[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome today we have such a special guest, a long-term friend and colleague named Michelle Fury.

[SPEAKER_01]: Michelle is going to tell her own personal story of complex trauma and I do want to say that there should be a little bit of a trigger warning, not about her story, but just the topics that are mentioned here.

[SPEAKER_01]: and some of the areas that she's worked in with respect to complex trauma.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you have children in the car, this might be a time to listen at a different time in case certain words are mentioned.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the beauty of Michelle talking about her story is that you can feel the deep, compassionate heart that she has for the work that she does with children who have complex trauma.

[SPEAKER_01]: Michelle is a psychotherapist and a yoga therapist and through a series of events orchestrated by the universe, she became one of the first yoga therapists before there was such a thing as yoga therapy.

[SPEAKER_01]: She was working in Colorado Children's Hospital with Art Therapist and Music Therapist.

[SPEAKER_01]: And she was using yoga.

[SPEAKER_01]: And basically, they told her, you're the yoga therapist now.

[SPEAKER_01]: And she's like, can I really say that?

[SPEAKER_01]: Because at that time, we didn't have the National Organization International Organization.

[SPEAKER_01]: We didn't have credentialing.

[SPEAKER_01]: We didn't have accreditation.

[SPEAKER_01]: So Michelle has been on the early [SPEAKER_01]: forefront of this emerging profession for so long.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I love it that someone with such a deep heart and personal connection to her own healing journey is the woman who's now helping other yoga teachers, yoga therapists, doctors, nurses, psychotherapists, marriage and family counselors.

[SPEAKER_01]: She's helping all sorts of professionals to learn how to use yoga in an appropriate way [SPEAKER_01]: inside of their own scope of practice.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I think you'll really enjoy hearing Michelle's story and how that led her to do the work that she's doing today.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go meet Michelle Fury.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hello, everybody.

[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the Yoga Therapy Hour.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is Amy Wheeler.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I want to thank all the people who've come forward in twenty twenty five to tell their stories.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are completely booked through the end of the year.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we will not be taking any more stories.

[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, many weeks, I'm recording two every Thursday because so many people were willing to share of themselves to be generous and gracious to help other people to suffer less.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's been quite a year.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're so happy that we have another several months of stories to share on the yoga therapy hour.

[SPEAKER_01]: But just to say that at this time, we're no longer needing people to volunteer.

[SPEAKER_01]: The response has been amazing.

[SPEAKER_01]: I feel overjoyed with so many of you willing to give of yourself to help others suffer less.

[SPEAKER_01]: We thank you, we're glad you're here.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go see our guest for today.

[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome Michelle.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for being here today on the Yoga Therapy Hour.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for having me Amy.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is also where you joining us from today.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm in sort of Denver Metro area.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just south of Denver called Unincorporated Littleton.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's my development has tucked up into a state park.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I love it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's great.

[SPEAKER_01]: You get to be in Colorado and live in a state park.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm too shy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Michelle, we haven't really talked at all, but I'm wondering, should we tell people how we met first?

[SPEAKER_01]: Do you remember?

[SPEAKER_01]: What I remember is that you were working on an amazing project and please correct me and refine this story because this was a long time ago.

[SPEAKER_01]: This was like ten or more years ago.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you were working at a hospital with, I believe, young women who were doing like self-destructive behaviors.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm still on track.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, yeah, this is funny.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't realize that's where we first met because I thought it was later.

[SPEAKER_00]: But yes, but I was at Children's Hospital, Colorado for fifteen years.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it has to been when I was working on the eating disorder unit.

[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you were working with these young women.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the story that you told me, if you don't remember, [SPEAKER_01]: was that they were not very in touch with their emotions and they were having a hard time kind of sensing and feeling what was going on inside of them and then maybe that's why they were needing to do this self-destructive behavior possibly to [SPEAKER_01]: feel and again, correct me if I'm wrong because this was quite a long time ago and that there was a part of the program you were guys were writing these manuals and the books, there was a part of the program where you wanted them to have an embodied approach where you help them to feel inside and then name the words that they were feeling and you told me there's like a huge disconnect between sensing and feeling [SPEAKER_01]: and then being able to say what that word was.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the optimal state charts that we had at the time with the different goonas, the white zone, the red zone, the blue zone, the gold zone, you had said they would sometimes come into class and they were going to do a check-in before you sat down and did your lesson and sometimes they would just stand there and stare at the chart and wouldn't be able to pick any of the words to say what they're feeling.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do you remember any of this?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's funny because it's different pieces, but yeah, like when I worked on the eating disorder unit and also not just the eating disorder unit, I worked on all the high-cutee units.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it could be girls and boys on our adolescent psychiatric unit that was on a lockdown because they were going to remember themselves.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's true that when people are in high emotional distress, that they either shut down all the feelings or because they're feeling too much, [SPEAKER_00]: And then when they can't feel anything, they've numbed out, then that's when kids or people start to cut, start to so harm.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so they are so out of touch that they can't name it as this big disconnect.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so having that visual of your chart was absolutely brilliant because the way the mind works, the way the brain works, if we can see it, it might take a few weeks, but then we can start [SPEAKER_00]: to go, oh, it's in that red zone, it's in that blue zone.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so your chart was this amazing bridge between total shutdown to feelings identification.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's why I was so exciting to see your chart and see that it was based on the guna as like, this is incredible.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was so thrilled that you were willing to use it and I remembered one more thing about that time that I wanted to share with our audience because I just think it's so interesting.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think at some point the families were brought in to do, you know, maybe this was a day thing or a residential thing, but then sometimes the families were brought in because of course the whole family system is part of this illness and I think you told me that even the parents couldn't name their feelings.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh, it gives me chills now thinking about what an incredible download of insight.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was for me in that time.

[SPEAKER_00]: So yes, this was definitely the eating disorder unit where it was residential.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was inpatient, but in some kids were outpatient, meaning they were in day treatment.

[SPEAKER_00]: But once a week, whether you were inpatient or outpatient on the unit, [SPEAKER_00]: The parents would come in and we do a multifamily group and I would do partner yoga with them and have the chart up and just the mirror of how the whole family had disconnected from their emotions and body sensations.

[SPEAKER_00]: And body sensations are one of the best ways we can get in touch with emotions if you even think about the word feelings, which are not the same exactly as emotions.

[SPEAKER_00]: But feelings aren't just emotional, states, their body sensations.

[SPEAKER_00]: And hunger actually kids who have had eating disorders, they're not aware of hunger.

[SPEAKER_00]: have a client just yesterday.

[SPEAKER_00]: He does not have an evening disorder.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's in his thirties, but he has such massive trauma and had food insecurity that he said, he can't tell the difference between if a stomach hurts or he's hungry.

[SPEAKER_00]: We see how yoga is this incredible system that cuts through all the levels of our existence through and on kind of getting ahead with the five coaches that at the level of feeling sensation, it's tied [SPEAKER_00]: to these deep feelings of wanting to belong and our existence and yoga.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's right there.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like it's built for trauma.

[SPEAKER_01]: All right, I love this.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to dig in deep today.

[SPEAKER_01]: First, I want to know your story.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know you as a professional woman.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know the great work you do in the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: But what's your story?

[SPEAKER_01]: Does it have anything to do with how you got interested in this work and how you came to be a yoga therapist?

[SPEAKER_01]: Are you a psychotherapist?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm a character.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: So how did you get to where you are today?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's so wild.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe that we're talking about disconnect.

[SPEAKER_00]: and feelings because that is my story.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I had a very rough childhood, very rough.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I used school as a haven and would lose myself in academics and the friends and the extracurriculars.

[SPEAKER_00]: So by the time I was a young woman, I was a teenager, I was full in myself.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was excelling in everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had lots of good friends.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I just skismed off, like, oh, how hard this time was at home.

[SPEAKER_00]: So by the time I got to college, I fell apart.

[SPEAKER_00]: I got to my dream college.

[SPEAKER_00]: I went to Northwestern University for Journalism.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was all excited.

[SPEAKER_00]: And after six months, I had to come back home and regroup because I was falling apart physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I couldn't keep up sort of the gym was up, you know.

[SPEAKER_01]: did you know that like when it was happening where you were where like this is just totally unsustainable or were you thinking I'm not well I just need to go home.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is where I really identify with the young people I work with because I had no idea what was happening.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was told I had all this promise and then I'm falling apart.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I thought it was on my fault.

[SPEAKER_00]: I really thought that there was something bad or wrong inside me.

[SPEAKER_00]: which is, that's a theme of trauma.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, it was definitely complex trauma that I was going through.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so, I come home, but the funny thing is, my first introduction to yoga actually happened on that's fourteen.

[SPEAKER_00]: School that was very progressive and would allow you to create courses.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to learn about Buddhism and meditation.

[SPEAKER_00]: My history teacher, Mr.

Beverly, told me, if I wanted to learn about that, I first had to learn about Hinduism.

[SPEAKER_00]: So he had me reading the Fogboita, the Pana Shads, and other yoga scriptures when I was fourteen, I'm like, yeah, yeah, whatever.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so Christian and Arjuna, that's kind of fascinating.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, I went on with the rest of my high school time.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so what was interesting is when I came back home.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I was in Chicago and Northwestern and come back home at age nineteen, eighteen, nineteen.

[SPEAKER_00]: to regroup from falling apart.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I re-enroll in school.

[SPEAKER_00]: I started dating this guy and he's like, you should try yoga.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, yoga looks goofy.

[SPEAKER_00]: People rolling around in the floor.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then the very first time I tried it, I was hooked.

[SPEAKER_00]: I felt this calm.

[SPEAKER_00]: I felt this profound okness.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the way I like to describe it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like what we get from yoga is, yes, there's joy, yes, there's ecstasy, but it's like, [SPEAKER_00]: This found well of deep okayness.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I cut in there because I taught college freshman for twenty five years yoga.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I would ask them, what do you feel?

[SPEAKER_01]: What's going on inside you?

[SPEAKER_01]: And they would say, I feel good.

[SPEAKER_01]: Those were the words like every single semester.

[SPEAKER_01]: every single student.

[SPEAKER_01]: I feel good for the first time.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, that's the best they could do to articulate it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think a lot of us are still, you know, it's kind of magical and mystical.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what is it doing in there?

[SPEAKER_01]: But for a teenager to just say, I want to do more of this because I feel good.

[SPEAKER_00]: Great.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you see that with them saying, I feel good.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can see how we and our culture are not taught about what's going on internally.

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't have these words.

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't have them, you know, in yoga, there's all sorts of kinds of meditations and visualizations and focusing techniques.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not this big, won't be word meditation.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's Diana.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's the Yoga Nidra.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's Pratyahara.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have all these descriptive words thanks to our Sanskrit yoga practices.

[SPEAKER_00]: We aren't taught to look at a meditation teacher who said, [SPEAKER_00]: Here in the West, we focus on external technology.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can build AI models, we can build skyscrapers, it's external technology.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that the East, India, through yoga and Buddhism, it was an internal technology.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so when people first tap into it like the teenagers and your college courses are me or the kids I work with, [SPEAKER_00]: There's no language for it.

[SPEAKER_00]: You don't even know where to go with that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you say, I feel good for the first time.

[SPEAKER_00]: That was my introduction and the song that I was part of at the time, city yoga, they really valued more meditation over asana.

[SPEAKER_00]: But asana is definitely, we grabbed me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's where I became a yoga teacher for the first time when I was like, twenty-one as part of my sava for selfless service.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, that's amazing.

[SPEAKER_01]: That by twenty one, you had already exported enough to become a teacher and did you stay in college then and finish out closer to home?

[SPEAKER_00]: Right, exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: So when I got back home, I'd taken like six months to recoup and so then I got back in college and continued and I had been in school for journalism, but my mom was like, you know, you've always been such a great listener.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this, F at you, Lord Atlantic University, which is my home state college, they didn't have a great journalism program.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I got on the school paper, but I switched my major to psychology.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this is where, like, all these things happened that I didn't choose or I didn't feel like I was choosing, but it was bringing.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I was introduced to yoga, and then I was taking neurobiology classes, and going, [SPEAKER_00]: I have a kind of calm focus right now as my professor is talking that I've never experienced before.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'll off the yoga mat and going, whoa.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is changing my minds.

[SPEAKER_01]: You knew that.

[SPEAKER_01]: You could see that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you can feel it, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's so palpable when we're practicing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what we want to share so much with others.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was like life changing.

[SPEAKER_00]: It absolutely, it shifted everything I now had this calm.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know I was hyper vigilant and scared all the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then when I feel this calm, I was like, wow, my mind.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think a lot of parents don't understand that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I think if they did, they'd all be sending their kids to yoga because it is.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's that ability to focus and just feel good and feel calm.

[SPEAKER_01]: and absorb the information.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's so amazing how doing something on a yoga mat or on a meditation cushion does translate into the classroom and I work with college golfers and that's what they all say.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, wow, once they started doing this, my grades got better.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not bad.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's why we're doing it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the thing we see these real life changes that can be evidence for others, but it's so much deeper.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like that's the, yeah, my grades got better is the tip of the iceberg poking out and underneath in our internal world.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the whole iceberg underneath.

[SPEAKER_01]: Talk about that from being a psychotherapist in yoga therapist.

[SPEAKER_01]: What is the iceberg underneath that maybe people don't even know?

[SPEAKER_01]: Because they are going for good grades, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: The even better stuff is what's in that internal technology that you're talking about.

[SPEAKER_01]: So what do you think is happening inside of those kids?

[SPEAKER_00]: You maybe.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is where, like, yeah, it's my own experience.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's probably true of every single one of us, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: We got into yoga.

[SPEAKER_00]: It had such a profound effect on our lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: We got, I gotta do something with this.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, this is where I think the punch in my acosha, the five body system, the five layers that yoga chakitsa, yoga therapy understands, as part of us, is like a road map.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, ideal, you know, that amazing, [SPEAKER_00]: Angard teacher says that, you know, Osana is the carrot that gets people in.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think that's to evolve us when we can feel something physically.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like when I could feel that calm that I couldn't speak, but I can feel it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And for your students when they could feel that focus probably with their golf game, you can't speak it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it's changing your world and you can feel that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's the physical sensation, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: I was working with a woman yesterday who's a rollover.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so she has so much understanding and expertise in Panama, Acosha.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's the second line of her energetic body.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's where she's working.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so [SPEAKER_00]: What's happening is yoga gets us whether it's the asana or whatever of the limbs we try.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's piercing all of the layers and so wherever we're most open.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's where we can speak to it, or that's where we can connect with it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So my client yesterday, she's already got all this wisdom in her about the energetic body.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we are tapping into this is how it relates to your physical body and to your mental emotional body and your beliefs.

[SPEAKER_00]: just right there for her, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And so she's a mom.

[SPEAKER_00]: So she's not a teenager, but for all of us, and for me, I value school.

[SPEAKER_00]: That was my identity as a young woman.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so when it gave me this focus, already given me this common, like, well, I can use this.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's the beauty is wherever we're able to tap into.

[SPEAKER_00]: And usually it is one of those first three layers, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Or physical or energetic or mental emotional.

[SPEAKER_00]: So like my eating disorder clients who were always half awake because they didn't have enough calories when they would feel energy from the yoga.

[SPEAKER_00]: They'd be like, that's weird.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I feel like I'm awake now.

[SPEAKER_01]: Isn't that interesting?

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, they need fuel too, obviously, but that something is happening at a subtle level.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not calories.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's one example, like it's not like it how it works for everyone, every different.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then also getting that refinement of sensation, too.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I have a bunch of people with trauma in this one, this kiddo, she was fourteen, fifteen, when I first met her, [SPEAKER_00]: But she was terrified of you.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's just a guy like you.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we could just talk at first.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she's like, but I'm really scared of Shavasana.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this is true for many people who don't talk about this, where when you've learned how to dissociate, Shavasana relaxation can feel way too much, like dissociation.

[SPEAKER_00]: and dissociation while it's in adaptive thing that the nervous system does.

[SPEAKER_00]: So dissociation is where we basically just check out and thoughts feelings or sense of self, we somehow check out.

[SPEAKER_00]: It can just be like in a sort of trans-like state when someone just sort of like, if you're in a therapy session and they just kind of seem spaced out, that's actually a form of dissociation.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not huge, but they got, wait, what did you say?

[SPEAKER_00]: That's very subtle dissociation.

[SPEAKER_00]: up into like the end degree is catatonium.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this kid her complex trauma was so severe that she would go catatonic.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hadn't seen it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's why she said to me, yeah, I don't like Shavasana.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, oh, we're not going to do that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because when she laid down on her back, it closed her eyes.

[SPEAKER_01]: She would go into that dissociation.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, she called it when it was dissociation.

[SPEAKER_00]: She called it a floaty.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's another word she used, but she's like, I don't like that floaty state.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's scary because it would flip from nervous system would take over and flip her into this catatonic state or it was too close.

[SPEAKER_00]: over the months and then years that I saw her, what happened is she started to become more aware of more subtle feelings until the point where she wanted to do Shavasana.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she's like, now I can differentiate.

[SPEAKER_00]: They are not the same.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're actually the opposite.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm, they more about that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, so Catatonia and all the levels of dissociation that we think of as negative.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, by the way, there's positive dissociation when we read a book, when we focus on a math problem, your golfers who are like, laser-focused on that ball, where they want it to go, that's dissociation.

[SPEAKER_00]: You have to dissociate from everything outside of you.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a bad thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a good thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: But when dissociation is automatic because the nervous system in its fight or flight or freeze mode chooses for you, so you're thinking mind doesn't get to decide.

[SPEAKER_00]: Your other parts of your brain are making that decision.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then that turns into dissociation.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's automatic.

[SPEAKER_00]: Person feels helpless.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so they don't like it.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's part of what happens with traumas.

[SPEAKER_00]: You feel powerless.

[SPEAKER_00]: For an nervous system is protecting you in the traumatic situation, but then you can't stop it, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: You can't decide.

[SPEAKER_00]: It decides for you.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what happens?

[SPEAKER_00]: What I've seen in the process of yoga, we get this good hit.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, oh, I feel focused.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I feel confident.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, my grades have gone up.

[SPEAKER_00]: It like hooks us in a good way.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then we have to have this period where, like, whoa, that's kind of scary.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like my client saying, but I don't want to do Shavasana.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so then you don't do that.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, use the yoga therapist.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're like, oh, yeah, we're not going to do that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But then what yoga does is it helps us to differentiate, it helps us feel these granular sensations and become aware.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then luckily, thanks to Sanskrit and yoga, we have words that we can give people, label in this grade, which is again, why your chart is so, so important, because it gives people a visual, and that helps us process in a different way.

[SPEAKER_00]: Until eventually, we can identify it with language.

[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like the process of yoga because it is mind body.

[SPEAKER_00]: It helps people open up and become self-aware in ways that are feeling gentle using the wisdom of our body and mind in ways that modern psychology can be clunky or too much of a broad stroke.

[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like yoga really helps us tailor [SPEAKER_00]: the practice to ourselves and then what's your yoga therapist to our clients.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for describing that, that the granular sensations, which then can lead to language about it is different than the dissociation.

[SPEAKER_01]: But at first, they can kind of because they're both kind of floaty and light and spacious, they can feel very similar until you learn to, oh no, that's not me going outside.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's actually me connecting deeply inside.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they don't know the difference between in and out.

[SPEAKER_00]: Think about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you don't know what you're hungry, [SPEAKER_00]: If you don't know, you have to go to the bathroom.

[SPEAKER_00]: These are all problems that can happen when you've experienced a cute trauma or whatever rules of this world.

[SPEAKER_01]: And what I imagine for people who have experienced complex trauma when you turn the attention inward to become more self-aware of those granular sensations.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know this has happened to me and probably to you like at first, that can be pretty overwhelming to find out what's in there and to feel again.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right, in fact, it's the scary place where you don't want to go.

[SPEAKER_00]: And just to differentiate, I'm sure many of your audience already know.

[SPEAKER_00]: PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, is differentiated from complex trauma, or CPTSD, and that PTSD is a singular event.

[SPEAKER_00]: It could be one tour of war.

[SPEAKER_00]: You could have someone who was sold or who went to one tour of war, and that could still be PTSD.

[SPEAKER_00]: It will incident trauma.

[SPEAKER_00]: Someone going through hurricane Katrina.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to be one day.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a whole ordeal.

[SPEAKER_00]: They have to go through it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's still single incident.

[SPEAKER_00]: But complex trauma is pervasive, longstanding, chronic, and super important always has a relational component where we feel the person who suffers the complex trauma has felt in some way, shape, or form betrayed by someone who's supposed to care for them.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, eating disorders are actually about control, about a child or a person who lacks control in a not healthy way because their family was chaotic or there was abuse or sex assaults and it's tragic, but we know this happens.

[SPEAKER_00]: So eating disorders aren't always because of sex assault, but there's usually this very unhealthy chaotic thing going on in their family of origin.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so they used the body to try to control something.

[SPEAKER_00]: body image might be related, but not always.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not always about body image.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, when we go inside, someone who's there doesn't want to do that because it's scary in here.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so what's interesting is the very physical forms of yoga are wonderful.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, if you think about a focusing practice, like we have this five, four, three, two, one, mindfulness practice or what's five things you see and four things you feel and three things you hear and two things you smell and a lot of times you're not tasting something but one thing you love or you can give people something to eat.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that connects people with the Anamaya Kosha, right, with the physical form.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the product that it's outside, it's still our physical world.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so this is something where it's not a yoga posture, but if someone really is afraid of going inside, it starts to connect them to their senses and ground them.

[SPEAKER_00]: What's not at least in your body that feels safe, my left pinky finger.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, good.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's your resource.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's actually tying in a lot of our trauma, understanding from research, as well as yoga, as well as, you know, just what works in the moment.

[SPEAKER_01]: You had complex trauma.

[SPEAKER_01]: did hit you hard in college.

[SPEAKER_01]: You end up closer to home, going into psychology.

[SPEAKER_01]: And by this time you were doing yoga, and maybe even teaching yoga, at what point did the yoga and your professional life completely merge, where you are now a psychotherapist who kind of specializes in yoga, yoga therapy, teaching other, [SPEAKER_01]: Psychotherapists, how to use the yoga toolbox?

[SPEAKER_01]: How did that happen?

[SPEAKER_01]: Or when did that happen?

[SPEAKER_00]: That was a very long journey.

[SPEAKER_00]: And not the route I thought.

[SPEAKER_00]: But so what happened is with that calm focus I got, I started to gain more confidence in myself.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so then I moved with the boyfriend to Colorado to study yoga with Richard.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that was one of the first big confidence.

[SPEAKER_00]: I could see my confidence was good because I was going to leave home and do something that mattered to me.

[SPEAKER_01]: And when you say Richard, we need a last name.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, Richard Freeman.

[SPEAKER_00]: I heard teachers, so Richard Freeman is an Ashhtanga yoga teacher, but started off with the iangar system moved into Ashhtanga.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I had heard about him.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was reading the yoga journal.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is like in the nineteen nineties.

[SPEAKER_00]: And [SPEAKER_00]: I just really had this feeling I wanted to study with Richard.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we moved out for a bunch of reasons, but we moved out to Colorado.

[SPEAKER_00]: I started going to Richard studio.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was the heyday of a studio where he'd give two, three hour talks and you'll look a lot of the kind of yama like violent mechanics.

[SPEAKER_00]: I took his teacher training.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was taking from a bunch of teachers, John Friend, and Laura Allard, and eventually Gary Kraso, and River Cummings, and I was getting interested in the therapeutics of yoga.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so then I started taking on, I was teaching.

[SPEAKER_00]: I also had a job, like a day job, basically.

[SPEAKER_00]: It taught on the side.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I kept seeing with my individual clients when they'd come to me for ski accident, or they had even hemoplegia.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had a client who was half as body was paralyzed.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was working with them.

[SPEAKER_00]: As soon as they'd walk in the door, I felt like I could see whatever mental, emotional thing was going on with them.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I would talk to Richard, I'd say, well, how do I work with that?

[SPEAKER_00]: You said, well, that's a little bit outside of a scope of practice.

[SPEAKER_00]: As long as you stay in your lane and you're not telling people, you're diagnosing them, you can work with that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that wasn't enough for me, so I went back to school to get my master's and psychotherapy.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then what's so crazy is in my last year, you do internship, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: As part of the Master's program.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I knew I wanted to tie yoga and mental health together.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so then I get this internship at a rape crisis center.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, OK, that's a little bit more specific.

[SPEAKER_00]: By the way, I didn't know at this point.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm in my early thirties.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know why I have complex drama.

[SPEAKER_01]: Do you know that you had complex drama?

[SPEAKER_01]: You just didn't know what had happened to you as a human?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like many people, many of my clients, like, you know something wasn't right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like something was off.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I was like, oh, these other people in my family, they suffered more.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was fine, dish.

[SPEAKER_00]: So when I got this internship dealing with acute trauma, rape, all of a sudden, I went, oh my God.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have three fours of these symptoms.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm hyper-vigilate.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have this, that and the other.

[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I get to internship and start doing this rape counseling and one of my students, [SPEAKER_00]: at a yoga studio was also the director of training at Children's and was like, hey, do you want to do a little bit of a side hustle here at Children's and like, well, sure, of course.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I had a dual internship at Children's and through the rape crisis center.

[SPEAKER_00]: So Children's is not a trauma center.

[SPEAKER_00]: and the trauma center wasn't kids.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was all ages.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's where basically my whole approach to pediatric yoga therapy and yoga therapy for trauma started to come together because I was thrown into it.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, whatever patients were thrown at me when I was at Children's.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: I guess I'll teach this group.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I guess I'll learn how to work with neurodiversity.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was intense.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a three-year experience.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's supervised internship.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, no one had done it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I followed, I really loved my music therapy, and my art therapy colleagues, because there was a creative arts therapy team that was starting to be put together.

[SPEAKER_00]: So Marianne, one both had this amazing vision.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's a psychiatrist, but had been a yogi since she was sixteen, and she was the chief of psychiatry at Children's, and she helped establish this creative arts therapy team.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's where they said, oh, we want you and your yoga therapist.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, what?

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there was no name for this.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: We didn't even have certification or accreditation at this point.

[SPEAKER_00]: No.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so this is like, two thousand five, two thousand six.

[SPEAKER_00]: They tell me, oh, your yoga therapist.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, can we say that?

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, well, that's an art therapist and that's a music therapist.

[SPEAKER_00]: So your yoga therapist, I'm like, [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, and so that's because of working at Children's for fifteen years and I was on research studies and pilot studies and retrospective chart reviews where we did initial quality control [SPEAKER_00]: which are quality assurance, which is a very first form of research.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we did it on our yoga groups for kids with autism.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we did it with the eating disorder group.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I worked on a chronic headache team.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what we did our retrospective chart review and started finding actual results that this was really helping kids in all of these different areas.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so from that fifteen years, then I was able to apply for the CIYT, the certified yoga therapist, and that's how that came about.

[SPEAKER_00]: But like all of this, it was like right place, right time.

[SPEAKER_00]: And right person.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was so motivated.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was so healing for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Those fifteen years old taught me up.

[SPEAKER_00]: But like, when I got to see these kids, I'm like, I'm that kid.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was that kid.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm like so grateful to yoga because this was not my dream.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was going to be a journalist, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love that the universe puts us where we're supposed to be against our will.

[SPEAKER_01]: You just wandering around and next thing you know, you're like right where you're supposed to be to live your life purpose and help people.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is magical.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it really is.

[SPEAKER_01]: So Michelle, where is your work now?

[SPEAKER_01]: I assume you're no longer at children's.

[SPEAKER_01]: Tell me what you're doing now and what that looks like.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I would get weekly calls at children saying, how do I get to do what you do?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I would give me very unsatisfactory answer of like, go back and get your masters in counseling and, you know, [SPEAKER_00]: take a ton of yoga trainings and blah, blah, blah.

[SPEAKER_00]: People thought I was being mean.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, I don't know if that's just what I did.

[SPEAKER_00]: But then I thought, you know, we're moving on.

[SPEAKER_00]: We need to come up with a different system.

[SPEAKER_00]: So after fifteen years, I was like, you know, I feel like I've done all I can do here.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I left childrens and started rhythms yoga training, which is both my private practice, which I still have.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then it's also training courses that I do for both yoga professionals and mental health professionals on how to integrate yoga with mental health in a safe effective way.

[SPEAKER_00]: And because I have this specialty in kiddos and pediatric yoga therapy, I feel like it really gives me this developmental edge that I can share with trainees.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I really collaborated a lot.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've done this the most with the Minded Institute and we have our annual training of yoga therapy for child and adolescent mental health coming up.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a forty-hour training that you do get CEUs for if you're a yoga therapist.

[SPEAKER_00]: It runs six Saturdays from the twenty second of February through twenty-ninth of March.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we have that coming up.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I do that on a yearly basis.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's really popular.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of my favorite things I do.

[SPEAKER_00]: all year.

[SPEAKER_00]: I look forward to it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's also a ton of work, but I love it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's where I focus now is training professionals on how to integrate yoga and romance a health and a safe effective way.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because you have to be, like as we're talking about, if someone's going to be triggered by Shavasana, or if they can't articulate what they're feeling, we don't want to make them feel embarrassed or less than.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's ways we can make sure that it's very trauma-informed.

[SPEAKER_00]: and save effective ways.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're teaching from both sides, though.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're teaching the yoga teachers to be aware of, you know, here's what trauma looks like.

[SPEAKER_01]: Here's the signs and symptoms.

[SPEAKER_01]: Here's the things you can do if someone does get triggered.

[SPEAKER_01]: But you're also going in from the other side, which is to take psychotherapists and saying, look, just taking some yoga classes isn't enough.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is a whole paradigm that you need to learn about.

[SPEAKER_01]: so that you can effectively teach yoga to your clients.

[SPEAKER_00]: And quite honestly, early on, I wanted to do either or, like, I've got to go down one route or the other route.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what happened was, especially when I started working with the minded Institute, the minded students were coming from both ends.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in the same group, in the same cohort, I'd have someone who was a doctor, like a pediatrician, and then a psychologist, [SPEAKER_00]: And then a teacher, like a school teacher, who also had some yoga training.

[SPEAKER_00]: And how did I talk to all three of them in the same course?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I guess we're doing this.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so from that course, I really have to thank Heather Mason that in being thrown into that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think because children said, taught me, if you throw me a curve ball, I go.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, that's fun, that's a fun challenge.

[SPEAKER_00]: So luckily because I've had that and I've done this course with the Minded Institute all these years, it helped me see how do I talk to all of these groups, these two groups of the yoga and the mental health professionals.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was from that that I want, you know what, I think it's time to write.

[SPEAKER_00]: a second book, because I wrote a book, I wrote a book back in the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the [SPEAKER_00]: videos of yoga therapy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Also, those are three sweeties that I worked with.

[SPEAKER_00]: But that was my first book.

[SPEAKER_00]: That was a very technical book.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, I think the way things have needed to be as we needed to show in yoga therapy.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you're one of them, too, who realize we needed to show no, there's scientific basis.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's evidence for what we're doing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so this book is very sort of dry and scholarly.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that way, although I talk about kids, you know, I've got permission to talk about [SPEAKER_00]: patients, I actually worked with.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it has more of this academic feel.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so as soon as I was writing this, I knew I already wanted to write a second book that wasn't so stuffy.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, that was more approachable.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so when I decided I wanted to write my second book and I started talking to the singing dragon, my publisher, I knew I didn't want to do it alone.

[SPEAKER_00]: So asked one of my students, and one of the minded institutes, students, I am a sonny.

[SPEAKER_00]: would you be interested in collaborating with me?

[SPEAKER_00]: I want your perspective as someone who's a student who's just come up to the ranks of my dead institute and it's just become a yoga therapist.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm sure, were you grandfathered into being?

[SPEAKER_00]: I was.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: You too.

[SPEAKER_00]: The thing is, when you get grandfathered in, you don't know how people are being trained.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, I don't know what you're learning in yoga therapy school through the minded.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so working with Iowa and then eventually with other many other collaborators who helped us along the way with the book, it really helped me see what is a yoga professional need to know where do we need to connect the dots to help them understand how to use yoga safely and effectively or mental health.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the new book is going to be out in August as yoga therapy will complex trauma.

[SPEAKER_00]: That was the name of it, and that's what it's for.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it will help mental health professionals too, like you're saying, understand that as soon as we're using yoga for a specific purpose, right, to feel a specific wound, it could be psychic wound, obviously trauma.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's yoga therapy versus yoga.

[SPEAKER_00]: And all of us have to make that differentiation when we're yoga therapist, like yoga class, it's very therapeutic, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: I go to my teacher, Jeanne's class.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's incredibly healing for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: But she's teaching to a group of people and she's come up with that theme before we walked in the room.

[SPEAKER_00]: Where's the therapy?

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it gets geared towards that individual's needs and feeling something that they're working for.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a whole professional understanding that, yeah, just like you said, and you can't just take a few yoga classes and go, yeah, I'm going to do this breathing technique.

[SPEAKER_00]: Reading techniques are very powerful, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're more powerful than the Asana because it's settlers that subtler level of our energetic body.

[SPEAKER_01]: I just said that in class on Monday night in one of my yoga nidras.

[SPEAKER_01]: I said something to the effect of when you feel the subtlety of your own breath.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's an intimacy with yourself that you might not have felt before and it's powerful.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's very powerful when I was at Children's and I would see psychologists teaching these breathing techniques and I'm like, you don't do a breathing practice.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's actually another thing that when I first started working at the hospital and like, oh, this is the power of yoga.

[SPEAKER_00]: We ourselves, the teachers, or the therapists, we know these practices in our own bodies.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's very different than the mental health roles.

[SPEAKER_00]: If I don't have depression and I'm going to counsel you on depression, but I don't understand what it's like, what lack of motivation is that it's debilitating.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then it's going to be a little bit harder for me to teach you this technique if I haven't found it to be transformative for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: If I'm not taking that med, you take and that would be of course completely unethical.

[SPEAKER_00]: But with yoga, we teach what we know.

[SPEAKER_00]: We may not know exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: How that reading practices impact them, but just like you said, Amy, you know it's powerful, and you've had your own lived experience.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the beauty of yoga.

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't offer anything that we ourselves don't use.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's so important.

[SPEAKER_01]: In so many fields of health and healing, it is more cognitive.

[SPEAKER_01]: You memorize things, you pass the test, you know how to do the technique.

[SPEAKER_01]: But in yoga, you actually need to have experienced that sense of calm, that sense of focus.

[SPEAKER_01]: How that inhalation-based breathing technique gave you more energy or how that exhalation-based technique [SPEAKER_01]: in Pranayama just completely brought you down.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's through that embodied practice and hopefully on a daily basis that possible that you can share it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's really unique about yoga and yoga therapy.

[SPEAKER_00]: It truly is.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's a very integrative system to begin with.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then what I noticed, so like one of the times that you and I worked together for the end of my time at Children's was when I was doing a group for little kids.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you had announced at Sittar, hey, does anyone want to use this in their practice?

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, oh, I'd really like to use it with these kiddos.

[SPEAKER_00]: Could you retrofit the chart for younger kids?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, remember that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and you're like, oh yeah, we're working on that too.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you and George work like amazing.

[SPEAKER_00]: We talked like on a regular basis what we were doing in that group was called mindful coping is we were taking yoga and integrating it with CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like hand in glove the way that yoga fits in and can create a much deeper richer [SPEAKER_00]: more whole-body experience because CBT can be very sort of clunky and simplistic.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm sure there's going to be going through these four steps in your mind.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's called the fear steps.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like that's a horrible name.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's an acronym they have.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hate this name.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would always tell people that, like as the therapist, as I was teaching them, I hate it, but it's useful.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is useful.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is, oh, yoga just gives it a whole other richness, depth.

[SPEAKER_01]: So Michelle, this new book won't be out until August.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we are, I'm not sure if we're going to publish this sooner or later, but this episode will be out at Michelle's request.

[SPEAKER_01]: So any last bits and closing that you want us to know about?

[SPEAKER_01]: Is there anything that you'd like to tell us words of wisdom or marketing?

[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't matter.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I guess more of the words of wisdom is the, I haven't been doing yoga now for thirty-five years, which I couldn't believe when I, oh my god, it's that true.

[SPEAKER_00]: The longer it practiced, the faster it gets, it just seems to get more vast.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so in the last two, three years I've been doing a mantra meditation practice that my teacher has given me and I was initiated in the mantra.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I've always looked mantras, but this practice has really transformed me even more.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we are talking about how yoga has this depth inside, but then there can be an outside thing that we can see that manifests.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was thinking about writing a book about the same time I started this mantra practice and boom, the book just seemed to happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, it's been a lot of hard work.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, a book is always hard work.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I feel like this mantra practice gave me the stamina.

[SPEAKER_00]: It gave me the focus to write this book.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so, a real life product came from it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there's this depth of my practice that [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know until recently.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's the thing I love about yoga is it's just this vast depth that it can follow us for an entire lifetime and just keep opening us up and giving us more joy and freedom and just ability to show up for this life which can be so hard.

[SPEAKER_00]: but we can use every bit of it to help ourselves, to help others.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm so grateful that [SPEAKER_00]: It found me.

[SPEAKER_01]: When you're talking, I just think of all these years of whether it was postures or breath work or mantra or meditation and studies of the texts when you were really young all the way till now.

[SPEAKER_01]: It builds up a deep well or resource within that we can tap into and the longer and more we do it, the deeper [SPEAKER_01]: and more nourishing that well is, which is so remarkable that we don't get bored because there's always something else to learn.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love that metaphor of a deep well.

[SPEAKER_00]: That really resonates.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's something about it that actually that was something I was thinking about is when I was young, I accomplished things by pushing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was so painful, if I would get rejected it, felt so painful.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yoga has taught me how to stop pushing the river, and to your metaphor of a well, like there's this deep, well-spring that if you just ride on it, you still have to work.

[SPEAKER_00]: It still helps struggles.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's not optional.

[SPEAKER_00]: But yoga gives you that stamina and that focus and that strength and that persistence.

[SPEAKER_00]: and you don't feel like you're doing a long.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's really amazing.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's a wonderful ending thought.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for being with us today, Michelle.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we wish you all the goodness with your new book coming out and all the people that I will touch and encourage people to go through your trainings.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, they're very, very spectacular.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you're really doing great work in the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so happy to be your friend.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, Amy, I feel so privileged that I get to know people like you, powerful, insightful, deep, yogi practitioners.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, we do have a website that's coming out in February, probably in another week or so, depending on when this gets aired.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that will have courses that will be attached to the book as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: And do we have a name for that website?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it is called rhythm.

[SPEAKER_00]: singular yoga therapy.

[SPEAKER_01]: Great rhythm, yoga therapy.

[SPEAKER_01]: All right, thanks for being with us, Michelle.

[SPEAKER_01]: Have a great rest of your day.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much, Amy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Take care.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you Michelle for being with us today.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was thinking as you're going through your interview that it might be nice for those people who are watching this on YouTube to see the charts that Michelle worked with in those early days that we created.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so one of the first ones that she used in Colorado Children's Hospital is called the Mental Emotional State Assessment.

[SPEAKER_01]: And as you can see, it's based on the Gunas and helping people tune into their inner sensations and then be able to talk about that and articulate that.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's also what we call the Physical Sematic Chard.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this is what are the [SPEAKER_01]: actual feelings and sensations that you're having inside your physical body, which is a little bit different than what am I emoting, you know, mental emotional.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now we're talking a more somatic experience.

[SPEAKER_01]: Are you feeling stuck?

[SPEAKER_01]: Are you feeling heavy?

[SPEAKER_01]: Are you feeling itchy?

[SPEAKER_01]: Are you feeling disembodied?

[SPEAKER_01]: Do you have pain?

[SPEAKER_01]: Those are different sensations that a lot of people who have complex trauma actually can't sense or feel inside of themselves.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then Michelle also mentioned that there is one for kids.

[SPEAKER_01]: We created a special one for her and we continue to try to modify these as needed.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this one that I'm showing is all about the different [SPEAKER_01]: faces of emotions.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so what does it look like to be overexcited?

[SPEAKER_01]: If someone can't name the word, maybe they can identify with a cute little face.

[SPEAKER_01]: And what I've found when using all these cute little faces instead of words, sometimes kids can figure it out.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, oh, I feel like that little face.

[SPEAKER_01]: But other times they'll say, [SPEAKER_01]: That's the look.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's the face I connect with.

[SPEAKER_01]: But that word you put underneath it is not the right word.

[SPEAKER_01]: And they'll go into great detail and tell me why that picture of that cute little face is a different word for them, which to me is wonderful.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's all about the exploration of what's happening inside of them.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's exactly what Michelle said that that's the important thing is kind of getting in touch with that.

[SPEAKER_01]: So all of this, all these different charts, we actually have seventy of them, if you can believe that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Seventy different ways to kind of self-connect.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have put the top six on our mobile app.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the mobile app is called Optimal State.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can buy it and get it for free also on both Android and iPhone.

[SPEAKER_01]: You just go to the app store.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can download it for about a month for free to see if you like it and try it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it helps you identify what you're feeling.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then if you want, you can have intervention sent to you.

[SPEAKER_01]: So if you're feeling out of balance in a particular direction, it will give you a two to five-minute intervention that you could do right then and right there to feel good, to feel better more of the time.

[SPEAKER_01]: So go try it out.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's free to try.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's called the optimal state on both the app stores for iPhone and Android.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we've really improved it recently.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think you'll enjoy giving it a shot.

[SPEAKER_01]: All right, everybody.

[SPEAKER_01]: Have a great day and we'll talk soon.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you to our guests this week for sharing so generously with you our listening audience.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes do you sit and wonder, what could I do that would make a difference?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think if every single one of us did something, we could make a difference in the world today.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, the way that I and our team are making a difference is by producing the yoga therapy hour.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're helping to show how it is the people suffer.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's part of being human.

[SPEAKER_01]: But there is a way to suffer less or at the very least, accept the situations that we're in.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we hope that the yoga therapy hour is inspiring you.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is our gift, our offering to you.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we encourage you to go out and find that thing that you can do to contribute to the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for listening and we'll see you next week.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for listening to the Yoga Therapy Hour.

[SPEAKER_01]: We wish you a wonderful week.

[SPEAKER_01]: We hope that somehow in a small way we've contributed to your well-being so that you can go out and share that well-being with others.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's what life is all about.

[SPEAKER_01]: Bringing in the goodness through you and then shining it out to the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: We need you more than ever.

[SPEAKER_01]: So let's all get out there.

[SPEAKER_01]: Do good, be good, and have a great week.