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 Beryl Bender.  Beryl has been a student and teacher of the classic 8-limbed path of Ashtanga Yoga since 1971. She coined the term power yoga, and her power yoga classes in New York and workshops all over the country. Were the first and original power yoga program based on the Ashtanga sequences, which is Barrows personal practice since 1979. She adapted the power practice for athletes of all sports ages and abilities, which is one of the reasons the program rocketed to success. Her first book power yoga was published in 1995 and sold nearly 300,000 copies. She has since then written three more books beyond power yoga, the philosophy of the eight limbs yoga path, Boomer yoga practice for Ageing athletes and yoga for Warriors written for veterans and men and women in active duty military. She's the founder and director of the hard and soft Yoga Institute, and she, alongside Rob Schware also founded the GiveBack yoga foundation in 2007. I personally practice alongside barrels power yoga for runners VHS tapes in my New Jersey home when I was training to run the New York City Marathon some time ago. And I've had the chance to attend several workshops and classes with her through the years. I'm a big fan. And she was also the inspiration for our school to form a partnership with giveback yoga. So we'll talk a little bit about many things today. It's such a delight to be speaking with you on the podcast today, Beryl from your new home. Not too far from me right now in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Beryl Bender
Hi, Michelle, thank you so much. This is so much fun. And I have a quick question for you. Did you end up running the New York City?

Michele Lawrence
Oh, yes, I did. I did have Yeah, I was gonna mention that. But yeah, I think that was in 2003.

Beryl Bender
And were you injury free?

Michele Lawrence
I was injury free.

Beryl Bender
Yoga, right? Yep,

Michele Lawrence
absolutely. My one and only marathon.

Beryl Bender
I know. I did one to one and on one was enough. 

Michele Lawrence
So I'd like to focus our conversation today on yoga and longevity, you have a new course on the subject in conjunction with yoga International, which will be available starting next week. And I'll provide a link for folks to find out more and register for that in the show notes. But first, I would love for you to share what you would like our listeners to know about Beryl. I've mentioned many things. You're probably known to a lot of our listeners already. You've had such a long history teaching and practicing yoga. And as I've already mentioned, you did coined the term power yoga, but what would you like our listeners to know about you that they may not already know,

Beryl Bender
it's hard to imagine that there's anything they don't already know? Because I'm a pretty open book, I don't have a lot of secrets, trying to think about things that people might not know about me know, probably that I'm, you know, pretty down to earth pretty accessible. I think people know that. I love yoga, I love the methodology of Patanjali is a classical yoga. Certainly, there are a lot of things that occurred to me when I talk to people about yoga, you know, right now, today's world, when you say tell people you do yoga, they immediately connect that to Asana, you know, the word yoga is sort of become synonymous with the word Asana. Whereas, we go back a couple 1000 years to the yoga sutra, or even know probably 100 years yoga meant something completely different. Yoga was sort of synonymous with meditation with Samadhi. And how that transition happened, I guess was when the asana practice became so popular here and everybody sort of was not everybody but many people were jumping on and starting to that's kind of the entry point for most people. I think coming into yoga is to go through us not what else do people not know about me? I have no children. So I really feel kind of good about that, that I'm contributing to keeping the population under control. That's one of the things I that's a good there's There you go. There's one thing people might not know is I was  radical activist and you know, my belief is that almost every problem we have now with the environment is because there are too many people on the planet. And when I'm teaching a workshop and I have young women of childbearing age, I try to encourage them to back off on the procreation, which is actually happening in this country, our population is going down. But of course, that freaks out the corporations that want us to have more kids, spend more money, consume more products, use more resources. And that's exactly, you know, what we don't really want to be doing and it's kind of exactly what yoga teaches us is to be simple, use things wisely to conserve to recycle. And so, yeah, no kids, no sisters, no brothers, no mother, no father, no ants, no uncles. So I'm a pretty solitary creature, although I have a big global family that extends from coast to coast and around around the planet.

Michele Lawrence 
Yeah, you do. And you're an animal lover too, aren't you?

Beryl Bender
Oh, my God. Yeah, I'm a huge I've been a pretty ardent act, animal activist since 19, early 70s. And I've got a couple Siberian Husky rescues laying around here, but I am definitely an animal lover.

Michele Lawrence
Well, thanks for sharing a little bit more about you to us. I'd love to kind of talk about some of the origins for some of what you do now. And then we'll focus on the longevity stuff that's coming out soon. So you started the hard and soft Yoga Institute back in the 70s. I'd love to know, because I think this is kind of telling about you. Why did you name it the hard and the soft? And what does it refer to? And then what is the mission of the hard and soft Yoga Institute today?

Beryl Bender
It started when I was living in Colorado in the 70s. I was in living in Fraser, Colorado, which is right next to Winter Park from about 1973 to 1989. Yeah, when I moved back to New York, and the idea for the heart, and I started the hardness of Yoga Institute. It wasn't the Yoga Institute when I first started because I wrote a couple grants for the Colorado humanities program. It was just the hardness soft Institute. But it comes from the Zen proverb which says only when you can be extremely pliable and soft, can you be extremely hard and strong. And the interesting thing about the Ashtanga asana practice is I think it introduced the element of strength into yoga practices, Asana practices in this country in the 70s, the practice of Asana was pretty soft. And it was mostly about stretching. And if you asked anyone, especially men weren't particularly interested in doing it, it was something women did and, you know, considered very feminine and very soft and very stretchy. And when I met Norman Allen, who was my teacher of the Ashtanga system, and I saw that practice, I was like, Oh, my God, this is yoga. Because I had been doing Shivananda yoga, I had taken many, many workshops with one of many of the old, the senior, I should say, Iyengar teachers, and the Ashtanga practice was something completely different. The practice that was developed by topic choice and taught to some of the early students such as myself, and David Williams, and Norman Allen. And I thought, Oh, my God, this is so focused on strength that was like watching a gymnast workout when I saw Norman do a demonstration. So I was pretty taken with that. And I think the influence of that system brought more awareness about the idea of yoga being capable of developing strength as well as flexibility. And so the harness off to me was just a perfect metaphor for not only the asana practice, but for everything in life, it seems like every decision we make, we have to choose between, okay, am I just gonna let this slide? Am I going to be soft here? I'm gonna, I'm not gonna get too upset about that, or is this something I really want to take a stand on? Am I gonna plant myself here and say, No, this isn't right. So I think we're always finding that balance between pushing and pulling, you know, when do you back off and when do you step in. And I think that as we develop the viveka,  discernment. And by raga, non attachment, we begin to see that boundary between hard and soft, a little more clearly and a little more easily and realize backed off a little too much Do I let those people just run over me? Or, you know, I was a little too forceful there. I pushed it a little too hard. I was a little too aggressive. I need to soften it a little bit. Does that make sense?

Michele Lawrence
Yeah, it absolutely does. I think it's so related to yoga, right, this balance of holding two things at the same time. Two things that can be opposite and finding your way and navigating to that. So even though you mentioned it comes from a Zen saying, it's also very instrumental to the core of what we do as Yogi's in this world and, and who we are always recognizing the the dark and the light, right? It's not all light, love and light, as some might say.

Beryl Bender
It also balances what Patanjali says in the yoga sutra about Asana, that Asana should be suka, Sarah, you know, soft, suka. easy, relaxed, and sthira. Focus strong, attentive. So it's a balance of effort and ease, just finding that balance. Yeah, that's great.

Michele Lawrence
What are you up to with the Hard and the soft Yoga Institute today? Are you doing teacher training programs? Still? Have you changed radically? Have you been sort of charting on the same path for a long time?

Beryl Bender
Yeah, there's always change happening, for sure. And when March 2020 came along, as for many of us, my entire income was dependent on traveling and doing workshops. You know, I traveled all over the country, really, all over Europe, and all over North America, Central America, and that just came to a screeching halt that was like, oh, boy, what do I do now? You know, so we, many of us, like many others, you know, we had to reinvent ourselves and thought, Oh, my God, how are we going to do this online? Now, looking back, you know, teaching online is such a joy. And we've have such a global Sangha. Now, I taught a class the other morning at five in the morning, here it was, it was for yoga International, they wanted it to be at 7am Eastern time. So I said, Hey, you guys should know that five o'clock to Mexico time. That means I have to get up about 330. I get up early, but not quite at 330. And I was so great. I had somebody from the Philippines, someone from Switzerland, someone from France, couple people from the UK, a woman from Japan, somebody from Michigan and Florida. And I went, This is so fantastic. And the fact that it sort of coincided with, you know, that it was created by the onset of COVID. And that people became so frightened to touch each other and breathe on each other hang out together. Rightly so, you know, it was it was a huge upheaval, for our lifestyle. And so the fact that we had, you know, that this technology came in to support us and kind of save us. And so I pretty much, you know, overnight, well over a summer over that summer, I had to figure out how to put my old teacher training program and workshops up online. And now we have this absolutely fantastic 300 hour teacher training program with where we're focused on meditation and activism and Compassionate Leadership and adaptive yoga. And I have incredible faculty. So I teach along with all my faculty, but I think it's it's spectacular program. And I do miss teaching in person, but I will sit you know, in our zoom class, in our zoom program, I'll sit gazing at the screen and I'll say, Michelle, can you take your feet a little bit farther apart in that angle your back foot in a little tiny bit? My Oh, God. That's it. That's great. Yeah. You know, so it is possible. I don't really like doing these just putting a class out there and having sent out to 250 people and not being able to see anyone or interact I'm really love the interaction and the interconnection and the two way communication. I like it when I can tell people to, you know, gee, try and put a little foot gag and put a little more strength into that arm and then you see it happen. So there is a feedback loop. There is a way to communicate, you know, and teach Asana virtually.

Michele Lawrence
Absolutely. And you know, you're not traveling and flying and you've reduced your carbon footprint so much. I mean, I think about that a lot too. You know, since we've moved our trainings, virtual and it surprised at how While it's going, I still miss being together with people. And I also am feeling good about the fact that I'm not getting on a plane every month or flying other people around all the time too. 

Beryl Bender
oh my god, me too. I haven't been on a plane. Since I came to Durango since February of 2020. 

Michele Lawrence
Yeah, that was I was wondering if that might have been one of your last workshops. 

Beryl Bender
Yeah, that and Albuquerque? I can't remember which one I did first. Yeah, it's almost two years. And I didn't fly down here from the northeast, I drove across country with my friend, my woman who works as my assistant now who I adore, and my two dogs. And we took seven days, and we had the best time and you know, it was great. Yeah. So yeah, I'm flying to Costa Rica in February. And that will be my first plane trip.

Michele Lawrence
Wow. So let's talk a little bit about give back yoga. So previously, on the podcast, I interviewed Rob Schware. And he told us his story on the origins and early development of giveback yoga foundation. But you were the inspiration for that and co founder of that, and he obviously talked to that a little bit in the interview that we had back then. Can you share with us your version of the origins of give back yoga foundation and where it's at today?

Beryl Bender
Well, Rob was a student. And so he came to a couple workshops that I taught in DC in Baltimore, and some of the suburbs of Washington, and became a student of mine, and I just connected with Rob right away. He's, you know, we're about the same age. He's a couple years younger than I am, and just a very bright, competent, kind, loving, wonderful guy. And we were talking one day, and he just said, you know, I really have this feeling that I want to give back to the yoga community. And I said, No, that's great. Rob, I've always wanted to start a foundation. I said, when I was in Colorado, and I had the heart of the soft Institute, I really started the process of turning it into a nonprofit of doing the application because I, I got a couple grants from the Colorado humanities program. And I thought, you know, I should really develop a nonprofit. And he said, Well, you know, maybe we could join, you know, collaborate on something, we could started a yoga Foundation. And I said, That's a great idea. I was doing teacher training programs already. And one of the requirements in the teacher training program was that all the graduates had to develop a giveback project in their communities. And I didn't care whether it was walking dogs at the local shelter, or going to the local grocery store and collecting, you know, out of date produce and repackaging it taking to the Senior Center, or, I mean, it was I just wanted people to do something to give back in their communities. And so simultaneously, we sort of came up with what about the GiveBack yoga Foundation? And there it was 2007. And so Rob, has I take very little credit for the success of the foundation today, because Rob has taken it into the stratosphere. He worked for the World Bank for many years and had incredible organizational skills and the ability to draw people in very often when someone hears that, you know, somebody else is doing something similar to what they're doing. You know, the response is, oh, that's competition. Rob is absolutely the opposite. He hears someone is doing something about, you know, giving back to the community. And his first instinct is to do collaborate, draw them into the web. And so he's been fabulous. He just sent me an email, he says, you know, since 2015, we've distributed 25,000, yoga mats, to over 1000 outreach programs, working to support prisoners, veterans, and people facing physical and mental illness. That's to all our programs. And that program, kind of you wouldn't think that giving out yoga mats would be such a big deal. But that kind of lies at the heart of our mission, to bring the healing power of yoga to people who need it the most. So where we are right now, we're in a place where both of us are I would like to be an emeritus board member and he would like to probably at some point retire he's been an executive director for 14-15 years. So we're looking to see who can we recruit to carry On the mission of give back yoga Foundation.

Michele Lawrence
Yeah, I'm so impressed and would just agree wholeheartedly with my experience with Rob in terms of how collaborative and supportive and organized he  is, and so impressed with all that they're doing, and thanks to you, really, our school was able to get involved with give back yoga, because I had mentioned to you back in Durango two years ago, how we were interested in starting a nonprofit of our own. And you really encouraged me to take a look at give back yoga and think about partnership opportunities versus diluting the field out there with more and more and more people who have a very similar mission. And I really took that to heart. And I'm so grateful for that conversation and the opportunity, and then what developed from there, and just the ability that we've had now to provide yoga training to a lot more people through scholarship, people who wouldn't have access otherwise, yoga therapy training that is and also Grants to Individuals who are doing yoga therapy, service projects in their communities, particularly those who are underserved. So it's been so great to kind of be involved and give back yoga and also see them do so many amazing things with a lot of other collaborators too, and, and know that it's in really good hands now with Rob and I trust that the future is as well.

Beryl Bender
 Yeah, I was very impressed Michelle, with the work that you were doing. I know how difficult it is to be a certified school to get that certification. Authentication from the International Association of yoga therapists. And so that's quite a prestigious organization, to have their seal of approval and be certified by them is quite an accomplishment. I mean, just filling out the form is amazing. And so I was really wanted to do all I could to encourage you to, you know, to grow and expand and be you know, come into the GiveBack network yet, you know this, someone said to me of one of my students last night, I do yoga sutras study course we do four weeks in a row there, it's on a Tuesday night, and we spread them out about two weeks apart. And we just did our first one this past Tuesday, and we have three more Tuesday's coming up, and that we have 2530 people, and it's so incredibly powerful. I mean, people, everybody has a different translation, we're all saying, you know, we're looking at a sutra and somebody's going, I have no idea what this means. And the deeper you get into the study of the Sutras, the more you find differences of opinion among all the scholars and you think well, you know, who's Patanjali? And? And did he really write this? And when was this written? Was it 200? You know, BC before the Common Era? Or was it 400. But the idea of this community, someone in the in the course was saying, you know, I really, there's no way I could do this on my own, I couldn't do what we do as a as a Sangha, as a community, among all of us bring so much more depth to the understanding of what the Sudra is trying to say. And that she was just so grateful for the fact that we could collaborate, we could all collaborate with one another and sort of penetrate the depths of this sort of obscured text, which actually is our, you know, which is the textbook for clap for classical yoga.

Michele Lawrence
Yeah, it's like we're greater than the sum of our parts, right? When we come together in this way. And I see that over and over again, in so many different groups. And that is the power of sangha really. And there's a lot of healing in that too, you know, when we talk about the yoga therapy aspect of it, and just, regardless of you know, what may be transferred in terms of teachings or skills, there's also that level of just the being together, which has a lot of transformative qualities to it.


Beryl Bender
It's important element to longevity. 

Michele Lawrence
So let's talk about that. Yeah, so I'm someone who just turned 50 This year, and so healthy aging, and longevity is definitely more top of mind for me now than it has been in the past. And even though I'm 50 Now, I also have very young children, seven year old children. And so because of that, I think I'm more invested in my longevity too, for that reason. So I'd love to know what we can learn from people around the world as common factors and living longer, happier and healthier lives. And even though I'm 50 Why is it important to consider these things when you're young, younger than 50?

Beryl Bender
You know, to fellows which Just over here at my house this morning young, just good looking Hispanic guys, they were here taking out a funky old gas eater in my bedroom. I turned it on the other day and set off the fire alarm. This has got to go. It's a relic. One of the guys just totally smelled of cigarette smoke. And I didn't say anything. And we came in, I just picked up on it immediately I went, Oh, yeah, he's a smoker. And I'm thinking God, he's just too young and too good looking to be smoking. And this buddy comes in and the two of them ran and we're sitting in the kitchen talking, getting ready. I said, Okay, I got to ask you guys a question. Who's the smoker? I know, I really knew, of course, but I was gonna spread it out a little bit. And he just kind of picks up a shirt. It goes like this. He goes, Oh, my God, can you tell? And his friend leans over? And he says, can you tell? Are you kidding? Yeah, of course, she can tell. You know, she just asked you who's a smoker? And he said, I was at my grandmother's house last night. And so the other guy says, What do you mean, you just had a cigarette in the truck coming over? And so I said, you know, you're such a good looking guy, and you're so young. I said, you know, you need to, I know, when we're young, we think, Ah, I'm just not going to get you know, I'm not gonna, who cares? I'm not going to think about what's going to have when I'm 70. Those are old people. You know, and it's true. We don't really project out that far. But I sit you know, now is the time to, to really start taking care of your health. I said, it's so it's so important to think about the things that are going to help you live a long, healthy, happy life. And the longer you smoke, the harder it is to quit. And I said there are I said, I realize it's extremely difficult. I said I was a smoker. Now I wasn't much of a smoker. I smoked a few Marlboros in college. But I didn't want to tell him that I just I was a smoker. That was true. I said I was a smoker. And you know, I said, I just started doing yoga and just lost interest in it. And really, he said, You think that for me? said, Oh, no question. You need to start doing yoga. You know? So? Yeah, it's the elements. You know, I first got turned on to the idea of longevity, reading Dan Buettner his book Blue Zones. And I don't know if people are listeners know about the Blue Zones. But Dan Buettner was a National Geographic fellow. And he was quite an extraordinary endurance athlete. He was a triathlete. And God, he rode his bike across the whole continent of Africa or some means. He, he's done some amazing exploration. But when he was at National Geographic, he rounded up some of the researchers there and they started looking at these pockets. of Long live people around the country of people that were there was a significant percentage of the population that lived to be centenarians over 100 years old. And then they started to say, well, what is it? Why is it these little groups of people are able to live so long and be so healthy for so long? And they don't just live on? You know, they're not on walkers, they're not carrying oxygen bags with them. They're not going to the hospital every five minutes. They're totally healthy and working and mentally, cognitively, fully functional. And so they thought, is it the water? Is it the food? What's the deal? And so they they identified nine commonalities among all these people. And as I was reading this, I'm seeing what she's talking about a yoga lifestyle here. Now my wife, yes, yoga, longevity. And so I kind of sent that idea to yoga International, and they loved it. They said, You know, we have a bunch of our older demographic students of yoga international that keep asking for more content. So that's how it all fell together.

Michele Lawrence
Can you tell us what some of those factors are? Give us a little teaser.

Beryl Bender
I thought that might be your next question. Sure. Well, you think about some of the things that first of all, is what they refer to as natural movement is, you know, people who are long lived. Well, let me tell you where they are. There's one in Loma Linda, California. He Korea, Greece, Sardinia, Italy, Okinawa, Japan, and Nosara, Costa Rica. And the first thing they noticed about these people is that they don't go to the gym, they don't have snowblowers they don't have mechanized lives. You know, they move naturally, all the time. They they live in environments and this is a quote directly from the book that nudge them into movement. They shovel they re they sweep, they climb, they walk, they go and they carry bat. You know, they do weightlifting, they carry bags of grain into town to the central mill to grind their wheat, you know, or their corn or, to me Asana is almost the epitome of natural movement. The asanas were developed by the long time ago, yogi's and Rishi who watched animals and people and you think of all the asana that are named after animals, I mean, the spine can do six things right, it can rotate left and right, it can extend and flex, and then bend laterally, right and left. And so the asana postures pretty much duplicate all this potentiality of the spine and the body of and stretching out the muscles and strengthening the muscles. So that seemed like a no brainer, well, that's awesome is dirt, certainly natural movement. And I kind of tie that in with walking or bike riding or hiking or swimming, doing things that supplement, you know, doing the asana practice. One of the things I think that makes yoga yoga is the ability to self regulate. First there's mind body connection. And then there's this ability to self regulate to pay attention to when you're starting to get stressed when things are going to starting to heat up. And to be able to notice that stop, take a breath and just tamp it down a little bit. If you've looked at some of the pranayama practices like langhana, which is the lengthening of the exhalation that activates the parasympathetic nervous system which is slowing and toning down, a quieting down of the nervous system, meditation.

Beryl Bender
Certainly an element of longevity, the now for many of these communities, the way they tend to meditate or self regulate change is you know the oak Inari. Okinawans pray to their ancestors to Sardinians have a glass of wine. The people in Loma Linda California take naps, the yogi's meditate. So meditation, I feel is key to a long, happy, healthy life to learn to pay attention, get to know the nature of your mind and begin to find ways to develop concentration and quiet the mind down. And then there are things like belonging, you know, right tribe, some people are born into the right tribe, some of us have to create it, then there's belonging, they found that people who attended some faith based service four times a month didn't matter what the denomination is, whether it was Islam, or the Judeo Christian, or Buddhist or Hindu that their longevity was increased by I think it was 14%. The statistics on that are in my longevity course. So belonging, having the right tribe downregulating, meditation, natural movement, what I'm missing an entire Oh, dharma having a cry favorite. Having a purpose. What is your purpose that this I love this, the Japanese have an expression called the E key guy. I KIG. A, i e, key guy, Google it. It's really cool. You'll find all kinds of little images and graphs. And basically what that means is, if you do what you love, if you're good at it, if you can make money doing it, if you can be supported by doing it, and if it's something the world needs. So they they illustrate that with four interlocking circles kind of looks like the Olympic circles only there are four of them north, south, east and west and they all interlock and in the center is the point where all four of them come together. So the center of that if you can check off all four of those circles. According to the Japanese, you have eKey guy, you found your dharma, you have your purpose. And it can be something as simple as raising your grandchild or baking bread for the community or transforming the world. It's all equally, it's all equal. It's all important. And the last one is certainly plant based eating, and that's probably the one that I'm most committed to because of I've been a vegetarian since 1971. I did eat way too much cheese and dairy and clogged up a few of my arteries. And so I became vegan three years ago and have given up all dairy and any kind of animal product not just not eating meat or fish. And it's interesting how that radically dropped my my blood pressure was this mysteriously high for a while and I went I don't understand I'm a vegetarian and I'm a yogi this I don't have Yogi's don't do my blood pressure. And once I became vegan, it dramatically changed everything, my cholesterol was always pretty fine. And my lipid profile was always good, but the heart disease, cancer and diabetes, I think, you know, we keep looking for cures the cure is stop eating animal products, and processed foods. And I also feel that if, if you're going to eat animal products, I feel that you need to source them, you need to know where they come from. There's nothing worse that I think any of us can do karmically, then buy into the factory farming industry and then to support factory for me. There's so much pain and suffering. You cannot name a documentary on animal rights that I've watched for five times. So yeah, I think it's important if you're going to want bacon, raise a pig in your backyard, kill it yourself so that he's happy one minute dead, the next and do your own bacon. And I think that's a much more ethical choice than going to the store and buying a nicely wrapped little cellophane package of some bacon product that comes from pigs in North Carolina that suffered their whole lives. And that suffering is in the meat.

Yeah, I could go on about that for a long time. But I'll take a break.

Michele Lawrence
Yeah. And no, I love you that you sort of brought those points forward and how the information comes from the book, The Blue Zones, right? And how you've tied it together with yogic principles that are supporting the same factors that have been researched to demonstrate the longevity. So I'm excited about the course. For those who are potentially excited about it, too, and want to participate. How have you structured it like and how are you encouraging folks to take it in? Is it something they do little parts of that they practice on their own? Is it a week to week thing? Tell us a little bit more about the structure of the course.

Beryl Bender
Yeah, thanks, Michelle. That's a great question. Yeah, it's structured said yoga International, it's just brilliant in the way they put it together, we spent four days filming it, it was the first return to in person live filming that they did, after COVID, or during COVID, I should say, I guess. And it's in modules. I think it's down now to eight or six hours of content. And there's there's nine or 10 different modules. And each module has a little introduction, a short 1520 minute lecture. And then there are practices, there's a premium a practice or a meditation practice, or asana practice, or I might say, you know, for the natural movement, the practice is, hey, go outside and take a walk, you know, just don't walk to go anywhere, no goal, no, just go out and walk and just enjoy nature, enjoy the city, or wherever you are. And then when you come back, you can check off this module and there are their study questions or contemplative questions for journaling. Then in each module, where you kind of check and see how much of this can I integrate into my lifestyle? And how much of this am I already doing? Maybe I do walk every day. But maybe I could eat more plants and less, you know, less processed food or less animal products. Maybe I could, you know, the, for the importance of community the importance of sangha, I think, and certainly, you're attending a faith based service, could be attending a Dharma talk for three or four times a month. Because that, I think that's one of the things that happened to us in the yoga community is when COVID hit and so many of the yoga studios closed or we couldn't go, what many of us lost our sagas lost our communities. And that was a real blow that was hard to adjust to. And I think people kind of looked forward to connecting online there wasn't as much funding, but I know this summer I did this past summer I did a workshop at omega. It was their Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, and it was their first they just opened in July, just as everything was starting to descend and we thought COVID was ending and things were opening up, we hit it exactly right. It was the last week in July, we had, oh my god, remember how many people 60 or 70, people came to that workshop. And my staff were masks, but we were in a huge room. You had to be vaccinated to be there. And it was incredible to be with your group of yoga practitioners in person. I mean, it was just the most joyful week. And then right after that, things started to shut down again. So it was really lucky. But Sangha is paramount find find your Sangha, find your purpose, eat more plants get outside, meditate, you'll live to be 100.

Michele Lawrence
Yeah, well, thank you for organizing that course, or putting it together and putting it out in the world. And I look forward to learning more about it from you. So as we get to the end of the podcast here, I do ask this question to everyone. That's a guest on the podcast. And it has to do with your own personal practice. I think it's so, so interesting to hear from other people, particularly people like you who have been at it for so long. What does your personal practice look like? Right? Because I have no doubt that you have a regular daily practice. And I also might assume that it has evolved through the years, but maybe some core elements have stayed the same. So would you be willing to share with us what your personal practice looks like?

Beryl Bender
Absolutely. And this is one of the things that I make a big effort to share with all my students, particularly in our teacher training programs is that your ability to teach and the insight that you share as a teacher, I find the most effective insights that you share come from your practice, they don't come from things you read, or come from things come from books, or come from wearing yoga clothes, or, you know, hanging out with other Yoga people. My favorite mantra is do the work. And Patanjali certainly talks about that in the yoga sutra. You know, Kriya Yoga is the yoga of action, do the work, do the practices. You know, yoga is a very empirically driven practice. It's not a dogmatic ideology. It isn't like you have to accept a certain set of beliefs to do yoga, there's just a methodology, I can't really teach people yoga, and neither can anybody else. All we can do as yoga teachers, is give our students a set of instructions, and say, Look, here, here's the methodology. Take this, follow these instructions, follow this map, see where it takes you. If you like, where it takes you, great, keep going. If you don't like it, don't do it. It's there's no pressure. It's not a religion. It's simply a brilliant methodology. So practice biasa, to me is everything. It's essential to have a practice. When I moved down here five weeks ago to Santa Fe, it really interrupted my asana practice, you know, I've done us in a few times, since I've been here, there's been this constant stream of tradespeople and workmen and so much work being done on the house. Get up in the morning, the one constant has been meditation. I've been meditating since 1971. You know, so, practice, you know, do your practice. I haven't missed a day of practice, since 1971. Practice simply means making an effort to be present. You know, and that's the classical definition of keeping your mind steady. Whether you're chopping carrots, the definition of Yasa of practice is effort towards steadiness of mind, then I will ask my students, when can we practice and someone will put up their hand and say, all the time 24/7 I know, yes. You know, it's about learning to pay attention, whether you're making toast or chopping carrots or scooping dog poop or driving to the store or taking care of your seven year old son or daughter. It's all about being present with whatever's going on. And so that to me, is, is the way I practice. I just started getting back into a regular asana practice. I love the shutdown. Good practice. I still do it. I don't do some of the crazy. So radical postures. And I never really did too many of the crazy radical postures. I was pretty regular and I got pretty good at what I did, but I was certainly wasn't a third and fourth series practitioner. But, you know if it weren't for us in terms of my health and my own personal longevity and, you know if it weren't for yoga, I heard David Swensen say this once, he said, I'd either be dead or in jail. And I went, yeah, probably me too. And it's funny when you don't do awesome that for a couple days or a couple of weeks, and then you do it again. And you say, Okay, that's it. I gotta get back into this. And you do it. You think, Oh, my God, this is so fantastic. I feel so good. How could I have not done this for, you know, a week or two weeks? It's kind of the same meditation, I've been so regular at that. I don't know what it feels like not to do it really. Because one way or another, you know, I managed to get it in and really worked on, you know, I've been a student of Buddhist meditation INFOPASS. Enough for a long time. And I'm probably a Buddhist yogi. But yeah, practice is everything. Practice is key. It's so when Patanjali says Yoga is the ability to focus your attention on one thing without distraction or interruption learn to quiet, you know, do that, that will quiet down your mind. And yoga is what happens when the mind becomes quiet. And that requires practice and non attachment, you know, letting go not sitting around waiting for the result the rewards of your efforts. Yeah, right, Michelle?

Michele Lawrence
Absolutely. Yes, I love it. And I so enjoyed our time together and appreciated what you shared with me and our listeners, and I look forward to the course. more time with you in the future, wherever that may be.

Beryl Bender
Thank you so much for this opportunity. It's been wonderful to talk to you and I wish you all the success with your work. We got to just hang in there and keep doing it until we reach critical mass. I've been waiting. I've been waiting for that for a long time, but I think we're getting close. 

Michele Lawrence
Thanks a lot Beryl 

Beryl Bender
Bye Michelle, talk to you soon.

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