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I love Ashtanga Yoga and co-direct Native Yoga Center in Juno Beach, Florida with my wife Tamara.

Michael Harris – Falling Down Getting UP – Overcoming Your Obstacles

Posted on October 21, 2022 by nativeyoga

Join in listening to this wonderful conversation I had with Michael Harris.

Michael has been telling “sit on the edge of your seat stories” ever since his first show and tell in grade school – some stories will make you laugh – others are quite tragic that could bring any listener to tears. He shares in his #1 book, Falling Down Getting UP, how starting in 1987, yoga helped heal him from several near fatal predicaments.

Today, Michael is a popular yoga teacher with three certifications from Erich Schiffman, Integral Yoga and Bikram Yoga. In addition, he is an author, lifelong entrepreneur and co-founder of Endless Stages – a company dedicated to help motivated yogis, healers and entrepreneurs get their personal voice, message and story out to the world.

You can download a free copy of his powerful book at www.michaelbharris.com/book or purchase at https://bookshop.org/shop/michaelharris.com

You can listen to the full episode for free here.

Todd McLaughlin

We’ll just so the listeners are aware you you gave me the best surprise ever because we had scheduled to do this podcast quite a while ago. I know we worked really hard at finding a date that we could both organize to make this work. Just prior to me hitting the record button, Michael, you reminded me that you and I had met in California, at Bikram Yoga Teacher Training. You were one of the teachers that were helping teach some of the classes at the training. I didn’t even know that was you when we were scheduling this appointment. So now the fact that I’m getting a chance to speak with you I am so exited. I remember you very clearly. I loved your classes! I felt like you were a grounding force in a really wild world. You know? I’m just now getting a chance to pick your brain and find out where you are at with Bikram yoga, and what you’re doing now. So on that note, can you just start telling me and filling me in on your journey? And I guess I’ll be a little more specific. Let’s go way, way back. Can you tell me the first time you start practicing yoga? What was the first yoga class you ever got a chance to take?

Michael Harris

Absolutely. You know, the first time that I took a yoga class was 1988. Yes. Or excuse me,1987. I had vascular surgery in November of 1986. I had blocked arteries. The doctors at the time suggested that they may need to amputate my leg. I was pretty blunt to them and saying that that wasn’t gonna happen. I ended up at a place called Pritikin Longevity Center, which is in Santa Monica, but no longer there. By the ocean right down on the boardwalk pretty close to the Santa Monica Pier. When I first got there, I was walking on a cane I could walk literally about 10 feet. Cane in one hand, my other hand on the wall. Well, I could barely walk. To make a long story much shorter. The doctors that I was seeing in Portland for my vascular disease suggested that when it hurt that I should not move my body. And not to walk. The doctor at the Pritikin Center said when it hurts, keep walking. In hindsight, it was a huge spiritual wake up call to me. It was one of a number of times that I can identify over the years. But that particular one, he says get up and walk and walk through the pain. He says I just want you to go out there on the boardwalk and start walking. Initially, I was pretty scared to. I was in serious pain and was nervous because the movement seem to make me feel more pain. Yet he said, “Yes, it’s gonna hurt.” And he says, “Just keep doing what you can do.” Well, here I am. You know, 1987 that was actually March of 1987. There was a lot of women on rollerblades. And here I am. I’m a sick man. And I don’t want to be a sick man. I want to feel strong and healthy. And I had already had a lot of self esteem issues and everything else that I’ve struggled with. And so I wanted to walk tall. So within two weeks, I went from walking 10 feet to two miles, unassisted without my cane without a wall.

Wow.

And the sheer process of moving my body. Of walking, going one foot in front of the next, helped to build new blood vessels in my leg and collateral blood vessels.

Wow.

So as those new vessels were being built, in addition to that, the popliteal arteries where the primary blockages were began to heal as well. So not only was I getting the collaterals, I was also getting the popliteal artery to begin to heal. So answering your question about the first yoga class, the first yoga class was at the Pritikin Longevity Center. Now, granted, it wasn’t a very vigorous class. It was mostly for people in rehabilitation of some sort. It was really known more for weight loss. Although I wasn’t heavy, I’ve never really been heavy in my life. So losing weight wasn’t my challenge, they actually wanted me to gain weight. But there’s also a plant based facility at Pritikin Longevity Center. So they said I can eat as much food as I want. So I was walking, I started doing some yoga classes in the basement, and I was eating all the plant based food I could possibly eat.

Nice.

Yeah, it was good.

Well, that’s incredible! That’s a really great story in terms of endurance and overcoming, like you said, that fear of working into the pain. Having that question like, “what do you mean…..walk more?” That whole transformation process of pushing through that. I’m curious, from taking yoga in the Pritikin environment there. What was your next step in relation to seeking other types of yoga? What was the evolution? How did it evolve from here?

Yep. Well, I was living in Portland at the time, so I was just down there for the Pritikin Center. And when I went back to Portland, I started going to a yoga class at the gym. Because I was doing the gym, I was doing the treadmill. When I first started doing the treadmill, actually, was at Pritikin Center. I was going point three miles an hour. As slow as the treadmill would move. That’s how slow I was going. And I was struggling. But I did more at the gym. And I was also walking in a park near my house as much as I could, but they had a yoga class there. And I would not call it a gym yoga, you know, however you want to perceive that to be, but it was a wonderful class. And at the end, they did candle gazing and I really liked it. When they would have me do downward dog. I would fall out of it. I couldn’t do much. But it led me to another general hatha yoga class. Diane Wilson was quite important for years. And I started taking her class. And I’m kind of jumping here ahead a little bit. I started doing Ashtanga Yoga. I saw a flyer for Yoga for Skiers. And I hadn’t skied for years because my condition and I want to get back to skiing. Somebody named Beryl Bender Birch was in Portland teaching and I thought, well, I’m gonna go to this thing and see if I can start skiing again. Well, I had what some people would call perhaps a kundalini experience and feeling the sensations in my body. Like tears flowing and just like opening up. Through this process and diving into Ashtanga I did a lot of stuff with David Swenson and a guy named Clifford. A lot of people don’t know who he was. He was one of the really early people. Nancy Gilgoff. I got a lot of time with her over in Maui.

Isn’t her place amazing? When you gotta look for the tomato sign when you’re driving up country on Maui? Everyone tells you like look for the tomato farm sign and then pull it you’ll find the house of Zen right? Is it called House of yoga and Zen or house of Zen? What a great little setup. That little wooden barn kind of yoga studio structure on that farm. Wow, studying with Nancy is like a real treat. That’s amazing. That’s cool, Michael. I love David Swenson. I’ve never had a chance to practice with Beryl Bender Birch, but she’s a bit of a legend in the Ashtanga vinyasa world as well.

Yeah. And a little bit more in synchronicity with Nancy. I don’t like staying in motels or hotels. So I was looking for a place to stay in apartment, a house something to rent. I rented this place. And you know, this guy named Gary and I called him and I said, Oh, do you know that Nancy? He says, oh, yeah, and that was about it. Didn’t say much. Well, when I got there, and it was rented apartment in his basement, do you know who Gary Kraftsow is?

Oh yeah, he’s one of the famous teachers of Viniyoga.

One of his primary teachers was really close to Desikachar. I had no idea when I rented this place who it was. So here I am staying at Gary Kraftsow’s house. Also studying with Nancy. Wow. It was just like, you know, I mean, totally immersed.

That’s right. When I lived on Maui for a year, and I remember seeing that he had a center in the upcountry area when I started looking into yoga. I never went but I remember his place was associated with a bodywork studio that always looked so interesting to me. That’s really cool. I can imagine that. Yeah, you’re staying with Gary, you’re getting your butt kicked with Nancy and in a good way. So at this point, I’m thinking you’ve made a pretty radical transformation from holding on to the wall walking 10 steps, if you’re hanging out with these yoga legends? Were you “back to normal” at this point? Where are you at at this phase?

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Nona Mileva – Tapping into the Yoga Well

Posted on October 14, 2022 by nativeyoga

Check out this discussion I had with Nona Mileva. Visit Nona at her website wellyoga.net. Nona is a Certified Life, Wellness and Health Coach, Yoga Teacher and Educator, based in Jupiter, FL, United States. She works with a wide range of clients, from variuos backgrounds and age, via in person, phone or Zoom sessions. Her coaching is holistic. It entails all aspects of the client’s life – emotional, psychological, physical, spiritual , as it authentically reflects the most important human needs. She focuses on the therapeutic modalities and applications of Yoga as a practice and discipline that enhances health and wellbeing.

You can listen to the full podcast episode for free here.

Todd McLaughlin

I’m so happy to have Nona Mileva here visiting in Native Yoga Center. We get to do an in person podcast! Nona, How are you doing today?

Nona Mileva

I am good. Thank you so much for having me. Good to see you.

Same as well, I got to meet you, Nona, because you came into Native Yoga Center very enthusiastically inquiring about yoga teacher training a few years ago. You completed our 300 hour Yoga Teacher Training which brought you into like the RYT 500. realm. And you also are involved in teaching in Stuart at a place called District 108, in Stuart, Florida. Also at the Powerhouse Gym in Stuart. You also teach therapeutic yoga in some of the local retirement communities. You have recently completed getting your PhD in health psychology. And you’re currently working toward Yoga Therapy Certification. Which you said will be completed in December 2022. So you’ve been very busy…. And that’s something that I really admire about you is you love to study. You put a lot of time and energy into reading and studying. And you’re you’ve expressed a lot of interest and enthusiasm for the history and the philosophy of yoga. And so that’s why I’m really excited to have you here today. Because I can just pick your brain a bit and see what kind of like “Top hits” have made it onto your playlist for yoga philosophy and yoga history. And so on that note, what is something that you have read about and or practiced or studied recently that’s caught your attention that you’re excited about?

How I love how you you’re beginning this conversation? Thank you for the intro firstly. Yes, I have been busy. And this is just, what can I say, my mode of functioning, learning, being always curious about things and topics. So my latest educational conquests, so to speak, or interests have been since COVID. Which, as you know, was to some extent, a traumatic experience. Then from a different perspective, it opened new doors. It made us more creative, looking for opportunities to keep doing what we love doing, which for us is yoga, obviously if we are talking about it. I have begun studying and doing a yoga philosophy course, of course is online, with Professor Edwin Bryant. He’s one of the most renowned names among Hindu researchers and philosophers and translators in the field. He’s at Rutgers University in…. I think it’s New Jersey or New York. So what he started doing is to record all his lectures, and then putting them up online for free.

Wow!

Absolutely amazing, isn’t it?

Yeah.

Yeah. It always amazes me when people share their knowledge with such immense generosity. So that got me into the groove of daily or twice a week. Sit down through those lectures or just doing my thing and listening to them. And pretty much it’s all the six directionals, the schools of various philosophical discourse and the man is a very knowledgeable teacher and scholar. He knows a lot about everything. His focus is bhakti. He is initiated in this tradition.

So can you explain bhakti to us?

In the discourse of yoga, bhakti yoga is the yoga of devotion. It’s the kind of yoga that is being practiced as a devotional yoga. Practitioners direct their attention, their energy towards a benevolent worship of a deity. In this case, usually Krishna is the the subject of the affection. There is lots of mantra and chanting. There’s lots of dancing and singing, praising, praising the Bhagavan. So think of the Bhagavata Purana, those ancient texts. All the Krishna stories, by the way, they’re amazing, amazingly entertaining and interesting stories. If anyone really wants to learn more about them, just go read them. They’re with tremendous sense of humor also created so many years ago. Yeah, so we would sit through those, he would just open the texts, and to about 300 people there, either live or from the recorded lectures will be listening and then following the stories, he would stop you with comments. And this, this goes for every subject. Whether you want to learn about like Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, whether you want to learn about Vedanta sutras, or Nyaya but more the stories of Krishna. So that’s what I kept doing for about a year, then he started doing live svadhyaya sessions every Friday.

I’m imagining that there might be someone listening that doesn’t know any of the Sanskrit terms. So that’s why it might just stop you every now and again and let you define some of the words. So if someone’s listening, that’s like a brand new listener slash just coming into the yoga fold. There’s a lot of Sanskrit terms that once you start to learn them, it gets easier and easier. Once you learn one, you learn another and before you know it, you can listen to these really in depth conversations about the yoga history and philosophy and know exactly what’s going on. But in the beginning, it’s really common to feel like a “fish out of water,” or have no idea what they’re talking about. So on that note, can you define what svadhyaya is to keep everyone up to speed?

Yes and once you get to actually work with those terms, it becomes kind of a second nature. And you don’t think that yes, there are people who still haven’t gotten there. So apologies again. So the idea is the concept of studying. So it could be defined as a studying about the self. That’s the obtaining of self knowledge through a variety of practices. But it is it does become by itself a practice. It could be even a spiritual practice. So you get to define it as for example, spending time with the sacred texts. So you sit down and you study, you read the text from the Upanishads, or from the later Puranas, or you open Patanjali yoga sutras and this is your weekend. Yeah, this is your weekend. What are you doing? I’m doing yoga psychology, how I’m just staring at Patanjali, sutra number, whatever. Trying to figure it out to study is that concept of the bhaktis. For the wisdom, another, I’m drawing attention. I’m throwing another Sanskrit word in Sangha, which means pretty much your social group. Yeah. What is your community? Yeah, let’s hang together with like minded people. Yep. And do our thing. What is our thing? We’re reading the scriptures. Yeah. Or in my case, I’m listening to someone much more knowledgeable. And they read it. And he’s reading the scriptures. He’s commenting on them, we get to ask questions.

Was that the difference? So actually, let me back up a little bit. Is that something that anyone listening can go to Edwin Bryant’s

Website. And by the way, at the end of the podcast, I will be happy to provide you with all the resources and links and the names that I’m throwing in here. So you can post it through your audience and I’ll be so happy for people actually go there and look up at this stuff because there’s so much available in the way of information out there that we just are not aware of. Yeah. So EdwinBryant.org, very cool website. It’s connected to the Rutgers University. As a matter of fact, the last study I did with him was on the Bhagavad Gita. I think it was… I forgot which ones, my memories also don’ serve me always. But starting four weeks from now, we are he’s doing a six week or an eight week course on Bhagavata Purana. He loves the back story. So that kind of yoga, devotional yoga, the yoga of love there. There’s a lot of kindness and love and compassion about this concept. I just was even listening to someone who has devoted pretty much his life and passion to that. Yeah, I think it’s amazing.

It is amazing.

It obviously takes cultivating it over a long period of time. Little by little before you know it, you understand these stories a little better. It makes sense. And that’s cool.

So it sounds like the interaction process with that particular training method you enjoyed. Was that the first way you started listening to his philosophy teachings not interactive? And then that the svadhyaya ones was where you could maybe type in questions into the chat box. Is that how that was going down?

Yeah. So you can do either, you can buy the pre recorded lectures, the lectures for students. We are a neutral audience, we have no access to the direct communication, we watch the recordings. But because the content is all out there, you can watch it at any time you want to watch it. The Friday sessions are live sessions, but he also records them and then post them online. So if you miss a Friday because you really want to go for that happy hour Friday, then you can watch it or listen to it the next day.

Listen to the full episode with Nona for free on our podcast site here.

Listen to the podcast here on our Podcast website: Native Yoga Toddcast

Please email special requests and feedback to info@nativeyogacenter.com
Please share this episode with your friends, rate & review and join us next time.

Conversation with Eric Shaw ~ The Sacred Thread of Yoga Philosophy

Posted on October 7, 2022 by nativeyoga

Ever wonder if there is more to yoga than yoga postures? Join my guest Eric Shaw for a discussion around his new book called Sacred Thread: A Comprehensive Yoga Timeline: 2000 Events that Shaped Yoga History. Eric’s teachings and passions have been influenced significantly by his teachers, in particular Shandor Remete and Rod Stryker. You can visit Eric on his website at prasanayoga.com and you can purchase a copy of Eric’s new book on Amazon here.

During this conversation we discussed:

the history and philosophy of yoga
the timeline associated with modern yoga
the origins of yoga in relation to the archeological findings at Mohenjo-daro
Eric’s experience with Iyengar yoga
What yoga was like on the West Coast of USA during its peak
Yoga as a global realization vs. a cultural specific identity

and quite a few more topics.

You can listen to the full podcast episode with Eric Shaw on our podcast site here.

Todd McLaughlin

I am so excited to have the opportunity to join in conversation with Eric Shaw today. Please find him on his website, prasanayoga.com. You can click the link in the description to easily access his work. He is the author of a book called BKS Iyengar and the Making of Modern Yoga. And he has also just released a new book called Sacred Thread: A Comprehensive Yoga Timeline: 2000 Events That Shaped Yoga History.

Eric Shaw

Yeah, yes.

Thank you, Eric. And I’m so happy to have this chance to speak with you. I love yoga philosophy. And you’ve done a lot study. And on that note, can you fill me and the listener in….have you gotten your doctorate degree yoga studies?

No, I’ve done a lot of a lot of academic work. I started a doctoral program in 2004, finished my studies in 2011 and pretty much got the knowledge base that I desired at that time. I was able to parlay that into practical purposes. It’s kind of like I feel like it’s something I want to do that is like climbing Mount Everest.

But yeah, I didn’t get it done at that point in my life. I could talk all day about why it didn’t happen. Yet I did get a master’s degree out of it and I got a knowledge base. It was quite useful for me for writing work and lecturing work in the yoga world.

Nice. Well, when you had to write a thesis for your masters, what did you base your thesis on?

I based it on the life of BKS Iyengar. I did a very deep study of him. Partly because his followers were so prominent in the Bay Area where I was working in San Francisco. And because that system, according to my training was so alien to me. I was so confronted by it. Iyengar’s system, as everyone knows who studied it, it’s arguably the most comprehensive yoga system out there. You know, unless you went to some ancient system, perhaps as far as the modern systems go, it’s complexity, it’s philosophy, it’s understanding the body and the way that it’s set up structurally to function. The Iyengar view of function in yoga is very clear and vastly articulated. So the people who teach it, have a pedagogy, a pedagogical style, a teaching style, which is strangely aggressive. That’s to say, all those things were quite confronting to me when I arrived in the Bay Area in 2004. After training in Kripalu Yoga and other forms of yoga, which were much more meditative, and much more I thought holistic based. Pranayama based in spiritual aims. Here I was faced with this very physical culturalist yoga, which some people from that tradition might argue with me as characterizing it that way. But to me, it was so body centric and so awesomeness centric. That I think it’s kind of strange to say in the year 2022, because yoga has become more and more and more body centric. I mean, it’s been a processes happening for hundreds of years. But it seems like it’s only been accelerated. It’s come into the American context. But for me, that was difficult. And part of my working that out, to write this mono focal paper on my anger.

Wow! Let me back up so I can get a timeline of your history of practice. When did you start practicing yoga? What was your first introduction to the yoga world?

It’s kind of an interesting, funny story, given my history. My parents were ministers. And they were very open minded liberal ministers. They come from the west coast. So it’s very much different from the south where I’m living now. Yeah, yeah. Me talking about Christianity in this part of the world. But where I came from, they were liberals, they were, you know, anti war protesters. They were raging leftist. So I did get a political orientation in my Christian experience, but it wasn’t a right wing one, it was a radical left wing. So that was my background. And so there was a certain openness there to intellectuality at all levels. So when I told my parents I was an atheist, they didn’t bat an eye. When I told my parents that I was into Eastern traditions and studying Buddhism and meditation, they didn’t bat an eye, you know. So that became my practice very early on in my early 20s, and very much a life saving practice, because my mind was kind of out of control. And it may still sound that way. But meditation helped me control my life. And I dove right into meditation and have maintained that practice to this very day.

Got it.

So like, I did some early investigation in Buddhist traditions. And it wasn’t till the early 90s that I joined Siddha Yoga, which is the Hindu tradition, I actually did that in the midst of a time I was studying Christianity and a Religious Studies degree in many Minneapolis, Minnesota. But that kind of opened the Hindu world to me a little bit. And then when I started practicing Hatha Yoga in 2000, then I started to investigate Hinduism more properly and understand how different it was from the Buddhist tradition. How much richer, how much more embracing of the human experience and all of its aspects and even culture in all of its aspects. And so it was incredibly compelling to me, given my background and it pretty much became a gestalt experience for me, I just dove right into it.

Wow. You made mention of the appreciation for Iyengar tradition and Iyengar’s guru being Krishnamacharya. Did you investigate other practices with any other teachers under that lineage?

Yeah, actually with quite a few. I mean, the Bay Area, as I said, was a hotbed of strong Iyengar teachers. So it was easy to study with strong teachers who not only came to town to teach, but who were residents there. So my chief preceptor was Tony Briggs and he had a relationship to Shandor Remete, who was my primary teacher. A teacher I’d met actually was still in Portland, Oregon and before 2004 started studying with Matt Hewish at the time, who was a primary follower of Shandor. Strange to talk about Shandor in the Iyengar context, because few people even know that he studied with Iyengar. He actually stayed with him for 20 years, extremely long time and he was actually the president of the Iyengar Federation in Australia. But he made a jump to embrace of martial arts and Bharatanatyam yoga, or rather Indian dance and he integrated into practices that he claimed to have learned at the Chidambaram temple in India into a new form that he called Shadow yoga. He’s continued to evolve his forms and change the names of them, but I learned from him and his teaching was profound and very vinyasa based, very movement based. But he was an Iyengar teacher. And then Tony. Tony had worked with Shandor, or so that was my connection with Tony. But Tony was a classic Iyengar teacher. I mean, he was gonna put you in a pose and hold you there and break it down into all its constituent parts in which muscles are engaged, and released and yada, yada, yada. So that training and another with Ramadan Patel and other big names in the Bay Area helped me understand asana and the alignment perspective, which I feel is, is very, very important. I mean, it’s at so many levels. But then I also worked with Paul Grilley, who was into kind of destroying the whole alignment concept. So I got a lot of a lot of input around yogic philosophy and yoga practice in those years that are invaluable.

Amazing, just to touch upon what you just mentioned, I’ve enjoyed watching Paul Grilley’s work around anatomy and yin yoga, can you explain how Paul’s philosophy shatter that existing idea of alignment that you were studying? Can you tell me what that means? Or what that sounds like?

Yeah, yeah. And it’s a good story. I think for anybody who wants to be a serious practitioner of yoga, I think it’s important to understand alignment principles, particularly from the Iyengar perspective, but it’s also very important to understand their limits. And Paul has done the spade work, he’s done the deep work in defining those limits. And I’m just shocked that so few people know his work, because it’s utterly revolutionary. Even if you don’t have Iyengar as a conversation partner for it. So Paul Grilley, you know, he’s ostensibly known for his work in yin yoga. And that’s how I first understood him and met him in yoga was my actually my teaching practice early on, because he was one of the first major teachers I met in Portland, Oregon. I wrote a small profile for him for a local yoga magazine, and we got to be friends. Then he was in an early video company making videos on yoga, you know, and when DVD still existed. A group of people there in San Francisco, who I met and hung out with, and then Paul was a part of that group, and he came down to do yoga videos there. And so he wrote, when I was there in San Francisco, and he recorded his Yoga Anatomy DVD, in which he distills all of his knowledge around bony limits in the body. So it’s the skeletal structure of the body, which determines which poses you can get and in which you can’t. And that’s, I know, that’s a very black and white statement. But it’s actually quite true that the soft tissue, of course, creates limits that we can push through in the attempt to attain any given Asana. And that’s what Iyengar practices are based on. That there is a limitless potential to achieve anything in yoga. Paul Grilley’s work debunked that theory in a way showing that bone structure does create limitation as to how far we can push into a posture. What he really determined and demonstrated directly in that DVD by comparing different human bodies, that the length of your bones, the orientation of the bones, in a given joint, the way it spirals out of that joint, the way it engages with the next joint in the chain determines whether or not any given poses even available. And that’s for a yoga teacher, who is attempting to guide students of different shapes and sizes into positions, proposes knowledge that is absolutely critical. Particularly if you’ve been trained in Iyengar yoga, because it does not integrate that knowledge. In fact, it’s kind of philosophically opposed to it.

Listen to the full episode with Eric Shaw for free on our podcast site here.

Listen to the podcast here on our Podcast website: Native Yoga Toddcast

Please email special requests and feedback to info@nativeyogacenter.com
Please share this episode with your friends, rate & review and join us next time.

Carley Smith – Yoga & Healthy Eating with the Fairy Gutmother

Posted on September 30, 2022 by nativeyoga

I had an amazing conversation with Carley Smith about gut health during this podcast.
Carley Smith, aka Fairy Gutmother, is a Nutritional Therapist, Certified GAPS Practitioner, and Registered Yoga Teacher. Carley became interested in health and nutrition after being diagnosed with Lyme disease and using food as medicine emphasizing gut health to help heal.

Visit Carley’s website at fairygutmother.com You can also follow here on IG here.

During our conversation she spoke about:

How she was able to heal herself from Lyme disease through
how she was able to learn what foods are best for her
how yoga has played an integral part in her healing process
why she is passionate about helping others
and so much more!

Below is a portion of the transcript from our conversation. Remember you can listen to the full episode for free here.

Todd McLaughlin

I’m so excited to have Carley Smith here with me in studio today. And Carley is a nutritional therapist, a certified GAPS practitioner and a registered yoga teacher. And she will explain what the GAPS practitioner is here in a moment. But Carley, thank you so much for coming in.

Carley Smith

Thank you so much for having me.

Well, it’s a pleasure. I’ve had the chance to meet you from taking classes here. I then learned that your career is helping people with gut health and that you have a website called https://www.fairygutmother.com. Correct? And also, we can find you at the same handle on Instagram @fairygutmother. I’m guessing the other social media channels are under the same name very as well? So on that note, can you tell me what your specialty is what what you focus on when helping people?

Sure. So I work with people to help them restore their health through the gut. That is through diet and lifestyle changes. I truly believe gut health is the foundation for our health. It’s where nearly the entire immune system is located. So basically helping people to optimize the health of the microbiome, putting, you know, bringing in different foods that help do that. And then supplements as well.

Nice. And you’re also a registered yoga teacher. So are you currently teaching classes?

I’m not currently teaching but I do weave yoga into my protocols with my clients. I think it blends very nicely in with gut health, because it’s kind of that lifestyle aspect. I tell people gut health is not just a diet, it’s a lifestyle. Stress is just as damaging on the gut as junk food. And that’s what clinical research actually says. So I love the way that yoga brings in that way to mitigate our stress levels, but also kind of gives the gut a little internal massage, helping to kind of increase that motility and just overall health of the gut.

Nice. Have you always been, air quote a “health nut?” Or did you have something happen to you in life that kind of pushed you in the direction of paying extra attention to your health?

Yes. So I’ve always been interested in health and nutrition and I always thought I was healthy but I ended up getting Lyme disease in 2014. Well, I’ll back up, I was probably sick for a year or two before that I finally found out and was diagnosed in 2014. But my whole experience was why I completely shifted the way that I view health and wellness. And like I said, I thought I was healthy. But after learning about gut health where nearly your entire immune system is located, and you know, I implemented a gut healing protocol. I was able to completely reverse my symptoms from Lyme. Based on just focusing on gut health completely changed my perspective on health and wellness, and what’s important and what actually is healthy as it relates to the gut.

Wow, when you were diagnosed with Lyme disease, what was the treatment that was prescribed to you via the Western field?

So at that time, it was mainly just antibiotics. So you go on a heavy dose of antibiotics for a prolonged period of time. And that’s basically the route I took at that time. I really wasn’t aware of any alternative therapies that are out there. So now I’m so much more aware of different modalities and treatments that are available for Lyme. But at that time, it was just straight antibiotics. And then that felt like it was doing more harm on my body than good. Because you’re obviously you’re killing the good and the bad bacteria with that. So I went off of all that medicine. And that’s when I started doing research and learning about gut health.

Nice. What did you start implementing? What were some of the first things that you began to utilize in your research and study?

So the first thing I did was the GAPS diet, which stands for Gut and Psychology Syndrome. And so that’s really all about healing the gut. It’s an elimination and reintroduction diet. So you’re eating a lot of nourishing foods that help to heal the gut lining, and then obviously, eventually repopulate the gut with beneficial bacteria. So you’re cutting out a lot of, obviously, any processed foods and sugar, things like that. But you’re really just focusing on bone broth, which was a huge part of my healing journey, animal meats and proteins and cooked vegetables. Foods that are going to be very easy to digest. And then as time goes on, you can slowly start incorporating more foods and more raw foods.

What were the main symptoms that you felt when you had Lyme disease? It sounds like you had Lyme disease for over a year before diagnosed? What were the symptoms you were feeling? When that was happening before you even knew what was going on?

Yeah, I mean, it honestly felt like my body was abducted by an alien. Like I had absolutely no control over my emotions. I forgot where I lived, driving home from work. And that’s really when I had to kind of just confine myself to my apartment. I couldn’t really leave. I was scared. Like a brain fraught with fog. I was like completely disoriented. I had no clue or recollection of where I lived. I didn’t know where to turn to or where I was. There was a whole neurological and cognitive dysfunction and I was just completely affected.

Are those common symptoms that most people that have Lyme disease experience?

Yes! A lot of brain fog, mental illness and loss of cognitive function. That’s a very big part of Lyme disease. And that I think is one of the hardest things about Lyme is that it is so difficult to diagnose and why it’s so misdiagnosed. Because there are so many symptoms of Lyme, in connection with that I also had a lot of issues with my hormones. So I was menstrual bleeding for about four months straight, and no one could figure out what was going on. The doctor just eventually told me to go lay at home in bed with my feet up. And that’s not a very common symptom. So I think it’s hard to, for people to get diagnosed, because there’s so many different things that people experience. I never noticed a tick bite, or anything like that. The thought is that perhaps I had that several years ago, and then a long period of stress weakened my immune system. And that’s when the disease flourished.

When you started taking the antibiotics, did you feel a little better? Did that work on some level?

It might have a little bit, initially, but I really was so sick that I couldn’t tell. And then there were so many other issues that kept popping up from the side effects of the antibiotics, that it felt like they were doing more harm than good. So it was hard to kind of pinpoint and truly that dietary change of shifting more towards a gut healing protocol was where I felt the biggest shift in my health. My memory was one of the first things to come back. I started to think more clearly I felt like I had a better control over my emotions. I was able to recall more information and just just felt better overall.

I’m just I’m trying to replay what you said. So you started with bone broth and eliminated almost everything else. You start off with bone broth as the basis for the diet? And then you said slowly implementing easily digestible foods like animal protein? And greens as well and vegetables, fruits, or no? Are you trying to eliminate carbs, the sugar from the carbs and that type of thing?

Yeah, so it’s basically on the veggie side, it was a lot of winter squashes, and everything is cooked. I know…. nothing raw, it’s a little bit harder to digest those foods, than the cooked meats and vegetables. That was a big thing, the animal proteins, what you’re looking to do with the proteins in the bone broth is really extract all those nutrients that help to support and heal the gut lining. So with those animal fats, and proteins are one of the most important things that you can do to help with that.

So being a yogi, and into yoga culture, where we are pressed in the direction of a “Ahimsa”, or non violence and vegetarian diet. And what are your thoughts regarding implementing animal proteins? In relation to that theory and approach that one should be vegetarian?

Yes, so you can absolutely still focus on gut health, with a more vegetarian approach. And I have a recipe for a vegetarian broth on my website. And basically, what you’re thinking, what you want to think about is pulling those nutrients from those vegetables that are helpful in healing the gut lining, and one of those is L glutamine. You can even just buy L glutamine in a powder form. And that’s very helpful in maintaining the integrity of the gut lining. So you can make a broth with lots of those vegetables like carrots, and beets, very high and L glutamine. Thinking again, about extracting those nutrients. One of the biggest proponents for gut health or components of gut health is fiber. So fiber feeds the good bacteria in the gut. So once the gut is healed, and a way to maintain that optimal gut health is just by, you know, adding in more fiber into your diet. In fact, the entire plate really should be plant based, lots of fiber, and then you can fill in, you know, the remaining parts of that. But as far as the animal base, I mean, for me that really helped. Those animal fats and proteins were one of the biggest things I think that helped my cognitive function and repair the gut lining. But if that’s not something that fits in, and I will note that it’s important to make sure that you’re sourcing those sustainably and that the animals are pasture raised and grass fed. Work with a local farmer and rancher is super important. But if that’s not something that works for you, that doesn’t mean that you still can’t heal the gut. There are other ways to get those nutrients.

Listen to the full episode here.

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Recent Interview with MysticMag

Posted on September 23, 2022 by nativeyoga

MysticMag has the privilege of chatting with Todd McLaughlin from Native Yoga Center and Palm Beach Thai Massage. Todd shares his views on the marriage between yoga and Thai massage and gives us a snippet of what his center has to offer and more.

When and how did yoga first find you, and what impact did it have on your life?

I was 18 when I got involved with yoga for the first time, almost 13 years ago. I saw a group of Hare Krishna devotees in the park who were eating vegetarian food and what they were doing seemed fascinating to me. I started hanging out with them and it was here that I was introduced to Bhakti yoga and chanting. I helped them out with the cooking and cleaning, and generally learned their ways.
About ten years later my mum started practicing Hatha yoga and took me along to a class with her. Yoga had an effect on my body similar to surfing big waves, and gave me the same feeling of excitement and physical well-being that surfing had done previously. (We lived in Australia before coming back to Florida). At this time of my life yoga seemed like the perfect fit, and I started eating clean and changed my lifestyle around completely.

Do you believe that you and your wife’s worldly experience of yoga allows you to offer more to your clients?

I think word travel is one of the best ways to get out of our comfort zone and open up to the bigger picture, so to speak. One of our destinations was India and this was an incredible eye opening experience for us. I believe that traveling allows us to see things from a wider angle, and I believe we were able to get a greater appreciation of yoga.
India is the birthplace of yoga and sometimes in Western countries, we are not exposed to the deep culture that emanates from India. Yoga is often over commercialized and the profundity and spirituality of the art is sometimes cast aside. Our experience in India definitely motivated us in our teachings and in our ability to teach.

Can you describe what Native Yoga Center and Palm Beach Thai Massage offer exactly, and do you offer yoga classes online?

Native Yoga Center is a community based and family owned and operated studio. We have been in the same location – Juno Beach, Florida – for the past 16 years. We have really focused on developing the local community and our goal is to offer the best yoga possible to the amazing people that come in on a daily basis.
Palm Beach Thai Massage is my other operation where I have been able to blend the body work element into our yoga studio. (I trained and studied in Thailand and am fully certified).
We do have online offerings and this was, strangely, one of the great things about the pandemic, as challenging as it was. It pushed me out of my comfort zone of working locally into the global community through the internet. We livestream our yoga classes daily and I integrate them onto my online yoga website (https://nativeyogacenter.teachable.com/). I have put a lot of energy into our online program and we now have a webinar where people from all over the globe can participate with questions, feedback and simply not feel so isolated and alone.

Is there a magic harmony between yoga and Thai massage, and when would you recommend combining the two?

There most certainly is. I always look at the two disciplines like salt and pepper. They go perfectly side by side. Yoga requires, to some degree, a certain amount of effort and Thai massage is absolute relaxation.
Yoga is your own personal effort that you put forth but Thai massage is where someone else moves and takes control of your body. Your nervous system is able to relax completely and be passive. This in turn helps your yoga practice as sometimes we put too much effort into our yoga and this can actually end up holding us back.
The most ideal situation, albeit privileged, would be to practice yoga, then to take a little break, and then have a Thai massage. This is one of the most incredible journeys you may ever experience. It is like a mini retreat and has a really profound effect.

How important are your workshops and retreats in the practice of yoga?

The great thing about having a brick and mortar location is that we have been able to invite some of our favorite teachers to travel to Florida and also host local teachers in the area. In a yoga class, typically we have an hour or an hour and a half together, but with workshops we are able to give a lot of extra information and extra fodder and food for practice that you can later take to your mat. They are a great way to get inspired.
Retreats are even better, although we haven’t hosted one since the beginning of the pandemic. We will be organizing retreats at a later stage, once we get back on our post pandemic feet.

What is your mission?

My mission is to hold the yoga tradition as purely and honestly as I can. I believe yoga and bodywork has the power to help us heal and grow. My main goal is to hold a safe and sacred space so that these amazing attributes of yoga and bodywork can be felt. My main mission is to continue to practice, to teach and to serve with our local and global communities to ultimately achieve world peace. This is a tall order, but small steps!

Listen to the podcast here on our Podcast website: Native Yoga Toddcast

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Sara Webb – Meditation is Medicine

Posted on September 23, 2022 by nativeyoga

Engage your listening senses with this conversation I had the pleasure of having with Sara Webb. Sara Webb is an author, inspirational speaker, and meditation healer empowering seekers to go from stress to success. Her life mission is to inspire people to access the power within themselves by teaching pocket-sized meditation techniques to improve daily happiness so people can bring the best versions of themselves to their own lives.

Visit Sara’s website at www.sarawebbsays.com
Check out Sara’s new book here: Amazon – Balboa Press – Barnes & Noble

Listen to the full conversation for free here.

During this conversation we discussed:

the importance of daily meditation
her passion for public speaking in the corporate environment
how to build trust after being harmed
how Sara has been able to recover from little “t” and BIG “T” trauma in her life
the role recovery has played in her healing journey
her books and her writing process
the importance of yoga practice in her life

And so MUCH more!

Remember to visit Sara’s website at www.sarawebbsays.com
Also don’t forget to check out Sara’s new book here: Amazon – Balboa Press – Barnes & Noble

Below is an excerpt form the conversation I had with Sara.

Todd McLaughlin

What is an example of a public speaking event that you’ve done recently.

Sara Webb

I’ve done all manner of things. I do a lot of corporate events, working directly with business owners and managers in order to help their staff deal with stress. I mean, a lot of times, we don’t realize the great power that we have with our breath.

If we can realize that when we’re in that fight or flight mode, that we’re not breathing properly, we’re not breathing from the belly. That’s a physiological, ancient physiology that we have carried over from when we were hunters and gatherers. You know, this autonomic nervous system that we have breeds for us, and beats our hearts and controls our sweat glands and salivary glands and blinking. But when the sympathetic nervous system is activated, that’s what we typically call the “fight or flight.” We begin chest breathing from the upper part of our chest, which is really great if we need to actually fight or flee.

But when it’s traffic and deadlines, and our bosses and our spouses and our kids, it can really build up and flood our blood with cortisol. We’ve heard some about that, and people are now pushing pills to get rid of cortisol when really, if we could just get in touch with what’s going on in our bodies, and learn how to belly breathe we can fix this problem. This is such an easy, portable, free way to tap into what’s going on in our bodies. And then people can learn how to process stress and actually ground themselves in where they are, especially in the workplace.

We have to work around people who maybe aren’t our favorite people. And so I do a lot of corporate trainings during the week. My wife is a dentist and so I got started doing that at her corporate gatherings. I do conferences and private conferences. I’ve done sweet 16 parties. I mean, I’ve spoken at sober retreats, you name it, I’ve done it. And I really just enjoy interacting with people in that way. Where they always come away and they say, wow, I really think I learned something new. I think that there’s a couple of simple facts that most people don’t understand about meditation.

Because as I mentioned, that’s my real passion. I kind of trick people into learning about meditation by talking about stress, because meditation is that wonderful way for us to get rid of our stress. And I am just such a seeker, I wanted to know, why is it that meditation works. And I’ll give you a couple of facts….. all around us at every single moment, it doesn’t matter if we’re on top of the hill, or in a busy street the scientists have calculated that we have access to about several billions of bits of data. And the human brain is pretty amazing and can process around 11 million bits per second. But we’re only conscious of between 40 and 50 of the 11 million bits per second that our brains and our bodies have access to. So I did the math there, that means we’re conscious of .04% of everything that’s actually being processed by our brains and our bodies. And 99.96% of everything that’s available to us is being processed by our subconscious.

Now we have five senses. And we have 11 million sensory receptors, the 10 million or so of the sensory receptors are dedicated to one sense, our eye site. So if you want to access to 99.96% of information that’s already inside of you shut off access to 10 million of the 11 million sensory receptors, ie. close your eyes and go inside. That’s where the magic is, that’s where the subconscious can begin to bubble up.

Because we’re literally getting into the brainwaves where our subconscious lives, if we only stay in beta and beta is stressed, then we’re not going to ever be able to have access to that. The only time during waking hours when we drop into that subconscious state, which is the theta wave in between alpha and delta, which is where most meditation is. Deep sleep is theta.

When some people are stressed, they like to drive, or they like to go and work on something that is repetitive. That’s because when we drop into repetitive things our subconscious is in control because you don’t have to think about it anymore. That allows the subconscious to bubble up, but our eyes are still open. And so think about how much more powerful it is to actually close the eyes, and then go inside.

Todd McLaughlin

Yeah, good point. That’s interesting. Can you give me an example or an idea of when you decided or felt that you wanted to heal the trauma that you had experienced? Was there some sort of catalyst that I mean, I’m guessing that there probably was something inside that said, “Okay, I realized something has happened. But I’d prefer just not to look at it.” What was the catalyst that helped you to turn that corner and feel like you wanted to be brave and process and heal and go through the therapy to come out the other side?

Sara Webb

Great question. I mean, I’ve always known about what happened. It’s just that I repressed it, I told my sister I did not go to the police, I barely told anyone much less dealt with it myself. When I began to get sober, which started in the end of 2018, I didn’t actually succeed with continuous sobriety until the end of 2019. So it took me a little over a year, almost a year and a half to actually be sober, and then an event would happen and we have this in the general collective that like, alcohol can be used to de-stress, which is an absolute lie. It actually causes stress in the body. So it took me a little while, but once I started playing with sobriety and had bouts of sobriety, I realized most poignantly that I needed alcohol in order to be intimate with my now ex husband. And I knew what even though I was gay, through college and a little bit after college, I called myself bisexual, and I only dated women, but I repressed that because I wanted to have a baby and I knew that my very strict Southern Baptist parents would not accept me for who I am. And to this day, they do not accept me for who I am. So in answer to your question, yeah, when when we get sober a lot of people deal with anger that is kind of unexplained. They’re just not really sure why, but it’s because we have been repressing by drinking. And then we have no outlet to numb with. I didn’t have that initially.

But what I did have was when I got re-married, and we started blending households, because I have a biological child, she has two you know, that’s, that’s no joke. And I started noticing that my go to response was anger, which, and I put out a reel on this recently, you know, usually anger is, is not actually a primary emotion, it’s a secondary emotion. And it indicates that there’s hurt underneath either sadness or fear usually.

So I started seeing a transpersonal interpersonal hypnotherapist in order to deal with the anger. And that’s when memory surfaced. And I was able to deal with them in a really beautiful way. It wasn’t immediate, and it certainly wasn’t easy. But healing requires injury and healing hurt. The result is always worth it.

Todd McLaughlin

Wow. Well, I appreciate you being so honest and sharing your story. That’s incredible. I think it’s empowering, because I know that there’s obviously a lot of us who probably have experienced trauma. Well, I guess, like you said, there’s the “big T” and the “little t.” So would you say that everybody has had some sort of “little t” trauma? Like, for example, someone made fun of us on the playground? A million or two different things that have happened could have happened. How many of us have experienced the “big T” trauma? What do you think the percentages are? I mean, like half the world, a third of the world, one in 100? Because I just wonder that sometimes it seems like I don’t know that anybody could get through life without having some type of “big T” experience. But maybe that’s because if I do have experience, then I think well, maybe probably everyone has. Perhaps it’s a smaller minority a smaller group of people that have. Do you have any insights into that?

Sara Webb

I wish I had the statistics! I’m definitely going to look it up. But even if we just look at, like, reports of sexual trauma with women, it’s one in three. And I didn’t report and I know a lot of other people who didn’t. So if you just look at that, it’s a high percentage. And and let’s not diminish that “little T” trauma.

Because it’s all relative, and vibrationally, if we just look at it. So everything that happens in our lives before the development of the prefrontal cortex would start around the age of 10. So everything from pretty much ages, like four to eight is when our brains are in that meditative state, we haven’t gone up into beta. Around the age of 10, is when we really fully start to inhabit beta.

Everything before that our brains take in as beliefs, basic beliefs about how the world is so for somebody like me, I saw people drinking, I grew up outside of New Orleans. I mean, drinking is just what people do. And I’m sure that’s for a lot of the world, you know, it’s just it’s very common. And so one of the beliefs that I had is that alcohol is safe. And if you have a “little T” trauma, “big T” trauma, some uncle that habitually made fun of you, a person on the playground who did something that could be seen as traumatic when it’s done, even once or twice, we can carry that vibration that belief with us into our adulthood and continue to attract those things into our lives. Because it’s something that we need to heal.

So it doesn’t matter if it’s seemingly small, it might be perpetuating itself as to a lack of abundance in our lives or a thinking that no one likes us. Then that can continue to play out in the workplace. And, you know, social groups, it doesn’t matter where it is. Because we’re basically here to heal.

Listen to the podcast here on our Podcast website: Native Yoga Toddcast

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Native Yoga Teacher Training returns in 2023

Posted on September 22, 2022 by nativeyoga

We are excited to announce the return of our Native Yoga Teacher Training program. Check out the new video we made to explain the details about the training. If you have any questions or would like to learn more you can click here.

Rick Olderman – The Confluence of Yoga & Physical Therapy

Posted on September 20, 2022 by nativeyoga

Check out the most recent episode of Native Yoga Toddcast with Rick Olderman. You can visit Rick at his website https://rickolderman.com. Enclose is the transcript from an excerpt of our conversation. You can listen to the entire episode for free here.

Todd McLaughlin

Welcome to Native Yoga Toddcast. I’m thrilled that you are here and excited to introduce to you Rick Olderman. Rick is a physical therapist, personal trainer and Pilates instructor. He’s authored several books, and he speaks and teaches people in this trade. I’m going to link all of the information in the show notes below, the easiest way to get a hold of them is to find him at rickolderman.com. I’ll put the links in where you can find his series of books that are available. Also, he has trademarked a method called Fixing You, which he has home courses, and basically a bunch of information for us as yogis, bodyworkers and professionals in these fields. So without further ado, let’s go ahead and get started.

I’m really excited and honored to have Rick Olderman here with me today. Rick, how are you?

Rick Olderman

I’m great. Todd. I’m so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Thank you. Can you tell me where you’re located?

I’m located in Denver, Colorado.

Nice. How’s the weather there right now?

You know, we had a really hot summer, but surprisingly it is cooling off a little bit. Now it’s only in the 80s. This past week has been unusually cooler considering it is still summer.

That does sound nice. Yeah, very cool. I’m excited to have a chance to talk to you because you have a background in physical therapy, you own and run a clinic and are a personal trainer and a Pilates instructor. You’ve written books and you guest speak. And so one of the things I noticed when reading over your information is that after graduating from physical therapy school, you found that when you got out into the real world that you weren’t fully prepared for dealing with the pain that people experience. So I’m really excited to hear what you’ve learned over your years of work and research. On that note, what is some of the things you learned along the way that helped you to be able to successfully help people with their pain? What differs from your initial protocols to you current approach to pain management the you are utilizing?

Yeah, well, you know, prior to physical therapy school, I had back pain myself. And I thought, oh, I’m gonna go to PT school and get the insider secrets. And, you know, I was that guy who raised his hand. Anytime they asked for a volunteer for a back pain demonstration of some sort, I was just like, okay, fix my back, I am ready to go. But it never happened. And what I learned was that the focus in PT school was on the structures that become damaged, rather than why they become damaged. And so we were taught to treat those structures, rather than treat why they were damaged. And after, as you mentioned, after I graduated, that’s why I was feeling like a complete failure. Anybody who had any kind of chronic issue, you know, I can help sprains and strains. That’s pretty easy, but chronic issues, I was hit or miss. And so and it was because of this and my intuition was that we have everything to do with why we’re having pain. But that’s not how we’re taught in school. We’re just taught to look at the structures that are painful and treat those structures, make pain go away and done. Yet it didn’t work out in the real world. So that’s what led me on this journey. It’s really interesting figuring out the “why’s” behind pain.

And what what were the steps that you used and or took to discover the answer?

Yeah, well, it was very difficult as well you know. I was sunk into a deep depression because of it. Because I really thought this was my calling. And I couldn’t believe that there, there wasn’t a lot more information about the “why’s” in pain. But anyway, I discovered Dr. Shirley Sarmad, who is an instructor out of Washington University in St. Louis. And she is, her whole focus is movement impairments that create pain and how to solve those. And that was a great starting point. And then, along the road, I also uncovered Thomas Meyers’ work with Anatomy Trains, and Dr. Robert Treat’s work with fascia. And then also, lastly, I discovered Thomas Hanna’s work with neurological reflex patterns in the body that contribute to chronic pain. And it turns out that all three of these different researchers, unbeknownst to each other, pointed to the same three patterns of dysfunction that caused almost all back pain. And so what I did was I ended up integrating these and then adding more into it, because none of them really went into the movement habits that were creating these patterns of dysfunction. So that’s what I’ve been teasing out and doing in my clinic and for the last 25 years, and it’s been pretty successful. Yeah.

Wow, that’s amazing. Can you explain those three main characteristics that you saw each of these instructors or practitioners were teaching you?

Yeah. So, you know, Dr. Solomon’s work is known as a classic physical therapy where, you know, we analyze movement. We look at tight or weak muscles associated with that movement impairment. And then we fix those tight or weak muscles, and also change a little bit about how they’re moving. Because movement also creates tight or weak muscles, it works both ways. Right? Tight or weak muscles cause movement impairments and moving impairments cause tight or weak muscles. So you have to fix both of those things. And so that’s what her focus was. But I learned that I realized that while my outcomes became much better, they were limited. And so I started looking, you know, further away and thinking, hey, you know, there’s got to be something else here. And that’s when I discovered Thomas Myers, because we had been taught about fascia, but we hadn’t been taught in depth about fascia. And that’s when I discovered his Anatomy Trains. He teaches the fact that we have these super highways of fascia that run through a body. And they, we have a back line that runs from the head to the bottom of the foot. Same with a lateral line down the side, we have a spiral line, we have a front line of fascia. And all of these lines can be dissected as one contiguous piece of tissue from the body. So they’re all, you know, very connected. And fascia is connective tissue. But it’s also highly nervous innervated to as well. So then, after I read his book, I realized, oh, he helped me understand how things further away from pain could be along that line of fascia that I would need to address in order to solve pain, kind of like a spider web, you know, you can hit a little twinge, you know, a little piece of webbing further away from the center. But the spider in the center still feels that little twinge. And that’s the way it is in the body, too. Then I started treating things further away from the sources from where the pain was being experienced, and I had better outcomes. But then I also ran into these certain people that seemed to have a battery that was charging their bodies to create tension in these patterns of dysfunction that I was uncovering, and that’s what I learned about Dr. Thomas Hanna’s work. Again he identified the same three patterns of dysfunction. And his focus was on decreasing the neurological tension that’s been that’s charging these patterns of dysfunction. So combining all three of these, I was just like, boom, that’s when I really saw the miracles happening in my clinic.

I highly recommend listening to the full podcast discussion. You won’t want to miss the rest of Rick’s story. Remember you can listen to the full episode for free here. https://nativeyogacenter.buzzsprout.com/950785/11318741-rick-olderman-the-confluence-of-yoga-and-physical-therapy

Listen to the podcast here here at Podcast website: Native Yoga Toddcast

Please email special requests and feedback to info@nativeyogacenter.com
Please share this episode with your friends, rate & review and join us next time.

Ashtanga Yoga in Tulum with Jayson Barniske

Posted on September 12, 2022 by nativeyoga

Todd McLaughlin

I feel honored to have the opportunity to speak today with Jayson Barniske. Jason is down in Tulum, Mexico. I had the opportunity of meeting Jayson at a Second Series Teacher Training with Tim Miller in California quite a few years back. I’m really excited to have this opportunity to reconnect with him. Jason, can you hear me?

Jayson Barniske

Yeah, I can. Thank you for having me today, Todd. It’s a privilege and honor to be on your podcast I’ve been listening to for a long time. And I’m excited that we get to do this today.

Oh, man. Well, I really appreciate that. I appreciate that feedback. And so I just figured we could jump in on the fact that you had made mention to me that today marks the grand opening of your Ashtanga Yoga Tulum Shala in Tulum in Mexico, is that correct?

Well, so….. today is the groundbreaking. So we’re building the floor today. Yeah, the groundbreaking. We’re building the floor. So it should be opened in about 30 days from now, but I am really excited! The floor is going to be built and handmade out of all local woods and then it’s gonna be a beautiful bamboo structure that’s over a raw, vegan, gluten free restaurant called Raw Love in the center of Tulum.

Whoa, you know, I just was looking at your Instagram page right before we’re got on this call, and so that everyone can find you it’s @jbarniske on IG. I’ll put that link in the show notes below so people can easily connect with you via that medium. And then I’m really curious, how long have you been in Tulum?

I’ve been here for about two years. And the reason I came down here, right before COVID hit, I was living in Imperial Valley, about an hour east of San Diego and California. I was working at Desert Yoga and Wellness and teaching a lot of yoga. When COVID hit everything closed down. When I saw that the saloon and bar was still open it got me thinking. Interestingly enough, in California, they started opening the bars and other lower vibrational establishments. Yet they left the yoga studios closed. So it’s really important for me to kind of keep teaching. The online is is great but I had moved down here to Tulum and was in classes with large amounts of people. It was really, really refreshing to move down here. When I came down here, to this place, it kind of just grew on me. The vibration of people down here is incredible. Alot of people say that Tulum is an energy vortex. So there’s lots of people who come down here for looking for spiritual growth and to connect to nature. I really just fell in love with Tulum and am enjoying making my home here.

That’s awesome! I know we share a teacher who we both really love and appreciate, Tim Miller. I know Tim had held retreats down in Tulum. I’ve never been to on of them though. I had heard how amazing it was….. did you go down there and practice with him when he was holding retreats in the past?

You know, it’s very interesting now. That was the only other time I’d heard of Tulum before moving down here was because of Tim. And it’s funny, but I seem to cross many of his same paths. He did a retreat at Maya Tulum. So I’m hoping later this year to do a retreat possibly at Maya Tulum, and have the same place that he used to do that. But no, I never came down here. It’s very interesting, coming down here and kind of following in his footsteps, has had, you know, such a profound impact on my life. I was lucky enough to meet him when I was 21 years old. And I remember the first teacher training I went to in 2009. With him, most of the people at the training had been doing yoga longer than I’ve been alive. And it was an incredibly humbling and enlightening experience that left me inspired to continue doing yoga. Really intensely ever since then,

Wasn’t the vibe in that area of San Diego just absolutely amazing? Was Tim still on E Street at that time in Encinitas? Or had he moved to the Carlsbad location by then?

Yeah, by the time I had met him, he was already in the forum at Carlsbad upstairs location. And I remember my first class going there I was in Mysore. I had completed the first series and this somehow inflating my ego. I was practicing next to these four women who are in their mid 60s. And each one of them was doing third and fourth series like standing up with their leg behind their head, all these things. I remember I was working on Marichyasana D and I had a pool of sweat that was so like, huge around me. Tim was standing there, and I felt him coming in to adjust me. And he slipped. And the next thing I looked up and Tim was sitting in my lap. I thought, “Oh no!” I nearly killed the guru with my profuse sweating. He continued to put me into the pose, and I had made the bind. Afterwards, he ended up giving me his mat cover. And I remember he said, “if Jason had a sign, it would be slippery when wet.” (Lots of laughter)

I know, I feel like we could just sit here for a whole hour and much more just just recounting classic tales of the Timji at work!

Oh Yeah!

The little things he would say always seemed so profound. Well, on that note, I saw one of the quotes that you put on your Instagram post was “Don’t tell Hanuman how big your problems are. Tell your problems how big Hanuman is.” I love that. That’s awesome. Did you come up with that? Or did you hear that somewhere?

I didn’t come up with that. A lot of times what I do is first thing when I wake up in the morning, is I just look and read for personal inspiration. So maybe I go on like the Self-realization Instagram page. Or maybe I’ll go on just some other Bhakti Instagram pages and find a meme and try to share that with my students. Yeah, and I will just spend time thinking on it it for about 10 minutes. It’s so amazing that Tim took so much time to teach us beyond just the third limb of Ashtanga Yoga. Beyond just the asanas. And like just how much effort he put into taking us into this world of bhakti and teaching us the stories of the Ramayana, Bhagavad Gita and the Mahabharata. How he was always encouraging us to slow down and study on the Yoga Sutras, and then we dive into these other texts. Wow, it’s really been been incredible for me. So thinking about Tim, thinking about my whole story and kind of thinking about my biggest message is that I’ve kind of learned through yoga and what I’d like to share is this process that I’ve worked out. I’ve really been diving deep into is the question of how do we transform our sufferings into a blessing.

A wonderful way that I like to tell my story is to say the three worst things that ever happened to me in my life. And then the three best things that ever happened to me in my life, because that helps me to see how all these things are totally lined up. And none of the good things could have happened without the bad things happening to me………..

I highly recommend listening to the full podcast discussion. You won’t want to miss the rest of Jayson’s story. He tells it with such a strong sense of stability even though it rocked me to my core to hear it. You can listen to the full episode and conversation for free here. https://nativeyogacenter.buzzsprout.com/950785/11153308-jayson-barniske-ashtanga-yoga-in-tulum

Listen to the podcast here here at Podcast website: Native Yoga Toddcast

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Please share this episode with your friends, rate & review and join us next time.

New Podcast | Episode 79 – Sara Gaugler ~ Serving the Recovery Community with the Trini Foundation

Posted on September 2, 2022 by nativeyoga

Check out this new episode with Sara Gaugler. Sara is the Director of Communications for the Trini Foundation. The Trini Foundation is dedicated to helping people with substance use disorder find long-term recovery by building environments of physical, mental, and spiritual support through integrating recovery services with Ashtanga yoga and mindfulness practices. Check out the links below as discussed during our conversation below.

Trini Website
Donate
Ashtanga & Addiction Forum

Remember to sign up for our donation based Ashtanga Yoga Workshop on September 11th, 2022. This Livestream event is open to everyone. You can register here:

https://www.nativeyogacenter.com/ap-ashtanga-yoga-workshop-for-all-levels-100-proceeds-to-benefit-trinin-foundation-sunday-september-11th-2022-130pm330pm-est.php

Thanks for listening to this episode. Check out: 👇
Native Yoga Teacher Training – In Studio and Livestream – for info delivered to your email click this link here: https://info.nativeyogacenter.com/native-yoga-teacher-training-2023/

New Student FREE 30 Minute Yoga Meet & Greet ~ Are you new to Native Yoga Center and have questions that you would like us to address? Whether you are coming to In Studio, Livestream or Online Recorded Classes we offer a one time complimentary 30 minute zoom meeting to answer any questions you may have. Schedule a time that is convenient for you. Click Here

Thank you Bryce Allyn for the show tunes. Check out Bryce’s website: bryceallynband.com and sign up on his newsletter to stay in touch. Listen here to his original music from his bands Boxelder, B-Liminal and Bryce Allyn Band on Spotify.

Please email special requests and feedback to info@nativeyogacenter.com
Please share this episode with your friends, rate & review and join us next time.

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About nativeyoga

Michael Harris – Falling Down Getting UP – Overcoming Your Obstacles

Nona Mileva – Tapping into the Yoga Well

Conversation with Eric Shaw ~ The Sacred Thread of Yoga Philosophy

Carley Smith – Yoga & Healthy Eating with the Fairy Gutmother

Recent Interview with MysticMag

When and how did yoga first find you, and what impact did it have on your life?

Do you believe that you and your wife’s worldly experience of yoga allows you to offer more to your clients?

Can you describe what Native Yoga Center and Palm Beach Thai Massage offer exactly, and do you offer yoga classes online?

Is there a magic harmony between yoga and Thai massage, and when would you recommend combining the two?

How important are your workshops and retreats in the practice of yoga?

What is your mission?

Sara Webb – Meditation is Medicine

Native Yoga Teacher Training returns in 2023

Rick Olderman – The Confluence of Yoga & Physical Therapy

Ashtanga Yoga in Tulum with Jayson Barniske

New Podcast | Episode 79 – Sara Gaugler ~ Serving the Recovery Community with the Trini Foundation