Michele Lawrence
You're listening to this as yoga therapy. I'm your host, Michele Lawrence. And I've had the opportunity to interview many of those who are making a difference at the intersections of yoga and health, and I'm here to share with you their stories and conversations. Thanks for listening. In today's episode, I interviewed Robin Robin Berg. Robin has trained yoga teachers since 1999. certified in both vinyasa yoga and I anger yoga through 1992. With additional training as a spiritual director and blue taiko breathing educator, Robin brings a unique weave of traditions into her practice since 2014. The EY T therapist training and that's essential yoga therapy therapist training has been an eye Whitey accredited yoga therapist training program with Robin as program director. She's also a regular presenter on yo Vu and offers workshops, trainings and clinics around the US. For the past six years, Robin has immersed herself in a personal study of the breath of the ancient teachings on pranayama and the science of respiratory physiology. The result of this inquiry has her calling for a breath revolution in the yoga community and her new books released in 20/21, restoring prana, a guide to pranayama and healing through the breath. And second this body Aya breath journal suggests a serious reevaluation of the big breathing habit and is scientifically supported return to the roots of yoga, which teaches us to retain prana by minimizing breath while increasing breath suspensions. So we're going to explore this topic of the breath a bit on the podcast today, and also talk about the work that Robin's doing around the therapeutic approach for long COVID from a yoga perspective. Since as early as summer 2020 Her long COVID presentation at the Global yoga therapy conference established her place as a thought leader in the field. She was a co organizer for the acclaimed wellness after COVID symposium in 2021, which brought together top researchers, medical professionals and policymakers from around the world in support of the efficacy of therapeutic yoga post COVID. Her four part series for those living with long COVID has consistently but been one of the most popular courses offered through the GiveBack yoga, I YT long COVID initiative. Currently, she's offering a continuing ed forum for IoT, illuminating over four consecutive sessions with a client, her unique approach to addressing symptoms associated with the condition. Additionally, Robin works as a consultant for a long COVID research team in the UK, as the head yoga therapist charged with CO Designing the Intervention. It's so great to talk with you today. Robin, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Robin Rothenberg
Thanks for giving me the opportunity. Michelle. It's lovely to be here.

Michele Lawrence
So you're quite an established name in the field of yoga therapy, Robin, and for some time now. So I imagine that many of our listeners today know who you are. And I just shared a bit about you and read from your bio, some of the work that you do. We're going to share more about that today as we get into discussion. But I'm curious, what do you want our listeners to know about you perhaps something that's not out there on your bio, or maybe that is that's not as frequently talked about,

Robin Rothenberg
I think to really understand how I'm living in the position that I'm living in. There's all the like, did this training and did that training and study this and studied that. But what I was bringing part of the essence of me and my story, you know, my narrative, my experience in life was growing up with chronic illness and not having any understanding of why I was sick all the time. You know, I was the kid with you know, as the baby with the ear infections and then the kid with a strep infections and then chronic bronchitis was what I was told I had when I was a teenager to the extent that my parents doped me up with Phenergan with Codeine just to send me to school because it was a non productive cough didn't seem like there was anything that could be, quote, unquote, done about it. So I went to school, I didn't have a fever, anything else, but I just coughed all the time. And nobody knew why. And I was tired, fatigued. I mean, now I understand that I had all the symptomology that relates to chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia are me. And so I just lived like that until I started practicing yoga and then started looking at diet and lifestyle changes and looking into holistic health, but I grew up with in a very medically oriented family with my father. And so, you know, on tons of antibiotics, which of course didn't make anything better, probably made it a lot worse in terms of messing with my gut biome. You know, there's so many things that I know now. had my parents known and I known back then it could, I could have avoided a lot of suffering as the Yoga Sutras say. But, you know, that had as much that experience. And then, you know, my own lived laboratory internally, as I've taken on different kinds of therapeutic modalities, yoga being the biggest tool, the biggest medicine and my tool chest, which of course, has a lot of variable tools within it, it's not one thing, but that has every bit as much to do with how it is that I know what I know. So I want to say it's not knowledge that's just, I've memorized some ideas or some concepts in my head and then applied it, everything that I've learned has passed through this malaise of challenge that I've had, and has brought me to a point where it's 60, I'm healthier and more vibrant and higher functioning, and with a great degree of ease in my body, much more so than when I was 18, when I was 28, when I was 38. You know, like really and truly more so than any other point in my life. So all of that goes into who I am.

Michele Lawrence
Yeah, that's so important. It's the lived experience, right? That gives you a unique perspective of being able to share that with others. And I think it's such an important aspect, quality, whatever you want to call it to bring to the table, particularly when doing this kind of work around suffering, right, and the human existence and how we can share what we've learned along the way to help others who may be on a similar trajectory. So thanks for letting us in on that. I think that is really helpful. And kind of puts things into perspective a bit. So let's dive into the topic of breath a bit. And I kind of was noticing a few things and remember some things and you can correct me in my memory, but I'm thinking back on sitar or the symposium that the IOI T puts on each year. And if I remember you were teaching more specifically on pranayama in like 2018, or 2019. And perhaps you were already working on your book at that time. And then the pandemic hit. And soon after I started to hear about breath work and how it was being introduced to help COVID patients no surprise, and then it wasn't long after that, that you emerged as a leader on the subject of the breath as it pertains to COVID recovery in long COVID. So maybe you can walk us through how this work came about for you and how you were able to take your research and your work on pranayama and apply it to those with long COVID.

Robin Rothenberg 
Yeah, it's interesting how that all played out. Because I mean, I do have a very strong intuitive sense of things. And I always say I take directives really well. Because when I get that sense like this, you have to get on this and do this. Now I listen, I don't argue anymore. So I got that message around the breath when I went through the breath retraining process with my taiko teacher that I needed to absolutely figure out how to understand the physiology, which was a slog, not easy at all. And but I needed to be able to do that and translated and transmitted as quickly as possible to my yoga therapy colleagues, I just felt this urgency like we need this information. I studied with great teachers, and learned a lot and I'm forever ever grateful to them. And I didn't learn the basics of respiratory physiology and functional breathing and the difference between functional breathing and dysfunctional breathing. And yet, I touted myself as a breath expert. And I'm going around giving breathing practices to people, which now feels highly unethical. And I'm embarrassed that I did that for so many years and trained people in my ignorance, shared it with with the people who came to my trainings. The bottom line was that I had this sense of urgency. And so I studied deep studied hard and worked on the book. And the book was I completed the book in 2019. And didn't went through publication without at the beginning of 2020. Or at the very very end of 2019 and had no idea obviously that COVID was just about to burst onto the scenes and suddenly 2020 became the year of the breath. We had certainly COVID And all this discussion about breathing and broken glass lungs and people on ventilators and SPO two oxygen saturation rates dropping and suddenly people are talking about the breath and James nesters book came out like simultaneously with mine and hit you know, the bestseller list and then we have George Floyd and I can't breathe in. Like breath was everywhere. You know? Okay. Yeah, there it is. So I remember when the first report started coming out in this, you know, like April, about this long COVID piece. And there was still that was like really early on in the pandemic, and people were mostly talking about people were getting sick and being in the hospital and people dying and all of that. And they were focusing on what can we do about that? And I was like, there's enough people focusing on that I'm concerned about what's, why are these people not getting better. And I had, because of my study in respiratory physiology, and because of what I just shared with you about my own experience with chronic fatigue and a lot of similarities between CF me and fibromyalgia, those that kind of chronic pain and the brain fog and all that that is associated with it. So many of those same kinds of symptoms, showing up for people with long COVID. I was like, I think, I think we need to be at least some of us need to be paying attention to this. And I reached down into my community, and people seemingly didn't get that this was going to be a big issue. But I flagged it really early on, because I just said, you know, there's gonna be a lot of people who aren't getting better, and what is there for them, because this is a population, you know, autoimmune conditions don't get the kind of funding and attention that at least I feel like they should in terms of research, and really looking at what can we do to help people who are living with chronic conditions, as opposed to acute conditions, which is where a lot of the medicine goes, and the money goes, medical research money goes. So in any case, I felt like what I had learned over the three or four years prior really primed me to look at long COVID from the lens of what's happening with the basic respiratory chemistry on the one hand, and oxygen and co2 levels. And what can we do with breathing, which I understood was a lot that we could do to rectify that get people more feeling more oxygenated. Because if they're more oxygenated, they're going to feel better, and they're going to think better, and their body's going to function better and they're going to heal better. But that's not about getting more breaths in it's about balancing oxygen and co2. So I felt like there was a big piece there. And then also the understanding of the biomechanics in terms of the working out the diaphragm, and when people are have a acute respiratory condition, and they're chronically coughing, it gets them out of a functional biomechanical pattern in their body where their diaphragm kind of goes, I mean, it's still there, but it's not working well. And that affects all the other systems in the body as well, because the diaphragm is a huge player in the lymphatic system and the cardiovascular system and the digestive system. And without a doubt, the immune system. And so getting people both breathing better biochemically and biomechanically can transform their state of health and well being hugely and I felt like, Okay, this information needs to get out there, and how can I proactively support that process. And then you listed a variety of the things that I've been involved with. And I seen private clients throughout this whole period with Lon COVID. And, in fact, have seen remarkably positive shifts in their health and well being. I've applied those ideas, those theories and put them into action.

Michele Lawrence
It's fabulous. Yeah, so thanks for like being right up front with all that. And also sharing what you've learned so that others can then learn from it and impart it as well, maybe we can break it down a little bit too. So perhaps if you could share with our listeners a bit about the science behind some of the specific techniques that seemed to be most valuable for those with long COVID from a breathing perspective, and then also and these may be one in the same and they may be different, but some of the other issues that come along with the long code besides the respiratory, like brain fog and and how yoga helps.

Robin Rothenberg
Yeah, so this is one of the key points that I just kind of touched on it, but I'm gonna say it again, the respiratory system, and none of the systems in the body function separately from one another. They're all part of the same family to family system. So one is having a problem. The others have to pick up the slack and there's stress on the system. However, the respiratory system, breath rules, it really governs a lot of what happens with everything else. So if the respiratory system goes awry, everything else is put off kilter. And the reason for that is that the respiratory system is the number one way in which the body modulates pH. And for those of you who are listening who know the value of pH that I don't have to explain it to you, but for those of you that aren't quite sure, like kind of know, like pH is important, there is a very small window on the acid to Alkalyn scale of where health exists, it's between its slightly Alkalyn, our blood needs to be between 7.35 and 7.45. For us to be in good health, if it drops a little bit lower, a little too acidic, or a little bit higher, a little too Alkalyn, there's going to be dis ease in the body, something isn't going to be functioning well. And then there's compensation and the body has to work really hard to kind of get us back into that little margin of health. If we veer to the left, and go to six with our pH, or we veer to the right, and we go to AIT, with our pH, we are dead. So not a lot of room to mess with. And the breath, again, is the number one way in which our body regulates our pH. So if our breathing is off, and to be even more specific, the heart of our breath, that the brain, the medulla in the brain that's monitoring all of this and keeping our autonomic nervous system functioning, our heart rate and our blood pressure and, and all of that. So the piece that it's focusing on and highly sensitive to is our carbon dioxide levels. And there's a whole reason and that's where respiratory physiology gets complex. So I won't go into the density of that. But just to say that it's not oxygen that is primary, it's carbon dioxide. And carbon dioxide is critically important for a number of reasons. Starting with it governs pH, when it drops a little bit, our breath rate increases. And if we increase our breath rate, or volume, the amount that we breathe out, because we're sick, and we're coughing all the time, and we're breathless, because our respiratory system is under attack from a virus like Corona, then we're off gassing tremendous amounts of co2, and that's going to drop our co2 levels. And that's going to put our system into imbalance. And part of what happens with that imbalance is that the oxygen that is within our body that we breathed in, we can't utilize well, because in order for our body to actually utilize the oxygen that we breathed in, there needs to be sufficient levels of carbon dioxide. So that is a huge factor in all of this, and I can't impress upon anyone but your listeners, right today, how important it is to understand that balance and to help people to reregulate their breath after they've had an acute respiratory issue, even if it's the flu, or they had a chest cold and they're coughing, there's dysregulation that happens. And what happens is a low level, hyperventilation can occur. And the definition of hyperventilation is not enough co2 to support metabolic needs. That's the definition of hyperventilation. And so with that drop of hyperventilation, there's a variety of symptoms that can occur. And you could look this up, I mean, there I books that I use for my articles, and you can look it up objectively the symptoms that correlate with hyperventilation, and you'll see that there's a lot of the symptoms that match the long COVID symptom picture.

Michele Lawrence
That's a really useful, helpful bit of education.

Robin Rothenberg
So if that's what's occurring, physiologically, and Iwould say it's one of the things that's occurring it make it sound like that's the whole story. Sure, but it's a big piece of the story. I think it's a core piece of the story that then other things feed off of.

Michele Lawrence
Got it. Yeah. So from a pranayama technique perspective, where do you go with that? And of course, this is not a training, this is a podcast, but it would be really helpful to get a little insight into approach even maybe it's specific technique to but what is the approach from a pranayama standpoint, then?

Robin Rothenberg
Yeah, so let me just put this out here. Now, just to say that I'm aware that I'm doing a number of podcasts and I'm doing this training through AI YT and some other things and so there's a lot of this question coming in like okay, that was really cool. that you knew that Robin, but what do I do with it? I actually just this weekend, wrote up and put out an upcoming training on March 12, and 13th. For those of you who really want the little bit more in depth answer to this question, and then there is my year long restore your private training that really goes into it will skill you to work more therapeutically with people, not just with long COVID. But with a variety of conditions. At least that eight hour workshop in March will give much more sufficient information than what I'm able to do right here. But I'll give you a couple of basic tidbits that are good, like good, what I call breath hygiene, good for everybody. Nobody's going to be worse off if you bring this into your practice, including you who are listening and anybody that you work with number one, number one, number one, breathe through your nose. Sounds easy. However, there's a lot of that happening in the world of yoga. I would die a happy person if that just stopped today. Right? Like, please, and and please don't tell anyone that that will increase oxygenation. That is just can I say BS on your podcast? And that's my polite way of saying, yeah, yeah, so really, it's just not true. It's not factually true. What you're doing when you're doing those big mouth breaths out is your big breathing, and you're off gassing a lot of co2. When co2 drops, there's less oxygenation happening oxygenation has to do with cellular respiration, how the oxygen is getting from the bloodstream, into the cells, into the tissues, into your muscles and into your organs, you know, your intestines to help you digest and into your brain to help you think. So we want oxygen, there doesn't help just to have good oxygen saturation in your bloodstream. If it's stuck there, and it can't get into the cells of your body, you're not going to feel good, you're going to feel tired, you're going to feel achy going to feel kind of dull in your head, you're going to be lethargic, you're going to probably crave a lot of carbs, because you're not creating ATP. Oxygen has to get in the cells in order to create energy. And the yogi's understood this. So to go back to your question about pranayama, all the Pranayamas except for she delete, were taught with a mouth closed and she totally, which is the tongue breath or she'd curry, you're making a very small funnel, you're not doing a big and that's also it's on the in breath, you're you're still titrating the amount of breath do you bring in? And would you do that tongue curl it's about the size of a nostril. So it's not a big gaping jaw dropping mouth breath in or out and it's in slightly through the nose, and then slips sealed, and then exhale through the nose. So the yogi's understood nasal breathing, as critically important, I would like nasal breathing to be reinstated as the go to way to breathe in yoga classes, fitness classes, basically, anywhere and everywhere you are, as my breathing teacher says, shut to your mouth. Right now it's your mouth, and you'll be healthier. So that's number one.

Robin Rothenberg
And then number two is to breathe less. This idea that because breath is so important, it's so vital, that more is better. You know, it's our usual Western adaptation of everything right? More harder, faster. There is such a thing as too much right? Too much of anything not good. It's a burden to the system. And I liken this idea to too many calories, like, you know, we know that there's a certain caloric intake, that for most of us who are not, you know, in the Olympics, right, not not in some kind of intense athletic training program that we really don't need as adults much more than 2000 to 2500 calories a day. However, our body can get entrained to and use to acclimate it to 3000 4000 even 5000 calories a day. But it's a burden to our system, our system has to work a lot harder. And it affects right everything it affects our musculoskeletal system, it certainly affects our cardiovascular system, our digestive system, to have that additional burden. Well, likewise, there is a certain amount of sort of appropriate or, you know, useful breath and more actually more breathing puts us out of balance and makes our system work harder. So learning to breathe light, silent when you're at rest. There's No reason to be huffing and puffing. I mean, when people are stressed, you can just ask yourself this as you're listening, like when you're stressed out? What happens to your breath? Right? Do you breathe slower to breathe calmer and quiet? Or do you breathe more like big size and kind of erratic breathing, what happens to your breathing when you're stressed out, I mean, there might be some breath holds in there. But that's also sort of framed with some rapid breathing and big size and then a breath hold. And it's like that there's not a steady, quiet still rhythm. And if you contrast that, with how you breathe when you're in a complete, deep, inward state of meditation, you know, Michelle, how do you breathe? When you're in a deep state of meditation? Can anybody even discern that you're breathing? can you discern your breathing when you're in a deep state of meditation?

Michele Lawrence
Right, it's like you're barely breathing, until the teacher tells you to pay attention to your breath,

Robin Rothenberg
until something takes you out. Right? Or you're suddenly it occurs to you, like, am I even breathing, right, and then you're out of meditation. But really, that the yoga teachings around breath and mind, talk about them in relationship to one another one follows the other, they wag each other's tail. So the more the mind revs up, the more the breath revs up, the more the breath revs up, the more the mind revs up. So there's really like to me, pranayama, and meditation are doorways into the exact same room. Right, because if you quiet the breath, the mind will follow. And if you quiet the mind, that breath will follow, it can't be any other way, because they're joined, completely co joined through the autonomic nervous system. So with that idea in mind, and understanding that yoga is about the quieting of the mind, I'm sorry to say that there's no way that you can achieve an inward state of Samadhi while you're breathing, like that. So very basic level, through the nose, quiet, less, and begin to work with breath suspension, because in doing deep study, after I did my breath study, through taiko, I came back around and started studying the original texts and the writings from pranayama. Experts from way back and looking at the Yoga Sutras and the Hatha Yoga Pradipika. And the grant of Sumita. These texts, what do they say about pranayama. And the bottom line is Khun Baca. That is the breath suspension, the space between the breaths, or between the inhale and the exhale, the time when you're not breathing in or breathing out, is synonymous with pranayama. Pranayama is about the increasing the length and the periods of not breathing. That is, by definition, and this was like repeated over and over again in every single text. And we lost that somewhere along the line. And it makes me very sad. I personally felt the negative impact of that because I do believe that in addition to my prior preconditioning towards hyperventilation, because of all my respiratory issues as a child coming in, and when I got into breathing in very, like really working with extending my inhale and particularly extending my exhale and 22nd exhales and you know, with that Ooh, je and really forceful and then a lot of chanting, which is also big breathing, I love chanting, please understand, I really love chanting. However, the combination of that with teaching more intensely for hours at a time because talking is big breathing. Talking is big breathing. This is another piece with long COVID is silent retreat, stop talking, reserve your prana. But all of that combined, really depleted my system and sent me into a acute state of respiratory distress, which is how I ended up going to the beach, take a training and immersing myself in that because the premium is that I have learned, we're making everything worse. Now I understand why. It's not because the Pranayamas were bad, please. There's a place for them. Right, right. And if you're a functional breather, and your blood gases are balanced, and you've got good oxygenation, good cellular respiration happening, lots of ATP being produced. your mitochondria are in good working order. You can do all kinds of things with the breath. The question is, are you a functional breather? Is your student a functional breather? Because if not, then that's the first starting place. And for sure somebody who's had respiratory issues like the people with lung COVID, one could assume they're not functional breathers. And so teaching them Chapala bati. And to like, cleanse and purify and clear the virus out of their body. That was actually the thing that freaked me out. Yeah, you know, way back in the, in the spring and summer of 2020. I was like, Oh, my God, I can just hear it now, in yoga classes, they're gonna be like, oh, let's cleanse, let's clear out all the toxicity. And I'm like, Oh, please don't go there.

Michele Lawrence
Mm hmm. What is the distinction between less breathing and shallow breathing?

Robin Rothenberg
Yeah. So I'm glad you asked that question. Because and I'm going to spin it for a moment, because I think one of the terms that if it's looked at in its true sense, is right on however it's gotten, I think the the interpretation of it is different than the intention, which is deep breathing, should deep breathe. But what that translates into is big breathe. And I'm a fan of deep, but I'm not a fan of big, deep means abdominal diaphragmatic, that you're you're utilizing primarily you're utilizing your diaphragm as your primary breathing muscle in a very active way. And that you're, you're drawing on your abdominal muscles as the secondary support for good abdominal diaphragmatic function. And in that process, your upper chest, your neck, your shoulders, your jaw muscles are completely passive, right, you're not sucking in the breath through the chest. Right. So to me shallow versus deep shallow is chest breathing, neck breathing, right, the clavicles, lifting all that tension and tightening, job breathing, which, you know, there's a lot of that that happens. And it's connected to mouth breathing, the sympathetic nervous system, stressed states, and that breathing in and of itself can actually trigger the sympathetic nervous system and take someone into a state of anxiety and stress. So to me, deep means low in the body, however, one can breathe low and light, and one can breathe low, and slow, and light. And that is a good prescription for health.

Michele Lawrence
Super helpful, thank you. I'm curious about what medical centers have stood out for you in terms of adopting these types of therapies and practices into the western model of treatment. I've read about maybe someplace near you in Seattle or on the West Coast. And I know that there was a mention of a partnership you have in the UK. So can you share more about

Robin Rothenberg
that. So it's slow, and research is slow, like I'm part of this UK team, we're just gearing up they have funding, they're very well respected team of yoga researchers in the UK who are looking into this. But you know, our projected timeline in terms of actually implementing the protocol and actually teaching classes to people is until next spring, we're working on it consistently. And we add, there's a great team of other yoga therapists, we're working together on it. There's a lot of behind the scenes for the first time I did yoga research, which was back in 2000. With the low back study, the first thing that the principal investigator Karen Sherman, who was working with on it told me his research is super slow. Like if we're lucky, and we get good results. There'll be something published in five, eight years. And I'm thinking, well, that's crazy. We're doing this now. But it was, you know, the first study was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2005. Of course, she was the expert she knew. So I've learned that this takes time. So so whatever is happening in terms of research, unfortunately, the people who are suffering with long COVID Right now, like there's not going to be much for them because in terms of looking at efficacy and randomized control trials and all of that kind of thing. They and they need help right now. I don't know a lot. I know that there's experimentation going on. What I do know this is the only one I actually can speak to is that there is a group that was either on the East Coast, either New Jersey or New York. It's a long COVID clinic. And they have been working with breath, they've been working with a variety of things and you know, people with these low SPO to like their oxygen levels way low and, and the fatigue and a lot of postural orthostatic hypertension pots where there's that difficulty with the blood pressure dropping and heart rate spiking with a change of position, from like sitting to standing, or certainly lying down to sitting, that's very disconcerting and can actually, you know, just render somebody unable to function in their life. Anyway, looking at those things, and they added at one point to their protocol, they added breath holds after exhale, breath suspension in order to raise co2 levels up. And they saw a significant spike in relief from symptoms. And I was just like, I felt like yes, validated, right? It's like, I could have told you this, right? Like, the direction I go in with my clients. And, and it's been pretty remarkable the the difference, first of all, in the subsiding of the cough, for the people who are chronically coughing, like, addressing the chronic cough is huge. And this, these are the kinds of things that we'll get into some of the nuts and bolts of it on in that training in March is how to approach that. And this is also for yoga teachers, too, I really try to make the basic information accessible, so that there's more hands on deck, because we've got 5 million people. And that's probably pretty low, because a lot of people aren't even reporting that they have long COVID Or have, you know, been officially diagnosed, because they're still questions in the medical community. Do you have it? Or is it even a thing? Yeah, and so you know, but we've got, let's say, at minimum 5 million, and could be maybe close to, you know, 10 20%, more than that, people suffering with this. And so the more education that yoga teachers yoga therapists have, because we do have, you know, there's a lot of yoga teachers out in the world, providing support, and just people come to us because they think we can help with their breathing issues. And also there help them to get feeling more vital and better, and all of that, and we can, we can help them, but only if we're educated. And we're working with the breath in a way that supports function, and doesn't take what's already dysfunctional and make make it worse.

Michele Lawrence 
Mm hmm. Yeah. So students can learn more about this from you next month, I'll put some links in the show notes that's being offered through iytc. Is that right?

Robin Rothenberg
So let me clarify. There are two different offerings. The one that's happening like that's available, you can download it right now is the four sessions. It's the support for long COVID supporting clients with long COVID through IoT, it's a nine hour like there's so much content in this I did four sessions with a client with long COVID, we recorded all four sessions. After every session, one of my colleagues, Claire Collins, who's also a yoga therapist interviewed me and downloaded like what was going on in my mind, what why did I make the choices I made so like getting into the mind of the yoga therapist, after the first session, there was a panel discussion with other yoga therapists who work with long COVID. And we had a wonderful discussion about different ways, not not just my way, but like, how they approach it, and what they perceived in watching me work with the client. And so really juicy content there. And then the three subsequent sessions, were recorded with those interviews, and then an outtake interview with the client herself about her experience, and what that was like for her and what she came away with. And then I included all of my notes to the client, and all of our email communication in between, so that you get to like go right in and see the whole thing laid out over the course of a month. And all that is available now. Like you can buy that package like the second you after you listen to this interview that's accessible to you now, and then you can join us on February 23. For an open kind of forum q&a, you can ask me questions. And I'll be sharing some more about that and some more about the clients experience because I've continued to work with her since then. And so that's very rich, and a great learning forum. That's who I have it. Now. I individually, just me myself and I will be offering this eight hour training on the weekend of the 12th and 13th of March, right for yoga. therapist and yoga teachers who want to then say, okay, I saw her do that stuff. But I didn't learn that yoga school. Like I didn't learn it in yoga school either, by the way, so I'm there sharing it. So I will be presenting on the 12th and 13th. These ways that use simple tools and through practice and lecture to help students really understand therapists and yoga teachers to understand how to bring these tools into their practices in their work with students, and particularly with students and clients with long COVID.

Michele Lawrence
Wonderful. Yeah, that's great. Thanks for recapping that. And I'll include all those links when I post this episode. Yeah. So last question. And I'd love to know a little bit more about you and kind of what practices you do and what your daily practice looks like to put you in the best place to serve others and to continuously learn and grow and evolve. You know, as yoga therapists, this is such an important aspect of who we are is, is actually having practice ourselves. And would you share with our listeners more about that what that looks like for you?

Robin Rothenberg
Yeah, absolutely. So because I had always had respiratory issues, pranayama was always an interest of mine. And I started and I and our yoga that just say, you know, I learned a lot, there was a lot that I take away and continue to use from my training and I and our yoga but not so much around the breath, more around the body and, and alignment structure and things like that and use of props, Vinnie yoga, definitely very breath centric practice in my training with Gary crafts, I was very informative. And I latched on to that big time, and brought, you know, like I would do like 10 or 15 minutes of pranayama or whatever, most days when I got sick. I mean, in addition to my asana practice, and meditation practice, when I got really sick with the respiratory illness, like for whatever it was now six years ago, that led me to be taiko, and I went through the Taiko training part of the training emphasized a minimum of an hour of breathing practice a day not to be done in one hour, solid but to be broken up through the day, in 10 minutes, or 15 minutes or 20 minutes segments, so that the total time practicing the breath retraining equaled at minimum an hour to 90 minutes. And I took that to heart. And I implemented that. And I did not miss a day. Like really truly because I could feel the difference. When I did my breathing. My head was clear. I had energy, I had vitality, I didn't cough, like it made a big difference. So I was highly motivated. And that instilled a very deep scar in me, I continue to I do pranayama when I that's the first I don't like I mean, I usually pay honestly just probably TMI, but you know, like I get up and I have to pee, but then I do my breathing, like so. And I do a good 20 to 30 minutes of my breathing practice my pranayama practice, which is a subtle breathing and breath suspension practice. And I do that 20 To 30 minutes before I go to sleep at night. So and I rarely miss like, it's highly unusual for me to not do those. Only if for some reason. Like I overslept, and I'd like have to get going, which doesn't happen too often. And then if I'm totally wiped out at the end of the day, I'm you know, I can't stay awake to do it. But really truly I'm, it's like every day. And then in between I exercise a lot. And I always exercise with my mouth closed. There you go. Yeah. And so I don't ever I mean, like I'm on the elliptical, I walk Hills every day with my dog, you know, several miles a day, I do weightlifting. I do my asana practice, I'm always conscious of moving a lot and breathing a little. So I get lots of practice in with movement, which there's a relationship between movement and breath, which is again related to carbon dioxide, and oxygenation. So it's on my mind pretty much all the time and then talking because I'm a teacher and talking puts me at risk because it's big breathing. I try it's the hardest practice for me of all is to try to remember to pace my speech you see what's happening is I'm bringing consciousness to it and a pausing to take a nose breath in instead of just reloading. So I try to pace my speech. So I'm not over talking myself and dropping into that low level hyperventilation, because what will happen is I'll tend to cough I still have that trigger. And I know like coughing is my canary it means that I'm literally running out of air. I've got my mouth open too much. And it signals meet up, close my lips and shut up. And so that keeps me honest as well. So breathing is like I just don't ever go too far away from it because it's my medicine. And I just stay very conscious of it. And that's part of my spine. Yeah, it's a lens. It's not really just about the breath, really and truly underneath all of this and why my book is called restoring products, because it's really the window into product allocation like, how am I utilizing my product? And how much am I conserving and reserving and how much am I expending? And where's my energy going? So that links me right into my, my mind and my lifestyle choices in my diet and what's happening in relationship. It's all intertwined.

Michele Lawrence
Mm hmm. So interesting, Robin, and really so insightful to thank you so much for sharing so much in this short period of time that is just really clear and helpful. And I have no doubt that folks we'll be inspired to learn more based on this conversation and, and really what you've shared resonate so strongly with me so much appreciated. So thanks so much for your time today. 

Robin Rothenberg
You bet. It's a pleasure to be here and thank you for listening.

Michele Lawrence
If you'd like to learn more about who we are and what we do, visit us at inner peace yoga therapy.com

Transcribed by https://otter.ai