January 16, 2026 • 62 mins
We explore how yoga shifts healing from labels and behavior control to embodied awareness, and how grounding builds real emotional regulation for bipolar symptoms and trauma. Dr. Ghada Osman shares her three-prong model so listeners can ground first, then safely energize or calm.
• mental health labels versus emotional health signals
• witness consciousness and bottom-up healing
• shame cycles, unmet needs and compassionate curiosity
• practical grounding: eyes open, even breath, bilateral movement
• how to choose energizing or calming after grounding
• honoring the body without judgment or “levels”
• seasons, contrast and building resilience
• resources to learn more from Dr. Osman
Website: www.ghadaosman.com
Book on Routledge: Mental and Emotional Healing Through Yoga: A Guiding Framework for Therapists and their Clients
Book on Amazon: Mental and Emotional Healing Through Yoga: A Guiding Framework for Therapists and their Clients
Check out Ghada's online training on using yoga to work with mental health here: Yoga for Mental Health Certification Course
FREE Mood Cycle Survival Guide: https://theupsideofbipolar.com/free/
The Upside of Bipolar: 7 Steps to Heal Your Disorder: @upsideofbipolar | Linktree
website: https://theupsideofbipolar.com/
email: michelle@theupsideofbipolar.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theupsideofbipolar/
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SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
We are human beings that have emotions.
And so can I feel the emotionand be with the emotion instead
of always trying to clamp downon the emotion?
So a lot of the time when wetalk about regulation, it's
about how can we make yourdifficult emotion go away?
And instead, can we think ofregulation as how can I have a
broader lens with which to seethings?
SPEAKER_00 (00:26):
Welcome to the Upside of Bipolar, where we
uncover the true sources ofbipolar symptoms and share
proven tools for recovery.
I'm your host, MichelleReitinger, number one
international best-sellingauthor of the Upside of Bipolar
Seven Steps to Heal YourDisorder.
In this podcast, I bring yousolo insights from my journey
and guest interviews withleading researchers and experts.
(00:47):
Join us to transform chaos intohope and reclaim your life.
Let's heal together.
Welcome to the Upside ofBipolar.
I am your host, MichelleReitinger, and I am thrilled to
have the first guest of the newyear be Dr.
Gata Osman.
(01:07):
I am so excited to interview heragain.
Anybody who's been listening tomy podcast for any length of
time will have already heard myfirst interview with her.
But I have been learning so muchmore from her book.
This is my copy of her book, andI've got all of these tabs.
If you're not if you're notwatching this, if you're
listening to this, I have tonsand tons of tabs because I've
been studying her book morethoroughly and so excited to
(01:29):
interview her today because Ihave better questions to ask her
this time that I think is goingto make for a much more exciting
discussion.
So thank you, Dr.
Osman, for joining us today.
I appreciate you being a guest.
SPEAKER_01 (01:40):
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm excited to be here andexcited to be your first guest
of the new year, too.
SPEAKER_00 (01:45):
Yes.
And I've been looking forward tothis.
She's been on my books for abouta month now, I think.
And I've just been like lookingforward to this with excited
anticipation.
So we are going to start withDr.
Osman sharing her story with us.
SPEAKER_01 (02:00):
Thank you for the opportunity.
And again, yes, so grateful tobe here.
So grateful to connect with you.
And the last time you asked mesome great questions too.
And I'm excited to chatt it, bechatting more.
So yeah, I appreciate yourreaching out to me.
And I'm always really excitedwhen folks reach out and say
that they've read the book andcome across it and, you know,
that it's been beneficial.
And so thank you.
(02:20):
Thank you for that.
Um kind of for reminding me ofthe importance of yoga and the
healing power of yoga.
It's really appreciate it.
My journey with yoga, where I'llI'll start there, even though I
am also a psychotherapist, andmy journey with yoga started now
almost 30 years ago.
And I remember going to my firstyoga class at the gym back when
(02:41):
doing yoga, you know, it wassort of between two periods
where there were a lot of folksdoing yoga decades ago, and then
it kind of slipped out of themore mainstream awareness and
then now has come back.
And so it was during thatin-between period.
And I remember taking a classand thinking, yeah, it'll be
good for me to do somestretching, and then coming out
of it in a completely differentheadspace.
(03:02):
And I remember getting in mycar, and that was back, you
know, and like turning on theradio was the best form of
entertainment in the car.
And I remember turning on theradio and then turning it back
off again because I was like,I'm in a headspace I have never
been in before, where I'mactually in this place where I
feel a little bit of spacecompared to the usual chatter
and hecticness that I'm movingthrough with that, you know,
(03:25):
it's is so rewarded.
You know, you're beingproductive, you're being
effective, and even though itactually really pulls us out of
being in the present moment.
And from then on, I continuedwith my yoga journey.
I remember when I became a yogateacher, which is now 26 years
ago in the year 2000, I thoughtit was just more to strengthen
my practice.
(03:46):
And then over time, as I beganmy psychotherapy practice, I
wanted to incorporate somethingthat really brought people home
to their bodies rather thanengage them more with the
chatter of the mind.
And that's how I connected morewith yoga therapy.
I have a good friend who has ayoga therapy program based in
Florida, and she and I cookedtogether a yoga for mental
(04:09):
health program back before otherfolks were doing that.
And that's where the journeystarted.
And then at some point Ithought, you know, I think I
want to get the word out thereeven more because I see the
impact that yoga has on folks,and I see the impact that it has
on folks regardless of wherethey're coming in, where their
head is at.
And so here I am.
So I teach, I train yogatherapists to incorporate mental
(04:32):
health.
I provide trainings forpsychotherapists as well to
incorporate yoga into theirpractices and into their work
with their clients.
And then I also um oversee amental health counseling program
at a community college district.
And so I work with graduatestudents, folks who are
post-degree pre-licensure, avariety of different therapists,
as well as my own directclients.
(04:54):
That's amazing.
SPEAKER_00 (04:55):
A little bit about me.
Yeah.
And that's and tell me what'syour educational background
again?
SPEAKER_01 (04:59):
Can you just so I hold a PhD from Harvard
University, and then I also holdmy um clinical degree.
So my licensure is as a licensedmarriage to family therapist.
A lot of the time folks thinkthat means that we work mainly
with relationships and families,and of course we do, but it's
also the outlook.
It's about the fact that we arevery much rooted in the idea
(05:21):
that therapy and our mentalhealth is very connected to
systems and to our originalsystem being our family, but to
other systems too.
And so we're looking at therapyrelationally, which I think also
connects really strongly withyoga in terms of that
relationship with others, butalso with ourselves.
SPEAKER_00 (05:39):
Yeah, and I think that's a very good lead into
where I want to start ourdiscussion.
In your book, you talk about thedifference between mental health
and emotional health.
And I thought that was such animportant distinction because
when somebody is diagnosed withbipolar disorder, it disconnects
us.
Like the diagnosis itselfdisconnects us because we are
(05:59):
focused on a problem in ourheads without any kind of
reference to anything else inour bodies or in our environment
or anything.
There's this idea that there issome kind of disease or disorder
that is rooted in the brain, andit stops us from being curious
about what could actually becausing these symptoms and
disconnects us.
Like it creates a disconnect, Ibelieve, between the mind and
(06:21):
the body.
And so I loved in your book howyou talked about mental health
versus emotional health.
And so could you talk a littlebit about that, help us
understand the differencebetween those and why that
distinction is so important?
SPEAKER_01 (06:34):
Yeah, absolutely.
So mental health, it's it'sinteresting, right?
It's a phrase.
It's we've re-purposed it insome ways, I think, in the last
few years, where we own it alittle bit more so that it
doesn't just come with thestigma of mental health and the
odd juxtaposition of mentalhealth and physical health, as
if this is not just all ourhealth altogether.
(06:55):
But mental health and especiallydiagnoses are this very odd way
of describing a very complexexperience where we say, okay,
well, to meet this diagnosis,you need to meet four of these
and five of these, and that'sthat's something that's 2D.
And we as individuals are 3D.
So I can meet criteria for adiagnosis, but the more
(07:18):
important aspect is how I'mfeeling right now, and that's my
emotional health.
So there, I will always meetpotentially criteria for a
diagnosis.
But how am I feeling right now?
That's my emotional health, andthat's the piece where we were
wanting to notice more.
What is it that tells me, okay,something's gonna shift for me?
(07:39):
I can see it coming around thecorner, and maybe now with my
relationship with my body, I canknow how to meet that.
That's my emotional health.
Maybe I feel like, oh, there'slike a fluttering in my body
that I don't notice typically.
And I excuse me, I'm beginningto notice it.
Ah, yeah, there's that shiftcoming around the corner.
Or I feel like a certain tensionin my neck, even, or my sleep is
(08:00):
impacted.
But what's my first tell thatit's impacted before I really
feel the impact?
Those are all parts of ouremotional health.
We all have emotional healthbecause we all have emotions,
because we're all human beings.
And so, how can each of us trackwhat's happening within
ourselves?
And that's building thatrelationship with ourselves.
We live in this culture of toxicpositivity, and everything is
(08:22):
supposed to be so great, and weignore what's happening for us
internally, and that's the bigshift.
A lot of the time when we workwith mental health and mental
health diagnoses, we work onbehaviors and decreasing
behaviors.
Well, you know what?
While you're experiencing this,how about you don't shop as
much?
So we're gonna say you use yourcredit card only this many
(08:44):
times.
That has nothing to do with howI feel internally.
So I might ego might be pleasedthat I spent less money.
Okay, that it has nothing to dowith my feeling in my body and
my relationship with that.
SPEAKER_00 (08:56):
Yeah, and I I think when you're talking about, you
know, the behaviors, trying tocontrol behaviors, I spent years
going to therapy, trying to workon like controlling behaviors
and that, and shaming myself forbehaviors that I was struggling
with repeatedly.
And I I remember that the theday that I remember the day that
it shifted.
I one of the one of the copingmechanisms that I had was binge
(09:19):
watching television.
And I'm not talking about like aweekend, you know, watching, you
know, I need to relax and I'mgonna watch, you know, eight
episodes of a show.
I'm talking about days on endbinge watching like 18 seasons
of Law and Order SVU, like backto back to back, like ignoring
all my responsibilities.
Like it was intense, verydestructive behavior.
(09:41):
And and it was very hard for mebecause I would go through
periods of time where I didn'tstruggle with this, and then all
of a sudden it was like thiscompulsion to do this.
And and I felt tremendous shamearound it.
And I went to a therapist onetime when it's when I started
struggling with this compulsionagain, and I was, you know,
crying and frustrated.
I'm like, I try all these thingsand I can't just stop it.
(10:02):
And she said, What need are youtrying to fill?
And it stopped me on my tracks.
I'm like, at first I was like, Ifelt resistance to what she was
asking because I'm like, it'sI'm not feeling a need.
I have, I have a, you know, Ibelieve I looked at it as uh an
addiction.
And I'm like, I'm addicted toTV, like I can't help it.
And she said, No, no, no.
What need are you trying tofill?
What what and what need are youtrying to meet within yourself?
(10:24):
And that whole day we talkedabout like, what could I be
trying to fix?
Like, this is a coping mechanismthat has developed to cope with
discomfort and and symptoms thatI'm struggling with.
And it t it totally shifted.
That was one of the first timesI started looking at these
things with curiosity instead ofjudgment to look for the source.
Like, what is the source here?
(10:44):
What's what's happening here?
And I loved what you weretalking about about seeing
clues.
That's one of the things that Italk with, you know, in my
coaching program.
I talk to people all the time,like you're a detective in your
life and you're looking forclues.
And when we shift, when we shiftthat, and I think that this is
one of the reasons why I loveyoga so much.
And I I want people tounderstand the value in yoga, is
(11:07):
that we become disconnected fromourselves, not just by the
mental health, you know, phrasesand those kinds of things, but
because we we are a society thatfocuses on being happy and
looking for good things, like wevalue certain emotions, we value
certain states of emotionalwell-being, you know, being, and
we want to avoid or suppress ordisc or get rid of, you know,
(11:31):
things that we feel like are youknow uncomfortable or that we
don't like.
And I think we do the samethings in our bodies.
So we start to becomedisconnected from ourselves
because, oh, I don't like thatfeeling.
And so over time, you you pushit aside or you suppress it or
you avoid it.
And so we start to becomedisconnected.
So how does how does emotional,because I think that this is a
(11:52):
lack of emotional regulation.
I think that we don't know howto regulate our emotions because
we're trying to avoiduncomfortable emotions and we're
trying to produce, we we'reseeking out the emotions that we
want.
And so we are not able to manageemotions.
We're not able to handleemotions that we don't like.
So, how what is, you know, Iwant to talk a little bit about,
(12:13):
if you could, about theimportance of developing
emotional intelligence,emotional, the ability to, you
know, emotionally regulate andhow yoga can better, you know,
help us with that.
SPEAKER_01 (12:24):
Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you too for sharing yourpersonal experience.
And I'm so glad that thattherapist asked you the question
about what need this fulfills,because that's that's exactly
it.
We're so focused on thebehaviors and what behaviors are
good.
And that exists so much in oursociety.
Like when we think of ourrelationship with food and we
say, Oh, I was good todaybecause I ate healthy, but it's
(12:44):
like, yeah, but was it what mybody needed, or was it just
external messaging?
Right.
And I'll loop back to the foodexample because I think the food
example is a very telling onewhen you ask that question about
emotional regulation.
Yeah, it's like we we come in,we have our coping mechanisms,
and you know, our bodies areamazingly adaptive.
So your system figured out, youknow what helps me in this
(13:05):
moment.
I'm just gonna keep watching andwatching and watching, and it
creates distraction.
That's very creative, right?
But we end up having a lot ofshame because ultimately it's
maladaptive in the sense that itgets in the way of our regular
day-to-day.
But how can we take that wisdomof our system and now direct it
to what we actually need in themoment?
So it's like your system was sowise and knowing, you know what,
(13:27):
this is what helps me get out ofthe space right now.
How can we guide it to then helpdevelop what fits more in that
present moment?
The need, what we need is astory.
Right?
So it might be, I might have astory, nobody loves me, nobody
cares about me, because in thepast, that's the messaging I've
received.
Can I shift that to in thispresent moment?
(13:51):
That's a story.
Did something happen in thispresent moment to show me that?
Probably not.
In this present moment, maybeI'm sitting in front of the TV.
Maybe 10 minutes ago, somethingactivated it.
But this moment, no.
That's how we're connecting withour emotions in this moment.
So there's the story, and mymind is full of stories.
Our minds are always full ofstories, and it's like, okay,
(14:12):
got it.
Really appreciate the story.
And what am what am Iexperiencing right now?
So I use the food examplebecause I think that is such a
telling example.
Baby, newborn baby cries whenhungry.
We feed the baby, the baby stopscrying unless there's something
else that's upsetting.
Somewhere along the lines, weshift it and we start building a
(14:36):
system where we don't have thatconnection between I know I'm
hungry and I feel it in my body,and I need to eat.
Instead, it becomes all thisother messaging.
I eat because other people areeating.
I'm supposed to choose certainfoods because somebody decided
these are the foods that aregood for me.
I have a whole narrative about Ieat this, I don't eat that, I
was good, I was bad.
(14:56):
I say, oh, I'm gonna be, I'mgonna cheat this one time, or
I'm upset, I deserve to eatthis, all of those complexities,
and we lose that connection.
And it's the same witheverything almost that we feel
physically.
We even feel physical pain andwe push through it.
We're like, you can push throughit, you can do it no matter
what.
And it's like, no, it's asignal.
Your body's trying to send asignal.
(15:18):
We ignore it, and so you knowwhat?
It gets more amplified.
It's like you're not getting it.
Here we go again.
And it's the same with ouremotions.
So I feel a little bit sadinstead of being like, oh, I
feel sad.
What am I noticing in my bodyright now?
Not what story my mind istelling me, because it has all
sorts of ideas and theories thatmay or not may or may not be
true.
(15:38):
But what am I feeling in the inmy body?
And we know sometimes we don'teven have access to the story.
Like sometimes we say, I feel soanxious and I don't know why.
And it's like, okay, there isn'teven a story here.
Let me just pause and noticewhat's happening in my body.
What do I notice in my chest?
What do I notice in my belly?
And a lot of us at thebeginning, we don't even have a
(16:00):
sense of that.
I know I myself, people wouldsay things like, I feel this
moving through my leg.
And I'm like, what are youtalking about?
I just have thoughts.
I don't know.
I'm like, okay, this is likewoo-woo stuff, but I have no
idea what you're talking about,right?
Because it's like we don't havethat developed.
And so can I pause and wait?
And in that moment, when I'mrushing towards the behavior,
even if I still carry out thebehavior, can I also notice
(16:23):
what's happening in my body andbuild that relationship within
myself?
That's ultimately what emotionalregulation is.
We tend to think of emotionalregulation as stopping emotions.
You're sad, we're like, oh, youknow, let's think of something
positive.
And we have this in mentalhealth too.
So somebody is agitated in atherapy session, we're like,
(16:44):
okay, let's do some grounding.
And it's like, okay, we could ifI really, you know, I need to
drive home and I actually, mymind is flashing back to 20
years ago and I'm dysregulated,but I have to be at work, then
yeah, we have to reground me andbring me to the here and now.
But in general, people, we arehuman beings that have emotions.
And so can I feel the emotionand be with the emotion instead
(17:05):
of always trying to clamp downon the emotion?
So a lot of the time when wetalk about regulation, it's
about how can we make yourdifficult emotion go away?
And instead, can we think ofregulation as how can I have a
broader lens with which to seethings?
So that I notice this feeling inmy body.
(17:25):
I notice, for example, anantsiness.
Like it's like there is I'mbuzzing.
But what else do I notice?
What do I notice in myshoulders?
What do I notice in my feet?
What do I notice in my pinkytoe?
How much can we expand the viewso that we don't go through life
with a tiny view like this?
But we can have that broaderview.
(17:46):
And that's what helps us thenregulate that I have the fuller
picture.
I thought that I was justlooking at a thorn.
And then as the picture gotbigger, I saw that I was looking
at an actual rose plant with thestem, with the thorn on it, with
also the flower, everythingtogether.
It doesn't take away from thefact that there's a thorn, which
(18:07):
is the other thing that we do alot, is like reframe, think
positive.
It's like, no, it's still there.
And there's also so much morethere.
SPEAKER_00 (18:13):
Yeah.
And I think as you're talkingabout this, one of the things
that came to mind is theimportance of us taking.
I I saw this one time.
This is not my quote, so I'm I Ineed to make sure it's a
disclaimer.
I'm not, this is not my ownthought.
But somebody said that trauma isa story, healing is a choice.
And and that when we don't makethe choice to heal past wounds,
(18:37):
those past experiences try toinform everything we have going
forward.
Because our brains are designedto protect us.
And so if it if it experienceda, you know, a traumatic event
or tr or series of traumaticevents and it is constantly on
the alert for looking fordanger, anything that it thinks
might be similar or present asimilar danger, it is going to
(19:00):
go into high alert.
And that's why we end up withpeople having like the first
time I had an anxiety attack, Ididn't understand what was going
on.
I didn't understand that I washaving a trauma response to
something that had happened.
I thought I was having a heartattack, ended up in the
emergency room for eight hours,and and then labeled with an
anxiety disorder on top of mybipolar disorder and given more
(19:20):
medication.
And it took years for me tostart recognizing when I was
having a trauma response.
And to look with curiosityabout, okay, what is my brain
sensing as dangerous?
There's something that happened.
It may not be related to whathappened in the past, but for
some reason my brain thinks thisis dangerous.
So I started again looking withcuriosity about the experiences
(19:41):
that I was having surroundingthese trauma responses.
And when as I started processingthe past trauma and allowing
myself to experience theemotions and processing it
through so that I could get mybrain to stop going onto high
alert anytime it's thought therewas danger around me, then I was
able To sit and stay presentwith emotions of current
(20:02):
situations.
Instead of having my brain justlike take over and run away with
me, I was able to like learn howto stay present with it.
And that's one of the reasonswhy I loved what I learned from
you because I, when I firstengaged with yoga years ago, I
could feel there was valuethere, but I had no idea what I
was experiencing.
And so I kept trying to seek itout.
And every once in a while Iwould hit on a practice that
(20:25):
worked, right?
And it, but it was sometimes Iwould do practices that didn't
feel good and I didn'tunderstand the difference.
I didn't know what was going on.
I didn't know why sometimes itfelt really good, and other
times I was like, yeah, I didn'tlike that.
And it wasn't until I engagedwith your book and started
learning about like what yoga isactually doing and how some of
(20:45):
it is activating and some of itis, you know.
So, so I think that, sorry, thisis a lot.
Let me go back a little bit.
So let's start first with thevalue in processing past trauma
and how yoga can help with that.
Because we become, I feel likewe become victims, not by the
trauma, but by our inability tomove forward in our lives
(21:07):
without having everythinginformed by the trauma, the
unhealed trauma.
And we can choose to take back.
I know that this is probably anoverused term, but taking back
our power, like taking back, Ithink maybe a better term would
be taking more responsibilityfor our lives, like accepting
responsibility and ownership ofour own emotions instead of
letting other people controlthem by choosing, like I said,
(21:30):
like that quote said, you know,that trauma is a story, healing
is a choice, like choosing toheal, choosing to do the work to
heal so that we can begin totake, you know, back our lives
and be able to live our lives inthe present instead of our past,
always trying to inform thepresent.
So that's kind of a loadedquestion, but thank you.
SPEAKER_01 (21:52):
Yeah, you know, one of the main pieces about a yoga
practice is what we refer to aswitness consciousness, which
sometimes can also be equatedwith some aspects of
mindfulness.
I can start healing once I'm notfully in the feeling, but maybe
can have a part of me thatleaves that has a little bit of
distance that can say, hmm,what's going on over here?
(22:14):
Then now my brain isn't fully init.
I've actually like stepped awaya little bit and I'm an
observer.
That is the key to healing.
If I have that curiosity, evenif I feel all the emotions and
all of it, but there's a littletiny part of me that's like,
what's going on here?
What's happening here?
What am I noticing in my butt?
And again, if I if I start goingdown the road of a story, I'm in
(22:35):
trouble because our mind is sofast.
Oh, well, you know what it is,blah, blah, blah, blah.
And it reaches conclusionsbecause, like you said, that's
what we're trained to do.
We are the descendants of folksthat are like, oh, there's a
saber-toothed tiger coming overfrom over there.
And instead of my assessingwhether that's really a
saber-toothed tiger, the outlinelooks like one.
So I'm gonna run.
Because if I stay here andassess, I'm gonna be dinner.
(22:56):
And so I'm just gonna generalizeand run.
And so now we we are thedescendants of these folks, and
so we do that.
I'm like, hmm, this persondidn't return my call.
Must mean they don't love mebecause nobody loves.
And now I'm like, I've gone downmy path.
The example that you gave, thethe shared, um, the experience
that you shared where you werein the ER and then they say it's
(23:18):
anxiety.
Most of the time in situationslike that, the response is it's
just anxiety, right?
That you're not having it's justanxiety.
It's like, okay, but now what?
So once it's just anxiety, theimplication is you figure it
out.
Rather than, yeah, how can webuild that relationship?
So, how can I build arelationship in my body where
(23:39):
I'm like, well, there issomething like I feel this
tightness.
I feel, and I don't need to havea story.
I if I just notice it, it's likeI'm now with someone.
It's like any of us where wedon't feel good and someone just
sits with us, doesn't advise,doesn't fix, but is just here
with us.
That's what I'm doing withmyself.
I'm like, oh, I'm feeling this.
(23:59):
Okay, I'm just gonna hang outhere and notice.
And it's it's uncomfortable, butit's not probably more
uncomfortable than the actualfeeling.
But yeah, the minute I notice,I've now stimulated, I'm using a
different part of my brainthat's here in the present
moment, not back in the trauma.
A lot of the time we havephysical responses and we don't
(24:21):
know where they're from, and wetheorize, but it's our body is
moving so fast for the physicalresponse that our prefrontal
cortex and our more consciousthoughts won't be able to figure
it out quickly enough for thefeeling.
The only way we can meet it isto be with that feeling.
And then over time, that's whereour system starts to absorb.
(24:43):
You know what?
Who knows what was happeningthere?
But actually, I'm not in thatsituation right now.
It's like sometimes I'm workingwith folks and they've
experienced a lot of trauma.
Do they necessarily feel verysafe with me?
No, because I'm an unpredictableentity, right?
Like they're sitting there andI'm talking and I'm guiding
through things, and maybe I'lldo something that doesn't work
for them.
(25:03):
However, can we say that in thismoment they're not experiencing
what they might have experiencedin the past that's been unsafe?
Yes.
Should I now say, well, you knowwhat?
This is a safe space.
You have nothing to fear.
No.
Because we don't know that.
Maybe we're sitting in my officeand there's an earthquake.
I don't know that.
But what I do know is can weobserve what's happening this
(25:24):
second?
This moment.
That's what helps us then say,okay, it helps the brain
understand I'm not back there.
I'm here right now.
SPEAKER_00 (25:32):
Yeah.
Well, and there's like I didn'tunderstand the tremendous power
in just sitting with emotion.
It's incredible.
And and I, like you said,emotions are not just in our
head.
You know, I think that it's soimportant for us to integrate
ourselves.
And that's why yoga, one of thereasons why yoga is so powerful,
is that we we can reintegratewhen we've become disconnected,
(25:56):
we can reintegrate and startnoticing, like, and I love that
the notice that notice that,notice that, you know, observe.
Like those words are so powerfulbecause as we start to notice
what our body actually feelslike, everything feels like when
we're in an emotion, then westart to become much more
self-aware and and and able toactually sit with it so we don't
(26:19):
shy away from or get scared ofsensations in our body because
we're like, that's fear.
Like I'm this is fear right nowthat I'm feeling, or oh, this is
that's what my body does when Ifeel angry, or that's what my
body does when I feel, you know,excited, or you know, so we
don't we don't start to fearthese physical sensations
because we become moreself-aware and more under, you
(26:42):
know, more understanding ofourselves when we have these
sensations and we can sit withthem more comfortably.
And like you mentioned, like Idescribe it as a toddler.
Anyone who's ever worked with atoddler, if you try to shush
them when they're trying to tellyou something, they will just
get louder.
The more you try to silencethem, the louder they will get
because they're like, no, payattention to me.
(27:03):
I need to tell you something.
And the second you pay attentionto them, especially if you get
down on their level and holdthem in, you know, like right in
front of you and say, tell mewhat you need, they'll tell you
and then it's over.
Like if they just go on abouttheir lives, you know?
But yeah, and it's the samething with our emotions.
If you try to silence theemotion, it's information that
your body needs to get to you.
It needs to give you thisinformation.
(27:25):
And the more we try to shut itdown, the more intense it'll
get.
And that's when we get, we endup with like I loved in The Body
Keeps a Score, how Dr.
Vanderkoel helps us understandlike a lot of the physical
ailments that we have are theresult of suppressed trauma, of
unhealed, you know, unhealedwounds that have been pushed
down, pushed down, pushed down.
And our body is like, well,you're not gonna listen to me
(27:47):
that way.
Maybe you'll listen to me thisway, you know?
And so it just startsmanifesting in other physical
ways because it needs to deliverthe information.
That's how we're designed.
And we have to learn how tolisten.
SPEAKER_01 (27:59):
That's exactly it.
And the toddler example isperfect.
It's like if I say to thetoddler, you know what, we're
not gonna go to the zoo today,but we're going tomorrow.
Oh, we had better go tomorrow,right?
Because tomorrow will come andwe'll be like, when are we
going?
Are we going?
You said we're going.
And that's exactly what we dowith the pain.
Yeah, yeah, I'll rest later.
I'll rest later.
And then the pain's like, oh,you didn't listen.
(28:19):
Okay, we're getting louder, andI'm gonna keep reminding you.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00 (28:26):
And I want to talk about you, you talk about the
difference between thephilosophies of psychotherapy,
like the approach ofpsychotherapy versus the goals,
or I shouldn't say I don't knowif philosophy is the right word,
but you talk about like thegoal, I guess, the goal of
psychotherapy versus the goal ofyoga and what the difference is.
Could you share that with ouraudience?
I have like, actually, let meread this quote.
(28:47):
I think this is really great.
I highlighted this for myself,so I'm gonna read it really
quick if that's okay.
This is from Dr.
Osman's book, and I should haveset shared the name of it:
Mental and Emotional HealingThrough Yoga, a guiding
framework for therapists andtheir clients.
And it's you don't have to be atherapist to read this.
It's so good.
Like, I highly recommend it.
Thank you.
But she says there are coredifferences between
(29:08):
psychotherapy and yoga.
The most significant is thatyoga has a loftier goal than the
mental awareness and insight ofpsychotherapy.
To liberate the human being fromthe shackles of self-doubt and
pain.
The goal of yoga is not toobtain something that is
lacking, it is the realizationof an already present reality
from which we are, we havebecome separate.
(29:29):
The aim is to attain aprogressively more evolved state
of being than that of mentalconsciousness, thereby attaining
a progressively greater force ofone's being.
So with the goal with yoga isn'tjust to understand, you know, we
when we are when we're going totherapy and we're talking about
the problems.
I I know lots of people who canarticulate all of their trauma
(29:50):
and all of their problems, andthey're still suffering.
They're still struggling withit.
There's an awareness, there'ssome kind of a, you know, a
conscious awareness of all theissues, and maybe even sometimes
a conscious awareness that theyare the source of a lot of the
things that they're strugglingwith.
But there has, but it has nothelped them to process the
emotion.
It has not helped them to learnhow to handle when when the you
(30:13):
know the body takes over andit's like, you weren't you're
not safe.
I'm taking over now.
And your brain goes into the,you know, you go into the lower
part of your brain where you'reno longer in charge of yourself.
So, can you talk a little bitmore about why that distinction
is different and how yoga canhelp you, you know, when we're
not talking about thingsnecessarily.
You're not necessarily talkingabout things when when you're
(30:33):
working with yoga, but if youcan learn the tools, you can
actually help help yourselfprocess emotion.
You can help yourself processpast trauma.
It's a really powerful tool.
SPEAKER_01 (30:44):
Yeah, in psychotherapy, we talk about,
and this is a relatively recentdistinction, the difference
between top-down and bottom-uptherapies.
So top-down is like myprefrontal cortex, my logical
mind is trying to tell my limbicsystem and my brainstem, so the
emotions to shift.
Usually what that does is buildinsight, but not necessarily
shift anything, right?
(31:05):
That's a little bit like if I'manxious and someone says calm
down.
Surprisingly, that's not goingto actually do anything, right?
If anything, it's just gonnamake things more frustrating.
Bottom-up therapies aretherapies where we're not trying
to gain insight, but ratherwe're trying to shift things
emotionally and we may neverknow why.
So therapies like EMDR therapy,brain spotting, somatic
(31:25):
therapies do that where it'slike you may not get the
insight, you may never know why,but the shift has happened.
With yoga, that's what we'rehoping to do is we're creating
that shift.
But the difference is that I'mcreating it through, as you
said, a practice.
So I, as the therapist, can bethere with my client, but the
big shift that happens is thatthe person practicing builds
(31:49):
that.
So a little bit like thediscomfort of sitting my with my
emotions, I'm sitting in apranayama, a breath practice, or
an asana, a posture, a physicalshape.
And it may not feel that great,but you know what?
It's gonna end.
And that's an analogy for otherdifficult physical emotions that
I'm sitting with.
They're all related to the body.
(32:09):
And that's the big piece withyoga, that it's like yoga, so
many pieces of the yogaphilosophy are about the whole.
So, for example, the what we inyoga term the koshas.
So there's sort of energybodies, there's the physical,
there's the breath, there's themental.
They're all one.
I'm not trying to pull one out,but they're all one.
(32:30):
So when my body is in downwardfacing dog, when I first started
my yoga practice, I remember myfirst class, the teacher said,
Yeah, and if you're tired, restin down dog.
And I'm like, Yeah, but I'mtired of being in down dog.
Like, I don't have my body isn'tthere yet.
So I'm like, okay.
But yeah.
So if my body is uncomfortable,but I know that this is going to
end at some point, that'straining for my mind to
(32:53):
generalize and be like, you knowwhat?
I'm noticing the discomfort frommy emotion, which is exactly the
same.
My body's uncomfortable.
That's what it boils down to.
It's not noticing somethingdifferent.
My shoulders were and my legswere uncomfortable and downward
dog.
And my chest is uncomfortableright now while I'm experiencing
anxiety.
It's all the same.
It's all my body.
So then the messaginggeneralizes in my mind, oh, at
(33:15):
some point it's gonna end.
If I sit with it like thattoddler you mentioned, and maybe
the toddler doesn't even knowwhy he's crying.
Something happened, and hedoesn't even have the words or
even the awareness.
But I'm just there and I'm like,I'm right here with you.
Hold your hand, I'm gonna giveyou a hug.
You can sit on my lap, you canlean your head against my chest,
(33:35):
it'll pass.
It's like I think of those sobsat the end, right?
Where the toddlers are, it'slike, okay, it's passing
through.
And that's exactly what yogateaches us that I by being in
this moment and building myawareness, I get to understand
that it's a moment, right?
(33:55):
It passes.
It's like there's a one of themost well-known passages in the
Yoga Sutras, a key text in yoga,is Yoga is the stilling of the
fluctuations of the mind.
So it's not about my feelinggreat and my accomplishing this,
it's just like that.
I sit with it and okay.
SPEAKER_00 (34:16):
It's a little stiller.
Yeah, and one of the things thatI think is so profound is if we
approach therapy or yoga therapyspecifically, like I'm talking
about that here, if we willapproach the process of healing
past trauma or past, you know,like if we're if we're learning
how to maybe somebody doesn'thave trauma, but they have
(34:38):
developed unhealthy thoughtbehavior patterns that have
gotten them stuck with emotions.
As we, if we will look at thatexperience not as something to
get through, but as something tolearn from, it actually will
help inform our ability to copeand manage and process emotions
in the future.
And I am actually in that phasenow, and it's pretty exciting
(34:59):
because I viewed, I used to viewmy stuck trauma, my processed,
you know, the past trauma assomething to overcome.
And and it was something to getover with and to be done with.
And what I have learned sincethen is that the experience of
going through and processingthat past trauma has enabled me
(35:19):
now, when I experience traumaticexperiences now, to process it
in real time because I'vedeveloped tools from that
experience in the past.
And so I it has caused me toview that experience totally
differently now.
I don't look back on thatexperience and processing the
trauma in the past as likesomething that was done in the
(35:39):
past.
It was an opportunity to learnand to develop new skills and to
develop new tools so that now,because life is hard.
Like life is really hard.
And it and I don't want to saythat to make anybody feel
discouraged.
It's just reality.
This is the reality that weexperience.
This is the reality we live inas human beings, and we can
either allow ourselves passivelyto become victims to it, or we
(36:02):
can choose to activelyparticipate and actively, you
know, use our agency, exerciseour agency to choose to interact
with these things in a way thathelps us to navigate them in a
healthier way that helps us tomove through them more smoothly
and move on to the next part ofour life.
And, you know, and and Ishouldn't say move on.
(36:24):
That's probably not the rightword, but but to navigate them
in a way that we're not justsuffering through it.
Does that make sense to you?
Do you understand what I'msaying?
It's really quite profound.
SPEAKER_01 (36:33):
It is.
And, you know, it doesn't takeaway from the challenges that
folks can have day to day,right?
So as opposed to the culture ofsaying, well, you know, anyone
can make it through and justpull yourself up.
It's like, no, there are realchallenges.
And there are real challengeswith our health, with our
systems of access, with biggersystemic things that we can't
(36:56):
control.
And noticing what's what'shappening for me in this moment
takes me, gives me a moreimmediate real experience than
that mind chatter.
That it's like this happened inthe past, it's gonna happen
again.
You know what?
I have so few choices.
I'm scared because this mighthappen to me.
(37:16):
All of that.
It's like, yeah, that and that'sthat both and that's that fuller
experience.
All of that is true.
We're not saying think positiveand therefore magically you'll
feel great.
And there won't be circumstancesthat are confining.
Rather, we're saying notice thismoment, this one.
This isn't the moment whenyou're at the hospital in XYZ.
(37:37):
This isn't the moment when wayback when something happened
legally or something happened inyour family, or when you were
very young, something happenedwith a caregiver.
All of that happened.
And this moment is none ofthose.
And that's that building ofawareness.
And you know, folks may not haveexperienced trauma in the sense
(37:57):
of what we think of as big Ttrauma, but anything that
impacts us is trauma in someshape or form.
So even people who say, Oh,yeah, my life has been really
smooth, usually there are thingsthat impacted them, right?
Otherwise, they wouldn't havebeen human.
And so it's again recognizingthat this moment wasn't there.
SPEAKER_00 (38:12):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we develop more resilienceand the ability to navigate life
in a more I don't know what theright word is.
I'm trying to think of it.
I just, I feel like youexperience a richer life when
we're able to stay present withall emotions, not just seek out
certain emotions.
You know, we don't need toconstantly be seeking out, you
(38:33):
know, the emotions that are moredesirable.
Learning how to stay presentwith all emotions and all
experiences, and it frees us, itliberates us too, because
otherwise we we are choosing toallow ourselves to become
victims to other people'schoices and to other experiences
and that we become victimized bythem.
But when we choose to developthese tools that help us to
(38:54):
learn how to navigate theseexperiences by staying present
and by not trying to avoid orchange constantly, it helps our
lives to be more full and morerich and more fulfilling.
I don't, it's hard to you notuse the word enjoyable, but I
mean it truly is.
It's more, it's a morefulfilling way to experience
(39:14):
life because you're notconstantly trying to change
things and you're not allowingyourself to be victimized by
other people.
SPEAKER_01 (39:21):
Absolutely.
And when we're trying to clampdown on certain experiences and
certain emotions, our systemdoesn't work that way.
Either I feel emotions or Idon't.
So if I try to cut out emotionsthat aren't so socially
acceptable and people do thatall the time, oh, don't cry,
right?
Like let's go do this anddistract you.
I also don't get to experiencethe other emotions, the more
(39:42):
positive ones, because how am Iable to clamp down those
emotions?
I'm clamping down a system.
And that's why also, and oftensay we are a culture of
hedonism, right?
If I say I've had a bad day, howmight someone meet that?
Maybe someone will say to me,Tell me about it, absolutely.
But after all, maybe they'llsay, you know what?
What?
Let's have a drink, eatsomething sweet, shop.
(40:04):
Something that's distraction andbig.
It's like, I don't needsomething so big.
I just need relationship.
Right?
But we are so about somethingdifficult happened.
Let's distract ourselves withsomething that's so big and over
the top because it's hard for usto feel even the positive
emotions fully because we'retrying to clamp down on all the
(40:26):
emotions.
SPEAKER_00 (40:28):
Yes.
Okay.
So I want to talk about yourthree-pronged model.
And I I would love for you toshare, first of all, what that
is.
It's in her book, but I want youto talk about it.
And how did you develop thismodel?
Because it's the more that Iunderstand it, and as I'm
working on learning how to, whenyou teach somebody else, you
learn things way on a way deeperlevel.
So I've learned it so much moredeeply as I've learned how to
(40:49):
teach it to other people.
But could you share like howthat how that developed and why
it is such an effective way tohelp people learn how to use
yoga in a really proactive,beneficial way to heal?
SPEAKER_01 (41:02):
Absolutely.
So when I first started workingwith yoga in with mental health,
and there wasn't that much outthere, and there wasn't even
that much research out there.
I went with what we tend tothink is going to be the fit.
So if I'm low energy, then maybewe raise my energy.
And if I feel like I'm bouncingoff the walls, then maybe we
(41:22):
bring down my energy.
And I would notice this in classteaching general population
classes, how people come totheir imbalance.
In other words, if I am teachingrestorative class, most of the
folks that would come in wouldbe people who are already
feeling pretty low energy, haveeither illness or an injury, or
(41:44):
are older, and they would cometo a restorative class.
And there'd be thisunderstanding that you come to a
more vigorous class when you canmanage it, you have the fitness,
you have the energy, and thenyou know, life happens, whether
it's the years or an injury, andyou come to a restorative class.
And I'm like, huh.
People come to where they'realready at because they can meet
(42:06):
it.
But the challenge is how is thatgoing to create any shift?
So if I feel was feeling lowenergy and I come to a
restorative class, I feel likeat the end, but it certainly
didn't shift.
I might feel emotionally more atease, more peaceful.
But usually when people arecoming in and there are mental
(42:26):
health concerns that come up,it's that somehow their
day-to-day life doesn't feelviable.
It doesn't feel like they'refunctioning in the way they need
to.
So feeling more of the sameisn't going to do it.
So what when we try to dosomething very different, I
remember I was working withsomebody and I'm like, oh, the
breath of joy, that's so muchenergy.
(42:47):
And this was a personexperiencing depression.
So breath of joy is inhaleforward, inhale side, inhale up,
exhale down, and you bendforward.
And I guided the person, and theperson started crying and felt
overwhelmed.
And I'm like, aha.
There's crying that's release,and there's crying that's I feel
stuck and I feel overwhelmed.
Why?
(43:07):
Because ultimately it moved thissadness that this person was
feeling.
Now she felt it even more.
Probably helpful in the longrun, but in the short run,
doesn't help her meet thedemands of her day-to-day.
I'm like, okay, so we're notgonna do something that's more
inwardly focused, meditation,etc., because if things are
(43:30):
feeling kind of blah in here andyou make me bend forward, and
you can even feel in my bodylanguage that I'm now becoming
even more immersed in that kindof blah feeling, and something
more invigorating shakes thingsup too much.
So, what is it?
How do we meet folks in a placethat feels accessible, but also
(43:50):
helps them feel like they'remeeting the day-to-day?
And that's where I developed thethree-prong model from.
So the three-prong model focuseson grounding.
Most yoga experiences that aregeneral population yoga classes
are very short on grounding.
So, what is grounding?
Grounding helps me feel more inthe present moment, more
(44:11):
connected to my surroundings.
Physically, how do I do that?
My eyes are open.
So we love closing eyes in yogaclasses.
But you know, the minute I closemy eyes, I'm in my head, and who
knows what's happening in myhead, right?
Whereas if my eyes are open, I'mnow looking around, I'm noticing
what's happening around me.
I'm here.
I'm not back in 2017 wheresomething might have happened
(44:35):
that even if I'm not aware, I'mback in 2017.
Right.
So my eyes are open.
I'm using both sides of my bodyin whatever way I can access.
So whether I when I use both ofthem, things look from the
outside like they'resymmetrical, or they don't look
from the outside like they'resymmetrical.
But in me, I'm exerting efforton both sides, however, that is
(44:58):
for me.
So either I'm doing somethingthat looks symmetrical or feels
symmetrical internally, or I'mdoing something that's one-sided
on one side, one-sided on theother, but engaging both sides
of the body.
My breath is even.
So all these lovely breaths wehave in yoga, it's like, oh,
you're feeling low energy.
Okay, let's do an energizingbreath.
(45:18):
It's too much.
It's a little bit like if I hadthe brake on and then suddenly I
slam on the gas.
Not good.
Not good for my car, not goodfor me as the driver, not good
for anybody around me.
Same here.
So all my practices aregrounded, help connect with
what's around me, help connectwith my body evenly.
(45:40):
There's always somethingtouching the floor.
So grounding practices are notones where I'm maybe hanging
forward and just hanging withthe arms dangling.
They're on something if I'mdoing a forward bend, but I'm
mindful that the spine is alsoalways straight.
I might bend forward a littlebit, so like kind of 90 degrees,
but I'm not bending forward allthe way.
So straight spine, both sides ofthe body, eyes open, even
(46:04):
breath.
And then I want to check in.
What's one word that describeshow I'm feeling, if it's me, or
if I'm guiding somebody, howthey're feeling?
And any word is fine.
Someone might feel tired,someone might feel stiff,
someone might feel whatever itis, it's all fine.
When we're working with someone,we want to hear positive things.
So when they say good, we'relike, great, but I have no idea
(46:24):
what that means.
If I say to someone, what's oneword that describes how your
body feels, and they say good,is that just that they're
telling me they're not in pain?
Is that they're telling me it'snot unbearable?
I don't know what that means.
I'm like, tell me what's what'sone word in your body, right?
First word that comes to mind.
Tight, peaceful, at ease, whichis two words, totally fine, but
(46:45):
we always do the check-in.
Once I'm doing grounding and thecheck-in that's coming is
consistently grounded, and thatmay take a long time, and it may
be always.
Some of us have emotionalexperiences, most of us really,
where they're up and down, andsometimes the ups and downs are
big, right?
(47:05):
So grounding is excellent.
And that can be my practice.
And there are many periods oftime where I'm just grounding,
or I really feel like I need toground.
Okay, I feel more grounded.
Great.
If I feel grounded consistently,then maybe now we can switch to
one of the other prongs,depending on what I'm moving
(47:26):
towards.
If I feel grounded consistently,but I need a little bit of
energy to meet my the demands ofmy day-to-day life, then after a
lot of grounding, maybe now wedo an energizing practice, but
brief energizing practice.
Maybe we do a pranayama, abreath.
So it's energizing, lifts theenergy.
Or I need a little bit ofcalming, then after the
(47:47):
grounding, maybe now we do somecalming breaths.
Okay, maybe now the exhale is alittle bit longer, which helps
calm.
Maybe now I do one forward foldor forward bend that's more
calming.
But the root is always thegrounding.
And that's where my model isvery different from a lot of
what's out there.
(48:08):
It enables us, and I, you know,I think a lot of that connects
to kind of psychotherapy workaround being in the present
moment, but also the core ofyoga around that witness
consciousness and thatmindfulness.
That grounding helps return meto the witness consciousness and
the observation.
And then I can work a little bitwith that, with the raising the
(48:30):
energy and a little bit with thelowering the energy.
SPEAKER_00 (48:33):
Yeah, it's incredible because one of the
things that I love about goingthrough your book and learning
how to understand thesedifferent the way that these
different poses and practicesaffect your body, affect my
body, helped me understand howto use the tool.
It helped me understand, youknow, okay, I I this is
(48:55):
supportive of me.
And the word that I use all thetime is supportive.
Is it supportive of what youneed right now?
Because a lot of times I I'vefound, I've started asking
people when they say, Oh, yeah,I tried yoga and I didn't like
it.
I will say, I will start to askthem questions.
Tell me about your dear yourexperience with yoga.
Like, where did you because I Itruly believe that when people
(49:17):
have an aversion to yoga, thatthey engaged in a practice that
was not supportive of theirneeds at the time and and it it
turned them off to it because itfelt discordant.
It it felt like it didn't, itdidn't work for them, it didn't
help them, it maybe made themfeel worse.
And one of the challenges is ifyou're if your experience is it
going into a class, you know,there's there can be social
(49:38):
pressure around you to be, youknow, to look a certain way, to
be able to do a certain thing.
I've been in I've I have beenpracticing yoga off and on for
years now, and I've always beenquite flexible.
I was an athlete when I wasyounger, and I was quite
flexible.
So I was able to get, you know,I even had a yoga instructor one
time, she's like, you're likeGumby, you know.
So, but I don't, I try to, I'vestarted trying to put myself in
(50:01):
the back of the classes becauseI thought I don't want somebody
else's experience here to bechallenged because they're
looking at me and comparingthemselves to the way that I am
that I am experiencing the yogapractice.
And I found myself doing thesame thing.
I found myself, we have atendency to judge, just a
natural human tendency to judge,you know, judge people, judge
(50:24):
situations in that, but we judgeourselves with reference to
people around us, and it canaffect the way that we
experience something like this,because our brain, we're up
inside our brain tellingourselves a story rather than
allowing ourselves to feelwhat's happening.
And and when I when I startedpracticing it, I think I I can't
(50:45):
remember if I told you thisstory last time, but the very
first I don't think it was averse day that I went, I think
it was the second time that Iwent.
I had a friend of mine whoinvited me to a yoga class.
And I went a few times.
It was I see there was like afree trial membership kind of
thing.
And I didn't go after thatbecause I couldn't afford the
membership.
But this, I think it was thesecond class we were in there,
and when I was in downwardfacing dog, and it was funny,
(51:08):
she said the same thing.
If you're tired, go into thisone.
I'm like, this does not feelreal unrestful to me at all.
Like, I don't know what you'retalking about.
But I had an emo I experiencedan emotional release in that
position.
You know, I was trying, I was atthe first time I went, I was
very kind of judgmental.
You know, I was looking atpeople around me, trying to be,
you know, I wanted to do itright, you know, and I was my I
(51:28):
was really in my head the firsttime.
The second time, she was veryfocused on pranayama and she was
focused on breathing.
Stay present with your breath,you know, this breath in, this
breath out.
She kept saying that over andover again.
Just focus on this breath in,focus on this breath out.
And as I started to try andallow myself to be present with
what she was saying, telling usto do, and I was in
(51:48):
downward-facing dog, all of asudden I felt these emotions
like rising up.
I it was like a physicalsensation of emotions coming up
through my body, almost like awater rising.
And all of a sudden, it was likepouring out of me, and I was
crying onto the mat, like a poolof water was forming under my
head.
(52:09):
And at first I was like, oh mygosh, what's happening to me?
And and then I just and I kepthearing her, you know,
prompting, which is why it'sbeneficial, so I think sometimes
to work with somebody if youcan, because you can have
somebody kind of observing andprompting according to what your
needs are.
But she kept, as I keptfocusing, trying to, you know, I
was like trying not to resistwhat was happening.
(52:31):
It was the most catharticexperience I'd had up to that
point in my life.
And I left there and I'm like,what just happened?
Like I felt so calm leaving thatthat practice.
And it was like you haddescribed with your experience.
You're like, I don't wantanything to interrupt this.
I just want to like stay presentin this peace and this calm.
But it took me years tounderstand what I'd experienced.
(52:53):
And and there were times when Iwould do yoga practices and I
would find myself being guidedthrough this guided practice,
and I would want to go intochild's pose.
Like I'm I'm doing an activatingpractice, and I just kept
thinking, I just want to go intochild's pose right now.
And it was a long time before Ilearned how to honor that desire
because I didn't understand,like my brain, my upper part of
(53:14):
my brain telling me a story islike, you're a dot a quitter,
don't quit, you know?
Right.
Like trying to stay present withthis challenging practice when
my body's just asking to begrounded.
Like I just need to be groundedright now, you know.
And so that's one of the reasonswhy I found your three-pronged
model so powerful.
Because when you start tounderstand what the different
(53:35):
poses are doing, and then youbecome more observant when you
do practices, you can start tounderstand and recognize what
your body needs and what issupportive of the state that you
are in or of the goal that youhave.
You know, if you are if you'reworking on processing trauma and
you need to learn, you need toallow yourself to like
(53:58):
experience emotions, but thenyou need to create safety for
yourself so that you don't, sothat your brain doesn't take
over and think danger, danger,and like shut everything down.
It's truly a powerful thing tolearn how to how to use this
tool in an effective way tosupport what it is your your
your goal is, whatever that itis that you're working on.
SPEAKER_01 (54:19):
Yeah, yeah.
And it's honoring what your bodyneeds and that it's not less or
more, which is one of the toughthings for us.
That it's like somehow child'spose is like less vigorous, and
so it's less.
It's like, no, they're allpractices and at the origins of
yoga, they're all practices thatfit together.
This is a very Western conceptthat we have that it's like this
(54:40):
is easy.
So, you know, you go to a classand someone's like, level one,
your foot is on the floor, leveltwo, you lift up it, lift it up,
and level three, you bring it uphere.
And it's like these these aredifferent asanas.
They're not levels of things.
And so, yeah, it is reallydifficult to honor and be like,
okay, what is it that I needright now?
It's not less than, it's meetingmyself where I'm at.
(55:02):
And not meeting myself where I'mat again because it's less than.
So sometimes people say, Oh,yeah, it's good that you took
care of yourself, which it is,but implied in that is like that
you downshifted to take care ofyourself.
But it's not a downshift, right?
It's actually an upshift becauseyou're relating to yourself
more.
SPEAKER_00 (55:19):
Yeah, and and learning how to observe, you
know, experience things withoutjudgment.
Like, don't judge where you areright now.
That does not do any good.
It doesn't do any good to to andand I think when I say judgment,
I'm talking about like it's noteven always just comparing
ourselves to other people.
It can be comparing ourselves toourselves.
You know, I was feeling so goodyesterday, and now I'm feeling
(55:40):
terrible today, and and youknow, what's the matter with me
and what I do wrong?
And, you know, and sometimesyou're just sometimes it's just
a bad day.
Like sometimes, and I don't evenlike the word bad day.
It just it's it's a down day, orit's a you know, it's a day
where there's lower energy, oryou know, maybe maybe something
that you have that happened inthe morning you without even
(56:01):
being aware of it just kind oflowered the mood.
And and so what and maybe that'ssorry, go Alex.
No, I was just gonna say justlearning how to stay present
with it rather than rather thanjudging it and trying to fix it,
just stay present with it.
SPEAKER_01 (56:15):
Yeah.
This is it, it's the contrast.
So it's like we need the nightto experience the day.
It's like this is it.
Like we have, you know, likeright now, here we are in
January.
It's colder, it's more hours ofdarkness.
How can that not impact oursystem somehow, right?
That maybe this is a season ofcontraction, maybe it's a day of
(56:36):
contraction where I feel likebeing more internally focused
and tomorrow I'm back.
And so that's that's a piecetoo, that it's it's a it's a
moment that's part of thatbigger picture.
And so, how do I meet myself inthat moment where I'm truly
meeting myself rather than theexpectations that are around me,
including the ones that I'vecreated because of how we're
(56:59):
encouraged and how we'reencouraged to not meet
ourselves, but rather meetexpectations around us of
perfection that lead to strugglein pretty much all of us.
SPEAKER_00 (57:10):
Yeah, and I it's interesting.
I my mom said something uh to meyears ago.
She said, bloom where you'replanted.
And she was talking about it.
We had grown up in California,and my parents, while I was in
college, moved up to WashingtonState.
A massive difference in in theweather, right?
So they went from a very, verysunny environment to a place
(57:31):
that has the majority of thedays of the year.
It's gray and the sun does notpenetrate the sky.
And, you know, and so my mom, Iloved that, you know, that she
they found joy in where theywere living.
They they found a way to, and Ithink the same thing for
seasons.
You know, I used to be like, Ihate winter, I love summer, and
(57:51):
then I moved to the Midwestwhere it was like the winters
were really hard.
We had, you know, we would getsnow drifts up to our waist and
you know, sub-zero temperatureson a regular basis in the sub in
the winter time.
And the first couple of years, Iwas super depressed in the
wintertime because it was such II hated it.
You know, I hated, I'm like, Ihate the snow, I hate the cold,
(58:12):
I hate, you know, and and I thenmy mom was talking to me one day
and said this, you know, samething, bloom or your planet.
And I thought, okay, how do youbloom in the winter?
Like nothing blooms in thewintertime, nothing blooms in
the snow, right?
But I I learned how to find waysto embrace each part of each
season of the year.
And, you know, and learning howto like made sure we got nice
(58:33):
warm snow clothes so we could goout and play in the snow, you
know, and and I I even had apaper out at one point.
I I did it to try and help mystepson, and he has zero
interest in doing it.
So I did it for a year and ahalf by myself.
But I found ways, you know, I'mI'm out in like negative 20
degrees with a windshield factorof negative 30 and you know, car
hearts and you know, all wrappedup and you know, walking through
(58:55):
snow drifts.
But I had like come up withgames to play with myself to
like pass the time, and Iactually started to really love
it.
You know, I loved getting upearly, I loved to vigorous, you
know, exercise, you know, ifthere was a feeling of
accomplishment when I, you know,was done with the parade, you
know, with the with the paperroute.
And so I think that the samething can be true for our
emotional states.
(59:16):
Instead of, and that's why yogais so powerful, bringing this
back to yoga.
If we will learn how to honorall of our emotional states and
recognize that all of theemotional states have value,
instead of judging them andtrying to escape them, learning
how to be present with them.
Number one, when you do that, itlessens the intensity a lot of
times of the emotionalexperiences, because often the
(59:39):
intensity of the emotionalexperience, anger or sadness or
whatever, is intensified, likewe talked about before, like the
toddler, by the resistance tothem.
When we try to resist them, theybecome more intense because
they're just trying to deliverinformation.
And and when we learn how tojust recognize like there's
value in each of these emotionalstates, and how can I?
(01:00:00):
How can I stay present with itand experience the value of it
rather than trying to avoid itor trying to escape it or
pathologizing it?
It's you know, it's incrediblehow beneficial yoga can be in
helping us to learn how to dothat, learn how to honor what
our you know our bodies and ourour exist our souls need and and
(01:00:20):
learning how to use it in a waythat helps us to live a more
satisfying, fulfilling, presentlife.
SPEAKER_01 (01:00:29):
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_00 (01:00:33):
Okay.
So if somebody wants to learnmore about what you do, or if
they want to connect with you insome way, how can they do that?
SPEAKER_01 (01:00:41):
So my website, gataosman.com, is the perfect
way to learn a little bit more,learn about the book, learn
about videos I have, learn aboutmy work in general.
And I am very responsive toemail.
My email is on there, but justin case, it's my first name,
Gata, at gataosman all oneword.com.
SPEAKER_00 (01:01:01):
Wonderful.
I'm gonna make sure all ofthat's linked in the show notes.
If you if you want to connectwith her, please go to the show
notes and you'll you'll find allof that there.
Thank you so much.
This has been an incredibleconversation, and I know that is
gonna benefit my audiencetremendously.
So thank you so much for yourtime today.
SPEAKER_01 (01:01:16):
Thank you so much for having me.
Really appreciated theopportunity and really enjoyed
chatting with you.
So thank you.
SPEAKER_00 (01:01:22):
Wonderful.
All right, until next time,upsiders.
Thanks for joining me on theUpside of Bipolar.
Your journey to recoverymatters, and I'm grateful you're
here.
For more resources, visitwww.theupsideofbipolar.com.
(01:01:43):
If you're ready to dive deeper,grab my book, The Upside of
Bipolar (01:01:46):
Seven Steps to Heal Your Disorder.
If you're ready to heal yoursymptoms, join my monthly
membership, The Upsiders Tribe,to transform chaos into hope.
Until next time, Upsiders.
We are human beings that have emotions.
And so can I feel the emotionand be with the emotion instead
of always trying to clamp downon the emotion?
So a lot of the time when wetalk about regulation, it's
about how can we make yourdifficult emotion go away?
And instead, can we think ofregulation as how can I have a
broader lens with which to seethings?
SPEAKER_00 (00:26):
Welcome to the Upside of Bipolar, where we
uncover the true sources ofbipolar symptoms and share
proven tools for recovery.
I'm your host, MichelleReitinger, number one
international best-sellingauthor of the Upside of Bipolar
Seven Steps to Heal YourDisorder.
In this podcast, I bring yousolo insights from my journey
and guest interviews withleading researchers and experts.
(00:47):
Join us to transform chaos intohope and reclaim your life.
Let's heal together.
Welcome to the Upside ofBipolar.
I am your host, MichelleReitinger, and I am thrilled to
have the first guest of the newyear be Dr.
Gata Osman.
(01:07):
I am so excited to interview heragain.
Anybody who's been listening tomy podcast for any length of
time will have already heard myfirst interview with her.
But I have been learning so muchmore from her book.
This is my copy of her book, andI've got all of these tabs.
If you're not if you're notwatching this, if you're
listening to this, I have tonsand tons of tabs because I've
been studying her book morethoroughly and so excited to
(01:29):
interview her today because Ihave better questions to ask her
this time that I think is goingto make for a much more exciting
discussion.
So thank you, Dr.
Osman, for joining us today.
I appreciate you being a guest.
SPEAKER_01 (01:40):
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm excited to be here andexcited to be your first guest
of the new year, too.
SPEAKER_00 (01:45):
Yes.
And I've been looking forward tothis.
She's been on my books for abouta month now, I think.
And I've just been like lookingforward to this with excited
anticipation.
So we are going to start withDr.
Osman sharing her story with us.
SPEAKER_01 (02:00):
Thank you for the opportunity.
And again, yes, so grateful tobe here.
So grateful to connect with you.
And the last time you asked mesome great questions too.
And I'm excited to chatt it, bechatting more.
So yeah, I appreciate yourreaching out to me.
And I'm always really excitedwhen folks reach out and say
that they've read the book andcome across it and, you know,
that it's been beneficial.
And so thank you.
(02:20):
Thank you for that.
Um kind of for reminding me ofthe importance of yoga and the
healing power of yoga.
It's really appreciate it.
My journey with yoga, where I'llI'll start there, even though I
am also a psychotherapist, andmy journey with yoga started now
almost 30 years ago.
And I remember going to my firstyoga class at the gym back when
(02:41):
doing yoga, you know, it wassort of between two periods
where there were a lot of folksdoing yoga decades ago, and then
it kind of slipped out of themore mainstream awareness and
then now has come back.
And so it was during thatin-between period.
And I remember taking a classand thinking, yeah, it'll be
good for me to do somestretching, and then coming out
of it in a completely differentheadspace.
(03:02):
And I remember getting in mycar, and that was back, you
know, and like turning on theradio was the best form of
entertainment in the car.
And I remember turning on theradio and then turning it back
off again because I was like,I'm in a headspace I have never
been in before, where I'mactually in this place where I
feel a little bit of spacecompared to the usual chatter
and hecticness that I'm movingthrough with that, you know,
(03:25):
it's is so rewarded.
You know, you're beingproductive, you're being
effective, and even though itactually really pulls us out of
being in the present moment.
And from then on, I continuedwith my yoga journey.
I remember when I became a yogateacher, which is now 26 years
ago in the year 2000, I thoughtit was just more to strengthen
my practice.
(03:46):
And then over time, as I beganmy psychotherapy practice, I
wanted to incorporate somethingthat really brought people home
to their bodies rather thanengage them more with the
chatter of the mind.
And that's how I connected morewith yoga therapy.
I have a good friend who has ayoga therapy program based in
Florida, and she and I cookedtogether a yoga for mental
(04:09):
health program back before otherfolks were doing that.
And that's where the journeystarted.
And then at some point Ithought, you know, I think I
want to get the word out thereeven more because I see the
impact that yoga has on folks,and I see the impact that it has
on folks regardless of wherethey're coming in, where their
head is at.
And so here I am.
So I teach, I train yogatherapists to incorporate mental
(04:32):
health.
I provide trainings forpsychotherapists as well to
incorporate yoga into theirpractices and into their work
with their clients.
And then I also um oversee amental health counseling program
at a community college district.
And so I work with graduatestudents, folks who are
post-degree pre-licensure, avariety of different therapists,
as well as my own directclients.
(04:54):
That's amazing.
SPEAKER_00 (04:55):
A little bit about me.
Yeah.
And that's and tell me what'syour educational background
again?
SPEAKER_01 (04:59):
Can you just so I hold a PhD from Harvard
University, and then I also holdmy um clinical degree.
So my licensure is as a licensedmarriage to family therapist.
A lot of the time folks thinkthat means that we work mainly
with relationships and families,and of course we do, but it's
also the outlook.
It's about the fact that we arevery much rooted in the idea
(05:21):
that therapy and our mentalhealth is very connected to
systems and to our originalsystem being our family, but to
other systems too.
And so we're looking at therapyrelationally, which I think also
connects really strongly withyoga in terms of that
relationship with others, butalso with ourselves.
SPEAKER_00 (05:39):
Yeah, and I think that's a very good lead into
where I want to start ourdiscussion.
In your book, you talk about thedifference between mental health
and emotional health.
And I thought that was such animportant distinction because
when somebody is diagnosed withbipolar disorder, it disconnects
us.
Like the diagnosis itselfdisconnects us because we are
(05:59):
focused on a problem in ourheads without any kind of
reference to anything else inour bodies or in our environment
or anything.
There's this idea that there issome kind of disease or disorder
that is rooted in the brain, andit stops us from being curious
about what could actually becausing these symptoms and
disconnects us.
Like it creates a disconnect, Ibelieve, between the mind and
(06:21):
the body.
And so I loved in your book howyou talked about mental health
versus emotional health.
And so could you talk a littlebit about that, help us
understand the differencebetween those and why that
distinction is so important?
SPEAKER_01 (06:34):
Yeah, absolutely.
So mental health, it's it'sinteresting, right?
It's a phrase.
It's we've re-purposed it insome ways, I think, in the last
few years, where we own it alittle bit more so that it
doesn't just come with thestigma of mental health and the
odd juxtaposition of mentalhealth and physical health, as
if this is not just all ourhealth altogether.
(06:55):
But mental health and especiallydiagnoses are this very odd way
of describing a very complexexperience where we say, okay,
well, to meet this diagnosis,you need to meet four of these
and five of these, and that'sthat's something that's 2D.
And we as individuals are 3D.
So I can meet criteria for adiagnosis, but the more
(07:18):
important aspect is how I'mfeeling right now, and that's my
emotional health.
So there, I will always meetpotentially criteria for a
diagnosis.
But how am I feeling right now?
That's my emotional health, andthat's the piece where we were
wanting to notice more.
What is it that tells me, okay,something's gonna shift for me?
(07:39):
I can see it coming around thecorner, and maybe now with my
relationship with my body, I canknow how to meet that.
That's my emotional health.
Maybe I feel like, oh, there'slike a fluttering in my body
that I don't notice typically.
And I excuse me, I'm beginningto notice it.
Ah, yeah, there's that shiftcoming around the corner.
Or I feel like a certain tensionin my neck, even, or my sleep is
(08:00):
impacted.
But what's my first tell thatit's impacted before I really
feel the impact?
Those are all parts of ouremotional health.
We all have emotional healthbecause we all have emotions,
because we're all human beings.
And so, how can each of us trackwhat's happening within
ourselves?
And that's building thatrelationship with ourselves.
We live in this culture of toxicpositivity, and everything is
(08:22):
supposed to be so great, and weignore what's happening for us
internally, and that's the bigshift.
A lot of the time when we workwith mental health and mental
health diagnoses, we work onbehaviors and decreasing
behaviors.
Well, you know what?
While you're experiencing this,how about you don't shop as
much?
So we're gonna say you use yourcredit card only this many
(08:44):
times.
That has nothing to do with howI feel internally.
So I might ego might be pleasedthat I spent less money.
Okay, that it has nothing to dowith my feeling in my body and
my relationship with that.
SPEAKER_00 (08:56):
Yeah, and I I think when you're talking about, you
know, the behaviors, trying tocontrol behaviors, I spent years
going to therapy, trying to workon like controlling behaviors
and that, and shaming myself forbehaviors that I was struggling
with repeatedly.
And I I remember that the theday that I remember the day that
it shifted.
I one of the one of the copingmechanisms that I had was binge
(09:19):
watching television.
And I'm not talking about like aweekend, you know, watching, you
know, I need to relax and I'mgonna watch, you know, eight
episodes of a show.
I'm talking about days on endbinge watching like 18 seasons
of Law and Order SVU, like backto back to back, like ignoring
all my responsibilities.
Like it was intense, verydestructive behavior.
(09:41):
And and it was very hard for mebecause I would go through
periods of time where I didn'tstruggle with this, and then all
of a sudden it was like thiscompulsion to do this.
And and I felt tremendous shamearound it.
And I went to a therapist onetime when it's when I started
struggling with this compulsionagain, and I was, you know,
crying and frustrated.
I'm like, I try all these thingsand I can't just stop it.
(10:02):
And she said, What need are youtrying to fill?
And it stopped me on my tracks.
I'm like, at first I was like, Ifelt resistance to what she was
asking because I'm like, it'sI'm not feeling a need.
I have, I have a, you know, Ibelieve I looked at it as uh an
addiction.
And I'm like, I'm addicted toTV, like I can't help it.
And she said, No, no, no.
What need are you trying tofill?
What what and what need are youtrying to meet within yourself?
(10:24):
And that whole day we talkedabout like, what could I be
trying to fix?
Like, this is a coping mechanismthat has developed to cope with
discomfort and and symptoms thatI'm struggling with.
And it t it totally shifted.
That was one of the first timesI started looking at these
things with curiosity instead ofjudgment to look for the source.
Like, what is the source here?
(10:44):
What's what's happening here?
And I loved what you weretalking about about seeing
clues.
That's one of the things that Italk with, you know, in my
coaching program.
I talk to people all the time,like you're a detective in your
life and you're looking forclues.
And when we shift, when we shiftthat, and I think that this is
one of the reasons why I loveyoga so much.
And I I want people tounderstand the value in yoga, is
(11:07):
that we become disconnected fromourselves, not just by the
mental health, you know, phrasesand those kinds of things, but
because we we are a society thatfocuses on being happy and
looking for good things, like wevalue certain emotions, we value
certain states of emotionalwell-being, you know, being, and
we want to avoid or suppress ordisc or get rid of, you know,
(11:31):
things that we feel like are youknow uncomfortable or that we
don't like.
And I think we do the samethings in our bodies.
So we start to becomedisconnected from ourselves
because, oh, I don't like thatfeeling.
And so over time, you you pushit aside or you suppress it or
you avoid it.
And so we start to becomedisconnected.
So how does how does emotional,because I think that this is a
(11:52):
lack of emotional regulation.
I think that we don't know howto regulate our emotions because
we're trying to avoiduncomfortable emotions and we're
trying to produce, we we'reseeking out the emotions that we
want.
And so we are not able to manageemotions.
We're not able to handleemotions that we don't like.
So, how what is, you know, Iwant to talk a little bit about,
(12:13):
if you could, about theimportance of developing
emotional intelligence,emotional, the ability to, you
know, emotionally regulate andhow yoga can better, you know,
help us with that.
SPEAKER_01 (12:24):
Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you too for sharing yourpersonal experience.
And I'm so glad that thattherapist asked you the question
about what need this fulfills,because that's that's exactly
it.
We're so focused on thebehaviors and what behaviors are
good.
And that exists so much in oursociety.
Like when we think of ourrelationship with food and we
say, Oh, I was good todaybecause I ate healthy, but it's
(12:44):
like, yeah, but was it what mybody needed, or was it just
external messaging?
Right.
And I'll loop back to the foodexample because I think the food
example is a very telling onewhen you ask that question about
emotional regulation.
Yeah, it's like we we come in,we have our coping mechanisms,
and you know, our bodies areamazingly adaptive.
So your system figured out, youknow what helps me in this
(13:05):
moment.
I'm just gonna keep watching andwatching and watching, and it
creates distraction.
That's very creative, right?
But we end up having a lot ofshame because ultimately it's
maladaptive in the sense that itgets in the way of our regular
day-to-day.
But how can we take that wisdomof our system and now direct it
to what we actually need in themoment?
So it's like your system was sowise and knowing, you know what,
(13:27):
this is what helps me get out ofthe space right now.
How can we guide it to then helpdevelop what fits more in that
present moment?
The need, what we need is astory.
Right?
So it might be, I might have astory, nobody loves me, nobody
cares about me, because in thepast, that's the messaging I've
received.
Can I shift that to in thispresent moment?
(13:51):
That's a story.
Did something happen in thispresent moment to show me that?
Probably not.
In this present moment, maybeI'm sitting in front of the TV.
Maybe 10 minutes ago, somethingactivated it.
But this moment, no.
That's how we're connecting withour emotions in this moment.
So there's the story, and mymind is full of stories.
Our minds are always full ofstories, and it's like, okay,
(14:12):
got it.
Really appreciate the story.
And what am what am Iexperiencing right now?
So I use the food examplebecause I think that is such a
telling example.
Baby, newborn baby cries whenhungry.
We feed the baby, the baby stopscrying unless there's something
else that's upsetting.
Somewhere along the lines, weshift it and we start building a
(14:36):
system where we don't have thatconnection between I know I'm
hungry and I feel it in my body,and I need to eat.
Instead, it becomes all thisother messaging.
I eat because other people areeating.
I'm supposed to choose certainfoods because somebody decided
these are the foods that aregood for me.
I have a whole narrative about Ieat this, I don't eat that, I
was good, I was bad.
(14:56):
I say, oh, I'm gonna be, I'mgonna cheat this one time, or
I'm upset, I deserve to eatthis, all of those complexities,
and we lose that connection.
And it's the same witheverything almost that we feel
physically.
We even feel physical pain andwe push through it.
We're like, you can push throughit, you can do it no matter
what.
And it's like, no, it's asignal.
Your body's trying to send asignal.
(15:18):
We ignore it, and so you knowwhat?
It gets more amplified.
It's like you're not getting it.
Here we go again.
And it's the same with ouremotions.
So I feel a little bit sadinstead of being like, oh, I
feel sad.
What am I noticing in my bodyright now?
Not what story my mind istelling me, because it has all
sorts of ideas and theories thatmay or not may or may not be
true.
(15:38):
But what am I feeling in the inmy body?
And we know sometimes we don'teven have access to the story.
Like sometimes we say, I feel soanxious and I don't know why.
And it's like, okay, there isn'teven a story here.
Let me just pause and noticewhat's happening in my body.
What do I notice in my chest?
What do I notice in my belly?
And a lot of us at thebeginning, we don't even have a
(16:00):
sense of that.
I know I myself, people wouldsay things like, I feel this
moving through my leg.
And I'm like, what are youtalking about?
I just have thoughts.
I don't know.
I'm like, okay, this is likewoo-woo stuff, but I have no
idea what you're talking about,right?
Because it's like we don't havethat developed.
And so can I pause and wait?
And in that moment, when I'mrushing towards the behavior,
even if I still carry out thebehavior, can I also notice
(16:23):
what's happening in my body andbuild that relationship within
myself?
That's ultimately what emotionalregulation is.
We tend to think of emotionalregulation as stopping emotions.
You're sad, we're like, oh, youknow, let's think of something
positive.
And we have this in mentalhealth too.
So somebody is agitated in atherapy session, we're like,
(16:44):
okay, let's do some grounding.
And it's like, okay, we could ifI really, you know, I need to
drive home and I actually, mymind is flashing back to 20
years ago and I'm dysregulated,but I have to be at work, then
yeah, we have to reground me andbring me to the here and now.
But in general, people, we arehuman beings that have emotions.
And so can I feel the emotionand be with the emotion instead
(17:05):
of always trying to clamp downon the emotion?
So a lot of the time when wetalk about regulation, it's
about how can we make yourdifficult emotion go away?
And instead, can we think ofregulation as how can I have a
broader lens with which to seethings?
So that I notice this feeling inmy body.
(17:25):
I notice, for example, anantsiness.
Like it's like there is I'mbuzzing.
But what else do I notice?
What do I notice in myshoulders?
What do I notice in my feet?
What do I notice in my pinkytoe?
How much can we expand the viewso that we don't go through life
with a tiny view like this?
But we can have that broaderview.
(17:46):
And that's what helps us thenregulate that I have the fuller
picture.
I thought that I was justlooking at a thorn.
And then as the picture gotbigger, I saw that I was looking
at an actual rose plant with thestem, with the thorn on it, with
also the flower, everythingtogether.
It doesn't take away from thefact that there's a thorn, which
(18:07):
is the other thing that we do alot, is like reframe, think
positive.
It's like, no, it's still there.
And there's also so much morethere.
SPEAKER_00 (18:13):
Yeah.
And I think as you're talkingabout this, one of the things
that came to mind is theimportance of us taking.
I I saw this one time.
This is not my quote, so I'm I Ineed to make sure it's a
disclaimer.
I'm not, this is not my ownthought.
But somebody said that trauma isa story, healing is a choice.
And and that when we don't makethe choice to heal past wounds,
(18:37):
those past experiences try toinform everything we have going
forward.
Because our brains are designedto protect us.
And so if it if it experienceda, you know, a traumatic event
or tr or series of traumaticevents and it is constantly on
the alert for looking fordanger, anything that it thinks
might be similar or present asimilar danger, it is going to
(19:00):
go into high alert.
And that's why we end up withpeople having like the first
time I had an anxiety attack, Ididn't understand what was going
on.
I didn't understand that I washaving a trauma response to
something that had happened.
I thought I was having a heartattack, ended up in the
emergency room for eight hours,and and then labeled with an
anxiety disorder on top of mybipolar disorder and given more
(19:20):
medication.
And it took years for me tostart recognizing when I was
having a trauma response.
And to look with curiosityabout, okay, what is my brain
sensing as dangerous?
There's something that happened.
It may not be related to whathappened in the past, but for
some reason my brain thinks thisis dangerous.
So I started again looking withcuriosity about the experiences
(19:41):
that I was having surroundingthese trauma responses.
And when as I started processingthe past trauma and allowing
myself to experience theemotions and processing it
through so that I could get mybrain to stop going onto high
alert anytime it's thought therewas danger around me, then I was
able To sit and stay presentwith emotions of current
(20:02):
situations.
Instead of having my brain justlike take over and run away with
me, I was able to like learn howto stay present with it.
And that's one of the reasonswhy I loved what I learned from
you because I, when I firstengaged with yoga years ago, I
could feel there was valuethere, but I had no idea what I
was experiencing.
And so I kept trying to seek itout.
And every once in a while Iwould hit on a practice that
(20:25):
worked, right?
And it, but it was sometimes Iwould do practices that didn't
feel good and I didn'tunderstand the difference.
I didn't know what was going on.
I didn't know why sometimes itfelt really good, and other
times I was like, yeah, I didn'tlike that.
And it wasn't until I engagedwith your book and started
learning about like what yoga isactually doing and how some of
(20:45):
it is activating and some of itis, you know.
So, so I think that, sorry, thisis a lot.
Let me go back a little bit.
So let's start first with thevalue in processing past trauma
and how yoga can help with that.
Because we become, I feel likewe become victims, not by the
trauma, but by our inability tomove forward in our lives
(21:07):
without having everythinginformed by the trauma, the
unhealed trauma.
And we can choose to take back.
I know that this is probably anoverused term, but taking back
our power, like taking back, Ithink maybe a better term would
be taking more responsibilityfor our lives, like accepting
responsibility and ownership ofour own emotions instead of
letting other people controlthem by choosing, like I said,
(21:30):
like that quote said, you know,that trauma is a story, healing
is a choice, like choosing toheal, choosing to do the work to
heal so that we can begin totake, you know, back our lives
and be able to live our lives inthe present instead of our past,
always trying to inform thepresent.
So that's kind of a loadedquestion, but thank you.
SPEAKER_01 (21:52):
Yeah, you know, one of the main pieces about a yoga
practice is what we refer to aswitness consciousness, which
sometimes can also be equatedwith some aspects of
mindfulness.
I can start healing once I'm notfully in the feeling, but maybe
can have a part of me thatleaves that has a little bit of
distance that can say, hmm,what's going on over here?
(22:14):
Then now my brain isn't fully init.
I've actually like stepped awaya little bit and I'm an
observer.
That is the key to healing.
If I have that curiosity, evenif I feel all the emotions and
all of it, but there's a littletiny part of me that's like,
what's going on here?
What's happening here?
What am I noticing in my butt?
And again, if I if I start goingdown the road of a story, I'm in
(22:35):
trouble because our mind is sofast.
Oh, well, you know what it is,blah, blah, blah, blah.
And it reaches conclusionsbecause, like you said, that's
what we're trained to do.
We are the descendants of folksthat are like, oh, there's a
saber-toothed tiger coming overfrom over there.
And instead of my assessingwhether that's really a
saber-toothed tiger, the outlinelooks like one.
So I'm gonna run.
Because if I stay here andassess, I'm gonna be dinner.
(22:56):
And so I'm just gonna generalizeand run.
And so now we we are thedescendants of these folks, and
so we do that.
I'm like, hmm, this persondidn't return my call.
Must mean they don't love mebecause nobody loves.
And now I'm like, I've gone downmy path.
The example that you gave, thethe shared, um, the experience
that you shared where you werein the ER and then they say it's
(23:18):
anxiety.
Most of the time in situationslike that, the response is it's
just anxiety, right?
That you're not having it's justanxiety.
It's like, okay, but now what?
So once it's just anxiety, theimplication is you figure it
out.
Rather than, yeah, how can webuild that relationship?
So, how can I build arelationship in my body where
(23:39):
I'm like, well, there issomething like I feel this
tightness.
I feel, and I don't need to havea story.
I if I just notice it, it's likeI'm now with someone.
It's like any of us where wedon't feel good and someone just
sits with us, doesn't advise,doesn't fix, but is just here
with us.
That's what I'm doing withmyself.
I'm like, oh, I'm feeling this.
(23:59):
Okay, I'm just gonna hang outhere and notice.
And it's it's uncomfortable, butit's not probably more
uncomfortable than the actualfeeling.
But yeah, the minute I notice,I've now stimulated, I'm using a
different part of my brainthat's here in the present
moment, not back in the trauma.
A lot of the time we havephysical responses and we don't
(24:21):
know where they're from, and wetheorize, but it's our body is
moving so fast for the physicalresponse that our prefrontal
cortex and our more consciousthoughts won't be able to figure
it out quickly enough for thefeeling.
The only way we can meet it isto be with that feeling.
And then over time, that's whereour system starts to absorb.
(24:43):
You know what?
Who knows what was happeningthere?
But actually, I'm not in thatsituation right now.
It's like sometimes I'm workingwith folks and they've
experienced a lot of trauma.
Do they necessarily feel verysafe with me?
No, because I'm an unpredictableentity, right?
Like they're sitting there andI'm talking and I'm guiding
through things, and maybe I'lldo something that doesn't work
for them.
(25:03):
However, can we say that in thismoment they're not experiencing
what they might have experiencedin the past that's been unsafe?
Yes.
Should I now say, well, you knowwhat?
This is a safe space.
You have nothing to fear.
No.
Because we don't know that.
Maybe we're sitting in my officeand there's an earthquake.
I don't know that.
But what I do know is can weobserve what's happening this
(25:24):
second?
This moment.
That's what helps us then say,okay, it helps the brain
understand I'm not back there.
I'm here right now.
SPEAKER_00 (25:32):
Yeah.
Well, and there's like I didn'tunderstand the tremendous power
in just sitting with emotion.
It's incredible.
And and I, like you said,emotions are not just in our
head.
You know, I think that it's soimportant for us to integrate
ourselves.
And that's why yoga, one of thereasons why yoga is so powerful,
is that we we can reintegratewhen we've become disconnected,
(25:56):
we can reintegrate and startnoticing, like, and I love that
the notice that notice that,notice that, you know, observe.
Like those words are so powerfulbecause as we start to notice
what our body actually feelslike, everything feels like when
we're in an emotion, then westart to become much more
self-aware and and and able toactually sit with it so we don't
(26:19):
shy away from or get scared ofsensations in our body because
we're like, that's fear.
Like I'm this is fear right nowthat I'm feeling, or oh, this is
that's what my body does when Ifeel angry, or that's what my
body does when I feel, you know,excited, or you know, so we
don't we don't start to fearthese physical sensations
because we become moreself-aware and more under, you
(26:42):
know, more understanding ofourselves when we have these
sensations and we can sit withthem more comfortably.
And like you mentioned, like Idescribe it as a toddler.
Anyone who's ever worked with atoddler, if you try to shush
them when they're trying to tellyou something, they will just
get louder.
The more you try to silencethem, the louder they will get
because they're like, no, payattention to me.
(27:03):
I need to tell you something.
And the second you pay attentionto them, especially if you get
down on their level and holdthem in, you know, like right in
front of you and say, tell mewhat you need, they'll tell you
and then it's over.
Like if they just go on abouttheir lives, you know?
But yeah, and it's the samething with our emotions.
If you try to silence theemotion, it's information that
your body needs to get to you.
It needs to give you thisinformation.
(27:25):
And the more we try to shut itdown, the more intense it'll
get.
And that's when we get, we endup with like I loved in The Body
Keeps a Score, how Dr.
Vanderkoel helps us understandlike a lot of the physical
ailments that we have are theresult of suppressed trauma, of
unhealed, you know, unhealedwounds that have been pushed
down, pushed down, pushed down.
And our body is like, well,you're not gonna listen to me
(27:47):
that way.
Maybe you'll listen to me thisway, you know?
And so it just startsmanifesting in other physical
ways because it needs to deliverthe information.
That's how we're designed.
And we have to learn how tolisten.
SPEAKER_01 (27:59):
That's exactly it.
And the toddler example isperfect.
It's like if I say to thetoddler, you know what, we're
not gonna go to the zoo today,but we're going tomorrow.
Oh, we had better go tomorrow,right?
Because tomorrow will come andwe'll be like, when are we
going?
Are we going?
You said we're going.
And that's exactly what we dowith the pain.
Yeah, yeah, I'll rest later.
I'll rest later.
And then the pain's like, oh,you didn't listen.
(28:19):
Okay, we're getting louder, andI'm gonna keep reminding you.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00 (28:26):
And I want to talk about you, you talk about the
difference between thephilosophies of psychotherapy,
like the approach ofpsychotherapy versus the goals,
or I shouldn't say I don't knowif philosophy is the right word,
but you talk about like thegoal, I guess, the goal of
psychotherapy versus the goal ofyoga and what the difference is.
Could you share that with ouraudience?
I have like, actually, let meread this quote.
(28:47):
I think this is really great.
I highlighted this for myself,so I'm gonna read it really
quick if that's okay.
This is from Dr.
Osman's book, and I should haveset shared the name of it:
Mental and Emotional HealingThrough Yoga, a guiding
framework for therapists andtheir clients.
And it's you don't have to be atherapist to read this.
It's so good.
Like, I highly recommend it.
Thank you.
But she says there are coredifferences between
(29:08):
psychotherapy and yoga.
The most significant is thatyoga has a loftier goal than the
mental awareness and insight ofpsychotherapy.
To liberate the human being fromthe shackles of self-doubt and
pain.
The goal of yoga is not toobtain something that is
lacking, it is the realizationof an already present reality
from which we are, we havebecome separate.
(29:29):
The aim is to attain aprogressively more evolved state
of being than that of mentalconsciousness, thereby attaining
a progressively greater force ofone's being.
So with the goal with yoga isn'tjust to understand, you know, we
when we are when we're going totherapy and we're talking about
the problems.
I I know lots of people who canarticulate all of their trauma
(29:50):
and all of their problems, andthey're still suffering.
They're still struggling withit.
There's an awareness, there'ssome kind of a, you know, a
conscious awareness of all theissues, and maybe even sometimes
a conscious awareness that theyare the source of a lot of the
things that they're strugglingwith.
But there has, but it has nothelped them to process the
emotion.
It has not helped them to learnhow to handle when when the you
(30:13):
know the body takes over andit's like, you weren't you're
not safe.
I'm taking over now.
And your brain goes into the,you know, you go into the lower
part of your brain where you'reno longer in charge of yourself.
So, can you talk a little bitmore about why that distinction
is different and how yoga canhelp you, you know, when we're
not talking about thingsnecessarily.
You're not necessarily talkingabout things when when you're
(30:33):
working with yoga, but if youcan learn the tools, you can
actually help help yourselfprocess emotion.
You can help yourself processpast trauma.
It's a really powerful tool.
SPEAKER_01 (30:44):
Yeah, in psychotherapy, we talk about,
and this is a relatively recentdistinction, the difference
between top-down and bottom-uptherapies.
So top-down is like myprefrontal cortex, my logical
mind is trying to tell my limbicsystem and my brainstem, so the
emotions to shift.
Usually what that does is buildinsight, but not necessarily
shift anything, right?
(31:05):
That's a little bit like if I'manxious and someone says calm
down.
Surprisingly, that's not goingto actually do anything, right?
If anything, it's just gonnamake things more frustrating.
Bottom-up therapies aretherapies where we're not trying
to gain insight, but ratherwe're trying to shift things
emotionally and we may neverknow why.
So therapies like EMDR therapy,brain spotting, somatic
(31:25):
therapies do that where it'slike you may not get the
insight, you may never know why,but the shift has happened.
With yoga, that's what we'rehoping to do is we're creating
that shift.
But the difference is that I'mcreating it through, as you
said, a practice.
So I, as the therapist, can bethere with my client, but the
big shift that happens is thatthe person practicing builds
(31:49):
that.
So a little bit like thediscomfort of sitting my with my
emotions, I'm sitting in apranayama, a breath practice, or
an asana, a posture, a physicalshape.
And it may not feel that great,but you know what?
It's gonna end.
And that's an analogy for otherdifficult physical emotions that
I'm sitting with.
They're all related to the body.
(32:09):
And that's the big piece withyoga, that it's like yoga, so
many pieces of the yogaphilosophy are about the whole.
So, for example, the what we inyoga term the koshas.
So there's sort of energybodies, there's the physical,
there's the breath, there's themental.
They're all one.
I'm not trying to pull one out,but they're all one.
(32:30):
So when my body is in downwardfacing dog, when I first started
my yoga practice, I remember myfirst class, the teacher said,
Yeah, and if you're tired, restin down dog.
And I'm like, Yeah, but I'mtired of being in down dog.
Like, I don't have my body isn'tthere yet.
So I'm like, okay.
But yeah.
So if my body is uncomfortable,but I know that this is going to
end at some point, that'straining for my mind to
(32:53):
generalize and be like, you knowwhat?
I'm noticing the discomfort frommy emotion, which is exactly the
same.
My body's uncomfortable.
That's what it boils down to.
It's not noticing somethingdifferent.
My shoulders were and my legswere uncomfortable and downward
dog.
And my chest is uncomfortableright now while I'm experiencing
anxiety.
It's all the same.
It's all my body.
So then the messaginggeneralizes in my mind, oh, at
(33:15):
some point it's gonna end.
If I sit with it like thattoddler you mentioned, and maybe
the toddler doesn't even knowwhy he's crying.
Something happened, and hedoesn't even have the words or
even the awareness.
But I'm just there and I'm like,I'm right here with you.
Hold your hand, I'm gonna giveyou a hug.
You can sit on my lap, you canlean your head against my chest,
(33:35):
it'll pass.
It's like I think of those sobsat the end, right?
Where the toddlers are, it'slike, okay, it's passing
through.
And that's exactly what yogateaches us that I by being in
this moment and building myawareness, I get to understand
that it's a moment, right?
(33:55):
It passes.
It's like there's a one of themost well-known passages in the
Yoga Sutras, a key text in yoga,is Yoga is the stilling of the
fluctuations of the mind.
So it's not about my feelinggreat and my accomplishing this,
it's just like that.
I sit with it and okay.
SPEAKER_00 (34:16):
It's a little stiller.
Yeah, and one of the things thatI think is so profound is if we
approach therapy or yoga therapyspecifically, like I'm talking
about that here, if we willapproach the process of healing
past trauma or past, you know,like if we're if we're learning
how to maybe somebody doesn'thave trauma, but they have
(34:38):
developed unhealthy thoughtbehavior patterns that have
gotten them stuck with emotions.
As we, if we will look at thatexperience not as something to
get through, but as something tolearn from, it actually will
help inform our ability to copeand manage and process emotions
in the future.
And I am actually in that phasenow, and it's pretty exciting
(34:59):
because I viewed, I used to viewmy stuck trauma, my processed,
you know, the past trauma assomething to overcome.
And and it was something to getover with and to be done with.
And what I have learned sincethen is that the experience of
going through and processingthat past trauma has enabled me
(35:19):
now, when I experience traumaticexperiences now, to process it
in real time because I'vedeveloped tools from that
experience in the past.
And so I it has caused me toview that experience totally
differently now.
I don't look back on thatexperience and processing the
trauma in the past as likesomething that was done in the
(35:39):
past.
It was an opportunity to learnand to develop new skills and to
develop new tools so that now,because life is hard.
Like life is really hard.
And it and I don't want to saythat to make anybody feel
discouraged.
It's just reality.
This is the reality that weexperience.
This is the reality we live inas human beings, and we can
either allow ourselves passivelyto become victims to it, or we
(36:02):
can choose to activelyparticipate and actively, you
know, use our agency, exerciseour agency to choose to interact
with these things in a way thathelps us to navigate them in a
healthier way that helps us tomove through them more smoothly
and move on to the next part ofour life.
And, you know, and and Ishouldn't say move on.
(36:24):
That's probably not the rightword, but but to navigate them
in a way that we're not justsuffering through it.
Does that make sense to you?
Do you understand what I'msaying?
It's really quite profound.
SPEAKER_01 (36:33):
It is.
And, you know, it doesn't takeaway from the challenges that
folks can have day to day,right?
So as opposed to the culture ofsaying, well, you know, anyone
can make it through and justpull yourself up.
It's like, no, there are realchallenges.
And there are real challengeswith our health, with our
systems of access, with biggersystemic things that we can't
(36:56):
control.
And noticing what's what'shappening for me in this moment
takes me, gives me a moreimmediate real experience than
that mind chatter.
That it's like this happened inthe past, it's gonna happen
again.
You know what?
I have so few choices.
I'm scared because this mighthappen to me.
(37:16):
All of that.
It's like, yeah, that and that'sthat both and that's that fuller
experience.
All of that is true.
We're not saying think positiveand therefore magically you'll
feel great.
And there won't be circumstancesthat are confining.
Rather, we're saying notice thismoment, this one.
This isn't the moment whenyou're at the hospital in XYZ.
(37:37):
This isn't the moment when wayback when something happened
legally or something happened inyour family, or when you were
very young, something happenedwith a caregiver.
All of that happened.
And this moment is none ofthose.
And that's that building ofawareness.
And you know, folks may not haveexperienced trauma in the sense
(37:57):
of what we think of as big Ttrauma, but anything that
impacts us is trauma in someshape or form.
So even people who say, Oh,yeah, my life has been really
smooth, usually there are thingsthat impacted them, right?
Otherwise, they wouldn't havebeen human.
And so it's again recognizingthat this moment wasn't there.
SPEAKER_00 (38:12):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we develop more resilienceand the ability to navigate life
in a more I don't know what theright word is.
I'm trying to think of it.
I just, I feel like youexperience a richer life when
we're able to stay present withall emotions, not just seek out
certain emotions.
You know, we don't need toconstantly be seeking out, you
(38:33):
know, the emotions that are moredesirable.
Learning how to stay presentwith all emotions and all
experiences, and it frees us, itliberates us too, because
otherwise we we are choosing toallow ourselves to become
victims to other people'schoices and to other experiences
and that we become victimized bythem.
But when we choose to developthese tools that help us to
(38:54):
learn how to navigate theseexperiences by staying present
and by not trying to avoid orchange constantly, it helps our
lives to be more full and morerich and more fulfilling.
I don't, it's hard to you notuse the word enjoyable, but I
mean it truly is.
It's more, it's a morefulfilling way to experience
(39:14):
life because you're notconstantly trying to change
things and you're not allowingyourself to be victimized by
other people.
SPEAKER_01 (39:21):
Absolutely.
And when we're trying to clampdown on certain experiences and
certain emotions, our systemdoesn't work that way.
Either I feel emotions or Idon't.
So if I try to cut out emotionsthat aren't so socially
acceptable and people do thatall the time, oh, don't cry,
right?
Like let's go do this anddistract you.
I also don't get to experiencethe other emotions, the more
(39:42):
positive ones, because how am Iable to clamp down those
emotions?
I'm clamping down a system.
And that's why also, and oftensay we are a culture of
hedonism, right?
If I say I've had a bad day, howmight someone meet that?
Maybe someone will say to me,Tell me about it, absolutely.
But after all, maybe they'llsay, you know what?
What?
Let's have a drink, eatsomething sweet, shop.
(40:04):
Something that's distraction andbig.
It's like, I don't needsomething so big.
I just need relationship.
Right?
But we are so about somethingdifficult happened.
Let's distract ourselves withsomething that's so big and over
the top because it's hard for usto feel even the positive
emotions fully because we'retrying to clamp down on all the
(40:26):
emotions.
SPEAKER_00 (40:28):
Yes.
Okay.
So I want to talk about yourthree-pronged model.
And I I would love for you toshare, first of all, what that
is.
It's in her book, but I want youto talk about it.
And how did you develop thismodel?
Because it's the more that Iunderstand it, and as I'm
working on learning how to, whenyou teach somebody else, you
learn things way on a way deeperlevel.
So I've learned it so much moredeeply as I've learned how to
(40:49):
teach it to other people.
But could you share like howthat how that developed and why
it is such an effective way tohelp people learn how to use
yoga in a really proactive,beneficial way to heal?
SPEAKER_01 (41:02):
Absolutely.
So when I first started workingwith yoga in with mental health,
and there wasn't that much outthere, and there wasn't even
that much research out there.
I went with what we tend tothink is going to be the fit.
So if I'm low energy, then maybewe raise my energy.
And if I feel like I'm bouncingoff the walls, then maybe we
(41:22):
bring down my energy.
And I would notice this in classteaching general population
classes, how people come totheir imbalance.
In other words, if I am teachingrestorative class, most of the
folks that would come in wouldbe people who are already
feeling pretty low energy, haveeither illness or an injury, or
(41:44):
are older, and they would cometo a restorative class.
And there'd be thisunderstanding that you come to a
more vigorous class when you canmanage it, you have the fitness,
you have the energy, and thenyou know, life happens, whether
it's the years or an injury, andyou come to a restorative class.
And I'm like, huh.
People come to where they'realready at because they can meet
(42:06):
it.
But the challenge is how is thatgoing to create any shift?
So if I feel was feeling lowenergy and I come to a
restorative class, I feel likeat the end, but it certainly
didn't shift.
I might feel emotionally more atease, more peaceful.
But usually when people arecoming in and there are mental
(42:26):
health concerns that come up,it's that somehow their
day-to-day life doesn't feelviable.
It doesn't feel like they'refunctioning in the way they need
to.
So feeling more of the sameisn't going to do it.
So what when we try to dosomething very different, I
remember I was working withsomebody and I'm like, oh, the
breath of joy, that's so muchenergy.
(42:47):
And this was a personexperiencing depression.
So breath of joy is inhaleforward, inhale side, inhale up,
exhale down, and you bendforward.
And I guided the person, and theperson started crying and felt
overwhelmed.
And I'm like, aha.
There's crying that's release,and there's crying that's I feel
stuck and I feel overwhelmed.
Why?
(43:07):
Because ultimately it moved thissadness that this person was
feeling.
Now she felt it even more.
Probably helpful in the longrun, but in the short run,
doesn't help her meet thedemands of her day-to-day.
I'm like, okay, so we're notgonna do something that's more
inwardly focused, meditation,etc., because if things are
(43:30):
feeling kind of blah in here andyou make me bend forward, and
you can even feel in my bodylanguage that I'm now becoming
even more immersed in that kindof blah feeling, and something
more invigorating shakes thingsup too much.
So, what is it?
How do we meet folks in a placethat feels accessible, but also
(43:50):
helps them feel like they'remeeting the day-to-day?
And that's where I developed thethree-prong model from.
So the three-prong model focuseson grounding.
Most yoga experiences that aregeneral population yoga classes
are very short on grounding.
So, what is grounding?
Grounding helps me feel more inthe present moment, more
(44:11):
connected to my surroundings.
Physically, how do I do that?
My eyes are open.
So we love closing eyes in yogaclasses.
But you know, the minute I closemy eyes, I'm in my head, and who
knows what's happening in myhead, right?
Whereas if my eyes are open, I'mnow looking around, I'm noticing
what's happening around me.
I'm here.
I'm not back in 2017 wheresomething might have happened
(44:35):
that even if I'm not aware, I'mback in 2017.
Right.
So my eyes are open.
I'm using both sides of my bodyin whatever way I can access.
So whether I when I use both ofthem, things look from the
outside like they'resymmetrical, or they don't look
from the outside like they'resymmetrical.
But in me, I'm exerting efforton both sides, however, that is
(44:58):
for me.
So either I'm doing somethingthat looks symmetrical or feels
symmetrical internally, or I'mdoing something that's one-sided
on one side, one-sided on theother, but engaging both sides
of the body.
My breath is even.
So all these lovely breaths wehave in yoga, it's like, oh,
you're feeling low energy.
Okay, let's do an energizingbreath.
(45:18):
It's too much.
It's a little bit like if I hadthe brake on and then suddenly I
slam on the gas.
Not good.
Not good for my car, not goodfor me as the driver, not good
for anybody around me.
Same here.
So all my practices aregrounded, help connect with
what's around me, help connectwith my body evenly.
(45:40):
There's always somethingtouching the floor.
So grounding practices are notones where I'm maybe hanging
forward and just hanging withthe arms dangling.
They're on something if I'mdoing a forward bend, but I'm
mindful that the spine is alsoalways straight.
I might bend forward a littlebit, so like kind of 90 degrees,
but I'm not bending forward allthe way.
So straight spine, both sides ofthe body, eyes open, even
(46:04):
breath.
And then I want to check in.
What's one word that describeshow I'm feeling, if it's me, or
if I'm guiding somebody, howthey're feeling?
And any word is fine.
Someone might feel tired,someone might feel stiff,
someone might feel whatever itis, it's all fine.
When we're working with someone,we want to hear positive things.
So when they say good, we'relike, great, but I have no idea
(46:24):
what that means.
If I say to someone, what's oneword that describes how your
body feels, and they say good,is that just that they're
telling me they're not in pain?
Is that they're telling me it'snot unbearable?
I don't know what that means.
I'm like, tell me what's what'sone word in your body, right?
First word that comes to mind.
Tight, peaceful, at ease, whichis two words, totally fine, but
(46:45):
we always do the check-in.
Once I'm doing grounding and thecheck-in that's coming is
consistently grounded, and thatmay take a long time, and it may
be always.
Some of us have emotionalexperiences, most of us really,
where they're up and down, andsometimes the ups and downs are
big, right?
(47:05):
So grounding is excellent.
And that can be my practice.
And there are many periods oftime where I'm just grounding,
or I really feel like I need toground.
Okay, I feel more grounded.
Great.
If I feel grounded consistently,then maybe now we can switch to
one of the other prongs,depending on what I'm moving
(47:26):
towards.
If I feel grounded consistently,but I need a little bit of
energy to meet my the demands ofmy day-to-day life, then after a
lot of grounding, maybe now wedo an energizing practice, but
brief energizing practice.
Maybe we do a pranayama, abreath.
So it's energizing, lifts theenergy.
Or I need a little bit ofcalming, then after the
(47:47):
grounding, maybe now we do somecalming breaths.
Okay, maybe now the exhale is alittle bit longer, which helps
calm.
Maybe now I do one forward foldor forward bend that's more
calming.
But the root is always thegrounding.
And that's where my model isvery different from a lot of
what's out there.
(48:08):
It enables us, and I, you know,I think a lot of that connects
to kind of psychotherapy workaround being in the present
moment, but also the core ofyoga around that witness
consciousness and thatmindfulness.
That grounding helps return meto the witness consciousness and
the observation.
And then I can work a little bitwith that, with the raising the
(48:30):
energy and a little bit with thelowering the energy.
SPEAKER_00 (48:33):
Yeah, it's incredible because one of the
things that I love about goingthrough your book and learning
how to understand thesedifferent the way that these
different poses and practicesaffect your body, affect my
body, helped me understand howto use the tool.
It helped me understand, youknow, okay, I I this is
(48:55):
supportive of me.
And the word that I use all thetime is supportive.
Is it supportive of what youneed right now?
Because a lot of times I I'vefound, I've started asking
people when they say, Oh, yeah,I tried yoga and I didn't like
it.
I will say, I will start to askthem questions.
Tell me about your dear yourexperience with yoga.
Like, where did you because I Itruly believe that when people
(49:17):
have an aversion to yoga, thatthey engaged in a practice that
was not supportive of theirneeds at the time and and it it
turned them off to it because itfelt discordant.
It it felt like it didn't, itdidn't work for them, it didn't
help them, it maybe made themfeel worse.
And one of the challenges is ifyou're if your experience is it
going into a class, you know,there's there can be social
(49:38):
pressure around you to be, youknow, to look a certain way, to
be able to do a certain thing.
I've been in I've I have beenpracticing yoga off and on for
years now, and I've always beenquite flexible.
I was an athlete when I wasyounger, and I was quite
flexible.
So I was able to get, you know,I even had a yoga instructor one
time, she's like, you're likeGumby, you know.
So, but I don't, I try to, I'vestarted trying to put myself in
(50:01):
the back of the classes becauseI thought I don't want somebody
else's experience here to bechallenged because they're
looking at me and comparingthemselves to the way that I am
that I am experiencing the yogapractice.
And I found myself doing thesame thing.
I found myself, we have atendency to judge, just a
natural human tendency to judge,you know, judge people, judge
(50:24):
situations in that, but we judgeourselves with reference to
people around us, and it canaffect the way that we
experience something like this,because our brain, we're up
inside our brain tellingourselves a story rather than
allowing ourselves to feelwhat's happening.
And and when I when I startedpracticing it, I think I I can't
(50:45):
remember if I told you thisstory last time, but the very
first I don't think it was averse day that I went, I think
it was the second time that Iwent.
I had a friend of mine whoinvited me to a yoga class.
And I went a few times.
It was I see there was like afree trial membership kind of
thing.
And I didn't go after thatbecause I couldn't afford the
membership.
But this, I think it was thesecond class we were in there,
and when I was in downwardfacing dog, and it was funny,
(51:08):
she said the same thing.
If you're tired, go into thisone.
I'm like, this does not feelreal unrestful to me at all.
Like, I don't know what you'retalking about.
But I had an emo I experiencedan emotional release in that
position.
You know, I was trying, I was atthe first time I went, I was
very kind of judgmental.
You know, I was looking atpeople around me, trying to be,
you know, I wanted to do itright, you know, and I was my I
(51:28):
was really in my head the firsttime.
The second time, she was veryfocused on pranayama and she was
focused on breathing.
Stay present with your breath,you know, this breath in, this
breath out.
She kept saying that over andover again.
Just focus on this breath in,focus on this breath out.
And as I started to try andallow myself to be present with
what she was saying, telling usto do, and I was in
(51:48):
downward-facing dog, all of asudden I felt these emotions
like rising up.
I it was like a physicalsensation of emotions coming up
through my body, almost like awater rising.
And all of a sudden, it was likepouring out of me, and I was
crying onto the mat, like a poolof water was forming under my
head.
(52:09):
And at first I was like, oh mygosh, what's happening to me?
And and then I just and I kepthearing her, you know,
prompting, which is why it'sbeneficial, so I think sometimes
to work with somebody if youcan, because you can have
somebody kind of observing andprompting according to what your
needs are.
But she kept, as I keptfocusing, trying to, you know, I
was like trying not to resistwhat was happening.
(52:31):
It was the most catharticexperience I'd had up to that
point in my life.
And I left there and I'm like,what just happened?
Like I felt so calm leaving thatthat practice.
And it was like you haddescribed with your experience.
You're like, I don't wantanything to interrupt this.
I just want to like stay presentin this peace and this calm.
But it took me years tounderstand what I'd experienced.
(52:53):
And and there were times when Iwould do yoga practices and I
would find myself being guidedthrough this guided practice,
and I would want to go intochild's pose.
Like I'm I'm doing an activatingpractice, and I just kept
thinking, I just want to go intochild's pose right now.
And it was a long time before Ilearned how to honor that desire
because I didn't understand,like my brain, my upper part of
(53:14):
my brain telling me a story islike, you're a dot a quitter,
don't quit, you know?
Right.
Like trying to stay present withthis challenging practice when
my body's just asking to begrounded.
Like I just need to be groundedright now, you know.
And so that's one of the reasonswhy I found your three-pronged
model so powerful.
Because when you start tounderstand what the different
(53:35):
poses are doing, and then youbecome more observant when you
do practices, you can start tounderstand and recognize what
your body needs and what issupportive of the state that you
are in or of the goal that youhave.
You know, if you are if you'reworking on processing trauma and
you need to learn, you need toallow yourself to like
(53:58):
experience emotions, but thenyou need to create safety for
yourself so that you don't, sothat your brain doesn't take
over and think danger, danger,and like shut everything down.
It's truly a powerful thing tolearn how to how to use this
tool in an effective way tosupport what it is your your
your goal is, whatever that itis that you're working on.
SPEAKER_01 (54:19):
Yeah, yeah.
And it's honoring what your bodyneeds and that it's not less or
more, which is one of the toughthings for us.
That it's like somehow child'spose is like less vigorous, and
so it's less.
It's like, no, they're allpractices and at the origins of
yoga, they're all practices thatfit together.
This is a very Western conceptthat we have that it's like this
(54:40):
is easy.
So, you know, you go to a classand someone's like, level one,
your foot is on the floor, leveltwo, you lift up it, lift it up,
and level three, you bring it uphere.
And it's like these these aredifferent asanas.
They're not levels of things.
And so, yeah, it is reallydifficult to honor and be like,
okay, what is it that I needright now?
It's not less than, it's meetingmyself where I'm at.
(55:02):
And not meeting myself where I'mat again because it's less than.
So sometimes people say, Oh,yeah, it's good that you took
care of yourself, which it is,but implied in that is like that
you downshifted to take care ofyourself.
But it's not a downshift, right?
It's actually an upshift becauseyou're relating to yourself
more.
SPEAKER_00 (55:19):
Yeah, and and learning how to observe, you
know, experience things withoutjudgment.
Like, don't judge where you areright now.
That does not do any good.
It doesn't do any good to to andand I think when I say judgment,
I'm talking about like it's noteven always just comparing
ourselves to other people.
It can be comparing ourselves toourselves.
You know, I was feeling so goodyesterday, and now I'm feeling
(55:40):
terrible today, and and youknow, what's the matter with me
and what I do wrong?
And, you know, and sometimesyou're just sometimes it's just
a bad day.
Like sometimes, and I don't evenlike the word bad day.
It just it's it's a down day, orit's a you know, it's a day
where there's lower energy, oryou know, maybe maybe something
that you have that happened inthe morning you without even
(56:01):
being aware of it just kind oflowered the mood.
And and so what and maybe that'ssorry, go Alex.
No, I was just gonna say justlearning how to stay present
with it rather than rather thanjudging it and trying to fix it,
just stay present with it.
SPEAKER_01 (56:15):
Yeah.
This is it, it's the contrast.
So it's like we need the nightto experience the day.
It's like this is it.
Like we have, you know, likeright now, here we are in
January.
It's colder, it's more hours ofdarkness.
How can that not impact oursystem somehow, right?
That maybe this is a season ofcontraction, maybe it's a day of
(56:36):
contraction where I feel likebeing more internally focused
and tomorrow I'm back.
And so that's that's a piecetoo, that it's it's a it's a
moment that's part of thatbigger picture.
And so, how do I meet myself inthat moment where I'm truly
meeting myself rather than theexpectations that are around me,
including the ones that I'vecreated because of how we're
(56:59):
encouraged and how we'reencouraged to not meet
ourselves, but rather meetexpectations around us of
perfection that lead to strugglein pretty much all of us.
SPEAKER_00 (57:10):
Yeah, and I it's interesting.
I my mom said something uh to meyears ago.
She said, bloom where you'replanted.
And she was talking about it.
We had grown up in California,and my parents, while I was in
college, moved up to WashingtonState.
A massive difference in in theweather, right?
So they went from a very, verysunny environment to a place
(57:31):
that has the majority of thedays of the year.
It's gray and the sun does notpenetrate the sky.
And, you know, and so my mom, Iloved that, you know, that she
they found joy in where theywere living.
They they found a way to, and Ithink the same thing for
seasons.
You know, I used to be like, Ihate winter, I love summer, and
(57:51):
then I moved to the Midwestwhere it was like the winters
were really hard.
We had, you know, we would getsnow drifts up to our waist and
you know, sub-zero temperatureson a regular basis in the sub in
the winter time.
And the first couple of years, Iwas super depressed in the
wintertime because it was such II hated it.
You know, I hated, I'm like, Ihate the snow, I hate the cold,
(58:12):
I hate, you know, and and I thenmy mom was talking to me one day
and said this, you know, samething, bloom or your planet.
And I thought, okay, how do youbloom in the winter?
Like nothing blooms in thewintertime, nothing blooms in
the snow, right?
But I I learned how to find waysto embrace each part of each
season of the year.
And, you know, and learning howto like made sure we got nice
(58:33):
warm snow clothes so we could goout and play in the snow, you
know, and and I I even had apaper out at one point.
I I did it to try and help mystepson, and he has zero
interest in doing it.
So I did it for a year and ahalf by myself.
But I found ways, you know, I'mI'm out in like negative 20
degrees with a windshield factorof negative 30 and you know, car
hearts and you know, all wrappedup and you know, walking through
(58:55):
snow drifts.
But I had like come up withgames to play with myself to
like pass the time, and Iactually started to really love
it.
You know, I loved getting upearly, I loved to vigorous, you
know, exercise, you know, ifthere was a feeling of
accomplishment when I, you know,was done with the parade, you
know, with the with the paperroute.
And so I think that the samething can be true for our
emotional states.
(59:16):
Instead of, and that's why yogais so powerful, bringing this
back to yoga.
If we will learn how to honorall of our emotional states and
recognize that all of theemotional states have value,
instead of judging them andtrying to escape them, learning
how to be present with them.
Number one, when you do that, itlessens the intensity a lot of
times of the emotionalexperiences, because often the
(59:39):
intensity of the emotionalexperience, anger or sadness or
whatever, is intensified, likewe talked about before, like the
toddler, by the resistance tothem.
When we try to resist them, theybecome more intense because
they're just trying to deliverinformation.
And and when we learn how tojust recognize like there's
value in each of these emotionalstates, and how can I?
(01:00:00):
How can I stay present with itand experience the value of it
rather than trying to avoid itor trying to escape it or
pathologizing it?
It's you know, it's incrediblehow beneficial yoga can be in
helping us to learn how to dothat, learn how to honor what
our you know our bodies and ourour exist our souls need and and
(01:00:20):
learning how to use it in a waythat helps us to live a more
satisfying, fulfilling, presentlife.
SPEAKER_01 (01:00:29):
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_00 (01:00:33):
Okay.
So if somebody wants to learnmore about what you do, or if
they want to connect with you insome way, how can they do that?
SPEAKER_01 (01:00:41):
So my website, gataosman.com, is the perfect
way to learn a little bit more,learn about the book, learn
about videos I have, learn aboutmy work in general.
And I am very responsive toemail.
My email is on there, but justin case, it's my first name,
Gata, at gataosman all oneword.com.
SPEAKER_00 (01:01:01):
Wonderful.
I'm gonna make sure all ofthat's linked in the show notes.
If you if you want to connectwith her, please go to the show
notes and you'll you'll find allof that there.
Thank you so much.
This has been an incredibleconversation, and I know that is
gonna benefit my audiencetremendously.
So thank you so much for yourtime today.
SPEAKER_01 (01:01:16):
Thank you so much for having me.
Really appreciated theopportunity and really enjoyed
chatting with you.
So thank you.
SPEAKER_00 (01:01:22):
Wonderful.
All right, until next time,upsiders.
Thanks for joining me on theUpside of Bipolar.
Your journey to recoverymatters, and I'm grateful you're
here.
For more resources, visitwww.theupsideofbipolar.com.
(01:01:43):
If you're ready to dive deeper,grab my book, The Upside of
Bipolar (01:01:46):
Seven Steps to Heal Your Disorder.
If you're ready to heal yoursymptoms, join my monthly
membership, The Upsiders Tribe,to transform chaos into hope.
Until next time, Upsiders.
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