You can listen to the full episode for free here.

Todd McLaughlin

I’m really delighted to bring to the podcast today, Dr. Rose Erin Vaughn. She is an experienced acupuncturist. She’s a yoga teacher, she specializes in myofascial trigger point therapy and the practice of science of meridians. She has over 20 years of practice in the field. And she’s got an incredible Instagram page, I really highly recommend you go check it out. It’s at @erin_bodyaware. And then please go look her up on her website, which is scienceofself.com. 

I recently bought her book The Science of Self, Yoga, Pathways, Organs and Emotions off of Amazon. I’ll put a link in the description below for all these different sites. It’s really interesting. I have to admit, I’ve been reading it and applying some of the ideas during my own yoga practice. I love the way that she’s been able to bring attention to the use of visualization of the meridians while practicing the yoga poses. I really appreciate how she encourages feeling the energy pathways in the body based on our experience. Then having a little bit of guidance from her to know what the tradition of it all is, has been really fascinating. So for me, this is a huge honor to bring Dr. Rose Erin Vaughn on. Let’s go ahead and start. 

I’m so excited to have Dr. Rose Erin Vaughn here today. Dr. Rose Erin, how are you doing today?

Dr. Rose Erin Vaughn

I’m doing great. I’m sitting by my wood stove up in upstate New York.

Todd McLaughlin

Oh wow. It’s obviously a little bit colder up there than here in Florida. I am in my flip flops and in the air conditioning. 

Dr. Rose Erin Vaughn

Oh, wow. Right?

No, it’s very cold here. Yeah.

Todd McLaughlin

Oh, man. I’m really excited to have this chance to speak with you because I have your book, The Science of Self – Yoga Pathways, Organs and Emotions, and I’m enamored with it. I think what you’ve done with blending your acupuncture career with the yoga together and the visuals of the way that you use the meridian lines from the acupuncture and Chinese medicine system in relation to the yoga poses has been so interesting. I really love your book. I think it’s incredible.

Dr. Rose Erin Vaughn

Well, thank you. 

Todd McLaughlin

You’re welcome. And so so that all of our listeners are aware, you’re an experienced acupuncturist, you’re a yoga teacher, you specialize in myofascial trigger point therapy, and practice science of meridians. And you’ve had an opportunity to learn from your 20 years of practice in the field. And I’m curious, was there a lightbulb moment for you that your study and career path would unfold to where you are now?

Dr. Rose Erin Vaughn

There was a few but I think as far as combining the energy pathways, which we call meridians, in Chinese medicine, with yoga, those are two different systems. That happened for me, I think that was something that was sort of a seed for a long time, you know, seed and sprout. Where roads and I think when I was studying originally just trigger point manual therapy and yoga before I went to acupuncture school and learned the meridian system. I sensed there is some deeper connection that I needed to find with combining the myofascial pathways that I was learning with the asana. With yoga asana, with an understanding, sort of the emotional connection to it. Like why are these patterns in the body? And why does yoga asana work, to not only heal the body, but to release emotions? Anyone that practices yoga knows that it there is this relationship? Yes. Because you start crying in class sometimes, and then you feel better. Yeah. So I really just had asked my teacher who is Dharma Mitra, my yoga teacher. He’s a master. I mean he’s 83 years old now, and I was pretty close to him. I said I want to learn the energy pathways. And he’s a funny guy. I mean, he will say things like, really short, you know, and then later, you’ll figure out what it meant. But he just said, what you need to do, you need to get a book. He was like, I don’t know that stuff. But you should get a book. He told me to get the Sivananda book that has description of the nadis. And I was like, Oh well, I guess that was a stupid question. But I think he mysteriously put me on the path to go to acupuncture school and learn those pathways. Now every time I see him, he’s always like, are you still doing the needles? You know, acupuncture. And he asked me while I was in school, and yeah, he asked me just last week, are you still doing? And anyway, I think, as I studied the meridian system, which is really overwhelming, in the beginning, yes, it’s a massive amount of very detailed information about the energy pathways in the body. And so it was overwhelming. So I made up these meditations, which I could do during yoga and afterward that worked like body scans. Where you just follow them around the body.

Todd McLaughlin

I don’t want to say it. I guess I was gonna say the word imagination, but you use your power of visualization to body scan and follow the meridian around while you’re in the yoga pose?

Dr. Rose Erin Vaughn 

Exactly. That’s crazy imagination. Yeah. Because whether, I mean, my acupuncture teacher is also a master. And he’s like, it doesn’t matter if these pathways are real or not. You know what I mean? Like, people argue over these things. Like, are they useful? And so they are useful. And anyway, yes, it’s totally imagination, visualization. And as I was doing the asana that I’d been doing for years anyway, I was like, wow, I can feel these pathways. Wow. They’re on some level. They’re really real. Doorways unfolded and it opened a whole new world when I did that. 

Todd McLaughlin

Did that light bulb go off more when you started to apply what you’re learning from the Chinese meridian system more so than what you had learned and applied from the myofascial release pressure point work?

Dr. Rose Erin Vaughn

Well, the thing about the myofascial release, which is brilliant, and that’s what I had studied, the Travell and Simons’ text. That is what I studied when I went to massage school first.

Todd McLaughlin

Yeah, that’s a very dense text isn’t it? I have those books and they are amazing. For those listening that are unfamiliar with those texts I would like to mention that it is a big undertaking to study these. So that’s pretty amazing that you combed through those volumes and went deep into study of them.

Dr. Rose Erin Vaughn

You really do have to comb through them and I still have the original books that I had bought and they’re you know, heavily underlined. I was just like, wow, what is this? Crazy like that? Any I tell everyone to buy those and just spend the rest of their life reading them. 

Todd McLaughlin

They’re absolutely incredible in relation to trigger point and referral points, don’t you think?

Dr. Rose Erin Vaughn

Yes. Learning about things that it could do to mimic, or that could mimic those pain patterns. Like, you know, you may think you’re having a heart attack, but you actually have a trigger point in your rhomboids or something like that, or your pec major. Yes. And so that was just fascinating to me, but it has left out one component, mostly which, which was emotions. Like stress and anxiety or anger. Like, how did those things relate and what patterns do they specifically create? And that is what the Chinese system is masterful for. Because they understand the connection of those myofascial pathways to the specific internal organs. When you first hear that the liver is has anger, you know, or is associated with anger, people don’t buy it right away. But I explain it to people like, you know, the heart is related to love. Right? 

Todd McLaughlin 

Yeah. Everyone just sort of intuitively knows that. Because they feel it. Yeah. And that’s one that we accept that. Yet the thought of the connection between anger and my liver, that’s a tough one at first.

Dr. Rose Erin Vaughn

It is, you know, but then if you start to study it and think about it. Then you notice, like, when you get really angry, or there’s something that’s really irritating you that’s not usually there, you notice certain patterns in your body. Like tension around the right side of the ribcage radiating down the right side, or down the IT band or something or up into your jaw. And that’s the liver and gallbladder. The gallbladder pathway, but it’s related to the liver. And then it changes your life, you can’t go back once you see the connection.

Todd McLaughlin

Good point.

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