EP#5- Empowering Youth through Yoga with Lara Benusis, Founder of Namasteens and Doctoral Student at Columbia University

(gentle music) - Hi everyone, happy Thursday and welcome back to Everyday Endorphins. I'm really excited to air this episode. Laura and I met back in 2009, so I was about nine or 10 years old then. She's been one of my mentors, honestly, throughout the past 11, 12 years, which has been incredible. I met her through a yoga program she designed for young children in early adolescence called Namasteans. She really was the first person who helped me realize my passion for yoga and got me really interested in the practice. Growing up, I didn't really know all the incredible work that Laura has done in the yoga community and in the academic community because I just, I was too young to really understand. So it's been so wonderful to reconnect with her now and to learn more about all the amazing research she's done about yoga with cancer patients, the effects of yoga on the body and the mind. And I just really enjoyed having more of a philosophical conversation on the practice of yoga. I think a lot of people often conflate yoga with either complete relaxation and lack of movement or with physical activity. And I just want to convey that there's so much more to yoga than just it being an exercise. As you'll hear Laura describe, yoga has tremendous benefits when you are exposed to the practice at the beginning or during your childhood development, your early adolescent late childhood years. So I don't want to give too much away, but you'll hear later in the episode all the wonderful things Laura has to share. Before we get into the recording, I do want to shout out anchor. (gentle music) And I also want to give a shout out to strive coffee. If you use the code in Dorfins, you will receive 10% off of your order and what better way to start your morning than with a cup of coffee brewed from single origin roasters. Way to be sustainable and ethical. And get your daily dose of endorphins. All right, without further ado, enjoy the episode. - Hi Laura, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast today. It's really wonderful to have you on as a guest and reconnect here after knowing you for so many years from the beginning of my journey practicing yoga. - It's such a pleasure to be here, Stella. Thank you so much for having me. And you've done so much incredible research in the yoga community. And you honestly kind of inspired me to start practicing yoga when I first met you. So I really do a lot of my interest and passion for yoga and well-being to you. - Oh, that's so good of you to say that. Really a pleasure that you're wanting to connect again because we met, I think it was in 2009. I'm thinking you were around nine years old when we first met. - Yeah, I was in and I had done yoga just with my mom. We'd go to the the Puyrioga studio in New York and she would kind of drag me along and I would sit and wait for her during her class. And then eventually she'd bring me into the studio and we practiced together. And that's where I met you doing your class with my mom. - That's great. And then we started the program at Puyrioga called Mama's Teens which was this unusual program really for us a city at the time because there was a budding interest in like children's yoga and yoga in schools that I had actually done a part of some of those initiatives, you know, dating back to 2000, 2001. But at Puyrioga we identified the sort of gap of offering where no one had been really offering yoga to pre-teens or to teenagers. And so I wanted to design a program and then implement it and see where it went and see who came. And you said he's there I think from 2009 to 2012, but that's correct. - Yeah, and I loved the Namasteen's program. It was really fun to have a class dedicated to practicing yoga with people my age rather than being in a fully adult class as a ten-year-old. So I really did love having that space to practice. And I remember like how relaxing the class was and it felt also very educational. I remember you once told us in class when we were doing the Eagle Pose where like your hands are bound in front of you and usually your hands are blocking your line of sight, you would say something to the, you'd basically said like don't let your hands in front of your eyes block you from seeing what's right in front of you, like you can just see right past it. And as a kid I didn't think a lot about it, but it's something that really resonated with me and stayed with me to this day because it's such like a beautiful metaphor for how to overcome obstacles in life. Yeah, a lot of these metaphors that we can take from the activities that are in yoga, but also in other types of activities that are similar can give us a lot of meaning and context of how to approach maybe even more challenging obstacles outside of that particular endeavor, like being able to balance on one leg and compress your body. I always looked at yoga especially when working with children and with teens, I'm seeing yoga as a game that you create your own challenges in order to then exercise these strengths and to elicit them from the activity if that makes sense. So just to give you a little bit of a background of like how non-appearance evolves. So I thought certified when I was a teenager. I was 19 when I was certified in that time. I was listed as the youngest certified yoga teacher in the database for yoga. It was pre-yoga alliance, but it was like in the databases. And I had learned yoga for my mother early in life and she had a lot of types of materials that she was practicing yoga from, like books and like the Richard Hittleman 21 or 28 day yoga program and then Lillia, who was on PBS. But it was just kind of like in the, you know, it was like it was a very marginal, like almost mystical practice that people, like some people were participating in and you'd like see flyers at the health food stores and all that. And I had a meditation teacher that I was introduced to the age of 12, that I then had a 20 year relationship to because it was a fascinating practice. And, you know, I would read books on Gandhi and things like that. I was just interested in like, I don't know, some of these philosophies. And then in college I studied a little bit of Asian thought under the professor, Susan Ironbiter. And one of my childhood friends, her father is Carl Ernst, who's like a very famous professor of the Sufi religion. So I had kind of like this influence. And I think a lot of people had influences of lots of different things, it's just like what you're drawn to. So I practiced the Richard Hiddelman routines in my parents' basement when I was a teenager. And I used to sit to supplement. I had the competitive ice skater and you know, trained as a dancer, very similar to you. And I used the yoga sort of as a way of grounding myself. And I think I was also interested in like, the exotic side of it. I thought of like these yogis being superheroes that could be buried alive and stop their heart rates or something like that, you know, like the yoga floor that you hear about. And then I passed forward, you know, I was a professional dancer and I also supplemented my dance career with being an educator. And I worked in the public school system as an English teacher, but I was hired to integrate movement into the curriculum because they were cutting the funding for physical activity and for art. And so they thought, well, maybe we could have, you know, the English teacher combined reading, learning, physical activity and the arts, all at once. You know, and it was a program that I felt like wasn't supported enough, but I, you know, I took a good go at it. And so I did that from 1999 to 2004, middle school, physics, and sixth grades for the board of ed in New York City. And from that experience, I was talking to a friend of mine who's also an educator and she was, you know, like basically venting of like where I felt like the program wasn't succeeding and what I wanted to do with it. And she said, well, why don't you come to Children's Aid Society? I have a great employer there, boss that's really supportive of kind of innovative programs. And so I met with that person. And immediately we, we, we, we, we, we were the kinship and she then supported me in, in developing programs there. And that was incredible. The Children's Aid Society. The society is a long, it's a longstanding program in New York City. It's based-- you know, you can look up at the history, but it has a very interesting history of dating back from 1800s and what types of programs they do. And so I started the first yoga program there. And I worked with the toddlers in early movement activities. I then developed a mommy and knee class, an after school program, an early childhood program of using yoga. And I wrote a curriculum. And the director of the Children's Aid Society at that time was a developmental psychologist. And so on Friday afternoon, I would kind of go over some of my ideas with him. And he was so supportive and really mentored me in what kind of research to use in developing my curriculum. And it had to think about the goals of the program, which is early socialization. So that my main goal of these yoga programs in all these different age brackets wasn't primarily movement or yoga. It was socialization. And that gave it such a richness so that in my teaching of, you know, anomalous teens and, you know, during 2009 because this program was back in, you know, the early 2001 all the way up to-- I can't even remember how long I was at Children's Aid Society, but it gave like five, seven years-- that then my goal at anomalous teens was really about being consistent and being an important relationship to three teens and teens. And I also had read a lot of psychology because of the mentoring I received. And I then began to think about, like, you know, the stages of brain learning and cognitive development, social development, as well as, like, physiological motor development. And what is important at each stage? And so the name, "nomest teens," "nomah" comes from the way that I reference it is. It means in this moment to name, to honor, to recognize that this moment exists. And then the themes comes from, you know, "nomest day." And then it's kind of like a play of like, "nomest" teens, being like the teens, being the upper most age that we will then end the program. And so it's honoring that each moment, each stage of a child's development is unique. And it's unlike, you know, if you're different when you're 11 years old, versus when you're nine years old, you're different. That's 10 years old, and you're at nine. So to be able to have a curriculum and material that has both a floor and a ceiling of both being familiar material and then also of being really challenging material for that age, that where you're not overshooting their abilities, is that that child can develop self-efficacy, feel a sense of command over their mind body. And also their intellect, their spirit. The 13 years is when we're starting to branch away from comparing ourselves to just our peers, but beginning to look at the world around us and how we want to exist in the world. So coaches of the same gender to students is known to be very an important relationship at those ages. And I had that growing up. And so we know this in like the research literature that at a certain point, the parents are still, of course, influential, but they're influential in different ways, where then teachers and coaches and other adults outside of the family unit become more influential. And so I found my role to teenagers to preteen as being really sacred and important to facilitate and guide and to influence and to inform students of how to restore information and activities and to be a guide for those individuals as they begin to learn about themselves and the world. - Yeah, yeah, that's, I love how there's so much psychology that's applied to the science of how you created the curriculum and really the goals of the program. As you mentioned, more really like a socialization process rather than just a yoga class for kids aged seven to 11, 12, 13. And I'm curious to learn more about what types of materials you included in the curriculum to really shape these students' experiences and see yoga as a different type of practice rather than an exercise, but more so a place that can really cultivate self development. - You know, when I was, when I had met you, you were a very consistent and really good student. And just like really absorbed a lot of the lessons. Like we were, I felt like there was a lot of alignment to what I was teaching and what you were wanting to take from the experience. At the time that I met you, I was actually developing a manual that I then had translated and I taught in Japan and I taught, I think over like 53 training in Japan from 2009 until 2019 on how to work with children. And I, you know, so I wrote a writing and developing the content right at the time that I was, that we were working together because it was helping me understand what resonated. You know, you actually helped me just as much as, you know, as maybe I gave you. And so I think a lot about, I'm heavily informed by theory and theory isn't actuality. It's just organized ways of understanding and describing what is observed, you know. So, Maslow's hierarchy of needs informed my work where you think about like the bottom layer of the pyramid of being like physiological safety. And then, you know, all the way up to like the self-actualization. You know, and you probably know his work where, you know, he was an anomaly in psychology because he started to study high achievers versus the abnormal pathologies. So he was like, wait a second, why are we studying, you know, what's going wrong? Why don't we study what's going right? And in healthcare, there's this new movement or it's not new, but it's a popular movement that's really taking hold in terms of looking at health and wellness and prevention, that's how you genesis. Like what about strengthening what is working in the person's system, you know, in the body, in their life, in, you know, and I've been thinking about this especially and thinking about like pathologies, like with autism or Down syndrome, like how we, we describe them as, you know, something that's wrong, but what about observing what's actually functioning for that child? And so going back into what's informed, man, kind of long-winded here, but Mariam Montessori, I read a lot of her material. And she had similar observations of, you know, her background was that she was on her way to, you know, doing a medical degree. And then she got sort of hired for this summer program where she's in T.C. orphan kids. And she then developed these theoretical models of the training and gulation of the teacher to the environment for the students learning. And it was very successful. You know, she observed that it was important for the child to develop the ability to interact with their environment because it's not this world that they will exist in. It is their future world that they will exist in. And how important it is that they have the ability to interact with the environment independent of the teacher eventually. And that makes me think so much about like what these children in the future are going to be faced with post-tendemic. How the world will look so different than the world we had that both you and I had, I think, will be more similar to them than their world. And thinking about the different skills that they would need. So when I look at what is of the yoga curriculum, what is taught in yoga of all these different, we think of yoga as just the often as in the physical practice but thinking about the self-regulation practices, the breathing, the philosophy, the metaphors, the magical thinking in a way of seeing what we don't understand about the world, what we don't see of the world that we might not comprehend. And also of the mutability or where we have opportunity to create change. And this week I've been reading more about the foundational work of homeostasis and how the origins of homeostasis of thinking about the constant environment and then how important it is to have stimulus in order to be healthy. So those of us that are sitting on our couch all the time, We understand firsthand how miserable that makes us versus when we go for walks where we go for a run Or we do something that's above our normal state of being because we need that at adaptation Yes, and how yoga it makes me think you know in terms of like is yoga a natural state? I don't think so Yoga is is an intervention from our normal like you know Humbrom state of being and even there's like some terms in the yoga literature that talk about like Pashu or the The cow brain of like you know like chewing grass and just existing like you know You know at a very simple level at versus what could be more evolved in terms of existence Yeah, and it takes it takes activity. It takes coming out of our inertia Yeah, and I think something that just reminded me is you know when you're practicing I think a lot of people associate yoga with being very calm and very slow which a lot of practices definitely can be but It requires so much focus and a heightened attention state to really being present in that moment and focusing on Exactly what you're doing breathing into certain spaces in your body to create more space or noticing How the energy changes and that requires a lot of attention and focus not just kind of existing in the practice and relaxing. It's very There's a lot of energy even in instillness Absolutely, I mean what you're describing also is like we can see from the simple structure of the nervous system like the a parent E-parent like external stimulus internal Processing you know and then respond to you know that stimulus and and I so I went back to school Okay, so after I I finished the foundational work of the non-meeting program at period and then I got head-hunted to work on the team at Memorial Sun Kettering and there I was first hired to work with Children of childhood brain tumor survivors of childhood brain tumors. That was my first task there and then I was hired to teach just like a one hour a week, you know Fill a position but that position because of my then curiosity and and relationship with the director It grew into a full time the first first and only full-time position that they've ever had of a yoga teacher Then I had a staff of 9 to 12 Depending on the time Practitioners under me so I designed at that time that I was there the largest yoga program in any Western hospital That's and bubble yeah, yeah, bubble Right, so we then you know looked at where can yoga fit within the hospital environment Well, hurricane Sandy hit and it was like there are nurses and doctors who've been sleeping at the hospital for stress Who have secondary trauma to the patient? You know, so we need to offer programs that can help them and support them We have nurses that you know are being given donuts from their patients Families and they're like, you know, they're like well, thank you, but I'm actually like so you know I don't have any I'm so exhausted because of my 12-hour shift. I don't have any time to exercise You know how can you know how can we create a program for them that fits with their schedule where you know Maybe it's in their lunch break and anyway, we looked at the whole hospital Mill you and we began to inject all of these different programs that they then support The care team but the patients the patients as well as their parents You know the parents who are sleeping on the pediatric oncology floor How could we support them because it you know when you when you treat the parent you're treating the child and I then got to be part of a couple of research studies Including one that was focusing on mechanism and so I wanted to then dive deeper into that and I needed to go to a formal program Because there was no way I was going to be able to teach that to myself so I then applied for the The bio-behavioral department at Columbia University has this great Section has applied physiology but also of motor learning and motor development which kind of crosses over into OT research and I then and health ed and I so I I've been in that program And working towards finishing hopefully doctoring out very soon, but I had a baby So I'm on maternity leave this semester, but I decided to study a lot of the ways that I could explain what's happening From what I observed, you know, you talked about like populations that yoga could be useful for I was looking at like Well, how could you know how could we apply yoga to children but also then to teens and then how it's different than adults like you were describing how How you know you took classes with your mom, but it wasn't the same and how could an approach that was specific to you both in skill level but also an interest then Be enriching and be something that was like really handcrafted for your stage of development of who you were at nine years old versus who you are at 14 versus now like you know going to like an adult class at age 18 and really challenging your body and maybe not getting so much as a philosophy is really what You know really hits you or maybe then you know at now age 21 Where it's about you know how to apply these lessons into like who you want to be in the world and how you want to actualize yourself and I really do love How your research focuses on understanding how yoga can be applied to different age groups or different niches like how can you change your approach so that the child or the adolescent or the now adult is gaining something different out of the practice. I remember Back when we saw each other maybe this was like 2012 or 2013 while ago we were talking about Some like epiphanies you would come to at age 18. I believe it was you you would made a comment about the way you saw the world At 18 and remember remembering very distinctly that you could remember How you perceived the world to be like at 16 but how it had drastically shifted once you had hit 18 but you were caught kind of between Seeing the world as a 16 year old and also an 18 year old and it's kind of hard to articulate But I remember that so clearly as I'm growing older now I'm 21 I Oftentimes I'm trying to understand How my development has changed from when I was 18 to where I am now and Trying to understand the nuances of how I see things a bit differently now versus How some things have kind of stayed the same and I do think a lot of it has come from having a dedicated yoga practice because it's kind of like this invisible therapeutic Space to reflect without even realizing you're engaging in some sort of deep critical reflection Yeah, you're deciding also it's like known experience and one of the Text talks about like having an imprint pressed into you like Where it's it's a it's something that you've been able to it's like it's made an impression Like the difference between like having had like this a peach and having tasted it and knowing what that's like Versus maybe like some exotic dragon fruit or something. I don't know So what's something that you've never used in New York? You tried everything but You know something like you've never tried and you have no idea even what it's like You know But you know like to be in the Shetland Islands in the north of England in the middle of winter like you know Would you really know what that's like you can you can associate from previous experiences that experience but you know It's until you really experience like what it's like to be 18 or what it's like to be 40 year what it's like to be a grandmother, you know, it's like You know tell you really experience There's going to be like the known experience of it and then there's like what you can have is like the imagined Um in question and teaching children has you know Is you know you have this advantage of knowing what a you know what what it's like to be 14 But you don't always like to be that 14 year old to have that story to have you know those parents to have you know That those challenges in your school or you know in your social circles or whatever that challenges you and I was lucky and that I was introduced to yoga at the age of three. I remember it. Um, I remember doing lotus with my mom Um in terms of the tbx show and I remember Who guiding me through relaxation Um, I don't know the fall asleep at age five because I had a hard time calling so I was really hyper kid And I remember like I'm you know, I remember I guess I started studying Estanga around age 21 because the structure of Estanga gave me structure because there wasn't any structure upon graduation For me because I went into like a very you know, I went into being a dancer as a post-illite having a corporate job And I needed something that gave me a sense of um Yeah, malice and And I think that a lot of people probably are looking for those things right now in the middle of the pandemic because We are in such an unpredictable time and that lack of knowing what's ahead is something we always existed in But now we we are really faced with the reality of that um where there's the unknown economy world um You know governance um, you know food supplies. I mean, there's so much unknown but that's always been the case in all of history. We've just had more stable time in human history and right now those of us that have lived with us long are chasing for the first time a very unstable time. But we hear about it from our ancestors, from our grandparents, of like previous times that they've lived through, but we don't have that experience. So for us it's really jolting. So we look for things that could be stabilizing. And the yoga practice can give us that, like how to live in the moment, how to be present. And so with working with children, I wanted to make sure that because a lot of their approaches at that time for teaching yoga to children was taking adult yoga and making it kids-sized, like making fun names out of it. Or I was really-- I had a dissonance with the way that yoga was being approached because I was a kid experiencing yoga. And so I took the approach of like, that we need to instead see the opposite. Children need, you know, physical activity before they need to do this. That's how they'll self-regulate. The adult, the more adult we become, like, you know, technically sociologically, you pass that term at age 25. So you're not quite there yet where you reach like a certain sociological, biological shift that will begin to happen. But, you know, after that age of 25, then you begin to need more stillness. And tell that point, my personal philosophy from the literature that I've written is that we need more stimulus for them self-regulation. So children need, you know, even in the government guidelines across all countries that have guidelines for physical activity is to be more active when you're younger, for longer durations and for higher vortexes of intensity. Because the system needs that stimulus. Would you say that's for purely like physiological needs, like needing that physical activity for yes, often fitness or does that also kind of provide an after effect of, you know, providing stillness in the mind through being exposed to various stimuli and being very physically active? - Yeah, I don't know if I'll be able to answer that. But yes, the first part, yes, absolutely. The physiological adaptations that happen from physical activity. And we know this from like the prediction and longitudinal research of looking at children who are less active when they're younger and the physiological burden that they have, like they're more likely to have diabetes and heart disease and be sedentary throughout their adult life. Like we know that children who were not exposed to sports are less likely to like sports as an adult. It does get harder to motivate yourself to move the older you get. And some of that, because, you know, your body, you know, at the age of like 18, 19, you know, you really see on these graphs of ability in terms of like, you know, like when we look at disabilities and ability and, and, you know, even like in terms of your recovery, you probably are starting to notice like certain, you know, health behaviors that are slowing down a little bit, because they do start to slow down when you're on 20, 21. Where if you have too much sugar than I before, maybe before you didn't feel it because your system would process it very quickly but in so in four hours. But now it's a little bit slower that you might feel it 10 hours later when you're still getting like a headache or a deficit. - Yeah, that's a good question. - Yeah, I think I've been way more tuned now to how my diet will affect. My energy levels or my mood, there's a much greater effect now than let's say if I was 15 or nine years old. And then that also kind of ties into the idea of, you know, what you put into your body, your body is your home. It's your food fuels you to accomplish so many tasks to have the energy to move and be physically active and to have the energy to think critically too. I often get really hungry when I'm just doing homework because my brain is extending so much energy. So yeah, I think there's like this hyper awareness now or hyper sensitivity as I'm getting older to the choices that I make for my body, how it affects really everything. - Yeah, and for us to be able to make the best choices of what we have available to us, you know, we're very fortunate to be able to have good nutrition and to not live in food deserts and to have adequate water supply and also be able to care about that versus just survive. That's what, you know, when we look at my loss pyramid of needs, you know, like that being the foundation, but also then to be able to move our body freely. So there's always programs that have emerged at the time, you know, that I started non-mustings that we met. You know, people teaching yoga and apropos and other places like where there would be very limited needs that were fulfilled. And, you know, I met with some of the people who were doing those kinds of programs, especially because I was an ambassador at Little Lemon and those kinds of people were part of that ambassador program. We all got to kind of get together and talk to each other on occasion. And it was very interesting to hear about some of their goals in offering those programs when you have hardly, like, don't they just want basic needs, but then to give someone a tool to be able to have self-efficacy to be able to make a positive change, to not feel so limited, that there's no real equipment really needed, no outfit really needed for yoga. I mean, you know, as much as it's nice to have something that you can be comfortably in, that you really don't need very much where there can be just such the simplicity of the ingredients or you time a 10 really one of the largest side effects that we get from yoga as a waste of our time. Yeah, and I do love Little Lemon. I love all of yoga. I love all the fitness brands, but I do think there's this gap in the wellness industry with how they portray yoga, especially the ads you see of certain types of models and yoga clothing and the poses and the postures that they're doing. I think it gives off an image that yoga is not for all types of people. And it also, I think people are viewing yoga as something that it really isn't. Yes, it can be a nice way to de-stress after a long day or it can be really great to strengthen your body and also providing space and lengthening your muscles. But there's this whole other side of yoga that really has to do with the philosophy and it's more of this introspection, more maybe like a spirituality side of yoga, that I don't think is really portrayed from all these different companies in the wellness industry. And that's so unfortunate because yoga is so deeply personal. It's not about the next flashy pair of leggings that you're going to wear to a class or the kind of mat that you have. Like you said, you really don't-- you just need yourself. You just need yourself and to be present in that moment. Well said, when we think about the noise that we have around what is presented and the commercial messaging, I think that's great that that's out there because it communicates that's unbelievable to me starting to teach back in the late '90s. I do the things that yoga would even be as big as it is. I can't believe it's on Billboard commercial because it was so French for so long. So I celebrate that it's out there. Yet I also understand what you're saying because I don't want someone to get on their mat and to think that they're not achieving or that yoga isn't valuable because it doesn't present in the way that it's marketed back to us. And then there's also the conflict that occur in terms of who owns yoga, where did yoga come from, what's the real yoga with traditional yoga. And I've been actually at the UN in some of these discussions. And so some of the political drivers that are wanting to reinstate and to reaffirm what that is. And I also, when you start to then talk to some of the scholars and as well, at the time that traditional yoga emerged, well, there was a lot of other factors that were coming into play that it was actually very heavily influenced by Western forces as well. These types of modalities existed and exist and continued to evolve depending on the context and the actors that use this type of resource. And so I'm really on my vision and my goals to contributing to the industry are to help to support the evolution and to have high inclusivity. And empowerment and engagement was lots of different types of individuals that when they are participating, that their yoga can be real yoga. And what that real yoga is is between them and the universe. It is not dictated by the silly little things that we have that are around us, the noise. And we forget that because we do exist at a time where the tools of our social media platforms than our instruments, you know, both help us take care of it. can access it also block us from the feeling of connection. It's very hard. It's a confusing time. And it even more so that we need these real authentic experiences of what it's like to be with our breath and to interpret and read some of the foundational literature. And I call it yoga color because I think that it's like somewhat-- that's just like in reading ancient scriptures. It's like we can use it to help inspire our current existence. And yet, both these current distances would trail. Yeah, definitely. And I think based off of everything that we've talked about, I feel like this is why it's even more critical or important that young children are able to start engaging in the practice. And I love how your programs were so specifically tailored to a certain age group and trying to understand how you would approach young kids into making yoga more fun and like a game and encouraging that physical activity. I know a lot in yoga, we talk about the mind-body connection and being very attuned to your body through your breath. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what a mind-body connection even means. It's hard to define it because it's very ambiguous. And I'm actually taking a class right now about the body, mind-connection. There's a lot of literature that describes how there's multiple sources of intelligence in your body. There's not just your head brain, but there's the heart brain and the gut brain. And the gut brain is like that foundational part of the pyramid. And then the heart brain is above and then finally, the head brain at the top. And so you can't really live to your full head brain potential or optimize it unless you have the gut brain and the heart brain in alignment. And I was wondering, is that my other theory for understanding the mind-body connection and how can you achieve that through the practice of yoga, especially as a kid? Right. I mean, I think for some formats, we take a back to-- you can read some of the historical literature about when the term mind-body connection actually evolves. And it does come out of a time period where there was a growth in reduction in six thinking, which is reductionism is being able to distill an isolate in order to prevent the spread. As someone now who's become like a student in the scientific method and looks at tools of measurement and evaluation as well as an application and reproducibility, the reductionistic mindset is super helpful. But we also have to then balloon out and understand that that's a philosophical point of view as a positionality and to think about the holistic nature of the body. So in thinking of systems biology, which is mind and body, right? Nervous system or central nervous system to systems. Then we also can take a step back and say, well, what if we don't use both definitions to be able to describe what we're observing? There is an interesting field of intercept of awareness or interceptive research in terms of claims like interceptive awareness and ability and it is looking at the coherent relationship between the self to the self. And specifically about the regulations of the bodily systems and that include cognition and emotional states and how they then influence the physiological system. So it's sometimes not just one and then the other. It's like this multiple moving machine where I went to school to study physiology because I wanted to understand the complexity of our bodies response to the stress and stimulus of movement and specifically what we would kind of coin and exercise. But then also wanting to know that I think that yoga is unique and that there is both the stimulus of activity, but then there is also the regulating effect. There's like the upper and lower regions of the brain beginning to then respond to this stimulus, like interpret the stimulus. And so when you do look at some of the research literature of advanced yoga versus novice yogis, that it's very confusing because you've caught someone who is able to regulate their response to the stress of the physical stimulus. And so the way that you can collect some of the data it shows very differently in terms of a beginner is going to have a higher exertion versus someone who's used to that stimulus. And you see that in a lead athlete's tooth so there's an out of state of effect. But I think there's something a little bit more complex going on. Maybe athlete's also would attest to having a very similar, almost like, real-ledged experience in high-level training. That I think that we can't count out. So anyway, when you're talking about the ecosystems of the body, mind, connection, I like to also unpack it a little bit more looking at the complexity of these self-writing complex systems. That there's both the positive and negative feedback loops that begin to occur to when your body does heat up from activity, from exercise. But then there is these regulating that they almost like over-counter act the response so that your body's always keeping this very stable state in order to maintain life. And so then we have those kinds of the origins of when those were described in 1800s and then early 1900s. But then we also have like Herbert Benson. It's still alive if the relaxation response and these forges of the polyvagal theory, which is super-popular right now in yoga, to talk about the perifinetic response and the vagus nerve. But I'm also thinking about it in terms of tissue adaptation, blood flow, regulations. There's a lot of things that I'm thinking about of how could we maximize the benefits of yoga and to understand and to continue to apply them and to design programs where they could be incredibly helpful to like in my area of research of looking at like oncology patients and cancer patients for sedentary patients. Then with some of my friends who are more focused on like neurological conditions of like Huntington's disease and Parkinson's disease, where there's some really exciting research to see even going into like the spiritual reality stimulus with patients in the ICU unit. There's how can we use all of these different tools that then could have an impact? Where we could say for a reality is very mind-body. Like it's visual that overrides the kinesthetic, that overrides the body, we experience. And I think it's an exciting time for us to begin to think about this and to source some of the ancient information. When people have more time to do longer practices of yoga, we can hopefully still capture from some of those libraries and get them translated and disseminated so that they could be useful to the next generation. Yeah. And when I think about like in my practice, oftentimes the instructor will right before we begin, maybe we'll be lying down or we'll be sitting in a cross-like position and we'll be asked to just notice our breath going through our body or areas of tension that exist in our body. And oftentimes like just moving through day to day, we're not thinking about how our body feels. You only realize your back is hurting when you stand up and you've been sitting on show where you're desk all day. And so I really love that moment at the beginning of class to just bring the focus inward and think about where in your body is their pain or discomfort or where does it feel really relaxed. And then as you go through the movements, you're constantly thinking about that as well, trying to be mindful about how the energy is flowing or where their space opening up. So I think that in my experience, like the mind, body connection is actively paying attention and being aware to the changes that are occurring throughout the flow from the beginning to during and then to write at the very end when you're in the final resting pose, Savashana. And it's just the most relaxing experience. And I think that that has been one instance for me at least where I've been able to kind of feel that mind, body connection. - And to put it in, 'cause you're a student of the neurosciences, you know, of how so much of our sensory experience is self-protective in order to survive as a, you know, as an independent entity in the world. And so that outward focus serves as a purpose that then when we do shift that attention say like more of this interceptive experience of like what are we feeling internally? Like are we thirsty? Are we in pain? Are we holding tension? Then to use our tension, our awareness, the fact that we can even be aware of these things is pretty remarkable because you think about how many species on the planet exist without this real sense of internal awareness and understanding. And as you were talking, reminding me also that Shakespeare quote, "know myself" and to know ourselves at each stage of our life and how our needs are different. Especially how you mentioned earlier, just the way that children perceive the world. And at the beginning, or for maybe let's say the first half of childhood, the parents largely influence the children's perception of them in the world. And then as they grow up, it's mentor figures in their life, teachers, coaches, there are types of mentors that exist to kind of shape the child's perspective. And I am so fascinated by how you've taken the practice of yoga and really tried to understand it and apply it in a very psychological lens and also from a neuroscientific perspective to childhood development because often when we think about yoga, we think about another exercise or an activity or an adult activity because most yoga classes are for adults. And a lot of people, I feel like don't even get interested in yoga until maybe college or after they graduate. And I just, I think the practice has so much to offer especially for those who are younger individuals. Well, I'm excited of what you'll do with it because, you know, now that you've had that first person experience of knowing what worked for you and you know, I only had so much to go on, you know, in terms of my background experience and education. But now, you know, it's up to the, you know, the next generation to really also maybe form at it in a way that works for the next generation. You know, science, one of the things I love about being in the scientific community is it's about adding to the conversation that of what previously existed, that was new on the front here. And in my own personal practice, I do like a little prayer, if you will, of honoring the teachers and the information and the knowledge that it gives us to be for me, you know, honoring myself for my courage and strength to be a caretaker of this information. But then also I make a prayer for the future and for the future generation that they may have and be gifted with this and use it to their best outcomes for the world and for their population for the generation that they will influence. Yeah, and I think just yoga is such a community oriented activity as well. When you're practicing with others, there's this really special feeling of being in a room full of people who are practicing together. Oftentimes at the end of the class, when you do like Namaste and the prayer, you're thinking yourself for coming up and showing up for yourself, but you're also thinking the others around you for practicing with you that that time. So it's, there's something really powerful about being with other people doing yoga and building a larger community around it. Yeah. And as we're wrapping up, it's been so wonderful to have you and I could talk about yoga for hours and you continuously blow my mind and blow me away with all the amazing research that you've done in the field and I'm confident that you will finish your your doctorate at Columbia. I know you're on maternity leave, but you will soon be on the way to getting your doctorate, which is really exciting and it's just it's kind of crazy for me to think that here we are today talking about this when I met you like 11 years ago, which is crazy. I know I'm looking at you and I'm just remembering, remembering our time together and it just certainly has a lot of meaning to me and yeah I really cherish this fellow. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. And one last question that I have before we end the episode today is and it's something I ask every single guest is what is something that brings you in Dorfins every day? So just general happiness. I can't list so many things like you know being able to hold my daughter and you know talking to someone and eat good food and drink water and go to bed at a good time. You know all those basic things that I think we all know what to do that we should be doing. But I'm going to add in one more thing that really is I think pertinent to this time in history and all those because we are lacking stimulus to make sure you're increasing positive stimulus that you're getting you know whether it's reading a really good book or article getting outside and feeling yourself a part of the world and of society and if it's just you know you're safely um physically distancing from others but just that you're a part of the world and to feel that tethering. So um or to feel the air on your skin I think we need that more than ever is that that feeling of not being isolated but as being included um and and I think to increase stimulus as well is what I'm craving um more and more into having the conversation you know gave me some of Dorfins. Thank you.