Episode 6_"You Don't Know Until You Experience the Difference: Tension vs. Relaxation"

12:27 - 36:46   Tense & Relax Practice

True relaxation feels like melting, like your body is so heavy it's actually light as a feather.  Something most of us have never experienced.  In this episode, Richelle reveals how to recognize the tension you don't know you're holding and shares a tensing and relaxing technique to help you tune into your body's sensation conversation.  You'll also learn why her students measure progress in millimeters, discover the difference between restorative and flowing yoga, and find out why there's no such thing as "too far gone."  If you've been living with chronic tension disguised as "just getting older, " this episode will show you what becomes possible when you finally experience the difference.

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Transcript

Intro

0:02

This is mindful movement matters where we explore how yoga and intentional movement become pathways to living your best life, especially after 50. I'm Richelle Schneider, founder of Fusion Yoga by GET'N FIT in Ovid, Colorado, and I've been guiding adults through transformative wellness journeys for over 20 years. With my background in exercise science and extensive yoga training, I've learned that the most profound changes happen, not when we push harder, but when we listen deeper. This podcast isn't about perfect poses or social media worthy flexibility. It's about discovering what your body and breath can teach you about finding calm and chaos. Honoring your edges and creating sustainable wellness that honors exactly where you are today. Whether you're curious about yoga, navigating health changes, or simply seeking practical wisdom for living well, you'll find evidence-based insights and gentle guidance that meets you exactly where you are. Because true wellness isn't about becoming someone else. It's about becoming more authentically you. One mindful breath at a time. Let's explore what mindful movement can teach us about living well.

Opening

1:46

Knowing is half the battle. If you grew up in the 1980s, you probably just heard that in the voices of the GI Joe cartoon characters, at the end of every episode, they'd share a little life lesson and finish with that phrase. I must have heard it hundreds of times as a kid, and honestly, I use it constantly in my yoga classes and personal fitness coaching sessions today. Because here's the thing, knowing is half the battle, but you can't know something until you actually experience it. And when it comes to the difference between tension and relaxation, most of us have no idea what we don't know. Welcome to Mindful Movement Matters. I'm Richelle Schneider, and today we're diving into something that might completely shift how you understand your own body, the profound difference between tension and true relaxation, and why you've probably never experienced the latter, even though you think you have. Let me start with a question. When was the last time you felt truly relaxed? Maybe you're thinking about that time you sat on the couch after a long day, or when you took a vacation, or even just this morning when you were still in bed before your alarm went off. Here's what I want you to consider. What if none of those moments were actually relaxation? What if your body has been holding tension for so long that you've forgotten what it feels like to let go? True relaxation, and I mean, the kind that makes your whole system reset feels like melting. It's this paradox where your body becomes so heavy that it's actually light as a feather. It's the embodied feeling of, ahhhh. Every cell in your body just exhaled at the same time. I've experienced this feeling many times at the end of yoga during final relaxation, Savasana, or sometimes during a pose that my body desperately needed in that moment. And here's something fascinating. Every time we step onto our mats, we're different people and our bodies are different. So a pose that made you feel phenomenal, one session might not have that same effect on the next time, or it might make you feel even better. But most people, they've never felt this, not once in their entire lives. So why don't we know we're tense? I think we're so entrenched in our daily lives, our to-do lists, our tasks, the endless stream of things we have to accomplish that we aren't aware of our body's tension or it's inability to relax fully. We're just trying to make it through the day, Right. Get through the meeting, make dinner, answer the emails, check the box, move on to the next thing. In all that doing, we lose the ability to simply be, and in losing that, we lose connection with what our bodies are actually feeling. This is where yoga comes in, not as another thing to add to your to-do list, but as a practice. That helps you learn to listen, to observe the sensations within your body, physical, mental, emotional, energetic, even your nervous systems. Dance between fight or flight and rest and digest. As we move through a yoga practice, we're having what I call a sensation conversation with ourselves, observing those sensations. Allows us to know how hard or how gentle our practice or even the next pose needs to be. This is a form of self-study, which is actually one of the foundational principles of yoga. The Sanskrit term is Svadyaya, and truly, we cannot begin releasing and melting into our poses or into final relaxation at the end of our practice, unless we're tuned in to our body sensations. Let me give you a concrete example of how this works. Imagine you're lying on your back in a pose called supine. Big toe pose. One leg is straight up over your hip. The other leg is lying on the floor. You can hold onto your big toe or use a strap around your foot to create a less intense stretch through your arm and shoulder. The main focus of this pose is the back of your leg, especially the back of your thigh, and for a lot of people, including those who sit most of the day, this area is full of tension. So along with the basic pose instructions, I would guide students to breathe and focus their attention on the area where they feel the most sensation. As they inhale, I ask them to imagine that area expanding and opening, and as they exhale, I want them to envision the exhale, blowing the tension away like a leaf blower, clearing debris from a sidewalk. Why does this work? Because our breath has a direct link to our nervous system. If you're feeling a lot of sensation and a pose. Your breath is shallow and fast. You're actually building more tension instead of letting it go. Your nervous system interprets those short, rapid breaths as a signal that you are in danger. It kicks you into fight or flight mode, which makes your muscles contract even more. But when you focus on taking slow, deep breaths, your nervous system gets a completely different message. It says, oh, we're safe. We can relax. Now, this activates the parasympathetic nervous system, your rest and digest mode. By the way, you might notice I said sensation instead of pain. That's intentional. It's a mindset shift that also helps relax the body. When we label something as pain, our brain immediately wants to protect us from it. Have us do something that moves us out of pain, but when we simply observe it as sensation a feeling, that's neither good nor bad, just present. We can work with it more effectively. We can sit with it, and in some cases, the sensation will lessen or go away altogether. Now, where are we holding all this tension that we don't even know about? The most common places I see in my students are across the shoulders in the low back and in the hips. But here's what's interesting. Attention isn't just sitting there innocently. It's actively impacting how you move through your daily life. Maybe it means you can't move as much or for as long as you'd like. Maybe you're not as successful during recreational activities. Or maybe you just feel like life is a struggle to get through every single minute of the day and you can't quite put your finger on why. Let me paint you a picture of what this might look and feel like. If you're over 50, you've unconsciously stopped getting down on the floor even to play with your grandkids because no matter why you need to, getting down there seems hard, but getting up seems like way too much effort. You strategically position yourself in chairs at family gatherings. Your shoulders are perpetually hunched forward from years of desk work, driving. Looking at your phone. You think that's just how you are now, or it's part of aging. You're exhausted by 2:00 PM every day. You assume it's your age, not realizing your body is working overtime to compensate for all that tension and restricted movement. You've stopped doing things you used to love, like gardening, hiking, dancing, but you've rationalized it as just getting older rather than recognizing that these are choices you're making because movement has become uncomfortable. Sleep may be terrible. You wake up stiff, you never feel rested, but everyone your age complains about sleep, so you figure it's just part of the package. Does any of that sound familiar? All of these things can be manifestations of unrealized tension. Tension you won't recognize is tension until you feel the difference by relaxing into a yoga pose or stopping completely in Shavasana final relaxation and letting your body go. I want to share something with you that I do with my students, a practice that helps people feel the difference between tension and relaxation for the very first time. This is not something new. In fact, I remember doing a similar exercise with a school counselor when I was in junior high. It is one of those tried and true techniques that isn't flashy or new age. It simply works, which keeps it relevant as a tool.

Tense & Release Practice

12:27

So let's try it now. First, let's get you into a comfortable position. You can be lying on your back on the floor, or even in bed. You can sit in a chair if that is more comfortable for you. If you joined us last week, you learned that yoga starts with just one breath, and so does this technique First, we're going to take a deep breath. In the nose and a long, slow breath out the nose signaling to our bodies and minds that we are going to begin. Continue to follow your breath, observing each inhale and each exhale finding a focus point as you breathe. You could place your attention on the sensation of the breath moving in and out of your nostrils, or maybe the feeling of your rib cage expanding and contracting as you breathe. If you need more focus, help try placing a hand over your belly button so you can feel your belly fill up with each inhale and sink into your body as it empties on each exhale. As we observe our breath coming and going, we can also make note of the quality of our breathing. So without changing or making anything happen, notice if your breath feels slow or fast. Is your breath deep or shallow? Are the inhales and exhales about the same length, or do you notice your exhales being longer than the inhale or maybe vice versa? Finally notice if there is a pause between each segment of breath. Remember to simply observe without trying to make anything happen. Each breath we take is helping us to relax more and more, but this is only on the surface. We have the opportunity to find an even deeper state of relaxation, and in a moment we will begin contracting and relaxing different areas of our bodies to help us let go even more. On your next inhale, I want you to curl the toes on your left foot, hold them. Notice the tension you are creating as you curl your toes. Then with your next exhale, release your toes, wiggle them a bit, and then let them be still. Now on an inhale, curl your right toes. Again, hold onto that tension. Feel it, embrace it, and with an exhale, release your right toes. Give them a wiggle, and then allow them to be still. What do you notice? Do your toes feel relaxed? Even if you feel increased sensation in them? Can you tell a difference between the tension of curling them and the release of letting that tension go? Let's move up a little and focus on our whole foot now. By pointing the left foot with your next inhale, it's like pressing the gas pedal down. Keep pointing, holding that tension, learning what it feels like. All at once. On your next exhale, stop pointing. Find a neutral position for your foot. Tune into the sensation inhaling. Flex your foot. Now pulling the top of the foot up towards your knee, pressing out through the heel to create tension. Hold on. Observe the sensation of tension. Then with an exhale, relax, let your foot go. How does your left foot feel different, or does it feel different? It's your right foot's turn. Now, inhale and point your foot. Keep pushing your foot down and feeling the tension that is created by the movement. Exhaling. Let go of the point and release the foot to a more neutral position. How does your right foot feel next? We are flexing our right foot on an inhale, pulling the top of the foot toward our shin and knee pressing out through the heel. Where is the tension being created this time? Does it feel different than when you were pointing the foot where, how On an exhale, release the flex of the foot, bringing your right foot back to a more neutral position. Notice the changes there. What are you feeling now? Before we leave our feet, let's do a couple of ankle circles in each direction to continue to release. Turn your feet clockwise and counterclockwise a few times and then let them be still. It's time to work our way up our legs now. So I want you to start tightening your left butt cheek as you inhale and add to that tension by tightening your thigh, your calf, and lower leg all the way down to your foot. Hold and observe the tension. Then on an exhale, release the tension from your seat to your foot. Does your leg feel looser, heavier? Start at your right butt cheek. This time, inhaling and tightening. Then engaging your thigh muscles, your calf, all the way down to your foot. Feel the tension. Get to know it like it's your new best friend. Then release it and let your leg go limp. Observe the sensations from your seat down. To your right and left legs feel the same. Finally, to let the legs go a little more. Roll them in and out a few times before you let them lay heavy and still. To help your legs feel even heavier. Imagine that there is a weight tied to your ankles, pulling them down into the support below them and making it nearly impossible for them to move. Tune into your seat. Pelvic floor and lower abdominals. Now with an exhale, tighten them all. As much as you can imagine that you have to pee really bad and you're holding it in, what does the tension in and around your pelvis feel like? Where you able to contract a lot or just a little? With an inhale, release the tension. Let your pelvic floor open towards your feet. Let your butt cheeks spread. Allow your lower abdominals to let go, breathe, and notice how much the area around your pelvis relaxed. Is it fully relaxed. Partially not much at all. Imagine your pelvis is a bowl. This is a place that can fill up with tension, unreleased emotions. It's your pelvic bowl. Is it overflowing? Is it half full, half empty? Next, we're going to focus on the lower torso. Similar to the balloon breath we learned last episode. We are going to fill up the belly like a balloon as we inhale, then hold our breath for a bit. When you need to exhale, let the belly sink into the body toward the spine, and hold your breath out. Hold your breath until you feel the need to inhale regularly again. After breathing in, we're letting our breath return to its natural rhythm. Notice is your lower torso relaxed or still holding on to tension. Now send your awareness to your rib cage. I want you to notice all the way around your rib cage as you breathe in and hold the breath. Feel your ribs expand out on the sides, as well as in the back and front. When you feel the need to exhale, notice how the ribs pull back into the body contracting as you hold your breath out. Inhale again when your body signals you to taking your time to observe the sensations around your ribs as you breathe. We've made it up to your arms. Now let's start with the left arm, with an inhale. Begin to tighten your hand into a fist. Letting the tension move up your arm to your shoulder, hold onto the tension, get to know how tension feels in your arm. Then on an exhale, release the arm completely. Next, I want you to make a fist with your left hand and keep the tension just in your hand. Hold that fist squeezing more and more. Then open your hand as wide as possible and keep spreading your hand open. Notice what this tension feels like is the tension of holding your fingers and hand spread wide different than the fisted tension. On an exhale, let your hand relax, releasing. Let your left arm, hand, and fingers rest at your side. Palms open. Let's repeat the gathering of tension with the right arm, hand, and fingers. First, with an inhale, we make a fist with the right hand. Let the tension move up our arm to our shoulder. Discover the sensation created by building tension in your arm. Then with an exhale, release that tension and let the arm get heavy. Now, make another fist with your right hand and keep the tension. Just in your fist and hand squeezing more and more. Next, open your hand and fingers as wide as you can, feeling the tension created by this position. Are the sensations in your right hand the same or different than your left? Exhaling? Relax your hand and fingers. What are you feeling now? Let your right arm, hand, and fingers rest at your side with your palm open to help your arms relax even more. Imagine a weight attached to your wrists. That weight is pulling your arms down, making them heavier and heavier. With your next inhale, raise your shoulders up towards your ears. Hold for a moment or two. Then release away from your ears with an exhale moving up to our faces. Let's purse our lips. Now, open your mouth as wide as possible. Finally with an exhale, relax your mouth and jaw into a slight smile. On an inhale, we're scrunching our noses and our foreheads. Furrowing, our brows scrunching, our eyes closed. Then we're opening our eyes as wide as possible. Lastly, as you exhale, rest your eyelids closed loosely. Feel your forehead smooth out. Your nose, relax. Let's take another deep breath in and long, slow breath out. Feel your body sink even more. With each breath, you are getting heavier and heavier, relaxing more and more. Notice that you have become so heavy that you actually feel light as a feather overcome by a sensation of floating weightless. Continue to breathe. We have nowhere to go, nothing to do in this moment, only being, being weightless, being relaxed, being this inhale. Being this exhale, being this moment. Coming back, we slowly allow our breath to deepen. Noticing the support below and where our bodies are touching the floor, the bed, or the chair that we are lying or sitting on. Notice the sensation of being totally relaxed in your own body. As you feel the energy returning to your limbs begin to wiggle your fingers and toes, continuing to observe the sensations of relaxation you created. Gently begin to stretch and move about. There is no hurry here, so take your time, allowing you to maintain some of the relaxation. If you are lying down and you're ready to get up, you can gently roll to one side. Pause there for a moment, observing the sensations of being relaxed. If you are seated, sit up a little taller. Scan your body, noticing the sensations there. If you turn to your side, please take your time to move into a comfortable seated position. Together. Let's take another deep inhale and long, slow exhale completing our practice. How do you feel is this relaxation different from what you have experienced before? After moving through this tension release exercise, many of my students say they had no idea they were tight in certain areas of their body. They thought they were relaxed until we moved through the entire body, and then they could tell they hadn't actually relaxed at all. Let us know about your experience during this technique. You can message us on social media. Send a text message to 9 7 0 4 6 3 5 3 0 1 or email me, richelle@getnfit.net.

End of Practice

36:48

Here is something really interesting I want you to be aware of, because sometimes releasing and relaxing can be challenging for people. That first experience of true release can be scary. It can be emotional. It can bring about pleasant feelings that people have rarely or never experienced before. And for some people. This is so profound that they don't return to yoga. They can't reconcile the difference. They're so stuck and comfortable with the state they've been living in, that they're afraid of these new sensations and this new state of being. It can also bring about a feeling of being drunk or uncoordinated. This is actually understandable from a biomechanics perspective. We have to bring about mobility in the body first before we can create stability and strength so your body becomes so relaxed and mobile that you feel a little out of control. This is another hard part of practice for people to get comfortable with. One of our yoga principles at Fusion Yoga is learn to get comfortable with being a little uncomfortable. This makes sense because students are moving into a state of being that they may never have experienced before or they may have forgotten how it feels. We do talk about this throughout the practice, and the longer someone does yoga, the more comfortable they get with sharing what's happening for them. When one person says, Hey, I felt this while we were doing that in the last class. Others often pipe up and share that they were feeling the same thing. Then I can give guidance either as a group or individually as needed. So how long does it take? When can you expect to feel that ah, moment of true relaxation? Well. It depends on how long you've been in a fight or flight, freeze or anxious state. More than likely it took years for you to build up to the level of tension or nervous system reaction that you're in. Now, for some people, they start to notice the difference within the first three months of practicing. For others, it could take years. This is mainly because you're generally in class for an hour or two. Maybe only once or twice a week. Yoga is a cumulative practice. The more you do it, the more you benefit and the quicker you see changes. But here's something we've observed over the years. The first time we do any practice is always the most difficult or uncomfortable, even if it's made up mostly of poses we've done before. So the first time we perform any sequence might not reveal any benefits, but the next two to four times we practice, that's when the changes start to reveal themselves. This is part of the reason why we repeat practices four to six times. The first time through. Most of our students are simply trying to learn any new poses. They're thinking about the instructions, wondering if they're doing it correctly and trying to breathe through it all. By the next practice, students can pay a little more attention to how they're breathing in each pose. Since they have an idea of the poses in the sequence, their thinking brain can relax a bit and they can start focusing on the sensations felt in each pose a little more. By the last time we do a sequence, most students are firmly entrenched in that sensation conversation within their bodies. They can assume the role of the observer instead of the doer. Here's another thing we've noticed, and on purpose missing of yoga sessions can actually help students identify the things that yoga has been improving in their bodies and their lives. Your body is changing. The way you move through your life is changing, even if you haven't become aware of it yet. After practicing for several weeks or months and then missing a class, your body and mind have a way of reminding you why you do yoga in the first place. Maybe you were sleeping better and missing a practice, especially if you only practice once a week. Results in one or more poor quality sleep nights. Maybe yoga has helped alleviate back pain or overall stiffness. And when you miss that pain and stiffness come back like a bad case of deja vu. So missing a time or two here and there actually reinforces to each student why they carve out time from their schedules to make yoga a priority in their lives. That's not the only way to find out how yoga is affecting you, though. We also take short pauses within each practice so students can check in and notice if they feel different after a series of poses. Than they did at the beginning of class. We pause between doing poses on the right and left sides to notice if there's a difference depending on which side they were working. One of the things that I discuss with my students and pausing helps us to notice this, is that we need to change our measuring stick instead of measuring progress in feet or inches. Our new measuring stick needs to be in millimeters of progress because every small, seemingly insignificant change or difference that you notice will begin to snowball into bigger changes that are easily noticed by yourself as well as people in your life. Now let me talk about two different approaches to experiencing this relaxation, restorative yoga, and flowing practices like Hatha or Vinyasa. We consider restorative yoga to be like a mini vacation where you've checked out completely for 60 minutes. Each person in class is doing their own set of poses that their body needs based on how they're feeling that day. We hold each pose for up to five minutes, but sometimes more and practitioners are supported by bolsters, which are firm pillows, along with blankets, blocks, chairs, and straps to make the poses as comfortable as possible. It's up to each student to then use their breath. To become even more comfortable in each pose, the changes happen from the inside out. Once in the pose, the student is breathing, observing, and releasing. They're not trying to make anything happen. They're simply being in each pose and allowing the changes to happen as their body, brain, and nervous system sees fit. Although we try to get as comfortable as possible in each pose, restorative yoga can actually be very uncomfortable for some students, especially if they normally feel a lot of pain in their bodies or they live in a state closer to fight or flight or anxiety. We do have ways to make each pose a little more subtle or more supported to work for each student. There are many poses to choose from. Not every student will do every pose at first or maybe ever. Restorative yoga teaches students how to listen to their bodies because they're not trying to simultaneously listen to instructions, observe, learn how to breathe in each pose and handle any sensations that come up. Restorative yoga is about breathing and observing. Which gets students in touch with themselves faster into me see is one of our yoga principles. The poses and practice of yoga help us become intimately acquainted with and learn to listen to our true selves, our haha and Vinyasa classes on the other hand. Are about students doing yoga instead of just being in poses. We move with our breath in a flowing style where one pose leads into another. We have different poses or movements grouped together in a sequence where each inhale and each exhale has a stewing something with our bodies. Examples of this are the sun salutations and moon salutations. We do a set sequence of poses together to wake the body up and warm it, as in the case of the sun salutations, or to help settle down and be ready for final relaxation or even sleep like moon salutations. Hatha and Vinyasa yoga are more vigorous styles of yoga, but we still have ways to make them doable for anybody through the use of chairs, either as balance insurance or as our base of support as in seated chair yoga. We also use blocks and straps to make poses fit each student instead of having a student force their body into a pose. An experienced teacher will know many options to make a pose work for each student. They'll also know many ways to turn a standing, kneeling, or lying down pose into something similar that can be done seated in a chair. My teaching experience has allowed me to learn how to have people doing both seated or chair assisted poses alongside other students who are doing poses without a chair. Both restorative and flowing yoga practices have their place and both can help you discover what difference between tension and relaxation feels like. I would like to address something directly. Now, maybe you're listening to this and thinking, this all sounds great, Rochelle, but I'm too tense. I'm too stressed. I am too far gone for yoga to help me. Let me tell you something, something I learned when I was going through my chair, yoga teacher training. We were in Florida. Part of the curriculum was a practical teaching session where we could be evaluated in real time. Our instructor took us to the Miami VA Hospital to team teach a class. One of the things she taught us is this, if you can breathe, you can do yoga. We got to experience that firsthand because we had a student in our class who was a quadriplegic. So literally all they could do was breathe during our class. That experience gave me a whole new concept of what yoga can be for everybody and every body. That's why as a teacher, I make it an important part of my professional pursuits to continue learning more and new ways to accommodate students' bodies and needs in class. So let me be clear, there is no such thing as too far gone. For some people. There is pain so often and at such a degree that their bodies have become used to the pain. They can consider that state of being as their set point. They're normal. It's foreign to them and their nervous systems to not. Have those painful areas or sensations happening. This in turn makes their bodies even more stiff, less flexible, even having immobile areas throughout the body. Maybe this is caused by a disease. Maybe they've gone through a physical or emotional trauma that has led to this state of being. They're so used to it that they don't realize they're hanging onto it. So as we move into restorative poses that are meant to help them let go and release the tension and stiffness, their bodies and nervous systems rebel. They try to hold on tighter. For some people, they're still at a stage where they can use their breath and their will to overcome or overpower. The sensations for others though they've been in this state and unaware for so long that they have to be taken into a state of breathing and sitting or lying, not imposes, but in the most basic alignment for their bodies so they can access a little relief at a time. Each person is different, so the amount of time in each stage of release is different. Our goal is to get them to a place where release and relaxation feel good instead of painful or uncomfortable, so that everyone gets a chance to experience that ah, feeling. We do talk about this and for students, their measuring stick isn't even in millimeters. If you have a lot of pain or discomfort, your measuring stick needs to be in micro millimeters because the sensations that you feel, even in seemingly simple poses can be overwhelming to the brain, the nervous system, and the mind. So we work with the breath a lot. We make sure that you're not clenching your hands or feet. We watch for signs of wincing in the face. Which can signal danger to the brain, even in a safe space and safe position. We try to encourage each student to keep at it. We tell them to that the rewards will be worth it, but they have to walk through some fire before they get to those rewards. This can be a point where many people give up and think yoga and even exercise is not for them. Painful sensations they feel can be so great that they find it hard to believe they'll ever feel any different, and the effects of trying are too disruptive to their lives. It's easier just to deal with life as they always have. It's an unfortunate thing, and it happens for many people who try to start. Some of our other yoga principles are meant to help with this. It's up to each student to embrace them. Our yoga principles ask each student to try to free their expectations and embrace whatever happens for them in each class to work on diminishing their thoughts of limitation in order to grant themselves permission to fit the poses to their bodies by using props and other options made available to them. And finally. Maybe these are the hardest ones to be patient with the process because yoga is a practice, not a destination, and to learn to get comfortable with being a little or even a lot uncomfortable along the way. So Let me give you a real example of working with someone in this deeply protective state. I'm going to tell you about my mom. In our forever young yoga classes we're working on not only her posture after working jobs that kept her hunched over for many years, but also calming her nervous system after going through a divorce from her spouse of over 30 years, having to move from her home into one that she now rents instead of the security of owning her home. Surviving blood clots that almost killed her while also going through a pandemic and the loss of many family members, and then a couple years later suffering and surviving a heart attack. It's no wonder her body is weak, her posture is beginning to fail, and her nervous system has her in a constantly guarded and stuck position in emotional state. She's been doing yoga and workouts with me for years, but after her heart attack, she took a turn toward protection at all costs. We've been working to open up not only her body, but her nervous system to a less frozen place. One of the things we've been working on is her ability to lay flat on the floor. We have to start with her head on several blocks and bolsters in order to keep her pelvis in contact with the floor. Then we simply have our work on breathing and trying to get relaxed into that position. We use brain-based vision and vestibular drills to work from the brain level out into the body, for example. I used a saccades drill for her vision. That's meant to work on the body's ability to extend or to be upright or to a backend. In this drill, I have her keep her head still and look up toward the ceiling with her eyes. From there, she keeps looking up while moving her eyes side to side, continuing to keep her head still. I've seen her torso lengthen on its own without her ever realizing it. During and after the vision drills we've used, we did nothing with her muscles or joints. We simply cleared the blurred visual inputs to her brain, and then her physical body responded. After a while. Sometimes minutes, sometimes multiple sessions. We've been able to lower her head more and more and even get her into a less stressed state where we can start moving limbs or practicing a few poses that have helped us start reversing her hunched posture than in her workouts. We're able to begin adding in strength a little at a time to support her new posture. A side note I want to include. She and I are not doing this alone. She also has regular appointments with a chiropractor to help support our efforts. Some of my other students have also had times where they've included physical therapy as a supporting modality to work through specific issues that are beyond my scope as a teacher and beyond yoga's offerings. The measuring stick for people like my mom is much different than for the average yoga student. Sometimes they can't even recognize or have the ability to acknowledge the benefits and changes that are happening as they practice. In fact, you're more likely to hear my mom say that I make her do yoga and come to her workouts, and that it hurts and it feels more like torture than something that's helping her heal. She keeps coming to class and keeps trying though, and as of our most recent classes, she's been expressing her displeasure less and has been able to breathe more deeply and find a little relief and relaxation along the way. She is almost able to lie completely flat on the floor without anything under her head. For me, she is an example of not giving up despite the struggle and discomfort of it all. So what do I see as progress that she might not be able to recognize yet? I see the clenching and holding on release as she's breathing. I take pictures of my clients in front of a posture grid. So we can literally see them standing straighter and taller. In my mom's case, I can measure the lowering of her head on fewer and fewer props while she's able to keep her pelvis in contact with the floor. When we do vision or vestibular drills, you can see a difference right away, especially if we use an assessment posture or movement before and then after the drill. Finally, the fact that we're able to add in movements or other poses is a sign in and of itself. These are the micro millimeter victories that matter. Throughout this journey of discovering the difference between tension and relaxation, people often discover things about themselves that surprise them. The most common surprise that they weren't taught this sooner or even when they were children. Many can imagine what life would have been like if they'd been more self-aware throughout their lives. Yoga is partly based on the yoga sutras of Patanjali, where we're introduced to the yamas and niyamas. They serve as the foundation for external and internal observances and restraints to help us live a more meaningful and purposeful life. These restraints and observances can be part of our practice on the mat and in our daily lives. The Niyamas focus on our relationship with our true selves. The Niyama called Svadyaya or self-study is one of the ways we teach each student to become more self-aware and in tune with their inner rhythms and state of being. The surprise of getting to know themselves better goes right back to our knowing is half the battle mantra. Understanding that you don't know what you don't know until you finally recognize it and get to know it. This can be physical knowledge, it can be spiritual or existential knowledge, which is different than religion. It can be emotional or even academic knowledge. I am sure there are patterns in what people discover, but going back to the fact that there are as many reasons to practice yoga as there are people who practice and types of yoga that can be practiced, it would take many years and many students to begin to establish what those patterns are, specifically the journey along the path. Is not a linear one. Each student can be practicing multiple different principles and foundations of yoga at one time or another. So let me bring this full circle back to where we started. You don't know what you don't know until you experience the difference. The difference between tension and relaxation. The difference between thinking you're relaxed and actually melting into that ah moment. The difference between pushing through your days and moving through them with ease, knowing is half the battle, but you can't know until you felt it.

Closing

1:02:42

If you are new to yoga, start with the breathing techniques we tried in episode five of this podcast. Learn how to let yourself go into this moment, this inhale and this exhale. Learn how to become the observer instead of the doer through your breathing First. Practice the tension versus relaxation technique we did in this episode. Get better at noticing the, so the subtle shifts within your body become an expert in you. Then if and when you feel ready, join us in person or find an in-person class close to you. If you aren't in the Northeastern Colorado or the southwest Nebraska area, if you haven't already, sign up on our website www dot G-E-T-N-F-I-T dot NET to receive our emails where you'll be one of the first to know when a new episode of Mindful Movement matters goes live. Remember, there's no such thing as too far gone. If you can breathe, you can do yoga. And if you can do yoga, you can discover what true relaxation feels like. It might take time. You might need to measure progress in millimeters or even micro millimeters. You might feel uncomfortable. Or even scared when you first experience genuine release, but you deserve to know what your body feels like when it's not holding all that tension. You deserve that. Ahhhh moment. Your body has been waiting for you to notice it's been trying to tell you. And now you know the first step is simply becoming aware that there's a difference to discover.

Next Steps

1:05:01

Thanks for joining me today on Mindful Movement Matters. I hope today's topic gave you something useful to carry into your daily life. If you'd like to explore these ideas further, I'd love to connect with you. Visit us@getfit.net for more resources or find us on social media ready to experience this work in person. We offer yoga and personal fitness coaching at Get'n Fit in Ovid, Colorado with weekly yoga sessions on Tuesdays in Lemoyne and Ogallala, Nebraska. Whether you're brand new to yoga or deepening your practice, you'll find a welcoming community that honors your individual journey. And if today's episode resonated with you, please consider sharing it with someone who might benefit from this conversation. Your recommendation might be the gentle invitation. They need to begin their own mindful movement journey. Until next time, remember. Your body holds wisdom. Your breath carries peace, and every small step toward wellness matters. Breathe deep and be well.