September 27, 2024 • 39 mins
Click here to RSVP for “Become Your Own Yoga Teacher” - https://www.quietmind.yoga/workshop
Live on Zoom
In this episode I share the main topics from the workshop including
- Common mistakes most yogis make
- Crossing the threshold from looking outside yourself for answers to looking within
- Why my yoga mat is my “home” after moving 40+ times in my life
- The real reason you get tight muscles
- Why stretching is not always the answer in yoga
- How you can quickly release pain in your body today
- 10 skills to deepen your practice
- My #1 recommendation of how to start applying energetic anatomy / the deeper more esoteric aspects of yoga to your life today
You’ll learn lots of practical things you can do right now to deepen your practice.
Jeremy Devens
Quietmind Yoga
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
My name is Jeremy Devons and this is the Quiet Mind Yoga
Podcast, and today's episode is all about becoming your own yoga
teacher and how you can use the things that I teach here on this
podcast to apply to yourself. So setting up your own home
practice, avoiding the common mistakes people make, and going
on the journey to maybe becomingeven a yoga teacher if you so
(00:21):
desire, which I actually did notthink I would ever do.
I never thought I'd be a yoga teacher.
I just wanted to learn for myself.
But then as I did that, I found the best way to learn for myself
was actually to teach others andhad a lot of validation and
support from my mentors along the way.
But in this episode, I'm sharingthat.
And if you want to go deeper into being your own yoga
teacher, I've got a free live workshop all about this called
(00:44):
Become Your Own Yoga Teacher. It's live on Zoom on October 1st
at 1:00 PM Pacific. If you're listening to it later,
go to the same link and you can still sign up for watching the
replay while it's still available for a limited time.
So it's quiet. Mind dot yoga slash workshop is
the link to the Become Your Own Yoga Teacher workshop.
(01:04):
I'll be sharing 10 skills to deepen your practice.
I'll be sharing common mistakes that you want to avoid that most
yoga students make that I made many times myself, as well as
the real reason you get tight muscles, which is a big overlook
thing, a mistake I made for manyyears myself, which will
hopefully save you a lot of struggle yourself.
And then I'll talk about the 10 skills to deepen your practice.
(01:25):
Based on all my years in studying and practicing yoga,
I've found that you can really distill it down to 10 main
things. I'll be sharing all this on the
free live workshop. Had amazing feedback from this
in the past and from past trainings I've done.
And this is all leading up to the next Kwi Amide Yoga teacher
training starting very soon. In October.
I had to move it back a little bit.
(01:46):
We had a hurricane pass through my region in Mexico and luckily
it wasn't too bad where I live, but it did slow things down
quite a bit. So excited to get back on track
with things and start the next teacher training.
It's going to be an amazing group.
I always love offering this. So if you're interested in
working with me deeper in the yoga realm, this is the next
thing to do. Become your own yoga teacher.
(02:08):
Free live workshop and again, ifyou missed it on October 1st,
join, sign up. Anyway, you get the free replay
for a limited time. It's all free.
I like to provide a lot of valuein these free workshops.
It's not like a big sales thing or anything like that.
If you want to work with me, there's opportunity to do that
in the teacher training. But the main purpose of this is
(02:28):
it's actual workshop. So you'll be applying a lot of
the stuff that you learn from this.
And I've heard many people say, like, what they learned in this
workshop was more valuable than years of trainings they've done.
So I love to do that. I love to make yoga easier and
more accessible, to learn and tofeel like you know what you're
doing because I felt like I didn't really know what I was
(02:49):
doing for a long time. And it can be a little
overwhelming, but you know, it'sbeneficial.
You know, there's a lot of greatthings about yoga, but are you
really doing it right? Are you doing the alignment
right? Are you missing anything?
That's the kind of stuff I'll help you avoid in this free
workshop. And in today's episode, I'm
going to talk about this as well, some of these same topics.
We're just going to go deeper and apply them more at the
workshop. So the first thing I want to
(03:11):
talk about today in this episodeis some of the common mistakes
that most yoga students make. And you've likely made these
mistakes yourself. I certainly have as well.
And one of them is looking outside of yourself for the
answer. So for example, you're in a yoga
class and the teacher says come into this pose.
Maybe it's something you're not super familiar with or
(03:32):
comfortable with and you're not sure what to do.
So you naturally are going to look to the teacher to see how
to do it. And you're going to look around
the room to see what other people are doing.
And this is OK, this is good. This is not a mistake.
It's important to see what otherpeople are doing to kind of see
what you're supposed to be doing.
And then there's a certain pointlike training wheels on a bike,
where you got to take the training wheels off and go
(03:54):
internal. And this is a big threshold for
yoga students to cross. Maybe you've already crossed it,
but it's the threshold of going from looking externally around
you for the answers to looking internally for the answers.
O looking externally of what is the teacher doing?
What are the other people doing?Am I doing it right like them?
(04:16):
Does it look like them? OK, I've made the shape with my
body just like they did. And then you feel like you've
completed the pose. You've done the pose and that is
almost like an athletic approach, like a sport, like
something you would look on the external, like superficially,
like are you wearing certain clothes that give you a certain
identity or certain makeup or hairstyle?
(04:39):
It says a certain thing about you.
Now you do this certain shape with your body and now you're a
Yogi. But it's really just the
beginning. And I'll save this for a
different topic, but the physical layer is just the first
of many layers of awareness and experience.
But the hysical layer is where we really need to start.
As we are looking around, tryingto understand what's happening
(05:00):
in the yoga class and the yoga ractice, that's where we start.
Then the next step to threshold the cross is to go from the
looking outside to looking inside.
And this applies not just on thephysical pose, but on so many
aspects of the yoga practice of the self-awareness, right?
Going from externally, OK, she'sdoing the shape and putting her
(05:22):
hands there and her feet there and her leg here and her arm
there. And I can do that too to now
I've done that. Now what's happening inside.
Or you can apply this to so much, so many areas of life,
like maybe you think you need toget this job or this
relationship or have this much money or achieve this certain
(05:44):
goal, or have this many childrenor buy this house and you do
that external thing. Now what?
Now what's happening internally when you have that thing?
And that's where the real yoga practice begins.
I think in my opinion is the physical external part is an
important first part, but then the across this threshold where
(06:05):
you go into the internal part. And in the yoga perspective, we
would call this interroception. And this is awareness of what's
happening inside. Like we have our perception of
others, of places, of things. We're perceiving things all the
time. And we have then the
interroception, the receptivity of what's happening inside to be
(06:29):
aware of. When I do down dog, it looks
like curved down dog, but my shoulder hurts.
So what's going on with my shoulder?
Or I can look like their versionof tree pose, but I can't
balance as much. So what's happening is what's
happening in my body or I'm not able to balance the way that
(06:50):
this other person's able to balance, even though I'm copying
the same movements they did. What's happening inside?
Or you might do it perfectly. You might perfect Warrior 2.
It looks just like you, the person next to you or the
teacher did it. And then what right is it now
that you've you've mastered warrior two, you're done with
yoga, you move on, you never do it again.
(07:13):
What's happening inside? So this is where so much of the
benefits of yoga come from, of the interception, crossing that
threshold from looking outside yourself to now looking within
yourself. And when you look within
yourself now, so much is there to explore.
So for example, you might be practicing a hatha sequence
(07:34):
every day for six months. Let's just say this as an
example. Do the same, pretty much the
same routine, go to the same class.
Maybe it's just once a week. Let's just say once a week
instead of every day. So every Saturday you go to the
same yoga class and you're doingthe practice and you feel like
you're getting stronger, more flexible, and the pose is always
(07:54):
the same. It's like if you do down dog
maybe 10 times every class, no matter what the pose doesn't
changed. But what is happening internally
is changing and that's always changing constantly.
Like the weather, your emotions,your mind, it's always
constantly changing. And this is what the real first
teaching of yoga is. Yoga's Chitta Vritti Naroda Yoga
(08:18):
is the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind so that
you can abide in your true self and have awareness of the small
S self of I have this identity, I have all the stuff to do,
etcetera, etcetera. You come back to the true self
and now you have choice, you have awareness, you have space
between you, the observer, and you, the experiencer.
(08:40):
The fears you have, the anxieties, you have, the
frustrations, the resentments, the anger, the sadness, all of
that thing. All of those things are welcome.
All those emotions are importantand part of the human
experience, but they can overtake us sometimes.
They can feel debilitating, theycan feel overwhelming.
We can get lost in it and yoga is the place where we can come
back to. Once you know down dog and you
(09:02):
know the shape and you know the anatomy a bit, you know the
alignment, even the basics, you don't need to know super deep.
You know how to get into down dog and now what happens
internally. So for me, as I've moved a lot
in my life, I am 38 years old now and I've moved about 45
times in my life. So just in the last year, I
(09:22):
moved four times from where I'm staying in Mexico and it's never
a big stressor to me. But one of the things that's
made it very easy for me is thatI have my yoga mat.
I had the same yoga mat for like7 years and I've had this one
for about 5 years and it's that same place.
I just come back to it over and over again.
(09:43):
Just get back on the mat, get back into down dog, just like
I've been doing down dog for a long time.
The pose hasn't changed, but I continue to change.
Life continues to change. The externals continue to
change, but I have this place that's like a home to me.
Somebody asked me a while ago, like, where is your, where do
you consider home? Right?
You moved a lot. So where do you consider home?
(10:04):
Is it where you were born? And to me, the honest answer is
my yoga mat. Like that's, that's my home.
That's the place I feel like I come back to you.
It feels like I'm back in my center, back to myself, clear.
I have choice and all the situations in my life.
I have perspective of everything.
I have this interception, what'shappening inside.
(10:25):
I have this ability to really feel on a deeper level when I
get into my body through my yogapractice of oh, OK, there's some
pain in my low back. What's going on there?
Maybe there's some feeling of resistance, some area of my
life, maybe some feeling of lackof support.
If it's the low back or it's theshoulders are tense.
Maybe I feel like I'm carrying too much, carrying the weight of
(10:47):
the world, as we say about the shoulders.
Maybe it's my neck, right? I'm not putting my neck out too
much or too little. Maybe it's my throat, my voice.
I'm not expressing myself. So all these things in the body
now become ways to check in withthe body, mind and spirit all
together. It's all one thing.
And as we become aware of these sensations in the body, it
(11:08):
becomes very easy to see these connections and things like low
back pain often associated with a lack of feeling supported,
particularly financially supported about any sort of
support or things like this. In the heart, of course, where
we feel grief, sadness, love, all these emotions can be around
the heart, the front of the heart where we open and give
(11:30):
love. If there's some limitation or
tension there, maybe there's a resistance to opening the heart
after a heartbreak or a sadness.Or if there's pain in the back,
maybe there's resistance to receiving love.
The back is where we receive andmaybe fear or resistance to
receiving support and love through the heart.
So just through having a place to get into your body through
(11:52):
yoga and be aware of what's happening inside, become the
observer, get into the witnessing, awareness, the
Atman, the true self. We can see the small S self, the
day-to-day self of what's going on, what needs attention.
So again, back to the big mistake people often make.
It's they, they don't go to thatpart of the practice.
(12:13):
They just go to the physical. And I can do chaturanga.
Well, I, I can actually do 2 chaturangas here.
I could do 2 vinyasas when everyone else does 1.
And I can push my body more and that's great.
That's fun, that's exciting, that's athletic.
It's good to build strength and flexibility and all these things
and endurance. We build that in yoga and that's
(12:34):
one layer and that's not the whole thing though, right?
That's, that's the part of the physical body and that's great.
But we also have this deeper stuff.
And that's really what makes yoga yoga and not just another
form of exercise like going to the gym and doing stretches and
foam rolling and all that, whichis also great.
I also do that, but it's a very different experience, different
(12:56):
practice. Yoga is a place to yoke, yog,
connect, combine the the mind, body, breath and breath spirit.
We get the word inspiration likebringing in the spirit in
Ferrari, the spirit within. So a lot of the terms to do with
(13:16):
breath are associated with the origins of that word come from
the spirit and like prana is carried through the breath among
other things. But prana is the life force in
Sanskrit. So body, mind and breath or
body, mind and spirit all brought together through the
yoga practice, not just the body, not just the mind and the
(13:36):
meditative part, and not just the breath, which is also very
important. So that's the first common
mistake that I see that I just want to touch on here in this
episode and we'll go deeper intomore mistakes on the free
workshop. Again, Quiet Mind at Yoga Slash
Workshop is where you can join us and sign up for free.
(13:57):
We're going deeper into more common mistakes that people
make. I've made myself.
I'm speaking from experience in all this, so there's no
judgement. It's just like, hey, you're
looking over here. Maybe try looking over there.
That's this is what I've seen. Maybe you'll see something
interesting there. Next, I want to talk about the
real reason you get tight muscles.
Again, I'll go deeper into this on the class, but I'll say that
(14:18):
stretching is not the solution to everything.
So if you think that you've got tight muscles and all you need
to do is stretch more, I would encourage you to consider maybe
it's not just that. Maybe there's more to explore
than just stretching as being the issue.
So what happens when a muscle feels tight, right?
(14:40):
Tension in the muscle like I've got, I'd say a tight hamstring.
I try to do down dog, but my heels are way off the ground and
down dog, I've got to bend my knees a lot.
It doesn't really mean anything.It doesn't mean that you're a
bad Yogi or you're not flexible or you need to train harder or
you're doing it wrong. It could mean so many things,
(15:01):
but we don't really need to giveit any particular meaning.
But we can look at what is goingon in the muscle.
So for some reason that muscle is shortened or tense or maybe
there's some sort of emotional stress there.
There's a lot of layers to this that we'll get into in the
workshop, but I just want to address the one part of it that
(15:22):
was a common mistake for me is that I thought stretching would
be the solution, right? So it's tight, so I need to
stretch more. And I did this with my shoulder
and my low back and my hamstrings.
For me, those, those are the three areas where I had this
issue the most. And I'll say with my shoulder, I
had this upper trap tension. So basically my shoulder was
(15:43):
always tight for this was about a year this was happening and I
was a few years into my yoga teaching.
So I thought I understood prettywell, OK, tight muscle, stretch
it out, it feels less tight, problem solved.
So I kept doing that with most of my body and it was working
fine for me. And then I tried to do with my
shoulder and it would work for alittle bit and then it would
(16:04):
come back, the pain would come back.
So oh, maybe I need to stretch more.
I'm not stretching enough. I'm going to stretch some more.
So I tried some other things, tried finding some different
angles to stretch it, different variations, different ways to
stretch it and every time it would feel a little better
afterwards and then it would come back the same.
So finally I went to a body worker who I love and respect in
(16:25):
Austin, TX, name is Hailey Flora, she's great.
Hailey Flora if you want to findher in Austin.
Pretty sure she's still offeringbody work and teaching yoga and
things like that. So I'm not in Austin anymore.
Otherwise I would not recommend her and see too many people.
But if you do get a chance to gothere, I would recommend her.
She's great. So basically, she's worked a lot
(16:47):
with cadavers, with anatomy a lot.
So I learned a lot of anatomy from her and her husband Ben,
who taught a lot in Austin, TX. And she suggested I try
tightening the muscle, actually tensing it up more instead of
just stretching it, tense it up more.
And I had not found this anywhere and where I was
(17:07):
looking, anything I was looking at.
So very interesting idea to me. So we worked together in a
session and she had me contract the muscle, like shrug my
shoulder up, tense it up as muchas I could.
And then she gripped onto it like a sort of clamp, like
squeezing the muscle, pressing firmly into where the most tense
(17:28):
spot was, where I felt like the most tension is slightly
uncomfortable as I hold the contraction.
So again, just like if you were doing at the gym, you do a
shoulder shrug, you tense up themuscle, she's squeezing it, I'm
tensing it. And we just held that for a
while, several breaths. At a certain point, my muscles
started to get fatigued and tired.
(17:50):
And she kept holding, kept holding.
And I very slowly released the shrug as she kept holding and
squeezing. And I could very slowly feel the
tension releasing from the muscle.
So it wasn't a stretch, it was actually the opposite.
It was a contraction, like full contraction of the muscle.
And that was what helped releaseit.
(18:13):
So that is one of the many techniques that I teach in my
teacher training and when I workwith people is not just stretch
everything. And if there's a tight muscle,
if there is a problem area, don't just stretch it because
that might not be the solution. Sometimes it is, but not always.
So you need a wider range of tools and I'm going to share
some of those tools at the Worksho.
I share all my tools in the yogateacher training.
(18:35):
But again, this rather than stretching a muscle, try
contracting it and extra bonus points, hold on the most tense
part in there like a trigger point, the self myofascial
release. You do it yourself or it's
actually better if you can have someone else to do it like a
body worker or through like a therapy ball or some sort of
(18:57):
body work tool, like a hard plastic knob or something that
you can press into. So that you don't have to use
the neurological effort of yourself of both trying to relax
and squeeze, right? That when you do it yourself,
it's like a little bit of a mixed signal in your brain.
Am I contracting or am I relaxing?
(19:18):
So it helps if you have like a therapy ball or something hard
to press into lacrosse ball, baseball, golf ball or one of
these kind of tools or somebody else just just pushing on it.
All they got to do is just make a fist or push with their
finger. It doesn't have to be a very
complex technique. They could just squeeze the
(19:38):
muscle, whatever it is, they're just applying some pressure in
this like self myofascial release technique.
You you push into the tense spotand that gives the neurological
signal of how much your brain isis tensing up there.
And now the brain notices it andrealizes that if it continues to
(20:00):
hold tension, there's going to be more pain.
Then they can start to relax. It's actually one of the first
massage techniques I learned many years ago, even before I
did a yoga teacher training. I was this technique.
I basically just finding a knot and pressing on it and waiting
and breathing and it will melt. Not always, but it is one
(20:20):
technique. And when you combine this with
contracting and then squeezing the muscle, that could actually
release the tense muscle. Now, there's a lot more to the
say about this. I'm just going to leave it at
that for now. But if you are feeling any
particularly tense muscle right now, hamstrings, back, hips,
shoulders, maybe this is something to explore.
(20:41):
It might not be the solution foryou, but it may be.
And being a Yogi and being your own yoga teacher is like having
a wide range of tools available,not just stretching.
So this is one of the tools thatmay work is you contract the
muscle and press into it firmly as a sort of myofascial release
technique rather than just stretch it.
(21:04):
Stretching is great, strengthening is great,
everything is great and and it'sa tool.
It's just a tool. It's not like as a, if you're a
Carpenter, a hammer is just one tool.
If it's the only tool you have, you're very limited in what you
can do. You can do a lot, but it's
limiting still. So you don't want to limit
yourself with just one tool of just stretching.
(21:25):
You want to have a wide range oftools as a Yogi practitioner,
and especially as a teacher. Definitely as a teacher, if
you're going to teach other people, you need a wide range of
tools because you're going to have a wide range of students,
especially if you teach just drop in classes where you might
have beginners, advanced, injured, not injured, young,
old, all sorts of backgrounds inone room teaching the same
(21:48):
sequence. So how do you adapt to each
person? And this is part of how is
knowing these different techniques, knowing how to
adapt, knowing how to read the room.
And these are some of the more teacher centric skills we go
into the teacher training. But just for you as a Yogi, as
your own practitioner, when yourmuscle is tight, stretching may
be the solution. It might not be myofascial
(22:11):
release, might be the solution, it might not be often that helps
a lot. Very often myofascial release is
one of the most important techniques.
This is why I teach not just stretching, but what I call
release strength and stretch as a technique in working with
tight muscles. Again, I'm not going to go super
deep into that now, but just to keep it simple.
Today stretching might work, strengthening might work,
(22:35):
Pressing into the muscle might work.
Anyone who says always, always, or never is probably not very
experienced. Probably if you do this long
enough, you work with thousands of people over thousands of
classes like I have. You know that there are a lot of
variables. So I would not trust any Yogi or
(22:56):
yoga teacher who just says this always works or this never
works. It depends.
That's the the voice of experience.
It depends. So for your body, it depends.
And if you're feeling frustratedwith your body, if you're having
some particular pains or issues,just know that there's other
things you might be able to try that might work.
And the things you are doing might seem good and they might
(23:19):
seem like they should work, and someone else might have said
they work, but they might not. And everything I just said, it
might work, it might not. But they're very useful tools.
And I've seen them work a lot ofthe times.
And I can say pretty confidentlythat if you only do one thing,
if you only do stretching, or you only do strengthening or
only do cardio or only do one particular thing for your
(23:41):
health, your body, your fitness,you're probably going to have
imbalances and you're probably going to need to do other things
at some point to balance it out.And being a Yogi and yoga
teacher is about knowing what those other things are and when
to use them. So among those things, there are
10 skills that I share that I talk about, I've talked about on
(24:02):
the podcast before, the 10 core competencies of yoga.
I'm going to share about that and the workshop and go deeper
with that. And that is the foundation of
what I teach in my teacher training.
So there are 10 modules and we go into these 10 core
competencies. And by my perspective and my
experience, everything in yoga can be distilled into these 10
(24:23):
topics, no more, no less. And if there were less, I would
make it less. I, I prefer it was only three
topics. I like threes or fives at most,
but it can't just separate or you got to separate.
You can't just lump together certain things.
You got to separate some of these things.
So for example, yoga history is distinct from yoga philosophy,
(24:44):
which is distinct from meditation and distinct from
anatomy. So I separate these things so
that we can go really deep with them.
Because as I was learning myself, I wanted to learn as
much as I could about yoga and go super deep.
And I realized it's going to take a while and it has taken a
while and it's continuing to take a while.
It will be a lifelong study, which I love about it.
(25:05):
But I learned a lot when I went really deep, like focus real
deep into anatomy for a while and everything about anatomy and
take everything I've learned anddistill it into the essential
teachings and what Ioffer in my teacher training.
And again, the highlights I'll give on the workshop.
So I'm going to point you in thedirection.
I'm not going to leave you hanging and say you have to work
(25:27):
with me. I'm going to give you the road
map. So whether you work with me or
not, if you go to any teacher training in the world, you'll
have a road map. So you're not just like, OK,
well this teacher says that. That teacher says that, well,
how do they all kind of fit together?
And if you go into a training and they start talking about
sequencing and you want to learnmore and you don't know where to
go next and they only do like 2 hours on sequencing and you
(25:49):
don't be prepared to sequence a class, you'll have an outline
based on what I provide at the workshop.
You'll have an outline of, OK, this is the direction to go with
sequencing. If I want to learn more about
that or for example, philosophy,it's one of the more common
things that people ask me about or come to me about because I, I
share this, a lot of my teachingis the philosophy and the
(26:09):
energetic anatomy, things like chakras, koshas, doshas, gunas.
If you don't know what any of those words are, great.
Come learn with me at the workshop.
Come learn with me more. Go back to my archives.
I talk about the limbs of yoga, the yamas and niyamas.
These kind of deeper topics are really, really the root of yoga.
(26:31):
And people talk about like what is real yoga or what is sort of
just fake yoga or not the real thing.
I think, well, if we're talking about what's the real thing, we
got to go back to the roots, thesource text, the Upanishads, the
Bhagavad Gita, the Vedas, and what do they say?
And in my teacher training, I give you all the quotes, all the
major quotes from all those texts.
And just right there, it's very clear as day.
(26:54):
And actually it's surprising howhard that actually is defined
anywhere in any book, any website.
Nobody just takes out all the quotes and puts them all in one
place and says here's what the Upanishad said, here's what the
Manduki Upanishad said, here's what the Rig Beta says, here's
what the Blaggitta says. And Blaggitta uses the word yoga
over 500 times. Actually, people don't often
(27:16):
think of it as a yoga manual, but it talks more about yoga,
says more about yoga than the Yoga Sutra does.
And most people think of the Yoga Sutra as the Bible of yoga.
So I mentioned all of these. I talk about all of these in my
teacher training in more depth. But to say that at the workshop,
this is one of the areas that I'll be exploring.
And people are so interested in the philosophy and the energetic
(27:36):
anatomy. So I like to break that down and
share about that. And I'll share a little bit more
about the energetic anatomy because a lot of people are very
interested in that. But how do you learn about the
chakras? And the chakras are so valuable
and something I've used a lot since I've learned it many years
ago and pretty much some degree use it every day.
(27:58):
And for me, the first thing was learning how to feel my root
chakra, my feet. I had cold hands and feet,
actually a cold stomach to for along time.
I grew up in Minnesota as long cold winters.
I didn't really like to wear allthe layers, so I would just not
wear them and then I would get sick all the time.
(28:18):
I had some very difficult experiences in my childhood,
which is very often correlated to stomach issues, digestive
issues, and I had those for a long time.
A lack of fire in the belly essentially had to do a lot of
work to wake that fire up. And that started with the root.
So when I started learning aboutthe chakras, I figured I'll just
(28:40):
work my way up the chakras. Maybe one a year, like 7
chakras, 7 years. There's no hurry.
This is yoga. It's a lifelong study.
It's going to take me a long time anyway, So I started
working with the root chakra fora year.
It's around 2013 I think. And one of the resources I found
really helpful was Anadaya Judith's books.
(29:00):
So if you want to go deeper intoenergetic anatomy, I'd recommend
any book by Anadaya, Judith, Wheels of Life, Eastern body,
Western mine. But she has this audio recording
that's about the chakras and youcan find it online now.
I was so happy I found it in used bookstore in Austin.
(29:22):
The C DS back when C DS were a thing and I had ACD player in my
car and I got this like maybe 7 discs.
So I just have those in the CD player all the time, every time
I'm driving around listening to Entity Judith talk about the
chakras. So I found that particular
recording to be my favorite overher books actually, and actually
(29:43):
got to study with her and get certified with her in Austin,
TX. And she's a great teacher and
she's I think the expert on chakras, modern living expert.
So I highly recommend if you want to learn more about
energetic anatomy, get any book by Anna the Judith.
If you can find her audio program, which I think is online
now as a download, I recommend that a lot.
It's awesome. If you can find the CDs, even
(30:06):
more fun. Just kind of feels like this
cool find as I had never heard about it before I found the CDs.
I didn't know that even existed.So those CDs are awesome.
And then start with the root chakra.
Just work with the root, which is means your foundation, your
security, the food you eat, yourenvironment, your home, your
finances, your family, like the foundational security, survival
(30:29):
base things. And if you work on those and
take care of those, it's amazingfoundation to start working with
the rest of the second chakra, your sensuality, working with
others, sexuality, creativity, third chakra, your expression,
your power, your willpower, your, your fire in the belly,
your ability to digest food and ideas and information, your
(30:51):
heart chakra, your ability to love and receive love,
compassion, kindness, etcetera. So working up the chakras is a
great way to work with energeticanatomy that you could start
today, but grounding by literally getting your feet,
bare feet on the earth. And this is a big part of why I
moved near the ocean where I live now.
(31:12):
It's like a 9 minute walk to thewater and I walk barefoot almost
all the time. So to have my feet on the earth
'cause I realized when I learnedabout grounding and being
barefoot. Most people in the US never
touch their feet to the earth. So we're living our lives
ungrounded and disconnected fromthe earth.
I'm wearing shoes and like goingout on the sidewalk and hard
(31:35):
pavement and not going on to theearth.
So anything you can do to groundeating, grounding foods, root
vegetables, things like this time with family, time with
friends, addressing financial issues, addressing family
issues, that's all root chakra stuff.
And that's always a good place to start, especially if you're,
you know, into the spiritual path, you're listening to this
(31:56):
podcast, you're into spirituality.
There's so much stuff out there the the 5th dimension and you
know, aliens and all this and crystals, which I think all that
stuff is interesting. There's nothing wrong with any
of that, but can we approach it from a grounded perspective,
starting with our feet on the earth?
Because we have bodies and we have this physical human
(32:16):
experience, so we start there. Kind of tying back to the
beginning of this episode of most yoga practitioners, start
with focusing on the physical body, looking at the physical
body. Am I doing it right?
Is my hand in the right place? That's all good.
We need to start with the physical body and have a good
foundation there first, and thenwe can get into the energetic
stuff and then we can get into the really interesting, you
(32:38):
know, movement of energies and expansion, contraction, yin and
Yang. And everything in yoga has an
energetic effect. And this is one of the biggest
things that I teach. I think it's so important to
know is when you're practicing yoga, it's everything has an
energetic effect. Everything should be
intentional. I think in my opinion, if I do a
(33:00):
practice where I just keep my arms up overhead most of the
time, that's going to have a different energetic effect than
if I do a practice where I keep my arms down pretty much the
whole time, right? That's going to be very
different energy. And I've taught classes, that's
actually very common in yoga classes that arms go up a lot.
I've taught classes where the arms never go up.
And it, it feels very good, verygrounding, right?
(33:22):
So it all starts though, coming back to actual physical
grounding on the earth as what I'm going to recommend in
today's episode is just get yourfeet on the ground.
And if you're already doing that, start addressing some of
those root issues. How are your finances?
How is your relationship with family?
And how is your diet and your food, the actual physical food
(33:43):
you're eating? And if there's something that
needs to be adjusted there and these things are just never
ending. Actually, it's it's not like
you're done with it, though. The chakras are chakra means
wheel or disc, and it's constantly moving and it can be
moving too fast or too slow or just right.
It's moving too fast. You got too much focus on
security, you're hoarding, moving too slow, you have too
(34:05):
little security, you're anxious and you're no boundaries, right.
So you get it just right. You have good boundaries, you
have good stability. You feel secure, you feel safe.
You've got connections with friends and family, you've got
financial security, you've got the connection to the earth.
You feel embodied. You got the interception we
talked about at the beginning and you're in a really good
(34:27):
place to continue on your path. And then working when you get
all the way up to like the intuition and the crown chakra
and like the psychic ability andthe stuff I talk about in my
astrology work of like channeling and allowing
information to come through and insights and intuition and being
able to predict the future and seeing patterns play out.
That's all coming from these upper chakras that really need a
(34:50):
solid foundation to stand on anda solid foundation to channel
down to. Because the chakras can work
down of downloading information into the material world and also
they can work up of raising energy up from the physical to
the spiritual. The channels can go both ways
and most people focus just on the getting up and out and
(35:11):
transcending, getting out of a difficult childhood or trauma or
something like this, escaping the body, which is necessary,
important at times, but also there's that downloading
information, channeling, receiving, bringing it from the
spiritual into the material. It's a very important highway as
well to open up and it starts with the root.
(35:32):
So that's my suggestion for today in this episode.
Take care of the root chakra that's basically from your feet
up to the base of your spine. And that includes the
elimination, right? So if your digestion is having
issues, basically, you know, Ayurveda, this is one of the
most important things we're going to talk about it.
So hang in there with me. But you're, if you're seeing
(35:56):
loose stools or hard stools or Constipation, there's an issue.
You've got to be dressed as soonas possible, right?
That's the first sign of illness, disease.
Something's out of balance in the body.
So you want to see a ripe bananawhen you've lushed the toilet,
right? If you don't see a ripe banana,
you got to fix something, get better sleep, more water, better
(36:17):
food, more connection in your life with other people.
Something's got to be addressed immediately, like the next food
you eat or the within that day because it's going to
accelerate. And we want to address issues
when they're the most subtle before they become more gross.
Because energy can move from subtle to gross and then gross
to subtle. And most of our yoga practice is
(36:39):
going from gross to subtle. Well, actually what manifests in
the body is often moving from subtle to gross is starting with
the thought and idea, a vision, and then it starts to become our
reality. And that's that Channel down
through the chakras, which most people are actually quite
unaware of. But if you're listening to this
podcast, you're probably pretty aware of that.
And hopefully this gives you a little insight on how you can
(37:01):
better open that Channel and strengthen that Channel and have
more access and more use of thatChannel to channel energy from
the spiritual to the material, from the subtle to the gross.
And hopefully it didn't gross you out with that topic, but
that's very important to addressand look at all parts of the
body. There's no shame, there's no
(37:22):
hiding, there's no nothing left out.
When we really are genuinely practicing and applying yoga to
our lives, we look at it from this very holistic perspective.
So again, if you want to go deeper with me, we're really
just scratching the surface here.
Got a whole 200 hour training that is now in the eighth time
I'll be offering this training. We'll be starting very soon the
Quiet Mind Yoga teacher training.
(37:44):
But really the first step if youwant to work with me and get a
feel for what Ioffer and really walk away knowing how to be your
own teacher, create your own practices and avoid the mistakes
people make. That's what we'll be doing at
the free workshop. So you'll walk away knowing how
to be your own teacher. You have to become your own yoga
teacher Workshop Quiet mind at Yoga Slash Workshop.
You join for free. If you're listening to it later,
(38:05):
still go there, you get the replay.
And I'll be sharing these commonmistakes people make going
deeper into that beyond just that first one I shared today,
the crossing the threshold from looking without looking outside
yourself to looking within yourself.
Talk about the real reason you get tight muscles and how to
work with them. Not just stretching all the
time, not just strengthening allthe time.
(38:26):
And then I'll talk about the 10 skills to deepen your practice,
the 10 core competencies you mayhave heard me talk about
throughout the years in this podcast, but a new perspective
in this workshop and how you canapply it to your life and apply
it to yourself and being your own teacher.
So again, I'm Jeremy Devens, I've been teaching since 2011 /
7000 classes with students around the world from all
(38:48):
backgrounds. And my joy is getting to share
this and make it personalized toyou.
So when you come to the workshop, I'll personalize it to
you. It's going to be based on who's
there live and I will be giving a free 1 to one session away a
397 value at the workshop as well.
All you got to do is join live and I'll pick someone at random.
And if you can't join live, you can still sign up and get the
(39:10):
replay. O thank you for listening Hoe
you're enjoying the podcast an Ilook forward to sharing more
with you next time on the Quiet Mind Yoga Podcast.
My name is Jeremy Devons and this is the Quiet Mind Yoga
Podcast, and today's episode is all about becoming your own yoga
teacher and how you can use the things that I teach here on this
podcast to apply to yourself. So setting up your own home
practice, avoiding the common mistakes people make, and going
on the journey to maybe becomingeven a yoga teacher if you so
(00:21):
desire, which I actually did notthink I would ever do.
I never thought I'd be a yoga teacher.
I just wanted to learn for myself.
But then as I did that, I found the best way to learn for myself
was actually to teach others andhad a lot of validation and
support from my mentors along the way.
But in this episode, I'm sharingthat.
And if you want to go deeper into being your own yoga
teacher, I've got a free live workshop all about this called
(00:44):
Become Your Own Yoga Teacher. It's live on Zoom on October 1st
at 1:00 PM Pacific. If you're listening to it later,
go to the same link and you can still sign up for watching the
replay while it's still available for a limited time.
So it's quiet. Mind dot yoga slash workshop is
the link to the Become Your Own Yoga Teacher workshop.
(01:04):
I'll be sharing 10 skills to deepen your practice.
I'll be sharing common mistakes that you want to avoid that most
yoga students make that I made many times myself, as well as
the real reason you get tight muscles, which is a big overlook
thing, a mistake I made for manyyears myself, which will
hopefully save you a lot of struggle yourself.
And then I'll talk about the 10 skills to deepen your practice.
(01:25):
Based on all my years in studying and practicing yoga,
I've found that you can really distill it down to 10 main
things. I'll be sharing all this on the
free live workshop. Had amazing feedback from this
in the past and from past trainings I've done.
And this is all leading up to the next Kwi Amide Yoga teacher
training starting very soon. In October.
I had to move it back a little bit.
(01:46):
We had a hurricane pass through my region in Mexico and luckily
it wasn't too bad where I live, but it did slow things down
quite a bit. So excited to get back on track
with things and start the next teacher training.
It's going to be an amazing group.
I always love offering this. So if you're interested in
working with me deeper in the yoga realm, this is the next
thing to do. Become your own yoga teacher.
(02:08):
Free live workshop and again, ifyou missed it on October 1st,
join, sign up. Anyway, you get the free replay
for a limited time. It's all free.
I like to provide a lot of valuein these free workshops.
It's not like a big sales thing or anything like that.
If you want to work with me, there's opportunity to do that
in the teacher training. But the main purpose of this is
(02:28):
it's actual workshop. So you'll be applying a lot of
the stuff that you learn from this.
And I've heard many people say, like, what they learned in this
workshop was more valuable than years of trainings they've done.
So I love to do that. I love to make yoga easier and
more accessible, to learn and tofeel like you know what you're
doing because I felt like I didn't really know what I was
(02:49):
doing for a long time. And it can be a little
overwhelming, but you know, it'sbeneficial.
You know, there's a lot of greatthings about yoga, but are you
really doing it right? Are you doing the alignment
right? Are you missing anything?
That's the kind of stuff I'll help you avoid in this free
workshop. And in today's episode, I'm
going to talk about this as well, some of these same topics.
We're just going to go deeper and apply them more at the
workshop. So the first thing I want to
(03:11):
talk about today in this episodeis some of the common mistakes
that most yoga students make. And you've likely made these
mistakes yourself. I certainly have as well.
And one of them is looking outside of yourself for the
answer. So for example, you're in a yoga
class and the teacher says come into this pose.
Maybe it's something you're not super familiar with or
(03:32):
comfortable with and you're not sure what to do.
So you naturally are going to look to the teacher to see how
to do it. And you're going to look around
the room to see what other people are doing.
And this is OK, this is good. This is not a mistake.
It's important to see what otherpeople are doing to kind of see
what you're supposed to be doing.
And then there's a certain pointlike training wheels on a bike,
where you got to take the training wheels off and go
(03:54):
internal. And this is a big threshold for
yoga students to cross. Maybe you've already crossed it,
but it's the threshold of going from looking externally around
you for the answers to looking internally for the answers.
O looking externally of what is the teacher doing?
What are the other people doing?Am I doing it right like them?
(04:16):
Does it look like them? OK, I've made the shape with my
body just like they did. And then you feel like you've
completed the pose. You've done the pose and that is
almost like an athletic approach, like a sport, like
something you would look on the external, like superficially,
like are you wearing certain clothes that give you a certain
identity or certain makeup or hairstyle?
(04:39):
It says a certain thing about you.
Now you do this certain shape with your body and now you're a
Yogi. But it's really just the
beginning. And I'll save this for a
different topic, but the physical layer is just the first
of many layers of awareness and experience.
But the hysical layer is where we really need to start.
As we are looking around, tryingto understand what's happening
(05:00):
in the yoga class and the yoga ractice, that's where we start.
Then the next step to threshold the cross is to go from the
looking outside to looking inside.
And this applies not just on thephysical pose, but on so many
aspects of the yoga practice of the self-awareness, right?
Going from externally, OK, she'sdoing the shape and putting her
(05:22):
hands there and her feet there and her leg here and her arm
there. And I can do that too to now
I've done that. Now what's happening inside.
Or you can apply this to so much, so many areas of life,
like maybe you think you need toget this job or this
relationship or have this much money or achieve this certain
(05:44):
goal, or have this many childrenor buy this house and you do
that external thing. Now what?
Now what's happening internally when you have that thing?
And that's where the real yoga practice begins.
I think in my opinion is the physical external part is an
important first part, but then the across this threshold where
(06:05):
you go into the internal part. And in the yoga perspective, we
would call this interroception. And this is awareness of what's
happening inside. Like we have our perception of
others, of places, of things. We're perceiving things all the
time. And we have then the
interroception, the receptivity of what's happening inside to be
(06:29):
aware of. When I do down dog, it looks
like curved down dog, but my shoulder hurts.
So what's going on with my shoulder?
Or I can look like their versionof tree pose, but I can't
balance as much. So what's happening is what's
happening in my body or I'm not able to balance the way that
(06:50):
this other person's able to balance, even though I'm copying
the same movements they did. What's happening inside?
Or you might do it perfectly. You might perfect Warrior 2.
It looks just like you, the person next to you or the
teacher did it. And then what right is it now
that you've you've mastered warrior two, you're done with
yoga, you move on, you never do it again.
(07:13):
What's happening inside? So this is where so much of the
benefits of yoga come from, of the interception, crossing that
threshold from looking outside yourself to now looking within
yourself. And when you look within
yourself now, so much is there to explore.
So for example, you might be practicing a hatha sequence
(07:34):
every day for six months. Let's just say this as an
example. Do the same, pretty much the
same routine, go to the same class.
Maybe it's just once a week. Let's just say once a week
instead of every day. So every Saturday you go to the
same yoga class and you're doingthe practice and you feel like
you're getting stronger, more flexible, and the pose is always
(07:54):
the same. It's like if you do down dog
maybe 10 times every class, no matter what the pose doesn't
changed. But what is happening internally
is changing and that's always changing constantly.
Like the weather, your emotions,your mind, it's always
constantly changing. And this is what the real first
teaching of yoga is. Yoga's Chitta Vritti Naroda Yoga
(08:18):
is the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind so that
you can abide in your true self and have awareness of the small
S self of I have this identity, I have all the stuff to do,
etcetera, etcetera. You come back to the true self
and now you have choice, you have awareness, you have space
between you, the observer, and you, the experiencer.
(08:40):
The fears you have, the anxieties, you have, the
frustrations, the resentments, the anger, the sadness, all of
that thing. All of those things are welcome.
All those emotions are importantand part of the human
experience, but they can overtake us sometimes.
They can feel debilitating, theycan feel overwhelming.
We can get lost in it and yoga is the place where we can come
back to. Once you know down dog and you
(09:02):
know the shape and you know the anatomy a bit, you know the
alignment, even the basics, you don't need to know super deep.
You know how to get into down dog and now what happens
internally. So for me, as I've moved a lot
in my life, I am 38 years old now and I've moved about 45
times in my life. So just in the last year, I
(09:22):
moved four times from where I'm staying in Mexico and it's never
a big stressor to me. But one of the things that's
made it very easy for me is thatI have my yoga mat.
I had the same yoga mat for like7 years and I've had this one
for about 5 years and it's that same place.
I just come back to it over and over again.
(09:43):
Just get back on the mat, get back into down dog, just like
I've been doing down dog for a long time.
The pose hasn't changed, but I continue to change.
Life continues to change. The externals continue to
change, but I have this place that's like a home to me.
Somebody asked me a while ago, like, where is your, where do
you consider home? Right?
You moved a lot. So where do you consider home?
(10:04):
Is it where you were born? And to me, the honest answer is
my yoga mat. Like that's, that's my home.
That's the place I feel like I come back to you.
It feels like I'm back in my center, back to myself, clear.
I have choice and all the situations in my life.
I have perspective of everything.
I have this interception, what'shappening inside.
(10:25):
I have this ability to really feel on a deeper level when I
get into my body through my yogapractice of oh, OK, there's some
pain in my low back. What's going on there?
Maybe there's some feeling of resistance, some area of my
life, maybe some feeling of lackof support.
If it's the low back or it's theshoulders are tense.
Maybe I feel like I'm carrying too much, carrying the weight of
(10:47):
the world, as we say about the shoulders.
Maybe it's my neck, right? I'm not putting my neck out too
much or too little. Maybe it's my throat, my voice.
I'm not expressing myself. So all these things in the body
now become ways to check in withthe body, mind and spirit all
together. It's all one thing.
And as we become aware of these sensations in the body, it
(11:08):
becomes very easy to see these connections and things like low
back pain often associated with a lack of feeling supported,
particularly financially supported about any sort of
support or things like this. In the heart, of course, where
we feel grief, sadness, love, all these emotions can be around
the heart, the front of the heart where we open and give
(11:30):
love. If there's some limitation or
tension there, maybe there's a resistance to opening the heart
after a heartbreak or a sadness.Or if there's pain in the back,
maybe there's resistance to receiving love.
The back is where we receive andmaybe fear or resistance to
receiving support and love through the heart.
So just through having a place to get into your body through
(11:52):
yoga and be aware of what's happening inside, become the
observer, get into the witnessing, awareness, the
Atman, the true self. We can see the small S self, the
day-to-day self of what's going on, what needs attention.
So again, back to the big mistake people often make.
It's they, they don't go to thatpart of the practice.
(12:13):
They just go to the physical. And I can do chaturanga.
Well, I, I can actually do 2 chaturangas here.
I could do 2 vinyasas when everyone else does 1.
And I can push my body more and that's great.
That's fun, that's exciting, that's athletic.
It's good to build strength and flexibility and all these things
and endurance. We build that in yoga and that's
(12:34):
one layer and that's not the whole thing though, right?
That's, that's the part of the physical body and that's great.
But we also have this deeper stuff.
And that's really what makes yoga yoga and not just another
form of exercise like going to the gym and doing stretches and
foam rolling and all that, whichis also great.
I also do that, but it's a very different experience, different
(12:56):
practice. Yoga is a place to yoke, yog,
connect, combine the the mind, body, breath and breath spirit.
We get the word inspiration likebringing in the spirit in
Ferrari, the spirit within. So a lot of the terms to do with
(13:16):
breath are associated with the origins of that word come from
the spirit and like prana is carried through the breath among
other things. But prana is the life force in
Sanskrit. So body, mind and breath or
body, mind and spirit all brought together through the
yoga practice, not just the body, not just the mind and the
(13:36):
meditative part, and not just the breath, which is also very
important. So that's the first common
mistake that I see that I just want to touch on here in this
episode and we'll go deeper intomore mistakes on the free
workshop. Again, Quiet Mind at Yoga Slash
Workshop is where you can join us and sign up for free.
(13:57):
We're going deeper into more common mistakes that people
make. I've made myself.
I'm speaking from experience in all this, so there's no
judgement. It's just like, hey, you're
looking over here. Maybe try looking over there.
That's this is what I've seen. Maybe you'll see something
interesting there. Next, I want to talk about the
real reason you get tight muscles.
Again, I'll go deeper into this on the class, but I'll say that
(14:18):
stretching is not the solution to everything.
So if you think that you've got tight muscles and all you need
to do is stretch more, I would encourage you to consider maybe
it's not just that. Maybe there's more to explore
than just stretching as being the issue.
So what happens when a muscle feels tight, right?
(14:40):
Tension in the muscle like I've got, I'd say a tight hamstring.
I try to do down dog, but my heels are way off the ground and
down dog, I've got to bend my knees a lot.
It doesn't really mean anything.It doesn't mean that you're a
bad Yogi or you're not flexible or you need to train harder or
you're doing it wrong. It could mean so many things,
(15:01):
but we don't really need to giveit any particular meaning.
But we can look at what is goingon in the muscle.
So for some reason that muscle is shortened or tense or maybe
there's some sort of emotional stress there.
There's a lot of layers to this that we'll get into in the
workshop, but I just want to address the one part of it that
(15:22):
was a common mistake for me is that I thought stretching would
be the solution, right? So it's tight, so I need to
stretch more. And I did this with my shoulder
and my low back and my hamstrings.
For me, those, those are the three areas where I had this
issue the most. And I'll say with my shoulder, I
had this upper trap tension. So basically my shoulder was
(15:43):
always tight for this was about a year this was happening and I
was a few years into my yoga teaching.
So I thought I understood prettywell, OK, tight muscle, stretch
it out, it feels less tight, problem solved.
So I kept doing that with most of my body and it was working
fine for me. And then I tried to do with my
shoulder and it would work for alittle bit and then it would
(16:04):
come back, the pain would come back.
So oh, maybe I need to stretch more.
I'm not stretching enough. I'm going to stretch some more.
So I tried some other things, tried finding some different
angles to stretch it, different variations, different ways to
stretch it and every time it would feel a little better
afterwards and then it would come back the same.
So finally I went to a body worker who I love and respect in
(16:25):
Austin, TX, name is Hailey Flora, she's great.
Hailey Flora if you want to findher in Austin.
Pretty sure she's still offeringbody work and teaching yoga and
things like that. So I'm not in Austin anymore.
Otherwise I would not recommend her and see too many people.
But if you do get a chance to gothere, I would recommend her.
She's great. So basically, she's worked a lot
(16:47):
with cadavers, with anatomy a lot.
So I learned a lot of anatomy from her and her husband Ben,
who taught a lot in Austin, TX. And she suggested I try
tightening the muscle, actually tensing it up more instead of
just stretching it, tense it up more.
And I had not found this anywhere and where I was
(17:07):
looking, anything I was looking at.
So very interesting idea to me. So we worked together in a
session and she had me contract the muscle, like shrug my
shoulder up, tense it up as muchas I could.
And then she gripped onto it like a sort of clamp, like
squeezing the muscle, pressing firmly into where the most tense
(17:28):
spot was, where I felt like the most tension is slightly
uncomfortable as I hold the contraction.
So again, just like if you were doing at the gym, you do a
shoulder shrug, you tense up themuscle, she's squeezing it, I'm
tensing it. And we just held that for a
while, several breaths. At a certain point, my muscles
started to get fatigued and tired.
(17:50):
And she kept holding, kept holding.
And I very slowly released the shrug as she kept holding and
squeezing. And I could very slowly feel the
tension releasing from the muscle.
So it wasn't a stretch, it was actually the opposite.
It was a contraction, like full contraction of the muscle.
And that was what helped releaseit.
(18:13):
So that is one of the many techniques that I teach in my
teacher training and when I workwith people is not just stretch
everything. And if there's a tight muscle,
if there is a problem area, don't just stretch it because
that might not be the solution. Sometimes it is, but not always.
So you need a wider range of tools and I'm going to share
some of those tools at the Worksho.
I share all my tools in the yogateacher training.
(18:35):
But again, this rather than stretching a muscle, try
contracting it and extra bonus points, hold on the most tense
part in there like a trigger point, the self myofascial
release. You do it yourself or it's
actually better if you can have someone else to do it like a
body worker or through like a therapy ball or some sort of
(18:57):
body work tool, like a hard plastic knob or something that
you can press into. So that you don't have to use
the neurological effort of yourself of both trying to relax
and squeeze, right? That when you do it yourself,
it's like a little bit of a mixed signal in your brain.
Am I contracting or am I relaxing?
(19:18):
So it helps if you have like a therapy ball or something hard
to press into lacrosse ball, baseball, golf ball or one of
these kind of tools or somebody else just just pushing on it.
All they got to do is just make a fist or push with their
finger. It doesn't have to be a very
complex technique. They could just squeeze the
(19:38):
muscle, whatever it is, they're just applying some pressure in
this like self myofascial release technique.
You you push into the tense spotand that gives the neurological
signal of how much your brain isis tensing up there.
And now the brain notices it andrealizes that if it continues to
(20:00):
hold tension, there's going to be more pain.
Then they can start to relax. It's actually one of the first
massage techniques I learned many years ago, even before I
did a yoga teacher training. I was this technique.
I basically just finding a knot and pressing on it and waiting
and breathing and it will melt. Not always, but it is one
(20:20):
technique. And when you combine this with
contracting and then squeezing the muscle, that could actually
release the tense muscle. Now, there's a lot more to the
say about this. I'm just going to leave it at
that for now. But if you are feeling any
particularly tense muscle right now, hamstrings, back, hips,
shoulders, maybe this is something to explore.
(20:41):
It might not be the solution foryou, but it may be.
And being a Yogi and being your own yoga teacher is like having
a wide range of tools available,not just stretching.
So this is one of the tools thatmay work is you contract the
muscle and press into it firmly as a sort of myofascial release
technique rather than just stretch it.
(21:04):
Stretching is great, strengthening is great,
everything is great and and it'sa tool.
It's just a tool. It's not like as a, if you're a
Carpenter, a hammer is just one tool.
If it's the only tool you have, you're very limited in what you
can do. You can do a lot, but it's
limiting still. So you don't want to limit
yourself with just one tool of just stretching.
(21:25):
You want to have a wide range oftools as a Yogi practitioner,
and especially as a teacher. Definitely as a teacher, if
you're going to teach other people, you need a wide range of
tools because you're going to have a wide range of students,
especially if you teach just drop in classes where you might
have beginners, advanced, injured, not injured, young,
old, all sorts of backgrounds inone room teaching the same
(21:48):
sequence. So how do you adapt to each
person? And this is part of how is
knowing these different techniques, knowing how to
adapt, knowing how to read the room.
And these are some of the more teacher centric skills we go
into the teacher training. But just for you as a Yogi, as
your own practitioner, when yourmuscle is tight, stretching may
be the solution. It might not be myofascial
(22:11):
release, might be the solution, it might not be often that helps
a lot. Very often myofascial release is
one of the most important techniques.
This is why I teach not just stretching, but what I call
release strength and stretch as a technique in working with
tight muscles. Again, I'm not going to go super
deep into that now, but just to keep it simple.
Today stretching might work, strengthening might work,
(22:35):
Pressing into the muscle might work.
Anyone who says always, always, or never is probably not very
experienced. Probably if you do this long
enough, you work with thousands of people over thousands of
classes like I have. You know that there are a lot of
variables. So I would not trust any Yogi or
(22:56):
yoga teacher who just says this always works or this never
works. It depends.
That's the the voice of experience.
It depends. So for your body, it depends.
And if you're feeling frustratedwith your body, if you're having
some particular pains or issues,just know that there's other
things you might be able to try that might work.
And the things you are doing might seem good and they might
(23:19):
seem like they should work, and someone else might have said
they work, but they might not. And everything I just said, it
might work, it might not. But they're very useful tools.
And I've seen them work a lot ofthe times.
And I can say pretty confidentlythat if you only do one thing,
if you only do stretching, or you only do strengthening or
only do cardio or only do one particular thing for your
(23:41):
health, your body, your fitness,you're probably going to have
imbalances and you're probably going to need to do other things
at some point to balance it out.And being a Yogi and yoga
teacher is about knowing what those other things are and when
to use them. So among those things, there are
10 skills that I share that I talk about, I've talked about on
(24:02):
the podcast before, the 10 core competencies of yoga.
I'm going to share about that and the workshop and go deeper
with that. And that is the foundation of
what I teach in my teacher training.
So there are 10 modules and we go into these 10 core
competencies. And by my perspective and my
experience, everything in yoga can be distilled into these 10
(24:23):
topics, no more, no less. And if there were less, I would
make it less. I, I prefer it was only three
topics. I like threes or fives at most,
but it can't just separate or you got to separate.
You can't just lump together certain things.
You got to separate some of these things.
So for example, yoga history is distinct from yoga philosophy,
(24:44):
which is distinct from meditation and distinct from
anatomy. So I separate these things so
that we can go really deep with them.
Because as I was learning myself, I wanted to learn as
much as I could about yoga and go super deep.
And I realized it's going to take a while and it has taken a
while and it's continuing to take a while.
It will be a lifelong study, which I love about it.
(25:05):
But I learned a lot when I went really deep, like focus real
deep into anatomy for a while and everything about anatomy and
take everything I've learned anddistill it into the essential
teachings and what Ioffer in my teacher training.
And again, the highlights I'll give on the workshop.
So I'm going to point you in thedirection.
I'm not going to leave you hanging and say you have to work
(25:27):
with me. I'm going to give you the road
map. So whether you work with me or
not, if you go to any teacher training in the world, you'll
have a road map. So you're not just like, OK,
well this teacher says that. That teacher says that, well,
how do they all kind of fit together?
And if you go into a training and they start talking about
sequencing and you want to learnmore and you don't know where to
go next and they only do like 2 hours on sequencing and you
(25:49):
don't be prepared to sequence a class, you'll have an outline
based on what I provide at the workshop.
You'll have an outline of, OK, this is the direction to go with
sequencing. If I want to learn more about
that or for example, philosophy,it's one of the more common
things that people ask me about or come to me about because I, I
share this, a lot of my teachingis the philosophy and the
(26:09):
energetic anatomy, things like chakras, koshas, doshas, gunas.
If you don't know what any of those words are, great.
Come learn with me at the workshop.
Come learn with me more. Go back to my archives.
I talk about the limbs of yoga, the yamas and niyamas.
These kind of deeper topics are really, really the root of yoga.
(26:31):
And people talk about like what is real yoga or what is sort of
just fake yoga or not the real thing.
I think, well, if we're talking about what's the real thing, we
got to go back to the roots, thesource text, the Upanishads, the
Bhagavad Gita, the Vedas, and what do they say?
And in my teacher training, I give you all the quotes, all the
major quotes from all those texts.
And just right there, it's very clear as day.
(26:54):
And actually it's surprising howhard that actually is defined
anywhere in any book, any website.
Nobody just takes out all the quotes and puts them all in one
place and says here's what the Upanishad said, here's what the
Manduki Upanishad said, here's what the Rig Beta says, here's
what the Blaggitta says. And Blaggitta uses the word yoga
over 500 times. Actually, people don't often
(27:16):
think of it as a yoga manual, but it talks more about yoga,
says more about yoga than the Yoga Sutra does.
And most people think of the Yoga Sutra as the Bible of yoga.
So I mentioned all of these. I talk about all of these in my
teacher training in more depth. But to say that at the workshop,
this is one of the areas that I'll be exploring.
And people are so interested in the philosophy and the energetic
(27:36):
anatomy. So I like to break that down and
share about that. And I'll share a little bit more
about the energetic anatomy because a lot of people are very
interested in that. But how do you learn about the
chakras? And the chakras are so valuable
and something I've used a lot since I've learned it many years
ago and pretty much some degree use it every day.
(27:58):
And for me, the first thing was learning how to feel my root
chakra, my feet. I had cold hands and feet,
actually a cold stomach to for along time.
I grew up in Minnesota as long cold winters.
I didn't really like to wear allthe layers, so I would just not
wear them and then I would get sick all the time.
(28:18):
I had some very difficult experiences in my childhood,
which is very often correlated to stomach issues, digestive
issues, and I had those for a long time.
A lack of fire in the belly essentially had to do a lot of
work to wake that fire up. And that started with the root.
So when I started learning aboutthe chakras, I figured I'll just
(28:40):
work my way up the chakras. Maybe one a year, like 7
chakras, 7 years. There's no hurry.
This is yoga. It's a lifelong study.
It's going to take me a long time anyway, So I started
working with the root chakra fora year.
It's around 2013 I think. And one of the resources I found
really helpful was Anadaya Judith's books.
(29:00):
So if you want to go deeper intoenergetic anatomy, I'd recommend
any book by Anadaya, Judith, Wheels of Life, Eastern body,
Western mine. But she has this audio recording
that's about the chakras and youcan find it online now.
I was so happy I found it in used bookstore in Austin.
(29:22):
The C DS back when C DS were a thing and I had ACD player in my
car and I got this like maybe 7 discs.
So I just have those in the CD player all the time, every time
I'm driving around listening to Entity Judith talk about the
chakras. So I found that particular
recording to be my favorite overher books actually, and actually
(29:43):
got to study with her and get certified with her in Austin,
TX. And she's a great teacher and
she's I think the expert on chakras, modern living expert.
So I highly recommend if you want to learn more about
energetic anatomy, get any book by Anna the Judith.
If you can find her audio program, which I think is online
now as a download, I recommend that a lot.
It's awesome. If you can find the CDs, even
(30:06):
more fun. Just kind of feels like this
cool find as I had never heard about it before I found the CDs.
I didn't know that even existed.So those CDs are awesome.
And then start with the root chakra.
Just work with the root, which is means your foundation, your
security, the food you eat, yourenvironment, your home, your
finances, your family, like the foundational security, survival
(30:29):
base things. And if you work on those and
take care of those, it's amazingfoundation to start working with
the rest of the second chakra, your sensuality, working with
others, sexuality, creativity, third chakra, your expression,
your power, your willpower, your, your fire in the belly,
your ability to digest food and ideas and information, your
(30:51):
heart chakra, your ability to love and receive love,
compassion, kindness, etcetera. So working up the chakras is a
great way to work with energeticanatomy that you could start
today, but grounding by literally getting your feet,
bare feet on the earth. And this is a big part of why I
moved near the ocean where I live now.
(31:12):
It's like a 9 minute walk to thewater and I walk barefoot almost
all the time. So to have my feet on the earth
'cause I realized when I learnedabout grounding and being
barefoot. Most people in the US never
touch their feet to the earth. So we're living our lives
ungrounded and disconnected fromthe earth.
I'm wearing shoes and like goingout on the sidewalk and hard
(31:35):
pavement and not going on to theearth.
So anything you can do to groundeating, grounding foods, root
vegetables, things like this time with family, time with
friends, addressing financial issues, addressing family
issues, that's all root chakra stuff.
And that's always a good place to start, especially if you're,
you know, into the spiritual path, you're listening to this
(31:56):
podcast, you're into spirituality.
There's so much stuff out there the the 5th dimension and you
know, aliens and all this and crystals, which I think all that
stuff is interesting. There's nothing wrong with any
of that, but can we approach it from a grounded perspective,
starting with our feet on the earth?
Because we have bodies and we have this physical human
(32:16):
experience, so we start there. Kind of tying back to the
beginning of this episode of most yoga practitioners, start
with focusing on the physical body, looking at the physical
body. Am I doing it right?
Is my hand in the right place? That's all good.
We need to start with the physical body and have a good
foundation there first, and thenwe can get into the energetic
stuff and then we can get into the really interesting, you
(32:38):
know, movement of energies and expansion, contraction, yin and
Yang. And everything in yoga has an
energetic effect. And this is one of the biggest
things that I teach. I think it's so important to
know is when you're practicing yoga, it's everything has an
energetic effect. Everything should be
intentional. I think in my opinion, if I do a
(33:00):
practice where I just keep my arms up overhead most of the
time, that's going to have a different energetic effect than
if I do a practice where I keep my arms down pretty much the
whole time, right? That's going to be very
different energy. And I've taught classes, that's
actually very common in yoga classes that arms go up a lot.
I've taught classes where the arms never go up.
And it, it feels very good, verygrounding, right?
(33:22):
So it all starts though, coming back to actual physical
grounding on the earth as what I'm going to recommend in
today's episode is just get yourfeet on the ground.
And if you're already doing that, start addressing some of
those root issues. How are your finances?
How is your relationship with family?
And how is your diet and your food, the actual physical food
(33:43):
you're eating? And if there's something that
needs to be adjusted there and these things are just never
ending. Actually, it's it's not like
you're done with it, though. The chakras are chakra means
wheel or disc, and it's constantly moving and it can be
moving too fast or too slow or just right.
It's moving too fast. You got too much focus on
security, you're hoarding, moving too slow, you have too
(34:05):
little security, you're anxious and you're no boundaries, right.
So you get it just right. You have good boundaries, you
have good stability. You feel secure, you feel safe.
You've got connections with friends and family, you've got
financial security, you've got the connection to the earth.
You feel embodied. You got the interception we
talked about at the beginning and you're in a really good
(34:27):
place to continue on your path. And then working when you get
all the way up to like the intuition and the crown chakra
and like the psychic ability andthe stuff I talk about in my
astrology work of like channeling and allowing
information to come through and insights and intuition and being
able to predict the future and seeing patterns play out.
That's all coming from these upper chakras that really need a
(34:50):
solid foundation to stand on anda solid foundation to channel
down to. Because the chakras can work
down of downloading information into the material world and also
they can work up of raising energy up from the physical to
the spiritual. The channels can go both ways
and most people focus just on the getting up and out and
(35:11):
transcending, getting out of a difficult childhood or trauma or
something like this, escaping the body, which is necessary,
important at times, but also there's that downloading
information, channeling, receiving, bringing it from the
spiritual into the material. It's a very important highway as
well to open up and it starts with the root.
(35:32):
So that's my suggestion for today in this episode.
Take care of the root chakra that's basically from your feet
up to the base of your spine. And that includes the
elimination, right? So if your digestion is having
issues, basically, you know, Ayurveda, this is one of the
most important things we're going to talk about it.
So hang in there with me. But you're, if you're seeing
(35:56):
loose stools or hard stools or Constipation, there's an issue.
You've got to be dressed as soonas possible, right?
That's the first sign of illness, disease.
Something's out of balance in the body.
So you want to see a ripe bananawhen you've lushed the toilet,
right? If you don't see a ripe banana,
you got to fix something, get better sleep, more water, better
(36:17):
food, more connection in your life with other people.
Something's got to be addressed immediately, like the next food
you eat or the within that day because it's going to
accelerate. And we want to address issues
when they're the most subtle before they become more gross.
Because energy can move from subtle to gross and then gross
to subtle. And most of our yoga practice is
(36:39):
going from gross to subtle. Well, actually what manifests in
the body is often moving from subtle to gross is starting with
the thought and idea, a vision, and then it starts to become our
reality. And that's that Channel down
through the chakras, which most people are actually quite
unaware of. But if you're listening to this
podcast, you're probably pretty aware of that.
And hopefully this gives you a little insight on how you can
(37:01):
better open that Channel and strengthen that Channel and have
more access and more use of thatChannel to channel energy from
the spiritual to the material, from the subtle to the gross.
And hopefully it didn't gross you out with that topic, but
that's very important to addressand look at all parts of the
body. There's no shame, there's no
(37:22):
hiding, there's no nothing left out.
When we really are genuinely practicing and applying yoga to
our lives, we look at it from this very holistic perspective.
So again, if you want to go deeper with me, we're really
just scratching the surface here.
Got a whole 200 hour training that is now in the eighth time
I'll be offering this training. We'll be starting very soon the
Quiet Mind Yoga teacher training.
(37:44):
But really the first step if youwant to work with me and get a
feel for what Ioffer and really walk away knowing how to be your
own teacher, create your own practices and avoid the mistakes
people make. That's what we'll be doing at
the free workshop. So you'll walk away knowing how
to be your own teacher. You have to become your own yoga
teacher Workshop Quiet mind at Yoga Slash Workshop.
You join for free. If you're listening to it later,
(38:05):
still go there, you get the replay.
And I'll be sharing these commonmistakes people make going
deeper into that beyond just that first one I shared today,
the crossing the threshold from looking without looking outside
yourself to looking within yourself.
Talk about the real reason you get tight muscles and how to
work with them. Not just stretching all the
time, not just strengthening allthe time.
(38:26):
And then I'll talk about the 10 skills to deepen your practice,
the 10 core competencies you mayhave heard me talk about
throughout the years in this podcast, but a new perspective
in this workshop and how you canapply it to your life and apply
it to yourself and being your own teacher.
So again, I'm Jeremy Devens, I've been teaching since 2011 /
7000 classes with students around the world from all
(38:48):
backgrounds. And my joy is getting to share
this and make it personalized toyou.
So when you come to the workshop, I'll personalize it to
you. It's going to be based on who's
there live and I will be giving a free 1 to one session away a
397 value at the workshop as well.
All you got to do is join live and I'll pick someone at random.
And if you can't join live, you can still sign up and get the
(39:10):
replay. O thank you for listening Hoe
you're enjoying the podcast an Ilook forward to sharing more
with you next time on the Quiet Mind Yoga Podcast.
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