Bend Into Balance: Loren Mahaffey, Licensed massage and bodywork therapist

In this episode of Bend Into Balance, host Adriana Marino sits down with Loren Mahaffey, a longtime yoga educator and licensed massage and bodywork therapist whose work bridges eastern and western understandings of the body. Loren shares her journey from competitive athletics and early injury into a lifelong practice of yoga, bodywork, and anatomy-based teaching, shaped by decades of study and hands‑on experience.

The conversation explores breath, posture, and movement as foundations for balance: physically, mentally, and emotionally. Loren breaks down complex ideas like the respiratory diaphragm, gravity, and the core canister in ways that are deeply accessible, emphasizing how awareness and efficiency in the body can support resilience, regulation, and overall well‑being. This episode offers a thoughtful look at how learning to inhabit the body with more ease can change how we live our lives, on and off the mat.

https://www.tulaayurveda.org/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Hello, my name is Adriana Marino, and I'm host and producer of Bend into Balance, Powered by the Source. Today I am with Lauren Mahaffey. Lauren is a body worker, a physio yoga instructor, and a yoga anatomist. If I pronounce that correctly, I have the pleasure of meeting Lauren through my recent yoga namaspa teacher training as she was our anatomy teacher. And at that point, when I was during the during the training, I was just beginning to think about this podcast and you know, in conversations with the source to launch this, and I knew from a get-go that if I was able to get this podcast on the air, I definitely wanted to interview Lauren because I've always been so impressed by her knowledge and just her passion for the subject of the body. So, Lauren, thank you for being here. If you want to tell us a little bit about yourself, what brought you to Bend?

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Thank you so much, Audrey. Um, what brought me to Bend? I came to Bend. I had been living in the U.S. Virgin Islands for almost, I don't know, 16, 17 years. I met my husband there and um had a yoga studio there and a bodywork practice there for many years, but we decided to have a different experience. And so he we came to Bend initially in 2013. My son was three, and our plan was to just stay for a few years, which we did at first. We came for four years. My husband worked as a fly fishing guide. I opened a practice here, started teaching yoga in Bend. Um, but we knew we would eventually have to return to the islands because of elderly parents and a family business, which we ended up doing in 2017. But then after two catastrophic hurricanes and going through COVID there, and then my son, um, you know, and being towards in middle school and high school, we really decided it was time to return to Ben for like the incredible education that's offered here and opportunities. And so um we live actually, we have sort of a half-and-half life. I'm here with my son all school year. We return to the Virgin Islands over the summers, and my husband goes back and forth. Okay. Thank you for sharing that.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

You seems like you have the best of both worlds.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Yes, we make it work. Yeah, and I'm very grateful.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

How did your path into health and wellness begin, Lauren? I know you were a gymnast as a young girl, if I'm not mistaken.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Yes, I was a competitive gymnast. Um I was a longtime martial artist. I did a former martial arts co capoeira, and that was a really big part of my life. Um, but I would say I so I was always a mover and found a lot of joy in movement. And however, both from being a gymnast and being a martial artist, I also had a lot of pain. I went had a lot of injuries growing up. I had a lot of injuries in my 20s. And um, so my first introduction to both massage, bodywork, and yoga, I really sought out due to uh pain that I was having and um and also stress. And so those were the first things that really kind of led me into the world of these alternative practices, and it quickly became very clear to me just how amazingly beneficial they were for me. And then that made me very curious and interested in learning more.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

Interesting. So it was your own personal experience that led you to these practices.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

Yes, a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

And what did you find through the different modalities that you began studying?

SPEAKER_00 4:25

Um, I was really fortunate to be living in Tucson, Arizona in the 90s. Uh I had a um I had a jewelry business. However, I had gone to college thinking I wanted to go to medical school, and I had a degree in molecular and cellular biology and psychology. And so I really loved science, but I worked in a hospital my senior year and just knew that that wasn't for me, and I didn't know what was for me. So um I started a small jewelry business right when I got out of college, and surprisingly to me, it really took off. And um, and so I had years of being a business owner and having quite a few employees, quite young, and I had a lot of stress and a lot of uh I was very stationary in those years because I would spend hours and hours and hours at a jewelry desk. And so between the combination of stress and pain from that had already settled into my body from different injuries I'd had, and that lack of movement uh made me seek some things out. And Tucson, Arizona was really has always been very ahead of its time in terms of alternative practices. There's a large bodywork community, a really seeped yoga community, and both of those have been there for a long time. And so the practitioners that I was able to see in the early 90s in different work like Zen Shiatsu or the yoga studios I was able to go to, um I just it was fascinating to me how much better I felt physically after trying many different things. Um, and also how much better I just felt mentally, and how it really taught me some incredible tools how to manage my stress and become clearer mentally and get also clearer with like what was the path that I wanted to take in life.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

And that from there sprang your interest in starting to study body work and its many different facets and your own yoga practice?

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Yes, very much. I sold my jewelry business in 1999, and I used that money to both go through my first yoga teacher training, uh-huh, which I did in 1999, and then go to bodywork school in the year 2000. Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Can you do so? Wow. So you've been doing this for a long time before a lot of these practices became more mainstream as they are now.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Yes. Um and that was an interesting process because I came from a very traditional conservative family. I have two brothers that are MDs and a mom that's a therapist. And so, and you know, and I really thought I would take that path myself. Um, and so when I chose to take this path, it was very misunderstood at the time. Like it just seemed strange and woo-woo and weird. And but I um I just knew it was a place that I felt at home and I couldn't really explain it, but thankfully I just kept going. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Thanks for sharing that. Um, how did you get into yoga? Can you tell us a little bit about your path into yoga?

SPEAKER_00 8:13

What took me to yoga first was there was a pretty solid yoga community in Tucson. And having been a really serious martial artist, I was just around a lot of movers. And so the first thing that really got me there was um and kept me there was that had a lot of discomfort. And I found that when I started, you know, maybe I'm trying to remember how I first first, I mean it was a long time ago, it's like 30 years ago. Um, but I know what kept me there was that at first the whole impetus for me was, oh, this is gonna help me continue to be an athlete because I am reducing the discomfort and the pain in my body. But what became obvious and very much a surprise to me was how much it was really kind of reorganizing the fabric of uh how I was thinking and how I was approaching things in life, and how much it really affected stress reduction for me, and I just felt better in so many more ways than beyond my body. Okay. And that I just learned through the practice. Sure. And that just kept me going on it.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

And then when did that step into a yoga anatomy begin for you? Because that is how I met you as my instructor of yoga anatomy.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

And so I've been in the yoga world for a long time. I did my first training in 1999 and taught in Tucson, Arizona in some special studios that really like gave me a start then. And and like I said, in a strong yoga community with teachers that had already been teachers for many, many years. Um but I moved to the Virgin Islands in 2002. And when I moved there, I was one of three other yoga teachers that existed in the entire island of 80,000 people.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

And um, and so I was just given so much opportunity there. And what I really fell in love with was in Tucson when I taught most of my students were athletes, movers, yogis. Uh, when I moved to the Virgin Islands, most people had never practiced before. And so, and I always say becoming a teacher to beginners is much harder than becoming a teacher. Like you learn so much when you're really introducing the movement practice to somebody who it's their very first time. You can't just say, oh, do this post, do warrior one. Right. They don't know what that means. And so to really be able to instruct and break things down. So that was a great education, and it made me realize that that was something that I really loved was like bringing practices to people who'd never had the opportunity to have them before. And so I ended up, I met my husband there, I ended up staying in the Virgin Islands. Uh, both my yoga and bodywork practice grew tremendously while I was there. And in 2008, I opened a yoga studio. Okay. Um, that I had until 2013, until we came here. Um and when I had my yoga studio, I had already done several yoga teacher trainings, taken them. But when I had my yoga studio, um, one of the exciting things about having a studio in the Virgin Islands is that I could really reach out to anyone and say, hi, I have a studio in the Virgin Islands. I have a group of students. Would you like to come and offer a training? Sure. And um, I'm a really avid learner, and so those were really, really rich years of learning for me. People came from all over and taught trainings, both in body work and yoga, and one of the conditions was that I got to attend. Sure, of course. So um I did uh a really foundational training over those years from some wonderful teachers out of St. Louis, and uh and it really changed how I saw yoga. But at that time, and I'd already done a lot of anatomy study in my bodywork world. Um, but at that time, I really got to the point of saying, but why? Because as a scientist, like I have that science brain, but like, but why, but why, but why? And I found that through different yoga trainings, and especially this one, even though as intelligent as this training is, I just had a hunger to understand things more. And at that time, a really seminal book in yoga anatomy had come out by it's called Yoga Anatomy, and it's the book that we use in teacher training. And um the authors are Leslie Kaminoff and Amy Matthews, and they were out of New York, offered a training so that you could become a teacher trainer. And so in 2011, I took that training from them and then became a teacher trainer, and was a teacher trainer for their approach to yoga anatomy for several years and offered that within my yoga studio in Virgin Islands. And so that was the very beginning.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

But I would say that my understanding of yoga anatomy now at this point, it comes from a lot of different places. It comes from kind of the depth of anatomy that I've been learning for years in body work and working individually with people and being a manual therapist. And the world of yoga anatomy has grown tremendously in the last 15 years. So not only do we have like this really important work by Leslie Kamanoff and Amy Matthews, but there are also really important teachers out there like Jules Mitchell and Robin Rothenberg. And um, I've been able to study with uh an incredible group of physio yoga therapists through um a program called Three's Physio Yoga that's really rich in yoga anatomy, understanding the body in movement and being able to assess the body in movement and how everyone is just so unique. And the more that we can really individualize um what's happening for people to help them become more efficient, more balanced as they move, and use the yoga practice to support their biomechanics, which then really supports so many other systems in their body. Um I hope that answers the question. Yes. But it's, you know, I've just come at yoga anatomy from a lot of different angles at this point. And so now when I teach yoga anatomy, it's a combination of many, many different teachers. And I've now created my own curriculum.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

Okay. We saw lots of topics in the 35-hour course that I did with you through Namaspa. You know, if we we had to distill it to an essence, you know, what would you like to focus on today? Because I know there's a lot we could go into, but we have a limited time. So, what are some essences of yoga anatomy which actually serve anybody, whether you do yoga or not, if I'm not mistaken?

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Yeah. Um, I would say, you know, the place that we I always start, and that's a really important place to start when understanding our own bodies and working with others is around the anatomy and physiology of breath. Of breath. The anatomy and physiology of breath. And why I say anatomy and physiology is because the two, of course, um work together, but they're different ways of looking at the body. And so the anatomy is the structural part of how we use the structures of our body to breathe most efficiently. Can you explain what that is?

SPEAKER_01 16:58

Yes. How do we breathe efficiently?

SPEAKER_00 17:00

Well, the pri one of the primary understandings is that we have this incredible muscle called the respiratory diaphragm. And it looks like a parachute, and it is at the base of the ribcage. It is attached to the base of the ribcage all the way around 360. And it is our primary breathing muscle. It is autonomic, means that the nervous system is sending it a signal that we're not aware of all the time to contract. And when it contracts, we naturally inhale, and then when it releases, we naturally exhale. And we, as humans, are more efficient when that organ, and why I say organ is because it's not only a muscle, because it also has nerves within it and fascia and many different tissues. That's what creates an organ. But when this organ moves efficiently and with ease, it affects our whole system. But it's such a delicate structure because it's really a very emotional structure. I mean, just think of one of the first things that happens when you feel scared or you feel upset. We usually hold our breath. Yeah. And due to many other things like posture or emotions or what's happening on an organ level, our respiratory diaphragm can become less efficient and not be the primary muscle all the time on that autonomic, unconscious level. And then we recruit all these accessory muscles, like muscles in our chest and muscles in our neck, to do the work of breathing.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

Which is incorrect.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

It's inefficient.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Inefficient, okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

Inefficient. And so energetically, we're really using uh so many of our resources in a way that really doesn't provide us vitality.

SPEAKER_01 19:20

Got it.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

And so when we can, one of the things that we really looked at or anatomy is looking in terms of how people stack their bodies, where they are in their feet, where they are in their pelvis, where they are in their rib cage, how their head is balanced on top. All of that really sets up either a way to support the respiratory diaphragm, to have its full excursion of movement on inhalation, exhalation, or to not have it. And we can, once we can assess where someone is, then we can help them to get a little more balanced, you know, and to create a little more efficiency in that way. And then what that also does, it contributes to all these other amazing benefits, which are that when the respiratory diaphragm works well, it's really supportive of our circulation and the massaging of our organs, because the heart sits right, the heart and the lungs sit right above the respiratory diaphragm. And the liver, the stomach, the spleen, the kidneys, they're all right below. And so when you have that full movement, inhalation and expansion of the reb cage and exhalation, the drawing in, it's creating this support for circulation and this like pumping action that's also massaging all these organs. So there's just so many benefits to having um to being efficient that way.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Yeah. Wow. And how can can you go a little further into how efficient breath can also serve our mental health and our well-being? Like in an emotionally?

SPEAKER_00 21:16

So I would say that um so what we just talked about is more like the anatomy of riot, but then there's the physiological part. And and the two, of course, are intricately correlated, but um when we are able to have what we call um it's it's it's like the ability for the brain to manage and maintain higher levels of carbon dioxide. People often think it's oxygen, right, but it's actually carbon dioxide. The more that you can retain and hold carbon dioxide in the system, it reduces systemic inflammation. Wow. And so, and that's what we see with athletes. That's one of the keys to a lot of the breathwork practices that happen today. And it's one of the essences when you really study yoga and pranayama is this ability to retain breath and to have subtle breathing is to, on a physiological level, is that we become more efficient. And when you have those um lower levels of inflammation in the system, it helps the nervous system to just balance and regulate and to have more resilience and capacity. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

So this idea of holding our breath or taking really long inhales and long exhales enhances a better regulation of our nervous system.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

Well, so what I would say is, and what we're understanding more and more is the long inhalation and exhalation that creates shape change in the rib cage where the ribs actually really expand and open three spits 360, especially in the size of the ribs, the back of the ribs. Um all of that is helping to mobilize and strengthen the respiratory diaphragm. Okay. But then over time, we really can learn on a physiological level to have more subtle breathing.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 23:49

And to be able to retain breath for a little bit longer, longer periods of time. And that's what begins to really work on that physiological level of reducing inflammation and deeply relaxing the nervous system. So those are kind of to a certain degree more advanced practices in breath work when you get to retention. Sure. Um, but at first, what's really, really important is just to notice how we breathe. Yeah. You know, because for most of us, it's just such an unconscious experience. And that's really what you're doing in yoga is you're making that which is unconscious, how we breathe all day long, and you're bringing it into your consciousness. And then you might notice, oh, wow, I hold my breath a lot, or I breathe in and out of my mouth all of the time. Or the more you can start to just become aware and become conscious of your habits, then you can start to work with your habits so that they become healthier and more efficient.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

When you are doing, when you're seeing a client either as a physio yoga instructor or as a body worker, are you always looking at their breath work as well, Lauren?

SPEAKER_00 25:15

Um I am always looking first in assessing how they hold their body, you know, and what I would say is like how stacked or not stacked they are. I am always sensing into the movement of somebody's respiratory diaphragm because a lot of people have a lot of restriction there. And that could be for many different reasons. Um, and then as that becomes more efficient through different practices, then we can start to go a little deeper into practices they can do on their own.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

Okay. Now that you talk about body alignment and how the body is stacked, can you go into more of this? Because that was definitely a big part of our training with you, is just about how gravity meets us. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

Well, so like one of the things that I like to say is that the two things that we're dealing with our entire life, from the moment we're born until the day we leave, is how we breathe and how efficiently we resist gravity because gravity is bearing down on us our entire life. And the more efficient we can be in our skeletal system in terms of how that force meets our body, um determines to a large degree how our body forms over time. And again, it comes back to efficiency and capacity. And so when we have what we would call like a healthy postural neutral, where we meet gravity in a way that gravity is really translating down our skeletal system in a way that's keeping our joints open and mobile, and we're not collapsing in joints and um creating patterns that are going to create a lot of discomfort because then we begin to really overuse our muscles for to hold our body up in that way. I mean, of course, muscles are participate, but they don't have to overly participate. Just think of somebody whose head hangs way forward when they walk. Yeah. There's a lot of muscular engagement instead of somebody who is really perpendicular to the earth and the force of gravity can come down through their skeleton. So, and that's you know, one of the interesting things that we can really examine when people do yoga postures is the way that they are practicing a pose is their and their habitual patterns, which will be seen in a pose, is that going to make them more efficient and support their structure when they are unconsciously sitting up or walking, or is it just reinforcing a pattern that's making them less efficient? Okay.

SPEAKER_01 28:30

Yeah, one thing I find myself, you know, since you're training, much more conscious of my posture, how I'm aligned. Even now that I'm talking to you, I'm very conscious of having my body well stacked, as you would say. And I'm always telling my son who's slouching in the couch or the chair, you know, to be more conscious of how he's, you know, sitting or standing. Um and I know that you see a lot of athletes, a lot of professional athletes in town, a lot of them with pain. Is there a connection between how they're stacking themselves on a daily basis or how they're practicing their sports of and the pain that they're coming to see you with?

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Well, how our skeleton, you know, there are many things that play into our bones and our skeleton, and and we're talking about gravity, but you know, first and foremost is just congenital. Like everybody comes into the world in different ways. And so someone might just have more flat feet, sure, or um more flexibility, or more flexibility, absolutely, or be more rigid, or have uh tightness in a certain area that they've had their whole life, or they had an injury quite young, sure, and it's become a habituated part of their system. So I certainly don't think you can say, is there one thing, yes, by any means, but I think that's what uh, you know, being an anatomist and being a physio yoga practitioner is that I can really see the uniqueness of different bodies, uh-huh, and how even just supporting someone to have more functional feet and not collapse in their arches can make a great difference in what's happening in their knees and then what's happening in their hips, and then what's happening in their spine, because gravity is always translating all the way through. And we have to look, oftentimes it's like, oh, I have knee pain, but wait, let's look first at what's happening in your feet. Let's look at what's happening in your hips, yeah. You know, and because oftentimes we have to look elsewhere and how things stack in relationship to each other, and to understand how patterns are reinforced and how we can then maybe start to get out of patterns. Nothing is isolated. Nothing. Everything is connected, and it really and the first place that it really starts is with breath and this term that we uh really investigated deeply in yoga anatomy, which is the core canister. And those are the structures of our, well, you know, everyone talks about the core, but what we can talk about, why we say the core canister, it's kind of like you can think of it like a cocaine. So you have the respiratory diaphragm, which is at the rib cage, and that would be like the top of the cochan, and then the pelvic floor, which is the musculature at the base of the pelvis, that's like the bottom of the cocaine. And then you have the abdominal layers of abdominal muscles, the transverse abdominus, the obliques, um, the rectus abdominis, all of that is like the front, and then the multifidus are the small muscles along the spine. And it's a system, and we want a healthy, efficient system that has what we call good length tension relationships. And what I mean by that is that all muscles to be healthy, they need to lengthen well and they need to contract well. Okay. And for most of us, uh there are places, or are always places, there's no such thing as perfection in the body, but there are places where a muscle can be just overly contracted. Or other areas where muscles are just too weak and too long. And then what that also does is create imbalance in the joints because we want both sides, the ant the agonist and the antagonist around a joint, to have good length tension relationships. And when we do, and when that becomes more balanced through throughout our entire system, we stack much better and we breathe more effortlessly. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 33:15

And then how does that relate to better movement? Because one thing that you mentioned a lot during the class is you know, movement is vitality. How does this all relate to then our life force, our prana?

SPEAKER_00 33:28

Well, okay, well, that the I I can come at that from quite a few angles, but um the joints are super rich in proprioceptors, and proprioceptors are the nerves that send information um back to the brain that let us know where our body is in space.

SPEAKER_01 33:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 33:59

And when we have healthy joints, so we have good length tension relationships of the musculature around the joints, the joints move well, they don't have a lot of inflammation. We have a lot of clear um communication between the brain and our joints, and that allows for agile movement, got it, and clear movement. And um, and movement is health, and we don't just move at the joints, everything in our body moves. We want our organs to move well, we want everything to have its own unobstructed movement, not too much movement, okay, and that's something that we really have to be careful of in yoga, is like there's uh over the years, kind of has been a lot of misconception that yoga was about flexibility. Right. And yoga is in terms of asana, in terms of posture, and that is not what asana about is about. Posture is the experience of sthira sukkha asana. It means stability and mobility in equal measure at any moment, and so we don't want things to be overly mobile and we don't want things to be overly rigid. We want there to be a balance of that strength and stability and groundedness in the system that's met with openness and movement. But if we get too much one way or the other, then we're we're out of balance. And we can look at that like on a small level, yeah, just within one small joint where we can look at that, and you know, and that's what yoga really does, and the practice is about is beginning to examine that on kind of bigger but also more subtle levels is like is like how we live it, or how are we living in terms of having both of those qualities in our life of stability and openness and ease.

SPEAKER_01 36:18

How that translates into our spirit and way of living.

SPEAKER_00 36:22

Yes. And examining that.

SPEAKER_01 36:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:25

And asana, you know, one of the things they that is understood about asana in the postural practice is like, yes, we do use this body. Um but as the body becomes more balanced, we're able to connect with the subtler qualities of ourself because the body isn't drawing so much attention through pain, through sensation, through discomfort. As the body becomes quieter and it becomes more balanced, then we can more easily uh experience our thoughts, our emotions, um, and the the vibration, the quality that those have. We can sit more easily in meditation, we become more balanced within our nervous system, and that improves greatly our quality of life.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

Wow. How would you say that all your trainings have enriched your own health and wellness, Lauren? Because you're not only, you know, you're not only active in your own practice, but you are also instructing others, you're also helping others. You come at it in all directions, right? I mean, this is your life.

SPEAKER_00 37:51

It is my life, and I would just say I'm human and I go through the ups and downs of being human, yeah, and um, and living in a body, and but I will say that I've been very blessed. I have a really wonderful life, but one of the things that's been super wonderful about my life is this path of work that I've chosen, and um I think it's just been a great honor to work with so many people, and we I learned just as much from everybody else. It's in being a witness, what people go through helps me understand myself more deeply. Um and it's just staying on the journey. I'm just like on this journey, but I do think that I'm a sensitive person, and what has helped me tremendously is I've been able to use my sensitivity as a strength in this life, and I don't know how easy that is in a lot of occupations and worlds that I've been able to really like hone the sensitivity. So I'm grateful for that. It's made me really comfortable in my skin in that way. Yes. I don't know if other worlds of work would have done for me. Sure. Um and I've been able to live a healthy life in the sense that the work is always asking me to regulate my nervous system. And so that's really pretty special that to really show up in the way that's necessary with how I work with people in terms of manual therapy and body work or within yoga or having a yoga practice. I'm always having to really get clear on being present, feeling myself, yeah, connecting in with sensation. Um, and now that's just kind of who I am.

SPEAKER_01 40:25

Yeah. No, I get that because you're coming in such close proximity with all your clients, and on an energetic level, you have to have a certain stillness to yourself in order to kind of receive your client and what they're going through and how to best serve them.

SPEAKER_00 40:41

Yeah. And it's also um we're always co-regulating with everybody we're around. That's true, right? Yes. We're co-regulating with our family, we're co-regulating, and even if we don't know it, it's happening. My nervous system is meeting your nervous system, and my nervous system is affecting your nervous system, your nervous system is affecting my nervous system. That's the energetic world that we live in. And so I just kind of see it as part of my responsibility since like a heart of all this different work that I do has this quality of regulation. It needs to, because healing is always it happens in that place where we become more regulated. Sure. So it's just part of the responsibility of the profession that I continue to take care of my nervous system. And that happens in a lot of different ways, right? In terms of me, the importance of proper rest and food and how I schedule my life and things I choose to do and things that I choose not to do. You know, all of that has really inspired me to live a certain way that I'm grateful for. Yeah. And I'm certainly not perfect by any means, but uh, but it's just part of the work. It's like the lifestyle is part of the work. I don't think I would have had the longevity in the work that I do if I wasn't, hadn't been taught by my teachers. Sure. Really, they're the ones who taught me that like this has to be part of how you live to do this.

SPEAKER_01 42:28

No, and having been your student in that brief period, I can tell that, you know, you really embody, you know, your practice, your knowledge into the way you teach, into the way you show up as a teacher. And yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:42

Thank you, Audrey.

SPEAKER_01 42:43

Thank you. Can you tell us before we go a little bit about your practice, how clients can find you, kind of a little bit about what bodyworkers do, you know, brief, because I know that it's very expensive, all the modalities you you'd have on your belt.

SPEAKER_00 42:56

Sure. So I have a private practice. Um and for some people, it might not be clear what a bodyworker is. Um I my licensure is as I am a licensed massage therapist, but I went to school um for Asian bodywork therapy in the year 2000. And that's quite different. Most people get their massage therapy license going to Swedish massage therapy school. Um, but uh Asian bodywork therapy, my school was based in Chinese medicine, and the practice was Zen Shiatsu. So it's similar in concept to acupuncture, except for it's manual therapy. It's with hands. And um, but I'm working with the meridian system and how that corresponds to specific organs and five element theory. And so that was the foundation of my work for about six years. But once you have license to touch, once you're, you know, a massage therapist or a PT or an OT, then there are just a lot of amazing sort of graduate trainings that you can go on to do. And so over the years, I have studied craniosacral therapy and different forms of that with the Upledger School and biodynamic craniosacral therapy. And so that's nervous system work primarily. And then I went on to study organ work. It started with my and abdominal massage, but I went on and then studied visceral manipulation through the Bural Institute. It's an osteopathic form of manual therapy where we work specifically. It's really that was all all the work I've done is has a an anatomy component. Visceral manipulation has very, very deep anatomy component where you really learn to feel into specific organs and the ligaments that connect organs throughout the body, and how restrictions can reside in those areas. And just like a joint, organs have to move well too. And when they don't, they don't function as well. And so with visceral manipulation, you learn to um release restrictions around the fascia, around organs, so that organs have better mobility, something called motility. And um so that's really incredible work. I love that work. And I've also studied uh lymphatic drainage therapy, and so that has to do with the lymph system, the circulation of the lymph and moving lymph uh through the lymph nodes and the lymph vessels, and that connects very much into the fascial system, and that's great immune system work. Uh-huh. Um, and that I studied with the Chickley Institute. Uh, most recently, in the last four years, sort of my final frontier of body work, I see it as is I've been studying um brain therapy technique through the Chickley Institute. And so this is manual therapy for the brain. Wow. And I specialize in concussion work. Okay. And so that's how I tend to see a lot of athletes. Sure. Is post-concussion. Um and concussion work is usually a combination of lymphatic drainage, craniosacrotherapy, and the brain technique where you're really working with the gray and the white matter of the brain. That's incredible. So um, so that's sort of the breadth of body work. And those are one-on-one clients. And um, you know, I don't have a website. Yeah. Okay. And I'm pretty much word of mouth. I'm word of mouth and referral primarily. But if people ever just like want to find me, you can find me on the Namaspa website. My yoga anatomy class is on the Namaspa website under teacher training. And um, I do have an Instagram page, and it's Lauren Mahaffey Studio. So if anyone wants to find me there, you can find me there as well.

SPEAKER_01 47:23

Okay. Thank you so much, Lauren, for sharing all of this.