All Episodes

November 5, 2024 • 39 mins

Join the waitlist for the Quietmind Yoga Membership at https://www.quietmind.yoga/qymwaitlist


What is Somatic Yoga and how do you practice it?

This term is becoming more popular, but it's not as new as you might think.

In this episode I'll share how this brand of yoga has evolved from things taught by myself, my mentors and other experienced teachers, as well as how you can begin to practice this way starting right away.

Enjoy!

Jeremy

If you enjoy the podcast, leave a review, and share it with a friend.

If you want to go deeper into practicing Somatic Yoga, the Quietmind Yoga Membership is opening soon with many classes in this style.

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Hey friends, welcome back to theYoga Teacher Training Podcast.
I'm Jeremy Devons, and today I'mgoing to talk about somatic
yoga. What is somatic yoga?
How do you practice it? Why is it important?
It's trending now. It's a common word.
We're hearing more and more online.
Somatic yoga versus other stylesof yoga.
What makes it different? Why should you care?

(00:31):
Why should you practice? Are you already practicing it?
And that's an interesting topic that I'll get into today and
sharing about somatic yoga. And if you want to apply the
things I'm going to share today and practice these things, check
out Quietmind dot Yoga. You can get on the wait list for
the Quietmind Yoga membership. It will be opening soon.

(00:53):
And in the membership, I teach alot of somatic practices and I
will cover some of those today as well on the podcast.
I'll talk about some of these exercises for the pelvis or the
neck or the back and things thatyou can do to apply these
somatic principles, which bring more awareness to the mind and
body and more presence and help relieve pain and even

(01:14):
potentially relieve traumatic experiences and help them move
through the body, which is a bigtopic, but it has seen profound
results for people I've worked with and sharing these things.
So Quiet Mind at Yoga if you want to join the wait list for
the next opening of the enrollment for the membership.
And in there I've got hundreds of classes applying the somatic

(01:35):
principles. And these are the same things I
am doing all the time, right? So I'm practicing most mornings
I'll get up and do some simple stretches and then I'll do
longer practices other times. But every day at least, that's
sort of the minimum check in. And I've talked about this
before. I did a recent workshop.
I talked about this daily check in idea, which I think is so

(01:57):
necessary. And recently I've been talking
with somebody who's going through a lot of pain,
uncovering some old traumatic experiences and things like
this, and waking up with pain and things like this.
And just doing this so long, working with so many people over
the years, I've just seen that some miraculous things can

(02:18):
happen. I, I don't say that yoga can
cure everything or that everything can be solved or like
if you have back pain that it will definitely go away, but
it's very likely. And I've just seen it so many
times. If people come to me with
injuries they've had for decadesand pains and aches they've had
for decades and nothing has helped.

(02:38):
And in the end of the class, they're like, I feel like I've
relieved the pain in my shoulderfor the first time in 20 years
or things like this. I hear this kind of thing a lot.
And then yes, sometimes people say it feels kind of the same,
You know, I'll keep working on it, I'll keep practicing.
That's that's OK too. That happens sometimes.
But I have seen some pretty miraculous results just doing

(03:00):
the kind of practices that I teach here on this podcast, on
the Quiet Mind Yoga podcast, in the Quiet Mind Yoga membership
on my YouTube channel. I've got lots of videos there as
well. These same simple practices have
profound results and at the coreof them there is this somatic
awareness, which I haven't necessarily been using that
word. It's become a lot more popular

(03:23):
and trendy now, but it's the things that are beyond just like
getting into the pose. And the poses are great and I do
those two in my daily check in. But a lot of times what I'm
doing in my daily check in and my practice in the morning is
movement stuff, awareness stuff.It's checking in.
I'm moving around a lot and feeling things out and then

(03:44):
finding where the knots are, where the tensions are.
I might use stretching techniques, strengthening
techniques, or releasing myofascial release techniques,
self myofascial release. And I might use awareness, body
awareness movements like pelvic tilts or neck rolls or shoulder
rolls. These things, these different

(04:05):
body awareness things are what people are calling more and more
now the somatic yoga. So you'll be finding this more
online, seeing this in search results, seeing this on online
and things like this. But it's just a new name for the
things that people like me have been teaching for a long time.
I didn't invent them. I don't claim to have invented
them, but I did pick them up from several teachers and

(04:27):
working with different physical therapists and body workers
beyond just the asana. Asana is amazing, right?
If you go back to kind of the roots of modern Vinyasa, you go
back to Ashtanga yoga, it's pose, pose, pose, pose.
And you get in the pose, you getout of the pose, go to the next
pose, breathe with the poses. And Hatha yoga and from the

(04:48):
Ayengar tradition is like this as well.
Get into this pose, breathe, getinto the next pose and breathe.
But a lot of these little in between things are these
exploration kind of things I share a lot like holding the
muscle of the trapezius muscle and squeezing it and holding it
there until you feel some release, right?
That's a self myofascial releasetechnique, which you could also

(05:10):
call a somatic technique, which is now this more common phrase
we're hearing. And you know, you could just do
a cobra pose or you could do thecobra pose position and do
little semi circles with the neck, right?
This is what would fall in this category of somatic practices.
You could practice with your eyes open and have a steady gaze

(05:33):
throughout the practice, drishti, or you could practice
with your eyes closed. And the eyes closed is generally
more favored in the somatic experiencing kind of practices
because you want to focus the attention inward of what's
happening in the body, which is part of the 8 limbs of yoga.
Of course, Pratyahara, the sensewithdrawal, you bring your
attention inward and that is part of the yoga tradition for a

(05:57):
long time. But again, this is part of what
is now being called more of the somatic yoga, which I think is
great. It's great that more people are
doing. It's great that more there's a
name for it now and there's moreof a label and people can find
it more easily versus other styles of yoga.
But you'll see as we continue on, it's just a lot of this kind

(06:17):
of little techniques that add tothe asana are the kind of things
I've been doing and other experienced teachers I've been
doing for a long time. My mentors have been doing it.
Jen Wooten and Angie Knight and Austin, TX have been hugely
influential in me in this way and a lot of the energetic work
I learned with Mata Benton Kunalini Yoga has also been very

(06:38):
influential in this way. And the anatomy stuff as well,
I've learned with anatomy teachers I worked with.
But what is somatic? What does somatic mean?
Well, it just basically means ofthe body or relating to the body
as distinct from the mind. So somatic means of the body.
Somatic yoga is about bringing awareness to the body and

(07:00):
integrating with the breath movement and the spirit, the
energetic work. Depending on the teacher's
emphasis, there could be more orless of the spiritual in there.
But again, it's kind of a broad term.
It's kind of loosely defined, but it definitely includes this
awareness of the body beyond just asana, asana, asana.

(07:21):
And it often combines elements of traditional yoga practices,
but also emphasizes more internal awareness, pratyahara,
this taking attention inward, which they might not use that
word in these somatic classes, but that is what it is.
That's from the limbs of yoga, and it's this goal to create a
deep connection between the bodyand mind, which is of course

(07:42):
what yoga is all about. So not too different, right?
And there's an emphasis on mindful movements, slow and
gentle movements, like a lot of times that I teach in my gentle
classes. And a lot of the gentle yoga
that I teach, especially, I'm very influenced by one of my
other mentors, Cable Houseman inAustin, TX, who teaches a gentle
style of yoga but also teaches other styles.

(08:03):
But the gentle style where you just take a lot of space, go
very slow, be very gentle with the body and pay close attention
to the sensations of each movement and not let yourself go
too far astray and get too distracted.
A lot of times in those classes there's no music.
And with my mentor at least, anda lot of times in the classes I

(08:25):
teach, there's no music, so there's more space to focus on
the breath and the internal experience.
And I think this also is what the somatic yoga sort of
movement is leaning towards as well.
Quieter, simpler room and simpler environment and room to
practice in. And this is very much also like
the yin yoga tradition and the way that I teach as well, where

(08:48):
I emphasize the yin qualities ofslow, heavy, dark, quiet.
I even recommend practicing in adark room, like if you follow my
quiet mind yoga podcast, that it's all designed so that you
can follow along with your eyes closed if you want.
And you don't need to look around and you need to have some
level of experience and embodiment to, to know some of

(09:11):
the poses. But I try to make it beginner
friendly as well. But if you can practice in a
dark room, especially yen practices and restorative
practices and Nidra, you can have a dark room that could be
so soothing to the nervous system.
And if you can practice in there, like 30 minutes, 60
minutes to the point where your eyes adjust.

(09:31):
And when what was previously a dark room and you couldn't see
your hand in front of you, now you can see your hand in front
of you in the dark room. There's something really
powerful about that beyond just like something logical.
Maybe there's some cool science that will come out about this,
but I learned this again from one of my mentors, Jen, this
idea of just going into a dark room and staying in there for

(09:53):
about 30 minutes until your eyesadjust.
So you've sort of dropped in to this yin space.
And especially if you have a very active life and you're
running around doing a lot of stuff, or for yoga teachers who
are maybe teaching three to fiveclasses a day and you need a
little break for yourself, even if it's just 10 minutes and the

(10:13):
dark room can be so valuable, but enough time to let your eyes
address. It's like you've really dropped
in there. And I think that's a really
powerful practice to do in this realm of somatic awareness as
well. There's also this awareness of
sensation in the body. So it's not just like coming to
pigeon pose and you're stretching your piriformis, but

(10:34):
to bring awareness to sensation throughout your whole body.
And this was again, something that was very revelatory to me
and my practice. And for those who are teachers
listening to, invite your students to come in, like for
example, let's say come into pigeon pose and take your time
to set it up and make sure everyone's sort of settled into
it. And then you might say something

(10:56):
like notice a sensation in your outer right hip if it's right
leg forward and pigeon and the typical pigeon that's prone to
the floor. And you could say no to
sensation in your right outer hip with the obvious sensation,
you might say and also say, notice sensation in your left
hip flexors, the front of the left hip, the other obvious
sensation. Then you might also just bring

(11:18):
awareness to something less obvious like your shoulders.
And you might be holding some tension there that's not
necessary. And that's a common cue that
I'll see some students like relax their shoulders and they
didn't realize there were tense there, or maybe they were just
focusing on other sensations. So notice that there's any
tension in your shoulders. I can soften here or your jaw or

(11:40):
your face. And you might even go beyond
that to more, even more subtle sensations, like notice the
sensation of the temperature on your skin.
If there's a fan in the room, you might even feel this, the
gentle breeze of the fan on the hairs of your skin.
Or you might even go even more subtle, like notice sensation in

(12:01):
your left big toe while you're in pigeon pose where there's so
much more loud sensations, but you bring more awareness to
subtler energies. So this is very similar to we do
in yoga nidra body scan or like Vipassana practice where you do
a body scan and you just notice what's there and sometimes you

(12:22):
don't notice anything, sometimesyou notice a lot.
But this brings the awareness beyond just the loudest thing
and the most intense thing. And this is really powerful.
Like, for example, if you're in a conflict with somebody outside
of yoga practice, that just in your life you feel conflict with
somebody and this tension arisesin your body.

(12:44):
You have a strong reaction. You can become overwhelmed with
that reaction and then angry andsay things that you don't really
want to say or hurtful things oraggressive things or have
actions that are hurtful or harmful in some way.
Because that sensation sort of flooded your nervous system,
overloaded your nervous system and you flipped into fight or

(13:05):
flight or maybe even to freeze response where you you've locked
up. So I talk about this a lot of
the sort of homeostasis of the nervous system.
The nervous system's always craving and seeking and trying
to move us back towards homeostasis, which can be a very
narrow range if you haven't trained the nervous system,
which is very important. I'm not saying that with any

(13:27):
sense of judgement, but you might have a more sensitive
nervous system where lights, noises, sounds strongly affect
you, somebody's criticism strongly effects you.
Or you can train your nervous system, train your homeostasis
to have a wider range of ups anddowns, which can come through

(13:48):
vinyasa practice where you're pushing your body into more
intensity, or through restorative practice where you,
you sort of could say pushing ornudging your body towards deeper
relaxation. So you're expanding that range
of the nervous system on the highs and the lows to be able to
be more active and to be more relaxed.

(14:10):
This was so, so important for me.
I froze up so much in my teens and early 20s to the point where
I had depression. Living in Minnesota where it's
ice cold, so it's literally freezing a lot of the time, very
cold and not getting enough sunlight.
Part of the depression, lack of vitamin D, lack of
socialization, too much work, and that all adds up.

(14:35):
So I was in the freeze response a lot of the time and I started
to do yoga practice, started to find a yoga class at the gym,
started to thaw out, started to do more active stuff, sweating
more, pushing my body more. It was very uncomfortable.
It was not very pleasant in the class.
But afterwards I felt incredible, like flooded with

(14:57):
just all the feel good hormones and just like, OK, I want more
of that. So I was expanding my capacity
out of the freeze. I was thawing out out of the
freeze response, right. So I've shared this image before
in different places. I teach it in my yoga teacher
training program. But basically you could think of
your nervous system like a wave.If you know a sine wave, it's

(15:20):
like a smooth kind of sideways Sand you go down, you go up, you
go down, you go up throughout the day.
And that is a healthy day. You have energy dips, you have
energy increases. You got high energy some points,
low energy, other points, but it's nothing too extreme, right?
It's manageable. Ideally, you might have crashes
sometimes if you eat a lot of sugar, you eat a lot of caffeine

(15:42):
in the morning, you might have abig crash around lunchtime or
big lunch, you might have a big crash afterwards.
So it's not such a smooth curve through the day.
Or you might take caffeine and have a big spike, right?
So these kind of things can happen where you have energy
spikes and dips, but ideally it's a smooth wave through the
day, ups and downs. And that wave becomes bigger

(16:04):
through nervous system regulation and training.
So all that to say, somatic yogapotentially could help expand
that range of the nervous system.
Now, what is I think this trending towards being called
somatic yoga is more on the yin side, more the relaxation side.

(16:25):
If that's great, that's fine. But I think somatic of awareness
of the body, awareness of the things beyond just the asana
should include some awareness ofthe nervous system and where you
get dysregulated. So let's say again, you get into
a conflict, you get you get flooded with sensation and you
can get dysregulated because it's outside of your homeostasis

(16:48):
of what you can handle. So let's say you can go down 10
points and you can go up 10 points.
But this this flooding sensationwas out of 12 and that was too
much. You got reactive, you blew up,
something volatile happened, youstormed out, whatever.
So you can use practices like vinyasa or hatha or power yoga

(17:10):
or more challenging exercise, sprinting, running, jogging,
these things that increase your heart rate, increase the healthy
stress on the body and increase your capacity to handle more
sensation in this direction of the stress.
So that next time you come into this sort of situation, your

(17:33):
capacity to relax is more like a12 and your capacity to be
active is more like a 12 insteadof a 10.
So when a 12 situation happens, it might be at your edge, but
you can remain relaxed or at least sort of conscious, you
could say where you're, you're fully aware of.
OK, I, I'm at my limit here. I need to take a breather.

(17:56):
I need to take some deep breaths.
I'm going to step outside. We'll come back to this in a
little bit so you don't get overwhelmed and overtaken by the
situation. And we see this with children
all the time. Like children's nervous systems
aren't getting trained. A lot of the time.
They're just reacting to the environment and they're not
really being taught, like emotional regulation or
emotional awareness. Ideally, they do get taught

(18:19):
these things and then they do notice, like they get flooded
and they're like, oh, I need to take a deep breath.
And you see them take a deep breath and it's really cute.
And it's a great skill for kids to have as well from a young
age. And it's really a really
valuable skill as adults to have.
So I think of our nervous systemagain, like this sine wave, the
sideways S that may have a smaller capacity when we're

(18:43):
younger. And through awareness of
sensation and practice of awareness and nervous system
regulation, we expand that capacity.
Maybe we all start with like a baseline of 10 up and 10 down
and it gets to like you do vinyasa for a week and now
you're at more like a 12 up and you do restorative also during
that week and you're more able to go down more and relax more.

(19:06):
And that's often the harder sidethe the relaxation side.
So doing yen restorative Vidra relaxation practices, legs up
the wall, not being able to expand your capacity for rest is
actually I think the harder skill in modern lifestyles where
most people are drinking coffee,most people have very busy
productive lifestyles, high stress deadlines, these kind of

(19:28):
things no time to rest. Who has time to relax?
I don't know I, I, I'll, I'll rest at the end of the day when
I go to sleep right. This kind of energy, but it's
very essential, especially if you're wanting to grow because
if you've ever done any strengthtraining you like we know that
all the growth of muscle actually happens when you're

(19:49):
sleeping and I've trained I've I've worked with an amazing
natural bodybuilder who's competed in won competitions
around the world and his biggestadvice to me the biggest thing
was sleep sleep, sleep you want to grow muscle you got to sleep
more and actually when I worked with him I was having trouble
sleeping usually I sleep well but at that time I had so much

(20:11):
trouble sleeping that. I had some amazing results in
the first couple weeks, but thenit's kind of plateaued because I
started having difficulty with sleeping and actually got COVID
at that time, so that didn't help.
So sleep, sleep, sleep. If you want to be able to grow,
and if you want to grow our capacity of the nervous system,
we need to grow our capacity to relax as much as our capacity to

(20:33):
handle stress, which isn't as celebrated in Western culture.
It's not as celebrated to say, oh, I took a great nap today.
I slept 9 hours and I had a great massage and, and I had
legs up the wall for 15 minutes.It's like, oh, really well, I
did all this and I made all thismoney and I got all these things

(20:56):
done and accomplished all these tasks.
And you know, there's a sort of higher perceived value of
accomplishing goals and achieving outcomes and goals,
which are great, but relaxation is also an outcome and also a
necessity for the body. And you can try to bypass it for

(21:16):
a while, but eventually it'll catch up with you.
So you you'll need to, you'll either choose the rest and make
it pleasurable and enjoyable, oryou'll have to rest and it'll
feel like a burden and you get wiped out.
And then sometimes we just get sick.
It's human. Like, you know, it's not like
it's all in your control. Like sometimes things just
happen, but the thing that is inour control is the expanding the

(21:37):
capacity to relax. And I think somatic practices
are so valuable for that. So that when you get triggered,
when you get flooded and you go to that freeze response, this is
like going too far down. It's like you, you freeze,
that's like you shut down. You don't know how to respond.
You're afraid of what could happen.
You don't want to upset somebody.

(21:58):
You just lock up, but if you have that capacity to have
deeper relaxation, you're less likely to have that freeze
response. And this was part of my journey
as well, like expanding my capacity for rest and for
activation and, and everything along that wave to expand that
wave. And I, I wouldn't say I've

(22:19):
mastered this or I'd like betterthan anyone else, but I can say
that I don't get stuck in depression anymore.
And that's a huge win for me andI don't get as easily flooded in
high sensation stressful situations like I have in the
past. So that's a success for me.
And I think if you are noticing you're getting either stuck in

(22:40):
the fight flight response or thefreeze response, then it may be
worth exploring ways you can expand that capacity for either
activation or deactivation through active practices or more
relaxing practices. And again, generally the somatic
yoga is going to be more on the relaxing side, but the somatic
things can be done in any style of yoga, like nervous system

(23:02):
regulation is you're flowing through vinyasa class and
maintaining ujayi breath. So rather than starting to
hyperventilate or breathe fasteror lose your breath, you
maintain your breath in the fast-paced high stressed
sequence of Vinyasa yoga. That is a great way of
practicing breath and nervous system regulation.

(23:24):
And that is part of the somatic practice.
It's not just pose, pose, pose, but also awareness.
And then of course, on the slower side, it's so much easier
to just be with the breath when you're holding like supine bound
angle and you can just breathe and just be present and like
takes long, take longer, slower breaths and slow down the

(23:47):
nervous systems get into more ofthe parasympathetic mode and the
resting practices. And that also brings more
awareness of how to navigate that space to be relaxed.
A lot of somatic practices are about training sort of new
patterns of movement. So you might do like pelvic
tilts to bring awareness to the pelvis.

(24:09):
Again, this is something I've been teaching for a long time.
I didn't invent it. I don't know if anyone really
could say they invented it, but let's say you are going into
chair pose and some teachers will say tuck the tail.
And I talked about this on the last episode about why did
teachers say tuck the tail? Well, it's just it has to do

(24:30):
with awareness of the pelvis. And I don't cue anything about
the pelvis in chair pose becauseI think it it's not the most
important thing in the pose. And I think whatever feels
neutral to the person is the right way to do it in chair
pose. And how do you know what is
neutral though? How do you know if you're not
excessively arching or tilting the pelvis when you don't need

(24:51):
to in a pose like chair pose? Well, that's where this sort of
repatterning kind of somatic awareness is so valuable.
And the way I often teach this is just standing in mountain
pose, put your hands on your hips and just tilt your pelvis
forward and back tilted forward.Notice how that feels.
You're arching your back, tiltedback.
Notice how that feels. That means you're sort of

(25:13):
rounding the low back and you kind of go back and forth, tilt
forward, tilt back, fine neutralin there.
And then go into chair pose, tryto tilt a little forward or
back. It's a little bit less range of
motion available in chair pose, but you bring awareness to it.
And now you notice, like, is this how I want to move my
pelvis, or is that how I want tomove my pelvis?

(25:34):
What feels better to me that's super valuable and you can do
this in so many different ways in so many different poses, but
it's all about this sort of thisrepatterning movements and
becoming aware of what is my pelvis doing in chair or bridge
pose or warrior 2 or cat cow. And can I maybe in cat cow

(25:55):
sometimes I'll teach to like isolate just the pelvis and then
isolate just the middle spine. Very tricky.
And then try to isolate just theupper back, the thoracic, the
around the thoracic into the cervical spine.
So you start to have more control of the body, more
awareness of the body. And this comes from these little

(26:16):
movements, these little spaces between asana, right?
I could just say mountain pose, chair pose, standing forward
fold vinyasa, right? I could just say pose, pose,
pose, but these somatic practices are these little
sprinkling of awareness of the movement between the poses.

(26:36):
I could just have us go to down dog, or I could notice some
people are having some shoulder limitations, doing some weird
things with their shoulder alignment and down dog.
So let's say let's come out of down dog and go to just kneeling
position for a moment and let's explore the rotation of the
shoulders and just stick your arms out in front of you

(26:56):
floating off the ground and justsay let's internally rotate the
arms and externally rotate the arms.
You could think of like turning a doorknob with your hand, but
the movements coming from your shoulder.
So now we're practicing awareness of internal and
external rotation in the shoulders.
And this is helping to re pattern the movement in the
body. So it's more intentional, more

(27:18):
awareness around it. It's not just I'm in down dog
and down dog has all these specific cues and then I'm in
chair pose and chair pose has all these specific cues.
Instead, it's I'm in a body and the body has these potential
ways to move and these potentialways to move express in these
poses, which are really what is a pose.

(27:40):
Really, a pose is just a a constellation of optimal
alignment patterns in the body, right?
Any yoga pose is a constellationof optimal alignment patterns in
the body, meaning that in down dog, you're in a pose where your
body weight is supported by yourarms.

(28:00):
So for your arms that support your body weight and they're
internally rotated, that's not optimal alignment.
That's going to put a lot of stress on your shoulders.
It's probably going to eventually do an injury long
term. Maybe not in one class, maybe
not in a year, but you do that for two or three years.
Oof that's not good. So a pose is a constellation of

(28:23):
optimal alignment patterns in the body.
So down dog supporting the body weight with the arms external
rotation is way more favorable to support the body and way more
sustainable. And you could do that for
minutes and minutes. 1015 minutes, you'll start to get
tired just for muscle fatigue, but you can hold it for a long
time safely and do that like do down dog like that for years

(28:46):
safely with no injury because it's the optimal alignment.
And then there's also optimal alignment of the pelvis and the
hamstrings and everything else in down dog.
And that's where I say it's a constellation of optimal
alignment patterns. And I think somatic yoga is
about, as I, I'm sort of, you know, somatic, it's just a new

(29:08):
term. It's not really a yoga style.
It's not like yin yoga or hatha yoga.
It, it's started sort of becoming a style I guess now.
But it's just like what I've been doing and what other
anatomy aware teachers and energy aware teachers have been
doing for a while. But somatic yoga is about
bringing awareness to these movement patterns and these
optimal alignment lines and patterns in the body.

(29:29):
And I think if you're doing that, awesome, great, more
people are doing this. Awesome, Everyone benefits.
I just hope that, you know, everyone benefits from the best
quality yoga they can find from the most teachers possible.
So everybody wins. And I hope any teacher listening
to this is also like picking up things you can do to improve
your own teaching. And, you know, everyone wins and

(29:52):
more bodies are healthy, more preventative Healthcare is
happening. So there's less dependence on
the whole big pharma complex. And you know, there's so much
injuries can be prevented and drug dependencies can be can be
prevented by just this kind of awareness of the body, like what

(30:13):
people are trying to do with thesomatic yoga.
So great. And then of course, there's this
emphasis on the internal versus the external.
And that's so much what I teach so much what yoga is about
what's happening inside the interception.
I've talked about this a lot. A lot of beginner yoga students
will look around the room. What's she doing?
Should I do it like that? And you look over and they're

(30:35):
looking at someone else while moving their body, trying to
mimic the shape. And that's OK.
That's great in the first year or so.
But I, I would love if you're past a year of practice that you
just stop doing that as much as you can.
And because a lot of the benefits going to happen inside
your body and a lot of the awareness and knowing what

(30:56):
you're doing is going to happen inside your body.
And that's where it's like the lights start to turn on and the
magic of yoga starts to happen where you have all these
insights into your body and yourmind.
And the the body is a is a gateway to understanding the
mind, understanding the self, how we talk to ourselves in the

(31:16):
pose, the judgements we might have the just the mental
patterns of distraction, even too of like noticing.
Oh, I'm looking around the ClassA lot.
Maybe I should maybe I'm really distracted in my life in
general. I wonder where else that shows
up. And then instead, OK, well, I'm
going to practice in the yoga class just to keep my attention
inward. Pratyahara, close the eyes and

(31:37):
and notice what's happening in my body.
And when I was starting, I was looking around all the time,
like, am I doing this right? I don't know.
You know, everything is just new.
So it's OK when you're starting out.
I see this in beginners all the time.
And it's actually even necessarya lot of the times for the
mirror neurons to like, OK, you do this, I do that.
We're doing the same thing. Got it.

(31:58):
Now I know what I'm doing. Now I don't need to look around
as much. Now I can just close my eyes and
go within and experience inside the body into reception what's
happening in the body. And then this comes back to the
somatic stuff of just like awareness of the breath,
awareness of the nervous system.Oh, I noticed my breath got a
little shallow there. I noticed a little contraction

(32:19):
in my chest. When we talk about this topic,
maybe it's triggering something.Maybe I can look at that.
So it opens up this whole world of self-awareness.
It's like the veil is lifted andand then it starts to become all
this whole domino effect. For me, it was like, oh, when I
eat this certain food, I don't feel so good afterwards.

(32:41):
I'm going to stop eating that food.
And then when I eat organic food, I feel great.
I'm going to start eating more organic food.
And when I go to sleep earlier, I feel better.
I'm going to start going to sleep earlier.
And when I watch this show, it doesn't feel so great.
I'm going to stop watching thoseshows.
So it becomes this whole domino effect from the inner awareness
of when I do Warrior 2 and I hold tension in my shoulders, it

(33:04):
doesn't feel so good. I can relax that tension a
little bit feels better. Or when I'm doing down dog and
my hamstrings are tight, I couldbend my knees and adjust a
little bit and take a little shorter stance and it feels a
little easier, a little a littlebetter in my body.
So now I start to become aware of like how much little
adjustments in my life improve dramatically the quality of

(33:27):
life. And, and there's need, there's
like a sort of need of like to adjust things.
Like I could try to force it. I could try to force things in
my life, I could try to force things in my body, but they're,
you're just more likely to get injured and burned out and end
up in situations that are harmful in some way.
So rather than force things and push things, I can make minor

(33:49):
little adjustments to make things more suited to my body,
more aligned, more optimal, moresimple, more more comfortable.
Sometimes, not always more comfortable.
It's like sometimes it's being able to flow quicker and more
challenging, push my body more in a vinyasa class or to relax

(34:10):
deeper in a restorative class. So we need both.
We need the yin and the Yang. We need the effort, we need the
ease, the stira and the suka. And neither is better or worse
than the other. We need both.
And this practicing in this way helps us bring awareness to both
and how to experience both in a wider range, to handle more, to

(34:31):
be able to rest deeper and to beactivated more and handle more
in a healthy way and to be able to flow through life.
And this wider range of experience, like what are we
here for? Might as well enjoy and
experience the the spectrum of life more fully and more
embodied, more present through these somatic kind of practices.

(34:53):
So this is my take on what somatic yoga is.
I think it's just a cool word. It's a great word for what?
Not just me. I'm not taking credit for it.
I didn't invent it, but I've been doing this kind of stuff
for a long time. Like I said, I give a lot of the
credit to my mentors, Jen and Angie and Matab and Cable for
teaching me a lot of these things.

(35:14):
And Libby as well. Have to say Libby Cox taught me
so many things about pelvic awareness and, you know, just
noticing the body and different poses beyond just pose, pose,
pose. And that's what my understanding
of what somatics is. It's the things between the
poses, the things that teach youabout anatomy and alignment to

(35:34):
get to the poses. And if you're teaching anatomy
and as a teacher and you just say externally rotate your
shoulders, I don't think that's as useful as taking a moment to
teach the students what is external rotation.
And it usually it helps to teachby just including the opposite.
So that's the opposite of internal rotation.

(35:55):
So when they know that range of internal to external, they know
how to do the external rotation and they get more value out of
it rather than you just saying externally rotate the shoulders
and down dog, they've learned the somatic embodiment of both
internal and external rotation and why it matters.
And you might even have them do both in down dog and see how

(36:17):
they feel and notice like how much more aligned, more
spacious, more light it feels tohave the altimal alignment.
So when you're teaching these kind of things, don't just say
them, but break it down like actually educate the students,
show them why it matters and howto do it beyond just saying

(36:38):
things like activate your glutesin this pose.
Well, how do I activate my glutes and how do I deactivate
them when I know that contrast? I'm going to know a lot better,
like how to actually do this andit's going to benefit me not
just in this practice, but forever.
Like that's so valuable to actually know how to activate
your glutes when actually most people are actually actually

(37:01):
over using their low back and not activating their glutes in a
lot of poses and a lot of movements in life.
So it's caused a lot of back pain and a lot of weak glutes,
which nobody wants that nobody wants a flat butt.
So get a stronger glute activation, more awareness of
how to do that. You're going to have happier
students and people you know, knowing how to use their body in

(37:24):
a more conscious way, which I think somatic yoga is all about
as far as I understand. But again, it's not something
really new. It's just a new word for this
way of practicing and teaching. And I hope you found this
episode helpful and insightful in some way.
If you did, leave a review in Apple podcast, share it with a
friend, share it with people. If you're in a yoga teacher

(37:44):
training, share it with your student, your classmates and
your students. I, I just think I want more
people to know about these toolsand techniques and more students
benefit and the whole world benefits.
Like imagine a world where people are doing daily check
insurance of their body and, andusing these somatic tools and,
and not getting stuck in pain for years and decades even and

(38:06):
chronic pain that that could be resolved with more somatic
awareness. Super valuable stuff and if you
want to go deeper with me, you want to practice this stuff with
me, check out Quietmind dot Yoga.
Get on the way. This for the Quietmind Yoga
membership opening soon and we've got hundreds of classes in
there and they'll be doing live classes as well to help you

(38:28):
improve and deepen your own practice and your own
embodiment. Thanks for listening.
Look forward to sharing more with you next time on the Yoga
Teacher Training Podcast.
Advertise With Us

Popular Podcasts

Crime Junkie

Crime Junkie

Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.

24/7 News: The Latest

24/7 News: The Latest

The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.

Stuff You Should Know

Stuff You Should Know

If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.