditation is
that meditation Meditation and yoga and, and cooking your own food.
(32:49):
And like, it's a thing.
It's like a 20, 30 minute project and you have to be there.
You have to be there because butter burns so fast. So you have to sit with your
ghee, and it's a whole pound of butter that you have to sit with your ghee.
Yeah, we have to do these practices, these slowing down, smelling your food,
(33:12):
going for a walk and looking at the trees and smelling the trees and listening
to the birds and the bugs and any chance you get, even if it's for a couple of minutes.
There's some study done. And I don't know the studies, but Michael Easter talks
about it in one of his books.
I think it's The Comfort Crisis is the book that I recently read.
(33:35):
And he talks about going out in nature for just like 15 minutes without your
phone or 20 minutes without your phone lowers your blood pressure,
but you have to be without your phone.
So as we draw to a close, and thank you so much for sharing all of your experience.
It's just so helpful to be reminded of what you've been sharing.
(33:56):
Any last tips that you can share?
And then beyond that, where can people find you?
Yes. So last tips, stop and smell the flowers.
Really, in yoga, in Ayurveda, kapha, that dosha of heaviness and groundedness,
it's also related to smell and taste.
So it's smelling your food, tasting your food. And kapha comes to the rescue
(34:18):
in so many ways, but it also in that way can make us unhealthy.
And it's too much. You want it to come to the rescue in good ways,
not in the ice cream ways.
So we talked about that. Like ice cream is medicine.
It is. In the proper dosage. Exactly. Exactly.
And it's really hard for us to just take it easy on that kind of stuff.
(34:40):
So instead, when you make a meal, smell it, chew it.
Taste it. When you're getting up in the morning, look around your room,
appreciate what's there.
If you don't have a neat house, I'm not very neat.
I have a hard time keeping things neat, but I have little places where I put
flowers or I have a little statue that I love so I can look at it.
(35:04):
And so I have a website. It's my name, zadibliss.com.
And I also teach yoga classes This is in Greenwich, New York,
and in this cute little studio right now that I'm sitting in.
Yeah, that's where you can find me. Are you in any of the social media platforms?
(35:26):
Yeah, Instagram, Zadie Bliss Yoga. And then I'm on Facebook.
Also, you can find my personal profile. And then I have a fan page.
Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate everything that you've shared and
your wisdom and your dedication to well-being.
And for those of you who are either listening or watching, thank you so much.
(35:48):
We appreciate you being here and we'll see you on the next episode. So bye for now.
Music.
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