Trauma, The Nervous System And Yin Yoga With Alyssa Stefanson

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yenise, and welcome back to a yen. Yoga, podcast.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: If you’re new around here, welcome, welcome.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: If you are a familiar. If you have been here with me before

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Nyk Danu Yoga: welcome back.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I’m excited to introduce you to today’s guest. But before we do, I just wanted to share a little bit of podcast love that I received in the Dms.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And this is from Brittany, Laura.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: hey, I just started listening to your podcast about 2 weeks ago, and I am so capital letters. Glad that I found it.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I’m a newer yen instructor. I’ve been teaching about a year and a half now, and your episode on sequencing, blew me away in the best way.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: It truly made me rethink about how I plan and sequence my classes.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And now, when I take anyone else’s class or take a class online. I notice these things.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And I also

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Nyk Danu Yoga: also a big thank you for the episode. On speaking during class.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I find I’ve been one of those instructors that feels the need to fill the silence.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: This podcast has truly been helping me grow even in the last 2 weeks.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So for that, a huge thank you. I appreciate your podcast

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Nyk Danu Yoga: well, Britney, Laura.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: thank you for letting me know

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Nyk Danu Yoga: it’s great to get feedback

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Nyk Danu Yoga: when you’re a podcaster, because you’re sort of

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Nyk Danu Yoga: when you’re doing a guest episode, you’re with a guest. Briefly. But most of the time it’s kind of a solo show. You’re recording an episode. You’re editing an episode. You’re uploading it. You’re doing all the things.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And it’s a lot of work.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So it’s wonderful to hear that it’s actually making an impact with you

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Nyk Danu Yoga: on that note. If you are a return listener and you have been benefiting from these episodes. One way that you could let me know.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: is to just take a moment

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Nyk Danu Yoga: to offer a 5 star review on apple or spotify. If you’re on apple. You could also add a written review

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Nyk Danu Yoga: these little things that will take you 2 min maximum make a huge difference for the podcast

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Nyk Danu Yoga: it really shows the algorithm that this podcast is

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Nyk Danu Yoga: well liked and that it’s getting attention. And then it’s more likely to show the podcast in the search. So somebody’s searching for a Yen, Yoga podcast or a Yoga. Podcast this one’s more likely to show up the more reviews that it gets.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So if you would not mind those of you that are return listeners. Just pause this right now

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Nyk Danu Yoga: take a moment

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and go into your

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Nyk Danu Yoga: app that you’re listening to this on

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Nyk Danu Yoga: whether that’s apple or spotify. Give me 5 stars if you’re on apple, maybe a written review, too, would be great.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: If you are watching this on Youtube, you could subscribe and like the video and then leave me a comment. To let me know what your takeaway was from this episode. What was your kind of Aha.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: this episode, and that would be great.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, thank you.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Also a reminder

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Nyk Danu Yoga: for those of you that are new around here.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: although I do have the sole of a mermaid. I also have the mouth of a sailor.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and that these are adult conversations my guests will sometimes be vulnerably sharing from their own past experience, and so please make sure that if you have small people around that, you put some headphones in. Now.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: okay, my guest.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I have heard my guest interviewed on a few podcasts

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and

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Nyk Danu Yoga: one of the reasons that I wanted to have

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Alyssa Stephenson on is because

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Nyk Danu Yoga: she’s not a Yoga teacher. So most of the time my guests are Yoga professionals. But sometimes there’s somebody who has a level of sort of expertise or has a way of explaining that expertise that really stands out to me. And that was the case here with Alyssa.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I have heard Alyssa be interviewed, and the way that she talks about the nervous system

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and trauma is just such a fantastic

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Nyk Danu Yoga: easily accept

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Nyk Danu Yoga: definitions that most people can understand. So that’s one of the reasons I wanted to have her on the podcast

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I also wanted to have her on a podcast because her sort of her story is just so

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Nyk Danu Yoga: inspiring

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Nyk Danu Yoga: as to what we can do as humans, right? People will often say, you know, people don’t change.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and Alyssa is proof that that is not true. In fact.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: people can change and people can heal.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So she’s in a very inspiring story, and she’s really great at breaking down.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know. What is

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Nyk Danu Yoga: what is our nervous system and trauma?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: My intention is for this to be the beginning of a 3 part series on trauma. So we’ll have this episode with Alyssa. She’s kind of breaking it all down for us.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Then we’re going to have an episode with the wonderful woman who was responsible for my trauma training.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and she’ll we’ll talk a little bit more about like how can we make?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: We’ll get trauma informed. And what’s the difference between trauma informed and trauma sensitive?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And then, in our third episode, we’ll have an interview from a former student, now colleague and friend of mine.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: who has used Yen Yoga as a key tool in her toolbox

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Nyk Danu Yoga: to help her heal her trauma.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and so we’ll we’ll get to hear her story as well. So, looking at this this first episode with Alyssa as sort of the the start of a three-part little Mini series on trauma.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So with that being said, Allow me to introduce Alyssa.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Alyssa is a holistic health coach and somatic practitioner.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: dedicated to supporting individuals on their journey towards physical

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and emotional healing.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: With a deep understanding of nervous, system-based

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Nyk Danu Yoga: mind, body connection, Alyssa helps tap into the wisdom held within their bodies

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Nyk Danu Yoga: to release tension trauma and stuck energy

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Nyk Danu Yoga: through various somatic techniques, including breathwork.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: somatic parts work.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: movement, and body awareness.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Alyssa empowers her clients to reconnect with their inner resources, fostering a sense of wholeness and resilience.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Alyssa is a certified holistic health coach.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: a certified somatic breathwork practitioner.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: a certified somatic parts, work practitioner.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: certified in somatic attachment therapy.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So that’s a little bit about Alyssa, and the next time that you hear from me I will be with Alyssa

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Hi! Alyssa! Welcome to a Yen. Yoga podcast.

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Alyssa: Thank you so much for having me.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So I’ve already introduced your your full bio. But just briefly let everybody know

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Nyk Danu Yoga: what you do in the world, what your work is and who you help.

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Alyssa: Yeah. So I am a holistic health coach and a semantic practitioner, trauma-informed sematic practitioner.

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Alyssa: And I, host, I have a community, an online community where I help women overcome, heal from past trauma relational trauma, and really step into their purpose and really lead with their feminine power.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Beautiful, beautiful. That work is so needed

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Nyk Danu Yoga: in the world. Yeah.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I know it’s like slightly off topic, but we won’t go too far into it when you say lead with their feminine power.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Can you tease that out a little bit more.

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Alyssa: Yeah, it’s funny, because masculine and feminine energies are talked about so much right now, and there is so much distortion, and the feminine is wild and fierce like. Yes, she is also soft and nurturing, but she is also wild and fierce, and I feel like it’s getting heavily distorted. The way that we’re talking about masculine and feminine polarities right now, as if it’s just like these rules

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Alyssa: and talking about going back to like traditional like traditional like roles. But it’s like, well, what are we talking about when we talk about traditional? Because, like historically, ancestorly, a lot of times like in indigenous cultures. Women were the head of the household, and the feminine is fierce, like she is leadership, energy.

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Alyssa: When we really, truly step into that power. So what I help women do in my program is really connect back to that feminine energy, soft, nurturing, also fierce and strong, and really work with their own cyclical rhythms because we forgot that we are cyclical. Our biology is very different than male biology. And I think really, with

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Alyssa: the the 9 to 5 workday structure really doesn’t work, or

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Alyssa: most women, because it’s we are not linear, right? We are cyclical, and that is based off of the rise and fall of testosterone.

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Alyssa: So that is one thing that I really help my. The women in my community is really connecting back to the cyclical rhythms of our body, and really connect back to all those different feminine archetypes, and lead from that energy.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I love the fact that you brought this up, and this is, we’re going a little off topic here, but I love it. Because to me it actually really relates to Yin Yang theory

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that yes, in within the feminine we do have this yielding, receiving darker kind of quiet, more inward nature.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and if you look historically, you can see that there were tons of female warriors, and if you you know, I mean, if you look at nature. I mean, no one is gonna mess with a mama bear. That is for damn sure, right? So it’s it’s interesting, because I feel like

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Nyk Danu Yoga: in Western culture. We are such black and white thinkers. It’s this or that, this or that, and one of the things that that studying Chinese medicine and Yin Yang theory really taught me is that actually, most of the time the answer is somewhere in between in the gray right? It’s not this or that these 2 polarizing extremes. It’s often yes and or well, it depends.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: is usually the the wiser answer.

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Alyssa: Absolutely, absolutely, and we have both energies within us, and it’s healthy to be able to step into both our feminine and our masculine.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And I would say that for our mail counterpouch as well, that there’s and of course they get horrific messages about what it means to be

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Nyk Danu Yoga: a man in society, you know. So yeah, yeah.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: well, little nice little sidebar. I love it. So

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Nyk Danu Yoga: what I would love to hear a little bit more about, because one thing I know for sure about Yoga teachers is that we love to hear people’s

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Nyk Danu Yoga: stories, their journeys from like here to there, and I know that yours is

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Nyk Danu Yoga: super inspiring, just because I’ve heard you interviewed before.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: From kind of like where you were to

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Nyk Danu Yoga: where you are now, because you were not always

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Nyk Danu Yoga: a health coach

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and a somatic practitioner that was leading women. So give me a little bit of your backstory.

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Alyssa: Yeah.

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Alyssa: it’s hilarious, because.

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Alyssa: you know, now, it’s like I’m I’ve lived 2 lives in one. It’s so crazy to look back on, because I’m just such a different person today, and I am that person because of who I was. So it’s not about getting rid of that person. And so many people who meet me and get to know me. Now they’re blown away when I they hear my story, because I don’t tell it that often to people I know personally, but they’re blown away.

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Alyssa: So I struggled with

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Alyssa: alcohol and drug addiction at a really young age. So I was addicted to hard drugs at 16 years old I was hanging out with a really bad crowd. I was hung hanging out with drug dealers, criminals.

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Alyssa: and during that time, from like the age of 16 to

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Alyssa: 20 I we lost a lot of friends that we were connected with through homicide.

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Alyssa: suicide, drug overdoses, and I end up losing my best friend at 20 years old

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Alyssa: in a car accident, and that really shook me.

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Alyssa: and I ended up getting pregnant with my daughter

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Alyssa: only 4 weeks after, and I would say that, like going through that was like a first awakening for me.

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Alyssa: It really just brought me to the depth of my soul like losing my best friend, and then I was

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Alyssa: a single mom. I was pregnant on my own. I was having a baby on my own.

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Alyssa: and I started really getting into personal development work during my pregnancy.

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Alyssa: And so after that I got into fitness and nutrition, I became obsessed with fitness and nutrition. So I thought, this is it right? Like, I’m gonna set these goals like this is what I need to do to get my life in order. I started doing fitness, competitions.

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Alyssa: and I became a personal trainer, and I had a fitness. Studio life was going good, but I didn’t deal with any of my internal stuff like my internal traumas, and so I would do really well for a little while, and then I would slide back, and I would like binge drink.

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Alyssa: and I ended up getting into a really unhealthy relationship

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Alyssa: at the age of 27 years old, with a person who actually really struggled with Ptsd. He was a war veteran.

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Alyssa: and the relationship became like very volatile and very abusive. Pretty quickly.

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Alyssa: It’s a lot of a violence, a lot of drinking.

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Alyssa: and my alcohol addiction just like spiraled out of control during that time.

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Alyssa: and there was a lot of like just horrific, like horrific abuse. And he also was a heavy drinker, and there was weapons involved as well.

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Alyssa: And so eventually I ended up hitting a complete rock bottom like I had a nervous breakdown it was actually, shortly after having a very serious injury, I had a bad fall. I broke my tip and my fib, and sprained my other ankle at the same time. So it’s in a wheelchair for a month.

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Alyssa: and just after that it was like, I just had a nervous breakdown like I hit a complete rock bottom. I knew I needed to leave the relationship, and so I left the relationship. I moved into an apartment with no belongings like no furniture, no belongings, nothing just had to leave, and I end up losing my job right after.

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Alyssa: and that was like such a rock bottom for me, and I ended up having a really intense spiritual awakening after that.

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Alyssa: and from there I

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Alyssa: completely change my life around. I ended up entering a 12 step program in Aa which saved my life completely. Changed like my whole life around all my friends and entire life changed, and from there I really got into holistic nutrition. So I went back to school. I became a holistic nutritionist. I started to work in an integrated pharmacy because I thought that nutrition was like the missing piece right like that was gonna.

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Alyssa: Save me, and it did help. Of course it did right, but I would say it was like 15,

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Alyssa: so I would say, like the personal development staff was like 15%. And then the nutrition was 15%. But there was like this big missing puzzle piece there.

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Alyssa: And so I kept still like noticing that, like I couldn’t connect to other people. I was so avoidant in in relationships. I started isolating myself. I went through such heavy depression. During that time I couldn’t connect to other people

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Alyssa: pretty much. All I was doing was working, going to school, and like just being on my own, like spending time by myself.

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Alyssa: And then I started to actually have, like all these symptoms, show up like my hair was falling out. I was losing a lot of weight dealing with really heavy depression. And then I was introduced to somatic work.

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Alyssa: I actually did a somatic breathwork

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Alyssa: session online. And I later became a semantic breath work practitioner after that. But that was my first intro to the world of Sematic work, because I never even knew what Sematic was at that time like, what does even semantic mean? So I went down this rabbit hole of exploring Peter Levine’s work. Who’s the founder of semantic experiencing from there. I went into Stephen Borges’s work, Polybago theory, and finally everything I was experiencing made so much sense.

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Alyssa: I finally realized that I wasn’t broken because for so long. I thought I was broken. I thought, I’m never going to be able to connect to other people again.

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Alyssa: I’m never going to be able to have healthy relationships. I don’t know how to have healthy relationships like I’m broken. There’s something wrong with me.

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Alyssa: But diving into this work, I realized that my body is so intelligent.

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Alyssa: My nervous system just wanted to protect me, that’s all it was doing, and it just didn’t know that I was safe in the present moment. So all I had to do was show my nervous system that it was safe in the present moment easier said than done, but the.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yes, exactly.

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Alyssa: It was a process for sure, but that was that opened me up to the whole world of sematic work, and from there I’ve worked with somatic practitioners. I’ve done a lot of extensive training and sematic work. And yeah, it’s completely transform my life like, it’s so crazy to look back on and see how avoidant and how isolated I was. And I love people like, I love being around people. Now I love being in community. I have a community of women that I help. It’s so crazy to think

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Alyssa: that I’m like this now, because I was so avoidant like I couldn’t even hug someone if someone hugged me my body would close off.

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Alyssa: Up.

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Alyssa: So I want anyone who might maybe like relates to this to know that, like you are not broken.

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Alyssa: your body is so intelligent, and you can heal from this we are wired for connection, like humans are wired for connection. Right? Yeah. So it is so possible to heal from that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Even as I often describe myself as a fierce introvert. However, I I 100% agree about connection like, so you know, I think sometimes

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Nyk Danu Yoga: introversion gets confused with being shy

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Nyk Danu Yoga: or being avoidant.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: which, of course, it can be right, can be. Those can be also part of an introverts makeup for sure.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But even as an introvert.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, when I teach my classes

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Nyk Danu Yoga: they’re all registered semesters. So it’s the same group from week to week, and we all do a Hello and a how’s everybody doing? Check in at the beginning of class like that?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: That sense of being in community is is so much more important I now realize in my life. Then I’m also an avoidant type. Than I ever would have thought when I was, you know, in my late teens, early twenties when I was just, you know, way too cool way. Too bad ass way, too punk

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Nyk Danu Yoga: to to be part of like communities, you know.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and you know, and and I have had a bit of a double edged experience with community, some of them where I’ve you know.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: put too much in too soon, unwisely. And then there’s others where it’s it’s been great. So but yeah, it it’s interesting how

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Nyk Danu Yoga: your journey? Actually I I was never an addict, but your journey in other ways parallels mine. So my very first relationship was

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Nyk Danu Yoga: young. I left home at like 14, and essentially ended up falling in love with a male version of my mother. So complex trauma survivor, mentally ill addiction, you know, abusive the whole, the whole thing, you know. And

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Nyk Danu Yoga: so yeah, I was with him for 4 years. So

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and then left. And yeah, definitely. Also, the avoidance is is also something that I identify with. And for those of you who are like, what are they talking about? We’re talking about is it called attachment theory.

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Alyssa: Yeah.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s it’s interesting, because I’ve always known that about myself. But it wasn’t actually until I listened to a couple of podcast interviews that you were on where I was like.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Oh, this is interesting.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So

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Nyk Danu Yoga: one of the things that

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I really love about your story.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and we’ll say this over and over again.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I’m also. I’m a realist, but also a forever optimist. At the same time

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I always have my foot in at least 2 camps at once. Is that when people say, Oh, people don’t change.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And I think about stories like yours, and I’m just like that’s a bunch of bull.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: They have to want to. They have to realize they need to. And they have to have the tools and the help and the support and the skills and the community. But absolutely, people can change.

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Alyssa: Yeah. And it’s not an easy process. And like you said, like, you have to want it

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Alyssa: like you have to be at that point. I’m so grateful that I hit Rock bottom that I wanted it so bad.

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Alyssa: And you know some people, they unfortunately never get to that point in their lives where.

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Alyssa: whether they want it or they? They even just know that it’s possible. It’s also connecting to a higher power for me that was really helpful in Aa was connecting to that something greater than myself.

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Alyssa: But yeah, it is. It is possible, and I’ve seen it just with so many people in recovery, and I really feel such a strong calling to hold space for people who hold a lot of like shame.

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Alyssa: You know, because we’ve all done bad things. We’ve all been the perpetrator and the victim, all of us. We’ve played all roles. Right? So yeah. But it’s it’s very possible

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Alyssa: the proper support and community. You can. You can change for sure.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I think, I really like the fact that you brought up rock bottom, because I think, unfortunately.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that there is

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Nyk Danu Yoga: a tendency.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Now, I find in our culture to

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Nyk Danu Yoga: not.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I’m trying to think of an elegant way to phrase this. I’m really not doing well at it.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: To not let people hit that bottom.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that there can be almost a coddling now.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: With addiction that

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Nyk Danu Yoga: keeps people from

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Nyk Danu Yoga: so hitting that bottom.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And I you know I witnessed this with my my ex partner, that you know there was so many times that he would reach out to his parents and borrow money, and I do think that they really didn’t

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Nyk Danu Yoga: believe or understand the

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the depth of his addiction, or even have the understanding to know that he had an addiction

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Nyk Danu Yoga: whether that was like the the blinders, or just like a cultural thing. But they, you know, would constantly give him money when he would ask which was just

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Nyk Danu Yoga: enabling him to keep

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Nyk Danu Yoga: getting high. And so sometimes I think that that

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Nyk Danu Yoga: a conversation around rock bottom

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Nyk Danu Yoga: it’s a tricky one nowadays, because I feel like

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Nyk Danu Yoga: there’s so much

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Nyk Danu Yoga: enabling going on

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Nyk Danu Yoga: with with with addicts that we think at the time. Sometimes like we’re doing

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the compassionate thing, the nice thing, that loving thing.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: but that

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Nyk Danu Yoga: over time

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Nyk Danu Yoga: it almost proves to be the opposite, because you’re almost just delaying

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Nyk Danu Yoga: this this Aha moment that they could have at some point.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: That would be the thing, the catalyst to get them into a meeting or into a rehab, or get them some help.

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Alyssa: Absolutely and and not to say that everyone needs to cause. I’ve seen people change who haven’t really hit a complete rock bottom. But for many people, if that is the case that they do need to, and that there’s a saying in like my recovery group is is, Let them hit rock bottom like do not enable them let them hit rock bottom.

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Alyssa: Fortunate for that, because I drank by myself like I didn’t drink with other people and so I really was isolated. And I, yeah, I ended up just hitting a complete rock bottom. And that was what helped me out of spiritual awakening. That was the catalyst, like a rock bottom, was the catalyst for my spiritual awakening. So I’m so grateful for that.

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Alyssa: And I look back now, and so many people I remember people were saying, like, you know, like Why didn’t? And and it was. It was painful as well to like. I didn’t get support during that time, and I had a lot of people say, Well, where were these people like? Why didn’t they get you into like rehab or treatment?

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Alyssa: And I’m so grateful that my family actually did let me hit rock bottom like in hindsight. Now, looking back on it. That they did just let you know. Let let her go on this path. Let her figure it out go deeper, right? And then I yeah, that was what I really needed. And I agree with you that sometimes, when

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Alyssa: when we try to enable people and and step in and try and fix them and get in their way of their own path, then we can actually be holding them back from the lessons that they’re meant to be learning from that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I mean, I’ve I’ve seen it in the past with friends where they’ve you know they’ve ended up in rehab before they before they really want to go like before, you know, before they’ve hit bottom, or you know, or acquaintances, and it never.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: It never works so like they’re going because their parents told them they had to, or their partner’s gonna leave, or because, you know,

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Nyk Danu Yoga: they’re they’re trying to avoid jail or something. And so they go into rehab, but they’re not. They don’t want to be there. They haven’t hit rock bottom. They don’t think they have a problem. They’re just doing it as sort of like a just gotta do this thing to get on with my life.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And what a difference it makes when somebody has really, you know, like within their own heart and soul been like, I can’t do this anymore. I need to get help.

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Alyssa: That’s what that’s what is required. That’s the 12 steps is like reaching that point of knowing that I am powerless over this. I I can’t do this on my own. I do have a problem. I need help. And you’re so right that I’ve seen so many people as well, so many friends that I’ve seen relapsed because their parents did put them in a treatment center. And unfortunately they weren’t at rock bottom

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Alyssa: at that point. So then they ended up going back out, even though they stayed so poor for a while. They ended up going back out for some people, their parents putting them in a treatment center was their rock bottom

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Alyssa: cause. They felt so much shame when they sobered up for some people right, which is beautiful to see but in other cases it it wasn’t a rock bottom for them.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Wow!

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So it sounds like your journey from kind of your addiction and your pain, and your heartbreak, and your trauma.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And it it sounded to me very

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I was just picturing you as as you were describing it, kind of walking along this path, and like, Oh, here’s a little tool. I’ll put this tool in my tool ballet. Oh, here’s nutrition. Let’s add this, and but it wasn’t. You said, until you kind of really start. And you did, of course. Aa. And meetings. But it wasn’t until you started seeing and experiencing somatic work that you were really like. Aha!

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Alyssa: Yeah. And the reason is is like I couldn’t step into my purpose or my future or healthy relationships until I got a dysmatic work, so of course my life was better cause I was sober and like eating healthy. Of course I felt better because I had my nutrition. Like I was. I was good with my nutrition. I was good with my routine. I was exercising all the time like I had a really great morning routine, really great night routine. I felt better.

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Alyssa: for sure, but I could not step into my purpose or into healthy relationships. It was like there was this block, and it was the self sabotage right like my my heart was closed off, completely closed off because of what I had experienced, and I didn’t understand it, that a cognitive level. I was trying to figure it out, but it wasn’t happening cognitively. It was happening in my body when we experienced trauma. Trauma happens at a physiological level. First, then the emotion and then the thoughts.

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Alyssa: But our Western clinical system. We work with the thoughts

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Alyssa: right? We work with the stories. Cbt. While that can be helpful as long as we do it alongside. Working with the body. 80% is the body, 80% of nerve fibers and information from body to brain, and only 20 from brain to body. So if you’re trying to rationalize your way into why you should be thinking, behaving, acting differently. And it isn’t working. This is why your nervous system is this electrical network of your being.

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Alyssa: So? It is like your nervous system is like this, an antenna, and it’s tuning into different radio stations of like thoughts

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Alyssa: depending on what state your nervous system is at.

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Alyssa: So if your body is stuck in a contracted state, you’re going to be, you know, tuning into lack, mindset.

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Alyssa: contracted thoughts, limited thoughts. That’s where limiting thinking comes from. It’s not our mindset, you know. It’s it’s not working with just shifting our thoughts alone that

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Alyssa: that’s just an override. That’s a band aid. It can get you like it. It can help you like working with your thoughts, can help you for a short period of time. But this is the reason why so many of us sabotage after a while, because it’s not sustainable. We have to work with the body. It’s a bottom up approach. Once we work with the stored trauma.

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Alyssa: then it’s like we’re tuning into different thoughts that we didn’t have access to before.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: would you mind defining the word somatic?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Because I think that it’s become one of these buzzwords that we hear

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Nyk Danu Yoga: sort of like mindfulness was about a decade ago. Where people kind of have a vague understanding of what that might be. But if you asked the average person on the street. Can you define what somatics are? They’d be like something to do with your body. I think they wouldn’t really have a good.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I think. Grasp of of what it is.

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Alyssa: Yeah. And the thing is so Soma is Greek for body, and sematics is such a hot word right now. So everyone’s calling themselves a sematic practitioner. But it’s important to note there’s so many different types of sematic practitioners out there.

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Alyssa: So massage therapy is Sematic is a sematic modality. Yoga is a sematic modality, right? Like we have so many different sematic modalities. Exercise would be a sematic modality. The one that I I am trained in is working with the nervous system. So poly vagal theory and sematic experiencing, I have training in as well. So this is another modality which works on

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Alyssa: the set felt sensations in the body and the nervous system. It’s sematic psychology as well. So I incorporate parts work as well. Semantic parts work and semantic attachment therapy. So it’s important to know that there’s so many different types of semantic

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Alyssa: healing modalities. That’s why it could be really kind of confusing for people and like overwhelming. And there’s so many different areas to explore to see what works best for you like. They’re also so helpful. There’s not really like. I don’t believe that there is one thing like at all. There’s not one thing you have to explore so many different

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Alyssa: areas, but what I found to be the most helpful personally for me has been anything to work with my nervous system, learning about poly vehicle theory, and how to navigate my nervous system, and also doing like regular like I like. I told you I do. Yan Yoga 3 times a week, cause it’s been really helpful for me. So that personally has been the most beneficial for me out of all these different semotic healing modalities.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I am.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I’ve had an experience once with a therapist who was just starting to do her somatic studies. And

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Nyk Danu Yoga: she.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So we went from kind of having this. You know, cognitive behavioral therapy, you know, visits. And then she also did a lot of art therapy which I also found

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Nyk Danu Yoga: challenging just for who I am as a person, because I was just like like I don’t.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I don’t draw like I just I mean, you know, I can scribble on some paper that’s about it. But one of the things that she

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Nyk Danu Yoga: she would try to get me to do is as we were talking, doing our cognitive stuff.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Then she would ask me to try to figure out where that was in my body and explain it.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The problem there for me was

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Nyk Danu Yoga: it felt like to me that that’s asking

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Nyk Danu Yoga: 2 different parts of my brain.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: like the part of me that can drop in and feel

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and notice and be curious and aware, and then I have to jump over to this other part of my brain, where now I have to find the right, the right words to communicate that to some outside person, and I found that really challenging, because then it just felt like I was like jumping from here to over here. Those of you who are listening can’t see my hands gesturing wildly, but like from

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Nyk Danu Yoga: having an embodied experience and an awareness of what’s happening inside of me then to now try to leap over to communicating what that was like to somebody I was just like, this doesn’t work for me.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So I was like, I either want to talk to you about it.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and then we do a separate session where I’m feeling it. But don’t ask me now to explain it, because

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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know it just it was. Yeah. It just felt like it was kind of like pulling me from one part of my brain to the other.

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Alyssa: Totally well. It’s that disconnect from Soma and Psyche. And what we want to do with sematic work is connect those 2 worlds back together.

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Alyssa: And so what she was doing was, and sometimes that’s that’s helpful. I when I first started getting into somatic work, I found that like so challenging as well cause they’ll you’ll be talking about a scenario, and then she’ll ask you to feel into it right? So it’s like, Oh, what did that feel like, what did you notice in your body? But when we actually start to connect those 2 worlds back together, it’s so helpful in to understand it. In this way.

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Alyssa: we want to be able to connect those worlds back together, because when we’re actually experiencing it in a relationship like what’s going on inside my body.

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Alyssa: So. And that’s that’s when it can be really helpful cause we we’re so disconnected. It’s like we’re we’re in our heads all the time we spend the majority of our time in our heads, disconnected from our bodies. But when we’re disconnected from our bodies, we’re

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Alyssa: be disconnected from the important information being sent from body to brain. So that’s one way to do it. You can do full sessions of just going into the body and like processing and releasing. And that’s another way of going back and forth between the mind and the body. It’s a bit more challenging, and a lot of people have a hard time explaining what they’re even noticing in their body during that time.

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Alyssa: But why that is so helpful is you’ll start to notice in your relationships that you’re tuning into your body more rather than just always in your mind, because we get so caught up in our mind. So say we’re triggered. Say, your partner triggers you

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Alyssa: often. We get so wrapped up in the stories in our mind.

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Alyssa: But if we can remind ourselves to go back into the body, what’s happening inside my body right now?

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Alyssa: Oh, like I’m in that fight or flight response. I’m feeling a lot of tension in my chest and in my throat, or we might notice that. We’re withdrawing. We’re closing off. I want to get away.

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Alyssa: So if we can do that, if we can separate ourselves from our thoughts, notice our thoughts in that moment, observe them, then go into the body. Then that’s actually how we process it and change our patterns. So it is a one way to do it. It’s and there’s many ways of doing it. But yeah, I work with a semantic therapist, and that’s her same approach as well.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah, like, I, I actually find. And it’s because of probably years of yin and years of meditation.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I find the kind of witnessing. Okay, what’s going on here?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: What you know? What’s going on up here in the head? And then like, where am I feeling that in my body and then questioning it, and being curious like that part I find.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Well, say easy, but you know, Doable, it was then just trying to. Now take all of that that I was feeling physically, and put put it in words that I thought someone else would understand. That’s where kind of the disconnect was. I was like.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: what am I supposed to say? I feel soupy like at the end. I mean, it was like it was so hard for me to figure out

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Nyk Danu Yoga: words to just because I’m even like this. When I when I learn new information that I want to then incorporate into my classes.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I always take

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Nyk Danu Yoga: a lot of time to practice that in my own practice

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Nyk Danu Yoga: for months.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, physically, mentally, emotionally, to bring those concepts in before I try to verbalize it. I just feel like, like I need to process this and see actually what it feels like for me. And then what words would I use to describe how I’m feeling, or it’s not quite this. It’s not, you know, just, I guess just language for me takes a while

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Nyk Danu Yoga: to to come up with the language that I feel like anybody else would understand. And so I think that’s what I found challenging about it, I think. Had we done like a session where it was like all me experiencing, experiencing. And then maybe I could write some notes. And then the next session she said so. How was last session. What it came up. That would have been easy for for me to be like.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: okay, I remember I wrote notes. This is what it felt like I’ve had chance to kind of be with it. Here’s the words that I could use, but it was just the like. Back and forth. I felt kind of like it was a metronome. It was like bloop bloop bloop. Yeah.

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Alyssa: I love that you said that because and that is a challenge for so many people. And that’s why it’s like I mean, seeing a therapist has changed my life 100. But that wasn’t enough. And that’s why it’s like, when I work with my clients like, I have a whole online program of how to actually navigate your nervous system and how to build somatic awareness. And I provide them with a whole list of words of how to explain their senses.

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Alyssa: Body, so they become fluent with it. So that way they’re starting to build that somatic awareness, because so many people, like so many clients struggle to

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Alyssa: name what they’re feeling in their their body. We’ve never been taught that to start naming like our sensations, so they don’t know what words to use. So I get them really fluent with that, and exploring their own felt sensations on their own, and then they become just. It becomes easier. It becomes a habit, and it becomes very fluent, and it’s so cool to see my clients go from not even being able to know what’s going on their body because they feel numb, and they’re like, I don’t know. I don’t even really even know if I feel anything, or I don’t know how to explain this to all of a sudden, like

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Alyssa: using, like all these different like words, and just becoming so fluent with what they’re ex experiencing in their body. It’s really, really cool. And it’s helped them so much process when they’re actually triggered in that moment of getting out of the head, because really all you need to do. And it it’s it’s mind blowing when you experience it. When we’re triggered. We often just get so wrapped up in our heads, and we wanna go bitch that person out, or whatever it is, right.

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Alyssa: But if you can get out of your mind and go directly into the body and be like him, triggered, what’s happening right now and then just start naming your sensations.

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Alyssa: Then all of a sudden it dissipates you, process it, and the trigger is gone like you’re able.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Of his cell.

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Alyssa: Suit in that moment. And then, all of a sudden, you’re not so reactive.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I love this. I love that you’re bringing up this idea of that, because I think we’ve all been taught culturally

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that. And it’s the same thing with anxiety that, like

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Nyk Danu Yoga: your trauma, or your anxiety, or your thoughts about it, is up in your head.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and then that that causes the body signals. And it sounds like you’re saying it’s actually the other way around.

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Alyssa: The other way around. It’s your body that’s that’s sending the signals to the. It’s it’s what’s tuning into your thoughts.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah.

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Alyssa: So that’s why it’s like you go into your body. You process that in your body. And then the thought, the thoughts shift.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I’ve noticed that even just with

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and it, it just sort of intuitively came to me based on a book that I read, but there was. There was a time in my life where I was.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, especially anxious, and that

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Nyk Danu Yoga: when I would

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Nyk Danu Yoga: immediately put my my hand on my heart and the other one on my belly.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and then go through

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Nyk Danu Yoga: graded what I was grateful for in that moment.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But I had. But but I’ve tried it without touching my body and doesn’t work. It’s there’s something about bringing the hand to the heart that and then I would go through, you know, kind of. I’m grateful for this. I’m grateful for that. And I just noticed, like this huge down regulation and my ability to get out of the sort of whirling hamster wheel of of anxious thoughts

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Nyk Danu Yoga: by, just you know, touching. And I actually started with before the gratitude was, this is why I put my hand on my heart with with noticing that that feeling of like the weight of my hand, the warmth of my hand, the tingle, you know, and then the sensation in my body beneath the hand, and then I went into gratitude, and I was just amazed at how

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Nyk Danu Yoga: powerful that was.

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Alyssa: Yeah. And you know what’s so important, too, is like, even just how we’re having this conversation about.

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Alyssa: you know, having this conversation and getting a better understanding of why we’re doing this like as humans, we wanna understand things we understand. Wanna understand why we’re doing things. And it’s such a limitation. If we go to see like a therapist, for example, and they’re just guiding us through a process. But we don’t understand why. And we’re like, Well, I’m not experiencing what I think I’m supposed to be experiencing. This feels weird, this feels off.

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Alyssa: but when we can explain, like knowing that well, that

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Alyssa: anxiety is actually alarm in your body.

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Alyssa: It’s not your thoughts right. It’s the alarm in your body that is causing the thoughts when we can actually show someone that. And that’s what I do with my clients. As I guide them through. Like this whole process, they go through this training of understanding their nervous system. When we understand how our nervous system works. Then we can work with it. If I were just to tell you to do something

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Alyssa: without you understanding why you’re not gonna likely stick with that. But when you.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Machines. Yeah, we want to.

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Alyssa: Making machines. Yeah, we wanna understand things. So it’s so helpful to have that knowledge and then have someone guiding you through it. So then you’re like, Oh, I get it. And I understand what I’m gonna get out of this. And then you’re gonna have a way, different experience. Whereas when we go into sessions, not knowing why we’re doing things. That’s why it’s I think it’s so important to have like go through like a training and then also work with someone as well.

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Alyssa: Yeah. So then you understand why you’re doing these things, and then you’ll just have a way, better experience and get better results.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: This might be a good time to actually just do a sort of overview, maybe, Ben, of the nervous system, because I feel like.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: even when I did my first several years of Yoga training I probably had been teaching for

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Nyk Danu Yoga: 1213 years before. I really had an understanding of our nervous system.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Because it wasn’t until I started taking Yoga therapy training, which, of course, there’s there’s that leaning to it so that we’re talking about the nervous system all the time, and then also some college level.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: anatomy and physiology courses that I even kind of really got this like. Oh.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: this is our nervous system. So I’m sure that there’s a lot of teachers listening who know that, like the nervous system, is really important, and they don’t know much more about it.

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Alyssa: Yeah. And I love to explain it like, in a really kind of fun, simple way. So I’ll break down the nervous system states for you. So this is poly vehicle theory.

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Alyssa: So the best way to describe it initially I like to explain. Like animals in the wild.

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Alyssa: So say, you have a herd of impala.

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Alyssa: Okay, so you have a herd of impala, and all of a sudden a lioness is chasing them.

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Alyssa: So what happens is they’ll go into that flight response. Right? So we go into the either the flight fight or flight response. So that’s our sympathetic nervous system. All of a sudden we have all this energy running through our body. Okay, so they take off at a super high speed.

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Alyssa: If they feel like they cannot escape. What happens is the impollow will drop to the ground and go into the immobility response. This is our shutdown response, the self protective system. It helps us leave our body so we don’t feel the perpetual pain of what’s about to happen. What an intelligent response

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Alyssa: many people think, freeze and shutdown are the same States. They are not

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Alyssa: okay. So the shutdown response is known as dorsal. It’s another branch of our parasympathetic. So we go into that shutdown response to protect ourselves, and we’ll dissociate and leave our body.

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Alyssa: Then there is also freeze, which is a blend of sympathetic and dorsal. So it’s equal parts. So it’s a lot of anxiety inside of our body. But we feel stuck like we can’t go anywhere, and the reason we go into that state is, we think, well, if I can escape, then I can just drop the dorsal and go into the fight or flight response, or, if I need to, I can add a more dorsal and immobilize and shut down.

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Alyssa: So those are the States that we experience. So when an animal goes into dorsal so that that herd of impolly they drop to the ground. They still have all that energy inside their body.

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Alyssa: and often what happens is a Linus will think the impala is dead, and then she’ll go get her cubs and bring them, and finish like making the kill.

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Alyssa: But what happens often is that and Paula will come up out of that immobility response, and they will shake. So they finish that energy, discharge cycle, and they go back to the herd, which is another important part, they return to community.

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Alyssa: Well, we humans have the exact same biological response. Okay.

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Alyssa: yes. We don’t deal with life threatening issues on a day to day basis. But many of us have experienced big T traumas, and we do deal with like daily stressors because trauma is subjective. It’s how we perceive it

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Alyssa: inside of our bodies. And trauma is what happens to us in the absence of an empathetic witness. So when we experience something traumatic, whether we go into that fight or flight response, whether we go into freeze or shutdown.

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Alyssa: We have that same biological response, but we often don’t finish the energy discharge cycle, and we don’t.

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Alyssa: Return to our community. We heal in community. Right? We need that we need to finish the discharge. And we need to return to our tribe for support. We don’t do that, and many of us are in isolation with our traumas. So we’re never actually finishing the cycle. And so what that looks like is we can get stuck in particular states. Okay, so it doesn’t mean that we’re always in the State. But we might spend the majority of our time there. So what we wanna look at is, what state are we spending most of the time in?

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Alyssa: So it’s important to mention that our core self state like who we are at the core, is known as our ventral vegl state. It’s a branch of our parasympathetic.

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Alyssa: This is when we feel like everything is in flow, we feel grounded in our bodies, our energy levels are full, but not too full. We feel capable and able, we feel connected with others. This is also known as secure attachment. Okay?

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Alyssa: So when we are securely attached, we spend most of our time in our ventral bagel state.

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Alyssa: Okay.

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Alyssa: if we spend most of our time in sympathetic, this would be known as the anxious attachment style. If we tend to spend a lot of time there in relationships. When we’re in that state, we feel a sense of urgency. We need to control things. We want certainty. We want to know what’s going on. We feel hyper, vigilant, or and we have too much energy in our bodies. We feel like I need to do something right now.

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Alyssa: I have to do something now, or something’s gonna fall apart right? Very urgent hyper arousal. It could be rage. It could be fear. That’s sympathetic

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Alyssa: when we are in dorsal dorsal is known as the avoidant attachment style. If we tend to spend a lot of time there in relationships, if that’s our pattern and what that looks like is apathy.

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Alyssa: an undactivated nervous system, disconnected, aloof.

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Alyssa: like not being able to really connect and fully open up to people depressed.

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Alyssa: lethargic, low energy not motivated. What’s the point? Why bother?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Was it the.

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Alyssa: Thoughts. When we’re in freeze, it’s like one foot on the accelerator, one foot on the break. So we have all this energy inside of our body, but nowhere to move. It’s very contradicting. Thoughts.

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Alyssa: Freeze is the. It would be the disorganized attachment if we spend a lot of time there in relationships that that’s our pattern

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Alyssa: and very contradicting thoughts I want to move towards.

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Alyssa: But I also want to pull away.

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Alyssa: I need to do this, but I can’t.

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Alyssa: It’s like sitting down and having all this work to do in your computer and your laptop. But not being able to get anything done, we’re just going and distracting yourself. So that’s like functional freeze. And these patterns show up in our relationships. And most people don’t know that our attachment system is our nervous system.

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Alyssa: So our attachment styles are completely connected to our nervous system states.

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Alyssa: Right? And they’re not fixed. We can heal them. And we might experience all of these different styles, but usually we have a dominant state that we go to.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I wanted to, just in case there’s a newer teacher here who even the word sympathetic and parasympathetic, or kind of like huh?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So when I was in Amp, I remember having trouble remembering this, because to me the word sympathetic sounds like, you know, should be the nicer one.

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Alyssa: Speaker.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: It starts with the word sympathetic, but it’s not and so I had to start memorizing it as parasympathetic. I kept thinking about like paramedics. You know how they come in like take care of you. So even just maybe a brief like what is sympathetic, what is parasympathetic? Just so that anybody who’s kind of got these words in their head but like don’t really know what that means.

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Alyssa: Yeah. So the parasympathetic is our rest and digest state. Okay, we have 2 branches of that.

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Alyssa: We have, like, I said that the ventral state, and also the dorsal. So the dorsal be like, we’re way, too, like way not enough energy at all like underactivated. And then the ventral would be like when we feel connected. We’re in flow or energy levels are good, but it’s a rest and digest state. Then the sympathetic is what we go into. It’s our defense mechanism. It’s that fight or flight response.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And so.

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Alyssa: Activation.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Freeze is sympathetic.

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Alyssa: Breeze is a blend of both.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Oh, interesting!

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Alyssa: Yeah. So a freeze is actual, equal parts of that shutdown in mobility response and the activation sympathetic. So it’s all that energy inside your body, but you feel stuck like you have nowhere to go.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Like you said, like the break in the gas kind of at the same time.

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Alyssa: Yeah.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: It’s so interesting what you said about shaking because of course, I learned some of that in my Yoga therapy training.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and

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Nyk Danu Yoga: there was an incident once where I don’t know how I had the cognitive awareness to do this at the time, but for whatever reason I did where I was in what could have been a traumatic situation. Small T, not like, not complex drama where I was riding my bike and somebody didn’t pay attention, swung their door out right into the the lane, and I ended up, you know, getting dored.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and I’ve been dored before on my bike. It’s not an uncommon thing. Just if so, if you’re a driver and you wonder why cyclists don’t go anywhere near the park cars. It’s probably because they’ve been dored a couple of times. And so I’ve been doard before, and I remember that in the past anytime I would ride by that spot again I would feel my body tense

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and my my mind would start racing.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And so I had that memory. And then this time, when I got dored

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Nyk Danu Yoga: ironically, it was actually a fellow Yoga therapist who who I know, who actually was the one who doored me. So it was kind of funny for both of us to witness this, but I just knew

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that if I wanted to be able to process this without getting triggered every time I drove by that spot, then I needed to do something in the moment. And so when she said, Oh, my God, are you okay? I was like, yes, but I need to shake, and I literally just stood there on the on the street, and just like shook it out and like, let out some sounds. And then I was just like, Okay, now I feel like I can talk to you, and you know I was very minorly hurt. Little scrape on the knee, and Neighbor brought me a Band-aid and a washcloth. And life went on. And so I thought.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, I’m going to

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Nyk Danu Yoga: it. It was weird how I decided to do that test because I was like, now I’m going to see when I ride by there

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Nyk Danu Yoga: tomorrow.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Am I tense? And I was completely not

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Nyk Danu Yoga: so. I thought it was so interesting. How something, because I’d heard about it in my yoga therapy training. I always like to experiment. I was like, I gotta try this

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Nyk Danu Yoga: shaking thing.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and and even what you said about community. So I did do the shaking right, and then I had my my colleague and my friend there, and I had a neighbor come by, and how I was able to just like

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Nyk Danu Yoga: whip by that spot on my bike the very next day, and not feel that like tensing.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: whereas other spots, even like a year later.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: when I would go by, I would feel my hands start to like grip the handlebar, and I’d be start to become hyper, aware of all the cars.

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Alyssa: And you know what it’s. It’s super cool cause. It’s we have this inner surveillance known as neuroception. So neuroception is our threat detector. It’s our subconscious system that is constantly on the lookout and deciding if the people, places, and situations we encounter are safe, dangerous, or life threatening.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: If it is.

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Alyssa: Danger, it brings us into dysregulation. So the tensing in the body. If it

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Alyssa: detects that we’re safe, then we’re able to go into a state of safety, and only 2 things bring our nervous system into dysregulation, and that is real danger of past trauma. One thing brings our nervous system into regulation that safety. So it’s like there that neuroception was kicking in because it was a reminder of that past trauma.

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Alyssa: And what you did in that moment was you were able to re enact it like, go into that. It’s like your body was reenacting that you finish the response. So then your body was able to Co. Go back to a place of safety in that moment. So then, you were able to rewire that we can rewire neuroception to show our body that it is safe. So super cool story.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah. And and again, I don’t know how I just I had the cognitive awareness in the moment that I should do this. But but I did, and so of course I’m a big fan of the shaking now. And when I used to teach I used to teach a class called yoga for anxious times.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And one thing I’ve noticed is that there are people who, when they’re dealing with their

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Nyk Danu Yoga: anxiety or trauma, or whatever that

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Nyk Danu Yoga: are okay to just move right into stillness. And then there’s other people that need to move first before they could become still.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And so what I used to do in that class was at the beginning before we went into constructive rest, which I can talk about in a moment. And why, that’s like a nervous system. Miracle!

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But before we would go into that I would invite anybody who did feel like they were too activated to be still to. We just did some like meridian tapping, and like shaking of our limbs, and like letting out some big, you know, exhales and getting a little noisy, and then we would settle into the stillness and the constructive rest. And then I had other students who they were, the opposite if they were really anxious.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the thought of like doing all that movement just made them feel even less grounded. And actually, that’s usually who I tend to be.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And so for them, I would get them to do just super gentle, like sweeping of maybe their arms, or that like almost like caressing themselves. So they’re getting that soothing aspect, but without

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Nyk Danu Yoga: sort of the

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00:56:06.460 –> 00:56:21.989
Nyk Danu Yoga: in in aerobata they would call it vata, being a vata state like standing, even when you’re feeling ungrounded, for some people can make them feel less grounded. So I thought it was really interesting when I started working with that anxiety in class to see that there’s definitely these 2

421
00:56:22.260 –> 00:56:29.016
Nyk Danu Yoga: different people that some need to move, and some are just like, if you ask me to move, I’m walking out the door.

422
00:56:29.470 –> 00:56:34.280
Alyssa: I love that you mentioned that. So yes, certain exercises

423
00:56:34.340 –> 00:56:36.309
Alyssa: can flood our system more.

424
00:56:37.210 –> 00:56:41.230
Alyssa: And this is the best way to explain it. So there’s different levels

425
00:56:41.440 –> 00:56:44.720
Alyssa: as well. Right? So let’s say, a level one to 10.

426
00:56:45.160 –> 00:56:46.110
Alyssa: So

427
00:56:46.390 –> 00:56:52.060
Alyssa: level one, say one to 5 is like, you see, a tiger a mile away.

428
00:56:52.240 –> 00:56:54.659
Alyssa: but you have time to escape

429
00:56:55.240 –> 00:57:04.010
Alyssa: level like 5 to 10 is that tiger is getting a lot closer like 10. That tiger is right in front of you. You need to do something right now, right? Like you need to take action.

430
00:57:04.060 –> 00:57:12.689
Alyssa: So when we’re very activated, we actually need to discharge some of that energy. First, before we can go into that parasympathetic state, we won’t be able to, because.

431
00:57:13.080 –> 00:57:15.590
Alyssa: Think about it this way. If someone were to

432
00:57:15.780 –> 00:57:19.310
Alyssa: tell, say, a tiger was chasing you, would you sit down and meditate.

433
00:57:19.310 –> 00:57:20.599
Nyk Danu Yoga: No, no.

434
00:57:20.600 –> 00:57:46.780
Alyssa: Right, you’d get up and run, and that’s what your system is saying. There’s a tiger right in front of us. We need to discharge some of this energy. We need to move, and that’s when it’s going to be a lot more helpful to move some of that energy. If we’re at like, say, like a one to 5 sympathetic. We have time to make a decision, but we do feel anxious, like we do still need to do something, but more gentle exercises, like the self soothing that you’re getting them to do is going to be more supportive in that state. So it’s so important to know that like.

435
00:57:46.780 –> 00:58:11.959
Alyssa: yeah, there’s so many different schematic tools. But you have to understand where your nervous systems at you need to do a check in to know where your nervous systems at. Just know which one’s gonna be more beneficial for you, because not one tool is gonna support every single state. Just like, if you’re like in a shutdown response, you’re gonna use a lot like a very different type of exercise than when you are in either freeze. Or if you’re in sympathetic. So it’s really understanding where your nervous system is at.

436
00:58:12.580 –> 00:58:21.240
Alyssa: And then what tool is going to best support you? So super cool that you’re able to even just notice that. And then, being able to separate the 2 is really cool.

437
00:58:21.566 –> 00:58:29.070
Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah, I mean, and because that was actually the biggest challenge for me, initially, when I was thinking of starting that series was.

438
00:58:29.230 –> 00:58:31.589
Nyk Danu Yoga: how do I, in one group session.

439
00:58:31.890 –> 00:58:38.429
Nyk Danu Yoga: deal with the folks that need to move first before we can get to any in and then deal with the folks that are like

440
00:58:38.770 –> 00:58:48.669
Nyk Danu Yoga: cause. What I have noticed, too, is that just from my own journey with anxiety is that if you’ve had like several days or weeks even of like back to back like anxious times.

441
00:58:48.820 –> 00:58:55.740
Nyk Danu Yoga: that when you start to almost come out of that, it’s exhausting, like you’re just like God, and that’s what I mean by like.

442
00:58:55.750 –> 00:59:08.169
Nyk Danu Yoga: Don’t make me stand up like, please. Can I just lay on the floor and rest for a while because they’ve they’ve like burnt out, you know their their nervous system. So it was. It was hard for me to like. How do I incorporate

443
00:59:08.240 –> 00:59:17.819
Nyk Danu Yoga: both of these? And that’s just how we did it. I introd luckily it was a registered series. So I didn’t have to go over that each time. But I just said, Okay, these are the 2

444
00:59:17.830 –> 00:59:27.320
Nyk Danu Yoga: typically personality types that we may have. And you may be 1 one week and a different one the next week. So here’s our 2 options, right? You could either do this or you could do this.

445
00:59:27.732 –> 00:59:29.910
Nyk Danu Yoga: And yeah, it works really well.

446
00:59:31.030 –> 00:59:32.422
Alyssa: So cool, so cool.

447
00:59:33.000 –> 00:59:39.879
Nyk Danu Yoga: I’d love to also just tease just briefly, apart, because this this is gonna be kind of

448
00:59:40.272 –> 00:59:47.330
Nyk Danu Yoga: the beginning of a sort of a three-part series where I talk about not me, but my my guests talk about trauma a bit more

449
00:59:47.470 –> 00:59:50.590
Nyk Danu Yoga: so. I’d love to hear just a definition of

450
00:59:50.990 –> 00:59:53.030
Nyk Danu Yoga: trauma from you.

451
00:59:53.560 –> 01:00:02.360
Alyssa: Yeah, so trauma is anything that happens? Too much too soon, too fast, or too long for our nervous system to handle.

452
01:00:02.980 –> 01:00:16.959
Alyssa: Levine’s definition of trauma is trauma is what happens, not the event, not the external event, but it’s what happens inside us in the absence of an empathetic witness. So I to me, that’s the absolute best definition, like those 2 together of trauma.

453
01:00:17.950 –> 01:00:20.089
Nyk Danu Yoga: That that empathetic witness

454
01:00:20.300 –> 01:00:24.045
Nyk Danu Yoga: that makes a lot of sense, I know, even with

455
01:00:24.780 –> 01:00:27.899
Nyk Danu Yoga: with friends of mine who’ve been sexually assaulted, for example.

456
01:00:28.050 –> 01:00:30.340
Nyk Danu Yoga: and the ones that had

457
01:00:30.530 –> 01:00:34.179
Nyk Danu Yoga: rape counseling like right away. Yeah, and had a friend.

458
01:00:34.260 –> 01:00:46.529
Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, or versus the people who just like didn’t have anybody or didn’t share, or didn’t talk about it, or and just how much it affected their lives later. Was is not, is notable.

459
01:00:46.870 –> 01:00:58.370
Alyssa: Yeah. Well, trauma is not an event like it doesn’t matter what happened to you. It’s subjective. It’s what happens inside you and trauma isolates us. It disconnects us from ourselves, others in the environment.

460
01:00:58.660 –> 01:01:18.740
Alyssa: And of course, like there’s there’s spectrums of trauma. And of course, like there’s like very significant events that can very much, you know, affect you if you don’t have the proper support after. But when you have that community and that support, after you’re gonna have a very different experience, also depending on whether you had secure attachment growing up your past trauma history.

461
01:01:18.920 –> 01:01:30.129
Alyssa: So that’s why it’s like important not to judge. And I hate seeing this like when I see so much judgment, you know, even just in like the personal development space of saying like, will this person, just change their mindset, or just change.

462
01:01:30.130 –> 01:01:30.540
Nyk Danu Yoga: On earth.

463
01:01:30.540 –> 01:01:59.599
Alyssa: Around their trauma, or they got over it like, look what they did with their lives. Okay, we don’t know their past trauma history. We don’t know what support that they had after that event. Like, it’s what happens inside you, and to compare yourself to other people like it’s that’s not gonna help you move forward. And I just know that because I tried for so long, I was so into personal development and thinking that I could like Tony Robbins, and, like, you know, like Tony Robbins, my way out of it, or like

464
01:01:59.877 –> 01:02:20.110
Alyssa: Just positive, think and make find meaning in it, which is important that all that has a place, and we can do that. But we do have to acknowledge what we experienced, and we do have to find safety in our bodies before we can do that. Otherwise we’re just putting a band aid over top of it. It’s a coping mechanism, and it’s not gonna help us! Move forward in life.

465
01:02:20.862 –> 01:02:26.987
Nyk Danu Yoga: First of all, I love that you turned Tony Robbins into a verb. That was great, but

466
01:02:28.010 –> 01:02:34.908
Nyk Danu Yoga: so, Alyssa, are you telling me that I can’t just do affirmations to heal my trauma.

467
01:02:35.340 –> 01:02:36.890
Alyssa: Wish it was that simple. I really.

468
01:02:36.890 –> 01:02:38.270
Nyk Danu Yoga: Oh, right I mean.

469
01:02:38.588 –> 01:02:40.179
Alyssa: I did try that. Oh.

470
01:02:40.512 –> 01:02:52.814
Nyk Danu Yoga: We’ve all done it. Anyone who’s been around New Age circles at all has done the affirmation route, and you know what it’s now, because I’ve been meditating so long. Whenever I’ve tried to do affirmations again.

471
01:02:53.770 –> 01:03:07.720
Nyk Danu Yoga: I can hear that little voice in my head like right away. That’s like you are full of shit. You don’t believe this, you know. So yeah, these these things need to be dealt with like you said with your body, and subconsciously, you can’t just like

472
01:03:08.040 –> 01:03:12.900
Nyk Danu Yoga: put things on your mirror and think that all your trauma is going to go away. And I think that this

473
01:03:13.590 –> 01:03:19.599
Nyk Danu Yoga: attitude that we’ve had culturally, that you can do that is, has led to so much spiritual bypassing

474
01:03:19.640 –> 01:03:22.779
Nyk Danu Yoga: where it’s like people are just acting like

475
01:03:23.150 –> 01:03:24.790
Nyk Danu Yoga: everything is okay.

476
01:03:24.900 –> 01:03:32.669
Nyk Danu Yoga: And they’re 100% healed when really, actually, all they’re doing is denying and deluding themselves.

477
01:03:33.330 –> 01:03:36.489
Alyssa: And you know what that is is the fawn response.

478
01:03:36.819 –> 01:03:54.590
Alyssa: So this is so interesting, so fawning is not a nervous system state. It’s a response that we either do in sympathetic or dorsal. And what that looks like is either people pleasing, putting on a happy mask, that everything is perfect. It helps us mimic and access a false ventral Bagel state.

479
01:03:54.590 –> 01:04:12.070
Alyssa: So it’s fawning. And that’s what we do when we’re spiritual. Bypassing is like just focusing on the positive. And yes, we do. Wanna do that, too, like it’s called glimmers. But we do actually need to pendulate like we do need to go into the darkness, into the traumas, and then you go into the light. And that’s actually how we heal from our trauma. But you’re so right that it’s

480
01:04:12.140 –> 01:04:29.319
Alyssa: we just see spiritual bypassing becoming so popular that it’s and there’s 2 forms of spiritual bypassing. It’s either just like focusing on love and light and evil doesn’t exist, and you know, just ignore all of that, and just find meaning out of your traumas. And that’s all you focus on.

481
01:04:29.380 –> 01:04:37.580
Alyssa: or there’s also like the heavy, spiritual or not spiritual personal development, like focusing on success, achieving, pushing forward.

482
01:04:37.750 –> 01:04:39.840
Alyssa: Both are bypassing.

483
01:04:40.690 –> 01:04:42.510
Nyk Danu Yoga: yeah, yeah.

484
01:04:43.450 –> 01:04:44.543
Nyk Danu Yoga: it’s like,

485
01:04:45.580 –> 01:04:53.830
Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, the lotus can’t actually go up above the water and bloom to the sun, unless it not it. Knowledge is that it’s actually in a bunch of mud.

486
01:04:54.345 –> 01:05:00.670
Nyk Danu Yoga: It’s like, it’s like, Oh, there’s a bunch of muck down here, you know. Yeah.

487
01:05:00.670 –> 01:05:21.909
Alyssa: And it’s a coping mechanism, too, like I have so much empathy for people who are in that state, because I was like when I. When I hit Rock bottom I had a very intense spiritual awakening, and I was floating. I was dissociated, and I was so focused on like a lot of the New Age spirituality like love and light. And it was exciting. I was having all these synchronicities happening, and you know it felt really good.

488
01:05:21.920 –> 01:05:29.550
Alyssa: But I had to come back down to Earth eventually and realize that we can’t ascend unless we’ve descended into our body first.

489
01:05:31.110 –> 01:05:32.030
Nyk Danu Yoga: yeah.

490
01:05:33.360 –> 01:05:34.360
Nyk Danu Yoga: so

491
01:05:35.070 –> 01:05:37.270
Nyk Danu Yoga: one of the reasons that

492
01:05:37.480 –> 01:05:41.180
Nyk Danu Yoga: I think that yin can be so helpful

493
01:05:41.560 –> 01:05:51.878
Nyk Danu Yoga: depending and i’m gonna preface, this because I just know somebody. I it’s like I’ve been working with teachers long enough. I can already hear the little things they’re gonna say in my head before I even speak

494
01:05:52.680 –> 01:05:55.370
Nyk Danu Yoga: So, depending on where someone is at

495
01:05:55.700 –> 01:06:01.289
Nyk Danu Yoga: with their nervous system and with healing their trauma. So let’s just get that out of the way that this is

496
01:06:01.410 –> 01:06:02.990
Nyk Danu Yoga: super individual.

497
01:06:03.700 –> 01:06:06.399
Nyk Danu Yoga: But one thing I have found

498
01:06:06.590 –> 01:06:09.050
Nyk Danu Yoga: is that at least for the people

499
01:06:09.190 –> 01:06:16.520
Nyk Danu Yoga: that know they have anxiety or know that they’re they’re dealing with trauma, and that they’re working through trauma

500
01:06:16.570 –> 01:06:18.790
Nyk Danu Yoga: when they’re in that state

501
01:06:19.080 –> 01:06:19.900
Nyk Danu Yoga: of.

502
01:06:20.050 –> 01:06:23.990
Nyk Danu Yoga: They’ve got a therapist, you know. They’re they’re working through things

503
01:06:24.040 –> 01:06:28.019
Nyk Danu Yoga: that Yin has been an incredibly powerful tool.

504
01:06:28.270 –> 01:06:33.450
Nyk Danu Yoga: because it helps us learn how to sit with what’s uncomfortable

505
01:06:34.590 –> 01:06:37.810
Nyk Danu Yoga: and to be open to it, and to be, you know.

506
01:06:38.040 –> 01:06:42.330
Nyk Danu Yoga: curious about it, and to know that we’re going to be okay

507
01:06:42.550 –> 01:06:44.460
Nyk Danu Yoga: sitting with that discomfort?

508
01:06:45.940 –> 01:06:54.736
Nyk Danu Yoga: And so, you know, I’ve I’ve seen both ends of the Spectrum Minion. I’ve seen people come to a yin class, not knowing what Yan even is, and you know,

509
01:06:55.210 –> 01:07:04.994
Nyk Danu Yoga: I’ve seen some interesting trauma releases, for sure in my class. Some of the ones that you’d expect, and then some that are like, Whoa, okay, that was intense.

510
01:07:05.560 –> 01:07:08.440
Nyk Danu Yoga: and then I’ve I’ve known students that

511
01:07:09.010 –> 01:07:13.559
Nyk Danu Yoga: have used this practice as like an essential tool in their tool belt.

512
01:07:14.645 –> 01:07:25.530
Nyk Danu Yoga: To work through this to be able to. You know, take the still and quiet time with their body, and learn to use their body as a resource

513
01:07:25.730 –> 01:07:30.570
Nyk Danu Yoga: and as an ally, instead of kind of fleeing their body.

514
01:07:31.530 –> 01:07:44.439
Nyk Danu Yoga: And of course I do think that nothing is for everybody, and that there will be people that at least for where they’re at right now that Yen might not be a great tool for them, that it might be too still, too quiet, too much

515
01:07:44.861 –> 01:07:47.529
Nyk Danu Yoga: maybe, especially if they don’t have support.

516
01:07:48.760 –> 01:07:50.719
Nyk Danu Yoga: but I have witnessed some

517
01:07:50.960 –> 01:07:54.169
Nyk Danu Yoga: absolutely incredible things with students

518
01:07:54.300 –> 01:07:59.039
Nyk Danu Yoga: from having this, and even with just as simple as there was one gal. I remember

519
01:07:59.470 –> 01:08:02.889
Nyk Danu Yoga: when we did our check-in at the beginning of my class, who said

520
01:08:04.090 –> 01:08:06.020
Nyk Danu Yoga: That she was feeling really anxious.

521
01:08:06.310 –> 01:08:10.989
Nyk Danu Yoga: and she said, like so anxious, I’m not sure that I can stay here.

522
01:08:11.520 –> 01:08:12.720
Nyk Danu Yoga: And I thought.

523
01:08:13.020 –> 01:08:25.620
Nyk Danu Yoga: Well, of course, you’re gonna stay here now, because you just identified right? Like you. Just you just saw it, you know, and so I’m so glad that she did, because that allowed me to just talk a little bit about at the beginning, about how

524
01:08:25.680 –> 01:08:27.090
Nyk Danu Yoga: you know there’s all these

525
01:08:27.200 –> 01:08:54.000
Nyk Danu Yoga: stupid things that we believe about Yoga, that, like it, is supposed to be all love and light, and it’s all supposed to be good vibes only, and it’s all supposed to be easy, and that like coming to a Yen Yoga class is just like getting a massage, you know. And it’s like, well, and for some people it is, you know, if they’re feeling really regulated, and they’re just like I need to, you know, do something in my fitness, routine, or in my rest cycle. Now, that is, you know. Still it is. But for others

526
01:08:54.120 –> 01:09:02.019
Nyk Danu Yoga: it’s a challenge from the first pose until the end. And so I think, just addressing and saying, You know, sometimes we think

527
01:09:02.950 –> 01:09:08.470
Nyk Danu Yoga: part of the reason that we struggle so much with our anxiety in Yoga is because we think we’re not supposed to be anxious in Yoga

528
01:09:09.939 –> 01:09:12.390
Nyk Danu Yoga: right? And it’s like that’s not true.

529
01:09:12.590 –> 01:09:16.290
Nyk Danu Yoga: If you’re anxious outside the door, you’re gonna be anxious in here, too.

530
01:09:16.370 –> 01:09:19.010
Nyk Danu Yoga: It’s just that I’m going to give you some tools

531
01:09:19.350 –> 01:09:20.949
Nyk Danu Yoga: to help you with it.

532
01:09:21.200 –> 01:09:24.129
Nyk Danu Yoga: But it’s not like it’s not like. Oh.

533
01:09:24.330 –> 01:09:27.340
Nyk Danu Yoga: did that yin class now? I’m never anxious again, you know.

534
01:09:27.770 –> 01:09:46.810
Alyssa: Yeah, it’s interesting. When I first I was telling you, I I love Yin, and I go 3 times a week just because it’s been so helpful for me when I first went. I could not even hold the poses, and I remember at first I’m so used to doing this work that I don’t care what other people think around me. And I was like, you know, I’m just gonna show up. It’s small, tolerable steps, right.

535
01:09:47.210 –> 01:10:11.340
Alyssa: So I held them as long as I could. I was very uncomfortable. I had anxiety, and I just kept showing up, and it kept getting a bit better and a bit better. And now now I’m at that point where it just feels like a a massage, and it’s so relaxing, and it’s maintenance. But when I first started I had anxiety, and it was very uncomfortable. But I was okay with that, because I’m like, I’m not performing for anybody here. I’m doing this because it’s my own inner work, and I know my body needs it.

536
01:10:11.340 –> 01:10:24.470
Alyssa: and it’s going to be supportive of for me. And it didn’t take too long like within a couple of weeks it was. It was very, very different. But I was definitely one of those very anxious people at the beginning when I first started going to yen. And now it’s completely different.

537
01:10:25.030 –> 01:10:27.610
Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah. And I think you know so much

538
01:10:28.050 –> 01:10:40.860
Nyk Danu Yoga: is more tolerable when we just have an understanding. You know. One other thing that I often mentioned to people, because I think that people also have this silly idea that, like other people, are capable of meditating.

539
01:10:41.190 –> 01:10:49.440
Nyk Danu Yoga: But I can’t, because I have such a busy brain. And I’m like, Yeah, welcome to being human, like, every person has a busy brain. And so

540
01:10:49.530 –> 01:11:02.330
Nyk Danu Yoga: I talk a lot about that in class the role of the mind and emotions. Again, just to normalize this human experience. Because if someone comes in the door and thinks that they’re supposed to be able to do this in practice and not think or not be anxious.

541
01:11:02.570 –> 01:11:04.129
Nyk Danu Yoga: No wonder they’re going to hate it

542
01:11:04.610 –> 01:11:09.600
Nyk Danu Yoga: because they’re just gonna think this practice isn’t for me, because I was supposed to be.

543
01:11:09.910 –> 01:11:39.080
Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, Zend out, and feeling like this was a Spa visit, but instead, I was anxious and impatient and irritated and bored, and you know all of these things, and so I I either I either I yin yoga wrong, or it’s not for me. And so I always try to make. And so if you’re a teacher listening to this, this is why it’s important, especially if you have new students to end. It doesn’t have to be a whole monologue. Just like, mention that like, hey? If your mind thinks when I’m not talking.

544
01:11:39.400 –> 01:11:40.600
Nyk Danu Yoga: that’s normal.

545
01:11:40.790 –> 01:11:59.348
Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, and give them some techniques, perhaps, that they could choose to anchor their mind to, so that they’re not just sort of laying their flailing internally. Waiting for it to be over, you know. So I offer several different like kind of grounding or or anchoring techniques that they could choose to use if they want. They don’t want. They can do whatever they want to. But

546
01:11:59.800 –> 01:12:02.730
Nyk Danu Yoga: I think sometimes just knowing what to expect

547
01:12:02.940 –> 01:12:08.400
Nyk Danu Yoga: already creates a bit of a sense of. Oh, okay, okay, maybe I can do this.

548
01:12:08.610 –> 01:12:09.440
Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah.

549
01:12:09.600 –> 01:12:31.249
Alyssa: Totally. I mean, it always takes courage to go to classes like that right? And just know that, like we all started somewhere, and every single person that started doing yin yoga like probably started out where you were right if you were like me, and very anxious, and you were very tense, and you couldn’t hold the stretches for long. But I I knew that going in there, cause

550
01:12:31.250 –> 01:12:52.439
Alyssa: I had done I mean I had done yoga years ago so, and I knew like how I saw differences within like a couple of weeks. So I knew I was like starting again right when I when I went back, and so I’m like, don’t compare yourself to anyone else like don’t compare yourself, because so often we think well, I need to keep holding all the poses, because everyone else is. If I’m so uncomfortable, I’m gonna

551
01:12:52.670 –> 01:12:57.119
Alyssa: come out of that post because otherwise I’m not gonna come back. If I.

552
01:12:57.120 –> 01:12:57.530
Nyk Danu Yoga: That’s.

553
01:12:57.530 –> 01:12:58.910
Alyssa: My body, exactly. Yeah.

554
01:12:58.910 –> 01:13:00.009
Nyk Danu Yoga: So. And yeah, so.

555
01:13:00.010 –> 01:13:15.310
Alyssa: Then. I didn’t compare myself, and then I just kept going back, kept going back. And now it’s like it’s you know I can hold those poses the entire time. I don’t have severe anxiety. Of course, there’s days that I still do sometimes where my mind is racing. I’m human. The human experience.

556
01:13:15.340 –> 01:13:22.089
Alyssa: But just knowing that, just keep coming back. Keep showing up. It’s consistency. It’s gotta be consistent with it.

557
01:13:22.090 –> 01:13:28.569
Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah. And I often will say to my students, you know, if you’re having trouble holding the pose, because.

558
01:13:28.950 –> 01:13:36.119
Nyk Danu Yoga: like, there’s an injury situation, you know. Please come out like we do. We’re not trying to re- injure things or hurt your body.

559
01:13:36.400 –> 01:13:45.269
Nyk Danu Yoga: but if you’re having trouble holding the pose consistently for every pose. It could be a trauma response, or it could sometimes be that you’re doing a version that’s way too strong

560
01:13:45.270 –> 01:14:07.819
Nyk Danu Yoga: like, what if we backed off to like 50 of the most you could do is that tolerable? Then let’s try that, and just stay there instead of you know, going with, I find that people often do their yin yoga with their young attitude, this sort of striving, pushing, competing. I must do more. I must look like the cover of Yoga journal, you know, when they’ve got all that going in their mind. Then, of course, they’re going to be suffering even more in their yen. Yeah.

561
01:14:08.240 –> 01:14:25.320
Alyssa: Yeah, absolutely. And I used to be one of those people. And that’s why it’s it’s been such a lesson for me to just don’t compare we’re all here for the same reason, and to know that, like, it’s just showing up consistently and with anything in life.

562
01:14:25.320 –> 01:14:38.530
Alyssa: whether it’s in Yoga, whether it’s speaking on podcasts like you have to start, and you have to be willing to be like messy and not be perfect at first, and then you just keep getting better. Keep getting better at it.

563
01:14:38.930 –> 01:14:40.480
Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah, yeah.

564
01:14:40.940 –> 01:14:46.930
Nyk Danu Yoga: Is there any other little nuggets that you think that we haven’t talked about as far as like sort of?

565
01:14:47.830 –> 01:14:53.789
Nyk Danu Yoga: I mean, the only thing I would maybe like to touch on before we wrap it up a bit is this idea that

566
01:14:54.530 –> 01:14:57.309
Nyk Danu Yoga: a lot of people don’t think they have trauma

567
01:14:57.320 –> 01:15:00.569
Nyk Danu Yoga: because they think of trauma as sort of like this

568
01:15:01.120 –> 01:15:10.319
Nyk Danu Yoga: big tea trauma right? They think of like huge car wrecks, or, you know, massive child abuse, or you know, sexual abuse, or

569
01:15:10.550 –> 01:15:32.969
Nyk Danu Yoga: but I I really think that this idea of kind of like it. It was an Aha for me, anyways, to know that like even, for example. You know, trauma can be like a one off incident, or it can be your childhood, you know, if some of you were raised like me, you know where it’s like. It’s it’s sort of this constant, you know

570
01:15:33.290 –> 01:15:36.149
Nyk Danu Yoga: thing that happens over years and years and years.

571
01:15:36.190 –> 01:15:39.010
Nyk Danu Yoga: So any any kind of nuggets you have, maybe on, like.

572
01:15:39.200 –> 01:15:40.120
Nyk Danu Yoga: you know.

573
01:15:40.490 –> 01:15:43.429
Nyk Danu Yoga: because I just feel like people often think they don’t have trauma.

574
01:15:44.220 –> 01:15:49.990
Nyk Danu Yoga: and I’m just always think how. How, if you’re human like? How have you not had any trauma

575
01:15:50.373 –> 01:15:59.720
Nyk Danu Yoga: and I think it’s because they are thinking that if they weren’t severely abused as a child, or they haven’t had some kind of serious assault that they they’re not dealing with trauma.

576
01:16:00.870 –> 01:16:05.360
Alyssa: Yeah, well, what trauma is is anything that disconnects us from our core self.

577
01:16:05.400 –> 01:16:24.310
Alyssa: When we are leading from our core self, we are connected to others, we feel calm, capable, able, we have compassion, we have understanding. When we experience trauma, we become fragmented, and how that can show up as different parts show showing up in our life.

578
01:16:24.310 –> 01:16:40.965
Alyssa: So if you have parts that are very, maybe critical, judgmental people, pleasers, caretakers, controllers, workaholics, stern taskmasters, those are wounded parts of ourself, or you can have very addictive parts, compulsive, reactive

579
01:16:41.470 –> 01:17:06.590
Alyssa: and what these parts are doing is they’re just trying to keep our inner child, our younger inner child in the metaphorical basement, and the inner child is what’s holding on to all the wounding from our past experiences. So every single one of us is experienced trauma, unless you know someone who’s like completely enlightened and walking around, always compassionate, open hearted, and always acting from their core self. I don’t think any of us know that right.

580
01:17:06.590 –> 01:17:06.910
Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah.

581
01:17:06.910 –> 01:17:15.659
Alyssa: So we’ve all experienced trauma. There is spectrums of trauma, of course. Right? So. And the thing is, it shows up in our relationships.

582
01:17:15.850 –> 01:17:21.480
Alyssa: We project our past wounds onto our relationship. So that that’s the best place to really

583
01:17:21.690 –> 01:17:39.890
Alyssa: look at. And I think that trauma has such like a bad, I think maybe it has a bad rep for some people that they don’t want to say that they’re like traumatized like, I don’t want to be a traumatized person. I haven’t gone through anything like that as if it’s a bad thing, but trauma can actually make you such a better person when you heal it and integrate those parts.

584
01:17:39.920 –> 01:17:48.060
Alyssa: When you actually do the inner work to integrate all parts of yourself, then you come back into wholeness, and you have wisdom to share.

585
01:17:48.240 –> 01:17:58.000
Alyssa: You have more strength, you have more resilience. We do want to go through trauma like stressful events can be traumatic, right? That’s actually how we build the resilient nervous system.

586
01:17:58.120 –> 01:18:03.929
Alyssa: I think it’s actually a good thing to go through trauma and heal from it, because it means that you’re stronger. You have more resilience.

587
01:18:04.520 –> 01:18:13.029
Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah. The key is to, of course, go through it and heal it rather than just bypass. I mean anyone who thinks they don’t have trauma. If you have been

588
01:18:13.050 –> 01:18:24.840
Nyk Danu Yoga: in the world in the last 4 years, we have collective trauma, I mean, can we just talk about this? You know this pandemic thing, this pandemic thing that like, and everyone had different

589
01:18:24.930 –> 01:18:36.950
Nyk Danu Yoga: traumas in relation to it. You know. Some people, of course, were super worried about family or themselves and other people were worried about their businesses, and I mean everybody collectively, over the last 4 years has gone through trauma.

590
01:18:37.040 –> 01:18:41.160
Nyk Danu Yoga: So and that’s why I still to this day

591
01:18:42.390 –> 01:18:48.740
Nyk Danu Yoga: I start all of my classes. I said that we I would tease this out a little bit, and you and I were talking about the so as before we hit record

592
01:18:49.102 –> 01:18:58.550
Nyk Danu Yoga: in a post called constructive rest, and for those of you who aren’t familiar that is lying on your back with your knees bent and your feet on the floor. Now I add some bells and whistles to this.

593
01:18:58.560 –> 01:19:13.529
Nyk Danu Yoga: I like to put support under somebody’s head, because what that does, especially under the back of their skull, is it very gently starts to stimulate that little bundle of nerves that is inside of your head, where your neck and your head meet, which are connected to our parasympathetic nervous system.

594
01:19:14.150 –> 01:19:19.979
Nyk Danu Yoga: So just that physical sensation and that gentle lengthening already starts to send a little signal to those nerves.

595
01:19:20.250 –> 01:19:31.339
Nyk Danu Yoga: And then, when you bend your knees, and you have your feet on the floor that puts a little pressure on your sacrum, that bony triangle above your bum, which also stimulates that little bundle of nerves that’s connected to our parasympathetic.

596
01:19:31.400 –> 01:19:37.610
Nyk Danu Yoga: So we’re already kind of starting. And then the so as which is a large and very important muscle

597
01:19:37.640 –> 01:19:52.790
Nyk Danu Yoga: for movement, for spine health. But it’s also one of the first muscles that kicks in. And when we’re in a sympathetic system, right when we’re because it has to. If you’re getting ready to run, or kick or curl up in a ball to protect yourself, the so as is going to be one of the first things that kicks on.

598
01:19:53.260 –> 01:19:57.540
Nyk Danu Yoga: But culturally, our. So as muscles are way overworked.

599
01:19:57.590 –> 01:20:16.170
Nyk Danu Yoga: they’re chronically tight and weak at the same time, and they’re always turned on. And so when you’re in constructive rest, just because you have your feet on the floor, on your knees bent, you’re letting yourself as hammock and kind of release and soften, and that can already have a huge effect on on the the nervous system.

600
01:20:16.639 –> 01:20:21.830
Nyk Danu Yoga: So that’s why I start all of my classes with that body position.

601
01:20:22.540 –> 01:20:35.090
Nyk Danu Yoga: so that just even if somebody’s mind is like, do do doing its thing. At least I’m I’m getting into the body and giving the body the signal, like through that stimulation of the nerve, and then releasing so as that like

602
01:20:35.140 –> 01:20:43.059
Nyk Danu Yoga: it, you can switch. You can start to switch gears here, you know and then that I found it so helpful.

603
01:20:44.290 –> 01:20:52.890
Nyk Danu Yoga: and it’s it’s very much kind of a yoga therapy thing. I think most yoga teachers don’t really know about that shape and don’t offer it that often. But when you become a Yoga therapist it’s like

604
01:20:52.960 –> 01:21:03.630
Nyk Danu Yoga: everything is all about constructive rest. Everybody’s just like using it. And what I have found when I train teachers in Yen is that, you know, because I start all my practices that way with them.

605
01:21:03.700 –> 01:21:15.249
Nyk Danu Yoga: and when they do their homework, which is like making sequences for me to look over and mark they almost all universally end up, starting all of their classes now with constructive rest. So I always think it’s like.

606
01:21:16.020 –> 01:21:21.160
Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, finding a gentle, passive way to let your so as release, which is different than stretching it.

607
01:21:22.117 –> 01:21:24.300
Nyk Danu Yoga: Is so invaluable.

608
01:21:25.640 –> 01:21:26.140
Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah.

609
01:21:26.140 –> 01:21:26.700
Alyssa: 5.

610
01:21:26.990 –> 01:21:31.269
Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah, cause you would, you would hinted a little bit to the so as is there anything you want to say about our.

611
01:21:31.270 –> 01:21:45.349
Alyssa: Yeah, well, I wanted you to explain it just because I’m definitely not a professional. But that is one of the benefits and the reasons that I actually wanted to go, do you in Yoga was because I heard that that the so as muscle is known as like that fighter, flight, muscle.

612
01:21:46.100 –> 01:22:04.429
Alyssa: So, yeah, that was such a beautiful explanation of it. And like we were saying earlier, like, when we have awareness and understanding of it, then it makes you want to do it more and, like, actually like, do the work to see the results when you have an awareness of the benefits to it, and why you’re doing it.

613
01:22:04.800 –> 01:22:07.364
Nyk Danu Yoga: And I’ll often say to my students, you know,

614
01:22:08.200 –> 01:22:11.599
Nyk Danu Yoga: if if you do, no yoga at home

615
01:22:11.790 –> 01:22:14.270
Nyk Danu Yoga: accept constructive rest

616
01:22:14.860 –> 01:22:17.979
Nyk Danu Yoga: like if you just took a few times at night.

617
01:22:18.595 –> 01:22:28.710
Nyk Danu Yoga: Every night when you came home, maybe, especially when you’re kind of shifting gears from like the busyness of the day, and, you know, like, do a few things, maybe wiggle around, shake a little bit, and then just do some constructive rest

618
01:22:28.820 –> 01:22:32.500
Nyk Danu Yoga: for a little while, and what a difference that makes!

619
01:22:34.900 –> 01:22:39.689
Nyk Danu Yoga: I find. Because I think sometimes people think a Yoga practice has to be stretching.

620
01:22:40.320 –> 01:22:43.789
Nyk Danu Yoga: that they forget about the nervous system part which to me.

621
01:22:43.810 –> 01:22:49.900
Nyk Danu Yoga: I often say, you know, if a student comes to my class and they don’t get any more flexible.

622
01:22:50.160 –> 01:22:56.650
Nyk Danu Yoga: but they got a chance to switch gears into their parasympathetic. Then that was a successful class, that’s all I care about.

623
01:22:56.650 –> 01:22:57.480
Alyssa: Absolutely.

624
01:22:57.480 –> 01:23:04.379
Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah. And if they get other little bonuses along the way, great. But like my priority is, did you feel like you could rest here.

625
01:23:05.400 –> 01:23:06.190
Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah.

626
01:23:06.300 –> 01:23:07.100
Nyk Danu Yoga: yeah.

627
01:23:08.090 –> 01:23:14.610
Nyk Danu Yoga: Well, I have a few. I think we’ll start to slowly bring this to a close, and I have a few icebreaker questions

628
01:23:14.690 –> 01:23:18.260
Nyk Danu Yoga: kind of like some of them are fun. Some of them are more soulful.

629
01:23:18.570 –> 01:23:19.870
Nyk Danu Yoga: If you’re game.

630
01:23:20.010 –> 01:23:21.120
Alyssa: Yeah, I’m game.

631
01:23:21.120 –> 01:23:23.220
Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay? Coffee or tea.

632
01:23:24.010 –> 01:23:25.217
Alyssa: I love coffee.

633
01:23:27.146 –> 01:23:29.170
Nyk Danu Yoga: Favorite ice cream, flavor.

634
01:23:29.680 –> 01:23:30.690
Alyssa: Oh.

635
01:23:30.800 –> 01:23:33.700
Alyssa: I also love ice cream.

636
01:23:34.980 –> 01:23:40.709
Alyssa: but I would say, like, I really love like the chocolate vanilla swirl like the soft ice cream is my favorite.

637
01:23:40.710 –> 01:23:41.490
Nyk Danu Yoga: Nice

638
01:23:42.346 –> 01:23:44.489
Nyk Danu Yoga: do you have a pop culture vice

639
01:23:44.670 –> 01:23:52.240
Nyk Danu Yoga: like something that you’re like? Oh, might surprise you actually that I binge watch this show, or I can’t get enough of whatever this thing is.

640
01:23:52.240 –> 01:23:53.670
Alyssa: Alien documentaries.

641
01:23:54.316 –> 01:23:56.253
Nyk Danu Yoga: Hi! Awesome, awesome.

642
01:23:57.840 –> 01:23:58.730
Nyk Danu Yoga: Oh.

643
01:23:58.800 –> 01:24:03.420
Nyk Danu Yoga: I haven’t watched that many, but I had a partner who had a alien documentary phase and

644
01:24:04.100 –> 01:24:15.159
Nyk Danu Yoga: still an ongoing, and anyone who has not seen them will not know will not get the joke, and if you can’t see me you won’t see what I’m doing with your hands. But you know, it’s an ongoing joke now where we’re like, well, we’re not saying it’s aliens, but

645
01:24:15.330 –> 01:24:17.730
Nyk Danu Yoga: aliens, yeah,

646
01:24:20.290 –> 01:24:22.100
Nyk Danu Yoga: when I’m not.

647
01:24:22.870 –> 01:24:29.780
Nyk Danu Yoga: it’s normally when I’m not practicing yoga. But I’m going to just open that up a little bit when you’re not doing the work that you do in the world. What are you doing.

648
01:24:31.010 –> 01:24:41.579
Alyssa: Oh, gosh! It’s such like a huge part of my life, which is, I mean, with my daughter. That’s pretty much it. I’m working cause. This is my passion, like I never even feel like it’s work, and I’m with my daughter. So.

649
01:24:41.580 –> 01:24:45.319
Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah, that the. That’s why that question’s in there. Because I find that

650
01:24:45.550 –> 01:24:50.389
Nyk Danu Yoga: most yoga professionals, too. Same thing. They’re so passionate about what they do that it’s like.

651
01:24:50.740 –> 01:24:59.430
Nyk Danu Yoga: Wait, there’s times I’m not doing yoga, because, like I find, even when I’m not doing yoga, I’ll go for a walk, and I’m listening to a Yoga podcast. Or I mean, it’s like, it’s constant. Yeah.

652
01:24:59.460 –> 01:25:00.250
Alyssa: Add.

653
01:25:00.470 –> 01:25:04.179
Nyk Danu Yoga: One weird fact about you other than aliens.

654
01:25:04.180 –> 01:25:06.580
Alyssa: Oh, weird fact!

655
01:25:08.070 –> 01:25:12.549
Alyssa: I ha! Other than my alien documentaries. Actually, I don’t watch any TV

656
01:25:12.630 –> 01:25:15.229
Alyssa: like alien documentaries. Was it.

657
01:25:15.230 –> 01:25:15.660
Nyk Danu Yoga: Oh, wow!

658
01:25:15.660 –> 01:25:20.059
Alyssa: And I actually went through a period of not watching TV for 5 years.

659
01:25:20.280 –> 01:25:20.950
Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah.

660
01:25:21.280 –> 01:25:21.930
Alyssa: Yeah.

661
01:25:21.930 –> 01:25:23.070
Nyk Danu Yoga: I am

662
01:25:23.370 –> 01:25:24.970
Nyk Danu Yoga: cut off cable.

663
01:25:25.570 –> 01:25:27.599
Nyk Danu Yoga: I don’t even know how many years ago.

664
01:25:27.970 –> 01:25:48.389
Nyk Danu Yoga: because I realized that I was watching like cause. I really like the true crimey stuff, and like cop shows. And you know and I realized, you know that was all fine when there was. Some of you will be too young to remember this, but when there was one law and order and one Csi. But what I realized is that I was watching, like 3 different law orders. 3 different. Csi’s criminal like I was just like

665
01:25:48.410 –> 01:26:01.840
Nyk Danu Yoga: all of my evenings, were spent with murder, rape, and mayhem. And I was like, I don’t think that this is healthy, but I knew that I wouldn’t have the discipline to not watch the shows if I had them coming in, so I just cut our cable.

666
01:26:02.187 –> 01:26:22.490
Nyk Danu Yoga: And this was before Netflix was the thing. And so in order to watch movies, I had to actually like use Dvds, and you know. Go to the library and take out things or go to, you know, back when Blockbuster was around. If any of you are old enough to remember that. You know. And so I had to be very intentional. And I had to go out and like, choose my things. Yeah.

667
01:26:22.530 –> 01:26:27.850
Nyk Danu Yoga: so I can relate. Yeah, for years. I still don’t have a television. We just watch things on my computer, if at all.

668
01:26:28.100 –> 01:26:29.330
Alyssa: Yeah. Totally.

669
01:26:30.172 –> 01:26:32.410
Nyk Danu Yoga: What the world needs now is.

670
01:26:33.630 –> 01:26:36.910
Alyssa: At trauma healing time.

671
01:26:37.666 –> 01:26:38.423
Nyk Danu Yoga: Yes,

672
01:26:40.010 –> 01:26:42.970
Nyk Danu Yoga: One thing I wish people knew.

673
01:26:44.280 –> 01:26:49.289
Nyk Danu Yoga: I normally say about Yen Yoga. But I’m going to say about their nervous system for you.

674
01:26:49.610 –> 01:27:01.329
Alyssa: That our nervous system is flexible, pliable, and malleable, and it’s a beautiful self protective system that is just trying to keep you safe, and you can work with it, heal it and show it that it’s safe.

675
01:27:01.530 –> 01:27:02.320
Nyk Danu Yoga: Nice.

676
01:27:02.850 –> 01:27:06.950
Alyssa: Also nervous system. Regulation doesn’t mean being calm all the time. That’s another important one.

677
01:27:06.950 –> 01:27:09.989
Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah. Because then how would we ever get away from that tiger.

678
01:27:09.990 –> 01:27:10.890
Alyssa: Totally. Yeah.

679
01:27:11.540 –> 01:27:11.900
Alyssa: Yeah.

680
01:27:11.900 –> 01:27:16.960
Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah. Is there anything else that I forgot to ask you that you would like to add.

681
01:27:17.890 –> 01:27:24.980
Alyssa: I think we covered everything we covered parts work, attachment theory, poly, vagal theory. Yoga, yeah, we covered a lot.

682
01:27:24.980 –> 01:27:32.960
Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah, I have a feeling. This is going to be one that teachers will have to re-listen to or sit down with a notepad which is good, which is good.

683
01:27:32.960 –> 01:27:33.510
Alyssa: Yeah.

684
01:27:33.818 –> 01:27:41.219
Nyk Danu Yoga: I’ve always want. I wanted when I created this podcast. Intentionally for it to be educational. So yeah, it’s really important to me?

685
01:27:41.878 –> 01:27:49.929
Nyk Danu Yoga: Of course I’m going to put links to all your stuff. In the show notes. But where can people find you online if they want to work with you?

686
01:27:50.440 –> 01:27:54.259
Alyssa: Best place is Instagram at Be Alyssa, Stephenson.

687
01:27:54.260 –> 01:27:58.739
Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, so find you there. Follow you there, Dmu, etc. Okay.

688
01:27:58.740 –> 01:27:59.710
Alyssa: Absolutely.

689
01:28:00.240 –> 01:28:03.759
Nyk Danu Yoga: Awesome. Well, we’ll see our proper goodbye once I hit stop

690
01:28:03.900 –> 01:28:06.960
Nyk Danu Yoga: but for those of you listening bye, for now.