March 3, 2025 • 38 mins
In a world increasingly fraught with stress and anxiety, finding balance and peace can sometimes seem unattainable. This episode of the Heart of Motion podcast dives deep into the potent intersection of movement, mindfulness, and health, featuring expert insights from Siobhan O'Connell, a seasoned physiotherapist with 40+ years experience. We explore how chronic stress influences our overall health, shaping our bodies and minds in detrimental ways. Siobhan shares her journey of discovering the mind-body connection, revealing how integrating ancient wisdom from meditation with modern science can open pathways to healing that extend beyond traditional practices.
Listeners will learn how meditation, often misconstrued as an esoteric pastime, plays a crucial role in counteracting the effects of stress while promoting overall well-being. Siobhan explains how mindfulness can revolutionize our understanding of healing and wellness, leading to transformative changes in the way we approach our health. The episode culminates in a guided meditation, offering listeners a tangible experience of the serenity that can be cultivated through such practices.
Join us as we uncover the layers of our personal health narratives, highlighting that within us lies the capacity for self-healing and resilience. Whether you seek to understand the science behind stress or are curious about meditation's profound benefits, there's something here for everyone.
Let's embark on this journey together and reclaim the joy of movement and connection in our lives. Join Siobhan O'Connell for a Meditation as Medicine workshop on Saturday, March 15, 2025 from 2 - 5 pm at Moving Spirit Pilates Studio in North Vancouver! Registration details below.
Connect with Siobhan O'Connell
www.meditationasmedicine.ca
Instagram: @meditation.as.medicine
Meditation as Medicine Workshop
Saturday, March 15, 2025
2:00 - 5:00 pm
Moving Spirit Pilates Studio
#205-38 Fell Ave.
North Vancouver, BC
$65.00 + GST
Click here for more info and to register
Want to learn more?
Siobhan recommends checking out the following resources:
www.deepakchopra.com
www.drjoedispenza.com
www.drdivi.com
Heart of Motion Podcast host Susannah Steers is a Pilates & Integrated Movement Specialist and owner of Moving Spirit Pilates in North Vancouver, BC. She is passionate about movement, about connections and about life.
Through movement teaching, speaking, and facilitating workshops, she supports people in creating movement practices that promote fitness from the inside out. She loves building community, and participating in multi-disciplinary collaborations.
Along with her friend and colleague Gillian McCormick, Susannah also co-hosts The Small Conversations for a Better World podcast – an interview based podcast dedicated to promoting the kind of conversations about health that can spark positive change in individuals, families, communities and across the globe.
Social Media Links:
Moving Spirit Pilates Instagram
Moving Spirit Pilates Facebook
Susannah Steers Instagram
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Susannah Steers (00:00):
Welcome to the Heart of Motion podcast.
I'm Susanna Steers and I'll beyour host as we explore the
heart, soul and science ofmovement as a pathway to more
active, vibrant and connectedliving.
Nothing happens until somethingmoves, so let's get started.
I'm going to hazard a guess thatmost of the people listening
(00:21):
right now are feeling buffetedby life lately.
Between work, family, finances,health and all the things we
need to navigate there, we'realso watching some pretty
dramatic world events unfold.
There's a lot of noise aroundus, lots of things creating
stress at the deepest levels and, whether we acknowledge it or
(00:42):
not, that stress is affectingour health.
In November, on a previousepisode, we talked a little
about that stress and how itmight affect our nervous systems
and our movement.
Today we're going to dig alittle deeper and talk more
about how that stress can be theroot cause of all kinds of
illness and ways that we mightbe able to shift that for
(01:03):
ourselves.
My guest today on the podcast ismy friend and colleague,
Siobhan O'Connell.
We've known each other for along time and I think we've been
on similar but somewhatdifferent paths in pursuit of
whole person health since wefirst met, way back when.
Siobhan is a registeredphysiotherapist with 46 years of
(01:24):
experience with the human mindand body in a whole variety of
settings, and she understandsnow more than ever how important
the mind and the spirit are tothe health of the body and all
its relationships.
She's now working to bringforward the best of the
8,000-year-old wisdom traditionof meditation with current
(01:44):
quantum science to help all ofus to understand the
intelligence that underlines ourcreation, our health and our
capacity for self-healing.
Siobhan, welcome to the podcast.
Siobhan O'Connell (01:57):
Thank you, Sue.
There's no place I'd rather bethan here today.
Susannah Steers (02:01):
Well, you know the body and all its
relationships.
You are speaking my language.
I have to ask you're anorthopedic physiotherapist.
What has brought you from anorthopedic physio practice to a
place where you want to exploreand deepen your understanding of
the mind-body connection to thehealth of the body, like how do
those two go together?
Siobhan O'Connell (02:23):
The short answer is that, since I was a
very young physio, I was veryaware of the fact that we were
taught a lot of techniques andthings to do for people and to
people, but that theeffectiveness of those
techniques was very muchdependent on the mindset of
people and who got better andwho didn't.
So my curiosity was tweaked along, long time ago, but our
(02:43):
culture didn't allow for toomuch exploration in that area at
that point in time.
And in 2014, I was at thatpoint in my career where I could
really listen to my curiositypath, and my curiosity was all
about how does the mind interact?
Like, what is the story?
And, like many, many people,meditation and mindfulness were
starting to show up, and I didthe apps and I did the workshops
(03:06):
and I did various books.
Like you can fill your leftbrain with books and information
, but you don't really get theexperience until you go to your
right brain, right, yeah?
So I made the decision.
I said where do I have to goand who is the top guy in the
world for this?
And it was Dr Deepak Chopra,and it still pretty much is.
And I went to a beautifulretreat that he hosted, called
(03:27):
Seduction of Spirit inCalifornia, my husband and I
both actually went together.
It was a splendid outing and wegot the full goods, the full
eight-day long experience.
And Deepak is such a phenomenalteacher because he gave us the
history, the philosophy.
Where does meditation come fromthe origins?
He gave us the science.
He gave us the history, thephilosophy.
Where does meditation come fromthe origins?
He gave us the science, he gaveus the research, he gave us
everything, but, moreimportantly, he gave us the
(03:48):
experience.
So I was so hooked.
It was just a beautiful,beautiful experience, though the
entire week was so welldeveloped that I went back and
forth to the Chopra Center formany years and finally they
offered a teacher training in2017.
That was going to be the lastlive training, so I thought I'll
(04:10):
do that.
Because I won't do it, I'm nota great online student.
So I've been teaching andcertified since 2017.
So that was kind of thebeginning of it and then
integrating it with the physiopractice.
It was finding the portal, likefinding the conversational
avenue that I could kind ofintroduce this to my patients.
And that wasn't a hard thing todo because in the study of
meditation as it's taught todayand as I learned it from Deepak.
There are two streams, shall wesay, and the first stream is
(04:33):
very much about the physiologyof stress and the second stream,
of course, is the spiritualityside of it.
So, on the stress side, deepakwas very, very crystal clear on
the fact that we are, as youreferenced, in an epidemic of
stress at the moment.
We hate to use that wordbecause it's so activating, but
(04:55):
we are, and it seems to get moreexistential every second day.
And what I really learned fromhim very powerfully was that we
are actually born into peace inour bodies.
We're born to be peaceful.
We're born into ourparasympathetic nervous system,
which is about rest, relaxation,creativity, happiness.
We have more brain cellsdevoted to the experience of joy
and happiness than any otherthing in our bodies actually.
(05:15):
So that is our natural restingstate.
And, yes, we have the option tokick out into the sympathetic
part of the nervous system,which is the fight flight, and
God bless it.
It's a powerful thing when weneed to fly out of a building
that might be on fire, or peoplefelt it the other day with the
earthquake, and in that momentwhere you feel threatened, many,
(05:35):
many bad things happen in thebody, for good reason, but for
short term.
So blood pressure goes up,people start sweating, immune
function goes down, digestionshifts from the belly to the
legs because you might have toescape.
Blood starts to thickenimmediately in anticipation of a
wound.
So phenomenal, elegant,exquisite response, but very,
very energy, expensive.
(05:55):
And we're understanding nowthat people today are
experiencing that eight to 10times a day, every day, months,
weeks, even years.
And the net effect of that isthat people, are us, all of us
are creating cortisol, which isthe stress hormone.
Lovely to have a little spikewhen you need it, but when it's
up an elevator for days, months,weeks, years, it's underpinning
(06:17):
autoimmune disease that we'reseeing diabetes, cancer,
arthritis, even dementia.
All of these things all comedue to an unchecked stress
response in the body.
Susannah Steers (06:29):
Wow, I mean, I see it often in the studio.
You know, in terms of people'smovement, in that they're not
breathing well, that theirmuscles it's almost an armored
state.
You know, the sympatheticmuscles are all hyperactive and
ready to go and those deepersympathetic or parasympathetic
associated muscles, whether it'sthe diaphragm or the deep
(06:50):
abdominal wall or some of thoseplaces that are a lot more about
the support and sustain, arejust not doing their job.
So as a physio, you probablyhave people coming in to see you
with a bad shoulder or a painin their back or something in
their foot.
How are you introducingmeditation when people are
(07:13):
coming in with something theywant fixed?
Siobhan O'Connell (07:15):
Well, I explain to them that their
physical situation is attachedto a much bigger intelligence of
healing in their bodies.
The injury that they got yeah,you know they might have a torn
shoulder or whatever it is Inthe moment of injury or stress
that the body we talk aboutfight.
We talk about flight, but wealso talk about this thing
called freeze, and that's verymuch, I think, what we see in
(07:37):
both our works, where they arefrozen and they can't move, but
they also can't breathe and theyalso can't sleep and their mind
is going a million miles aminute.
They're going to the past,they're going to the future.
So the first thing we have todo is acknowledge that the body
can heal, but it can't heal.
If you're in a state of freezecan't happen right.
All the blood is in theamygdala, which is the reptilian
(07:58):
brain, can't come to thefrontal brain where all the good
stuff happens.
So the first thing we have todo is start from the inside out.
So I typically would start withan explanation of just that
kind, depending on where theperson's mind is at, to receive
that kind of information.
But I'll do that.
First, set the stage.
It's almost like you're goingto set the scene and then on
that scene, can we deal with ashoulder, can we deal with the
(08:19):
breath, can we deal with therecovery plan and the rehab plan
?
So that's typically kind of howI would approach that.
Susannah Steers (08:25):
I love it.
It makes me think of the sayingthe body will do what it can
with what it's got in the momentit's in to help you heal.
And that again brings it rightdown to that moment, to what is
happening right now.
Siobhan O'Connell (08:41):
But if that goes on indefinitely and we try
to rehab somebody's neck orshoulder and they can't breathe
and their minds are still inturmoil because they're going
back to the car accident orthey're going back to the point
that they missed, that lost thematch, that created a whole
bunch of emotional drama forthem, you can't really get a
thorough healing established inthat kind of situation.
But what I'm finding more now isthat, especially with the news
(09:04):
and the amount of media thatwe're exposed to by choice, we
do it because we think it's aactual thoughts, and this is
such an interesting thingbecause we have the idea that we
(09:29):
are our thoughts.
But what we learn frommeditation is that we're not our
thoughts, we're the observer ofour thoughts and the thoughts
which are coming at us from thesecond.
People turn on the radio in themorning and I have a good
friend who turns on the radio,opens two newspapers and their
phone going.
All this is happening firstthing in the morning.
So getting all the informationfrom all these different places.
But the amygdala, which is thereptilian brain designed to deal
(09:51):
with stress, into which all ofthis information from all these
sources is going, the amygdalais not designed to actually tell
the difference between thestress that a person is reading
about is happening in Gaza oroverseas, or happening to them.
The amygdala can'tdifferentiate.
Susannah Steers (10:07):
And it's filtering all of this.
Siobhan O'Connell (10:09):
Exactly.
It just doesn't.
It just produces fight, flight,freeze in response to all of it
.
It can't tell the difference,but people aren't aware of that
and all of that creates thisthought loop cycle.
So we know that we have about60,000 to 80,000 thoughts a day,
every day.
Mostly they're the samethoughts you had yesterday,
they're the same thoughts we'regoing to have tomorrow, and very
few of them are focused on thepresent moment, here and now.
(10:32):
So, whether it's mindfulmovement that I experienced when
I work with you, which Iabsolutely adore, or whether
it's a meditation practice justhere in my own home, the first
thing that has to happen is Ihave to leave the past and leave
the future and be here now.
That's the first thing andthat's kind of what mindfulness
is.
So mindfulness, if you will,people often ask what's the
difference between mindfulnessand meditation.
(10:52):
It's a form of meditation, butit's just bringing your
attention to the present moment,and the breath, of course, is
the portal for that.
That's the way we can accessthat at any moment in time, but
it's kind of can access that atany moment in time, but it's
kind of essential that we dobecause we're understanding that
our nervous systems being sooverstimulated, they're
exhausted and this chronicoverproduction of cortisol
(11:12):
causing all this disease statesis actually reversible and we
have a lot of science andresearch to show this now Quite
exciting, profound and everincreasing amounts.
There's lots there.
Susannah Steers (11:24):
Okay, wait there.
Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait.
You're so, you're sick.
So here am I.
I have almost 59 year old woman, you know, menopausal.
All the things have happened interms of my, my life experience
and my physical health and allof the rest of it.
There is an opportunity for meto shift, yes, my cancer risk or
(11:44):
my Alzheimer's risk or my like.
That can happen, even this latein the game.
Siobhan O'Connell (11:50):
It can happen any moment, at any time that
you choose to take the time togo from out there to in here, to
reset, to shift.
I call the nervous system.
It's like a house with tworooms.
You know.
There's the quiet room.
That's where the good stuffhappens, where the healing
happens, and not just healing.
I'm going to get more specificwith that.
We know now that with thatpractice of going inward, that
(12:11):
not only can we set up the bodyfor healing, we can actually
change genetic expression.
There's studies were done, someabout five or six years ago by
the Chokework organization, andthey showed that one of the
consequences of stress is thatat the end of our genes we have
a little um.
The end the tip of the gene iscalled the telomere.
The telomere produces an enzymecalled telomerase.
Under conditions of chronicstress, telomerase production
(12:35):
actually goes down and the genestarts to come apart.
It's like a, it's like a laceunraveling.
But with the practice ofmeditation we we go in and we
give our nervous systems thatregenerative rest, telomerase
production actually goes up andgenes can heal and repair
themselves.
Susannah Steers (12:50):
Wow, it's a different kind of rest.
It's not the kind of rest thatpeople often think of oh, I need
a break, I'm going to go homeand just read a book with a cup
of tea, or I'm going to watch TVfor a while.
This is a very different kindof rest that is restorative at a
level that just reading a bookis not going to do.
Siobhan O'Connell (13:06):
Reading a book isn't enough.
No, I mean, reading a book isnice, but you're still focusing
on some other story that theremight be drama, trauma and death
.
And you know, god knows what'sin the fiction that we're
reading.
It's giving the mind and thenervous system a complete rest
so that it knows what to do.
You know God bless MotherNature.
You know she sent us into thisworld to cope with stress and to
survive and do the things wehave to do.
(13:28):
But she also gave us the toolswith which to recover from
stress and to heal and repairourselves from the inside out.
Susannah Steers (13:35):
As a kid, when I was growing up, my
associations of meditation.
I had some older brothers andone of them was into
transcendental meditation andthis was something with
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and atthat time I thought, okay, the
people who were doing thismeditation stuff are either
sitting on a yoga mat going omor they've got the flowy robes
(13:56):
around them and it was very muchsort of a hippie image in my
mind.
And then a little later in mylife I did a little bit of
Vipassana meditation with aBuddhist monk and that was
wonderful.
And then a little later in mylife I did a little bit of
Vipassana meditation with aBuddhist monk, and that was
wonderful and he obviouslybrought with him some Buddhist
teachings.
And then a different kind ofmeditation that I did with a guy
named Dr Les Femi.
(14:16):
It was very much.
It was called open focusmeditation and it was really
about, again, attention andbringing attention and altering
brainwaves by what you wereattending to.
But I think that there's stillquite a woo.
You know, meditation is alittle woo.
It's not something you canquantify and say this.
(14:36):
I mean, maybe now, maybe moreyou can, but it still seems like
it's a little bit woo.
There's still some sort of do Ihave to be religious to do this
?
Is it associated with kind ofweird hippie stuff, or can you
speak a little bit to that?
Like it does still seem alittle more mainstream, but
there's still a little bit of awoo attached to it.
Siobhan O'Connell (14:57):
Yeah, I agree with you.
I think the language of aroundmeditation has to be cleaned up
a little bit, and I kind of fallbetween two pieces here, which
is that it is a mysticalpractice.
When you go into yourselfquietly and you really listen,
you're in your own awareness.
You're listening to your own,the rhythm of your own heart,
your own breath.
(15:17):
It's a profound.
It's a profound experience andnot one that we're trained to do
.
Right, our focus is always verymuch out there and our focus
when we're in trouble is alwaysvery much out there.
There's somebody for this.
I need to talk to this personabout this.
Whatever, and God bless us all,we all.
That's what we do and we aredoing it all.
But one of the things that Ireally like to teach people is
that all of this is actually inyou yourself.
(15:39):
You just it's the, it's apractice.
Now, the style of meditation Ilearned at the Chopra Center is
is transcendental meditation.
It's the exact same philosophy.
It's a thousand years old andit's it's considered to be the.
It was a philosophy of life.
It was never a religion oranything formal.
It was just the way peoplelived a thousand years ago on
the banks of the Indus Riveranything formal, it was just the
(16:00):
way people lived 8,000 yearsago on the banks of the Indus
River.
So fast forward thousands ofyears and we have all kinds of
religions and all kinds ofspiritual beliefs and all kinds
of meditation practices, largelybecause humanity is humanity
and we like to tinker withthings and we like to put our
own stamp and brand on things.
So there's meditation where youcan walk, you can, you know,
you can look at a candle.
You have to empty thosemeditation styles where they
(16:22):
require that you empty your mindcompletely, and I think that's
where the woo comes in.
It's like what the like?
This is very unachievable.
But what I love about TM andthe style and the Chopra
meditation, which are the same,is that they fundamentally
understood, as did the originalteachers of all of this work,
which comes, as I said, theVedic tradition, and they
understood that the human mindis a mess the Buddhists call it
(16:42):
the monkey mind, and you'renever going to stop it and you
shouldn't try to stop it.
So what we do is we use a mantra, and a mantra is a Sanskrit
word, a beautiful word fromSanskrit.
So, if you think of le main andtraverser, we even have
language that comes fromSanskrit.
So a mantra is a tool thattakes you by the hand to cross
over.
(17:02):
I never knew that.
Yeah, and it's always a gentle,vibrational sound from nature.
It's nothing that well I don'tknow Sanskrit anyway but the
words and the vibrations that weuse are extremely soft and
soothing to the nervous system.
So we don't just sit in a chairand close our eyes and hope for
the best, because that's notgoing to last long.
Traffic is going to go by andyou've got things going on.
(17:24):
And so we teach breath work andwe give a mantra.
And the purpose of the mantrais that you slowly and quietly
repeat it to yourself so yourmind has something gentle to
allow it to withdraw with.
And over time, when your mindstarts to fall in love with that
process of withdrawal and thepeace and the deliciousness of
that experience, the mantra justgoes away.
(17:46):
So it's like training wheels ona bike while you train your mind
.
So when the thoughts come up,you say, okay, I've got to pick
up the car at half two.
Okay, fine, I'm just going tocome back to my mantra.
So we look at the thoughts likeclouds drifting along the sky
on a sunny day.
We want to stay in the sky butnot get busy with the clouds,
and the mantra helps you to dothat and we set a timer.
(18:06):
I teach people how to do thatand how to just be gentle.
The mind is like a muscle, sowe start with maybe 10 minutes,
12 minutes.
The science and the researchsays optimal is about 20 to 25
minutes.
Twice a day would be ideal,twice a day okay.
And that's the type ofmeditation that causes the brain
to actually change.
(18:27):
So we shift activity from thereptilian brain to the frontal
lobes.
This is where intuition lives,creativity, memory.
The frontal lobes, actually inpeople who meditate, start to
change and they get bigger andmore developed and the
fight-flight-fear part of thebrain actually shrinks.
That amazing.
Even the mind.
Like any other muscle in thebody, even though it's not a
technical muscle, it behaves thesame way.
(18:49):
If you give it what feels goodto it, it loves it and it just
just absorbs it and it just getsbetter and better.
Susannah Steers (18:54):
It's interesting to hear you say it
in that way.
You're taking yourself to aneutral where the
neuroplasticity has anopportunity to go.
It's not already pre-directedin one direction that you're so
used to traveling that it's hardto shift from that.
It's like you're opening up awindow and creating an entirely
(19:14):
new potential for your brain andyour body to adapt in a very
different way.
Siobhan O'Connell (19:21):
Except for one small little thing which,
again, I think in our societywe're so crisis-focused all the
time that, again, speaking tothe elegance of the human system
, we are hardwired.
We do have this quality calledhomeostasis, which is the body's
ability and desire built intoour DNA to be in balance and be
(19:41):
in health.
You know the body is hardwiredfor good digestion and you know
movement and thinking andcreativity and all of these
things.
That is our hard drive.
So when we get distracted withfaulty software and we start
putting funny patterns in thesoftware and you decide I need
to make some changes, that harddrive will always want to take
over and help.
So it doesn't take very long.
(20:01):
That your point about yourneuroplasticity.
Once you start doing somethingthat brings the body back into
its highest functioning, thebody loves.
It's like, oh, I got this,let's go for it.
Like, just give me more of thatthing, because this feels
really good.
And so we're always workingwith the body's ability to heal
and repair, which is built inLike that's not up for
discussion, that's what it is,it's what it does, which is why
(20:22):
I think neuroplasticity andwe're so excited to learn more
about that, because we're justworking with the incoming tide
of the body's self-repaircapacity.
Susannah Steers (20:30):
We talked a little bit about the woo and
we're talking aboutneuroplasticity and it's kind of
hard to measure the benefits ofthis empirically, maybe unless
you're looking at a body frombirth to death.
I mean, I remember reading JonKabat-Zinn's book Little
Catastrophe Living many, manyyears ago when he talked about
some of the challenges that hehad of setting up his first
(20:53):
mindfulness-based stressreduction program at the U of
Massachusetts and that was totreat sick people.
That program was 1979.
But it seems like it's still apretty fringe idea in a medical
setting.
Siobhan O'Connell (21:07):
You're right, but it is changing and thank
God that it is because peopleare finding they're certainly
looking at alternative ways totry and try and help themselves
and there are, as I said, anincreasing amount of studies
that are coming through and ofcourse it's not overly difficult
thing to study from the pointof view that when we circle back
to chronic cortisoloverproduction, chronic
(21:29):
inflammatory states causing pain, disease, you know, especially
in the autoimmune world, thatwhen you start to change a
behavior that's driving cortisol, you're going to see a
significant drop.
In the subject of an object, ofpictures of how people are
showing up, it actually doesn'ttake very long.
So we're having more and morestudies.
I did have a referral from acardiologist just about a month
(21:49):
ago for a gentleman who had aheart attack and said well, you
know, meditation is.
The studies are starting toshow that changing your mind is
really going to help change yourbody, especially with the
stress related information, andso that was a first.
That was kind of exciting.
There are certainly somerheumatologists around the city
that are certainly understandingthat stress side of it.
It's just quite hard for peopleto find a meditation teacher
(22:12):
honestly, and especially if yougo shopping and there's a
Buddhist here, and there's thisand there's this and it's a hard
to navigate.
Susannah Steers (22:19):
So especially if you don't really know what
you're doing.
Siobhan O'Connell (22:23):
Where do you start?
And, like Buddhism, is its ownwhole belief system with very
similar, many, many overlaps.
So what I really enjoyed aboutthe Chopra process was that it's
coming from a medicalperspective and giving, and it
has certainly helped to give melanguage with which to make the
process of meditation relatableand functional for people and
they start to feel better very,very, very quickly.
It doesn't actually take longto make the changes.
(22:45):
So I think we're on the cusp ofa whole.
I mean, you remember 20 yearsago when acupuncture was kind of
a dodgy, weird like really, andnow everybody has acupuncture.
So things change actually quite, quite quickly and I think we
won't even be having thisconversation in another 10 years
.
Wow, because the the focus onlooking inward and getting tools
from within ourselves is, uh,is is just gaining in interest
(23:07):
and popularity and, again,evidence-based as well.
Susannah Steers (23:10):
So where is the research happening, is it?
I mean, I guess we're talkingabout quantum science as well as
traditional science yeah, it'scoming's coming from.
Siobhan O'Connell (23:20):
A lot of it is coming from quantum for sure,
because we're understandingthat what we're actually
changing is our.
We're changing our energy field.
We're changing our own energywhen we meditate and we are
understanding now more and morethe old way of looking at the.
Just to put it in a small way.
You know, we're coming from aplace of Newtonian law in
physics where there was causeand effect and there was gravity
(23:41):
and that happened, that balldropped and that caused that.
Now we've shifted into thisquantum world where we realize
that we're exploring more andmore to do with molecular and
atomic energy.
We're understanding more andmore that everything is composed
of energy, like it's not up fordiscussion Everything is energy
.
(24:05):
If I took every cell in yourbody and I laid it out on a
floor 70 trillion cells I'd findthat between one cell and the
next there's a gap, and in thatgap is light energy.
Why can't we see it?
Because as humans, we only seeless than 0.01 percent of all
the light that's actually on thespectrum to be that we're aware
of.
So this is going back to theveiling tradition.
They call this the maya, theillusion, like we think that
this is all there is, when it'simportant and it's physical, but
it's only a tiny.
So when, if you really want toget esoteric, like when we're
(24:26):
meditating, we are getting, weare moving into the, the, the
field of consciousness, thequantum field that created
everything.
So, um, it's.
There's a much bigger, biggerpiece to that.
But you know, with for somebodywho's interested in meditating,
they don't have to be havingthat type of conversation
necessarily, unless they reallywant to do that.
But on its most simple level,it's about down-regulating your
(24:47):
own nervous system, bringing youback to the parasympathetic,
the peaceful, quiet room in thehouse and away from the chaos
and the stress, so your body canheal and repair and reset
itself.
Susannah Steers (24:57):
It's funny just hearing you say that in the
quiet room in the house.
It brings me calm, and I knowjust watching your face when you
were talking about thedeliciousness of sinking into
that meditative state.
I'm curious what you've noticed.
I mean, you've been practicingthis now for a while and you're
teaching it.
This is clearly something thatis super important in your life.
(25:17):
What changes have you noticed?
For you.
Siobhan O'Connell (25:20):
I noticed my sleep has really improved.
I noticed my general, myrelationships have improved.
I'm not as hot and reactive,maybe, as I would have been in
the past.
I tended to make a lot ofdecisions very quickly and just
always feel that I had to bekind of ready for the next
crisis that was going to happenand be ready to respond and do
make the right decisions, andit's made me just a lot more
(25:42):
peaceful and calm and I thinkthe decisions I'm making are
more creative andmultidimensional than they were
before.
Physically, I feel better in myown body, I think, because I was
also had a business for a longtime and you don't realize until
you come out of that how muchthat was actually costing you
physically.
There was never enough time toreally exercise or do my lovely
(26:06):
Pilates work or anything, soit's just been a huge shift all
around for myself.
But I've seen those shifts inmy patients as well too, who
experience it in terms ofreduced pain, less dependency on
medication, just less.
More enjoyment of life and atthe end of the day we're here to
enjoy life and enjoy our bodiesand enjoy our minds.
So while we can talk all daylong about the physiological
benefits.
In the end, we just want tofeel good, we want to enjoy our
(26:26):
day and our relationships and bein joy and in fun, and that's
what I believe is what we'rehere to do.
Susannah Steers (26:31):
I love this so much.
My team and I have adopted atheme for this year and it's for
the whole year at the Pilatesstudio and that theme is
presence.
We felt that amidst all thevarious things that people can
do for their health, finding andembodying their own presence is
probably one of the mostimportant, most powerful things
(26:52):
they can do, and while we don'tobviously include a specific
meditative element to ourclasses, we do our best to
encourage that sort of embodiedpresence, that mindful state
throughout.
You know, people get bettermovement skills.
They, you know, more comfortand capacity in their bodies.
Siobhan O'Connell (27:09):
And yeah, and I love that you, I mean your,
your business is called movingspirit.
Well, the origin of spirit isspirit, to in latin, which is
breath, right, yes, and to be inbreath is being in profound
contact with yourself.
You know in a deep way, youknow what I.
What I say to my patients tooand I know I've heard it at
yours is be here now, don't bein the past, don't be in the
(27:32):
future.
We have this precious time.
This is your investment, likethis is your time when you're
going to really sow and reap.
You know benefits at deeplevels in movement and it's a
profound thing and I thinkpeople really need to be
realized and realize that that'sa huge thing to be here now, to
be present and sometimes it's abit of a hard sell at first.
Susannah Steers (27:51):
You know, when people first come to our studio,
you know they're sort of likeyeah, I'm here to move, let's go
, let's go, I want to get thatit.
And, yes, all of that willhappen, but be here now.
And so once they get throughthat and start to experience
what that feels like, then theycome to depend on it.
Siobhan O'Connell (28:06):
It's like oh, I need this hour for myself,
mm-hmm yeah, but then throughyour breath work, which I
learned from you 30 years ago, I, and forgot for about 25 of
those.
But now I'm back.
You know, sometimes you realizeyou sow a seed with somebody
you know and you mightn't see itin that year or that day, but
you plant something deep likethat and it never goes anywhere.
(28:27):
It just, it just appears whenit's time for it to come back.
And uh, came back for me in abig way from what I learned from
you way back at that time.
And you can do it anytime.
That's the thing.
Once you have that within youand once it's been reactivated
and you start to see and feelthe value of it, it doesn't
matter if you're in an airportor supermarket or sitting in the
car waiting for a kid.
Like you can have that be here,now, present moment which takes
(28:49):
you from the chaos of theoutside world into your own
inner terrain.
So it doesn't always have to bea formal practice of sitting
with your eyes closed in amantra.
It can be a movement, it can bein moments that you take for
yourself.
That are the reset moments.
So I think us just takingcontrol back of our nervous
systems is a really importantthing.
Susannah Steers (29:08):
Well, there is that saying that you know
everything we need is within us,and it's hard to maybe believe
that when we're out runningaround chasing all the things
and finding the experts andlistening to all the social
media stuff and all the noisethat's coming at us.
But it's interesting when youdo start to deepen into that
(29:31):
self, that lovely room.
You're talking about how yourresources sort of appear, that
deeper sense of things, andagain, not just for healing but,
like you say, for joy, for thatinner wisdom our sense of being
able to just slough off thethings that, oh yeah, okay, that
thing that looked like a bright, shiny object over there really
(29:52):
isn't relevant.
I don't need that.
Siobhan O'Connell (29:55):
No, definitely, your object over
there really isn't relevant.
I don't need that.
No, definitely, your valueschange definitely.
Susannah Steers (30:00):
Your values change.
Yeah, Siobhan.
How do people get started?
It's hard to find a goodteacher.
I am speaking to a wonderfulteacher and I would love to know
what your advice is for someonewho's just starting out Well.
Siobhan O'Connell (30:12):
I think that learning meditation is a bit
like learning Pilates.
Honestly, it's a very personalexperience.
When I first saw you 30 yearsago, my body was in a certain
place, my beliefs were in acertain place, my nervous system
was in a shambles, and thebeauty of those initial sessions
that we had together so longago was that I thought I started
(30:34):
with the right ingredients in,with the right words and the
right experience to set me onthe course.
And I think meditation is thevery same way.
I find I've tried teachingclasses and groups and it just
doesn't seem to work Well.
People you know have you know,they have stories, they have
conditioning, they have somepeople you know grow up with
really different, varyingreligious experiences and it's
(30:57):
much easier to teach somebodyone to one, who's to find out
like where are they coming from,what is the backstory in your
nervous system, in your mind andin your conditioning and your
beliefs that got you to thisplace, and then kind of starting
with that fresh, fresh slate.
So my own preference is toteach people one-to-one At the
moment, because I'm a registeredphysio.
A lot of my teaching comesthrough somebody who has neck
(31:19):
and back pain and they say.
Oh, by the way, I'd also liketo learn some meditation and as
long as I can incorporatemeditation teaching into a
physical program.
It's still covered, actually,as physio, which is nice because
again, physio is moving to thatplace that we understand that
physiotherapy is a bit of anoxymoron.
There's no such thing asphysical therapy.
You can't achieve success inthe body unless you bring the
mind on board, especially whenyou're dealing with chronic pain
(31:41):
, inflammation, autoimmunediseases and cancer, all these
things.
So my preference is myself toteach my people one-to-one, and
we have three or four sessionsand in that they get the
education, they get theexperience, they have a mantra
and then they have the kind ofthe rules of the road about when
to meditate and how it looksand is.
This is can I do it at bedtime?
(32:01):
Nope, um, do I have to bevegetarian?
Nope, do I have to do all thesethings?
So I just kind of demystify itand just make it a practical
thing.
It's like brain hygiene at itsvery most fundamental.
Honestly, I love that brainhygiene, or it can be a more
elaborate spiritual practice, ifthat's where you are.
But I just like to have theinformation and the training
myself that I can kind of coverthe spectrum, depending on just
like we would do with a movementprogram or any other kind of
(32:21):
treatment program.
It's nice to be able to isolateit and then once you kind of
have that basic, then theworld's.
I mean, I have endlessresources and places I can send
people, but typically, likemyself, people don't do well,
who just try to learn online ortry to learn from an app.
It just doesn't, it doesn'tstick because they don't really
understand the full value of it.
Susannah Steers (32:39):
I think that's a big part of it so, and
sometimes I wonder too aboutthat energy transmission when
you're with someone you know Ialways find I'm a much better
teacher in person than I am overover the waves, and I don't
know if that's just thatphysical presence.
You're sharing space, you'resharing breath, you're sharing a
contact that you don't.
Siobhan O'Connell (32:59):
Well, we know .
I mean, you were talking aboutthe quantum field a few minutes
ago and you know, we know thatthe quantum field is energy,
it's all there is.
We know that each individual,one of us, has our own personal
force field right which goeseight feet around the body.
We know that there's a colorand waveform to it.
We know that those colors andthe waveform has been measured
with infrared photography is thesame as how the chakras are
(33:21):
stacked up, which is the same asthe rainbows that appear in the
same color form.
So this just reminds us everyday that we are part of that
energy field.
So when we meet one-to-one, Ithink it's achievable online.
It's much easier to dosomething online when you've met
the person and you kind of havemade that real energy, that
pure energy connection.
But it's all about the energy,absolutely 100, and especially
(33:41):
in the teaching world, as weboth know, is that we show up
with our hearts first.
It's not the brain and thefacts and the story.
It's like heart to heart, likewho are you and where are you at
and how can I, how can we, incompassion, kind of help, help,
help each other to to moveforward.
That's a hard thing to doonline.
I find I'm not that good yetthat I can do that that well.
But in person is good.
Susannah Steers (34:02):
But to your point, once people have the
basics and they understand whatthey're doing, then it's got you
know lots of resources outthere yeah, I am thrilled to
announce that Siobhan will bepresenting a Meditation as
Medicine workshop at MovingSpirit Pilates in North
Vancouver on Saturday, march15th, from 2 to 4 pm.
So if you're interested inchecking that out, please visit
(34:25):
movingspiritca, and if you headover to the MATS series and
events page, you'll see all thedetails and you can register
there if you like.
And you can also learn moreabout Siobhan and her work by
going to meditationasmedicineca.
I'll put links in the shownotes to all of this stuff.
Siobhan, I wondered if, as weclose out our conversation,
(34:49):
would you be able to lead us ina short meditation.
Siobhan O'Connell (34:54):
Absolutely, we will end with a to our point
that we were just chatting aboutbeing present moment awareness,
and we will just do a shortbreath-based meditation to bring
us into the present moment andinto our own body's beautiful,
elegant, super intelligentenergy system.
So the invitation is to sitback in your chair wherever you
(35:18):
find yourself, close the windowsof your eyes and just let your
body get soft, feel it melting.
The invitation is to imagine aribbon of golden light that
starts in your belly and thatribbon of golden light is going
(35:41):
to follow your spine, from yourpelvis, rippling up towards your
head, rippling past yourkidneys, rippling past your
stomach, your heart, your lungs,bringing the breath up to your
space between your collarbones.
(36:02):
Bring the breath up to thespace between your eyes, third
eye, continue that ribbon oflight all the way to the crown
of your head.
Let it pause there and feel theenergy of the light just
flooding all the parts of yourbrain, feel it encompassing
(36:25):
every organ, your head and yourneck.
And as it comes back down, it'slike it's gently washing over
all your organs.
It comes back down, it's likeit's gently washing over all
your organs, nourishing them,healing what needs to be healed,
calming what needs to be calmed, and just bring that ribbon all
the way down again to yourbelly, all the way down to your
(36:46):
pelvis where you started, andwe'll just repeat that one more
time with breath.
So, as you inhale, draw theribbon up.
Repeat that one more time withbreath.
So as you inhale, draw theribbon up, adding the widening
of your lungs, feeling thatexpansion front to back of your
rib cage.
Draw the ribbon up, up, up, atthe peak of your breath, on a
full inhale, see that beautifulgolden ribbon, a ball of light
(37:12):
at the crown of your head, andwith a long, slow, unhurried
exhale, allow that ribbon oflight to ripple its way down,
all the way down onto yourpelvis where you started, just
knowing that you've nourishedyourself.
You've had a minute in thepresent moment, giving your
(37:34):
nervous system a little breakfrom the outside crazies.
Given yourself a little giftthat you can give yourself any
time with your breath.
Thank you.
Susannah Steers (37:46):
Thank you so much for escorting us into that
beautiful space that we cancarry with us.
I so appreciate you coming andspending some time with me today
.
Siobhan O'Connell (37:56):
Siobhan, it is always a pleasure, pleasure
too, sue, thank you.
Thanks so much.
Bye-bye.
Susannah Steers (38:03):
I hope you enjoyed today's episode.
Subscribe and, if you love whatyou heard, leave a five-star
review and tell people what youenjoyed most.
Join me here again in a coupleof weeks.
For now, let's get moving.
Welcome to the Heart of Motion podcast.
I'm Susanna Steers and I'll beyour host as we explore the
heart, soul and science ofmovement as a pathway to more
active, vibrant and connectedliving.
Nothing happens until somethingmoves, so let's get started.
I'm going to hazard a guess thatmost of the people listening
(00:21):
right now are feeling buffetedby life lately.
Between work, family, finances,health and all the things we
need to navigate there, we'realso watching some pretty
dramatic world events unfold.
There's a lot of noise aroundus, lots of things creating
stress at the deepest levels and, whether we acknowledge it or
(00:42):
not, that stress is affectingour health.
In November, on a previousepisode, we talked a little
about that stress and how itmight affect our nervous systems
and our movement.
Today we're going to dig alittle deeper and talk more
about how that stress can be theroot cause of all kinds of
illness and ways that we mightbe able to shift that for
(01:03):
ourselves.
My guest today on the podcast ismy friend and colleague,
Siobhan O'Connell.
We've known each other for along time and I think we've been
on similar but somewhatdifferent paths in pursuit of
whole person health since wefirst met, way back when.
Siobhan is a registeredphysiotherapist with 46 years of
(01:24):
experience with the human mindand body in a whole variety of
settings, and she understandsnow more than ever how important
the mind and the spirit are tothe health of the body and all
its relationships.
She's now working to bringforward the best of the
8,000-year-old wisdom traditionof meditation with current
(01:44):
quantum science to help all ofus to understand the
intelligence that underlines ourcreation, our health and our
capacity for self-healing.
Siobhan, welcome to the podcast.
Siobhan O'Connell (01:57):
Thank you, Sue.
There's no place I'd rather bethan here today.
Susannah Steers (02:01):
Well, you know the body and all its
relationships.
You are speaking my language.
I have to ask you're anorthopedic physiotherapist.
What has brought you from anorthopedic physio practice to a
place where you want to exploreand deepen your understanding of
the mind-body connection to thehealth of the body, like how do
those two go together?
Siobhan O'Connell (02:23):
The short answer is that, since I was a
very young physio, I was veryaware of the fact that we were
taught a lot of techniques andthings to do for people and to
people, but that theeffectiveness of those
techniques was very muchdependent on the mindset of
people and who got better andwho didn't.
So my curiosity was tweaked along, long time ago, but our
(02:43):
culture didn't allow for toomuch exploration in that area at
that point in time.
And in 2014, I was at thatpoint in my career where I could
really listen to my curiositypath, and my curiosity was all
about how does the mind interact?
Like, what is the story?
And, like many, many people,meditation and mindfulness were
starting to show up, and I didthe apps and I did the workshops
(03:06):
and I did various books.
Like you can fill your leftbrain with books and information
, but you don't really get theexperience until you go to your
right brain, right, yeah?
So I made the decision.
I said where do I have to goand who is the top guy in the
world for this?
And it was Dr Deepak Chopra,and it still pretty much is.
And I went to a beautifulretreat that he hosted, called
(03:27):
Seduction of Spirit inCalifornia, my husband and I
both actually went together.
It was a splendid outing and wegot the full goods, the full
eight-day long experience.
And Deepak is such a phenomenalteacher because he gave us the
history, the philosophy.
Where does meditation come fromthe origins?
He gave us the science.
He gave us the history, thephilosophy.
Where does meditation come fromthe origins?
He gave us the science, he gaveus the research, he gave us
everything, but, moreimportantly, he gave us the
(03:48):
experience.
So I was so hooked.
It was just a beautiful,beautiful experience, though the
entire week was so welldeveloped that I went back and
forth to the Chopra Center formany years and finally they
offered a teacher training in2017.
That was going to be the lastlive training, so I thought I'll
(04:10):
do that.
Because I won't do it, I'm nota great online student.
So I've been teaching andcertified since 2017.
So that was kind of thebeginning of it and then
integrating it with the physiopractice.
It was finding the portal, likefinding the conversational
avenue that I could kind ofintroduce this to my patients.
And that wasn't a hard thing todo because in the study of
meditation as it's taught todayand as I learned it from Deepak.
There are two streams, shall wesay, and the first stream is
(04:33):
very much about the physiologyof stress and the second stream,
of course, is the spiritualityside of it.
So, on the stress side, deepakwas very, very crystal clear on
the fact that we are, as youreferenced, in an epidemic of
stress at the moment.
We hate to use that wordbecause it's so activating, but
(04:55):
we are, and it seems to get moreexistential every second day.
And what I really learned fromhim very powerfully was that we
are actually born into peace inour bodies.
We're born to be peaceful.
We're born into ourparasympathetic nervous system,
which is about rest, relaxation,creativity, happiness.
We have more brain cellsdevoted to the experience of joy
and happiness than any otherthing in our bodies actually.
(05:15):
So that is our natural restingstate.
And, yes, we have the option tokick out into the sympathetic
part of the nervous system,which is the fight flight, and
God bless it.
It's a powerful thing when weneed to fly out of a building
that might be on fire, or peoplefelt it the other day with the
earthquake, and in that momentwhere you feel threatened, many,
(05:35):
many bad things happen in thebody, for good reason, but for
short term.
So blood pressure goes up,people start sweating, immune
function goes down, digestionshifts from the belly to the
legs because you might have toescape.
Blood starts to thickenimmediately in anticipation of a
wound.
So phenomenal, elegant,exquisite response, but very,
very energy, expensive.
(05:55):
And we're understanding nowthat people today are
experiencing that eight to 10times a day, every day, months,
weeks, even years.
And the net effect of that isthat people, are us, all of us
are creating cortisol, which isthe stress hormone.
Lovely to have a little spikewhen you need it, but when it's
up an elevator for days, months,weeks, years, it's underpinning
(06:17):
autoimmune disease that we'reseeing diabetes, cancer,
arthritis, even dementia.
All of these things all comedue to an unchecked stress
response in the body.
Susannah Steers (06:29):
Wow, I mean, I see it often in the studio.
You know, in terms of people'smovement, in that they're not
breathing well, that theirmuscles it's almost an armored
state.
You know, the sympatheticmuscles are all hyperactive and
ready to go and those deepersympathetic or parasympathetic
associated muscles, whether it'sthe diaphragm or the deep
(06:50):
abdominal wall or some of thoseplaces that are a lot more about
the support and sustain, arejust not doing their job.
So as a physio, you probablyhave people coming in to see you
with a bad shoulder or a painin their back or something in
their foot.
How are you introducingmeditation when people are
(07:13):
coming in with something theywant fixed?
Siobhan O'Connell (07:15):
Well, I explain to them that their
physical situation is attachedto a much bigger intelligence of
healing in their bodies.
The injury that they got yeah,you know they might have a torn
shoulder or whatever it is Inthe moment of injury or stress
that the body we talk aboutfight.
We talk about flight, but wealso talk about this thing
called freeze, and that's verymuch, I think, what we see in
(07:37):
both our works, where they arefrozen and they can't move, but
they also can't breathe and theyalso can't sleep and their mind
is going a million miles aminute.
They're going to the past,they're going to the future.
So the first thing we have todo is acknowledge that the body
can heal, but it can't heal.
If you're in a state of freezecan't happen right.
All the blood is in theamygdala, which is the reptilian
(07:58):
brain, can't come to thefrontal brain where all the good
stuff happens.
So the first thing we have todo is start from the inside out.
So I typically would start withan explanation of just that
kind, depending on where theperson's mind is at, to receive
that kind of information.
But I'll do that.
First, set the stage.
It's almost like you're goingto set the scene and then on
that scene, can we deal with ashoulder, can we deal with the
(08:19):
breath, can we deal with therecovery plan and the rehab plan
?
So that's typically kind of howI would approach that.
Susannah Steers (08:25):
I love it.
It makes me think of the sayingthe body will do what it can
with what it's got in the momentit's in to help you heal.
And that again brings it rightdown to that moment, to what is
happening right now.
Siobhan O'Connell (08:41):
But if that goes on indefinitely and we try
to rehab somebody's neck orshoulder and they can't breathe
and their minds are still inturmoil because they're going
back to the car accident orthey're going back to the point
that they missed, that lost thematch, that created a whole
bunch of emotional drama forthem, you can't really get a
thorough healing established inthat kind of situation.
But what I'm finding more now isthat, especially with the news
(09:04):
and the amount of media thatwe're exposed to by choice, we
do it because we think it's aactual thoughts, and this is
such an interesting thingbecause we have the idea that we
(09:29):
are our thoughts.
But what we learn frommeditation is that we're not our
thoughts, we're the observer ofour thoughts and the thoughts
which are coming at us from thesecond.
People turn on the radio in themorning and I have a good
friend who turns on the radio,opens two newspapers and their
phone going.
All this is happening firstthing in the morning.
So getting all the informationfrom all these different places.
But the amygdala, which is thereptilian brain designed to deal
(09:51):
with stress, into which all ofthis information from all these
sources is going, the amygdalais not designed to actually tell
the difference between thestress that a person is reading
about is happening in Gaza oroverseas, or happening to them.
The amygdala can'tdifferentiate.
Susannah Steers (10:07):
And it's filtering all of this.
Siobhan O'Connell (10:09):
Exactly.
It just doesn't.
It just produces fight, flight,freeze in response to all of it
.
It can't tell the difference,but people aren't aware of that
and all of that creates thisthought loop cycle.
So we know that we have about60,000 to 80,000 thoughts a day,
every day.
Mostly they're the samethoughts you had yesterday,
they're the same thoughts we'regoing to have tomorrow, and very
few of them are focused on thepresent moment, here and now.
(10:32):
So, whether it's mindfulmovement that I experienced when
I work with you, which Iabsolutely adore, or whether
it's a meditation practice justhere in my own home, the first
thing that has to happen is Ihave to leave the past and leave
the future and be here now.
That's the first thing andthat's kind of what mindfulness
is.
So mindfulness, if you will,people often ask what's the
difference between mindfulnessand meditation.
(10:52):
It's a form of meditation, butit's just bringing your
attention to the present moment,and the breath, of course, is
the portal for that.
That's the way we can accessthat at any moment in time, but
it's kind of can access that atany moment in time, but it's
kind of essential that we dobecause we're understanding that
our nervous systems being sooverstimulated, they're
exhausted and this chronicoverproduction of cortisol
(11:12):
causing all this disease statesis actually reversible and we
have a lot of science andresearch to show this now Quite
exciting, profound and everincreasing amounts.
There's lots there.
Susannah Steers (11:24):
Okay, wait there.
Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait.
You're so, you're sick.
So here am I.
I have almost 59 year old woman, you know, menopausal.
All the things have happened interms of my, my life experience
and my physical health and allof the rest of it.
There is an opportunity for meto shift, yes, my cancer risk or
(11:44):
my Alzheimer's risk or my like.
That can happen, even this latein the game.
Siobhan O'Connell (11:50):
It can happen any moment, at any time that
you choose to take the time togo from out there to in here, to
reset, to shift.
I call the nervous system.
It's like a house with tworooms.
You know.
There's the quiet room.
That's where the good stuffhappens, where the healing
happens, and not just healing.
I'm going to get more specificwith that.
We know now that with thatpractice of going inward, that
(12:11):
not only can we set up the bodyfor healing, we can actually
change genetic expression.
There's studies were done, someabout five or six years ago by
the Chokework organization, andthey showed that one of the
consequences of stress is thatat the end of our genes we have
a little um.
The end the tip of the gene iscalled the telomere.
The telomere produces an enzymecalled telomerase.
Under conditions of chronicstress, telomerase production
(12:35):
actually goes down and the genestarts to come apart.
It's like a, it's like a laceunraveling.
But with the practice ofmeditation we we go in and we
give our nervous systems thatregenerative rest, telomerase
production actually goes up andgenes can heal and repair
themselves.
Susannah Steers (12:50):
Wow, it's a different kind of rest.
It's not the kind of rest thatpeople often think of oh, I need
a break, I'm going to go homeand just read a book with a cup
of tea, or I'm going to watch TVfor a while.
This is a very different kindof rest that is restorative at a
level that just reading a bookis not going to do.
Siobhan O'Connell (13:06):
Reading a book isn't enough.
No, I mean, reading a book isnice, but you're still focusing
on some other story that theremight be drama, trauma and death
.
And you know, god knows what'sin the fiction that we're
reading.
It's giving the mind and thenervous system a complete rest
so that it knows what to do.
You know God bless MotherNature.
You know she sent us into thisworld to cope with stress and to
survive and do the things wehave to do.
(13:28):
But she also gave us the toolswith which to recover from
stress and to heal and repairourselves from the inside out.
Susannah Steers (13:35):
As a kid, when I was growing up, my
associations of meditation.
I had some older brothers andone of them was into
transcendental meditation andthis was something with
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and atthat time I thought, okay, the
people who were doing thismeditation stuff are either
sitting on a yoga mat going omor they've got the flowy robes
(13:56):
around them and it was very muchsort of a hippie image in my
mind.
And then a little later in mylife I did a little bit of
Vipassana meditation with aBuddhist monk and that was
wonderful.
And then a little later in mylife I did a little bit of
Vipassana meditation with aBuddhist monk, and that was
wonderful and he obviouslybrought with him some Buddhist
teachings.
And then a different kind ofmeditation that I did with a guy
named Dr Les Femi.
(14:16):
It was very much.
It was called open focusmeditation and it was really
about, again, attention andbringing attention and altering
brainwaves by what you wereattending to.
But I think that there's stillquite a woo.
You know, meditation is alittle woo.
It's not something you canquantify and say this.
(14:36):
I mean, maybe now, maybe moreyou can, but it still seems like
it's a little bit woo.
There's still some sort of do Ihave to be religious to do this
?
Is it associated with kind ofweird hippie stuff, or can you
speak a little bit to that?
Like it does still seem alittle more mainstream, but
there's still a little bit of awoo attached to it.
Siobhan O'Connell (14:57):
Yeah, I agree with you.
I think the language of aroundmeditation has to be cleaned up
a little bit, and I kind of fallbetween two pieces here, which
is that it is a mysticalpractice.
When you go into yourselfquietly and you really listen,
you're in your own awareness.
You're listening to your own,the rhythm of your own heart,
your own breath.
(15:17):
It's a profound.
It's a profound experience andnot one that we're trained to do
.
Right, our focus is always verymuch out there and our focus
when we're in trouble is alwaysvery much out there.
There's somebody for this.
I need to talk to this personabout this.
Whatever, and God bless us all,we all.
That's what we do and we aredoing it all.
But one of the things that Ireally like to teach people is
that all of this is actually inyou yourself.
(15:39):
You just it's the, it's apractice.
Now, the style of meditation Ilearned at the Chopra Center is
is transcendental meditation.
It's the exact same philosophy.
It's a thousand years old andit's it's considered to be the.
It was a philosophy of life.
It was never a religion oranything formal.
It was just the way peoplelived a thousand years ago on
the banks of the Indus Riveranything formal, it was just the
(16:00):
way people lived 8,000 yearsago on the banks of the Indus
River.
So fast forward thousands ofyears and we have all kinds of
religions and all kinds ofspiritual beliefs and all kinds
of meditation practices, largelybecause humanity is humanity
and we like to tinker withthings and we like to put our
own stamp and brand on things.
So there's meditation where youcan walk, you can, you know,
you can look at a candle.
You have to empty thosemeditation styles where they
(16:22):
require that you empty your mindcompletely, and I think that's
where the woo comes in.
It's like what the like?
This is very unachievable.
But what I love about TM andthe style and the Chopra
meditation, which are the same,is that they fundamentally
understood, as did the originalteachers of all of this work,
which comes, as I said, theVedic tradition, and they
understood that the human mindis a mess the Buddhists call it
(16:42):
the monkey mind, and you'renever going to stop it and you
shouldn't try to stop it.
So what we do is we use a mantra, and a mantra is a Sanskrit
word, a beautiful word fromSanskrit.
So, if you think of le main andtraverser, we even have
language that comes fromSanskrit.
So a mantra is a tool thattakes you by the hand to cross
over.
(17:02):
I never knew that.
Yeah, and it's always a gentle,vibrational sound from nature.
It's nothing that well I don'tknow Sanskrit anyway but the
words and the vibrations that weuse are extremely soft and
soothing to the nervous system.
So we don't just sit in a chairand close our eyes and hope for
the best, because that's notgoing to last long.
Traffic is going to go by andyou've got things going on.
(17:24):
And so we teach breath work andwe give a mantra.
And the purpose of the mantrais that you slowly and quietly
repeat it to yourself so yourmind has something gentle to
allow it to withdraw with.
And over time, when your mindstarts to fall in love with that
process of withdrawal and thepeace and the deliciousness of
that experience, the mantra justgoes away.
(17:46):
So it's like training wheels ona bike while you train your mind
.
So when the thoughts come up,you say, okay, I've got to pick
up the car at half two.
Okay, fine, I'm just going tocome back to my mantra.
So we look at the thoughts likeclouds drifting along the sky
on a sunny day.
We want to stay in the sky butnot get busy with the clouds,
and the mantra helps you to dothat and we set a timer.
(18:06):
I teach people how to do thatand how to just be gentle.
The mind is like a muscle, sowe start with maybe 10 minutes,
12 minutes.
The science and the researchsays optimal is about 20 to 25
minutes.
Twice a day would be ideal,twice a day okay.
And that's the type ofmeditation that causes the brain
to actually change.
(18:27):
So we shift activity from thereptilian brain to the frontal
lobes.
This is where intuition lives,creativity, memory.
The frontal lobes, actually inpeople who meditate, start to
change and they get bigger andmore developed and the
fight-flight-fear part of thebrain actually shrinks.
That amazing.
Even the mind.
Like any other muscle in thebody, even though it's not a
technical muscle, it behaves thesame way.
(18:49):
If you give it what feels goodto it, it loves it and it just
just absorbs it and it just getsbetter and better.
Susannah Steers (18:54):
It's interesting to hear you say it
in that way.
You're taking yourself to aneutral where the
neuroplasticity has anopportunity to go.
It's not already pre-directedin one direction that you're so
used to traveling that it's hardto shift from that.
It's like you're opening up awindow and creating an entirely
(19:14):
new potential for your brain andyour body to adapt in a very
different way.
Siobhan O'Connell (19:21):
Except for one small little thing which,
again, I think in our societywe're so crisis-focused all the
time that, again, speaking tothe elegance of the human system
, we are hardwired.
We do have this quality calledhomeostasis, which is the body's
ability and desire built intoour DNA to be in balance and be
(19:41):
in health.
You know the body is hardwiredfor good digestion and you know
movement and thinking andcreativity and all of these
things.
That is our hard drive.
So when we get distracted withfaulty software and we start
putting funny patterns in thesoftware and you decide I need
to make some changes, that harddrive will always want to take
over and help.
So it doesn't take very long.
(20:01):
That your point about yourneuroplasticity.
Once you start doing somethingthat brings the body back into
its highest functioning, thebody loves.
It's like, oh, I got this,let's go for it.
Like, just give me more of thatthing, because this feels
really good.
And so we're always workingwith the body's ability to heal
and repair, which is built inLike that's not up for
discussion, that's what it is,it's what it does, which is why
(20:22):
I think neuroplasticity andwe're so excited to learn more
about that, because we're justworking with the incoming tide
of the body's self-repaircapacity.
Susannah Steers (20:30):
We talked a little bit about the woo and
we're talking aboutneuroplasticity and it's kind of
hard to measure the benefits ofthis empirically, maybe unless
you're looking at a body frombirth to death.
I mean, I remember reading JonKabat-Zinn's book Little
Catastrophe Living many, manyyears ago when he talked about
some of the challenges that hehad of setting up his first
(20:53):
mindfulness-based stressreduction program at the U of
Massachusetts and that was totreat sick people.
That program was 1979.
But it seems like it's still apretty fringe idea in a medical
setting.
Siobhan O'Connell (21:07):
You're right, but it is changing and thank
God that it is because peopleare finding they're certainly
looking at alternative ways totry and try and help themselves
and there are, as I said, anincreasing amount of studies
that are coming through and ofcourse it's not overly difficult
thing to study from the pointof view that when we circle back
to chronic cortisoloverproduction, chronic
(21:29):
inflammatory states causing pain, disease, you know, especially
in the autoimmune world, thatwhen you start to change a
behavior that's driving cortisol, you're going to see a
significant drop.
In the subject of an object, ofpictures of how people are
showing up, it actually doesn'ttake very long.
So we're having more and morestudies.
I did have a referral from acardiologist just about a month
(21:49):
ago for a gentleman who had aheart attack and said well, you
know, meditation is.
The studies are starting toshow that changing your mind is
really going to help change yourbody, especially with the
stress related information, andso that was a first.
That was kind of exciting.
There are certainly somerheumatologists around the city
that are certainly understandingthat stress side of it.
It's just quite hard for peopleto find a meditation teacher
(22:12):
honestly, and especially if yougo shopping and there's a
Buddhist here, and there's thisand there's this and it's a hard
to navigate.
Susannah Steers (22:19):
So especially if you don't really know what
you're doing.
Siobhan O'Connell (22:23):
Where do you start?
And, like Buddhism, is its ownwhole belief system with very
similar, many, many overlaps.
So what I really enjoyed aboutthe Chopra process was that it's
coming from a medicalperspective and giving, and it
has certainly helped to give melanguage with which to make the
process of meditation relatableand functional for people and
they start to feel better very,very, very quickly.
It doesn't actually take longto make the changes.
(22:45):
So I think we're on the cusp ofa whole.
I mean, you remember 20 yearsago when acupuncture was kind of
a dodgy, weird like really, andnow everybody has acupuncture.
So things change actually quite, quite quickly and I think we
won't even be having thisconversation in another 10 years
.
Wow, because the the focus onlooking inward and getting tools
from within ourselves is, uh,is is just gaining in interest
(23:07):
and popularity and, again,evidence-based as well.
Susannah Steers (23:10):
So where is the research happening, is it?
I mean, I guess we're talkingabout quantum science as well as
traditional science yeah, it'scoming's coming from.
Siobhan O'Connell (23:20):
A lot of it is coming from quantum for sure,
because we're understandingthat what we're actually
changing is our.
We're changing our energy field.
We're changing our own energywhen we meditate and we are
understanding now more and morethe old way of looking at the.
Just to put it in a small way.
You know, we're coming from aplace of Newtonian law in
physics where there was causeand effect and there was gravity
(23:41):
and that happened, that balldropped and that caused that.
Now we've shifted into thisquantum world where we realize
that we're exploring more andmore to do with molecular and
atomic energy.
We're understanding more andmore that everything is composed
of energy, like it's not up fordiscussion Everything is energy
.
(24:05):
If I took every cell in yourbody and I laid it out on a
floor 70 trillion cells I'd findthat between one cell and the
next there's a gap, and in thatgap is light energy.
Why can't we see it?
Because as humans, we only seeless than 0.01 percent of all
the light that's actually on thespectrum to be that we're aware
of.
So this is going back to theveiling tradition.
They call this the maya, theillusion, like we think that
this is all there is, when it'simportant and it's physical, but
it's only a tiny.
So when, if you really want toget esoteric, like when we're
(24:26):
meditating, we are getting, weare moving into the, the, the
field of consciousness, thequantum field that created
everything.
So, um, it's.
There's a much bigger, biggerpiece to that.
But you know, with for somebodywho's interested in meditating,
they don't have to be havingthat type of conversation
necessarily, unless they reallywant to do that.
But on its most simple level,it's about down-regulating your
(24:47):
own nervous system, bringing youback to the parasympathetic,
the peaceful, quiet room in thehouse and away from the chaos
and the stress, so your body canheal and repair and reset
itself.
Susannah Steers (24:57):
It's funny just hearing you say that in the
quiet room in the house.
It brings me calm, and I knowjust watching your face when you
were talking about thedeliciousness of sinking into
that meditative state.
I'm curious what you've noticed.
I mean, you've been practicingthis now for a while and you're
teaching it.
This is clearly something thatis super important in your life.
(25:17):
What changes have you noticed?
For you.
Siobhan O'Connell (25:20):
I noticed my sleep has really improved.
I noticed my general, myrelationships have improved.
I'm not as hot and reactive,maybe, as I would have been in
the past.
I tended to make a lot ofdecisions very quickly and just
always feel that I had to bekind of ready for the next
crisis that was going to happenand be ready to respond and do
make the right decisions, andit's made me just a lot more
(25:42):
peaceful and calm and I thinkthe decisions I'm making are
more creative andmultidimensional than they were
before.
Physically, I feel better in myown body, I think, because I was
also had a business for a longtime and you don't realize until
you come out of that how muchthat was actually costing you
physically.
There was never enough time toreally exercise or do my lovely
(26:06):
Pilates work or anything, soit's just been a huge shift all
around for myself.
But I've seen those shifts inmy patients as well too, who
experience it in terms ofreduced pain, less dependency on
medication, just less.
More enjoyment of life and atthe end of the day we're here to
enjoy life and enjoy our bodiesand enjoy our minds.
So while we can talk all daylong about the physiological
benefits.
In the end, we just want tofeel good, we want to enjoy our
(26:26):
day and our relationships and bein joy and in fun, and that's
what I believe is what we'rehere to do.
Susannah Steers (26:31):
I love this so much.
My team and I have adopted atheme for this year and it's for
the whole year at the Pilatesstudio and that theme is
presence.
We felt that amidst all thevarious things that people can
do for their health, finding andembodying their own presence is
probably one of the mostimportant, most powerful things
(26:52):
they can do, and while we don'tobviously include a specific
meditative element to ourclasses, we do our best to
encourage that sort of embodiedpresence, that mindful state
throughout.
You know, people get bettermovement skills.
They, you know, more comfortand capacity in their bodies.
Siobhan O'Connell (27:09):
And yeah, and I love that you, I mean your,
your business is called movingspirit.
Well, the origin of spirit isspirit, to in latin, which is
breath, right, yes, and to be inbreath is being in profound
contact with yourself.
You know in a deep way, youknow what I.
What I say to my patients tooand I know I've heard it at
yours is be here now, don't bein the past, don't be in the
(27:32):
future.
We have this precious time.
This is your investment, likethis is your time when you're
going to really sow and reap.
You know benefits at deeplevels in movement and it's a
profound thing and I thinkpeople really need to be
realized and realize that that'sa huge thing to be here now, to
be present and sometimes it's abit of a hard sell at first.
Susannah Steers (27:51):
You know, when people first come to our studio,
you know they're sort of likeyeah, I'm here to move, let's go
, let's go, I want to get thatit.
And, yes, all of that willhappen, but be here now.
And so once they get throughthat and start to experience
what that feels like, then theycome to depend on it.
Siobhan O'Connell (28:06):
It's like oh, I need this hour for myself,
mm-hmm yeah, but then throughyour breath work, which I
learned from you 30 years ago, I, and forgot for about 25 of
those.
But now I'm back.
You know, sometimes you realizeyou sow a seed with somebody
you know and you mightn't see itin that year or that day, but
you plant something deep likethat and it never goes anywhere.
(28:27):
It just, it just appears whenit's time for it to come back.
And uh, came back for me in abig way from what I learned from
you way back at that time.
And you can do it anytime.
That's the thing.
Once you have that within youand once it's been reactivated
and you start to see and feelthe value of it, it doesn't
matter if you're in an airportor supermarket or sitting in the
car waiting for a kid.
Like you can have that be here,now, present moment which takes
(28:49):
you from the chaos of theoutside world into your own
inner terrain.
So it doesn't always have to bea formal practice of sitting
with your eyes closed in amantra.
It can be a movement, it can bein moments that you take for
yourself.
That are the reset moments.
So I think us just takingcontrol back of our nervous
systems is a really importantthing.
Susannah Steers (29:08):
Well, there is that saying that you know
everything we need is within us,and it's hard to maybe believe
that when we're out runningaround chasing all the things
and finding the experts andlistening to all the social
media stuff and all the noisethat's coming at us.
But it's interesting when youdo start to deepen into that
(29:31):
self, that lovely room.
You're talking about how yourresources sort of appear, that
deeper sense of things, andagain, not just for healing but,
like you say, for joy, for thatinner wisdom our sense of being
able to just slough off thethings that, oh yeah, okay, that
thing that looked like a bright, shiny object over there really
(29:52):
isn't relevant.
I don't need that.
Siobhan O'Connell (29:55):
No, definitely, your object over
there really isn't relevant.
I don't need that.
No, definitely, your valueschange definitely.
Susannah Steers (30:00):
Your values change.
Yeah, Siobhan.
How do people get started?
It's hard to find a goodteacher.
I am speaking to a wonderfulteacher and I would love to know
what your advice is for someonewho's just starting out Well.
Siobhan O'Connell (30:12):
I think that learning meditation is a bit
like learning Pilates.
Honestly, it's a very personalexperience.
When I first saw you 30 yearsago, my body was in a certain
place, my beliefs were in acertain place, my nervous system
was in a shambles, and thebeauty of those initial sessions
that we had together so longago was that I thought I started
(30:34):
with the right ingredients in,with the right words and the
right experience to set me onthe course.
And I think meditation is thevery same way.
I find I've tried teachingclasses and groups and it just
doesn't seem to work Well.
People you know have you know,they have stories, they have
conditioning, they have somepeople you know grow up with
really different, varyingreligious experiences and it's
(30:57):
much easier to teach somebodyone to one, who's to find out
like where are they coming from,what is the backstory in your
nervous system, in your mind andin your conditioning and your
beliefs that got you to thisplace, and then kind of starting
with that fresh, fresh slate.
So my own preference is toteach people one-to-one At the
moment, because I'm a registeredphysio.
A lot of my teaching comesthrough somebody who has neck
(31:19):
and back pain and they say.
Oh, by the way, I'd also liketo learn some meditation and as
long as I can incorporatemeditation teaching into a
physical program.
It's still covered, actually,as physio, which is nice because
again, physio is moving to thatplace that we understand that
physiotherapy is a bit of anoxymoron.
There's no such thing asphysical therapy.
You can't achieve success inthe body unless you bring the
mind on board, especially whenyou're dealing with chronic pain
(31:41):
, inflammation, autoimmunediseases and cancer, all these
things.
So my preference is myself toteach my people one-to-one, and
we have three or four sessionsand in that they get the
education, they get theexperience, they have a mantra
and then they have the kind ofthe rules of the road about when
to meditate and how it looksand is.
This is can I do it at bedtime?
(32:01):
Nope, um, do I have to bevegetarian?
Nope, do I have to do all thesethings?
So I just kind of demystify itand just make it a practical
thing.
It's like brain hygiene at itsvery most fundamental.
Honestly, I love that brainhygiene, or it can be a more
elaborate spiritual practice, ifthat's where you are.
But I just like to have theinformation and the training
myself that I can kind of coverthe spectrum, depending on just
like we would do with a movementprogram or any other kind of
(32:21):
treatment program.
It's nice to be able to isolateit and then once you kind of
have that basic, then theworld's.
I mean, I have endlessresources and places I can send
people, but typically, likemyself, people don't do well,
who just try to learn online ortry to learn from an app.
It just doesn't, it doesn'tstick because they don't really
understand the full value of it.
Susannah Steers (32:39):
I think that's a big part of it so, and
sometimes I wonder too aboutthat energy transmission when
you're with someone you know Ialways find I'm a much better
teacher in person than I am overover the waves, and I don't
know if that's just thatphysical presence.
You're sharing space, you'resharing breath, you're sharing a
contact that you don't.
Siobhan O'Connell (32:59):
Well, we know .
I mean, you were talking aboutthe quantum field a few minutes
ago and you know, we know thatthe quantum field is energy,
it's all there is.
We know that each individual,one of us, has our own personal
force field right which goeseight feet around the body.
We know that there's a colorand waveform to it.
We know that those colors andthe waveform has been measured
with infrared photography is thesame as how the chakras are
(33:21):
stacked up, which is the same asthe rainbows that appear in the
same color form.
So this just reminds us everyday that we are part of that
energy field.
So when we meet one-to-one, Ithink it's achievable online.
It's much easier to dosomething online when you've met
the person and you kind of havemade that real energy, that
pure energy connection.
But it's all about the energy,absolutely 100, and especially
(33:41):
in the teaching world, as weboth know, is that we show up
with our hearts first.
It's not the brain and thefacts and the story.
It's like heart to heart, likewho are you and where are you at
and how can I, how can we, incompassion, kind of help, help,
help each other to to moveforward.
That's a hard thing to doonline.
I find I'm not that good yetthat I can do that that well.
But in person is good.
Susannah Steers (34:02):
But to your point, once people have the
basics and they understand whatthey're doing, then it's got you
know lots of resources outthere yeah, I am thrilled to
announce that Siobhan will bepresenting a Meditation as
Medicine workshop at MovingSpirit Pilates in North
Vancouver on Saturday, march15th, from 2 to 4 pm.
So if you're interested inchecking that out, please visit
(34:25):
movingspiritca, and if you headover to the MATS series and
events page, you'll see all thedetails and you can register
there if you like.
And you can also learn moreabout Siobhan and her work by
going to meditationasmedicineca.
I'll put links in the shownotes to all of this stuff.
Siobhan, I wondered if, as weclose out our conversation,
(34:49):
would you be able to lead us ina short meditation.
Siobhan O'Connell (34:54):
Absolutely, we will end with a to our point
that we were just chatting aboutbeing present moment awareness,
and we will just do a shortbreath-based meditation to bring
us into the present moment andinto our own body's beautiful,
elegant, super intelligentenergy system.
So the invitation is to sitback in your chair wherever you
(35:18):
find yourself, close the windowsof your eyes and just let your
body get soft, feel it melting.
The invitation is to imagine aribbon of golden light that
starts in your belly and thatribbon of golden light is going
(35:41):
to follow your spine, from yourpelvis, rippling up towards your
head, rippling past yourkidneys, rippling past your
stomach, your heart, your lungs,bringing the breath up to your
space between your collarbones.
(36:02):
Bring the breath up to thespace between your eyes, third
eye, continue that ribbon oflight all the way to the crown
of your head.
Let it pause there and feel theenergy of the light just
flooding all the parts of yourbrain, feel it encompassing
(36:25):
every organ, your head and yourneck.
And as it comes back down, it'slike it's gently washing over
all your organs.
It comes back down, it's likeit's gently washing over all
your organs, nourishing them,healing what needs to be healed,
calming what needs to be calmed, and just bring that ribbon all
the way down again to yourbelly, all the way down to your
(36:46):
pelvis where you started, andwe'll just repeat that one more
time with breath.
So, as you inhale, draw theribbon up.
Repeat that one more time withbreath.
So as you inhale, draw theribbon up, adding the widening
of your lungs, feeling thatexpansion front to back of your
rib cage.
Draw the ribbon up, up, up, atthe peak of your breath, on a
full inhale, see that beautifulgolden ribbon, a ball of light
(37:12):
at the crown of your head, andwith a long, slow, unhurried
exhale, allow that ribbon oflight to ripple its way down,
all the way down onto yourpelvis where you started, just
knowing that you've nourishedyourself.
You've had a minute in thepresent moment, giving your
(37:34):
nervous system a little breakfrom the outside crazies.
Given yourself a little giftthat you can give yourself any
time with your breath.
Thank you.
Susannah Steers (37:46):
Thank you so much for escorting us into that
beautiful space that we cancarry with us.
I so appreciate you coming andspending some time with me today
.
Siobhan O'Connell (37:56):
Siobhan, it is always a pleasure, pleasure
too, sue, thank you.
Thanks so much.
Bye-bye.
Susannah Steers (38:03):
I hope you enjoyed today's episode.
Subscribe and, if you love whatyou heard, leave a five-star
review and tell people what youenjoyed most.
Join me here again in a coupleof weeks.
For now, let's get moving.
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