Justin Trosclair 0:02
Episode 13 resilience interception, neuro plastic yoga awareness. I’m your host, Dr. Justin shows Claire and today we’re Christine Coverity perspective

for doctors who want a thriving practice and abundant life. Listen as your host, Dr. Justin Foursquare goes behind the curtain can use doctors and guess about real world triumph struggles, practical tips and entertainment on this episode.

Welcome back to this week’s episode. I gotta be honest, I don’t know about yoga poses. That’s about it. So today, our guests will go deep into how to look for appropriate yoga therapy teacher. What are some qualifications? You know, we hear about yoga is good carpet is good. Acupuncture is good. Physical Therapy is good for low back pain. But what’s a good yoga teacher? What aspects should we be looking for? Maybe what are some good books? What role does yoga have in the health care of American right? So goes into a whole lot of these types of details, and it should be really good. So enjoy the hour. All the show notes can be found at a doctor’s perspective, net slash three, eight. Let’s go hashtag behind the curtain.

podcast. Welcome back. Today we have a special guest. Her name is Christine. Cool, very Weber. She’s been studying yoga for nearly 30 years. She’s an advocate. She’s been doing it since 1995. And training and teaching. She believes in holistic mind body experience. She’s the director of the subtle yoga teacher training for behavioral health professionals in Asheville, North Carolina. She does workshops, she does training, she has lots of resources on our website, amazing type of things here. So let’s jump right in. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Unknown 1:44
Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here. Well, let’s

Justin Trosclair 1:46
just jump right in. You experience yoga A long time ago is actually impacted your life you know, enough to teach it and everything. So how did you find yoga yoga find you?

Unknown 1:56
Haha, that’s always a good question. I have and a hippie social studies teacher when I was in seventh grade in Pennsylvania, and she weren’t Birkenstocks and long Chloe skirts maybe wasn’t Birkenstocks, but it was sudden, like groovy 70 sandals.

Unknown 2:14
And I’ll never forget, and we were like, Oh my God, we have to do yoga with our teacher, you know, but I’ll never forget, we made fun of it. But I’ll never forget that first experience that I had of lying still in the at the end practice, which we call the show Barcelona. And that’s the practice that you do. And just about every yoga class you go to it’s you lie flat, after you’ve done all of the practices. And basically, you go into an introspective awareness experience where you’re noticing the feelings in your body. And I remember going there and I had almost like this. I don’t know, it’s a seventh grade out of body experience. I remember feeling so light and free and so peaceful. And I didn’t tell anybody about that. At the time. I didn’t have any content text for understanding it. I was just like, wow, yeah, yoga is for weird old hippies. But it really made me feel good. And actually the practices that I learned from her that’s that year that I was studying yoga with her, I think it was like every Wednesday we did yoga, and that I still use some of those practices. 40 something years later, I still use some of the things that she taught me. So yeah, and I tried to look her up a few years ago, I thought, oh, I’ve got to find Miss Gail and tell her how grateful I am for teaching me yoga and seventh grade, or sixth, it might have been sixth grade. And she had already passed away. It was sad. But, but that was my first you know, that open the door for me. And then, you know, of course, life came, I became a teenager and I did all sorts of other stuff. I was an aerobics instructor in the 80s when there are studios around and, and so when I got when I was in grad school, one of my best friends would say, you know, we were, you know, at grad schools, like you’re just completely slammed all the time, you know, time, and a lot of your people have been through med school, I didn’t go through med school, thank God, but the amount of time and you have stress that your body’s under is really extraordinary. And so I had my my friend would be like, Come on, let’s go to yoga. This was 1989 you know, so there wasn’t there were no sticky mats, there was really no yoga studios, nothing, you know, we she would take me to the gym, and in the gym. You know, those big thick wrestling those old blue, dark navy blue wrestling mats that they were we clean them first? Yeah, they were nasty. And she, we’d go to the gym. And we had a real Indian Swami teaching us yoga. I don’t know where this guy came from. But you know, they’re long black beer and was wearing white flowing clothes. And we would stand on our heads and do all this stuff. And my friend would say, Hello is the perfect complement to all the stress you have to deal with from academia. And I was like, Yeah, but I still was so embarrassed to practice yoga because it was cool at all back.

Unknown 5:13
So that’s kind of how I got started. And since that time, I’ve used I really have been a regular practitioner, I spent four years in Asia. So I was living in Japan for a couple of years making some money so I could travel and then I spent almost a year in India and Nepal studying at different Ashram. So I really, I really kind of immerse myself in the traditional study of yoga before I came back to the west and started to see what the West had added to the practice. So I you know, I really got the best of both worlds. And since that time, I’ve studied extensively with many different teachers.

Justin Trosclair 5:53
How did you find these places back then? Then had the internet so is

Unknown 5:58
there not the internet back those days?

Unknown 6:00
governmental, these teachers remember forever, but all those

Justin Trosclair 6:05
you to ask the locals, there were guidebooks

Unknown 6:06
you talked to the locals, I spent a lot of time traveling to the tourist places and meeting people and they’d be like, you should go to that Ostrom which is in that small town and go talk to those people because that would be really interesting for you you might learn something so it was that kind of a just word of mouth experience of traveling around I was backpacking around India for for quite a while just meeting people and trying to figure out you know, I was 27 I was in the middle of my Saturn return trying to figure out life.

Justin Trosclair 6:42
Now the word you use is that mean teacher in yoga lingo?

Unknown 6:45
Which Where did I say

Justin Trosclair 6:47
Swami Swami

Unknown 6:48
Swami,

Justin Trosclair 6:50
Swami, the people you studied with an Indian

Unknown 6:52
Yeah, is that like the teacher the master of the the important instructors who know it all? Um,

Unknown 6:58
well, that would be guru, right? But small me is like, typically Swamis are some kind of redundancy it and you’ll often see them wearing turbans, you know, so typically, they’re they’re a redundancy at of a particular yoga order. And some of them mainly they’ve been men but you will find orders that have women and I usually call them nuns because I don’t know what other words you use for them they in, in Sanskrit, they would say so a meanie or son Yes, Eenie, or, I guess they use the word Acharya, sometimes for both male and female. So there’s a lot of different words for the teachers, you know, it’s it’s a very, very exists extraordinarily rich tradition, with many, many different paths and lineages and teachers and thousands of years behind it. So it’s very complex.

Justin Trosclair 7:54
Yeah, let’s, let’s explore that just a little bit. as a practitioner, we here in studies, capital, acupuncture, yoga, polities, Tai Chi, any of it works, it’s all the same, except a little bit not.

How do we eat right? And I could think of probably the most of Western at the gym, you got weights down the hall, you got yoga class from a 19 year old in the other room, right? What? What kind of training does that person have versus someone like yourself? Who’s actually going to those countries and possibly could even do that in America and still learn, quote the same thing?

Unknown 8:28
Well, this is an interesting question. And I’ve thought about it and written about it extensively, I actually have a free ebook on my website, that’s called How to Choose a yoga teacher training program. I have two of them for the first the 200 hour and then 300 hour, because I’m so fascinated by by the this question, you know, sort of the, the, not only the training behind it, but also the theory and the worldview behind it, I think those things are important as well. So let me just start by saying that, you would never expect to be able to clean someone’s teeth, or to cut their hair with 200 hours of training. And yet in our culture, that is what we have set as the standard for a yoga teacher is 200 hours of training, you know, as a health professional, you know, that’s nothing, you know, very, very small amount of training. And so I start with that, and I tell people, like don’t expect to quit your day job and become a yoga teacher. After 200 hours of training, it’s just it’s an extraordinary amount, it takes an extraordinary amount of training to really be adept. A you’re a you’re a chiropractor, right, but chiropractors or pts work a lot with kinesiology, you know that you can’t be adapted helping people to really heal their bodies with small amounts of training. So so that’s the first thing I want to say. That doesn’t mean that people can’t have wonderful therapeutic presences and therapeutic skills that they’ve just intuitively developed. Many people do. That’s why they get attracted to these professions in the first place. But then there is a level of training that’s necessary. So to answer your question, you really do want to look for somebody who has an ROI t 500. That means they’ve at least had 500 hours of training. If they have an E in front of the ROI t 500. It means they have 3000 hours of experience teaching. And then the highest level of certification right now is what’s called si ay ay y te. So certified International Association of yoga therapist, and the ay ay ay y te is a fairly rigorous organization made up 40% of health professionals. 60% are more yoga professionals like myself. And they have drafted guidelines, as well as competencies for for yoga therapists and then have created this service. vocation designation. So that’s why I have a CI MIT after my name, it means I’ve done the the necessary training to be to call myself a yoga therapist. And, you know, the problem, of course, is there’s no licensure for yoga anywhere, which, which is good in some ways. You know, but but what it requires is individuals and health professionals looking to

Unknown 11:39
looking to refer to have an incredibly an incredible amount of capacity for discrimination, and to understand what they’re referring to, you know, so you have to be able to be clear, you can’t just send somebody a client down the street to the gym to a yoga class and say that’ll help your back. In fact, it could work worse in your back,

Justin Trosclair 12:01
because they may not have any. So that’s the difference between a relaxation yoga versus a healing Yoga is you can see them do whatever poses and fix and show them like, Okay, this isn’t right, because maybe this or this, or this is all Yeah. And you can guide them into, I guess, better, healthier positions that what they can handle with versus what they think they can handle. And then

Unknown 12:25
I think that’s, I think you’re getting warmer, and there’s much bigger picture. So so let me Okay, let me say that Yoga is a practice, especially particularly of the therapy but yoga in general, is a practice that addresses all aspects of human existence, mind body spirit, and essentially uses for process tools, which were defined by the Kripalu Research Consortium, the group of researchers all over the country and from some other countries who came together and said, Let’s make a good definition of yoga that we can base the research studies on to date, there been more than 5000 studies on yoga, and several meta analysis and systematic reviews. So there’s some good stuff coming out. And that definition, according to the propeller Research Consortium, is ethical engagement, mindfulness movement, breathing practices, and then meditation. So from my perspective, we have to understand yoga not as sort of relaxing physical therapy, but as a holistic technology for taking people from states of disease to states of ease, and from taking people from states of ease to states of potential and thriving. So it’s a it’s a holistic technology. And and it’s not just about postures, that’s important to me to understand. Now going back to the training, yeah, yeah, very important. So going back to training,

Unknown 14:00
the difference. Most people the way that, let me let me, let me do something before I go back to training, which is, let’s talk about the way that yoga gets conceptualized in the Western world. So since 1968, 1969,

Unknown 14:15
when Kenneth Cooper came out with his famous groundbreaking book, aerobics revolution, we have been assaulted in this country, with media telling us how important physical exercises, I don’t dispute that physical exercise is incredibly important. But that tends to be the way that we conceptualize any kind of movement practice that it has to fit into that fitness, cardiovascular kind of mode, right. And so when yoga comes around in the 60s and 70s, yoga comes around, and the way that is going to get packaged and conceptualized is as a fitness strategy. So primarily, I would say, 80 to 90 percent of the yoga services that get delivered in this country, fall under fitness industry,

Unknown 15:06
20%, 10 to 20%, fall more under wellness, relaxation stuff, mindfulness stuff, right. So you can have training people who are fitness professionals, and this happens all the time fitness professionals can go and get trained as yoga teachers under the American aerobics Association, I think that’s what it’s called, I can’t remember. But you know, so you can become a fitness yoga instructor fairly easily. You can do it in a weekend, you know? And then, and right. So then if you’re trying to find professionals, who can actually help people in implementing this transformative and healing and transformative technology on in a much more deep, rich, holistic way, then yes, you want to look for our yoga therapist, because they’ve been trained in the full spectrum, hopefully, and the full spectrum of yoga technology. So So it’s, you know, that’s, that’s where it gets a little tricky. And and I think it’s very difficult for health professionals to navigate what’s out there. because anybody can say anything on Facebook ad or whatever about about their yoga, and I think it’s very difficult to navigate. If somebody actually has skills to help somebody and not hurt them. 50% of the people who start doing yoga, quit because they get injured, which is really bad, why it’s good for my business, but it’s really bad for the yoga industry.

Justin Trosclair 16:29
shoulders and risk is that the common injury areas,

Unknown 16:32
a low back, neck, shoulders, wrists, knees, hips, hip joints are big problem, everything. So everything. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah,

Justin Trosclair 16:42
yeah, I know, anytime I pretend to do yoga, I’ll feel the stress in my in my wrists, which by tells me I should probably actually use someone who’s more trained. Yeah. So when you go into that, like the mindfulness and the breathing exercises, I know my wife will talk about that. She’s like, the breathing is like a huge part of it, it helps her when she started doing fast being stuck, I could just breathe and kind of bring the energy down and makes me fall. And I’m like, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I would like some almonds now.

So to talk about, could you talk about that a little bit the power of proper breathing? And what that has to do with yoga and maybe like a stress relief for

the benefits?

Unknown 17:18
Sure, sure, sure, sure. Well, there’s a large body of research that demonstrates the effectiveness of deep breathing, in terms of building resiliency in the nervous system. So you know, it’s not just about parasympathetic activation, it’s but it’s about being able to dance between the sympathetic part of the nervous system and the parasympathetic partner, the nervous system, and to be able to rise to the, the needs of the body, right? So and the needs of the situation, so that you, you can be activated when you need to be activated, and you can be relaxed, when you need to be relaxed, you know, our culture kind of pivots on this coffee and wine cycle of waking up with coffee and going to sleep with wine, you know, or beer or whatever. And that is demonstration of lack of resilience in the nervous system, essentially, right? So it’s not so much I think, sometimes we get this idea that the SMS and the pianos are are oppositional, and they’re not entirely oppositional, there’s more of a dance going on with them, right. So that being said, the breath is the primary autonomic function that can be brought under conscious control. Right, you can also blink that’s another.

Unknown 18:29
blinking is autonomic, but we can bring that right. But but the breath is something that really goes deep into the nervous system. And it has an effect on bagel tone and heart rate variability primarily. And also, you know, there’s some interesting, interesting studies out there about the emotional connection between the breath and the limbic system, right. So, so as you starting to tap into the power of your breath, and as you start to employ, I should say safe breathing techniques, we call them pronto, Yama. And in yoga, you can start to develop better resiliency in the nervous system, more Vega tone, bagel, flexibility, which correlates with psychological flexibility. So the capacity you have to bounce back and forth between

Unknown 19:19
what you know as the body as the system needs to be activated as a system needs to relax the capacity you have to do that is going to correlate to more psychological flexibility as well. So the capacity to not get up tight or upset when certain things are, are coming at you and be able to clearly handle your life. Right. those are those are all correlate, those are all correlated. So what yoga does is it helps to train heart rate variability and bagel tone. And and there is some research on this. So as the Vegas nerve gets more toned, I often so this is the way I explain it to my clients, they say, you know, what does that mean? What’s bagel town, I say, Well, you know how like, your muscles need to tone up and you you know, do exercises to tone your muscles. Well, you need to do exercises to tone your Vegas nerve to that those exercises are not the same. They’re not cardiovascular exercise is rather they’re being able to move into states of discomfort, which might be partly holding up yoga pose for a little while, and then being able to move into states of deep, deep relaxation. Right. And and if you’re doing both of those things during a yoga experience, or yoga posture practice, I should say, and even to some extent during breathing experiences, that’s going to confer greater Vega tone, and that that confers more resilience in the system. I think that, you know,

Unknown 20:51
exercise is good for building resilience to, but we have to have this other part of the practice, which is about learning how to calm the nervous system down and in our hyper activated, overstimulated society. That is something that is of great value. And I think it’s almost I don’t think it’s understood well, yet, you know, I think we’re at the beginning of the bell curve, I think we’re going to start to understand Yeah, soon.

Justin Trosclair 21:20
Yeah, cuz my brain goes straight to, we have such a go, go go. Especially if you’re like in a bigger city, you’re always full of stress is everything you do is rushed. And so the have able to sit down to this want to watch a movie, if you could spend maybe what, five or 10 minutes on some of these yoga poses, and maybe just some of the breathing exercises that you’ve learned while you’re doing it, you can really calm you down, which has so much more benefits with stress, with heart rate, like said with the heart rate and all these different, we’d rather take a pill then actually just sit down and focus well, and let’s just get into an hour.

Unknown 21:50
And this is something I’m very interested in. So let me take that a bit further. Because, you know, our culture’s thinks about calming down as Netflix and boxes, wine, I mean, or Netflix on a six pack. Like that’s the way I think about calming down. And that’s not the same training, your nervous system needs to train in resilient, that is not training that is numbing you out. Right? It’s numbing you out. Because you just are like so hyperstimulating, you have to do something to calm down. So it that’s a different approach. It doesn’t train the system, it just provides a short term relief, just like taking, you know, as a sleep aid would provide a short term really. So what I what I would suggest is that, to learn to train the nervous system, the key to resilience is awareness. It’s the key. And what are you aware of? And this is neuro biologic to this isn’t just like mindfulness, new agey chatter, this is neurobiology. So what are you aware of, you’re aware of the feelings in your body, when you understand the feelings in your body, when you’re aware of them, then you can make good decisions, then you can make healthy decisions for yourself, instead of acting out of on autopilot out of habitual ways of understanding. So how do you facilitate awareness? Well, what the research is starting to demonstrate is one of the best ways to facilitate awareness is through interception. Right? So interception is the capacity to feel the sensations in your body. And then not just to feel your sensations, but to understand, identify and make meaning out of those sensations. And that primarily occurs in the insular cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex and the brain. That’s where that’s happening. What studies have shown is that people with term trauma histories, you know, so people who and the reason I’m using this as an example is because those are probably the most dis regulated clients that you’re going to see are those people that have that are in constant state of hyper vigilance. Right? So what studies have shown is that people with PTSD have a very dis regulated insula. The insula doesn’t work properly. Of course, they have a hyper activated hypothalamic, pituitary adrenal axis, of course, right. But also, the insula is not the insular cortex is not working, right, and the anterior cingulate cortex, so what these practices do, you know, and I always tell my students the pause between your poses that that where you stop and assimilate and notice that is just as important as the yoga practice itself in terms of developing resilience, because what we’re starting to understand is what these practices do, moving slowly moving with your breath, moving with awareness, focusing on what you’re doing, that’s what creates neuro plastic changes in the brain. There’s four ways that you change the brain focus, or awareness, repetition, which is doing the practices all the time, novelty, right? You want something like a little bit different and a little unusual, because that activates the dope of me. So wait, what did I say focus? Focus or awareness, novelty?

Unknown 25:16
repetition, repetition? Yeah, repetition. And the last one, I’m, it’s just escaping me right now. But I’ll remember it before we finish. I know there’s another one. Exactly. And those are from Dan Siegel, who’s a neuroscientist. And anyway, so to go back to, to this idea of focus on awareness. What we understand is, it’s through these mindful awareness practices that we start to elicit neuro plastic changes in the brain. So we start to heal the the insula, and there are people right now working at the trauma center in Boston, who are helping people with complex developmental childhood trauma, to heal the effects of PTSD to heal the trauma, you know, that hyper vigilance. And yeah, just that sense of uncomfortableness in the body. They’re helping them heal it just by these slow, mindful intercepted practice, yoga practices. That’s what they’re using for it. Of course, they do cognitive work. And they do you know, they have an integrated system. But that’s one of the big pieces of their system. Right?

Justin Trosclair 26:21
Yeah. So that could be another reason to find someone like yourself. Oh, yeah. Because it can deal with the psychosomatic, the cycles, visceral, that component, as well as, yeah, we want you to be stronger physically. But you also have in these other issues, and you can actually get them both taken care of at the same time, in a very healing environment. You know,

Unknown 26:41
and that’s why I talked about yoga as such a important especially therapeutic yoga, yoga therapy as such an important piece of the health care dilemma, the health care crisis that we’re facing. So let’s, let’s talk about this. What crisis? Yeah, right. So you know, when you think about, when you think about the what’s happening, you know, in terms of our understanding of something like chronic pain, or addiction, chronic

Unknown 27:13
autoimmune issues, all of these things, we’re now looking at them, like we have to apply a bio psychosocial approach, right? We have to, because that’s the only way that you can really address these issues is we can’t keep going back to mechanics, or, you know, some sort of trying to tweak the nervous system or tweak the hormones, it we have to have a bio psychosocial approach. I mean, that’s best practice, right? So that being said, since Yoga is inherently bio, psychosocial spiritual, I think it offers a really powerful compliment to traditional medicine to contemporary medicine, you know, I think it offers a really powerful compliment. And the other thing is that it can be delivered in small groups quite effectively. So that you can you can work with more than one person at a time. And if you’re using populations with similar challenges, then those those people you know, you kind of can work with, for example, back pain or kidney you know, some kind of a kidney challenges. You know, I, I’ve got somebody with who’s on dialysis right now. Parkinson’s, I think it Fibromyalgia I think about all these populations and how they’re so pervasive addiction, big one. And you can work with people in small populations, and it, it adds so much value to the treatment. That’s what’s so powerful about it to add this value to the treatment. So I’m really interested in population health and how therapeutic yoga can help to benefit, you know, as it’s a, it’s not just an add on, but it’s certainly a powerful compliment to traditional therapies for these kind of chronic challenges that people are facing right now. And it’s huge, you know, $3.2 trillion. Last year 87% of that money goes to chronic preventable diseases. So we have to do something differently.

Justin Trosclair 29:15
Well, yeah. When you when you’re talking about this triple aim for like, the affordable health care what what would you see if you had a perfect world? And you could just implement something on what are some of the things that you would like to see just turned on?

Unknown 29:26
Yeah, that’s such a great question. I think about it all the time. So what I would love to see is a yoga therapist as part of integrative treatment strategies in, you know, across the spectrum of care. So, when you’re looking at hospitals, I don’t think hospitals need one yoga therapist, I think they need yoga therapist in each group, you know, whatever the whatever the floor is, or whatever the specialty is, I think yoga, I think yoga therapist should be in part part of those integrated treatment teams. I think yoga therapist would do really well, as we’re starting to develop more complimentary medicine approaches and integrative. You know, there’s a few really, really cutting edge practices out there.

Unknown 30:11
I’m thinking about the Casey Institute right now, not Edgar Casey, Casey Institute in Virginia, that is an integrative medicine facility, they have a yoga therapist on staff, it’s a primary care, practice, right? I would love to see yoga therapist as part of primary care practices, also, as part of ob gyn practices, makes a lot of sense to have to do prevention, right? You’re you’re doing health in the mother, but you’re doing prevention work, because what we know is that the mother stress level influences the health of the child in utero, right. So. So I think, I think yoga therapist would be really important of the important part of those, those sorts of teams. I just there’s, there’s so much scope for utilizing yoga therapist and a much broader context that we’re doing right now. And most Yoga is delivered via the wellness industry, which is a $600 billion industry. But it’s primarily outside of the auspices of the health care system. And I and what that means is that people without money are disenfranchised from the practices. So I’d like to see yoga brought into public and population health in a in a much in a much stronger way. But you know, what it requires is, is training people at higher levels, because you can’t ask a fitness person to go in and teach people who are in wheelchairs, you know, that just that doesn’t work.

Justin Trosclair 31:44
Yeah. So I was about to ask you how many CIA whitey teachers instructors are there to be able to meet this type of the man who would

Unknown 31:51
I wish I knew the number right now? And I don’t, but I think it’s only it’s only maybe three or 5000. This designation just came out.

Unknown 32:01
This year, actually, it’s brand new.

Justin Trosclair 32:04
Yeah, well, okay. Is there any other ones that we should be looking for?

Unknown 32:07
Um, well, if you have someone who’s an ER, it 500, that’s not bad. You know, that means that they’re taking their Okay, they’ve been around for a while, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they understand anything about therapeutics. So, yeah, you do want to want to start You, you, you really have to vet people and ask them, like, what their training is, what they who they’ve worked with, have they worked with people outside of a yoga studio, I mean, yoga studio populations are rather homogenous, you know, they’re there are heterogeneous there there, you know, they tend to be white women who have a certain level of fitness, you know, and that’s just tends to be who goes to those, those venues. So if you’re asking someone to come into intensive outpatient addiction treatment program, that’s, you know, that’s not not where you’re going, you know, going to find somebody at the Fitness Studio to do that, necessarily, that it’s a special skill set, working with trauma is a special skill set. Working with back pain is a skill set, you know, so it really, it really is important to vet the person that you’re referring to, or that you’re asking to come into your program. But the the good the good news to it is that, as I mentioned, there’s there’s a tremendous amount of studies out there that are coming out the American Medical Association, just came out with their recommendations for, you know, it was in response to the opioid epidemic, but they came out with recommendations for low back pain, and they strongly recommend yoga. No, it’s it’s on the you know, it’s being recommended by them. It’s, you know, you’re seeing you’re seeing it out there that people are looking for yoga. So as a health professional, I think it’s very important to start learning how to refer and meet the people meet the professionals in your area. I’ve trained physicians, I’ve trained nurses, and mostly I’ve trained behavioral health professionals. So the the mental health people are getting pretty good at referring and there’s a lot of somatic stuff coming into the mental health world right now. It’s kind of flooding in right now. Because of the research. Yeah. You know, we’re not okay, mental health problems are not up here there in your whole body. You know,

Justin Trosclair 34:20
I was about to ask that if someone’s want to learn more, or maybe a know someone, how can they develop these skills, or if someone’s out of high school, and they really are into what you’re talking about how to, you know, they don’t even want to go to college? Do you teach this like in seminars, or they fly out to North Carolina and spend a week a month? How do they how they go about learning how to do this, especially through your systems.

Unknown 34:41
So I have training programs at the mountain area Health Education Center, with the premier institution in the western part of North Carolina, for training the healthcare workforce. So I’ve been training yoga, I’ve been training healthcare professionals for about 10 years, years now. It’s one of the few programs in the United States, there’s a couple others. There’s one at the University of Maryland medical school, but they’re training the medical students exclusively, you know, and there’s one at Loyola Marymount University in California, and they will train professionals there. There’s a few trainings around, I also offer some online trainings through yoga University, which is the website for that is yoga, you online.com Yoga, you online.com you as in the letter not, why are you? So yoga, you the letter online backup? And so I have quite a few workshops. So that’s another great resource. Actually, there’s many, many different, very, very well established yoga therapist teaching through that website. So that’s a great online resource to learn more about yoga and and what it can provide,

Justin Trosclair 35:58
how long would it take? Don’t 200 hours, three hours, I don’t have an idea, as a chiropractor when we take courses, right? Like that, but someone who wants to do it full time. And that’s what they want to learn as fast as possible. How many years or months does that take?

Unknown 36:13
There are very few. So here’s the thing we because the yoga industry doesn’t have licensure. That means we are not for the most part, unless you’re packaged with some other therapies. For the most part, we’re not reversible, right? What that means is there is not a market for full time training. So most training happens on the weekends. There are some training programs that are month long training programs. I don’t necessarily recommend long training programs. I mean, sometimes you have to do it just because of time, but the problem is assimilation. So like more than 10 or 12 days, usually, really, you really get flooded. Because the thing about yoga is that you have to you learn it by doing doing it and experiencing it as much as you do by theory, you can’t just learn the theory and go do it. You really do have to practice. And that’s where, what one thing that’s so wonderful about it because it provides the clinician self care experience, right. So that clinician self care, again, the behavioral health world, that’s an ethical imperative, and I think it should be at all Yeah, but health, the health practitioners of the health professions, rather, you see the fat doctor.

Unknown 37:30
Yeah, there it is the ethical imperative, or the smoking one. I used to have a couple of smoking doctors when I was young,

Justin Trosclair 37:37
plenty of those here. Yeah. So so that that.

Unknown 37:38
Yeah, I mean, I think that’s the beautiful. And the wonderful thing is there’s there’s this parallel process with yoga where you get to practice it for yourself, and learn how to regulate your own nervous system. And then you get to teach that and it’s really beautiful. I should also say that I work with lots of people, I trained lots people who have physical limitations. So I’ve trained many, many yoga teachers, to who are physically unable to do a lot of postures and have to do stuff in chairs because of various chronic conditions, right? So that I feel like that’s so important to mention, anybody who can breathe can do yoga, you just have to understand how to adapt it to whatever the person is dealing with at that time. And if you know how to do that, you can work with anybody. My first yoga teacher, yoga therapist gig was 1995 to 2001, I worked in a nursing home hospice assisted living facility that was run by Quakers and and Pennsylvania, and I was their alternative person. And I went and I worked with all the people in the wheelchairs, and I worked with people in hospice beds. And, you know, I did all sorts of stuff with people with, with very, you know, serious physical limitations. So, if you can breathe, you can do yoga. That’s the thing to remember.

Justin Trosclair 39:00
Stretch your comfort zone with it, too. Yeah, yeah. Good ruin, then have

Unknown 39:06
to be very creative.

Justin Trosclair 39:07
Yeah. That’s great. Do you mind we switch gears a little bit? Now? I don’t know. Because you have your own business. You’re talking about training people? How are you marketing this? I’m like, what works in your field.

Unknown 39:19
If anybody out there can help me, I would appreciate it.

Unknown 39:23
Because be care of, you know, I’m the creator. I’m like, the creative person. I’m the creative director of my business, I guess you could say I spend most of my time developing PowerPoints, and teaching curriculum and manuals. That’s what I love doing. That’s what I’m good at. So I have spent some time with marketing people who’ve helped me to some extent. But I have to say, I’m still kind of living in the 20th century, most of my marketing is word of mouth, which is good marketing. But you know, I haven’t exploited the wonders of the internet as much as I probably need to.

Justin Trosclair 39:59
Yeah, when you have that availability, there’s so much you can do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you heard of Russell Brunson? Now? Definitely check him out with Click Funnels. He’s got these books, if you got like virtual products and different things like that, oh, my goodness, he’s gonna blow his books will blow your mind. And then you’ll have a to do list for like two months, okay? of like, okay, I can make this work. Well, it’s so amazing. And you sound like you’re

Unknown 40:21
you can send me his link on Skype. That would be great. I’ll do it. I’ll do it.

Justin Trosclair 40:26
Five Year goals, anything set in the future that you’re really striving toward right now? And how do you know if it’s really worth it? This is my

Unknown 40:33
philosophy of life, everything I do is worth it. You know, as long as I’m doing it with the right intention in my heart, I’ve never, I’ve never going to make a mistake. Like there’s always just something to learn from it, you know. So I know it’s worth whatever I’m going to do. I know it’s worth it.

Unknown 40:48
I might not like be thing, but but I’m going to do it. So what I really want I’m really focused on right now. And I shouldn’t say I’m really focused on right now. This is my five year plan. Right now I’m focused on what’s in front of me, which is I’m I’m teaching in Brazil next month, and I’m training a bunch of teachers for the rest of the year. So I have a lot of curriculum that I’m working on. But my sort of long term goal or plan is to train a whole health system. So I want to go to Charlotte, North Carolina, or Knoxville or somewhere, as a consultant and train all of their health professionals. I’ve got manuals that I’m ready to go with. And I’m going to start promoting or contacting people because what I really want to do is train the workforce. I want to go into a hospital system and say, What if your hospital system was a mindful mindfulness,

Unknown 41:44
mindful movement, mindfulness, breathing, and spiritual leveraging spiritual assets, organization that knew how to apply these bio, psychosocial spiritual technologies across the spectrum of care. So I’m going to go train 40,000 people, that’s my plan,

Unknown 42:01
or whatever, you know, about but not now many people, but you know, like, when you think about a hospital, like hospitals can have eight or 10,000 employees, some

Justin Trosclair 42:09
some of people in there,

Unknown 42:10
yeah, tons of people working there. So yeah, and maybe I can’t train all of them. But I’d love to go and start that, you know, that’s kind of where I’m thinking like, what if? What if I had a whole health system that I trained, and then I could research that health system in terms of the population health benefits of using these, these technology? So that’s kind of what I’m thinking. That’s my big picture.

Justin Trosclair 42:31
If there’s any way to get CPE credits with that, that would be huge. It’s like, it’s not just the spin in a couple hours, you actually can get credit to So come on hospitals,

Unknown 42:41
right? Well,

Justin Trosclair 42:43
everybody wins. Yeah, I have a position I’m trying to, I’ve got a couple of physicians I’m working with, I’m trying to get them on board to help me do it. Because I don’t have the credentials, you know, to do it for the CMA. And if nothing else, they can let you know what’s necessary, like, Oh, that’s true. You got to have that part of the criminal tools, rather, is that Oh, yeah. But you can also like, when you speak to people that are in the field, they can give you hints, like, if you’re going for this approach, don’t go that route. And never when you approach it from this angle, you might get an appointment or something. These that’s what I’ve learned, trying to get chiropractic into hospitals, which is a no go. No, normally, and I’m like, Come on, guys. What can we do with this is all the research shows that it should be in there already? Like, what is the Hangout?

Unknown 43:27
So it’s tough? It is, yeah.

Justin Trosclair 43:29
Where do you see your health care profession, your the yoga elites going in the next few years?

Unknown 43:34
I think they are going in this direction of integrating the care integrating the services into into the medical system. That’s definitely a trend that I’m seeing happening. It was that was exemplified by the keynote at the last conference, I went to who was john weeks? Who’s that? You know, john weeks? the integrator block? Oh, you should definitely look up. Yeah. Okay. Really cool stuff. He’s he is, he has been like the chief advocate for integrative health care for 30 years or something. And he’s a fantastic speaker. So that was really exciting. He was the keynote at the last International Association of yoga therapy conference. And and I just connected with him so well, and, and it, it makes me think that that’s, you know, that’s the trend where we’re going. I think, culturally, we are at a place where we have a lot of challenges right now to deal with not not just health care, because healthcare is the problem of healthcare is intermingled with the problem of economic disparity, social injustice, racial injustice. And so all of those, when I think about all of those problems, how do people, right how to how do we help raise consciousness, you know, go back to the 60s, consciousness raising is basically about knowing, understanding yourself a little better, and digging through some of the places in yourself that create limitations and create dysfunctional, negative belief systems that perpetuate this idea that it’s okay for people to be hungry, or it’s okay to be, you know, anti semitic or racist, which is, you know, we’re seeing that in our culture, I would love to have Donald Trump for a client for a few months, so I can help him get better touch with himself.

Unknown 45:37
And like,

Justin Trosclair 45:38
take away his phone, just get them off Twitter,

Unknown 45:41
Twitter, and help them sleep better.

Unknown 45:46
Be Oh,

Justin Trosclair 45:49
yeah, and I think about and I were talking about, like, the guy would just get off Twitter,

Unknown 45:53
and off Twitter, but it’s not just get off Twitter, he needs to get in touch with themselves and heal some of that inner wounds, child, you know, and, okay, I’m not one to wait around for Donald Trump to go through this process. But you know,

Unknown 46:09
the fact of the matter is that a lot of people hold those similar attitudes, because they feel so traumatized and hurt. And if we can help people get a little bit more in touch with themselves, I think that this is one of the things that society desperately needs in order to heal some of the the elements that the social ills that we’re faced with. So, you know, when I think about the possibility for yoga therapy, I think, gosh, we could really help to heal the world, you know, and I think, and then I think about, well, what if everybody got a massage and a chiropractic adjustment, and did some yoga and, you know, ate healthy food? How much happier people would be, you know, and not feeling so uncomfortable in their bodies that they have to project it onto the weak and vulnerable people in our culture?

Justin Trosclair 47:01
What’s a good yoga schedule anyway?

Unknown 47:03
What’s a good yoga schedule? You mean? Like, when should you do it?

Justin Trosclair 47:06
Yeah, once a week, that once a week, three times a week, every day, every day?

Unknown 47:10
Yeah, I mean, so my schedule is I wake up in the morning. And if I don’t have to rent rush off somewhere, like this morning, I got to do it, they wake up in the morning, I meditate for 20 to 45 minutes, depending on how much time I have. But even if you only have five minutes for meditation, you should always meditate My opinion is meditation. so important. And then I do yoga postures for, again, 20 minutes to an hour every day, depending on my schedule. And that’s my, that’s what I set my day off, I sent my day off with that, not coffee, because a coffee is good. But I’ve decided, like, it’s probably not that great for my nervous system. So I instead of the stimulant I go for instead of stimulation, I go for nourishment, and yoga nourishes me, you know, so and it’s not like a crazy practice, I do a few a roll around on the floor with my cat a little bit. And, you know, and then my body feels good. And I can do whatever I need to do for the day, you know, so I think a daily practice is great. But when you’re first starting out, it really helps to go to classes a few times, you know, twice, two or three times a week, that’s the other thing I love about yoga and population health is you can just watch a video, you can just do 20 minutes video with somebody like it true, you know, you don’t necessarily have to go anywhere, the benefit of being in a group is that you get that group process and that. And there’s so much research about group process being that which really helps people to heal. So you’re working with people that have similar challenges to you. And there’s a lot of support. So that’s a good thing about a group.

Justin Trosclair 48:48
I know I bought a, I don’t remember what it’s called now, but it was some guy.

He’s probably he probably like, is a big deal. But he did a big class in Greece or Rome, or like, it’s some of the ruins. And it’s got like 12 different DVDs included. I don’t remember what it was called now, which is actually been probably not mentioned it because I don’t remember, I think it did to the CDs. And then my wife kind of got out of it. And he was like, I’m going to go here and do it. I like to be more of a class setting a real class setting, and I just haven’t really picked it up. Because like I had, and I intended to try it. And then just kind of you know, just like anything, you got to be real even not to Intuit enough, it’ll just fall to the wayside. And I think you’re going to motivate me to least pick it up for another week or two and maybe make it routine again.

Unknown 49:35
Right? Right. That’s the problem. That’s really the problem with the videos as you don’t necessarily have that group support. And group support also includes group motivation, like, Oh, I gotta show up to be with my people, you know, and, and that can be really helpful for people. I started doing yoga so young, it’s just like, part of my life, you know, but I think I think if you if you haven’t been doing it for your whole life than that, really, I know that from talking to my students, you know, it, it really, really helps to be part of a community.

Justin Trosclair 50:07
You mentioned, you’re going to go to Brazil. But it’s more of like a teaching. How are you to take vacation? Some of you had a lot on your plate, you got your you got a lot going on? How are you going to take vacation? Yeah,

Unknown 50:17
after that’s really requires a lot of discipline, right? To be able to shut it down. So I don’t have a nine to five job. I only teach one public class a week, which means I only have one car, I only have one commitment every week and the rest of my schedule, I totally determined myself. So I work those. I work and I and I used to teach a ton of classes, you know, but so I work in my what I want to do I work that in on my on my time, you know, and so I make sure that I go on vacation a couple of times a year. We just got back from the beaches in South Carolina. We were there for a week, and I’m going to somewhere for my 20th anniversary. We haven’t decided yet, but maybe some Island or something off of Florida. So we’re Puerto Rico, I’m not sure. But so we try and make time to do that at least twice a year to take time. And I’m so very fortunate because I have a 13 year old son. And I’ve been able to be present for him through his you know, after school and picking him up from school and taking him to sporting events. I’ve been able to do that. It’s been a wonderful career in that sense.

Justin Trosclair 51:32
Absolutely.

Are you able to do any? I mean, besides work you have any hobbies or you got a kid sounds like that’s obviously an important thing in your life. Anything that keeps you distracted from working that you fulfilled life on the homefront.

Unknown 51:46
Yeah, I love I’m I’m a reader.

Unknown 51:50
I love books, I love fiction. I read you know, I just I love reading I feel really fulfilled when I get to I was a I have a Master’s reading literature. So I love reading and writing. Those are really those are really creative things for me. So I read good books and I just read one called

Unknown 52:12
euphoria by Lily Kang think which is a wonderful book and I’m reading this wonderful book now called gardens in the dunes by Leslie Marmot soco, so I, I just I love reading that’s definitely one of my hobbies. I also, you know, I go for walks every day with my family, but almost every day we go for walks after dinner. That’s one of our things we meditate together as a family. We sing together a lot of play guitar.

Unknown 52:42
Yeah, so so those are fun things that I like doing. I mean, I definitely feel like you have to get away from work sometimes. But I have to tell you, like, one of the most wonderful creative things I get to do is write and make PowerPoints and present. I mean, it’s amazing. You know, I love that. Yeah,

Justin Trosclair 52:58
that’s really awesome. So many people are like, what are you supposed to do with a master’s degree in literature? You hear that like that job. And you’re learning you figured it out? Like, what am I supposed to write about? What am I supposed to be like? Well, I got this whole thing on yoga. Got this passion

Unknown 53:14
was a journalist for a couple of years. So I get to use some of that and write articles. Yeah, the the journalist voice or you just always have our best quarter. Never Yeah, I was really a reporter. I guess to be accurate. I wasn’t really a journalist.

Unknown 53:28
For a newspaper, yeah.

Justin Trosclair 53:30
Hey, come on. What do you do with your spouse to keep the love alive? And

Unknown 53:35
well, we meditate together at least once and often twice a day. And we work you know, he’s a yogi. So we’re just we’re totally simpatico you know, we we talk about my work all the time. We talked about his work. He’s also a therapist, who’s a psychotherapist. Yeah. And you know, and we’ve just we just take walks together and I don’t know we get along really well. I’m really glad.

Justin Trosclair 54:02
Hi, no, I mean, sounds like you got you found someone that actually jobs well

Unknown 54:06
with God. Yeah, I’ve just like I get so I may sometimes that I’m like, how did I find this guy? Because he’s from New Zealand, actually. And, yeah, yeah, he’s a kiwi. So we’re all but then that’s the thing. I was like, Oh my God. He said when I first met, I was like, Oh, he’s so nice. So nice. But then I went to New Zealand and I was like, oh, they’re all like

Unknown 54:33
with a great acts.

Unknown 54:34
Again, that’s why I’m married. I’m I just want to hear that voice.

Justin Trosclair 54:38
Okay, you know what? America Chinese girl so I can I can feel you on that one.

All right. So last two questions. You ready for this? You can already mentioned books, but do you happen to have any favorite books, blogs podcasts that you definitely would recommend for others? Sure.

Unknown 54:56
Well, I can tell you what I’ve been reading.

Unknown 55:00
And what I love so one of the lovely book if you’re interested in trauma and recovery as vessel Vander cock, the body keeps the score. I can’t I have not met a person who doesn’t love that book is that’s a very readable book. The other book that I love is anything by Gabor Mattei, but particularly in the realm of hungry ghosts. Like I said, I’m a reader so I can tell you about podcasts. I also listened to the brain science podcast, that’s fun. But, but that’s pretty much the only podcast that I’m if you have good podcast recommendations, let me know. Another book I read recently that I loved was Barbara Fredrickson, and it’s called love to point out. It’s all about oxytocin and interception. Really good stuff.

Unknown 55:46
Yeah, really good book. You know,

Unknown 55:48
Rick Hansen’s book is a nice one for just starting out to understand some some things about mindfulness and yoga and neurobiology. And it’s called Buddha’s brain. That’s a nice kind of starter book. It’s not. I think, Norman George’s latest book is excellent, really readable, very narrative. And it’s called the brains way of healing. So those are some of the things I’ve been,

Justin Trosclair 56:14
I’ll put all these on the show notes as well. So they can have a quick reference and right, yeah,

Unknown 56:18
they’re there. Those are some fun books. I you know, I feel like I get books all the time. And I don’t always read all of them. But I still am very much a book Purina, I’m still I’m old. I love books.

Justin Trosclair 56:31
Somebody told me that, you know, it’s okay not to finish a book, or it’s okay to skip around is like, you know, I want that you just like, I have permission to do that. Yeah, you don’t have to go from page one to 220. You can do whatever you want. It’s your book. You could, you didn’t have to finish it was like, Oh, my gosh,

Unknown 56:46
and and I have a book called healing self massage that I wrote about more than 10 years ago, that’s published by Sterling. And that was, you know, I really was really getting into the importance of, of being able to access acupressure points and do some simple techniques on yourself. I think that a lot of people can feel a little more empowered if they have a few techniques they can do.

Justin Trosclair 57:09
Yeah, yeah.

Unknown 57:10
A little bit. I use some apps, you have a good app.

Justin Trosclair 57:13
Well, that was the last time I saw always our last question. I have a favorite apps that you just love to use on your phone. It’s just a fun way.

Unknown 57:21
It’s called guitar tuna.

Unknown 57:25
Tuna. It’s a good way to tune your guitar. I use that one all the time. But I’m not you know, I’m not like huge into i’ve i’ve fiddled around with some of the music apps and some of the yoga ones. And I don’t know, I’m, I’m a really fast typist. So I prefer to sit at my computer and write stuff. And then I do to fiddle around on my phone, I don’t love and I also hate the phone, neck, the cell phone neck thing, you know, looking down all the time at the phone. It’s It’s such a strain on my neck. So I’d rather sit ergonomically at myself theater and do stuff that way.

Justin Trosclair 58:01
I almost don’t want to tell people not to do it. Because it brings in so much income to the

Can I say that I just did I make a 13 year old so I may can lie back on the on the couch and do it like this. So at least that they support it, you got to we are seeing it in such a young age where people are losing their net curves and reversing their curve. And that’s just we’re not going to go into it. Suffice it to say that you don’t want that. But luckily, there’s devices and things you can purchase to help with that rather than just proper posture, which is so hard

Unknown 58:34
to do it. That’s Yeah, I think it’s bad. It’s really addictive. And and this promotes maladaptive movement patterns. It’s not good. Yeah,

Justin Trosclair 58:44
yeah. Tension issues, I think as well for sure. How can people get in touch with

Unknown 58:49
so my website is subtle yoga, calm as you bt le y o g a.com. Please visit it. There’s lots of freebies stuff in the store well, around there’s like videos and some audio stuff and some some ebooks and things like that you can you can play with. And then my my email is subtle yoga at gmail. com. So feel free to contact me or connect with me and let me know what you’re doing out there. Love to hear love to hear from people.

Justin Trosclair 59:20
Thank you so much for being on the show. I think this is going to be a really good hour for the listeners to explore yoga explore, that is not just about poses, and you gave so many resources that they can really explore your own website, as well as others on their own time. So I really appreciate that.

Unknown 59:38
Thank you for having me, Justin, it was fun to talk to you for in China.

Justin Trosclair 59:44
Christine, thank you so much for coming on the show how cool living in Japan, learning in Nepal and India, I really liked the idea of long term how to implement yoga into hospital said and how to make it a part of the system to get that entire mind body spirit better. And the fact that it has over 5000 studies to me, that’s pretty awesome. So definitely yoga, you calm. And of course, if you want some training from her subtle yoga, calm again, show notes, a doctor’s perspective, net slash three eight travel tip is coming up next.

Somebody was asking me the other day, they said I’m 30 pounds overweight, which is more than what it used to be, I’ve got no motivation to go to the gym. But I know I need to do something. That’s what I’m that’s what my book is about. You can’t go from eating 3000 calories, dropping them to 18. without some kind of plan, I can help you get there. And all the little steps in between, maybe you can only exercise for five minutes. But start there, don’t feel guilty about it. And then work yourself up to that 30 minute goal that everybody says you should do. That’s what the books about you can get a doctor’s perspective. NET slash free ebook, or you just buy it on Amazon as a paperback or Kindle. If you notice on our website, we have all these pop ups where you can get a 12 exercises for your neck and low back core strengthening. We also have stretches for numbness and tingling that are in the arms, feet. Hands, I want you to know we have merchandise at a doctor’s perspective. NET slash shop mean we’ve got t shirts and logo podcast gear that I would be so thankful for you got definitely post a picture on social media and and tag me and I’ll give you a shout out. As always, you look at the top right of the website, we have all the little social media icons, just pick the ones that you like to use the most followers, you’re going to get quotes from the each week’s episode. You know, if you sign up on an email, you’ll get all the updates and important announcements. So as always, I appreciate you and thankful for you listening. And as you’d like to leave a review on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you listen, have you much obliged.

Today’s travel tip I just got back from Singapore. And while I was there was a very short trip. But I made an effort to meet a few people I had one on from the show. So I was like let me go meet her and her husband. And there was another guy that were part of a group together never met him. So I met him as well. And this isn’t the first time that I’ve traveled somewhere and and met people along the way most of the time that was in America. But a highly suggested sometimes you might get a you know free room and board which is kind of nice. And that was not the case here and wasn’t trying to get that just saying that it’s really cool to be able to grab dinner catch up and meet either old friends or people that you colleagues and things like that. So I encourage it. See you next week where

we just went hashtag behind the curtain and this episode has come to an end. I hope you got the right dose for your optimal life. Please spread the word about this podcast by telling to friends, share it on social media, and visit the show notes on a doctor’s perspective. net to see all the references from today’s guests. A sincere thank you in advance. Even listening to Dr. Justin trust Claire giving you a doctor’s perspective.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai