Cheri Clampett, C-IAYT, ERYT-500 is the Founder and Director of the Therapeutic Yoga Training Program. She is a certified yoga therapist with over 30 years of teaching experience and is passionate about bringing the benefits of yoga to those recovering from or living with injury or illness. Cheri has presented Therapeutic Yoga at Beth Israel Medical Center and the Langone Medical Center at NYU. Cheri started the yoga program at the Ridley-Tree Cancer Center in 1999, where she continues to teach weekly classes. Cheri’s teaching focuses on the healing aspects of yoga: freeing the body, breath and flow of energy through practicing with awareness, compassion, and love. Cheri is the co-author of the Therapeutic Yoga Kit, published by Inner Traditions.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
I'm Cynthia James, and this network is about changing lives,
one woman at a time. Welcome to Women Awakening. I'm
your host, Cynthia James, and you know, I get the
distinct honor of celebrating women. I really feel like this
(00:27):
is our time on the planet. This is the time
for us to emerge, to bring our nurturing, caring, loving
souls because the planet needs us, the children on the planet,
the ecosystem, everybody needs this feminine quality, these energies, and
so I get to bring women to you that are
change makers. They're people who have said, oh, I know
(00:49):
what I came here to do, and I'm not only
going to do it, I'm going to show others how
to do it so that they can have powerful lives.
And so I love that I get to do this
every week, you know, on all the platforms Spotify, iTunes,
iHeart Speaker, Amazon Video, on YouTube, Subscribe, tell your friends, share,
because I guarantee you there hasn't been one woman. You know,
(01:12):
we're close to two hundred and fifty women now internationally
and there has not been one woman that was an
inspiration that I didn't walk away with an aha moment
guarantee that will happen for you too. So today I
get to introduce you to a very dear friend of mine,
been in my life for a very long time. Her
name is Sherry Klampitt. She's the founder and director of
(01:34):
the Therapeutic Yoga Training Program. She's a certified yoga therapist
with over thirty years of teaching experience and is passionate
about bringing the benefits of yoga to those recovering from
or living with injury or illness. Sherry has created therapeutic
Yoga at Beth Israel Medical Center and the land Gone
(01:55):
Medical Center at NYU. She started the yoga program at
the Ridley Trees Cancer Center in nineteen ninety nine. She
continues to teach weekly there. Cherry's teaching focuses on the
healing aspects of yoga, freeing the body, breath, and flow
of energy through practicing with awareness, compassion, and love. And
(02:20):
Cherry is the co author of the Therapeutic Yoga Kit,
published by Inner Traditions sharey. I'm so happy that you
are here.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Thank you, Cynthia, thank you so much for having me.
I'm so thrilled to be here and to talk about
exactly what you opened with you know, this powerful time
and women are rising and the energy that we have
and the gifts we have to share are just so
important more than ever, I.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Feel, Oh, that is so awesome. Well I want to
start though, because I don't think you dropped on the
planet to be a yoga teacher, and you have a
very interesting childhood. So I want you to share it
because because it's sort of cool and magical.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Oh well, I think if you're talking cool and magical,
you're probably talking about my dad, who was a cartoonist,
and so he was so much fun and so playful
and just always creating and sharing his love through art
and through in many different ways puppets and cartoon characters.
(03:25):
And so I was raised in that kind of very loving,
creative environment. But I had a lot of health issues
as a child and had a lot of trauma, you know,
and it was I think through my trauma journey, and
I won't go into all of it, but that I
came out really wanting to help people who were healing
and suffering. One of my specialties is working with trauma,
(03:49):
working with all kinds of trauma, but I work a
lot with cancer patients. It's one of my specialties, so
medical trauma. How do we overcome these amas that we
go through? And they often you know, I think it
was Roomy that said the wound is where the light
enters us, and so to take the wound and to
(04:13):
work with the light, and then to be able to
share what you've learned through your healing, which is part
of what I do and yoga. You know, I was
not thinking I would become a yoga teacher, but when
I started doing yoga, I thought because I thought, maybe
I'll be a doctor an acupuncturist, and I was looking
at other forms of healing, but I fell so in
(04:36):
love with the way that yoga takes you inside to
connect with the body. And then as I started to
learn about the Esclepian temples, which were the first temples
that were hospitals, really the first hospitals that existed, and
they created them in honor of Esclepias, the Greek god
of healing. They were often built near water, you know,
(04:56):
in Greece and Italy in different places in ancient times,
and when people were sick, they were invited to go
to the temples, and the temples had many things, you know,
they had you know movement. There was healing with water,
There was dietary changes. There was dogs in the temple
because they believed dogs were really healing, and snakes but
(05:17):
not poisonous ones, because snakes were about transformation, you know,
the transformation that we go through when we heal. But
there was an abadon in the temple where people would
descend and downward into a chamber where they would sleep
together and there would be a sitter that would hold
space for them, and if they woke up, you know,
they would basically open to a healing dream that the
(05:40):
wisdom to heal is within right, and so they would
Then the sitters would remember their dreams for them. They
would work with the figures of the dreams, not dream
analysts like we have now, but to meet what those
figures were and to feel into it for yourself what
the message is. And for me, I feel yoga does
(06:01):
that in a way. We go inside, and especially the
stylite teach, which is a lot of restorative poses where
you're lying over bolsters and covered in blankets and pillows
are propping you. Then maybe you close your eyes or
put an eyepillo over your eyes. Maybe there's music or
guided meditation to take you inside and to meet what
(06:21):
needs healing. And when I think about awakening, because that's
such a beautiful thing for us to all think about
right now, I think some of it is it's our
own personal healing that the more we heal from our traumas,
the less we're just acting them out in our lives.
And I think it's layered. It's many, many years of
healing work. It never ends really when you've gone through
(06:44):
trauma or wounding, which I think if you've lived long enough,
everybody's got some trauma, right. But it's just a beautiful
way to pause, to go inside and then to meet
what needs healing. And it might be emotional, it might
be physical. And I really think we're all healing on
some level.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
And well, I just want to tell anybody listening I
have experienced you firsthand because I had two knee replacements
and the first one, Sherry sent me this. I think
it was called healing missed meditation was that what it
was called? And you all, I got to tell you here,
(07:25):
I am drugged up. You know, I'm in vain. You
know getting up and moving is not fun, and I
don't want to eat, and it's you know, you know,
thank God I have a husband who was helping me
to take care of me, but her meditations were the
one thing that would just take me right into center
no matter where I was. And you know, I mean
(07:49):
I've done yoga stuff with you before, but to not
be able to really move well, but to have that
that breathing and that energy bringing me to center, it's
so important. So I want to talk a little bit
about breath because you know, when people are suffering, when
they've got some kind of diagnosis and their body is
(08:10):
not cooperating, that is traumatic. Yes, So talk about what
the importance of breath in those moments.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Well, you know, the yois felt, that breath held holds
energy prana and the practice of breathing is called pranayama,
the control of energy. And so when we're when we're
dealing with that kind of difficult moment, maybe you've just
been given a diagnosis, or you're not able to relax
in your body, or you're in pain, or by accessing
(08:39):
the breath, which is it's interesting because it's part of
our autonomic system and we don't have to think to breathe,
you know, it happens without us thinking but it also
can be controlled. Therefore, we can control the physiology of
our bodies by controlling our breath. So, for instance, one
of the things that happens is every moment, a part
(09:00):
of our brain that's asking am I safe? Am I safe?
Am I safe? And if there's a no. So let's
say you've been diagnosed with cancer, you feel that nose
inside of you, and then you go into a stress
response where the tendency is for the breath to become
shallow and short in the upper chest, and that just
keeps you stuck in the stress response. And people can
get stuck in that stress response for years, months, years,
(09:22):
you know, and that can really cause even more trouble
for your body that's trying so hard to heal. So,
for instance, by lengthening your exhalation, breathing a natural inhalation,
we can all do it together right now, just taking
a breath in, preferably through the nose because it filters
the air and warms it for the lungs. But you
can breathe through your mouth if it's stuffy, and you
(09:43):
just take a breath in and then you lengthen your
exhalation maybe twice as long. So if you're inhaling for
a count of five, you exhale for a count of ten,
or inhale for account of four, exhale for longer. And
you have to find your own ratio because depending on
how you're lungs are doing and everything else. But it's
a quick way to start to turn off the stress response.
(10:06):
When we're in stress, our body is trying to deal
with that stress, so it can't focus very well on
mending and healing and digestion and all of that. So
sometimes just by distressing with deep breathing, but then there's
many other things that we can do to destress. It's
but the breath is powerful and it's always at the
tip of your nose, so you're having a difficult conversation,
(10:27):
you can breathe and that can calm your nervous system.
I often say we can't control everything around us, but
we can control our response, and we can do things
like breath work to just support ourselves and how we
fare through all that life brings.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
That is such a beautiful thing, you know. One of
the things I noticed because I work with a lot
of different people who who've had different traumas, and they
stop breathing it's like they get stressed and they stop,
they hold a breath, which is like the worst thing
you can do to open the body. So I want
you to go a little deeper into restorative yoga because
(11:08):
I don't know that people know that there's different kinds
of yoga, right. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
For instance, just before getting on, I taught two classes
online for my local cancer center. We went online during
the pandemic, but we've stayed online and it's quite easy
to do online because you can be in your home.
You can grab your pillows, and we use props for
restorative yoga, and so the idea and really, if you
(11:34):
think about restorative yoga, there's different kinds of yoga. So
there's the young yoga where you're striving and you're pushing
and you're getting stronger, and it's a great style of
yoga for certain times in your life. But when you've
had a surgery, or you're fatigued, or you're going through
a difficult emotional time, sometimes just being held by props
(11:55):
literally held you're lying back. Let's see, in a backbend
where there's bolster behind your back and a pillow at
your head. Maybe your legs are open in butterfly or
straight out in front of you and you can just
rest there. You're getting this wonderful stretch for the front
of your body and it opens the heart, it opens
the energy flows through some really important meridian lines. That's
(12:19):
just one restorative pose, though there's many many poses, and
you stay for quite some time, five ten, fifteen minutes.
So it's so RESTful, and as you first come into it,
you'll feel like okay, and you get all settled and
you make sure everything feels just right, and then you
start syncing into the pose and sinking grounding. And it's
(12:40):
interesting in a lot of different teachings about meditation, the
lying down meditations are for healing, the seated meditations are
for wisdom, the standing meditations are for connecting to our strength,
and walking meditations are for working out things. And so
(13:00):
the lying down meditation really is restorative yoga. And then
you do your breathing there or you just get quiet
where you listen to some music, or if people are
really stressed, I'll guide them in a meditation. Maybe they're
breathing light into the area that's healing and breathing out
the fear or tension and stress, and so it gives
(13:21):
you something that you can do for your own healing.
And you can do it in bed, you can get
to the floor. There's a lot of restoring you can
even do in a chair. Pillows under your feet, maybe
something under your elbows, hands on your body, or there's
all kinds of different ways to do it. But it's
such a powerful, powerful healing practice. And I think rest
(13:42):
is revolutionary because I don't know about you, but I
remember my grandmother used to say, you don't sit down
till your work is done. And I'd say, Grandma, it's
never done right, It's never done. There's always never done now.
And I went for a long time until my body
laid me down and I said, okay. And now I'm
really honoring and teaching people how to find balance right
(14:06):
because we are it's important to get things done. We
do the laundry and we take care of the stuff.
And that's the young energy and the taws teaching. Yong
is the sunny side of the mountain, Yin is the
shady side. We can't have one without the other. But
what a lot of people do is they just kind
of burn their nervous system by pushing all the time,
where they don't have that balance of rest. So some
(14:28):
of the ways that we rest meditation is a rest
restorative yoga to sleep, but not everybody sleeps well, so
it's finding ways. And I was working with somebody yesterday
and I said, I want you to lay down for
ten to fifteen minutes every day and just do some
breathing and focus on what we were working with. But
that's another thing you can do. And for people with
(14:49):
chronic illness, if they do that every day for a month,
they'll have a big shift in their health. I've seen
it time and again.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
So I just did a stomach and Dawson Church, who
is a he's a scientist and he's written all kinds
of books and stuff, and he was talking about he's
got a new book coming out. I think it's called
Spiritual Intelligence or something, but he was talking about the
importance of consistency over a thirty day period. Yes, what
(15:20):
it does to bring everything into sink and calm things down.
And I just love that the healers are all talking
about it from different points of view.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Yes, yes, we're all kind of tuning in, you know,
and sharing it in our different ways. You know. It's
so big change Also for the neurons and the pathways
in the brain when you stick to something for thirty days.
I'm sure he was mentioning that.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
I want to talk because you mentioned as a child,
you know, there were a lot of health issues and things.
Could you just talk a little bit back, because I
want people to know that, you know, people who are
master teachers or healers or whatever, we're still human. We're
all going through our own human experiences. So talk to
(16:07):
me a little bit about the process you went through
of finding your own path to healing.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Wow. Well, when I was young, I just survived, right, Yeah.
I didn't really know how to handle it, so I
embodied a lot of it. And then I got sick
in my twenties and that was when I met a doctor.
And he said, a really interesting doctor because he had
been an emergency room surgeon and he was, you know,
(16:39):
he was a Hykomi therapist, Native American type of therapy.
He was, you know, worked with homeopathy and emotions and
all this. And he started to work with me when
I was recovering from this, you know, this big illness.
And he said, you're sitting on a load of rage.
And I said, oh no, I'm very spiritual, and he
(17:02):
said no, and you know, I want you to take
a talent. I want you to just start squeezing it
and say, I'm angry, see if anything comes up. And
he showed me how to do it in his office
and I just started shaking, and my illness was in
my pelvis. That's where a lot of my wounding was.
And I ended up and it was, you know, it
(17:23):
was procedures. I had a lot of medical procedures and things.
And as I started to work with it and started
to process it and started to really feel the feelings
around being stuck, not being able to run, fight or
flee and having these painful procedures, I started to feel
(17:43):
the energy flowing in my body again. And I went
from possibly needing a hysterectomy to having healing it and
not needing that. And I was hoping to have children.
I wasn't able to, but it was that was the
impetus of me to try any thing I could to
heal before the surgery if I could. So you know,
(18:03):
we we all, you know, we all have so much
power to heal within. But one of the things I
feel that's really important is to feel the feelings we
can't bypass past the darker shadow emotions. We have to
go into those to come into the lighter, freer feelings.
And so for me, you know, my mom used to
(18:29):
call her church the happy church, and so everything was
very you know, positive, We're going to stay positive all
the time, which is great, but I didn't learn how
to go into the shadow that was sitting in my
body and making me sick. And when I started to
work with that, So that was a big part of
my healing in my twenties. And then yoga, going in
(18:52):
and moving and feeling and I cried a lot in
yoga classes. I worked through so much emotional pain there.
And then just befriending my body, starting to love it
and care for it like a dear friend. And that
was a huge turning point to healing, because when you're
sick so much, you just see your body as like
(19:13):
this thing you're trying to get away from, you know.
But when you start to love it and befriended and
listen to it and let it guide you, you start
healing and getting stronger. And you can often recover from
things that seem insurmountable. And I've seen it, so it's
one of the pieces of my work with people privately
that I really work on is the relationship that we
(19:35):
have and if our body tells us something we get
a hit of something, to not just push it off,
to listen, to follow those intuitions. And you know, I
was reading your book and I was really touched by
your relationship with the mother grandmother and the psychic qualities
that they had and the gifts, because I think that's
(19:58):
also one gift that women have. I think men do too,
but I think that we really when we use that,
it's one of our superpowers, right, Yeah, And part of
its honoring what you get right.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Right, And so it's so important, and we're in a
culture that doesn't necessarily honor it or lift it up.
And I want to say to you sharing and this
is for any woman listening who's been through trauma, who's
been through illness, who's been through finding herself. I witnessed
(20:35):
you create a loving relationship and I would love for
you to talk about because what I was seeing as
you were sharing was this love of self and body
and the information flowing through it that I believe became
the field through which love from the exterior could come in.
(21:00):
Is that your experience.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Yes, yes, very much so. I mean it's interesting because
my father died suddenly when I was twenty and the
men that I would choose after that I hadn't healed yet.
They would leave me. You know, I was just getting
my heart broken all the time, right and you know,
cheat on me or whatever. And it wasn't until I
(21:23):
really healed myself and shifted that I was. And I
said to my husband when I first met him, because
I said, you know, be ready, You're not just going
to see the nice part of me. I want you
to see all of me. I'm not because that was
another part of me is that I thought, oh, you know,
to have a relationship, I have to just show this
(21:43):
one side. And it's because I hadn't done my shadow
work and seen the power of that part of me
that has a voice that stands up that and men
respect a powerful, you know, woman who can be soft
too and loving. And but you know, I'm just so
blessed when my husband came into my life, he was
(22:05):
just right there. And also spiritually, we deeply connected and
we're able to pray together and sit together in meditation
and really hold all that life brings and it's an
incredible gift and blessing, but it didn't I really felt
like I wasn't able to have that. And I didn't
(22:25):
get married till I was thirty seven, you know, so
it was a little later in life for me. That
took me some time to work on that stuff.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Well yeah, but you know, there is no time and space,
you know, in the universe, and so whatever it takes,
you know. But the reason I wanted to bring this
into the field today was is that so many people
are talking about I want my soulmate, I want my
perfect partner, you know whatever, but there was a resistance
(22:54):
to doing their own healing work so that they can
become the thing that they desire. Yes, So I I
just wanted to honor you because I witnessed it, and uh,
it's a beautiful thing too to see it, to be
in the presence of it, and and to see how
your personal life and your professional life have this synergiestic
(23:18):
and synergistic feel.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Thank you. And I was at your wedding and you
were at my wedding. I was, and you know ditto
you and your beloved. What a union and what what
a love and respect and deep reverence and and you
can see how a good supportive union also brings your
(23:40):
ability to be and do all that you're doing. You know,
it's a reflection too of being held by you know,
in relationship too, a relationship with with Spirit, with God,
God iss all that is, our relationship with the earth,
our relationship with our mates.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Yeah, absolutely show it. How do people find you and
your work and get in touch with the magic you bring?
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Oh well Therapeutic Yoga dot com. There is my website
and there's a contact page if anybody wants to reach
out to me that goes directly to me. And on
that offering page is my yoga teacher training. I teach
with ar Tropeal. I teach Level one and Level two
therapeutic Yoga training and it's really open to anyone who
(24:29):
wants to heal with restorative yoga therapeutic yoga. So some
people take it just for them, other people take it
to become certified in therapeutic yoga. So that would be
the place to go, But there's lots of other offerings
there and the preparing for surgery meditations and things like that.
And I'm working on a on a beautiful visionary yoga
deck yes with a local artist, Megan Forbes, and I'm
(24:54):
very excited about it and it's coming along. It's not
not been birthed entirely yet, but it's coming along.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Well. I'm sure it's going to be beautiful, you know.
I mean, I'm way past my surgery and I still
listen to Hailing Miss. So whatever the deck is, you know,
I'll be one of the first in line. Toget Oh
and me too.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Your meditations in your book. I'm just enjoying so much.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Yeah, thank you. So I asked the same last question
of everybody on the show. This show is called Women Awakening.
What do you think is the most important thing about
women awakening on the planet in this moment.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
I think the most important thing is to really come
into our hearts in a deeper way. And I just
find when we're in our hearts, we can meet each
other with greater compassion and ourselves too with this planet
needs kindness. One of my mentors, Laura Huxley Alles. Huxley's widow,
(25:59):
used to say say, yeah, you've met her. Everything in
life is relationship to each other, to the world and
our unity consciousness. Right now, that really is we connect
to that through our heart, I think. And the more
that we can open our hearts to all the beauty,
the diversity, the light of each being, I think that
(26:23):
comes from the heart. I think that's really needed now
as we move forward.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Well, I couldn't agree with you more. And it wasn't
just the words that you expressed, it was the energy
behind the words that felt so heart centric. So thank
you for bringing that to the plant and reminding us
all that we can be in the heart and we
can be loving and kind and still be healing. Saves
(26:52):
on a lot of different levels. I appreciate your being here.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Thank you, Cynthia so much, such an honor to have
this time with you. Thank you to your listeners.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Yeah all right, everybody. You know I say the same
thing different ways at the end of this show. You know,
the core of your being is healthy. You dropped on
this planet whole, perfect, complete, and you were so loved
(27:25):
that the universe knew that it needed your energy and
your body temple to come here to be a healing sam.
So whatever you have to do, do that to be
reminded of your health and your well being and your
strength and your kindness and your caring. You are powerful.
Beyond measure, and just like Sherry, you know we've all
(27:48):
been through stuff, but your determination to be strong and
healed and whole is the thing that will transform this planet.
I love you so much. I'm so grateful you're here.
If you need anything from me, it's Cynthia James dot net.
And know that I'm grateful that we get to play
together and that you get to meet my friends. I
(28:09):
love you, and we'll talk to you soon.
I'm Cynthia James, and this network is about changing lives,
one woman at a time. Welcome to Women Awakening. I'm
your host, Cynthia James, and you know, I get the
distinct honor of celebrating women. I really feel like this
(00:27):
is our time on the planet. This is the time
for us to emerge, to bring our nurturing, caring, loving
souls because the planet needs us, the children on the planet,
the ecosystem, everybody needs this feminine quality, these energies, and
so I get to bring women to you that are
change makers. They're people who have said, oh, I know
(00:49):
what I came here to do, and I'm not only
going to do it, I'm going to show others how
to do it so that they can have powerful lives.
And so I love that I get to do this
every week, you know, on all the platforms Spotify, iTunes,
iHeart Speaker, Amazon Video, on YouTube, Subscribe, tell your friends, share,
because I guarantee you there hasn't been one woman. You know,
(01:12):
we're close to two hundred and fifty women now internationally
and there has not been one woman that was an
inspiration that I didn't walk away with an aha moment
guarantee that will happen for you too. So today I
get to introduce you to a very dear friend of mine,
been in my life for a very long time. Her
name is Sherry Klampitt. She's the founder and director of
(01:34):
the Therapeutic Yoga Training Program. She's a certified yoga therapist
with over thirty years of teaching experience and is passionate
about bringing the benefits of yoga to those recovering from
or living with injury or illness. Sherry has created therapeutic
Yoga at Beth Israel Medical Center and the land Gone
(01:55):
Medical Center at NYU. She started the yoga program at
the Ridley Trees Cancer Center in nineteen ninety nine. She
continues to teach weekly there. Cherry's teaching focuses on the
healing aspects of yoga, freeing the body, breath, and flow
of energy through practicing with awareness, compassion, and love. And
(02:20):
Cherry is the co author of the Therapeutic Yoga Kit,
published by Inner Traditions sharey. I'm so happy that you
are here.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Thank you, Cynthia, thank you so much for having me.
I'm so thrilled to be here and to talk about
exactly what you opened with you know, this powerful time
and women are rising and the energy that we have
and the gifts we have to share are just so
important more than ever, I.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Feel, Oh, that is so awesome. Well I want to
start though, because I don't think you dropped on the
planet to be a yoga teacher, and you have a
very interesting childhood. So I want you to share it
because because it's sort of cool and magical.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Oh well, I think if you're talking cool and magical,
you're probably talking about my dad, who was a cartoonist,
and so he was so much fun and so playful
and just always creating and sharing his love through art
and through in many different ways puppets and cartoon characters.
(03:25):
And so I was raised in that kind of very loving,
creative environment. But I had a lot of health issues
as a child and had a lot of trauma, you know,
and it was I think through my trauma journey, and
I won't go into all of it, but that I
came out really wanting to help people who were healing
and suffering. One of my specialties is working with trauma,
(03:49):
working with all kinds of trauma, but I work a
lot with cancer patients. It's one of my specialties, so
medical trauma. How do we overcome these amas that we
go through? And they often you know, I think it
was Roomy that said the wound is where the light
enters us, and so to take the wound and to
(04:13):
work with the light, and then to be able to
share what you've learned through your healing, which is part
of what I do and yoga. You know, I was
not thinking I would become a yoga teacher, but when
I started doing yoga, I thought because I thought, maybe
I'll be a doctor an acupuncturist, and I was looking
at other forms of healing, but I fell so in
(04:36):
love with the way that yoga takes you inside to
connect with the body. And then as I started to
learn about the Esclepian temples, which were the first temples
that were hospitals, really the first hospitals that existed, and
they created them in honor of Esclepias, the Greek god
of healing. They were often built near water, you know,
(04:56):
in Greece and Italy in different places in ancient times,
and when people were sick, they were invited to go
to the temples, and the temples had many things, you know,
they had you know movement. There was healing with water,
There was dietary changes. There was dogs in the temple
because they believed dogs were really healing, and snakes but
(05:17):
not poisonous ones, because snakes were about transformation, you know,
the transformation that we go through when we heal. But
there was an abadon in the temple where people would
descend and downward into a chamber where they would sleep
together and there would be a sitter that would hold
space for them, and if they woke up, you know,
they would basically open to a healing dream that the
(05:40):
wisdom to heal is within right, and so they would
Then the sitters would remember their dreams for them. They
would work with the figures of the dreams, not dream
analysts like we have now, but to meet what those
figures were and to feel into it for yourself what
the message is. And for me, I feel yoga does
(06:01):
that in a way. We go inside, and especially the
stylite teach, which is a lot of restorative poses where
you're lying over bolsters and covered in blankets and pillows
are propping you. Then maybe you close your eyes or
put an eyepillo over your eyes. Maybe there's music or
guided meditation to take you inside and to meet what
(06:21):
needs healing. And when I think about awakening, because that's
such a beautiful thing for us to all think about
right now, I think some of it is it's our
own personal healing that the more we heal from our traumas,
the less we're just acting them out in our lives.
And I think it's layered. It's many, many years of
healing work. It never ends really when you've gone through
(06:44):
trauma or wounding, which I think if you've lived long enough,
everybody's got some trauma, right. But it's just a beautiful
way to pause, to go inside and then to meet
what needs healing. And it might be emotional, it might
be physical. And I really think we're all healing on
some level.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
And well, I just want to tell anybody listening I
have experienced you firsthand because I had two knee replacements
and the first one, Sherry sent me this. I think
it was called healing missed meditation was that what it
was called? And you all, I got to tell you here,
(07:25):
I am drugged up. You know, I'm in vain. You
know getting up and moving is not fun, and I
don't want to eat, and it's you know, you know,
thank God I have a husband who was helping me
to take care of me, but her meditations were the
one thing that would just take me right into center
no matter where I was. And you know, I mean
(07:49):
I've done yoga stuff with you before, but to not
be able to really move well, but to have that
that breathing and that energy bringing me to center, it's
so important. So I want to talk a little bit
about breath because you know, when people are suffering, when
they've got some kind of diagnosis and their body is
(08:10):
not cooperating, that is traumatic. Yes, So talk about what
the importance of breath in those moments.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Well, you know, the yois felt, that breath held holds
energy prana and the practice of breathing is called pranayama,
the control of energy. And so when we're when we're
dealing with that kind of difficult moment, maybe you've just
been given a diagnosis, or you're not able to relax
in your body, or you're in pain, or by accessing
(08:39):
the breath, which is it's interesting because it's part of
our autonomic system and we don't have to think to breathe,
you know, it happens without us thinking but it also
can be controlled. Therefore, we can control the physiology of
our bodies by controlling our breath. So, for instance, one
of the things that happens is every moment, a part
(09:00):
of our brain that's asking am I safe? Am I safe?
Am I safe? And if there's a no. So let's
say you've been diagnosed with cancer, you feel that nose
inside of you, and then you go into a stress
response where the tendency is for the breath to become
shallow and short in the upper chest, and that just
keeps you stuck in the stress response. And people can
get stuck in that stress response for years, months, years,
(09:22):
you know, and that can really cause even more trouble
for your body that's trying so hard to heal. So,
for instance, by lengthening your exhalation, breathing a natural inhalation,
we can all do it together right now, just taking
a breath in, preferably through the nose because it filters
the air and warms it for the lungs. But you
can breathe through your mouth if it's stuffy, and you
(09:43):
just take a breath in and then you lengthen your
exhalation maybe twice as long. So if you're inhaling for
a count of five, you exhale for a count of ten,
or inhale for account of four, exhale for longer. And
you have to find your own ratio because depending on
how you're lungs are doing and everything else. But it's
a quick way to start to turn off the stress response.
(10:06):
When we're in stress, our body is trying to deal
with that stress, so it can't focus very well on
mending and healing and digestion and all of that. So
sometimes just by distressing with deep breathing, but then there's
many other things that we can do to destress. It's
but the breath is powerful and it's always at the
tip of your nose, so you're having a difficult conversation,
(10:27):
you can breathe and that can calm your nervous system.
I often say we can't control everything around us, but
we can control our response, and we can do things
like breath work to just support ourselves and how we
fare through all that life brings.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
That is such a beautiful thing, you know. One of
the things I noticed because I work with a lot
of different people who who've had different traumas, and they
stop breathing it's like they get stressed and they stop,
they hold a breath, which is like the worst thing
you can do to open the body. So I want
you to go a little deeper into restorative yoga because
(11:08):
I don't know that people know that there's different kinds
of yoga, right. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
For instance, just before getting on, I taught two classes
online for my local cancer center. We went online during
the pandemic, but we've stayed online and it's quite easy
to do online because you can be in your home.
You can grab your pillows, and we use props for
restorative yoga, and so the idea and really, if you
(11:34):
think about restorative yoga, there's different kinds of yoga. So
there's the young yoga where you're striving and you're pushing
and you're getting stronger, and it's a great style of
yoga for certain times in your life. But when you've
had a surgery, or you're fatigued, or you're going through
a difficult emotional time, sometimes just being held by props
(11:55):
literally held you're lying back. Let's see, in a backbend
where there's bolster behind your back and a pillow at
your head. Maybe your legs are open in butterfly or
straight out in front of you and you can just
rest there. You're getting this wonderful stretch for the front
of your body and it opens the heart, it opens
the energy flows through some really important meridian lines. That's
(12:19):
just one restorative pose, though there's many many poses, and
you stay for quite some time, five ten, fifteen minutes.
So it's so RESTful, and as you first come into it,
you'll feel like okay, and you get all settled and
you make sure everything feels just right, and then you
start syncing into the pose and sinking grounding. And it's
(12:40):
interesting in a lot of different teachings about meditation, the
lying down meditations are for healing, the seated meditations are
for wisdom, the standing meditations are for connecting to our strength,
and walking meditations are for working out things. And so
(13:00):
the lying down meditation really is restorative yoga. And then
you do your breathing there or you just get quiet
where you listen to some music, or if people are
really stressed, I'll guide them in a meditation. Maybe they're
breathing light into the area that's healing and breathing out
the fear or tension and stress, and so it gives
(13:21):
you something that you can do for your own healing.
And you can do it in bed, you can get
to the floor. There's a lot of restoring you can
even do in a chair. Pillows under your feet, maybe
something under your elbows, hands on your body, or there's
all kinds of different ways to do it. But it's
such a powerful, powerful healing practice. And I think rest
(13:42):
is revolutionary because I don't know about you, but I
remember my grandmother used to say, you don't sit down
till your work is done. And I'd say, Grandma, it's
never done right, It's never done. There's always never done now.
And I went for a long time until my body
laid me down and I said, okay. And now I'm
really honoring and teaching people how to find balance right
(14:06):
because we are it's important to get things done. We
do the laundry and we take care of the stuff.
And that's the young energy and the taws teaching. Yong
is the sunny side of the mountain, Yin is the
shady side. We can't have one without the other. But
what a lot of people do is they just kind
of burn their nervous system by pushing all the time,
where they don't have that balance of rest. So some
(14:28):
of the ways that we rest meditation is a rest
restorative yoga to sleep, but not everybody sleeps well, so
it's finding ways. And I was working with somebody yesterday
and I said, I want you to lay down for
ten to fifteen minutes every day and just do some
breathing and focus on what we were working with. But
that's another thing you can do. And for people with
(14:49):
chronic illness, if they do that every day for a month,
they'll have a big shift in their health. I've seen
it time and again.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
So I just did a stomach and Dawson Church, who
is a he's a scientist and he's written all kinds
of books and stuff, and he was talking about he's
got a new book coming out. I think it's called
Spiritual Intelligence or something, but he was talking about the
importance of consistency over a thirty day period. Yes, what
(15:20):
it does to bring everything into sink and calm things down.
And I just love that the healers are all talking
about it from different points of view.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Yes, yes, we're all kind of tuning in, you know,
and sharing it in our different ways. You know. It's
so big change Also for the neurons and the pathways
in the brain when you stick to something for thirty days.
I'm sure he was mentioning that.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
I want to talk because you mentioned as a child,
you know, there were a lot of health issues and things.
Could you just talk a little bit back, because I
want people to know that, you know, people who are
master teachers or healers or whatever, we're still human. We're
all going through our own human experiences. So talk to
(16:07):
me a little bit about the process you went through
of finding your own path to healing.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Wow. Well, when I was young, I just survived, right, Yeah.
I didn't really know how to handle it, so I
embodied a lot of it. And then I got sick
in my twenties and that was when I met a doctor.
And he said, a really interesting doctor because he had
been an emergency room surgeon and he was, you know,
(16:39):
he was a Hykomi therapist, Native American type of therapy.
He was, you know, worked with homeopathy and emotions and
all this. And he started to work with me when
I was recovering from this, you know, this big illness.
And he said, you're sitting on a load of rage.
And I said, oh no, I'm very spiritual, and he
(17:02):
said no, and you know, I want you to take
a talent. I want you to just start squeezing it
and say, I'm angry, see if anything comes up. And
he showed me how to do it in his office
and I just started shaking, and my illness was in
my pelvis. That's where a lot of my wounding was.
And I ended up and it was, you know, it
(17:23):
was procedures. I had a lot of medical procedures and things.
And as I started to work with it and started
to process it and started to really feel the feelings
around being stuck, not being able to run, fight or
flee and having these painful procedures, I started to feel
(17:43):
the energy flowing in my body again. And I went
from possibly needing a hysterectomy to having healing it and
not needing that. And I was hoping to have children.
I wasn't able to, but it was that was the
impetus of me to try any thing I could to
heal before the surgery if I could. So you know,
(18:03):
we we all, you know, we all have so much
power to heal within. But one of the things I
feel that's really important is to feel the feelings we
can't bypass past the darker shadow emotions. We have to
go into those to come into the lighter, freer feelings.
And so for me, you know, my mom used to
(18:29):
call her church the happy church, and so everything was
very you know, positive, We're going to stay positive all
the time, which is great, but I didn't learn how
to go into the shadow that was sitting in my
body and making me sick. And when I started to
work with that, So that was a big part of
my healing in my twenties. And then yoga, going in
(18:52):
and moving and feeling and I cried a lot in
yoga classes. I worked through so much emotional pain there.
And then just befriending my body, starting to love it
and care for it like a dear friend. And that
was a huge turning point to healing, because when you're
sick so much, you just see your body as like
(19:13):
this thing you're trying to get away from, you know.
But when you start to love it and befriended and
listen to it and let it guide you, you start
healing and getting stronger. And you can often recover from
things that seem insurmountable. And I've seen it, so it's
one of the pieces of my work with people privately
that I really work on is the relationship that we
(19:35):
have and if our body tells us something we get
a hit of something, to not just push it off,
to listen, to follow those intuitions. And you know, I
was reading your book and I was really touched by
your relationship with the mother grandmother and the psychic qualities
that they had and the gifts, because I think that's
(19:58):
also one gift that women have. I think men do too,
but I think that we really when we use that,
it's one of our superpowers, right, Yeah, And part of
its honoring what you get right.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Right, And so it's so important, and we're in a
culture that doesn't necessarily honor it or lift it up.
And I want to say to you sharing and this
is for any woman listening who's been through trauma, who's
been through illness, who's been through finding herself. I witnessed
(20:35):
you create a loving relationship and I would love for
you to talk about because what I was seeing as
you were sharing was this love of self and body
and the information flowing through it that I believe became
the field through which love from the exterior could come in.
(21:00):
Is that your experience.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Yes, yes, very much so. I mean it's interesting because
my father died suddenly when I was twenty and the
men that I would choose after that I hadn't healed yet.
They would leave me. You know, I was just getting
my heart broken all the time, right and you know,
cheat on me or whatever. And it wasn't until I
(21:23):
really healed myself and shifted that I was. And I
said to my husband when I first met him, because
I said, you know, be ready, You're not just going
to see the nice part of me. I want you
to see all of me. I'm not because that was
another part of me is that I thought, oh, you know,
to have a relationship, I have to just show this
(21:43):
one side. And it's because I hadn't done my shadow
work and seen the power of that part of me
that has a voice that stands up that and men
respect a powerful, you know, woman who can be soft
too and loving. And but you know, I'm just so
blessed when my husband came into my life, he was
(22:05):
just right there. And also spiritually, we deeply connected and
we're able to pray together and sit together in meditation
and really hold all that life brings and it's an
incredible gift and blessing, but it didn't I really felt
like I wasn't able to have that. And I didn't
(22:25):
get married till I was thirty seven, you know, so
it was a little later in life for me. That
took me some time to work on that stuff.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Well yeah, but you know, there is no time and space,
you know, in the universe, and so whatever it takes,
you know. But the reason I wanted to bring this
into the field today was is that so many people
are talking about I want my soulmate, I want my
perfect partner, you know whatever, but there was a resistance
(22:54):
to doing their own healing work so that they can
become the thing that they desire. Yes, So I I
just wanted to honor you because I witnessed it, and uh,
it's a beautiful thing too to see it, to be
in the presence of it, and and to see how
your personal life and your professional life have this synergiestic
(23:18):
and synergistic feel.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Thank you. And I was at your wedding and you
were at my wedding. I was, and you know ditto
you and your beloved. What a union and what what
a love and respect and deep reverence and and you
can see how a good supportive union also brings your
(23:40):
ability to be and do all that you're doing. You know,
it's a reflection too of being held by you know,
in relationship too, a relationship with with Spirit, with God,
God iss all that is, our relationship with the earth,
our relationship with our mates.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Yeah, absolutely show it. How do people find you and
your work and get in touch with the magic you bring?
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Oh well Therapeutic Yoga dot com. There is my website
and there's a contact page if anybody wants to reach
out to me that goes directly to me. And on
that offering page is my yoga teacher training. I teach
with ar Tropeal. I teach Level one and Level two
therapeutic Yoga training and it's really open to anyone who
(24:29):
wants to heal with restorative yoga therapeutic yoga. So some
people take it just for them, other people take it
to become certified in therapeutic yoga. So that would be
the place to go, But there's lots of other offerings
there and the preparing for surgery meditations and things like that.
And I'm working on a on a beautiful visionary yoga
deck yes with a local artist, Megan Forbes, and I'm
(24:54):
very excited about it and it's coming along. It's not
not been birthed entirely yet, but it's coming along.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Well. I'm sure it's going to be beautiful, you know.
I mean, I'm way past my surgery and I still
listen to Hailing Miss. So whatever the deck is, you know,
I'll be one of the first in line. Toget Oh
and me too.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Your meditations in your book. I'm just enjoying so much.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Yeah, thank you. So I asked the same last question
of everybody on the show. This show is called Women Awakening.
What do you think is the most important thing about
women awakening on the planet in this moment.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
I think the most important thing is to really come
into our hearts in a deeper way. And I just
find when we're in our hearts, we can meet each
other with greater compassion and ourselves too with this planet
needs kindness. One of my mentors, Laura Huxley Alles. Huxley's widow,
(25:59):
used to say say, yeah, you've met her. Everything in
life is relationship to each other, to the world and
our unity consciousness. Right now, that really is we connect
to that through our heart, I think. And the more
that we can open our hearts to all the beauty,
the diversity, the light of each being, I think that
(26:23):
comes from the heart. I think that's really needed now
as we move forward.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Well, I couldn't agree with you more. And it wasn't
just the words that you expressed, it was the energy
behind the words that felt so heart centric. So thank
you for bringing that to the plant and reminding us
all that we can be in the heart and we
can be loving and kind and still be healing. Saves
(26:52):
on a lot of different levels. I appreciate your being here.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Thank you, Cynthia so much, such an honor to have
this time with you. Thank you to your listeners.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Yeah all right, everybody. You know I say the same
thing different ways at the end of this show. You know,
the core of your being is healthy. You dropped on
this planet whole, perfect, complete, and you were so loved
(27:25):
that the universe knew that it needed your energy and
your body temple to come here to be a healing sam.
So whatever you have to do, do that to be
reminded of your health and your well being and your
strength and your kindness and your caring. You are powerful.
Beyond measure, and just like Sherry, you know we've all
(27:48):
been through stuff, but your determination to be strong and
healed and whole is the thing that will transform this planet.
I love you so much. I'm so grateful you're here.
If you need anything from me, it's Cynthia James dot net.
And know that I'm grateful that we get to play
together and that you get to meet my friends. I
(28:09):
love you, and we'll talk to you soon.
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