September 29, 2025 • 43 mins
SHOW #88: Welcome to the disSOLViNG fear podcast!
IN THIS EPISODE, Rachel Krentzman and I talk about her work as an author, physical therapist, yoga instructor, and so much more.
Rachel is the author of three books, and they can all be found at https://happy-back-yoga.teachable.com/
Her website shares a free "Happy Back Spine Health" course as well as information about her upcoming yoga retreat in Greece!
If YOU struggle with tightness or tension in your hips, back, neck or jaw, TUNE IN! Rachel and I discuss ways to release the stress we hold in our bodies. We also talk about healing our inner child, and the unmet needs in our childhood, through Hakomi Therapy.
Rachel leads us through a breathing practice during this interview, so take a deep breath, share this episode with a friend, and enjoy the show!
P.S. There was a bit of a tech issue with the microphone in this interview, so if the background noise bothers you, I sincerely apologize! The issue is resolved for future episodes, so don't worry. Have no fear, we know it wasn't the best audio this time around.
Get my free monthly newsletter at https://missalissa.myflodesk.com/newsletter
Let's Connect on Instagram @miss.alissa.shirk
Fear doesn't run the she show, YOU do!
Welcome to the family.
Much Love, Alissa
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to the Dissolving Fear Podcast, where fear doesn't run
the show you do. I'm your host, Miss Alyssa
Shirk, and if you're new to the podcast, welcome.
You can scroll through over 80 episodes of this podcast on
Spotify, Apple Podcast, and more.
I share a variety of inspiring and informative guest interviews
(00:21):
as well as tools and practices to dissolve fear and live your
best life. Personally, I'm the yoga teacher
and creative entrepreneur on a mission to help people live life
with more courage and creativity.
So follow this podcast. You'll love the results.
Loving life is what we're all about here on the podcast and at
(00:42):
missalyssa.com. Enjoy the show.
Rachel Krenzman, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you so much. It's really a pleasure to be
here. So Rachel, you're a physical
therapist, author, mother, and yoga teacher, and I'm thrilled
to have you on the show today. I feel like my podcast listeners
(01:05):
are going to learn so much abouttheir bodies and their minds
today. You're also a Hakomi somatic
practitioner, and it's a method based right here in Colorado, in
Boulder. So I'm sure we might take a deep
dive into how yoga can actually help us heal emotionally as well
as physically. Rachel, tell us a little about
(01:26):
yourself. So I, I've been a physical
therapist the longest, I would say I started my I'm a physical
therapist for about 30 years nowand I'm from Canada.
I'm originally from Montreal andI graduated from McGill
University and I started workingwith the body and I always felt
very connected to the body. But later on in my career, I
(01:50):
started to get into yoga for myself, for my own spine.
I have a scoliosis, so I startedto work on yoga for my own back
pain. And then I ended up herniating a
disc. And then I really dove into yoga
and the teachings to heal from back pain and disc disc
herniation. And what I noticed is it changed
(02:15):
my life in this. At the same time, my yoga
practice changed my life and I started to integrate it with
physical therapy. I interview so many amazing
people on the show and lots of guests host retreats overseas.
And I saw that you have a retreat coming up in Greece and
it's actually something I could attend because I'm a teacher and
(02:36):
I have summers off and I've beento Greece before and I'd love to
go back. I actually have a bad back.
So I think your retreat would beperfect for me because I'm a
certified Kripala yoga teacher, but I've really avoided a little
bit of yoga because my spine doctor told me to avoid twisting
(02:58):
because I have two bulging discsin my lower back like S1L5.
And and so you were saying that you decided to focus on spine
and back health because of your disc issues.
How did you end up hurting your like herniating your discs?
Were you lifting something heavyor was that just like a side
(03:19):
effect of having scoliosis? It's a really good question.
I mean, it might have been due to scoliosis, but I'll tell you
the truth. In fact, a yoga teacher pushed
me into a very deep pose, and that's when I herniated a disc,
which was very traumatic in a way, because I was practicing
yoga. I was teaching yoga.
(03:40):
What I learned from that experience, first of all, is
never to force or never to push people into poses, because you
really never know. So it was aggressive.
At the same time, I realized that I was practicing a style of
yoga, more of a vinyasa, more ofan Ashtanga practice that wasn't
really good for my body. And you're going to lead us
(04:03):
through a little breathing practice later in this episode
because I think I am on the samepage as you.
Like what what drew me to yoga was I was recovering from a
little soccer injury. I sprained my back.
But the reason I stayed with yoga was because it was like a
way to explore your emotions through your body.
(04:24):
Like when you're doing yoga, yourelease things that you're
holding in your body, you release trauma and emotions.
And sometimes we don't even knowwhere it's coming from.
It could just be like the traumaof watching the news, a
collective trauma that we're holding on to in our bodies.
But sometimes it's also from ourchildhood.
(04:45):
And how does yoga tend to unlocktrauma that we're holding, that
we're storing? Is it because we're releasing
through the chakras? Or in your opinion, how does
yoga help us release it and locktrauma?
That's a big question. I know.
It depends on the style of yoga you teach and kind of where you
come from. I would say I come a little bit
(05:07):
less from the chakra, all right,Work less with the chakras and a
little bit more with the nervoussystem.
So for me, a lot of the work I do, I, I guess I see that the
release comes from muscles that hold tension due to patterns of
tension that, that come about through the fight or flight
(05:28):
response. So the sympathetic nervous
system. And that what I've noticed as I
work with many clients, many students all over the world, is
that we all have similar musclesor patterns of muscle tension.
There's a general kind of group of muscles that go on and become
really tight and really tense when there's, there's stress in
(05:53):
our lives. And, and it doesn't matter if
the stress is perceived stress or actual stress, even if it's
just overthinking, you know, or worrying about something versus
an actual, you know, traumatic event.
So should we do a little breathing practice?
And then I would love to ask youa little bit more about
releasing tension in these common areas.
(06:15):
Like for all of my listeners, what's a good way to release
tension in our jaw? What's a good way to release
tension in our neck? Just to, you know, one simple
suggestion. So should we do a little
breathing practice first though?Yeah, let's do it because the
truth is, if you don't breathe properly, OK, If you don't
(06:35):
actually know how to breathe correctly.
This is why in yoga we really start with the basics.
Then your nervous system is learning that you're stressed
even during yoga. You can be in yoga class and
breathing wrong and getting morestressed because you're inhaling
and sucking in the breath ratherthan breathing into the lungs.
So the way you breathe signals the nervous system, which turns
(06:59):
on the parasympathetic state, and then all the muscles relax.
So the breath is key. So we'll start with the basics.
Yeah. Yeah.
OK. So we'll start with the hands
below the belly button, so in the area of the lower belly just
below the navel and above the pubic bone.
And if you'd like, you can closeyour eyes, relax your shoulders.
(07:25):
Notice if you're holding any tension in your forehead, in
your eyes, in your jaw. Try to relax the face and just
without trying too hard, just begin to allow the breath to
move in and out through the nose.
(07:46):
And for everybody listening, if you're driving or something, you
can save this portion for later.You can come back to this
portion. I might even make an entirely
separate episode with just a small little short breathing
practice so you can just TuneIn and come back to it later if
you're busy right now. But keep listening, OK?
I have my eyes closed. I'm breathing through my nose.
(08:07):
OK. And you can do it with your eyes
open as well. So take a deep breath in through
the nostrils. So we don't want to breathe in
and out through the mouth and yoga.
We breathe in and out through the nose.
It controls the breath and helpsit stay longer.
It also warms the breath as you breathe in.
And try to make sure the shoulders stay relaxed.
(08:27):
So when you breathe in, we want to keep the shoulders down away
from the ears. And with the hands on the lower
belly. As you breathe in, just notice
if you can feel the belly move out into the hands.
So your belly should actually puff out into the hands.
And as you exhale, just feel thebelly move away from the hands
back towards the spine. Inhaling.
(08:52):
See if you can feel the belly relax out into the hands.
And people don't like to feel that their belly is sticking
out, but it's actually necessaryto make sure that you're
breathing properly, that your belly is relaxed.
Inhaling, the belly rises or moves out.
Exhale, the belly moves towards the spine.
(09:13):
And this is called belly breathing.
It's not even a actual breathingtechnique.
It's just getting back to the basics of breathing and making
sure that we use our diaphragm. So let's try that again.
OK, inhaling belly out into yourhands.
(09:35):
Exhaling belly in and up. Your belly Button's coming.
In and out, exactly, exactly. So almost like the shape of the
letter J. It's moving back towards the
spine and up, so you're lifting as well.
OK. So feel that a few more times,
inhale, belly relaxes, exhale. The belly will naturally go in,
(09:56):
but you're going to engage a little bit more and draw the
belly a little bit more in and up.
And that we call lifting the pitof the abdomen.
It's also called udiana Banda ina way.
And you might even notice your pelvic floor lifting as you do
that action. And as you inhale the belly and
the pelvic floor should relax completely.
(10:19):
Good. Now what you want to do one
more, one more brief instructionis you want to extend the
exhalation. So you want to make the exhale a
little longer than the inhale. So let's inhale and count how
long it takes you to inhale and then as you exhale, see if you
can exhale one or two more seconds.
(10:40):
Draw the belly in and up. As you exhale, the belly moves
towards the spine, up towards the chest, and then inhale
again. Let everything go.
Great. So this is the way we should be
breathing all day, every day, and even with a little
(11:01):
engagement of the core. And you can do this even while
you're driving or while you're standing in line and really
working on teaching your nervoussystem that I'm safe, I'm
relaxed. And also on strengthening your
stomach muscles and your pelvic floor at the same time.
I love that. I love that.
(11:22):
You know, what I love about yogais that balance between like
effort and then relaxing. And that's what I love about
this practice too. It's like you're relaxing,
you're inhaling, your belly is relaxed.
And then as you exhale, you're putting a little effort in.
You're pulling your belly buttonin toward your spine.
You're sitting up tall, you're firming up your core as you
(11:45):
exhale. And yeah, the key is exhaling a
little bit longer than you inhale, because that relaxes
your body in general, having a longer exhalation.
It sends a message to the brain and to the heart saying, OK, now
we can relax. And then the brain sends
(12:05):
messages to all the muscles and the organs that, oh, OK, we're
not in flight mode, we're not infight mode, We're in kind of
rest and digest mode. I mean, just the fact that our
body can send messages to itselfis amazing because I feel like
most of our messages come from our brain, right?
(12:26):
We're like, OK, well now I have to drive to the store.
So you go and do that. And now I have to, you know,
remind the kids to get off the phone or whatever.
I feel like so much of what we do every day, it just comes from
our brain. It comes from our little To Do
List. And then if our brain is
worried, like you said, our bodygets tense.
(12:48):
And so this, it's almost like we're bypassing the brain, we're
turning off the mind, and we're just focusing on the body when
we do yoga. Yeah, I would say that it's
both. It's a little bit of both in a
way. I, I see it as yoga works bottom
up, you know, working with the, the body and then the body
(13:11):
informs the nervous system and the psychology.
But we also get instructions from teachers and we get little
messages and they say maybe pay attention to this, right?
Like I did in the breathing, payattention to this.
So we're using our intellect also.
So I see it sort of as a bottom up, top down kind of at the same
time. Yeah, yoga means union.
(13:34):
So it's the union of everything.What about tension in the jaw?
What is a good way to release that?
Tension in the jaw is something I struggle with.
So I'm very, very, very good at this.
It's it's my area where I holds a lot of tension.
I actually kind of grip at nightsometimes.
(13:55):
And so let's just do a very simple technique that helps to
release the jaw. And it's a lot about the
positioning of your, your tongueand your lips.
So what we're going to do is you'll just bring your lips
together, but not strongly. They'll just touch, but very
lightly, OK. And then separate the teeth a
(14:15):
tiny bit apart. So the lips come together, the
teeth move a little bit apart. And then your tongue should rest
on the bottom of your mouth, on the inside of the bottom edge of
the teeth, the row of teeth. So tongue on the inside of the
bottom teeth. And you guys relax while you're
(14:36):
doing this too. Relax while you're doing at all.
Because anyway, I love this. And then just keep this
position. You'll see the minute the tongue
drops, the teeth open a little and the lips touch, it sort of
opens the TMJ, which is a temporomandibular joint.
(14:57):
If you feel like you're startingto get tense or someone's
aggravating you, it's also really good because no one knows
you're doing it, so you can do it anytime, anywhere.
OK, let's talk about maybe two more things.
What about our neck? What is a good way to relax our
(15:17):
neck? I know that one thing I do is
like lift my shoulders up to my ears, take a deep breath in and
then exhale, roll my shoulders down and back.
I'll do that a few times. I also love like, just like
letting my head be a little heavy and imagining I have like
(15:38):
a weight hanging off of my rightear and then kind of like relax
my head into the weight and it'slike my right ear is getting
heavy, heavy toward my right shoulder.
So those are a few things I do. What do you think, Rachel?
Well, I think those are great. Those are really good
suggestions. I have a a whole class idea for
(16:00):
neck and shoulders. I have so many fun techniques,
which requires a lot of visual and some props.
But one thing that I love, one of my favorites is simple,
similar to what you do, but I add a little to it.
So let's say you take your left ear to your left shoulder and
kind of, you know, let the head fall to the side.
(16:22):
But then what you do is you takeyour right hand and you reach it
out. OK, Reach it out, but not up,
down a little bit away from the body.
So left ear to the left shoulder, the arm is reaching
just a little bit away from the body.
And then really as if you're trying to make your arm very,
very long stretch through the fingertips.
(16:42):
And the more energy you put in your arm, the more you can start
to feel the stretch move up intothe upper trapezius in the neck
muscles. And then it's all about the
breath again, coming back to thebreath.
And I imagine all the tension and stress and an especially
sense of responsibility. I imagine that sort of releasing
(17:03):
on the exhalation through my fingertips.
So on the inhale, I would just move the breath into my neck
muscle. On the exhale, stretch through
the fingertips, make the head heavy like you said.
And if you reach with the arm, you can really feel the stretch
(17:23):
move into the neck. And you can even play with the
angle of the hand. You can move the hand a little
forward, a little bit back a little higher, a little lower
until you feel that you get the area that's most tense.
And we have to hold for a long time.
So I hold for at least 2 minutesto really let the fascia
(17:44):
stretch. OK, so 30 seconds to stretch a
muscle. And then how long do you
recommend holding the pose for to stretch the fascia?
3 minutes. OK, so breathing and holding.
And while you're holding, you'reexploring too.
Like you said, you might spread your hand open a little wider.
Pay attention to breathing into your stomach, your heart.
(18:07):
Breathe into your neck too. I love like breathing into
certain muscles. And then, yeah.
The area of tension and releasing tension from that
area, even if something that's there's something very stressful
going on in your life that's on your mind, you can even breathe
into that and like let it go or let go of, you know, whatever
that thought might be. So you can play with a lot of
(18:29):
things, but you do need to hold a longer amount of time to
really get a deep release. Do you do yen yoga and yen yoga?
You hold the poses, yes. That's what I was, yeah. yen and
restorative. I do more restorative practices.
That's what I'm trained in. But in restorative yoga, we hold
(18:50):
5 minutes, never less than two. Yeah, yeah.
One thing that my physical therapist gives me to improve my
back that is a yoga pose is birddog for everyone listening.
You can Google that. But everyone tells me to do bird
dog when it comes to having a better back as well as hip
(19:15):
bridges. And I mean, let's just talk
about one more area maybe. What do you think, Rachel?
The hips? Is that a common area that
people have a lot of tension in?Yeah, it's one of the first
areas that I work on when I workwith back pain.
Why was it the muscles of the hips and the pelvis are directly
(19:39):
linked to the low back? So depending on what muscles are
tight, whether it's the hip flexors or the hamstrings or the
abductors or the abductors, the muscles that connect around your
pelvis pull your pelvis in different directions.
And so there's, if your hips aretight, there's no freedom in the
pelvis and then your spine can'treally find its neutral place in
all the poses. So I do see the hips as a
(20:02):
crucial kind of foundational part to work on.
And my teacher actually teaches the Porn of Yoga hip series,
which I think is brilliant. I've used it with many people
who have back pain and it reallyreally helps.
It's in my book. It's in my first book.
Can you tell us the title of that please?
Sure, it's yoga for a happy back.
(20:24):
A teacher's guide to spinal health through yoga therapy.
OK. By Rachel Krensen That book came
out in 2016. But in that book I have a lot on
the hip series and different modifications and and
adjustments that we make. But it's kind of like magic for
back pain. Let's talk a little bit about
how we store emotions. You can tell us a little bit
(20:49):
about your story. I know that you grew up in a
really strict Orthodox Jewish household and then your father
went to jail. I'm curious how he what what he
did and and then, you know, you had some trauma from that.
Tell me that story. Yeah, a lot of that story is the
story of the latest book, which is called, as is a memoir on
(21:13):
healing the pass through yoga. And it's very connected to yoga,
but it's it's much more of a personal story.
It's it's it shows a bit how yoga helped me first connect to
my body and then, you know, helped guide me on my my path of
healing of recovery. But the bit of the story is that
(21:34):
I grew up in a very orthodox home.
I went to an all girls school. I had kind of a very set path
ahead of me, which was very muchget married at a young age, have
a lot of kids, be a Good Wife. And that was pretty much the,
the aspirations. And then like you said, my
(21:56):
father was arrested and he was arrested for drug trafficking.
It's it was kind of a shocking thing because he was a rabbi
also. So he was very kind of strict
and used to preach on High Holidays.
And so we were shocked. The family was shocked.
We had no idea he was even involved in anything.
(22:18):
And I go on and on about, you know, maybe what led him to do
that and how he got involved and, and things like that, which
is kind of shocking, but it threw me into a lot of it was it
was less about what he did and more about the way that the
community reacted. That was traumatic, to be
honest. We were very shunned by the
(22:39):
community. There was a lot of bad talk.
People treated me very strangelyafterwards, even though I didn't
do anything wrong. How old were you?
I was 2322. And were you living in Israel?
Is that where your father? No, I was living in Israel, in
Canada, Yeah. And so I don't know, it didn't
(23:05):
happen right away, but I, I do see now that that was one of the
first things that shook my world.
You know, like we say, you know,when things fall apart, it kind
of shook my world, shook my belief system.
And all of a sudden people that I thought I respected and looked
up to were acting very strange, weren't very nice.
And I said to myself, if this iswhat my community acts like, you
(23:29):
know, where is God in all of this?
Like how is, you know, if you can't be a decent person and
can't be warm and you become very judgmental and very rude?
I didn't, I didn't believe that that's the intention of
religion. So it, it started me on a path
of questioning. But I would say that I didn't
leave the religion till a few years later.
(23:50):
It took me time because I was soimmersed in it.
I was so involved in it that I couldn't really, it's hard to
get out once you're sort of in that world.
So slowly over time, when I moved to California, I moved to
San Diego and I got into yoga and things changed a lot.
I got divorced. I started to want a different
(24:11):
type of life. And we didn't see see things the
same way anymore. We didn't want the same
lifestyle. So I was sort of on my own, you
know, like out at sea without a buoy to, to hang on to, to cling
to. And yoga became a place that was
always safe and always comfortable.
(24:31):
And I felt that if I felt scared, if I felt overwhelmed by
the uncertainty, it always kind of brought me home.
So it became sort of an anchor. And also I realized that I
hadn't been taught to connect tomy body very much in my in my
culture as a woman growing up ina very religious culture, it was
(24:52):
all about covering your body. So I wasn't allowed to wear, you
know, I had to wear long sleevesand, and skirt that covered my
knees and cover my hair. And so everything was about kind
of covering up. And so there was really little
emphasis on connecting to your body.
If we're not connected to our body, we missed some of those
(25:12):
messages. Like our body will tell us.
It's our intuition. In my opinion, our body will
tell us, like, don't park your car there, you know, like, don't
trust this person. And if we're just kind of like
living in our head, sometimes wemiss those messages that are so,
so important. Yeah, or you get a feeling, you
(25:33):
know, that sometimes you meet someone or you're, you know,
introduced and that you get a bad feeling or you have some
kind of a gut reaction. And I didn't trust that, you
know, you make I made decisions with my head and I learned later
in life that there's a lot of wisdom in that, that if you if
you have feelings about something and there it's not
(25:54):
just a feeling inside, it's it'sa physical feeling you get.
You know, we don't, we don't check in with our physical state
very often. In yoga, we learn how to do
that. But you start to realize I'm
contracting. You know, I'm, I'm not feeling
expensive, I'm not feeling light, I'm feeling contracted,
or my breath is getting short orshallow.
There's something to that. We really have to pay attention.
(26:17):
Yeah, sometimes with people I'm like, huh, I'm having trust
issues with this person. And I don't know why, but I'm
gonna trust my gut on this. And I think when you're like a
world traveler like you, you're doing yoga retreats in Greece.
I've been to Greece. I've been all over the place.
We really have to trust our gut and our intuition, especially as
(26:40):
women, because. Sometimes, you know, like, wow,
this person is perfectly nice orthis area is perfectly nice, but
there's just a feeling that something is not right.
And I've, I've bypassed that feeling.
I pushed it away and said that that's ridiculous.
It doesn't make sense. And I learned later on in life
or later on down the road, you know, ah, that's what my body
(27:00):
was telling me. So I do think that what yoga
does, what Hakomi does mindfulness does, is really help
us understand our bodies and, and, and get in contact with the
messages. So we we become more sensitive
to what's true for us. With Hakomi I was reading about
(27:27):
it, maybe you can like touch on it briefly.
It sounds like you get in touch with your body and then you kind
of identify something that maybeyou were missing as a child,
like nurturing, self-care, self love.
And then you give yourself that love and that care and that
nurturing. I mean, I'm all about like
(27:50):
parenting yourself, you know, like telling yourself, like you
got this and being supportive ofyourself.
And I'm a mom. My kids are 10 and 13.
I know you're a mom. I think parenting helps us
parent ourself. Because you look, I look at
myself and I'm like, oh, I'm so nurturing with my kids.
I ask them, what do you need? And this, this is how we need to
(28:12):
be with ourselves too. But tell us a little bit about
Hakomi if you want to. I do, I, I would say it goes a
lot deeper than that with Hakomi.
So because there's a limit to how far you can parent yourself.
I think this is from my experience, you know, I've been
(28:32):
through a lot of the mindfulnessand the yoga and, and you know,
even affirmations or different things that you can say, but I
felt that Hakomi went a lot deeper and that was sort of the
missing piece for me. I think it really helped.
Why? Because you have a relationship
with the therapist. So everything you're doing is
not actually to yourself. It's it's in in the context of
(28:54):
someone else being there, someone else seeing you and them
also giving you what you're missing.
So you're not just giving it to yourself.
So as a Hakami therapist, one ofthe things we do is we with the
client identify what that missing experience is.
And there's usually one or two key missing experiences that
(29:17):
caused kind of a cascade of strategies that develop in life
that help you figure out a way to exist.
So, you know, for some people, they become very tough.
You know, I'm going to toughen up because people are going to
hurt me or the world is not safe, right?
Which can be a deep belief. Other people become very
(29:37):
dependent and act very sweet andshy because that was the way
that they got approval. So different people, different
people develop different strategies.
And so we work with these strategies.
We work with the missing experience underneath what
caused these strategies to come out.
And then I would say instead of just kind of saying, I give,
(30:00):
give yourself what you're missing because it's nice to say
that, but it's very hard in practice to give yourself that
thing If if your subconscious believes something very deeply
from a very young age, it's veryhard to convince it otherwise.
So we do things in a little bit of a more experimental way, I
(30:23):
would say with the therapist. So the therapist with you will
work on different experiments togive you that experience that
you were missing and then to help you actually take it in,
which is another part because wecan hear it, we can see it.
Somebody can say you're amazing,you're wonderful, and you just
don't believe it. Your subconscious doesn't
believe it. What are some typical
(30:44):
experiences that people are missing?
Is it that, you know, they needed somebody to be there for
them and they were alone or what?
What's common? So they're very common themes
that really everyone deals with.Number, the number one is
safety. So someone might not have felt
safe and that's a big, you know,core need.
(31:06):
Another one is a sense of belonging or that they're wanted
or welcome in the world. Another thing is being seen,
like you're saying, being seen by someone else, that they
noticed you, that they're aware that you're there.
Another one is being nurtured orbeing cared for.
(31:29):
So there are, there are, you know, many themes, but in the
end it comes down to maybe 5 or 6 core themes that most that
every child needs, you know, to feel safe, to feel that they
belong, to feel that they're loved, to feel that they're
seen, to feel that they're important and to feel that they
deserve, they deserve nourishment.
(31:55):
And these are core needs that ifat any point in life, it can be
from a very young age or it can be something that happened later
in life, is a trauma that kind of, you know, breaks their,
their belief. And if we don't have that need
met at any point, then we develop ways of, of coping.
(32:16):
Mm hmm. And also something important to
say about Akomi is that the defense mechanisms or these
strategies are not viewed as bad.
OK? They're not viewed as something,
oh, well, you, you became this way because of this.
Mm hmm. We really look at them with
kindness. We look at them as something
positive that that your organic self knew at that time that you
(32:38):
know, maybe there was father you.
And your. Parents were there physically,
let's say, but not emotionally. They didn't pay attention.
They weren't focused on you. There might have been another
child who had like special needsor was sick and they just didn't
have space for you. And so you weren't seen.
You know, it's not always your parents fault, but but the point
(33:00):
is that you didn't get what you needed at that time.
For whatever reason. We see that as as very smart,
you know, very wise, that you developed a strategy in a way to
get your needs met at a time when you were very vulnerable.
But at a certain point in life, that strategy doesn't work
anymore. We need a different strategy.
We need something new. Yeah, it's so interesting.
(33:22):
Like as a kid I would I would see my parents maybe not make
the best decision sometimes, right?
So then I developed this little belief that if I were a good
girl and I made all positive decisions, nothing bad would
happen to me. And it's just so interesting
because like, when I slipped andfell, I was like talking to my
(33:45):
therapist and I was like, I justdon't understand why I'm having
health problems. I'm such a good girl.
And it just came out of my mouth.
It was like I was 3 again. I was like, I've been such a
good girl. Like, why is this happening?
And it's just so interesting, even just in any therapy, to be
aware of, you know, what shaped you as a child?
(34:08):
Maybe you didn't feel like you got attention.
Maybe you didn't feel seen. Maybe you like, in my case, I
think I felt like the solution to any chaos was to be good
girl, all as perfect perfection.And it's just like these little
stories that we start telling ourselves when we're trying to
(34:28):
make sense of the world when we're little.
Yeah, and, and that little childis always inside us, even though
we're grown up. So what we do in Hakomi also is
we contact that child. It's it's kind of we get people
sometimes into a child's state and we talked to the child.
So we kind of go backwards and images or memories or
(34:51):
visualizations and we talked to the child so that they
understand. Maybe, like you said, you know,
maybe you didn't get a lot of attention, but it wasn't, it
was, you know, you thought it was your fault, maybe that I
wasn't good enough. So I'm going to be better.
I'm going to be really good. Then they're going to pay
attention to me. So maybe we tell the child at a
(35:12):
certain point, you know, they were just really busy and
overwhelmed with something else or they were working and it's
not about you, you know, you areperfect.
You were perfect. You didn't have to try so hard.
And we get the kid, the child inside of us to, to understand
something new. And then from the inside,
everything changes. And then your behaviors, your
(35:33):
needs change. That's the belief in Hakomi.
Yeah, it's kind of like eventually your story changes.
The story that you tell yourselfchanges.
I know that you've said it's notlike the big trauma, like your
dad getting arrested. It's not often the big trauma
that we hold onto. It's these little stories.
(35:54):
I don't know if you want to talkabout that, but it's so
interesting. Like what we remember, I
remember like being at the hairdresser and my hairdresser
was like always married to a millionaire.
He owned a bunch of McDonald's and she was showing us this
shirt. She's like, I just bought this
shirt like to for the weekend for an event.
And then on the way home, my momwas like, you know, that's not
(36:15):
real life. Like going shopping just for an
event, like going shopping because you have something to go
to. And I remember thinking, well,
it has to be real life because my hairdresser just did it.
She just went shopping for an event.
Like anyway, it's just interesting, the little stories.
But I totally got off subject. Tell us your what you mean when
you say, you know, it's not likenecessarily like the big trauma
(36:38):
that we hold on to. Yeah, it's funny.
In my book, I have a saying, I don't know if you saw it, maybe
the the deepest, our deepest binding beliefs are held in the
littlest stories of our lives. And this is what I noticed.
It wasn't the big trauma actually, that were the things
that I was working on as I started to work in therapy
because obviously I went througha lot of therapy, but it was a
(37:02):
little things, a little messagesthat you get here and there.
And we just trust the process when you're in therapy or in
Hakomi psychotherapy, just trustthe process that whatever needs
to come up will come up. And some of the strangest
stories, like you just mentionedsomething random out of nowhere,
you know, would come up. You have this big trauma, but
(37:23):
yet you start to notice that, no, I got this strange message
when I was growing up and not really stuck.
So I believe that that's true. Sometimes it is a big, you know,
a big trauma that shakes us. But often it can be a series of
little mini traumas overtime or little events that tell you
you're not important or you're not worthy or you're not good
(37:46):
enough or you're not smart enough or you don't belong that
aren't really connected to the big thing that you think you're
dealing with. So in the book also, there's a
lot of sub stories. You'll see.
There's, you know, big story, but then there are a lot of
smaller stories as well. That's so interesting.
(38:08):
I want to get your website whereeveryone can find your book.
I know I went to your website and I signed up for a free Happy
Back Spine Health course, and I think it's videos that I'm going
to start watching at home that Ifound on your website.
I also know you have a YouTube channel.
I'll put that in the show notes,the Happy Backyoga with Rachel
(38:29):
on YouTube. So I want to give you an
opportunity to tell everyone where your website is and how
they can learn more about like yoga to build a better spine to
boost our mental health. I mean, I can't believe we've
been talking for an hour alreadybecause there's and you know
(38:51):
what my main question is before I give you the floor to tell
everyone where to find you. Actually, my main question is,
and tell me you can tell me if you don't want to answer this,
but like, why was your dad selling the drugs?
Was it like he felt financial pressure and he was trying to
make money? Was he doing drugs himself?
(39:12):
Like what? And that's all in your new book
as is. Yeah.
But I'm just curious I guess. It's, it's a question I was
asking myself. I don't believe he was using OK.
I don't think he was actually involved in using drugs himself
because we would have noticed that there was something wrong.
I do think he was very stressed for financially and he got
(39:33):
involved with the wrong people. And it started with more like,
you know, little mini petty crimes.
I would say, you know, selling fake passports.
There was a lot of other, some fraud, some things going on
there and I guess somebody askedhim to do a job.
(39:56):
You know, I that's, that's the sense I made of it.
I actually never got the answersthat I had asked for or
requested. So I don't really know.
But I don't think I think it wasvery much about making money
that he was somewhat felt somewhat desperate and got
involved with the wrong friends.Yeah, and it's so easy in life
(40:18):
to get off track and find ourselves doing something that
we have done before. We know better.
But here we are again, doing thesame thing and expecting a
different result. And I think that's the beautiful
thing about yoga. Even if you just do the belly
breathing that we talked about at the beginning of this
episode, connecting with yourself is so important.
(40:39):
It'll just help us navigate lifein a more healthy and happy way
because it is so easy to navigate.
Off course it is so easy as a human.
There are so many distractions, temptations and just moments
where maybe we don't think things through or connect with
ourselves before we make a decision.
(41:00):
There are so many decisions to make on a daily basis.
Being human is not easy. No, not easy at all.
But we learned that in Buddhist teachings, to write that all
life is suffering or that suffering is just a part of
life. Yeah, but it is complex.
And unfortunately, if you do nothing, you usually tend to get
(41:20):
sucked into your repetitive patterns.
And that's where yoga comes in and really teaches you that
having a discipline or having a way to check in with what you're
doing or why you're making thosechoices is important.
And having that pause that you mentioned is super important.
Yeah, and when you break up the tension in your body, you can
break up your patterns, the way that you're holding yourself,
(41:42):
the habits and patterns of how you even hold your muscles.
So, Rachel, thank you for being here at this podcast exists to
have guests like you come on andhelp us continue to navigate
life in the best way possible. Tell us where everybody can find
you online. Best place to find me on my
website is Happy backyoga.com. That's my main website.
(42:05):
It will take you to my books, myretreats, and some free videos
and also some videos and coursesand trainings that Ioffer people
online. I've done a lot of recordings.
So people are interested in studying yoga for Happy Back.
It's a lot of resources there aswell.
And Greece, the retreat in Greece will be focused on all of
(42:26):
the things we talked about. The practices are very much
happy Backyoga practices. So anyone can come.
And I'm really comfortable working with all types of
bodies. That's kind of my strength and
giving you what you need from your practice and not forcing
you to do something that you're,you know, is not good for you.
But we also dive a little bit into the Hakomi, understanding
(42:46):
the different strategies. So it's a lot of transformation
for body and soul. So happy backyoga.com is where
you can find. Me awesome and I will also post
a clip of this podcast on Instagram.
I'll post all of our socials in the show notes for you guys and
(43:07):
that completes our episode for today.
If this podcast content felt true for you, follow the podcast
today and leave a rating or review on Apple Podcast.
Have an amazing day and keep exploring your favorite ways to
navigate life with a little morecourage and creativity every
single all day. Thank you for being here.
Welcome to the Dissolving Fear Podcast, where fear doesn't run
the show you do. I'm your host, Miss Alyssa
Shirk, and if you're new to the podcast, welcome.
You can scroll through over 80 episodes of this podcast on
Spotify, Apple Podcast, and more.
I share a variety of inspiring and informative guest interviews
(00:21):
as well as tools and practices to dissolve fear and live your
best life. Personally, I'm the yoga teacher
and creative entrepreneur on a mission to help people live life
with more courage and creativity.
So follow this podcast. You'll love the results.
Loving life is what we're all about here on the podcast and at
(00:42):
missalyssa.com. Enjoy the show.
Rachel Krenzman, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you so much. It's really a pleasure to be
here. So Rachel, you're a physical
therapist, author, mother, and yoga teacher, and I'm thrilled
to have you on the show today. I feel like my podcast listeners
(01:05):
are going to learn so much abouttheir bodies and their minds
today. You're also a Hakomi somatic
practitioner, and it's a method based right here in Colorado, in
Boulder. So I'm sure we might take a deep
dive into how yoga can actually help us heal emotionally as well
as physically. Rachel, tell us a little about
(01:26):
yourself. So I, I've been a physical
therapist the longest, I would say I started my I'm a physical
therapist for about 30 years nowand I'm from Canada.
I'm originally from Montreal andI graduated from McGill
University and I started workingwith the body and I always felt
very connected to the body. But later on in my career, I
(01:50):
started to get into yoga for myself, for my own spine.
I have a scoliosis, so I startedto work on yoga for my own back
pain. And then I ended up herniating a
disc. And then I really dove into yoga
and the teachings to heal from back pain and disc disc
herniation. And what I noticed is it changed
(02:15):
my life in this. At the same time, my yoga
practice changed my life and I started to integrate it with
physical therapy. I interview so many amazing
people on the show and lots of guests host retreats overseas.
And I saw that you have a retreat coming up in Greece and
it's actually something I could attend because I'm a teacher and
(02:36):
I have summers off and I've beento Greece before and I'd love to
go back. I actually have a bad back.
So I think your retreat would beperfect for me because I'm a
certified Kripala yoga teacher, but I've really avoided a little
bit of yoga because my spine doctor told me to avoid twisting
(02:58):
because I have two bulging discsin my lower back like S1L5.
And and so you were saying that you decided to focus on spine
and back health because of your disc issues.
How did you end up hurting your like herniating your discs?
Were you lifting something heavyor was that just like a side
(03:19):
effect of having scoliosis? It's a really good question.
I mean, it might have been due to scoliosis, but I'll tell you
the truth. In fact, a yoga teacher pushed
me into a very deep pose, and that's when I herniated a disc,
which was very traumatic in a way, because I was practicing
yoga. I was teaching yoga.
(03:40):
What I learned from that experience, first of all, is
never to force or never to push people into poses, because you
really never know. So it was aggressive.
At the same time, I realized that I was practicing a style of
yoga, more of a vinyasa, more ofan Ashtanga practice that wasn't
really good for my body. And you're going to lead us
(04:03):
through a little breathing practice later in this episode
because I think I am on the samepage as you.
Like what what drew me to yoga was I was recovering from a
little soccer injury. I sprained my back.
But the reason I stayed with yoga was because it was like a
way to explore your emotions through your body.
(04:24):
Like when you're doing yoga, yourelease things that you're
holding in your body, you release trauma and emotions.
And sometimes we don't even knowwhere it's coming from.
It could just be like the traumaof watching the news, a
collective trauma that we're holding on to in our bodies.
But sometimes it's also from ourchildhood.
(04:45):
And how does yoga tend to unlocktrauma that we're holding, that
we're storing? Is it because we're releasing
through the chakras? Or in your opinion, how does
yoga help us release it and locktrauma?
That's a big question. I know.
It depends on the style of yoga you teach and kind of where you
come from. I would say I come a little bit
(05:07):
less from the chakra, all right,Work less with the chakras and a
little bit more with the nervoussystem.
So for me, a lot of the work I do, I, I guess I see that the
release comes from muscles that hold tension due to patterns of
tension that, that come about through the fight or flight
(05:28):
response. So the sympathetic nervous
system. And that what I've noticed as I
work with many clients, many students all over the world, is
that we all have similar musclesor patterns of muscle tension.
There's a general kind of group of muscles that go on and become
really tight and really tense when there's, there's stress in
(05:53):
our lives. And, and it doesn't matter if
the stress is perceived stress or actual stress, even if it's
just overthinking, you know, or worrying about something versus
an actual, you know, traumatic event.
So should we do a little breathing practice?
And then I would love to ask youa little bit more about
releasing tension in these common areas.
(06:15):
Like for all of my listeners, what's a good way to release
tension in our jaw? What's a good way to release
tension in our neck? Just to, you know, one simple
suggestion. So should we do a little
breathing practice first though?Yeah, let's do it because the
truth is, if you don't breathe properly, OK, If you don't
(06:35):
actually know how to breathe correctly.
This is why in yoga we really start with the basics.
Then your nervous system is learning that you're stressed
even during yoga. You can be in yoga class and
breathing wrong and getting morestressed because you're inhaling
and sucking in the breath ratherthan breathing into the lungs.
So the way you breathe signals the nervous system, which turns
(06:59):
on the parasympathetic state, and then all the muscles relax.
So the breath is key. So we'll start with the basics.
Yeah. Yeah.
OK. So we'll start with the hands
below the belly button, so in the area of the lower belly just
below the navel and above the pubic bone.
And if you'd like, you can closeyour eyes, relax your shoulders.
(07:25):
Notice if you're holding any tension in your forehead, in
your eyes, in your jaw. Try to relax the face and just
without trying too hard, just begin to allow the breath to
move in and out through the nose.
(07:46):
And for everybody listening, if you're driving or something, you
can save this portion for later.You can come back to this
portion. I might even make an entirely
separate episode with just a small little short breathing
practice so you can just TuneIn and come back to it later if
you're busy right now. But keep listening, OK?
I have my eyes closed. I'm breathing through my nose.
(08:07):
OK. And you can do it with your eyes
open as well. So take a deep breath in through
the nostrils. So we don't want to breathe in
and out through the mouth and yoga.
We breathe in and out through the nose.
It controls the breath and helpsit stay longer.
It also warms the breath as you breathe in.
And try to make sure the shoulders stay relaxed.
(08:27):
So when you breathe in, we want to keep the shoulders down away
from the ears. And with the hands on the lower
belly. As you breathe in, just notice
if you can feel the belly move out into the hands.
So your belly should actually puff out into the hands.
And as you exhale, just feel thebelly move away from the hands
back towards the spine. Inhaling.
(08:52):
See if you can feel the belly relax out into the hands.
And people don't like to feel that their belly is sticking
out, but it's actually necessaryto make sure that you're
breathing properly, that your belly is relaxed.
Inhaling, the belly rises or moves out.
Exhale, the belly moves towards the spine.
(09:13):
And this is called belly breathing.
It's not even a actual breathingtechnique.
It's just getting back to the basics of breathing and making
sure that we use our diaphragm. So let's try that again.
OK, inhaling belly out into yourhands.
(09:35):
Exhaling belly in and up. Your belly Button's coming.
In and out, exactly, exactly. So almost like the shape of the
letter J. It's moving back towards the
spine and up, so you're lifting as well.
OK. So feel that a few more times,
inhale, belly relaxes, exhale. The belly will naturally go in,
(09:56):
but you're going to engage a little bit more and draw the
belly a little bit more in and up.
And that we call lifting the pitof the abdomen.
It's also called udiana Banda ina way.
And you might even notice your pelvic floor lifting as you do
that action. And as you inhale the belly and
the pelvic floor should relax completely.
(10:19):
Good. Now what you want to do one
more, one more brief instructionis you want to extend the
exhalation. So you want to make the exhale a
little longer than the inhale. So let's inhale and count how
long it takes you to inhale and then as you exhale, see if you
can exhale one or two more seconds.
(10:40):
Draw the belly in and up. As you exhale, the belly moves
towards the spine, up towards the chest, and then inhale
again. Let everything go.
Great. So this is the way we should be
breathing all day, every day, and even with a little
(11:01):
engagement of the core. And you can do this even while
you're driving or while you're standing in line and really
working on teaching your nervoussystem that I'm safe, I'm
relaxed. And also on strengthening your
stomach muscles and your pelvic floor at the same time.
I love that. I love that.
(11:22):
You know, what I love about yogais that balance between like
effort and then relaxing. And that's what I love about
this practice too. It's like you're relaxing,
you're inhaling, your belly is relaxed.
And then as you exhale, you're putting a little effort in.
You're pulling your belly buttonin toward your spine.
You're sitting up tall, you're firming up your core as you
(11:45):
exhale. And yeah, the key is exhaling a
little bit longer than you inhale, because that relaxes
your body in general, having a longer exhalation.
It sends a message to the brain and to the heart saying, OK, now
we can relax. And then the brain sends
(12:05):
messages to all the muscles and the organs that, oh, OK, we're
not in flight mode, we're not infight mode, We're in kind of
rest and digest mode. I mean, just the fact that our
body can send messages to itselfis amazing because I feel like
most of our messages come from our brain, right?
(12:26):
We're like, OK, well now I have to drive to the store.
So you go and do that. And now I have to, you know,
remind the kids to get off the phone or whatever.
I feel like so much of what we do every day, it just comes from
our brain. It comes from our little To Do
List. And then if our brain is
worried, like you said, our bodygets tense.
(12:48):
And so this, it's almost like we're bypassing the brain, we're
turning off the mind, and we're just focusing on the body when
we do yoga. Yeah, I would say that it's
both. It's a little bit of both in a
way. I, I see it as yoga works bottom
up, you know, working with the, the body and then the body
(13:11):
informs the nervous system and the psychology.
But we also get instructions from teachers and we get little
messages and they say maybe pay attention to this, right?
Like I did in the breathing, payattention to this.
So we're using our intellect also.
So I see it sort of as a bottom up, top down kind of at the same
time. Yeah, yoga means union.
(13:34):
So it's the union of everything.What about tension in the jaw?
What is a good way to release that?
Tension in the jaw is something I struggle with.
So I'm very, very, very good at this.
It's it's my area where I holds a lot of tension.
I actually kind of grip at nightsometimes.
(13:55):
And so let's just do a very simple technique that helps to
release the jaw. And it's a lot about the
positioning of your, your tongueand your lips.
So what we're going to do is you'll just bring your lips
together, but not strongly. They'll just touch, but very
lightly, OK. And then separate the teeth a
(14:15):
tiny bit apart. So the lips come together, the
teeth move a little bit apart. And then your tongue should rest
on the bottom of your mouth, on the inside of the bottom edge of
the teeth, the row of teeth. So tongue on the inside of the
bottom teeth. And you guys relax while you're
(14:36):
doing this too. Relax while you're doing at all.
Because anyway, I love this. And then just keep this
position. You'll see the minute the tongue
drops, the teeth open a little and the lips touch, it sort of
opens the TMJ, which is a temporomandibular joint.
(14:57):
If you feel like you're startingto get tense or someone's
aggravating you, it's also really good because no one knows
you're doing it, so you can do it anytime, anywhere.
OK, let's talk about maybe two more things.
What about our neck? What is a good way to relax our
(15:17):
neck? I know that one thing I do is
like lift my shoulders up to my ears, take a deep breath in and
then exhale, roll my shoulders down and back.
I'll do that a few times. I also love like, just like
letting my head be a little heavy and imagining I have like
(15:38):
a weight hanging off of my rightear and then kind of like relax
my head into the weight and it'slike my right ear is getting
heavy, heavy toward my right shoulder.
So those are a few things I do. What do you think, Rachel?
Well, I think those are great. Those are really good
suggestions. I have a a whole class idea for
(16:00):
neck and shoulders. I have so many fun techniques,
which requires a lot of visual and some props.
But one thing that I love, one of my favorites is simple,
similar to what you do, but I add a little to it.
So let's say you take your left ear to your left shoulder and
kind of, you know, let the head fall to the side.
(16:22):
But then what you do is you takeyour right hand and you reach it
out. OK, Reach it out, but not up,
down a little bit away from the body.
So left ear to the left shoulder, the arm is reaching
just a little bit away from the body.
And then really as if you're trying to make your arm very,
very long stretch through the fingertips.
(16:42):
And the more energy you put in your arm, the more you can start
to feel the stretch move up intothe upper trapezius in the neck
muscles. And then it's all about the
breath again, coming back to thebreath.
And I imagine all the tension and stress and an especially
sense of responsibility. I imagine that sort of releasing
(17:03):
on the exhalation through my fingertips.
So on the inhale, I would just move the breath into my neck
muscle. On the exhale, stretch through
the fingertips, make the head heavy like you said.
And if you reach with the arm, you can really feel the stretch
(17:23):
move into the neck. And you can even play with the
angle of the hand. You can move the hand a little
forward, a little bit back a little higher, a little lower
until you feel that you get the area that's most tense.
And we have to hold for a long time.
So I hold for at least 2 minutesto really let the fascia
(17:44):
stretch. OK, so 30 seconds to stretch a
muscle. And then how long do you
recommend holding the pose for to stretch the fascia?
3 minutes. OK, so breathing and holding.
And while you're holding, you'reexploring too.
Like you said, you might spread your hand open a little wider.
Pay attention to breathing into your stomach, your heart.
(18:07):
Breathe into your neck too. I love like breathing into
certain muscles. And then, yeah.
The area of tension and releasing tension from that
area, even if something that's there's something very stressful
going on in your life that's on your mind, you can even breathe
into that and like let it go or let go of, you know, whatever
that thought might be. So you can play with a lot of
(18:29):
things, but you do need to hold a longer amount of time to
really get a deep release. Do you do yen yoga and yen yoga?
You hold the poses, yes. That's what I was, yeah. yen and
restorative. I do more restorative practices.
That's what I'm trained in. But in restorative yoga, we hold
(18:50):
5 minutes, never less than two. Yeah, yeah.
One thing that my physical therapist gives me to improve my
back that is a yoga pose is birddog for everyone listening.
You can Google that. But everyone tells me to do bird
dog when it comes to having a better back as well as hip
(19:15):
bridges. And I mean, let's just talk
about one more area maybe. What do you think, Rachel?
The hips? Is that a common area that
people have a lot of tension in?Yeah, it's one of the first
areas that I work on when I workwith back pain.
Why was it the muscles of the hips and the pelvis are directly
(19:39):
linked to the low back? So depending on what muscles are
tight, whether it's the hip flexors or the hamstrings or the
abductors or the abductors, the muscles that connect around your
pelvis pull your pelvis in different directions.
And so there's, if your hips aretight, there's no freedom in the
pelvis and then your spine can'treally find its neutral place in
all the poses. So I do see the hips as a
(20:02):
crucial kind of foundational part to work on.
And my teacher actually teaches the Porn of Yoga hip series,
which I think is brilliant. I've used it with many people
who have back pain and it reallyreally helps.
It's in my book. It's in my first book.
Can you tell us the title of that please?
Sure, it's yoga for a happy back.
(20:24):
A teacher's guide to spinal health through yoga therapy.
OK. By Rachel Krensen That book came
out in 2016. But in that book I have a lot on
the hip series and different modifications and and
adjustments that we make. But it's kind of like magic for
back pain. Let's talk a little bit about
how we store emotions. You can tell us a little bit
(20:49):
about your story. I know that you grew up in a
really strict Orthodox Jewish household and then your father
went to jail. I'm curious how he what what he
did and and then, you know, you had some trauma from that.
Tell me that story. Yeah, a lot of that story is the
story of the latest book, which is called, as is a memoir on
(21:13):
healing the pass through yoga. And it's very connected to yoga,
but it's it's much more of a personal story.
It's it's it shows a bit how yoga helped me first connect to
my body and then, you know, helped guide me on my my path of
healing of recovery. But the bit of the story is that
(21:34):
I grew up in a very orthodox home.
I went to an all girls school. I had kind of a very set path
ahead of me, which was very muchget married at a young age, have
a lot of kids, be a Good Wife. And that was pretty much the,
the aspirations. And then like you said, my
(21:56):
father was arrested and he was arrested for drug trafficking.
It's it was kind of a shocking thing because he was a rabbi
also. So he was very kind of strict
and used to preach on High Holidays.
And so we were shocked. The family was shocked.
We had no idea he was even involved in anything.
(22:18):
And I go on and on about, you know, maybe what led him to do
that and how he got involved and, and things like that, which
is kind of shocking, but it threw me into a lot of it was it
was less about what he did and more about the way that the
community reacted. That was traumatic, to be
honest. We were very shunned by the
(22:39):
community. There was a lot of bad talk.
People treated me very strangelyafterwards, even though I didn't
do anything wrong. How old were you?
I was 2322. And were you living in Israel?
Is that where your father? No, I was living in Israel, in
Canada, Yeah. And so I don't know, it didn't
(23:05):
happen right away, but I, I do see now that that was one of the
first things that shook my world.
You know, like we say, you know,when things fall apart, it kind
of shook my world, shook my belief system.
And all of a sudden people that I thought I respected and looked
up to were acting very strange, weren't very nice.
And I said to myself, if this iswhat my community acts like, you
(23:29):
know, where is God in all of this?
Like how is, you know, if you can't be a decent person and
can't be warm and you become very judgmental and very rude?
I didn't, I didn't believe that that's the intention of
religion. So it, it started me on a path
of questioning. But I would say that I didn't
leave the religion till a few years later.
(23:50):
It took me time because I was soimmersed in it.
I was so involved in it that I couldn't really, it's hard to
get out once you're sort of in that world.
So slowly over time, when I moved to California, I moved to
San Diego and I got into yoga and things changed a lot.
I got divorced. I started to want a different
(24:11):
type of life. And we didn't see see things the
same way anymore. We didn't want the same
lifestyle. So I was sort of on my own, you
know, like out at sea without a buoy to, to hang on to, to cling
to. And yoga became a place that was
always safe and always comfortable.
(24:31):
And I felt that if I felt scared, if I felt overwhelmed by
the uncertainty, it always kind of brought me home.
So it became sort of an anchor. And also I realized that I
hadn't been taught to connect tomy body very much in my in my
culture as a woman growing up ina very religious culture, it was
(24:52):
all about covering your body. So I wasn't allowed to wear, you
know, I had to wear long sleevesand, and skirt that covered my
knees and cover my hair. And so everything was about kind
of covering up. And so there was really little
emphasis on connecting to your body.
If we're not connected to our body, we missed some of those
(25:12):
messages. Like our body will tell us.
It's our intuition. In my opinion, our body will
tell us, like, don't park your car there, you know, like, don't
trust this person. And if we're just kind of like
living in our head, sometimes wemiss those messages that are so,
so important. Yeah, or you get a feeling, you
(25:33):
know, that sometimes you meet someone or you're, you know,
introduced and that you get a bad feeling or you have some
kind of a gut reaction. And I didn't trust that, you
know, you make I made decisions with my head and I learned later
in life that there's a lot of wisdom in that, that if you if
you have feelings about something and there it's not
(25:54):
just a feeling inside, it's it'sa physical feeling you get.
You know, we don't, we don't check in with our physical state
very often. In yoga, we learn how to do
that. But you start to realize I'm
contracting. You know, I'm, I'm not feeling
expensive, I'm not feeling light, I'm feeling contracted,
or my breath is getting short orshallow.
There's something to that. We really have to pay attention.
(26:17):
Yeah, sometimes with people I'm like, huh, I'm having trust
issues with this person. And I don't know why, but I'm
gonna trust my gut on this. And I think when you're like a
world traveler like you, you're doing yoga retreats in Greece.
I've been to Greece. I've been all over the place.
We really have to trust our gut and our intuition, especially as
(26:40):
women, because. Sometimes, you know, like, wow,
this person is perfectly nice orthis area is perfectly nice, but
there's just a feeling that something is not right.
And I've, I've bypassed that feeling.
I pushed it away and said that that's ridiculous.
It doesn't make sense. And I learned later on in life
or later on down the road, you know, ah, that's what my body
(27:00):
was telling me. So I do think that what yoga
does, what Hakomi does mindfulness does, is really help
us understand our bodies and, and, and get in contact with the
messages. So we we become more sensitive
to what's true for us. With Hakomi I was reading about
(27:27):
it, maybe you can like touch on it briefly.
It sounds like you get in touch with your body and then you kind
of identify something that maybeyou were missing as a child,
like nurturing, self-care, self love.
And then you give yourself that love and that care and that
nurturing. I mean, I'm all about like
(27:50):
parenting yourself, you know, like telling yourself, like you
got this and being supportive ofyourself.
And I'm a mom. My kids are 10 and 13.
I know you're a mom. I think parenting helps us
parent ourself. Because you look, I look at
myself and I'm like, oh, I'm so nurturing with my kids.
I ask them, what do you need? And this, this is how we need to
(28:12):
be with ourselves too. But tell us a little bit about
Hakomi if you want to. I do, I, I would say it goes a
lot deeper than that with Hakomi.
So because there's a limit to how far you can parent yourself.
I think this is from my experience, you know, I've been
(28:32):
through a lot of the mindfulnessand the yoga and, and you know,
even affirmations or different things that you can say, but I
felt that Hakomi went a lot deeper and that was sort of the
missing piece for me. I think it really helped.
Why? Because you have a relationship
with the therapist. So everything you're doing is
not actually to yourself. It's it's in in the context of
(28:54):
someone else being there, someone else seeing you and them
also giving you what you're missing.
So you're not just giving it to yourself.
So as a Hakami therapist, one ofthe things we do is we with the
client identify what that missing experience is.
And there's usually one or two key missing experiences that
(29:17):
caused kind of a cascade of strategies that develop in life
that help you figure out a way to exist.
So, you know, for some people, they become very tough.
You know, I'm going to toughen up because people are going to
hurt me or the world is not safe, right?
Which can be a deep belief. Other people become very
(29:37):
dependent and act very sweet andshy because that was the way
that they got approval. So different people, different
people develop different strategies.
And so we work with these strategies.
We work with the missing experience underneath what
caused these strategies to come out.
And then I would say instead of just kind of saying, I give,
(30:00):
give yourself what you're missing because it's nice to say
that, but it's very hard in practice to give yourself that
thing If if your subconscious believes something very deeply
from a very young age, it's veryhard to convince it otherwise.
So we do things in a little bit of a more experimental way, I
(30:23):
would say with the therapist. So the therapist with you will
work on different experiments togive you that experience that
you were missing and then to help you actually take it in,
which is another part because wecan hear it, we can see it.
Somebody can say you're amazing,you're wonderful, and you just
don't believe it. Your subconscious doesn't
believe it. What are some typical
(30:44):
experiences that people are missing?
Is it that, you know, they needed somebody to be there for
them and they were alone or what?
What's common? So they're very common themes
that really everyone deals with.Number, the number one is
safety. So someone might not have felt
safe and that's a big, you know,core need.
(31:06):
Another one is a sense of belonging or that they're wanted
or welcome in the world. Another thing is being seen,
like you're saying, being seen by someone else, that they
noticed you, that they're aware that you're there.
Another one is being nurtured orbeing cared for.
(31:29):
So there are, there are, you know, many themes, but in the
end it comes down to maybe 5 or 6 core themes that most that
every child needs, you know, to feel safe, to feel that they
belong, to feel that they're loved, to feel that they're
seen, to feel that they're important and to feel that they
deserve, they deserve nourishment.
(31:55):
And these are core needs that ifat any point in life, it can be
from a very young age or it can be something that happened later
in life, is a trauma that kind of, you know, breaks their,
their belief. And if we don't have that need
met at any point, then we develop ways of, of coping.
(32:16):
Mm hmm. And also something important to
say about Akomi is that the defense mechanisms or these
strategies are not viewed as bad.
OK? They're not viewed as something,
oh, well, you, you became this way because of this.
Mm hmm. We really look at them with
kindness. We look at them as something
positive that that your organic self knew at that time that you
(32:38):
know, maybe there was father you.
And your. Parents were there physically,
let's say, but not emotionally. They didn't pay attention.
They weren't focused on you. There might have been another
child who had like special needsor was sick and they just didn't
have space for you. And so you weren't seen.
You know, it's not always your parents fault, but but the point
(33:00):
is that you didn't get what you needed at that time.
For whatever reason. We see that as as very smart,
you know, very wise, that you developed a strategy in a way to
get your needs met at a time when you were very vulnerable.
But at a certain point in life, that strategy doesn't work
anymore. We need a different strategy.
We need something new. Yeah, it's so interesting.
(33:22):
Like as a kid I would I would see my parents maybe not make
the best decision sometimes, right?
So then I developed this little belief that if I were a good
girl and I made all positive decisions, nothing bad would
happen to me. And it's just so interesting
because like, when I slipped andfell, I was like talking to my
(33:45):
therapist and I was like, I justdon't understand why I'm having
health problems. I'm such a good girl.
And it just came out of my mouth.
It was like I was 3 again. I was like, I've been such a
good girl. Like, why is this happening?
And it's just so interesting, even just in any therapy, to be
aware of, you know, what shaped you as a child?
(34:08):
Maybe you didn't feel like you got attention.
Maybe you didn't feel seen. Maybe you like, in my case, I
think I felt like the solution to any chaos was to be good
girl, all as perfect perfection.And it's just like these little
stories that we start telling ourselves when we're trying to
(34:28):
make sense of the world when we're little.
Yeah, and, and that little childis always inside us, even though
we're grown up. So what we do in Hakomi also is
we contact that child. It's it's kind of we get people
sometimes into a child's state and we talked to the child.
So we kind of go backwards and images or memories or
(34:51):
visualizations and we talked to the child so that they
understand. Maybe, like you said, you know,
maybe you didn't get a lot of attention, but it wasn't, it
was, you know, you thought it was your fault, maybe that I
wasn't good enough. So I'm going to be better.
I'm going to be really good. Then they're going to pay
attention to me. So maybe we tell the child at a
(35:12):
certain point, you know, they were just really busy and
overwhelmed with something else or they were working and it's
not about you, you know, you areperfect.
You were perfect. You didn't have to try so hard.
And we get the kid, the child inside of us to, to understand
something new. And then from the inside,
everything changes. And then your behaviors, your
(35:33):
needs change. That's the belief in Hakomi.
Yeah, it's kind of like eventually your story changes.
The story that you tell yourselfchanges.
I know that you've said it's notlike the big trauma, like your
dad getting arrested. It's not often the big trauma
that we hold onto. It's these little stories.
(35:54):
I don't know if you want to talkabout that, but it's so
interesting. Like what we remember, I
remember like being at the hairdresser and my hairdresser
was like always married to a millionaire.
He owned a bunch of McDonald's and she was showing us this
shirt. She's like, I just bought this
shirt like to for the weekend for an event.
And then on the way home, my momwas like, you know, that's not
(36:15):
real life. Like going shopping just for an
event, like going shopping because you have something to go
to. And I remember thinking, well,
it has to be real life because my hairdresser just did it.
She just went shopping for an event.
Like anyway, it's just interesting, the little stories.
But I totally got off subject. Tell us your what you mean when
you say, you know, it's not likenecessarily like the big trauma
(36:38):
that we hold on to. Yeah, it's funny.
In my book, I have a saying, I don't know if you saw it, maybe
the the deepest, our deepest binding beliefs are held in the
littlest stories of our lives. And this is what I noticed.
It wasn't the big trauma actually, that were the things
that I was working on as I started to work in therapy
because obviously I went througha lot of therapy, but it was a
(37:02):
little things, a little messagesthat you get here and there.
And we just trust the process when you're in therapy or in
Hakomi psychotherapy, just trustthe process that whatever needs
to come up will come up. And some of the strangest
stories, like you just mentionedsomething random out of nowhere,
you know, would come up. You have this big trauma, but
(37:23):
yet you start to notice that, no, I got this strange message
when I was growing up and not really stuck.
So I believe that that's true. Sometimes it is a big, you know,
a big trauma that shakes us. But often it can be a series of
little mini traumas overtime or little events that tell you
you're not important or you're not worthy or you're not good
(37:46):
enough or you're not smart enough or you don't belong that
aren't really connected to the big thing that you think you're
dealing with. So in the book also, there's a
lot of sub stories. You'll see.
There's, you know, big story, but then there are a lot of
smaller stories as well. That's so interesting.
(38:08):
I want to get your website whereeveryone can find your book.
I know I went to your website and I signed up for a free Happy
Back Spine Health course, and I think it's videos that I'm going
to start watching at home that Ifound on your website.
I also know you have a YouTube channel.
I'll put that in the show notes,the Happy Backyoga with Rachel
(38:29):
on YouTube. So I want to give you an
opportunity to tell everyone where your website is and how
they can learn more about like yoga to build a better spine to
boost our mental health. I mean, I can't believe we've
been talking for an hour alreadybecause there's and you know
(38:51):
what my main question is before I give you the floor to tell
everyone where to find you. Actually, my main question is,
and tell me you can tell me if you don't want to answer this,
but like, why was your dad selling the drugs?
Was it like he felt financial pressure and he was trying to
make money? Was he doing drugs himself?
(39:12):
Like what? And that's all in your new book
as is. Yeah.
But I'm just curious I guess. It's, it's a question I was
asking myself. I don't believe he was using OK.
I don't think he was actually involved in using drugs himself
because we would have noticed that there was something wrong.
I do think he was very stressed for financially and he got
(39:33):
involved with the wrong people. And it started with more like,
you know, little mini petty crimes.
I would say, you know, selling fake passports.
There was a lot of other, some fraud, some things going on
there and I guess somebody askedhim to do a job.
(39:56):
You know, I that's, that's the sense I made of it.
I actually never got the answersthat I had asked for or
requested. So I don't really know.
But I don't think I think it wasvery much about making money
that he was somewhat felt somewhat desperate and got
involved with the wrong friends.Yeah, and it's so easy in life
(40:18):
to get off track and find ourselves doing something that
we have done before. We know better.
But here we are again, doing thesame thing and expecting a
different result. And I think that's the beautiful
thing about yoga. Even if you just do the belly
breathing that we talked about at the beginning of this
episode, connecting with yourself is so important.
(40:39):
It'll just help us navigate lifein a more healthy and happy way
because it is so easy to navigate.
Off course it is so easy as a human.
There are so many distractions, temptations and just moments
where maybe we don't think things through or connect with
ourselves before we make a decision.
(41:00):
There are so many decisions to make on a daily basis.
Being human is not easy. No, not easy at all.
But we learned that in Buddhist teachings, to write that all
life is suffering or that suffering is just a part of
life. Yeah, but it is complex.
And unfortunately, if you do nothing, you usually tend to get
(41:20):
sucked into your repetitive patterns.
And that's where yoga comes in and really teaches you that
having a discipline or having a way to check in with what you're
doing or why you're making thosechoices is important.
And having that pause that you mentioned is super important.
Yeah, and when you break up the tension in your body, you can
break up your patterns, the way that you're holding yourself,
(41:42):
the habits and patterns of how you even hold your muscles.
So, Rachel, thank you for being here at this podcast exists to
have guests like you come on andhelp us continue to navigate
life in the best way possible. Tell us where everybody can find
you online. Best place to find me on my
website is Happy backyoga.com. That's my main website.
(42:05):
It will take you to my books, myretreats, and some free videos
and also some videos and coursesand trainings that Ioffer people
online. I've done a lot of recordings.
So people are interested in studying yoga for Happy Back.
It's a lot of resources there aswell.
And Greece, the retreat in Greece will be focused on all of
(42:26):
the things we talked about. The practices are very much
happy Backyoga practices. So anyone can come.
And I'm really comfortable working with all types of
bodies. That's kind of my strength and
giving you what you need from your practice and not forcing
you to do something that you're,you know, is not good for you.
But we also dive a little bit into the Hakomi, understanding
(42:46):
the different strategies. So it's a lot of transformation
for body and soul. So happy backyoga.com is where
you can find. Me awesome and I will also post
a clip of this podcast on Instagram.
I'll post all of our socials in the show notes for you guys and
(43:07):
that completes our episode for today.
If this podcast content felt true for you, follow the podcast
today and leave a rating or review on Apple Podcast.
Have an amazing day and keep exploring your favorite ways to
navigate life with a little morecourage and creativity every
single all day. Thank you for being here.
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