SPEAKER_00 0:00

On this episode, can yoga treat addiction? If so, what aspects of a yoga practice are most effective for addiction? Is it the physical, meditative, or philosophical aspects that one should focus on for the most benefit? What other healthy lifestyle choices, such as mindfulness, breath work, and yoga nidra or yogic sleep do we have available for addiction? Where do these all fit in with other treatments like therapy and medication? Joining me to answer these questions is Ryan Suave. Ryan is a world-renowned expert on addiction treatment and recovery with over 15 years of experience helping people navigate trauma, addiction, and the survival patterns that quietly run their lives. His clinical approach integrates evidence-based psychotherapy with body-based practices like breath work and yoga nidra, all built around one central idea. We often confuse discomfort with threat. And learning to tolerate discomfort is the first step to real change. He was featured on the Huberman Lab podcast, where Dr. Andrew Huberman called him, quote, the person you call when life breaks down. I'm Jake Panasevich, and this is the Yoga with Jake podcasting. How are you? Good. How are you? Doing good. Well, I appreciate you taking the time to chat with me today. But I was wondering, Ryan, if we could just start by getting to know a little bit about yourself and your work and how you even became interested in the work you're you're currently doing.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Uh yeah. So to answer your question, um, you know, I I came to being a, you know, I'm a I'm a I'm a licensed mental health counselor, I'm a therapist. I uh I came to that. I went back to school and got a master's in counseling when I was 34. Um, I had kind of come to it through my own recovery. Um, I, you know, struggled with alcohol and drug addiction, mostly alcohol. Um, and uh was you know, I'd I'd had my own, I had kind of come from a long line of entrepreneurs. I was doing that. I had a my own business and everything started coming crashing down. Um uh I it was easy for me to blame it on what was happening. It was like in real estate in 2008, so like building homes, stuff like that. And you know, it was it's easy to look at what happened in the you know the economy then, but you know, that was preceded and uh in parallel with uh uh an internal collapse. Uh and uh so I you know kind of hit an existential crisis. I, you know, wasn't sure I was gonna live much longer. I was not knowing that I I could. And um fortunately I got some help and you know, I I went to uh a treatment center in Arizona through a family friend recommended it, and then they sent me to one in Florida after that, and and and I um for longer-term care. And you know, I I'd been in therapy a little bit before, uh, but I didn't really know how to engage with it. And I just it it just like really opened up a lot of stuff for me. Um I'd always kind of wanted to be like a teacher or a service in some way, and um it it never but but I wasn't doing that, you know. I thought I needed to make a bunch of money first and then I could do that. You know, I had this like uh really kind of crazy thought, which I've come across a lot in my career. People like, I need to I need to make a lot of money before I can live a simple life, you know, and uh it was like those two don't have to be hand in hand, and you don't have to not make money, you don't have to make money, right? It it's uh how are we living? And uh, you know, I I just really like the process I went through, maybe not in the beginning, but it you know, it really helped me change and transform. And a couple years uh after being sober, I I went back to school and got a master's and started working at a a place myself. And you know, I just really I say I took to the work. I mean, I I I really enjoyed it. I kind of had uh some abilities in it. I was able to, you know, kind of connect patterns and see things with people. And you know, I just I I got great training and I I really enjoyed it, you know. And one of the things that, you know, since we started chatting before we started, one of the things that, you know, I came in contact with for the first time when I was in this treatment center was uh yoga. And I remember I I hadn't never done a yoga class. I'd done these I'd been into like fitness off and on, and I'd I'd gone to like a Pilates thing, like on a reformer type, but it wasn't you know meditative or anything like that. And I remember this this treatment center I was in had a a yoga class at like 6 30 in the morning and I couldn't sleep, so I just went. And I didn't know anything about it then. Looking back now, it was some very gentle Hatha yoga, you know. Um and I remember at the end, which I had no idea what it was, but I now know it was Shravasana, you know, like laying in the meditative pose at the end. Like I felt my body in a way that I'd never felt it before, you know, and it was just and of course I was like, I need more of that, you know. But it was I I remember the teacher like came around and touched my hand and it it felt like I it was like I'd been touched for the first time. It was very it was a very interesting experience. You know, I was just really getting in touch with the like energy in my body in a way that I I I in a conscious way, you know. I think we're always in touch with the energy in our body. Uh, you know, it's just what are we calling it? How do we let it direct us? Usually it's unconscious or automatic, and it's usually some form of stress that's driving us. But um that that and then I, you know, I just kind of progressed in the field and um I've done a lot as a as a therapist. I've helped run uh behavioral health facilities, and you know, now I I I I do some coaching and stuff like that too. I I I work with uh a lot of different populations, but mostly, you know, in the past few years I've been working a lot with with men who are maybe similar to how I was on the track, you know. They they probably uh you know they've they've done really well in the world, um uh by all success metrics, but you know, uh good in transactional environments, but not really great in emotional environments. And um, so I've I've I've kind of uh that that's one of the areas that were you didn't ask that question, but that's one of the things I I work with a lot. But you know, the it's always been looking at at trauma, of course, addictions, but really looking at the root of of what's driving people. Sorry, uh kind of that was a long answer to a question.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Well, it's a very broad question. And so I do appreciate the more thorough background because I um I'm always curious how folks like yourself get involved in this sort of work. And it's usually through a passion to help and to make an impact. And what was it about um your personal experience in uh Florida? You mentioned that yoga had helped, but was there something about that program that you took to that was specifically effective for you?

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Um, you know, I think there was a lot um that impacted me. But if I, you know, when I really consider that question, you know, it was more the container and the environment that was created. You know, I've taken that forward. You know, when I do workshops or when I've I've worked in residential facilities, I see the time that people take away. And I'm sure you've seen this in in workshops. Um I do intensive workshops and things like that. That more than what the modality or the thing that we're gonna do in it, like what tends to be more is that there's this container of space and time that allows people to kind of maybe in a yoga workshop it's totally relaxed, you know, in a trauma workshop, it might be. I I tell the clients, you know, this is a container of space and time where you can really fall apart, you know, and and really what that means is to get vulnerable and really look at a lot of things and not have to worry about, you know, all the stuff that was going on in the world around me. You know, at that point, I didn't even want to answer my phone, you know, and and and not to use the time away to escape, but I needed that time to I I just my mind was moving so fast. I I I never I didn't know how to slow down. And and so there was a lot of great people. There was a lot of great things like like yoga that I was introduced to, breath work, and other things, but I think more important was the that that kind of environment to to get vulnerable. That's that's interesting. I feel with other people, but you know, with other people, I had some experiences where there were things I never wanted to share with anybody, and I got terrified. And then by being able to like take a risk and share things about myself and see how other people reacted to them allowed me to see, hey, the reactions I'm having might just not be like accurate.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

Yeah, it's it's feels like such a leap, even when you think of I don't know if this is a a male-specific thing, but I feel like when you reach out to even a therapist, like it's something like a better help, even on the app, it's like, you know, it almost feels as a guy, like a leap of faith, as if, you know, uh like you expect someone to react a certain way, as you had mentioned. But then at least it's been my experience, finding the right community or therapist is also a thing. And it's like, oh, I it took so much energy to take that initial leap to reach out, what felt like reaching out for help. But then like, then to navigate having to ship shape or change uh directions and and ask for help again and and seek it somewhere else, I feel is often like an energy drain, especially when you're in uh a dire kind of situation. Um did you so you mentioned how yoga had helped you um process things and to and help how how else has did it help you and what role did did yoga play in in your experience?

SPEAKER_01 11:20

You know, I yoga's played a uh a role in it played a role in my healing experience, and then it's played in my role as a as a therapist and a and a healer in in a couple different ways. Um you know I've I got a chance to later on study it. I I I I wouldn't call myself a like I wasn't somebody I I got trained to teach yoga like if you go to a class, you know, so like the the the asanas or the the positions, but uh I probably only did that to like pass the course. I didn't really I you wouldn't have yeah, I wasn't like in a studio doing that. I ended up teaching a lot of yoga nidra, and I still do, which is the sleep-based uh meditation, which is being a yoga teacher, but I just mean that in the in the in the kind of traditional sense. But you know, I I think at first it was just being able to get in touch with my body and my nervous system and recognize, you know, that I could, even if it was for the moments, you know, one of the things I learned later on, and I'm sure you you you you teach is that you know, kind of the the whole if you go to a 90-minute yoga class, like the the whole purpose of it, I mean there's certain types that it's not. You go to a power yoga class, it might be different. There's nothing wrong with that, but most of it, it's like that whole 75 or 80 minutes is meant to prepare your body for the last 10 minutes. It's like yeah, the the the positions are meant to prepare your body for meditation. And like I would have these experiences of like now what I maybe call integration or just feeling complete whole in the moment, uh, you know, present that I'd never felt before or hadn't felt without I mean I'd felt it before, but I felt it with drugs and alcohol. And so it was like I can I can experience this like being okay, like feeling like I'm totally this might sound weird to people, but like I'm totally here, I'm totally present, I'm not like worried about the future, I'm not regretting the past, and even if that was lasting just like a a few moments, it gave me this experience to go, okay, that's possible. You know, and that's what I do a lot with my clients in different ways. It's like, you know, we can create environments in which they can, you know, look at their past in a different way, look at their present in a different way, forgive people, feel completely different. But most of the time I tell them that's not the goal. I mean, that's a that's a part of it. But the that like if you come to a workshop, I do, I I got enough bag of tricks in there that I can make you feel good. You know, I can almost guarantee it for a little bit, but that's not the point. The point is okay, now you recognize that you can be in a different state. You know, when I look at like post-traumatic stress disorder, I'm not saying everybody has that, but I almost see it as a state disorder, like they're stuck in survival mode. And I think a lot of people are in the world are are stuck in survival mode. If we call it being stressed out, that doesn't mean they have PTSD, but I think most people can relate to being stressed or things are moving fast. And and to be able to recognize that, hey, I can be in this other state, right? This what do what do drugs provide? An altered state. And now that's kind of a touchstone experience for me to go, okay, how can I like build practices and and and be in the world in a way that I can move toward that throughout? It doesn't have to be I go away to a workshop or go away to treatment, like I can create islands of that in my day. And so uh, you know, kind of recognizing with with like even the postures in yoga, which like you're kind of pushing in uh uh uh activation and then uh relaxing back into kind of resource builds flexibility in our muscles and our joints, but it also builds flexibility in our nervous system in the way that we can kind of stay. You know, Victor Frankel, the famous uh psychiatrist who wrote man's search for meaning and was in the concentration camps and came out and wrote that amazing book talks about like between stimulus and response, there's a space. And in that space is our ability to choose, and in that choice lies our power and our freedom. And uh, you know, I think most of the world, including myself, when we're running kind of on automatic or throughout the day, we're going from we're skipping right over that space. We're going from stimulus to response or reaction. If we're following what he's saying, we're giving up power and freedom, right? We're thinking like I'm solving all these issues, I'm putting out all these fires, I'm doing what I want. That's gonna get me to where I want to go, when in reality you're giving up your own power and your own freedom and just are living kind of stressed out. So, you know, I I've I then I later on studied like somatic experiencing, which is a uh a type of um therapy to really kind of release trauma um and kind of uh but it was kind of like yoga for the nervous system, right? It was kind of how do we pendulate back and forth between activation and resource and move people from being stuck. And when I do workshops or when we've had residential, we kind of do that in the schedule. It's like you go into a group and you deal with some hard stuff, and then you go eat lunch or walk, go for a walk, and then you come back in. And so so much of it is building. I think what I've learned is from yoga, and there's other practices. I just happen to be in that, you know. I got to go to the uh Amrit Yoga Institute, which happened to be right near where I worked in Central Florida and and and and trained under them. But I was able to see how much of it was almost like modern neuroscience and how we're looking at the brain and the and the and the body. They just couldn't see it before, but it was like, okay, people are kind of stuck in this state. How do we move them and create a flexibility so that they can experience a stimulus, be triggered, discern between that being something that's actually threatening or something that I'm perceived as threatening, and then make a choice rather than be in reaction. Um, I don't know if that answers your question, but it's it's informed quite a bit for me.

SPEAKER_00 17:34

Yeah, no, that that does answer my question beautifully. And and you you did put words in my mouth. I was about to say exactly your point. It feels as if to me, yoga has this um skill set that you develop over time to pause, sometimes force yourself to pause. And usually the vehicle is through the breath and move forward more skillfully or make a more informed decision rather than just go with your knee-jerk reaction. That sometimes if you don't put yourself into that experience through something like yoga, I feel as if you go on autopilot and you don't even sometimes recognize that there could be a pause in between the thought and your action. Um so that's that's beautifully said um how you did it there. And that's exactly what I was thinking. That's been my experience as well. And for me, it I I felt as if things got easier in a way as I got more acclimated to that process through yoga. However, I do think also life got a little bit more challenging and harder, but it allowed me to lean into the hard stuff.

SPEAKER_01 18:52

Yeah, I mean, listen, I I I think I was in some sort of crisis as a human being, partially because like I I didn't have the stuff. I thought I needed to have the stuff in my life. I was alone, I didn't have a family, you know, I didn't really like my career, you know, all of these things. And I come across this all the time with people, right? Um and then, but you know, then you get you go through some healing process, and I really went through a transformative process and become out relating to life very differently, being in the world in a different way. And as a result of that, was able to go out and you know, go after a career that I wanted, meet a woman that I wanted to marry, have children with her, now have a career and a home. I got more stuff for all of my I, you know, I have more stressors in my life now than I did when I was falling apart. You know, you build a life and now you got a life to deal with, and that's not a bad thing, it's just to recognize, you know. I mean, we face stress all the time. You know, I I got little kids, I you know I'm 50 years old and I have a we have an older kid who's 19 and or almost 19, and then a seven and a four-year-old. I mean, sometimes I don't know how how old if you have kids or how old they are, but you know, when you have seven and four-year-olds, sometimes you're going to like five birthday parties on a weekend. Even if you like it and it's fun and the kids are up, you know, you come home and it's like it's exhausting. You know, it's it's there's a there's a there's a stress that we're putting into it, you know, and and so things, and I don't mean to make birthday parties the things that are more challenging, but like work and you know, figuring out being you know, having a family to support and all of these things, you know, I almost need the practices and principles that I've learned over the years more now than that first day when I came in, you know?

SPEAKER_00 20:44

Uh-huh. Yeah, it's that's fascinating. It's I could I could see that. I mean, was there something about any components of the yoga practice that helped you come to this revelation, or was it more through all of it? Was it a combination of mind, body, breath, all of it together?

SPEAKER_01 21:05

I I you know, I I I've kind of you know I've been involved in a lot of different things, you know. I mean, from um other peer support programs, you know, like 12-step programs, and and uh, you know, obviously I'm a therapist, so I've done a lot of you know psychological trainings and things around the nervous system and study a lot of different forms of more of the clinical breath work, like the uh holotropic style of of breath work that's a little bit different than like the yogic pranayams and things like that. But um it's been uh a combination of things. Um, but I think it it does kind of boil down to like, you know, kind of finding this integration in mind, body, and spirit. You know, we like to separate those things, they're not separate, right? You can't have a Mind without a body, a body without a mind, and you need a spirit to animate it all. You know, we we I I don't think I think it's helpful the way we talk about it. But you know, I I I always find that you know, I can pick up my phone. We're on a Zoom call, there's no delay. You're up in New York, I'm in Florida. I can, I was just on a meeting with somebody in uh uh Sri Lanka. You know, I can pick up my phone and call anybody in the world. I'm not like amazed by that every day. You know, there's like, you know, there's like wireless, you know, there's stuff flying through the air into satellites and beaming down, and you know, or even like my Bluetooth headset when I'm going for a walk, like it doesn't amaze me, you know, and I I take it for granted. I and I just expect it to work. And when it doesn't work, I get annoyed. Yet it's very easy for us to not think that we have this, like, can really get in touch with like the energies in our body and the way and it's all wired. Like, you know, we they they haven't made an iPhone screen yet, at least that I know of, that can heal itself. But if I cut my arm and kill, like I'm actually driving, you and me are both driving kind of the most amazing piece of equipment that's ever built. And we're like, oh yeah, it can't be, you know, I can't I can't reduce stress or I can't, you know, heal myself by relaxing or think or meditating or thinking about it. You know, these things that kind of get put in these buckets of being woo-woo or out there, when in reality, like if you know, if my hose wasn't filling up the pool because the water and I noticed the water's not coming out, and I look back and the hose is kinked, I would go unkink the hose. But it's not the first reaction when like I'm feeling really constricted and upset or angry in a way that's not helpful, that I go, oh, there's something in me that's constricted, which is what for people, I mean, a lot of people don't even know this about something like yoga, which is more of a science than an athletic practice or a or a uh a spiritual practice, at least that's the way I see it, is we're gonna go unkink that hose and like the energy can flow through a little bit easier.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

Yeah. Yeah. I I have you had how how do you you said a lot of sorry, a lot of your clients are men. Do you uh what's their response when you suggest something like yoga, or do you, since you've trained, are you out able to provide them with maybe something basic they could do while they visit you, or how do you approach that? Is it based on the individual?

SPEAKER_01 24:34

Yeah, I mean, it it's based on the individual. So I, you know, I work with people in different ways. Um, I do group intensive workshops, I do individual intensive workshops. And you know, some people I a lot of my work, a lot of my clients are all over the world. So I'm not seeing those people in person, but um it depends on the person, you know. You gotta uh you know, I I this great teacher, Amrit Desai, who's like a very old Indian man, you know, and he's in his 90s now. And we'd go to the ashram, and you know, it's very Hindi. And yeah, he always used to say, Don't, don't, don't throw away the the gift because of the rapping. You know, he would come out and do his talks and his you know traditional, but like he would tell us, don't like show up at a corporate office wearing all white, you know, don't go work with football players, you know, wearing, you know, in and and use this language, or go into a a church, uh a Christian church and talk, change your, you know, don't like meet the people where they are. Call it, it doesn't matter if you call it yoga or something else, or we're gonna do movement and and stress reduction. Like it, it it's like how do we meet those people? You know, one of the things um I think you found me because I was on Andrew Huberman's podcast and he's been a friend for a long time. And you know, he really, as best I can tell, is he coined the term non-sleep deep rest, which is Yoga Nidra. And he'll say it's yoga nitra without the intention. And we talked about this on the when I was on his podcast, he was like, Some people were giving him flack, and and I was like, the people that actually taught me yoga nidra now have NSDRs, like who cares? You know, so some people I can say, you know, go to yoga class, some people say we're gonna do movement. It's not about tricking them, but it's about what's the you said this earlier, it's just a doorway in, and it doesn't even have to be yoga, it might be something else, right? It might be, you know, some people I you know, we got to get them moving, and so they go to a uh a trainer in a gym and do something, right? Or they go to a uh one of those places that stretches you. That might be the the doorway in. When I do workshops, I introduce people to a lot of different things in them. And um, I'm just you know, not every practice is gonna work for every single person or every single person at that time, and it's not a matter of trying to force something down, and you weren't saying this, but it never works to force something down someone's sort of, it's more like inviting them in and say, Let's try this. So instead of going, hey, we're gonna do yoga, I might just I used to run this. Uh, I was the coach and mentor, I didn't run it, I was the coach and mentor for this men's mastermind group. And these guys came from all over the world, they're very successful. Um, they were they would meet four times a year. And a lot of them had been open to stuff at the time, but at first, you know, I just like I'd have them stand up and move. I didn't say we're gonna do yoga, you know, uh and I wasn't trying to hide it, it was just like, okay, let's let's give people an embodied experience of it. If the if the language is gonna push, it doesn't, you know, you don't you don't have to if it's gonna push people away. The idea is how do we invite people in to to to moving in their bodies, and again, it could it could be something else other than yoga.

SPEAKER_00 27:47

Yeah, I I was gonna ask you about the non-sleep deep rest um coin term that Huberman uses because a lot of folks and myself included, I have a men's class, they called it broga, and you know, fine, you know, they're just like, oh, it's just a funny thing to call it because the response, it was it was a loud um minority of people, but very loud, that kind of push back against that that name for some reason. But heck, I mean, 150 guys came in within a month's time. Like there's something to this, these guys are getting help here, something bigger is going on, and it's a it's a positive thing, but sometimes people cling on to the the name of or the the term that you use.

SPEAKER_01 28:40

Yeah, and I think that's something we need to be sensitive to. I mean, people have histories with things, right? I mean, you know, sure people have, you know, some people they see it as something a different spiritual practice that might go against the way that they have practiced, or you know, they suffered abuse within a spiritual community, and now they're really kind of skeptical of things. And that that's all fine, right? We want to invite, you know, I love that you know, the book, The Four Agreements. I'm sure you bad one. And then his son wrote the fifth agreement. I forget what all four agreements are. It was like, don't take things too personally, always do your best. Keep your word. I forget the four. That's not the point. I think his son wrote the fifth agreement, which I really like, which is uh be skeptical. I think it's something like be skeptical, but be open, like question things. And like it's my job as a therapist, a teacher, a trainer, a coach to meet people where they are, you know, and that's something that gets thrown around a lot. But what does that really mean? Like, well, what it means is people are coming to us because they want to go somewhere. I mean, it's not physically going somewhere, but they want to transform something, change something, right? So let's just talk about it like they're going somewhere. Well, if I'm taking someone on an actual trip, I can't pick them up from somewhere that they're not to take them to where we're going. I have to pick them up where they are. And I gotta learn what that is too, you know, like, oh, you have a problem with this. That's fine. I don't need to push that down your throat. I don't need to say, you know, I'm not modality driven, you know, it's that never really worked well for me. I mean, I've trained in certain modalities, and I think some are very effective. Um, some are very effective at certain times for people, you know, that all that, you know, if I use EMDR, they're not prepared for it yet. Or, you know, some people don't relate to me in the way that they would relate to somebody else. So I have to be aware of that too, you know. So I don't know if that answers your question, but I think, you know, I I I I I I actually liked what he did a lot with that because it opened the door to people to do pretty much the same thing. It did take out something, you know, and people that kind of lead it. It's not talking about, you know, if you do a yoga nitra and I on a online, you might start hearing things about chakras or things like that that you know some people are just not open to, don't understand, and that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 31:04

Right. Right. Yeah, you're sounding like a yoga teacher to me. I think I well, I just I feel like it takes a level, I think a lot of the yoga teachers are teachers or folks in in these sort of positions sometimes, even in my area, yoga teaching, it takes people some time to realize that I might not be everyone's teacher. Um, and that's perfectly fine, you know. And it sounds like do you find that you're able to help folks who resemble maybe who you were in your past? Like that, and I feel like um, at least to some capacity, I I'm able to help a lot of these men who were like good had a strong athletic career, had a lot of physical injuries, but then that led to mental kind of a cascade or what came first, I don't know. But it's kind of like this similar background I've noticed light attracts light a little bit. Um, you you mentioned you work with men. I was curious that sort of self-awareness you have about not everyone's maybe uh teacher or mentor, that uh these are the folks that I could help uh most effectively. Do you find that they resemble maybe something that you had gone through that you're able to resonate with them?

SPEAKER_01 32:28

Yeah, you know, I I think I it it comes down, yes, but I think that also comes down to kind of style. Like I am, you know, I bring my own personality to things. So who's gonna relate to that? Interestingly, I spent a lot of my career working with with women, you know, and I've worked with adolescents and things. It's just who's kind of been coming to me in the in the in the last uh, you know, most recently, which is not all men, but I I think yes, you know, it does. I it I find that one of the things that I have an issue, I guess, that I can have with therapy coaching, other things like that is, you know, I said I'm not modality driven, but I'm trained in modalities and I absolutely use them. So I'm not some people will get trained in one modality and that's all they use. And and and that's okay as long as they're aware when you know it's not effective for somebody or who they're not effective for. And then there's this whole realm of of coaching, which there are people who are very well trained to be a coach. I mean, there aren't really there are coaching academies people can go to, there aren't really, you know, licenses or credentials in the way that there is for a therapist. And why that can be important is there's a board of ethics, you know, there's there's you know, there's confidentiality, there's other things like that that, you know, sometimes coaches actually don't have. They don't always realize that they don't have the same limits of those things. Um, but there's some that are very well trained. I've gone and seen, and you know, I always have somebody that I'm working with, and sometimes it's a therapist and sometimes it's a coach that doesn't have that training. I met people that have not gone to, you know, become a therapist that think better than most therapists I know. But there's kind of been this movement over the last maybe 10 years or so where it's like I transformed something in my personal life. So this is the way that I'm gonna teach you to do that. And that's not there's nothing wrong with that, but that doesn't mean it's going to be effective for everybody or for everybody at that time. And just because this thing impact, like for me, yoga, breath work, I've done some, I you know, if you followed me when I was especially in those early years, I was out doing a lot of weird stuff, you know, a lot that I would have thought weird and probably other people do. That's not what every client that comes to me wants or is looking for, right? So it it's again about understanding how to meet them and how to be with them. And I think the more seasoned and trained you become around that, it becomes it does open up for who you can work with. I also know I I try to do my best to say, you know, this isn't for me. And how can I refer this person to somebody to somebody else? But you know, just because I did it this way doesn't mean you have to do it that way. Now, sometimes I'm gonna throw that in there, but I don't always find that as super effective, you know, because some of them just don't have the same story or the same thing, and that's okay. So, how do we be with them and understand their history, their nervous system, the way that they view the, you know, their worldview. Um, I don't know if does that answer your question?

SPEAKER_00 35:43

Yeah, no, it definitely does. I think I think so much of it is based on the individual. And I think I think sometimes, at least for me, and maybe this I don't know if this is stereotypically a male trait, but a lot of my friends fall in this category. Like I almost have to force myself to try different things. Like I feel like yoga has always been a pillar to me, and it's great. But dog on it, sometimes I need to go. Yoga allows me to go do try lifting weights and uh cardio or uh have those difficult conversations, take a leap and seek out a different therapist. You know, I feel yoga is the pillar that allows me to what feels again like a leap of faith and go out and try different things. But I feel being willing to be a beginner again, try I've tried Pilates, try uh different communities. And I just think sometimes it's a matter of throwing more, sometimes just trying more different things if you feel stuck, feels to be um effective to me.

SPEAKER_01 36:58

Yeah, and and and I think all of it kind of boils down to it's you know, in in some way, it's like movement, breath, connection with, you know, with community, with spirit, whatever that means to you, God, you know, the that there's it's these uh I'm actually writing about this in a in a in a in a book I've been working on, but it's like the the problems that we face today are not really new problems. You know, we look at I think I open it with a a quote by Pascal, which is in like, you know, over a thousand years ago or 1500 years ago, and he says something like man's chief problem is his inability to sit alone in a room by himself, right? This this is not a a reaction to cell phones or social media, right? Those are those become the thing that we're distracted with. You know, Patanjali wrote the Yoga Sutra, I don't know, what was it 25 to 400 to 4,000 years ago, and it started off with the time for yoga is now, which is the time for union is now. And if there's if we need union, there must be disunion. So, like you look at almost every spiritual text from the you know, Bible, anything or into other Eastern traditions, a lot of it is talking about how we're kind of distracted by the the mind and where do we go with it, you know? And and you know, you can yeah, was in in doing some of this research, I was finding all these quotes about things that were gonna like ruin the world because you know, and if you looked at them, it sounds like social media and AI, and it was things like the novel, the radio, the printing press, you know, this you know, the the this this other thing that's gonna take us away from, and I'm not saying that there's not challenges with things now and that we're not distracted, but my point is uh the the distraction things might be bigger and more prevalent, but you know, and and we are available to a lot more. I mean, probably two or three hundred years ago, what do you want to be when you grow up was not really a question. You know, name of Smith, you were gonna put shoes on horses, right? Or you're gonna live at the farm. I'm not saying we go back to that, but we kind of have this unlimited possibility and then this analysis, paralysis. But my point in it being that these are kind of old problems is there's old solutions. We don't need a new necessarily a magic pill for things. I mean, you look back at at so many different at almost probably any tradition that's been around for a long time. Reliers religious, spiritual other, and there's breath, there's movement, there's you know, uh contemplation, there's community, there's connection with spirit. It's all the same. It's it's it's it's wild how simple it is, right? I mean, and and science is showing us. I mean, there's all kinds of studies that you can listen to many podcasts, and they're like the impact of gratitude, the impact of breath, the impact of connecting with others or laughter. You know, and I'm not saying we don't have challenges today, we absolutely do, but sometimes I think we're overlooking what some of the the solutions to that might be. And I think you know, our biggest problem as humans is that we confuse discomfort with threat. One of our biggest problems for our mental health is that we confuse discomfort with threat, and then we respond to discomfort as if it's threat. We perceive threat when there's not actually threat. And so we're living in survival mode. And what's the way out of that? You know, to be able to slow down, use discernment, release stress, all of those things.

SPEAKER_00 40:50

Yeah, that's I love that. Um I love I also really enjoy uh Yoga Nidra. I've taught it now for years, but especially when COVID hit, it was just a a life changer, I felt. I couldn't sleep. Um and it's incredible. Um and I was curious what your experience has been with it and what how you implement it in your in your work.

SPEAKER_01 41:24

So I um my experience of it is like I remember the first time I I did it, I had I'd been practicing this is many, many years ago, maybe eight, 17, 18 years ago. Um I had been trying to practice meditation, you know, and I remember like sitting there and trying to sit for like five minutes. This guy taught me said, just breathe in peace and breathe out calm and just sit there for five minutes. And like five minutes seemed like I don't know, the end of the world or something, like days. I remember I heard a guy share in this group I was in, and he goes, and he'd been sober for a long time, and he goes, you know, I start every day and I have to meditate for 45 minutes, or maybe it might have even been 30. And I was like, whoa, you know, no way. Like it was just like I was like, I will never be able to do that.

SPEAKER_04 42:20

Right.

SPEAKER_01 42:21

And then I I remember I I I was in a I was able to practice and get a little bit better at it, but I was just kind of doing seated breathing meditation. Um and then I went to a Yoga Nidra uh class that somebody was offering, and it was like or I might have done it at the place I was working and and a teacher was doing it, and I was like just amazed at how relaxed I got and how easy it was. It's very, you know, it's a I was taught that there, you know, the technique disappears the technique, right? Not that seated meditation or like transcendental meditation, those are all wonderful tools, but you know, and sometimes if you have to think of the mantra, if you have to do this, especially for people that aren't trained, it can kind of pull you out of the experience, right? And and this is meant to be completely guided. And in in any script I use, it's it's like let any disturbance internal or external draw you deeper within. So if you hear a noise, it doesn't pull you out of meditation, it's meant to kind of take you in it. But there's a little bit of movement or tension and relaxation to kind of to just you know relax the body, and then you know, I would fall asleep. I and I remember I was pretty sure I'd fallen asleep. But then when the teacher would say, like, roll over onto your right side, I would do it. So I must not have been completely asleep. I definitely wasn't unconscious, and I've seen that a lot with people where they just feel like you know, it it's it's a you know, I I sometimes I wear like a whoop band that's like a tracker, and I'll do I'll do yoga need. And I haven't fallen asleep totally. And it'll track like I was in deep sleep for 20 minutes, you know? And so it was, it was just really an easy way for me to get in. And then I've been able to do other forms of meditation. I'm a big fan of, you know, one to two minute or three minute things throughout the day because finding 30 minutes to lay down or 15 minutes, even is just really hard for people. So how do I put this in my practice with folks? I introduce them to something like this, NSDR or Yoga Nidra, and help them get a felt sense in their body. Because what we know now is like this is kind of bringing the sleeping state into the waking state. So you're kind of slowing the brain waves and then awake with that. And the more that you practice it, the easier it is to kind of drop into that state, just seated breathing. So, you know, a lot of the people I work with are very busy, you know, and and I find myself that, and I'm sure you do too. It's not even as a yoga teacher, you're not always probably it's it's not as always easy to find the the time to practice. Or if you're stressed out, you're not gonna like in the middle of a meeting, you're super stressed and just start, you know, doing postures in the board, right? It just doesn't or lay down. So I I I I do a couple things, like I try to introduce this to them, and what I'll say to them, you know, the best time to do it is first thing in the morning, second best is mid-afternoon, third best is in the evening, fourth best is just whenever you can. Just like try to practice this, you know, three to five times a week for a month. And then, you know, I'll say to them because you are getting rest from it, like even if you have to wake up earlier to do it, or you know, you do it late in the day, and it's counterintuitive. You get rest and then it kind of energizes you. Then I'll bring in different proactive and reactive tools that they can use. So proactive tool is something that you schedule. So I'm gonna schedule my Yoga Nidra at 7 a.m., right? So I have that. I whether I need it or not, I'm I'm doing that. Uh proactive tools could be things like coaching or working out or whatever people do that they schedule. And then reactive tools are the things that they use in the moment that they get stressed, they realize that they're like maybe not thinking clearly, they're upset in a way that's a little bit, you know, uh beyond where whatever the situation is calling for. So, what's something in breath, movement, or connection or like some sort of behavior that you can use really quickly and have access to anywhere that can kind of help you, you know, act go from activation of the sympathetic nervous system to activation of the parasympathetic? So going from kind of activation to to resource or relaxation. And those are things that need that should take a minute, you know, seven breaths, maybe that's two minutes, making a phone call, going for a walk, something like that around the office, even or just outside to the car and coming back, you know, having people do these little kind of micro practices either throughout the day in transition or when they recognize that they're kind of off the beam a little bit. Um, so kind of trying to anchor it with some practice. You know, I'd love for them to say I'm gonna do it every day for 90 days. I, you know, it depends on the person. So I collaborate with them to come up with a plan. And it might be, you know, it might be every day. Some people are like, I gotta do this. I love it. It could be three times a week, could be once a week. And then kind of anchoring that to these shorter practices that people can actually use and have access to.

SPEAKER_00 47:32

That's that's so sweet. I um I've interviewed folks and now good friends with a couple of yoga nidra researchers with she's looking at um addiction and insomnia, and it's just it's such a fascinating experience and practice that um I can't imagine life without it anymore. That's it's incredible. Um, how have these free tools, lifestyle choices like a yoga practice and a yoga nidra, what has been the result in your in your um work for your clients? Like is this helping them through addiction or is it a supplemental tool to also um kind of guide them through making better decisions? And is there or how do you view these sort of um techniques?

SPEAKER_01 48:30

Yeah, I I I think that even people that suffer not even people, people that suffer with addiction are not generally waking up every morning and saying, How can I destroy my life? How can I ruin the people's lives around me? I mean, there's a uh Carl Jung wrote a letter to Bill Wilson, who was the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. Bill Wilson had written a letter to him saying that he had actually kind of a lot of his work had informed what they did with Alcoholics Anonymous, and by then there'd been like a couple million members, and people were really transforming. I mean, it it it especially when it started in the 30s, and and people have different opinions of it, whatever. Um you know, it's it's different today than it was back then. But, you know, maybe I'll get pushback on this, but basically your, you know, your solution to really chronic alcoholism back then was to be locked up forever or have a lobotomy. I mean, it was there wasn't like a, you know, and and Carl Jung had worked with uh this guy Roland Hazard, who then had met one of Bill Wilson's friends, and kind of that's what kind of got them on this like idea of uh creating some sort of trying to find a way to create some sort of spiritual upheaval. And Carl Jung, Bill Wilson wrote a letter to him and basically said, Thank you. You don't know that you impacted what we did, but you did. And Carl Jung wrote back, and this is in the 60s, so this is now 30 some years later, or 30 years later from when they formed it, or when he first worked with that guy in in Sweden. And or uh was it Switzerland in Europe? Swiss. Was he Swiss? Swiss Switzerland. And uh apologies. And he uh basically, and I'm gonna paraphrase this, said, you know, I there's something that I wanted to say back then that I I I I probably would have been you know kind of torn apart by my colleagues, but that alcoholics when they drink were seeking, you know, they're basically seeking union with God. You know, they were they were looking for this kind of I would translate that, you know, or or expand it to even be they're searching for mindfulness, they're searching for presence. People use drugs and alcohol because they work. They work, they work fast. I'd say they don't maybe work long or well over a period of time, especially when we're talking about people using at the you know level or it's destroying their lives or or or others' people's lives. And that's not everybody who drinks, and that's not everybody who does drugs. We're talking about the the the the people who fit in the in these categories. So you know, they're seeking something, you know, they're almost like seeking this positive change, even if it's just like stop the shakes. You know, so they're looking for wholeness. And and that's what he said, translated in medieval languages, wholeness was like union with God. So whether you're someone that believes in God or not, I mean, we can turn it to like just being whole, being complete, being present, being okay, being at peace, being at rest, being relaxed, however you want to define that. You know, I mean, we hear that with people that would just maybe people that don't have alcohol problems, but they're going to happy hour. They're like, I want to take the edge off. People say that all the time, right? They take the edge off. The edge of what? Right? What's driving them such that they need to reach for something, you know, and oftentimes it's it's how their history, you know, in my work with people, it's how their history is informing them and patterns that they've developed that were survival patterns, especially in their formative years, that they're now operating unconsciously and automatically in a way that it just doesn't fit the environment they're in, or it doesn't fit all of the environments they're in. I work with so many guys that are extremely successful in their businesses. They can build a business, they can make money, they can lead a team, you know, a problem happens, they can handle it, and then they go home, their wife looks at them the wrong way, their kid whines, and they fall apart. Like they're really good in transactional environments. What they how they, you know, what their survival patterns were allows them. Probably when they were younger, there was something going on where they needed to perform to get attention, right? Everything they were treated as a transaction, like you be, you know, if you're okay and you're quiet or you're successful, then we're okay. Some version of that, and that allows them to thrive in certain environments, but that's not the same way to thrive in a in a marriage or as a dad, right? Like you said, you work with football players, right? If the football player, you know, if they get on the field for three hours on Sunday and they're running as fast as they can, tackling everybody, getting tackled, you know, being nasty, you know, like they're supposed to. And then they the game ends and they run off the field and tackle everybody that they see in the hallway on the way home in the grocery store, they're gonna be exhausted, lose their friends, and probably get arrested. Right? It's like, how do you identify we don't want people to like lose some of these patterns, but where are they appropriate? Where are they not?

SPEAKER_00 54:12

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I it's just I see I see this in myself for sure. I definitely see this in myself for sure, looking at you know, as an athlete. That's all that's all I was going to say. I'm shaking my head because I remember in wrestling, it was the way my father would respond would be not not great if I lost to the point, you know, where maybe it's like old school quote unquote. But I think that really kind of carried into making decisions as an adult, you know, at times.

SPEAKER_01 54:51

Listen, I mean, it's not it's not crazy to think. I mean, I was talking to someone yesterday who's like, I I and he's a very smart guy, and he's like, I'm kind of thinking that like the environment that I was in can have an impact with with with how I am today. And I was like, Well, yeah, I mean, think we call them our formative years for a reason. That's where everything's forming, how we are in relationships, how we understand the world. And like I said before, we probably you know didn't evolve to like move out of the family or environment that we're in and be in other environments. We just we we stayed in that one. I'm not saying that we should go back to that. I'm just saying we need to recognize that you know, we're not really good with transition or change like that without being conscious about it. And just because you know, I want something different, if I've only swam in these waters, but say they're polluted waters, that doesn't mean I'm gonna know how to swim in the clean water, right? That might not be the best example, but I, you know, I mean, taste is informed by the environment we grow up in. If you go to China, they eat a certain way. If you go to Italy, they eat a certain way, uh-huh, you know, and sometimes people eat things that I would find disgusting, but if I grew up there, I would love it. If taste is informed, why isn't how we relate to others and the world? Really, and I think a lot of that relates to how our nervous system was developed. I mean, we were we're we're before we're born, we're connected to somebody else's nervous system. And I really believe that our nervous system kind of forms in a way to to prepare us for the world we're coming into. And if there's a lot going on, we're gonna absorb some of that. So when you ask me how does this kind of stuff impact and what does it do for them, you know, I don't only work with, I mean, uh that's at the extreme end of the people who are addicted to drugs and alcohol. I think it's it's a lot of my clients don't have any issues with that, but we find that they're still attached to certain patterns that they've been running for a long time. It's like an older operating system and a newer environment. So, how do we recognize what that operating system is? Look at its strengths, right? And its weaknesses and its strengths for what environments we should use it in. I mean, another example I give is an F1 car is an amazing vehicle and they're very, very, very expensive, but they're worthless on the highway. Just like my pickup is worthless on an F1 track. You know, and and if you only have one gear or one model, you're not gonna, you're gonna do well in the environment, you're gonna do great on the F1 track and terrible everywhere else. You know, I'm I'm a I'm a therapist. I I did this, you know. I I do, you know, I've I've been fortunate to do well in this and be able to like do a lot of things and work with really cool people. Um, you know, I didn't get into it for the money. If I did, I would have done something else. But I, you know, it is it's it it it's a passion, sometimes it's work, but I I I I enjoy it. It's part of my DNA now. But my wife doesn't want me to be a therapist when I walk in the house every day. She wants my advice, she's gonna ask me. But if if I'm constantly looking at her through the lens of what my clients were or my talking, you know, people pay me money to challenge them and to, you know, notice things and and to help them see where they're falling short. And if I walk in the house and and treat my kids like that all the time, you know, like it's that 50 minutes or an hour that I have with my client, uh they're not gonna want to hang out with me.

SPEAKER_02 58:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:28

Now that doesn't mean that there's times that I don't use everything that I have in dealing with my kids, but I do, but at the appropriate time. So, you know, how can we understand ourselves in a way that we can you know not be chameleons or different people, but understand, you know, when's the time for this and when's the time for that? What's the season? You know, I'm gonna be differently vulnerable at work than I am at home. And I can still be authentic, right? So helping them understand that and moving into kind of a an authenticity, which authenticity is not just I am who I am, right? If we look at authenticity, the root of the word is auth, which is the same as author. So if we could carry that forward, it's like, how am I gonna stop plagiarizing from my past and repeating things over and over again and start writing kind of a I be the author of it, right? I'm gonna write what happens next. And and and an author creates, right? Someone who writes the story, the same story again and again, or somebody else's story is a plagiarizer. So how do we how do we move from that? And and that's that's how some of a lot of these practices help and helping them, you know, find that space between the stimulus and response, right? And recognize I'm not at threat right now. I can sit here, I can be. The the working title of the book I'm writing is called How to Feel Bad. Because you know, most of the time my clients come to they say I want to feel good. I'm like, well, first we need to learn how to feel bad. Like we need to learn how to deal with discomfort, build emotional talk, emotional resilience and distress tolerance in a way that um we can be with the things we don't like without making, you know, without reacting like they're gonna kill us.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:13

Yeah, I I love that. Um so many people think things like therapy and and yoga are um well, especially yoga, you know, that's bliss, it's gonna be just blissful. But I'm always telling them, no, you really want to invite all of it to your mat, all of it to you.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:36

That's bump sticker bliss, by the way, because bliss is really not a right. I'm gonna experience all of it. Things are gonna break, people are gonna die. I'm gonna, I'm gonna experience all of it, right? And and things like yoga, right? People see it as the postures, and that's one of the eight limbs, an eight-limb yoga, right? That's just a very small part of it. And like my teacher used to say, if you're gonna use yoga for physical exercise, it'll work, but it's like taking a 747 to the 711 to get milk. It's got it's got more power to it, right? And and it shouldn't just be about feeling good, just like therapy. And I I I've got some challenges with how therapy has evolved. If we look at you know, cognitive behavioral therapy, uh, rational motive behavioral therapy, other schools, even like DBT or most of the schools of therapy, when we look at them, they're about challenging, challenging beliefs, challenging emotions, challenging thoughts. You know, and a lot of I think uh, you know, a lot of people get into this, like me. You know, we want to help people, we want to be liked. It's hard to challenge people. One of my friends says it's always it's easy to be a good therapist that'll people come to you, just listen to them and agree. It's hard to be a great therapist, you got to challenge them. You know, you shouldn't love your therapist all the time. You should sometimes be pissed off at him. Yeah, you know, and and and I think we've lost some of that in our field. I'm glad that people have access to it through, you know, online therapies and stuff like that. But a lot of the the people coming out of school, and I work with around a lot of young therapists, they're going right into a private practice, they're not working in an agency and understanding how an interdisciplinary team works and how to challenge people and how to hold them accountable. Like, I mean, sometimes a guy comes to me and says, My wife's calling me an asshole and then tells me what's going on. And I, you know, sometimes I gotta say, kind of sounds like you're being an asshole. Or, you know, like I'm not calling all my clients' names, don't be like just telling me that, or it's like sometimes the way I'm experiencing a year like that. Like, I I don't think that's happening for somebody who's texting an online platform. And I'm not saying those things don't have a place, I'm not saying that, but you know, I I was reading an article yesterday that says we're more aware of our mental health and talking about it more than ever, and it still seems to be getting worse. Like, how are we handling it? Like, it's like you have a mental health issue, you need to be coddled. No, a lot of times we need to be challenged, and not in a way that we traumatize people, but so much of our problems are that we're not facing discomfort.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:16

Is that a cultural thing? Do you feel? I feel like we really resist, obviously, always we're human beings. But I feel like anymore, I feel it's more so that people really don't push on that button in their lives where um they want to feel comfort, they want to not do the tough thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:37

I don't think it's a cultural thing, I think it's an evolutionary thing. And here's what I mean by that. I I I I heard my my friend, the the writer Michael Easter say this, something like this that, and I I really I think this is brilliant. Like we're built to do really hard things, but we're programmed, I think this is how he said we're built to do really hard things, but we're programmed to do the next easiest thing. So, how do I translate that, right? We there's people like literally you wouldn't like it, but if we dumped you with a bunch of you know, people, indigenous people in the Arctic, you could survive. We could live in the Arctic. But if you were living in the Arctic, you wouldn't go for a run. You would eat as much food as you possibly could when you could eat it, you would sleep as much as you possibly could. It's a survival mechanism to not work extra hard. You're not gonna like go on a hunt and then come back and like lift weights, right? You're gonna conserve the energy that you have, right? And I think that's what we had to do for so much of our history. Now it's it's not a you know, everyone said the the generation. I mean, probably every the last every generation says this, right? This last generation, they're lazy. Um if I grew up in the same generation as my teenager, I probably would be doing a lot of the same things they're doing. I'd be figuring out how to use AI and my, you know, to do school. I'd be ordering food instead of going after it. I'd be sitting around. I mean, like we're not, I think we have to go against some of our programming to do something hard. And I'm I'm not that doesn't let people off the hook, but it's like recognize okay, we have to do do this. Like we don't struggle for anything really, and I think that's a big part of the problem, you know. And and we we don't have to go hunt, but we don't also have to go to the grocery store anymore. You just press a button on your phone and it shows up. I and I get there's places in the world it's not like that, but for a lot of people here, that's what it's like, and why not? You know, I'm I'm I'm I'm probably not gonna go, you know, to my wife, like you know what, we should really start hunting and gathering. Like I I'm not even going to say we're going to start going back to the grocery store. I mean, it it costs a little bit more, but it saves us so much time with three kids running around that stuff gets delivered.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:09

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:10

But we have to recognize that. And that means we have to, and then of course, there's probably more things that are available to us to make it easier. I mean, there are. And the food we eat and all that kind of stuff. But again, we go back to what are the solutions to it? Some sort of breath, some sort of movement, sort of community, some sort of, you know, but what how do we challenge ourselves?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:35

Yeah, I feel like that sort of mental, emotional, psychological challenge is harder than um a lot of other challenges in life. But I think there is a way to practice that, like we said in the onset, like the mind and body being connected. But I feel like yoga is a great things like yoga are a great way to kind of practice being uncomfortable and like skillfully give put enough on your plate to challenge yourself, um, but not so far that you go off the deep end. Like, do you is that sort of metaphor? Does that make sense? It makes sense in my mind, or is that am I oversimplifying that? Like, are you okay?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:20

I mean, I look at if if we look at yoga, right? The postures are designed to box. If we're gonna just look at the postures, right? Designed to box, kind of box your body into something that's uncomfortable. But you don't want to go so far past discomfort that you're hurting yourself. You want to go to the edge of discomfort, stay there a little bit longer, come back. Not much different in therapy. We want to go to, you know, you don't want to like expose somebody to like exposure therapy works really well unless you expose them too fast or to the thing or you re-traumatize them. But like, you know, if you're gonna talk about a car accident that happened, you might not talk about the accident. You might talk first about like the morning they woke up and how they knew they were alive, right? And then if you're gonna talk about it, you know, and it happened at first and elm, you might start at eighth and elm, right? And then you move in and you recognize it's a little bit as they're remembering it uncomfortable, then you're gonna move back from it, and then you're gonna come in a little bit more, right? It's building that that that you're pendulating and kind of building that that flexibility. I think the same thing with our physical bodies and anything, like you don't want to like you start working out now, you're gonna work out every single day if you haven't worked out forever, and you're just gonna lift heavy as heavy weights as possible. That's not the you you gotta like you wanna go to that edge and then and then come back, and over time you're gonna be able to handle more, you know. Um, and and I but I think you know, things like yoga are great, like I guess you are pushing, and I go to this Raja yoga class, which is like uh it's heated, so hot is uncomfortable, but it's also not it's not very like uh it's not like a vinyasa or class where it's like a lot of you're you're really on the mat the whole time and you're holding these positions, like just on your back or like putting your shoulder underneath and threading it through, but you're holding it there for three to five minutes. And at first it doesn't feel like anything, and then I'm into it. I'm like, this is like the most like and it's not uncomfortable here, it's here. Like, okay, how do I, you know, that's why that's why I mean that's one of the things I love. Whether you can go online and Google saunas and cold plunges, and people say this helps, this isn't, this isn't. I think one of the best benefits of it, you're doing something that's really hard and uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:41

Totally.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:42

I mean, there's nothing more uncomfortable than wait me waking up in the morning and getting in a really cold in cold water. Whether that has a benefit, and I'm not saying it does or doesn't to the inflammation of my body or whatever's happening, if nothing else, I've done something hard.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:04

No, I love that because then that can translate through to that email that you didn't want to send, to that conversation you didn't want to have. Like, oh, I can handle this, right? I've got a little more room in my nervous system.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:18

Yeah. I really um really appreciate you unpacking this in a way that I could understand and and people could um benefit from and and really understand. Um I know I've taken up a decent amount of your day here so far, but is there anything else that you um want to discuss? Or I I was very interested in your experience and your your work involving and implementing practices that are accessible to um to folks, like like yoga, obviously, and yoga nidra and mindfulness. Um but is and we brought up breath work, but is there anything any other tools?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:16

It sounds like you're totally open to working with the individual and trying uh I mean I I I I think you know I look at interventions that we use in psychotherapy or in the workshops I do or as coach as as kind of a doorway into the room that is that person, right? And so how are we gonna get in that room? And you know, I it's easy for me to also look because I've seen people have these cathartic experiences and you know, like really just see things differently, and it's like this big weight lifted off them. Excuse me, almost like some white light spiritual experience. And it what I have to remember is sometimes it doesn't have to be that, right? Like it might be something learned over time, or things that I think might be very like uh I want to go really deep. And uh but some people where you start to go shallow, and I don't mean shallow in like a meaningless sense, I just mean not as deep, like like in a swimming pool, you know, like if they've never experienced that or never looked at it, it can it can make a huge difference for them, right? And and sometimes trying to dive in the deep end first can be really dangerous, right? I mean, hell, if you can't, if you don't know how to swim, you can drown in the shallow end, right? So, how do we kind of guide people in slowly and understand them and help them not go all the way to you know some sort of like in yoga, like an injury, like if they can only bend this far, telling them they have to touch their toes, like they're gonna not come back tomorrow because they're gonna be hurting so bad. It's it's counter, it's counterintuitive. But I think a lot of these tools and things help people have uh a different experience in their body and their mind and their nervous system, right? It's like an altered state. I mean, it's why we're seeing, I think we're seeing a lot of uh discussion around psychedelics and the the place that they have. And you know, I always they're the what I would caution people is they're not a magic pill, they're effective, they're not effective for every single person, right? I mean, some people are allergic to peanuts, right? Why wouldn't they have a different you know and a lot of these things have been around for a long time, but let's look at what they are, you know, they're not really they're helping people have uh in in some ways a very profound and valuable experience that they can see themselves, they can see the world differently, and now they've got more available to them. But I think you know it's kind of like whatever you want, your your transformed self is on the top of this building, and there's a there's there's no staircase and elevator, you can this giant trampoline and go see it and like kind of view it and understand it, but you can't get up and down, right? So now your job is to go build the staircase and the elevator, and I think we build those through our practices, you know, as life comes on, we could clear out if there was a way for us to clear out every wound, injury, traumatic experience, stress that you've ever had, you're gonna create it. There's gonna be a new one tomorrow, right? So, how do you then learn to recognize? And what I say to my clients all the time is like, how do you learn to recognize when you're out of just use the word peace, when you're out of peace sooner and return to it quicker? You know, you're gonna have bad days, you're gonna have days that you don't like things, you're gonna have a bad mood. They're not always all bad. You know, life can't be about having the things we want to happen happen more and the things we don't want to happen happen less. That's that's hedonistic, that's addiction. Like one day my parents are gonna pass. And if if hopefully if things are going, you know, I stay healthy, right? Or don't have an accident, I'm gonna be alive when they pass. And I love them. I don't want like that day to be like it doesn't affect me. I I I hope it, I'm not gonna like it then, but I hope it hurts like hell. I I love them, it's like something changed and I'm gonna miss them. And all you know, like I there's an experience there that's not always gonna be the one that I want or that I woke up to have. And most of the time, at least personally, and I see this in my clients, when we have like when life goes exactly the way we want it, we've sold ourselves short.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:54

I love that.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:55

I'm usually just thinking about how to get out of discomfort, not how to build something out.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:02

Uh-huh. Yeah, I really love that. I feel I feel that I feel that deeply from yoga. And it's not, it's always a practice, it's never, you know, perfect, but it I feel grateful sometimes when I um even when I feel lost, like even losing a pet. I'm like, how am I this out of bent out of shape over my dog passing, you know? And um then I just kind of think through yoga I've been able to say, you know, how lucky and grateful I am to have this creature in my life, this living being that I loved so much. And I was able to uh connect with something for years and develop that uh that kind of uh connection. Like if I feel grateful for the even the difficulty emotional loss there. I think I think eventually become grateful for those things, weirdly.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:03

Yeah, I mean I I think the the real gratitude is not just about, at least in the way I've been taught and view it, is not about I liked it happen. It's not that I'm just thankful it happened. It's like really being with what is as it is, like full acceptance, you know, and you know, there's this serenity prayer. Uh you may have heard, right? It says, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference, right? Very powerful. Like, what what do what do I just need to accept? What can I change? And then where's the discernment that I use? Most people don't know that that that that poem or prayer has some more prayer has some more stanzas. And in the next one, one of the lines is that depending on the translation, is like pain is the pathway to peace. You know, that the the pain is a touchstone of our spiritual growth. You know, we can't just nobody grows. I mean, that's the bumper sticker, is there's no growth in the comfort zone, right? Like you're not gonna you're not gonna get more flexible unless you go to your edge and feel uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:20

Right. You learn how to play that edge more skillfully with practice, I feel.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:25

If you got to be willing to go there, yeah, and sometimes it sucks, and that's okay. Yeah, and that's okay. It's like, what are you what are you choosing out of and how do you recognize it and how do you know about yourself?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:37

Hmm. So love this, Ryan. This is a really wonderful conversation. Even uh yeah, even I wasn't sure. I like going into these things with a little bit of sense of where we're going, but also I love the the kind of let it be organic and conversational. And I did not realize you were so um experienced and um a proponent of skills like like yoga and and yoga nidra. You know, I did hear you speak on it before, but but I didn't realize the depth and the breadth of work you've done with this has been really uh a good surprise, a fun, a fun conversation with you today.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:21

Thank you for having me. I really appreciate you reaching out. Um, hopefully, I mean, I got a lot of this. Hopefully, one other hopefully you did, and hopefully one other person. If that's the case, that's that's that's enough.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:34

Absolutely. And uh definitely it'll help a lot of my viewers. It's like I said, it's really refreshing to hear uh down-to-earth perspective uh in a way this communicated that everyone could understand. And uh um it's gonna help a lot of people. I know it's gonna help me, so I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:52

Great. If anybody wants to um, I make the uh like these 10, 15 minute videos on YouTube um every week. I'm gonna start doing it twice a week. So it's just my first two initials, RJ Swave, S O A V E. Um, and uh my website's RyanSwave.com if anyone wants to find me. But um beautiful. There's some couple yoga needers on that YouTube channel as well, if they want to hear my voice. If not, there's a lot of other great voices out there.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:22

Excellent. And I will link those in the show notes for for listeners. And um, and yeah, is there any else any anywhere else you want me to point them to uh no if they go there, they they can find me.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:34

Uh yeah, I'm on I'm on Instagram too. It's uh Ryan Swav S O A V E. Um uh if anybody wants to reach out, I'm happy to have a discussion or or or or anything. I don't really have anything to sell on there, just some some free uh tools and uh information for people. Excellent. Ryan, thank you. By next year I'll have a book to sell them.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:57

But that's well, when the book is ready and you're if you'd be up for it, I'd love to have you back on and and unpack the book. I'd love to obviously read the book and then maybe yeah, circle back. Sounds good. All right, Ryan. I appreciate it. Thanks for tuning in. If you found my conversation with Ryan to be informative, if it got you thinking, if you learned something, please give the podcast a like, share it with a friend, and subscribe. You can find me on all social media platforms, especially Instagram at Yoga with Jake, and on my website, yoga with Jake.com. Until next time, take care of the