Yoga -Take Back the Agency Of Your Own Health: A Healing Discussion with Certified Yoga Therapist Susi Amendola

After enduring a difficult period of anxiety and depression following a traumatic event at the age of 15, Susie Amendola found a powerful ally in yoga, which she shares in this episode of the Gaslit Truth Podcast. Susie's journey to healing began when her mother introduced her to yoga, during a time when mental health was rarely discussed, and holistic clinics offered a beacon of hope. For over three decades, Susie has been committed to teaching the authentic essence of yoga, and she joins us to discuss the transformative power of this ancient practice, contrasting its healing potential with the often commercialized versions found in the western world.

We also break down stereotypes and misconceptions about yoga, emphasizing its inclusivity and accessibility to individuals of all body types, shapes, and sizes. My own experience of becoming a certified yoga instructor during the pandemic shed light on trauma-informed yoga's focus on personal connection and self-awareness. By centering and embodying these practices, yoga emerges as a transformative tool for stress relief and healing, encouraging a culture where everyone can find a place, regardless of preconceived notions or physical abilities.

Our conversation further explores the principles of trauma-sensitive yoga and the importance of creating safe spaces for healing. Susie shares insights from her work with a lifestyle program for cardiac patients inspired by Dr. Dean Ornish, showcasing the profound impact of yoga, a vegan diet, and stress management on heart disease, depression, and diabetes. We delve into practical stress management techniques, the importance of internal self-care practices, and the value of mindfulness. By embracing these practices, we learn to foster a profound sense of well-being and presence, underscoring the power of yoga in personal healing and transformation.

Chapters

• 0:23 Gaslit Truth Podcast
• 14:36 Inclusive Yoga
• 19:55 Healing Through Trauma Sensitive Yoga
• 30:17 Revolutionary Heart Disease Lifestyle Program
• 38:33 Daily Stress Management Practices
• 46:44 Internal Self-Care and Stress Management

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:23

Hey everyone, you've been gaslit by Western Yoga. I'm Dr Tara Lynn here with therapist Jen, and you are listening to the Gaslit Truth Podcast. Today we have a special guest and we're going to bring her in right now.

Speaker 2: 0:39

Yeah, here she is everyone. What do we got here? Here she is everyone. What?

Speaker 1: 0:45

do? We got here, terry, all right. Please welcome Susie Amendola, certified yoga therapist and author of the new award-winning book the Centered Heart. Susie has been a stress management specialist for the past 32 years for the Ornish Lifestyle Medicine, which I hope we get to talk about a lot. She's also founded Yoga Now in Omaha, nebraska, in 1983, and it's one of the oldest running yoga studios in the Midwest. Please welcome Susie to the show.

Speaker 3: 1:18

Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:21

Yes, so we need to get into this, because I think there's so many misconceptions around yoga in the first place, and but before we do that, I wanted to get into your story about what got you here in the first place, because I know there's a good one to be had.

Speaker 2: 1:40

Yeah, which may or may not be in the book.

Speaker 3: 1:43

It actually is in the intro.

Speaker 2: 1:45

I know, oh yeah, it's in there, so it's yeah. Tell us about it, susie.

Speaker 3: 1:53

Well, you know, I grew up in the Chicago area and when I was about 15 years old, I went to a party and smoked weed, which is like you know. 15 year olds do this, these things.

Speaker 1: 2:03

Way to start strong on the podcast. I'm telling you right.

Speaker 3: 2:09

And you know, what happened to me was so unlike any experience I've ever had or any of my friends had ever had. I literally became so disoriented and it sort of almost like burned out my nervous system so that I couldn't, that I couldn't go to school, I couldn't go to work, I couldn't drive a car, I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep and it sort of resembled like anxiety and depression all put together. But at that time, because that was long ago, like in the 70s, there wasn't really anyone talking about mental illness or anxiety and certainly no one was really offering any kind of holistic alternatives to anxiety, and so I kind of suffered in silence and it was really traumatic. You know, I ended up, you know, after several years of suffering, my mom took me to a yoga class and there was a Swami there in Glenview Illinois, who kind of you know, had this center that they had like an ashram, almost like a yoga center, and my mom, who had had five children in five years, in six years, was losing her mind. Wow, naturally, I mean right. So she, I mean she was amazing, and so she said, hey, maybe going to yoga class would help. So I went, and it was for the very first time in a couple of years of suffering, I felt relief. Just in that moment I felt relief, and of course, at that clinic were also some kind of well-known doctors. I don't know if you've ever heard of Rudolph Ball. I felt relief, just in that moment I felt relief, and of course at that clinic were also some kind of well-known doctors. I don't know if you've ever heard of Rudolph Ballantyne. He wrote a book called Radical Healing many years ago, but he was a fairly well-known psychiatrist and he was there and working as a homeopath and a yoga therapist and a Ayurvedic specialist. And so he was this amazing doctor who had a clinic, and part of that clinic was teaching people yoga as a way to sort of manage health and teaching them how to cook and how to eat and how to take care of themselves. So I, I hooked up with that clinic and also started doing yoga and my life started to change.

Speaker 3: 4:21

And you know the reason that I didn't. I, you know, I, I, I went to doctors but nobody could really put their finger on what was happening to me, and one of the things that really scared me was I had a friend. I don't mention this in the book, but I had a friend whose mother had had a lot of anxiety and now was staring at a wall in a room in their house that none of our friends were allowed to go in because she had had shock treatments and that was the kind of treatment that was offered for anxiety. So I just could not tell anyone, I was just terrified. And so it took me a long time to find help. And I found help in this alternative world and it sort of threw me into all different worlds, you know, like some chiropractors that were working with unusual kinds of therapies, but it really was the yoga that made the difference.

Speaker 3: 5:13

And after a few years of practicing I moved to the ashram that they had, that they had moved to Pennsylvania, in the Poconos, and it was this old seminary that they had taken over, knows, and it was this old seminary that they had taken over, and just being able to walk in these sort of hills and mountains and have this amazing food cooked for you every day and it was Ayurvedic or yogic food, which was vegetarian at the time, and, you know, being in community and doing meditation every day it really slowly just started to turn things for me and the life started changing and so that was, you know, my sort of introduction into the world of yoga. And at that time yoga was not practiced like it is now. It was kind of considered weird and crazy and um, but it was, it was my saving grace at that time and so I sort of made a commitment to myself that I would try to teach other people. So I sort of made a commitment to myself that I would try to teach other people, and I've been doing that ever since.

Speaker 1: 6:08

So I want to just kind of touch on this idea that it wasn't the way yoga is practiced now. Okay, and I think that is a very important distinction, because Western yoga, in my opinion and you can correct me if I'm wrong is not yoga. Often it is workout. It is definitely not the same as how you were taught, and that's why we started the show with You've Been Gaslit by Western Yoga. So what is the difference between the yoga that you were taught and that you teach and traditional Western yoga?

Speaker 3: 6:51

Yeah, I want to be careful here because I have a lot of friends in this world.

Speaker 2: 6:58

And I think you know around. But we've got some controversy here and I'll bring in some questions too, as someone who is more the traditional Western yoga in the way I have learned it Right. So it's open, curious conversation, right, well?

Speaker 3: 7:13

here's the thing. I think that you know there's a place for a lot of different kinds of yoga, but the kind of yoga that I was taught was really from a Swami. You know, I lived with a Swami and the practices were with a spiritual tone that there was. There were ethical precepts that, under that, were the foundation for all the other practices, and I think in some ways, buddhism and yoga have both suffered in the West because the ethical precepts aren't often taught with it, and ethical precepts not about do's and don'ts, but just a framework for understanding the tradition and a framework for working with your own mind and your own heart. And so you know, I think that what we see a lot in what is now Western yoga and it's changing, it's shifting. I see it shifting, but what we saw when it came in was this kind of athletic approach and a very competitive approach and also an over like what I would call like micromanaging people's bodies and to me that's where they went off the rails like trying to tell people, trying to touch people and move people and telling them how to move and what to move and where to move. And while there's some value to that in some ways, I think it's not the kind of yoga that I was taught and it's certainly not the kind of yoga that I understand to be healing for things like trauma and anxiety and depression and mental health and all of the and just physical health. I often call that kind of yoga.

Speaker 3: 8:42

Simon says yoga and it's a lot like the medical world, like. I feel like the difference between yoga and medicine is that medicine is like saying everything is wrapped around an external locus of control. So the doctor heals you, the medicines heal you, the nurses heal you, but you don't have any agency in your own health. And I feel like this Western yoga kind of did the same thing a little bit when it came in. It's like the teacher becomes you know, I'm going to show you instead of you. You have all that you need inside of you and I'm just going to turn you towards that and help you unravel that so that you can be your own teacher, and help you unravel that so that you can be your own teacher.

Speaker 3: 9:27

I think that it took away that self-responsibility when we started telling people how to move and micromanaging their movements. And when I teach the movements now you know I talk about it in terms of health. And you know, in Ayurvedic medicine, which is the sister science to yoga, they say disease knocks three times, and when you don't listen, it takes you, and so the movements are part of listening. I love that, yeah.

Speaker 1: 9:50

That actually spoke to me for just a second it speaks to everyone.

Speaker 3: 9:53

It's a very yes, thank you. It's a very profound statement, but I believe it's really true. I believe that we get a lot. I have so many participants in the Ornish program that have come to me and said I knew something wasn't right, I just didn't listen. I knew I was sick, I just didn't listen, or the doctor told me it wasn't anything, or whatever their story is, they've lost agency, and I feel like that's what yoga is supposed to do is introduce you to yourself. It takes you back to yourself and gives you agency and healing power. And so that's what didn't come with this age of yoga. That kind of moved in. It was really more about who can do what and how much they can do and how much you sort of don't listen to your body. Well, that's.

Speaker 2: 10:41

I think that's a big piece.

Speaker 2: 10:43

As somebody who does more of the traditional Western yoga, I can tell you that I will be in that yoga, in that studio or in that room, in that space, and I find myself comparing myself two ways from Sunday, from everybody else in the room, right from the instructor, to the people that are around me.

Speaker 2: 11:05

Now I being trained in, in, in, in some some mindfulness, just by proxy of my job. Right, that's helped me because I understand, I can understand this ethical piece that you're talking about, where I have to continue to turn my mind to go focus on me, focus on my body, focus on what it feels like, not that that ass next to me who can do like the eight pointed star and just kill, right, like, because that's what we do. But in traditional Western yoga you're not quite taught that that part's not brought in as much Now. Now the words are there when talking through yoga and trying to this is your practice through yoga, and trying to this is your practice, your body, you know. But it's not something that's almost preloaded heavily for people to be able to be in the space of. You're the only person in there, in the space, even if there's 30 other people in there.

Speaker 3: 11:56

Well, jen, I love that because I think that's something, that because I train yoga teachers and that's been part of my job for many years, and one of the things I always tell people is it's not a script. You can't say words and then not back them up. And I think that one of the biggest things I had happened to me early on and I won't say the teacher's name, but this one teacher wrote this beautiful book all about how you listen to yourself. And then I went to his class in Los Angeles and the first thing he said is everybody get up and stand on your head and I thought what, where am I? And so the book didn't match the class.

Speaker 3: 12:28

And I'm like oh, people can say a lot of things, but if they're not teaching in a way that's allowing for people to listen to themselves, then they've lost the point. And so I think that there's good intentions, because the words are there, but there has to be some way of teaching that we allow for people's differences and we allow for them to really listen. And you know, I once brought this really great yogi to Omaha. His name was Amrit Desai. He started Kripalu If you've ever heard of Kripalu, the Center for Health in Massachusetts, it's one of the best known yoga places in the world, really and he started this school of the best known yoga places in the world, really. And he started this school. But what he said his name was Amrit Desai and he said doing yoga without relaxing in between is like planting a garden and then leaving town when the crops come in.

Speaker 1: 13:20

I've done that. I do that all the time. I plant gardens and then I leave them. So, maybe that's what I did with my yoga practice.

Speaker 3: 13:27

Maybe that's what I did with my yoga practice and there's something that's so great, there's something so important about pausing in between so we can integrate what's happening to us, and so so many of the yoga practices that people teach, it's just a constant flow of movement, but there's not this redirection inward to move and then listen. Okay, what do you notice when you move this way? Okay, now move again and see what you notice. Can you move right up to your edge of comfort, discomfort? Pause there, breathe there, and does that range of comfort change? Does your comfort level expand? Or do you feel like you're fighting yourself and you're sort of moving into your sympathetic nervous system, sort of fighting yourself?

Speaker 3: 14:08

So there has to be that kind of permission and a framework, a framing of how to practice for people and I think that's missing in yoga and, like I said, I think people are coming back to it. Long-term yoga teachers are finally getting fed up with the way that they're teaching and they're coming back to some of these really basic ways of teaching. But it's been a long time, it's been a long haul of this kind of yoga. That's like athletics.

Speaker 1: 14:38

Yes, because I want to point out I don't have a small yoga body, as you would see wearing leotards or yoga pants and doing all these-.

Speaker 2: 14:49

You could totally wear a leotard Terry.

Speaker 1: 14:52

Just saying the next podcast. I may or may not be in a leotard, Anyway, but when I think about it it should be yoga for everybody, because it's yoga for everybody. And that's one of the pushbacks I get. A lot is that I don't have the body for yoga.

Speaker 3: 15:11

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 15:11

That goes back into the yoga is for exercise.

Speaker 2: 15:14

Right.

Speaker 1: 15:15

And the yoga is for perception, not perception. Perception, perfection, right, like body perfect, pose, perfect, yeah. So over COVID. When that happened, I was bored Right. So over COVID. When that happened, I was bored right. And so I got certified in yoga. Okay, to be a yoga instructor, which I have never instructed yoga. I did it because I was bored and I wanted to learn more. But really what it was was here's how you do every pose right. Here's anatomy. So we learned anatomy and then we learned posing right. We didn't learn pausing, we didn't learn checking in. We didn't learn checking in. We didn't learn any of those things. It was all very much exercise, almost based yoga.

Speaker 1: 16:00

Previous to that, I used to have a clinic and we had a yoga instructor there and her name was Heather hats off to Heather and she introduced me to trauma informed yoga, which is something that I had never seen or heard of before, and it was very, very different. Different in so much that people from my clinic resisted doing it because they would come in to do it and they expected a traditional exercise yoga class.

Speaker 1: 16:32

And that is not what she gave and I sat in there and hers was very much check in with your body. If moving like this feels right to you, then go ahead and move like this. Yeah, you know that type of stuff and I got complaints.

Speaker 1: 16:47

She's not teaching yoga, she's not all these things, and I'm like actually she is you know, um, actually, and so I'm like so then I didn't do a very good job of educating what it would look like differently, you know, than what traditional yoga is, and so I was really grateful to have that experience as something entirely different yoga for every body. So, yeah, so if you were to have somebody say like that's not yoga, I'd like for you to explain in layman's term what yoga is for people and what it can do, and maybe incorporate a little bit of the vagus nerve into that conversation, if you would please.

Speaker 3: 18:32

Okay, well, let me just say this, after you've said all that about yoga for everybody. I wanted to just say that if you come to classes at our center, nobody is wearing tights, by the way. People come in their jeans, they come in baggy clothes, they come in a sweatshirt, they come, and we have very few. We have bodies of all sizes, all shapes, we have people of all ages. You know, I have people in their eighties that come, I have people in their teens that come, and it's very much a different approach, obviously. But I don't say yoga for everybody and I don't do all those things because I don't want people to like even. I mean, there's no question that it's for everybody in my mind. So when people come, they're like oh my God, I didn't know this even existed. I hadn't, because I think that, no matter what you say, people already have an idea about what it is, and so you know, there's a very, there's a very sort of ancient definition of yoga. But I think that I'll just say that the kind of yoga that I teach and the kind of yoga that I talk about in the book the Centered Heart is really practices that grew out of my understanding of yoga for healing, and while yoga was more of a spiritual endeavor, there's so many of those practices that are for healing and I'll say that some of the things that you want to look for in a class, if you're looking for yoga for healing, is someone that does a centering practice, which is an embodiment practice.

Speaker 3: 19:56

You talk about trauma sensitive yoga. Well, trauma sensitive yoga is really about how am I going to move back into a body that I've left because I've whatever, for whatever reason, can't live in there anymore because it's too scary. So how do I create safety in my own body? Because the yoga teacher, while they can do some things to create safety, the safety has to come from the person. You can't say this is safe for you, because for some people that won't feel safe and trauma is so different for everyone, and one thing that I learned in teaching people with heart disease is that everyone has trauma. Everyone is coming with that. Everyone has trauma. Everyone is coming with some sort of trauma. So how do you create a space, for? Some people need to sit by the door with their eyes open. Some people are okay lying down. Some people need to stand up. Some people need to move around and not lay on their back. Some people need to lay on their belly. How do you give permission for that in a class? And so when you're looking at the kind of yoga that I'm doing, you want to find something where they're giving permission to move into the body, like in whatever way is comfortable for you, and that they're doing things like we call postures instead of calling them asanas. We call them gentle movements, so that you have the idea that you want to move gently with yourself we do.

Speaker 3: 21:10

Every class has some element of relaxation and a lot of it has what's called yoga nidra or yogic sleep, and yoga relaxation is so important because it helps us sleep, but also because it rests the mind and the body deeper than sleep. So it's one of those things that's left out of yoga, but it's probably in my mind. In working with people with heart disease and all kinds of chronic illness, sleep is the bit, one of the big issues, and so relaxation is one of the most important pieces, and not just relaxing between poses, but taking a good 20 minutes to relax at the end systematically and really have the feeling of letting go of what's holding, like all the holding in the body. And oftentimes, in the end of relaxation, I'll say to people things like imagine letting go of the edges and the boundaries of body so that you feel a more expansive version of yourself, a version of yourself that's connected to everything living and breathing, that it's not just you but you are part of everything in this universe. So things like that, where you have this sense of oneness because yoga actually translates to mean oneness, unity it's that individual consciousness joining with a kind of higher consciousness, and so that aspect has to be incorporated into a class, giving people the opportunity to feel themselves bigger, to have a more expansive presence than this sort of gripping down that we do all the time.

Speaker 3: 22:37

And when you talk about the vagus nerve, you know those reactions of fight, flight and freeze, you know, are so common that we don't even know that. There's another reaction, which is to rest and digest. You know we don't even have that as part of our, our, you know language anymore, and so so doing these long relaxations really help to sort of shift the nervous system over from these states of, you know, fight or freeze into a kind of rest and digest kind of response. So they're training. So a lot of what yoga is is nervous system retraining or building resilience through yoga.

Speaker 3: 23:14

So those two aspects of gentle movement relaxation, breathing practice and breathing practice that's being taught now is like also a competition, but it's ways of learning how to expand your capacity around breathing, that we have three ways that we breathe breathe long, wide and deep. Our breath moves in three ways and some of us get sort of through our training and through our stress we start breathing just in the upper you know the sort of deep upper breathing, and so we don't have any ability to use the lower part of our lungs. So yogic breathing is really retraining. It's like can you breathe and not. It's not like there's a right way to breathe, like I love this sort of thing. Everybody's talking about a square breathing. I think that's like one of the worst things that's ever happened to yoga, because everyone thinks that's the answer. That's how you breathe.

Speaker 2: 24:02

It's kind of giggled Cause that's like the one of the first things we get trained in as clinicians. Right, it's like the taboo stereotypical breathing. You know, like all the clients that I get, they're like I did my square breathing and it's not effective.

Speaker 3: 24:16

I'm like, well, no shit, yeah, yeah I mean, and there's so many aspects to breath, like how we breathe affects how we think and feel, and how we think and feel affects how we breathe. And so we have this one little part of us that can happen automatically. The autonomic nervous system takes over, but we can also, with our minds, affect our breath. Like that's crazy. So you know this ability to shift our nostril dominance. Like we have, we breathe an hour and 45 minutes through one side and then it shifts to the other side. We just a little subtle switch, but we have that going on all the time.

Speaker 3: 24:53

And to sort of understand that science of breath, and if your right nostril is blocked all the time and you're breathing predominantly left, you might experience more depression, and if you're breathing predominantly right, you might experience more anxiety. So how do you bring that into balance? Well, there's practices for that, you know, but they're not the end all beat, all practices. So it's like there's it's a subtle kind of training ground around yoga, that to understand when to use what and what helps what. You know what would help what and you know. So square breathing is certainly one thing you could do, but there's about 400 other things you could do. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know about square breathing, but there's about 400 other things you could do. I don't know.

Speaker 2: 25:30

Yeah, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.

Speaker 3: 25:55

I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't. Which is so interesting? Because if you ask me what is yoga? Well, yoga actually is meditation. But people always say I did my yoga and my meditation and they're the same thing and my meditation, I'm like they're the same thing.

Speaker 3: 26:12

Yoga, all of those practices like yoga postures, didn't exist 200 years ago. The practice of yoga, when they said posture, they meant a posture that's steady for meditation. They didn't mean all this. I didn't know that. Yeah, that's a new thing. Postures are new and so they're great because they're helpful for delivering. They can unblock patterns of energy, you know, so that for trauma, they can start to loosen things and sort of unhint, you know, unglue us from all this stuff that's happening. But they're a newer thing and so it's a really, you know, breath is, you know, more refined, but meditation is what I always say that yoga postures and breathing are a way of romancing the mind into meditation. That's really what their goal is is you're getting rid of tension so that you can sit still and you can have an experience of oneness, and so meditation is really part of every practice.

Speaker 3: 27:04

But if you go to a yoga class. I bet you've probably never been taught meditation. You've probably never been taught meditation, but that should be part of every yoga class, because the relaxation delivers you right to the doorstep of meditation. There you are and you're sitting in this practice. That's all about unification and seeing yourself as whole, and so that's where healing happens. Healing happens in that moment. So it's really interesting to me that people kind of run after things but then they don't sit and really experience what that is. That's healing.

Speaker 1: 27:37

Well, I think it's because we like structure right. So yoga posing is structured Do this, do this, do this, do this, do this, do this Whereas meditative breathing is, it has a framework, but you could do meditative breathing anywhere you are Like, you don't have to do a certain pose to do it, you can just be right. And I think, as society, people, we like that structure, we like a beginning, a middle and an end and we like to know that we're doing it right. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 28:14

And I think that's why postures became such a big part of yoga and they also are really helpful. They're really healing in some ways. But I think that what's really interesting is that you know postures can unlock blocks, but they can create them too. And same with breathing. Like breathing, you know you can use breath, like I'll always say to people like, imagine, go through your body and just notice where there's places that you feel blockage and see if you can make that area breathe, let that area itself breathe and as you're breathing, let it just gently unwind and let the tension in that area dissipate and let the breath carry it away. Like it's like you're unwinding with breath, and so you can do a lot with moving energy in the body just by directing your breathing.

Speaker 3: 28:59

Certain places Someone who has asthma? You don't tell them to take a deep breath because they can't breathe. So you say why don't you take your energy down into your feet and just feel as if your feet are breathing and it takes all the energy away from this fear that's happening here and it moves it down and starts to relax the lungs. You know. So there's different ways to approach different things that actually help people, you know? Yeah, so those are the elements, I think, and even imagery, which is a big part of yoga. Using imagery is so important, and you know everybody's really into Joe Dispenza now. Well, you know that's a basic part of yoga. All of his work is kind of a basic aspect of yoga, just in believing something to be true and where you put your attention, that's where your energy goes. So those qualities, all of those are chapters in my book the postures, breathing, relaxation, meditation, imagery, those are all aspects of yoga that you want to look for if you're looking for this kind of yoga that's particularly healing.

Speaker 2: 30:01

Yeah, yeah. So can you jump into and I know, Terry, if you're going to go here or not because I saw you were just about to ask something. I was going to ask if you could lead a little bit into sharing with us more about what the Ornish program is.

Speaker 3: 30:15

Oh sure, yeah, Okay, great, yeah. So you know, in 1993, I went to work in this program. They had called me because they were doing a lifestyle change program for people with cardiac disease and Dr Ornish had started his study in California where he was working with people and saw that doing lifestyle changes actually could stop and reverse heart disease. So he got Mutual of Omaha, got interested they're a company in Omaha and so they wanted to do a pilot like a multi-center lifestyle trial, and so they decided to do it in Nebraska. And so they called me up and said hey, you're the only person we know that lives here that has these kinds of this kind of training. Cause there was yoga happening here, like Iyengar yoga and yoga that wasn't inclusive of all these other aspects that we've talked about. And so they said would you come work for us? And I said absolutely not, because I had no interest in working in a hospital, because I had felt gaslit by doctors. So I was like there's no way I'm working in this program. So I went back to my life and a month later they called me again and said like what would it take for you to work in this program? And of course you know. I said I just can't imagine this. I lived in an ashram and and they said, well, the woman who is working with us now was a swami in an ashram and she teaches this. And I was like really, so my ears kind of went. And then they said how much? The hospital called and said how much money do you need? We'll give you $7. I'm like, forget it. And then they said, just name your price. And I thought, well, I'm going to say something outrageous. It was in 1990. I said $7, though that's still a little cheap in 1990. It was. And I said 75. And they said okay, so they went from seven to 75 in five minutes and I said, okay, I'll do it. And so the program changed my life.

Speaker 3: 32:07

It's the most amazing program. So it's actually a program of five components. It's diet, excuse me, four components. It's diet, which in this program? It's a vegan diet. There's some, you know, and I know there's question about that for a lot of people, but for heart disease it seems to have been quite an important piece.

Speaker 3: 32:28

It's diet, exercise, moderate exercise, about 30 minutes a day, and weight training a little bit of weight training, minutes a day and weight training a little bit of weight training, talking about your feelings in a group, so it's safe sort of talking, like you create the parameters of compassionate listening. So that's an hour of training. And then yoga, doing stress management, which is postures, breathing, relaxation, meditation and imagery. So they have to do an hour of each. The diet part is really they cook for themselves, they learn how to cook, so there's an hour of each. When they meet and they come together and some of the things that we noticed.

Speaker 3: 33:06

I mean this program is offered in over a 12-week period and there's only 15 people in a group and they've now just now moved to mostly virtual, but I was involved when it was a high touch, hands-on in-person program in the hospitals and Medicare covers it. So it was the first time that Medicare ever covered yoga. It was the first time that a yoga teacher had a voice in patient care. That's never had happened before. It was crazy and so it was really profound.

Speaker 3: 33:37

And I was so fortunate to be in at the beginning and I worked in the hospital setting for 12 years in Omaha and then I went on to train teams. So we trained like Cleveland Clinic and we trained Walter Reed Army Base and you know all scripts, all the big hospitals you know in the country to have this program at their hospital. But of course a lot of the doctors didn't refer to it. And the ones that did, their patient outcomes were incredible. And in the lifestyle trial that I was first involved in they saved Mutual of Omaha $33,000 per patient in the first year just by doing the program. And we had somebody that came into our program that was on the heart transplant list that the doctor didn't know what to do with while he was waiting for a heart and in six weeks came off the heart transplant list. Then we started having people coming off of their. First of all, their depression scores would change dramatically in 12 weeks.

Speaker 1: 34:33

Yes, as you're talking about all this, I'm like why has this not been completely, wholly adopted in the mental health community? You know, like in every community science, this Ornish program is not rocket science.

Speaker 3: 34:45

No, and it's. The outcomes are incredible and they're over it. It's been proven over and over and over. We've had 50 hospitals deliver it. They all had the same outcomes, if people do it. So it was really about the support to do it, and having group support was a big part of that. But so the interesting part to me was that not only was people's heart disease getting better, but people were coming off of their insulin. People were, you know the people coming off.

Speaker 3: 35:10

The heart transplant list became kind of a regular occurrence and Dean Ornish would say you know, if this were a pill, it would be malpractice not to prescribe it. So, fast forward to now, josh's dad just got diagnosed with heart disease. They said all your arteries are clogged and you know, blah, blah, blah. And he said well, what about the Ornish program? The doctor said no, no, no, that doesn't work. That's what he said to him. No, no, no, this is today. That doesn't work, yeah. And I thought to myself well, it's still happening. Doctors are still saying it won't work, and that's one of the that's one of the things that you know attracted me to your podcast too is that there's so much of this going on that they're taking agency away from people that people like Dean Ornish are trying to give to people.

Speaker 3: 36:03

You know, in the conference mental health that we went to, you know it's all sort of moving towards lifestyle. As you know, tara Lynn, because you were there, everything's moving towards lifestyle because lifestyle is the, it's the foundation for all of this. And yoga stress management. People don't know yet how to use that, but it's such a, it's so profound in its healing abilities that it really is kind of like the glue that keeps all of the other aspects, the supplements, everything else together. And so it's.

Speaker 3: 36:31

You know, it's sort of been my mission now to really help people see how to integrate it, because it seems like it's overwhelming and hard, but once you get the hang of it it's pretty. We keep the postures pretty simple, the breathing's pretty simple. Do you know, an hour a day? And the thing that I always say to people is your life needs to organize around your stress management. You don't need to squeeze stress management into your life, but everyone should have a self-care stress management practice every day and everything starts to change.

Speaker 3: 37:00

And we would hear from people that would do start this and they would say oh, my God, like I, I'm sleeping at night. I'm going, I have regular bowel movements, I I'm like not hungry anymore, I'm not depressed, I I feel good. I'm taking you know all these things with their outlook starts to change and they felt like they were, they had hope again. I'm taking you know all these things with their outlook starts to change and they felt like they were, they had hope again and to me, like hope is the biggest thing for people. You know, if they have hope, they can heal.

Speaker 2: 37:27

Yeah, and to give credit where it's due. So, susie, you just mentioned Josh and, for those those that are listening, so Josh is your, your husband, and he's your biggest fan and he's in your book, and before we started I was talking a little bit about him and the pictures of him in your publication. I just think it's cute. Right After getting to meet him. So he was on our podcast too. He said something that I thought was very profound and you just said it again in different words. He said to us 80% of functional medicine is lifestyle, and when you're talking about these lifestyle changes and how it's not effective to build stress management in, you build your life around stress management right. That, for people, is the crux, I think, of this idea, because it's so difficult for people to do that. It's really tough to let go of those things right that you need to have, and I'll slide stress management in.

Speaker 3: 38:30

Yeah, and I think that's the biggest issue. I'll just say like 75% 90% of doctor's visits this is the CDC says are for stress-related illness. 75 to 90% for stress-related illness. It's all of it.

Speaker 3: 38:47

Yeah, and then how do we? You know? And the truth is, is you know, we, we, we all spend time on in the morning on social media, maybe not social media, maybe Substack, maybe a podcast, maybe this, but everybody has time. There isn't any. I've met people that work so many hours and they can still manage to do stress management. It's like we have time to brush our teeth, we have time to take a shower, we have time to you know. So it's what you value, and I think that that's the piece right. There is that people need to be able to value it and understand that. You know, we've been valuing, we've been valuing being busy over being relaxed, and I say this in my book, but I think it's really funny Like nobody ever says, hey, great job on that heart attack, Great job on high blood pressure, you are killing it. You know, nobody ever says that.

Speaker 2: 39:39

And when people are on their deathbed, you just start saying that, and then people will be like I love it, though. It's such a strong, bold statement that has so much meaning behind it. Though, when you say it that way and that's how we live right we live anxious lifestyles.

Speaker 3: 39:52

Yeah, and when people are on their deathbeds they never say I wish I would have worked harder. Never does that come out of anyone's mouth that I've ever been with while they're dying.

Speaker 1: 40:00

I wish I had more anxiety and stress. No, no one ever says that right.

Speaker 3: 40:04

They all say I wish I had loved more, I wish I had been with the people that I loved. I wish I had taken time to smell the roses. I wish I, yeah, all of those things you can do every day, let me ask you a quick question.

Speaker 1: 40:17

So when I think of traditional yoga practices, I think of going to the gym, spending an hour there, getting you know all these things. So when we say anybody can do this, anyone can build this into their life and into their day Okay, and I have a feeling I know what you're going to say, but, like, if you could like put this down and say like, listen, if you have X amount of minutes a day, you can build yourself a stress management practice what would be the very, very, very smallest amount with the biggest bang for your buck, Do you think?

Speaker 3: 40:53

Well, I just put together a program because people always ask me this question. You're asking me something that people really want to know and we say in the Ornish program, when you're reversing disease, it's an hour. But I have a program that's 30 minutes for 30 days and it's just a little training program that has all of these elements over the 30 days that you do. One day you'll do a few postures and a little breathing, and the next day you'll do a little relaxation and meditation. So you know, I say 30 minutes, but I also. Here's the other thing.

Speaker 3: 41:25

I also think that when people say you can do all it takes is three minutes, it doesn't take three minutes because your nervous system needs time. Same thing with meditation. You can't sit in meditation and expect to reach that place, because our minds are just so filled with stuff. So what happens is you sit for meditation and you start hearing like jingles, and then you're reliving the conversation you have with your mother-in-law and then you're sort of screaming at your husband or your kids or you know in your mind, and so then by the time you're done, you're like that was nothing. I just screamed at everybody in my head, and so it takes a little time and practice for that to not happen every time.

Speaker 3: 42:04

And so it's sort of like you need a little bit of like a runway, you know. So doing a little postures before you meditate, doing a little breathing before you meditate, sort of sets you up so that you can do it. But doing it every day allows you the depth of that experience, so that if you then if you've got a 30 minute a day practice of some kind of either meditation or breathing or postures, then when you feel stressed in the day and usually you won't feel as stressed. That's the other thing is most people realize that they don't feel as stressed as they used to. They're like they don't have to do anything in the day because they're doing this practice every day. But if you feel some kind of stress, doing a three-minute alternate nostril breathing or a two-minute pose at your desk where you're just moving your neck or shrugging your shoulders connects you back to the deeper practice that you have, the daily practice, and it actually works more effectively. Those little short, little sessions really work dramatically well because you have a regular practice that you do.

Speaker 3: 43:12

So I think a 30 minute practice you know everyone scrolls social media for 30 minutes Come on, be serious, almost everyone. So what if you just got up first thing in the morning and for 30 minutes you did some breathing, a little bit of meditation, a couple of movements, and then you were set for your day. You're kind of aligned, you know. So I feel like it's. You know it is, it's a subtle practice, it's hard to keep up with, but, you're right, everyone can do it.

Speaker 3: 43:39

And even if you did 30 minutes, or some people, it's 20 minutes. Start there, you know, and then the more you do it, the more time you'll want to spend. And so, like I spend, you know, I walk with Josh every morning. We do a 30 minute, 40 minute walk. He does like an hour and a half, but I join him partway, but we do a walk and then we do meditation and I do some postures and he sometimes does them with me and you know and then we cook for ourselves.

Speaker 3: 44:07

And so this whole lifestyle thing, it's it's once you're in it, it's so flows and life flows and things seem easier. And I always say to people like, once you have your life set up like that, it's almost like you find yourself in the right place at the right time with the right people in the right circumstances and life has a kind of flow to it that seems graceful and easy, and I think that that's what these practices do, is they set you up and they put you in that part of your nervous system right, the parasympathetic nervous system where you can kind of move through life a little more elegantly and a little more gracefully.

Speaker 1: 44:48

So I have a question how can people get a hold of this 30-minute yoga practice?

Speaker 2: 44:52

that you're doing.

Speaker 1: 44:53

Yes, please Give yourself a little pitch here because, I'm really worried.

Speaker 3: 44:59

You know it's up on our site, it's called yourcenteredheartcom yourcenteredheartcom and you can buy the book, um and the book. You know the book is like 20 some dollars and in the book you can get um a little QR code to free practices and then you can also buy practices. The 30-day program is there, but the 30-day program is up on the website too.

Speaker 1: 45:19

Nice, Because I'm just listening to you going. I feel like I'm in your meditative group now. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 45:26

Are we doing this? We're in it, I know.

Speaker 2: 45:33

So, there's something you said, susie, that I think is really important, because I think we have a lot of listeners who may be in a position similar to mine and that you may have. You're starting to learn about yoga, you're trying to develop what it is for you and your own practices. You traditionally, in a lot of the Western, western okay yoga formats, at the very end of the yoga session, the very last like five to seven minutes okay. You're in your like final resting space, okay, and then your final resting posture, which is probably I mean, for me at least unarguably the most difficult part of the entire thing. Okay.

Speaker 2: 46:20

But something you said I think really reigns true in that for people, when you're thinking about the importance of building this into a daily practice and and actually giving yourself enough time, when you're just talking about the nervous system and how 60 seconds is is not going to be enough for your nervous system right To get itself to a space where it's ready to be able to do the things we need it to do.

Speaker 2: 46:44

I think that for many people, you can sit in understanding this concept when you're doing more of a traditional yoga practice, because the last, like five to seven minutes of the class is where you are doing just that and by the time that's done you're almost ready and primed to go to whatever the next level is. But then it's over. Yeah, and it's not. You don't? You know, it's not a 30 or a 60 second thing, right, um, it's, it's a good five to seven minutes. And right, when you finally are there and in that space, that's then where it ends. And I remember sitting, I remember at the end of it I'm always like, yeah, what's the next level? Because all of a sudden you're ready for whatever just opened up. You've let, you've gotten there, but it takes, you know, because your nervous system got to that space which wasn't a quick thing, Right.

Speaker 2: 47:37

So not to not to negate the power of doing some, some breathing exercises or shorter mindfulness exercises I'm not trying to take that away from anybody, but if you are someone who does this, you could probably resonate with what that feels like. And then you go okay, now, what Is that ready?

Speaker 3: 47:53

Yeah, there's a couple of things I want to say to that. Do we have time? Yeah, okay. So one of the things is that, you know, when I teach yoga classes, the last 20 minutes is meditation, is relaxation, because of what you're saying, and we, I talk people through it instead of just leaving them to kind of chew their hands off. Right, I talk them through it and then I leave them to it for five or seven minutes, so they're just in that stillness. So I think that that's a really important piece. There was something else I was going to say and it just slipped my mind. What were we, what were you just saying? You were talking about.

Speaker 1: 48:30

I want to slip in a comment here too, Well, because, Jen, you said like people who only have it takes longer than a minute. Well, because, Jen, you said like people who only have it takes longer than a minute. What I don't want people to hear is I what? Well, that's it, I can't do it, then Cause. I only have minutes at a time, still do it, even if you only have a minute like still still keep trying.

Speaker 1: 48:49

Like if you have a minute in between work or things like that, don't stop yourself just because we're like you need a longer term practice. Like don't start. Everybody needs to start somewhere and move from that point, you know.

Speaker 3: 49:04

Yeah, and I think starting in bed is a good place, because you're already laying down going to bed. Perfect, I can do that. Just do some of it while you're in bed. Yeah, you can do breathing and relaxation in bed and there's your 30 minutes right there and then you drift off to sleep. So there's a lot of ways to sort of trick yourself into doing it.

Speaker 1: 49:23

I tell people all the time I'm like you know, you can do a meditative breathing practice anywhere. And you could be sitting in a meeting that you're just there to listen.

Speaker 2: 49:33

You could do your meditative breathing.

Speaker 1: 49:36

I said nobody knows, we're all sitting in the same room breathing. It's not like you're going or whatever.

Speaker 2: 49:44

Yeah, unless you find yourself just completely like siding out loudly in front of everyone, which I've done before, and it pauses the whole room because I'm sitting there, breathing, right, doing it, you know.

Speaker 3: 49:55

I wanted to address something that we didn't quite, and I wanted to say that. You know, people all the time tell me oh, I don't need stress management because I read or I golf or I knit or I have a dog or I, you know I drink, whatever it is they do, and I always say those things could be great and can manage stress in the, you know, immediate sometimes, but they're not retraining your nervous system and they're not changing your mindset. And that's the thing. The goal of these practices is to retrain your nervous system and to change your mindset, and that does take some practice and time, and so I wanted to.

Speaker 1: 50:35

I wanted to add one quick thing, because this, this was something that occurred over COVID right. Suddenly we we have a tendency of outsourcing all of our self care and our stress management, like to massage therapists or getting your nails done or you know, doing all these things. Then COVID happened and nobody knew how self-regulate because, we outsourced it to everyone or even going to a yoga class or a gym.

Speaker 1: 51:04

You know what I mean. It was all outsourced and it made clear, perfect sense to me that we have a lot of work to do into teaching people how to not outsource your self-care anymore but to rely on yourself and your internal stuff.

Speaker 3: 51:18

Yes, I love what you just said. We outsource our self-care. I want to. Can I steal that from you? I will. I love that so much because I think that's exactly what we do. We think somebody else is going to fix us and that's a very medical model. You know, the medical model trained us to outsource our self-care. So I don't think that I'm going to start saying that, because I think it's so profound and so true and I think you're right that COVID for Josh and I, covid was great. You know we're like, we're like you know, more time to meditate.

Speaker 3: 51:53

You know, and I am a people person, so it wasn't great in that realm, but it was great in the terms of, you know, I know what to do in those moments and I and I love having time to do it, and so I think that you know, you're right. I think that we really have gotten away from the thing We've looked to our phones like we turn to everything outside of us for our care and we forget that it's all in here we have the ability to heal ourselves and to be with ourselves and to, you know, to take care to manage our own self-care. So I love that.

Speaker 1: 52:31

And our own emotions.

Speaker 3: 52:32

So I love it too.

Speaker 1: 52:33

This seems like a good wrapping up point for me. What a wonderful conversation. I have to say I was enthralled from beginning to middle to end. You have such a wonderful voice. I cannot wait to listen to it on your program, because that's what I'm going to be doing next. So and everybody buy the book the Centered Heart.

Speaker 3: 52:53

Buy the book. Thank you for having me on and I love your podcast so much. Thank you so much for offering the work that you offer out to the world.

Speaker 2: 53:07

Absolutely and thank you too, because the world needs more of you on the boots on the ground. So, thank you and your husband, josh. We'll throw that out there and, josh, we have to thank Josh too, we got to reach him up too right.

Speaker 1: 53:17

All right, if you guys have hung out with us this long, make sure you like, comment, share, subscribe and send us your gaslit truth stories at the gaslit truth podcast at gmailcom. Until next time we're out.

Speaker 2: 53:30

Thanks everyone.