Episode 329 - Meredith Phipps, "Yoga Therapy and Trauma Recovery"

In this captivating episode of Restoring the Soul, Michael John Cusick connects with Meredith Phipps, a dedicated yoga therapist with a passion for integrating faith and wellness. Meredith shares her profound journey from discovering yoga amidst personal healing to becoming a certified yoga therapist with a focus on trauma recovery. Throughout the conversation, Meredith addresses common Christian misconceptions about yoga, highlights the scientific and theological underpinnings of the practice, and emphasizes the importance of embodying one's faith.

Tune in to explore how yoga can be a transformative tool for healing, fostering a deeper connection with oneself and God. Don't miss this enlightening discussion on bridging the gap between spirituality and physical well-being, particularly for those navigating trauma and seeking holistic care.

ON THE WEB: Essentia Yoga Therapy

Transcript

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Hey, everybody. Welcome to Restoring the Soul. I am talking today with an old friend that I recently connected with, Meredith Phipps. Hi. Welcome to the podcast. Hi. It's good to be here. Very good to be here. You are not in North Carolina. You're in Texas, Is that correct? We are in Texas currently, yes. Well, thanks for getting on the podcast. We had the joy for me of after probably 10 years reconnecting over a phone call, and as I was learning about what you're doing and how your life has developed and the ministry and the vocation that you've been given around yoga, I wanted to have you on the podcast. So you ready to jump in? I'm ready to jump in. Always. Cool. I'd love to hear your story of how you got into yoga and what it is that you do today. But I also just want to say at the outset that for many Christians, the word yoga elicits a lot of strong responses. I know of many Christians from the left and the right and the center who practice yoga. And I know of Christians who I dearly love and respect who have heard the word yoga and they believe that it's demonic, that you can't possibly be a Christian and do it. And so your heart behind this, as you talked about it, was both beautiful in your passion for this, but also how you integrate your faith. You have a master's in yoga therapy, and yet you've also been in ministry for many, many years. And what I loved is that you brought significant and substantial science to this conversation, but also a depth of. Of theology and biblical background. Not that you walk around trying to proof text this, but one more thing. At the outset, I'm a little biased in this conversation. Number one, because I really love you and your husband Jason and have so much respect for you. But secondly, about a year and a half ago, my wife Julianne gave me a membership to a local yoga club and I went to some, like, experimental classes. And after I used up the four packages, I got a membership for a whole year. So over the last 10 months, I've done about 101, not about, but exactly. The app tells me exactly 101 yoga classes, and it's been life changing. Wonderful. Bessel Van der Kolk and Dan Allender, secular and Christian trauma experts, both talk in some of their most recent books that yoga is one of the top things you can do to heal from trauma. So that's the introduction with all the caveat. But do jump in and tell me a little bit of your story, how you got here and what you do. Sure. Well, how I got here. And I want to say as well on the outset that I deeply respect each individual walking with Christ and allowing the Holy Spirit to take them through that journey of what they should and should not be a part of. So I believe that's a deeply personal thing between God and each believer. And that is really where it started for me. I grew up in a very, very spiritual background, both very dark and light. A lot of Christianity, a lot of walking with God and a lot of spiritual darkness just where I lived, not in my family, but just in the location that I grew up. So while we were in counseling with you all, I was going to a local gym that had just a. A regular yoga class. There was really no spiritual component to that class, but what I found was that that practice, just two or three times a week, was where God was meeting me in profound healing in my life. I remember we would get to the end of class. There's a practice called Shavasana, where you're literally just resting in stillness. It's probably the only time in my life that I was still, still, ever. And I would just weep. I didn't care if I was in the gym. I didn't care who was around. It was just this profound moment between myself and God. And the practice of moving my body in this way and being able to create this new relationship with my body in the middle of healing from PTSD and from a lot of other troubles that were going on in my life was phenomenal. And I really launched me forward in what God was able to do. And I really noticed specifically that that gave God the space and time to be able to minister to me in a way that I hadn't had never experienced before. So from that, you know, fast forwarding several years, of course I wanted to be able to bring this to other people. I'm a military spouse. I loved the idea of being able to bring this to other military spouses. It's a life that comes with its own challenges. And so I immediately got my 200 hour with yoga alliance teaching certificate and began to teach. And from that moment, I immediately was attracted to, in that training, something called yoga therapy. Yoga therapy is a complementary healthcare practice. It's an emerging healthcare practice. It's bound by hipaa. And it is the idea of taking the practices, the embodiment practices of yoga and applying them to our holistically, to every medical, physical, emotional, spiritual and emotional condition that we encounter, building support and inner resource there. And again, just the idea of changing that relationship with our body. So that's how I got interested in yoga therapy. When we moved to Washington, D.C. i found a program that had a master's of science in yoga therapy. It was a clinical program. And for me, I'm a why girl. I need to know the why behind things. I love pulling on those threads. And so being able to partake in a clinical practice, that really dove into the. The science behind it. And I'll tell you why. It's not demystifying for me what the practice is actually doing in our bodies. What it did for me was open my eyes to God's creation, open my eyes to. To what he has already designed within us and how he can use that. And it's just so phenomenal. The more I learn and the more I dig, the more it draws me back to His Word, the more it draws me back to His Majesty. It's like the, like, the end chapters of Job where he's going through all of these things that he's done, raised the mountains, you know, tamed Leviathan. I mean, just that's what it's like for me, diving into the scientific side and the neurology behind this, the mechanisms behind what we've seen. I see it all over God's Word, and it just drives me. So that's where I am today. Yeah. Thank you for all of that. I love how you're talking about the fearfully and wonderfully madeness. You didn't use that word, but out of Psalm139, of course, that is a reference to our bodies, that as David is saying those words, there's something that's so amazing and wondrous. I could spend a lifetime thinking about this, experiencing it. There's a couple directions I want to go. One is back to this idea of how the word yoga itself can elicit discomfort in Christians. And then how you talked about that your study is in a clinical application of that as it relates to all kinds of medical issues. And I've noticed that. I've noticed a handful of online individuals that are offering programs and even some apps that are out there that are essentially taking yoga practice that is all the same poses, but they're calling it a stretching program, and people are doing it. And so part of yoga is stretching and movement and flexibility. But then there's also things like presence and rest and compassionate acceptance and all those things. But it's fascinating to me because some people, they think, well, they're Sanskrit words, or you're praying to gods that are not Jesus. And things like that. So will you address some of that tension and then maybe in that talk about what it is that you do and how you're interacting with people on a regular basis with yoga and then some of the impact that you're seeing? Sure, absolutely. For me, as a believer, and especially with that background of growing up with so much new age in our culture, in the state that I grew up, it was important for me to really understand what was behind what I was practicing. I was seeing the difference in my own life. I was seeing the difference in my body every time I was on the mat. It was a deep and profound meeting between myself and God. There was no one else sharing that space. And so, again, being a Y girl, I really, I really wanted to know what was behind a lot of that. So, again, with deep respect for where each individual is, we've all had some different experiences with yoga, whether we understand, whether we've just kind of heard a few things. If you Google yoga and Christianity, hands down, you're going to see a lot of it's evil, it's, it's horrible, it's. I, I actually appreciated being able to dive into the history. Yoga does predate Hinduism by about 1500 years. The earliest, the earliest evidence that we have of yoga existing, it actually was in northern India, which is a monotheistic practice. When you go down towards southern India, that's where you get more of the multiple deities. And so yoga, even the practice is much more, as you mentioned, more than just the physical practices, breath practices, the mindfulness, the meditation that goes, that goes along with it. The practices themselves. The more that I have studied and the more that I dive into this really are, really are very, I could almost say individualistic for religious purposes. So, for instance, the practice of being prostrate before God, I cannot call any of my prostrate yoga postures anything other than being prostrate before God. I would no more say that I could not kneel before my God because it's a yoga posture. Then I would say, you know, I can't. Well, I can't kneel because somebody who is Islamic kneels and prays to Allah. And I don't pray to Allah. It's. It's really taking that extreme. And I'm not discounting that. Some people have absolutely taken the yoga practices and cultures have taken yoga practices and used it within their own religious practices. And so that's where it gets really sticky. There's a really great study that has been done over several years by two Harvard psychologists, and they began to study the practice and change of trait behaviors through meditation. And of course they went to India and they went to yogis who were meditating. They also went to Buddhist monks, they also went to Christian monasteries everywhere. Because these practices they were recognizing were that the same and were creating some of those same changes. So for me, the reason that I dove so deeply into that mechanics, the more that I began to unravel it, my prayer was constantly, God, show me what is yours and what is not. You know, every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of Lights. And that, that verse kept resonating with me. And I thought these practices are making a difference. They're, they're being used within our bodies that God created and having good effect. I think that's why I want to go back to for myself in this practice. It's very important to me that as I move forward with anyone, whether I'm working with a believer or a non believer, that I know the origin of the practice that I'm offering, that I know what mechanisms it's were actually why I'm, what purpose I'm using it for. Am I activating the sympathetic nervous system? Am I activating the parasympathetic nervous system? Am I, you know, are we creating a change in the insula and, you know, whatever that is. We used a good example when we were talking on the phone of Om. I don't use the word Om myself, but that formation of Om, which can also be found when you chant amen in a certain way or shalom in a certain way, does have an effect not only on the vagus nerve, but the megahertz, just the frequency. We've seen changes on a cellular basis in our bodies can change cellular design, can change the function of our bodies and certainly tone the vagus nerve, which is very. Working with trauma survivors. So Meredith, I love how you're talking as a trauma informed person who's doing and teaching yoga. And I know that's part of how you describe yourself as trauma informed yoga therapist. And trauma is where I've seen this impact myself and others so greatly. Talk a little bit about the nature of the work that you actually do. You're talking about working with believers and unbelievers and you're obviously coming alongside people and training and, or educating them. Yes. So trauma recovery is my wheelhouse. I've worked with trauma survivors even before I had my yoga therapy certification. I found certainly again in my own experience, just the profound change of what happens when we can change our relationship with our body. I purposefully work with, or I specifically work with those who are recovering from trauma. But I found that that crosses over quite a bit to aging, to progressive illness, to many areas where we feel either disconnected from our body or we have felt betrayed by our body, or our body no longer feels safe or even recognizable to ourselves. So very similarly, in all of these cases, it's reforging our relationship with our body. And what really draws me to this work, I typically work one on one with people. And in any of these conditions, and especially trauma, where it feels unsafe to be in the body, what has been beautiful is to watch God change the relationship that we have. I think of our bodies as one of the most intimate places that we can be with God. No one else can know our thoughts, no one else can know the inside of our bodies as well as our Creator, who knit us together and knows how it works and operates. Aside from our Creator, we are probably the next best understanding knowledge of our own bodies, Right? So imagine our bodies as God's temple. Imagine meeting God in our body in that intimate and quiet place in our body. In all of these cases, especially in trauma recovery, there's several steps to that, and it certainly can take time. Our body and our brain is designed to protect us. It's designed to specifically weed out anything that is negative. I'm sure most of us have experienced that negative loop where you see something that is horrible, maybe you spilled your coffee that morning and that just got the day out wrong. And then all of a sudden you start to notice every neg thing. Our brains are literally designed for that. So it can take several steps to actually reverse that. Sometimes it takes a little longer than others. And certainly when we're dealing with trauma recovery, that can take quite a while. But the beautiful thing is discovering those steps in God's word, discovering those steps that are already knit literally into our physical bodies, that have been created to reverse this relationship and reforge this beautiful, intimate place to be with God inside ourselves. I've often said on this podcast and in my writing and teaching that it's hard to practice the presence of God if we can't practice the presence of ourself, if we can't be connected to ourselves. And so I can just testify that yoga has been a wonderful way for me over the last 12 months to reconnect with parts of myself that I've been disconnected from, especially parts of my body. And even to the point where I find, as you started out, the top of the program, saying there's certain postures and places on the mat. I find myself where it feels like a space just opens up for experiencing the presence of God within. Like, wow, something just expanded. And then there's even one or two postures or movements that will sometimes bring up a sense of vulnerability or a sense of anxiety. And so that's a chance for me toward the end of the class to sit with that and just let God hold me or to reassure me that healing is coming or that he's at work in me. And so it's really beautiful. I wish we had more time on this particular podcast to dig deeper. But how can people work with you if they're listening to this and saying, I just want to have a conversation with her. Are you available for one on one appointments or is it just face to face classes? Do you do yoga online? Excuse me? Yes, actually I work telehealth as well. So I have clients via telehealth and I do see people. I have a website that you can contact me through. I am seeing clients one on one in Texas, near Fort Cavazos. But I do a fair amount of work via telehealth. And we actually have just begun a new nonprofit for those who have barriers to complementary health care, who are experiencing trauma, who are wanting to recover from trauma. It's called Empowered Wellness Group. Myself and a few of our graduates from our grad program have begun this wonderful. And have volunteered our time with this wonderful program so that we can. You can find the link on my website in Resources, and through that website, you can apply for that care. If, for instance, you're. You're. Maybe you're seeing a counselor and your insurance covers that, but it doesn't cover the embodiment practice. And these embodiment practices really do. I mean, they're right in line with the Body keeps the score with Peter Levine's work, with our somatic practices. I mean, we're seeing the difference now in Western medicine. And I can't remember if it was Peter Levine or Van der Kolk who said it, but one of them had mentioned the body was involved in the trauma. Why would we not include the body in the healing? And that has been, I mean, really that profound, using that movement, just that attention. I think you said it in your new book. The excerpt that you sent out was wonderful, experiencing that presence of God in our bodies. And it's just I would love to be able to come alongside anyone who is interested and help them to reforge that relationship slowly but surely. So what is that website? It is essentiayoga therapy.com It's E S S E N T I a yoga therapy.com and Essendia yoga Therapy is is my practice. Yeah, Essentia like the word essence or essential. Essentia yoga therapy.com incredible. And then you're also on Instagram under Meredith Phipps. That's where, that's where I one of the places I reconnected with you. Well, I'm delighted to reconnect with you. I'm delighted that our listeners will have a chance to check out your resources and hopefully this will either reinforce for someone that they're on the right track with yoga or maybe somebody who would benefit from it, who's been curious but a little hesitant that they can step into this and experience some of the healing and the benefits that I have through this practice. So Merry Christmas to you and blessed Advent for the remainder of Advent. But it's so great to talk with you and thanks for your time today. You as well. Thank you so much, Michael. I appreciate it.