Weird things happened in the weird weird weird. Wow, guys, welcome to
Bledso sets. So this is an idea of ours, particularly Nick, that
we've had to have the wonderful Marina Manano on our show. She's been uh
I guess I could say a listener of bledso setto for what a year or
two years now? Yeah? Really early on, and she has been a
member of our Patreon discord and has on numerous occasions schooled us in the benefits
and the seriousness of yoga, coming hot off of our h pathetic uh not
serious exposition on yoga and yoga is a muscle and our video. But I
wanted to read you guys some of the awesomeness that is Marina, author of
the Gift of Healing Hands, doctor Marina Mangano. Am I saying that right?
Yeah? Mangano is a chiropractor that holds special certifications in acupuncture and yoga
instruction. Watch out, she'll poke youa. She uses her social media platform
at Cairo Yoga Flow to share her passion for combining yoga philosophies with traditional healing
techniques. I actually wrote that myself about two minutes ago. No just kidding,
Marina sent me that, but cool, So welcome to the show.
It's it's crazy to be on this end of the listening audience, right.
We knew internally that it would happen eventually, and it's just like the time
is now. You know, it's such good timing for you know, everything
we've been going through. So how have you been? Really good? Yeah,
really good. This has been a really new kind of summer for me
and in blending in new motherhood and congrats, yeah, thank you about that.
I know it was fun to share with everybody in the Patreon just like
some of that progress and you know, we talked so much about all the
spirituals were learning, so that was quite the experience to h to add into
that group. That's amazing. Real quick, right off, Rip, you
had to give our yoga video like a one out of ten? Uh,
yoga expert, what was that? What we do? We are we scoring
for effort or Yeah about a score on effort and a score on knowledge ten
per ten on effort or impressed, and uh, we'll go with We'll go
with an eight out of ten application. How about that? That's that's really
generous, super super generous and you know it, but that's very generous.
That's the thing though, is like you can be really stiff and really purist
about yoga and it's not going to you know, share the wealth of knowledge.
It's not going to ask people to get involved. So exactly what you
guys were doing. You kind of have to go in feeling like an idiot,
and you have to be able to laugh at yourself and just not take
yourself so seriously to get started because it's an excavation process and the first time
is not pretty. That's a really cool thing I feel. I feel that
way about so many things in my life, Like if I'm starting something new,
there's always that beginning thing of like, yeah, I look like a
total idiot, right, Like I don't, I have no clue what I'm
doing, right. But I think that's like the barrier that you have to
break through, like so many people have to break through, you know,
in order to learn new things. You have to Some people will never even
start. They'll just hit that point and be like I want to look like
an idiot, so I'm not going to do it. But we did look
like idiots and it was a lot of fun. I think asht your tone,
and you're the culture of this show. Very well. Thank you.
So actually I'm excited because I had no clue that you did acupuncture. I'm
very interested in acupuncture. I've had it done, so we definitely are gonna
have to talk about that. But before we get into, you know,
yoga and acupuncture, I wanted to ask you, how did you find out
about us, the show, the story, all of it. Yeah,
so you probably won't have too many people respond like this. My mom sent
me your show, he shout out him, him, Mama, Megano.
We were I was just chatting with her a couple of weeks ago about like,
what was the show that you sent me? You know, I think
it was early like maybe The Matrix, maybe Alice in Wonderland. My mom
is just this like proprietor of information, and she's a seamstress. While she's
always working at home, she's got something going on in the background. It's
like very probably much more versed in your world of like experiencers, but she's
just been so inundated from my end, like the healing end of you know,
esotericism and occultism and things like that, that she's like, Hey,
I think I think these guys are for you, like you should take a
listen. You know, some of like the pop culture references goes over her
head at that age. But yeah, so my mom got me started on
and I've been listening to you guys ever since. It's so cool. That's
amazing. Wow. So what was she into the whole occult mysticism stuff first,
or did she just like happen to find us, Like, you know,
it's pretty rare that we hear about people being raised under mysticism, But
was that like, was that like your gig our family kind of took a
nice like spiritual journey together, which is really fascinating to look back on.
I was raised Catholic, and you know, really probably just along those cultures
of like Irish Italian, like a lot of you know, folklore and myths
that blent into religion. You know, you don't really separate them here,
Marina, Yeah, like what those myths are? Those folklores? Oh,
you know, just like little things that you just it's second nature, like
praying to saints or little Irish sayings, especially I live on an island.
We grew up at the shore, so you just kind of look up at
the sky and you're like red sky at night, so there's delight, you
know, like all these little like just like adages and things like that that
half of them like wives tales, you know, like did I learn medicine
or did I learn wives tales from my mom's superstitions? Yeah, exactly.
Then No, when we all I went to chiropractice school in the Midwest and
my family kind of journeyed out there with me, and that was around the
time that we all kind of lost our foundation, our roots for where we're
from. But we found spirituality and you know, my more on the healing
side, and my family moved to Arkansas and just like weird stuff happens there.
Just like really like what the the they're in northwest Arkansas, and I
think like they'd be better describing it, but I think it's like most of
the foundation is there's some kind of courts under yeah, a lot a lot
of this, you know, geology, geography, and you know, we
could go crystal mining if you want there, but there's I think like she
just had some really odd experiences and you know that's kind of in the bubble
of like big Footland. So you know, between Dad and you know,
just like some interesting experiences at home. I think it got her on this,
like listening to youtubees and you'll laugh at this, Ryan, she always
says like full names like oh my buddy Jim Simmavan, and like, I
have no I have no idea who these people are. And I'm like,
Mom, just because you say their first and last name, that's not helping
me. Because on the show, Yeah, because she listens to them,
but she calls them her buddies. So she probably had known of your your
dad's story. And you know, I'm very grateful that she listened to the
temper many of you guys and sent me away because I think there's so many
people our age that this has been a natural path for you know, we
all have like different details of our stories, but we're all landing upon the
same epiphanies. Yeah, that's an awesome way to put it, because it
feels like that. Especially lately, I've had like I don't know what's going
on, like astrologically or whatever, but it's it's been a weird couple of
weeks. The synchronicities have been through the roof. I am seeing like angel
numbers everywhere, and then I don't know it just seems the past couple of
weeks have been super positively transformative, maybe even like more like like a month
and a half, and oh my gosh, that's that's genuinely one of my
favorite things about doing this is people reaching out to us and like, hey,
you know, this is my first introduction to like spirituality or or even
like, hey, I grew up in a really traumatic kind of religious situation,
and this is like helping me like find positivity both inside and outside of
that. Those are those give me life like those messages me in the world.
We could maybe get into that with some yoga as we Yes, please,
I'm ready, I'm so ready. Yeah, yeah, that's amazing.
Okay, So did spirituality bring you to yoga or was it more like you
started the yoga and realized like, oh, this is spiritual. You know
you would think that, but really it's like, were you just hungry for
something and you know you found what you're looking for, or you know,
as I started to fall into yoga more, I'm like, oh this is
it. Okay, Yeah, I think within I was learning so much about
the body. But when you're in school, you have to be like,
you know, very robotic answer the tests, like even if it doesn't feel
like a human interaction anymore, I would personally go to yoga like to start
to keep my mind really still and just not you know, handle the stress
of medical school. And so through learning those four years of chiropractic with also
yoga, they kind of started to overlap. I don't really know where one
ends anymore and one starts. That makes perfect sense. They're both really focused
on symmetry, alignment, you know, balancing your tone so you can handle
the you know, it doesn't like we can't remove the negativity of our life,
but we can improve our resilience to our response to it. I wanted
to ask you a question that was, like I say, simple, Like,
you know, I imagine there's a lot of people who listen to the
show, and you know, we cover a huge range of topics. We
don't talk about yoga that frequently. So like, I'm just going to assume
that everybody except for you, is a layman. So like my question,
there's video evidence, Yeah, definitely layman. Yeah, I wouldn't call it
expertise, But like my question is framed as simple as possible, because I
believe the answer is not simple. Why is yoga sacred? Why is yo
yoga spiritual or rather how how? Yeah? Yeah, I always say yoga
is almost like arrested, like it's a menu, like when you go that
day, if you need a hamstring stretch, it's a hamstring stretch. It
can be on the scale up to an enlightening experience if that's what you want
from it that day. So I think, you know, most people will
really start in the physical realm when they meet it. Not many people walk
in and have that, like whoa full blown sacred experience the first time?
That was me, Like you did physical stretch? No, no, no,
I didn't Like I used to believe it was just stretching poses, you
know, right, yes, yeah, yeah, it's just like the progression.
I think I've heard you talk about chakras and things like that, like
we can definitely get to it, but there's a reason that they're described as
like an ascending process. We have to all star are in this very physical,
lowest realm, not meaning bad, just primitive to work up to these
I you know, same movements could have a completely different effect on somebody who's
been doing it for twenty years or someone who did it the first stay you
could be doing the exact same movements, breathing the same way, but because
they're so experienced and tapping into a part of themselves, they just get to
these higher realms so much faster. So, but for some people, healing
a knee pain that they've had for thirty years is secret. Oh absolutely,
that's a good point, you know, if it's been keeping them out of
like the life that they love, just the first time they feel like no
pain when they've been their need that you know, who might to quantify qualify
what that is to them. Yeah, absolutely, I think about it like
just just in my limited understanding, it's like, you know, it's no
secret we're really into as above so below, right. So it's like,
you know, when we so to speak, when we kind of like tick
all the physical realm here, you know, we we do some sort of
spiritual practice or some you know, yoga, it's it's like it's it's also
like tickling the spiritual realm, right, you know. And like the way
that I've been made to understand it is that yoga. It's it's it's like,
is yoga Ayurveda? Are they one and the same or are they are
they? They are sisters sciences to each other. So in Indian medicine,
like more the internal chemical ciclic component that's going to be Iurvedic. Okay,
Yeah, the actual practices and intentions that's going to be the yoga. My
understanding of yoga is it's like we are in the physical realm, we're putting
our body into shapes or we could say poses that mirror some sort of harmonious
energy in the spiritual dimension. Does that make sense? Is that is that
all based the just like you know, like you said, some of these
poses are named mountain and they're not always you know, natural based poses.
There could be like animals or embodiment that you want to develop, Like just
off the top of a head, I'm thinking, like you know, temple
and pyramid. They're not necessarily you know, natural living things, but they
come with this understanding that when you step into one of these places, you're
going to feel like blank, or you want to prepare yourself like blank.
So when we create these poses, you can just flop through them really fast
in class if you want to focus on your hamstrings. But when you get
to a certain intention, like you can really feel the mindfulness that goes into
pretending to be these shapes and then hopefully feeling strong and stable like these shapes.
Wow, that's interesting. How do you feel about Moodra's Moodra is,
Yeah, we I mean, I'm a chiropractor too, so I love hands
Italian chiropractor, so definitely no moodra is. I mean, I'm so And
I mean I've been a practitioner for yoga teacher for about it's probably seven six
years now, and I've even just skimmed the surface of mudras. You know,
every religion has different like you know, Benedictions style of mudras. Everybody's
got prayer hands, right, They've got like some kind of bestowing a blessing.
But you know, if he could just look at it, like in
a neurological standpoint, you're you're touching different pathways, You're waking up little pockets
of your brain telling your body where you are in space depending on what you're
touching. Love that whoa, Yeah that was deep. So uh it sounds
to me like you know, because right I had heard from Brian uh that
that part of the spiritual nature of yoga is, like you were saying,
like you put your body in those forms and it reflects something in a higher
realm. But it also sounds like yoga and meditation are like married practices or
closely related or something to that effect. Is that right? Yeah, And
this actually may answer your question earlier too a little bit better. Ryan,
when you're when you go to a yoga class, they're all going to be
so different. There's a lot of different styles and variables. But one of
my trainings it's called Vinyasa yoga, and it just follows a certain template that
it's going to go through a sequence of poses, and there's this really beauty
to class that it's like this full symbolism of like a circle of life,
I guess you could call it. They you start usually in child's posts,
which I think everybody kind of recognizes, like you're at you're on your knees,
you're sitting, you're in child's pose. You stay really close to the
ground. As you start to build up through class, you start to go
into more new knee poses, you work your way up to standing poses.
There's a lot of transitions and balances, and then there's usually a peak posing
class that's going to be like what you've sneakily been preparing for the whole time,
whether you know it or not. Yeah, it's like traditionally the hardest
pose of the class, or at least needs the most focus and intention.
And then after that it's just like coming down, it's restoring, it's complimenting
whatever you've been doing, working your way back to the ground. And then
the last thing is often a meditation in class, it's called shivasana or corpse
posts. So it's like you've finished this full cycle of you're supposed to go
through and see things about yourself and learn things about yourself to hopefully take off
the mat. You know when you're done. Wow, that's so cool.
Yeah. One of the only times I've gone to like a place to do
yoga, it was me and my wife went and did hot yoga yea,
and it was awesome. It was so awesome. It was like, of
course, like a month after we went the first time, this place closed.
That's just common. But yeah, but at the end of the session
we did is corpse posed just like lying on your back. Yep, when
you're just full laying her back, maybe your hands are open closed, they
ask you to relax your feet. Hi. Yoga is tough because you're just
laying there and you're sweating and you may not you can, like you can't
focus in your mind because there's like sweat rolling down your face. You feel
so good afterwards, though, Oh you feel amazing. And we did,
like the instructor had like sacred frequencies with you know, singing bowls and different
things like that, and like a bowl of cold water with some kind of
oils in it. I think it might have been like peppermint oil or something
like that, and everybody got one like a cloth to put on your head,
and then we did like a ten minute meditation and I that was my
first time being like, wait a minute, that that was legitimately my first
time realizing there was a spiritual aspect to yoga. I had always thought it
was just like stretching, like I have a bad back, I need to
stretch, you know whatever. But what did you We're able to actually we're
able to like turn off your mind and let that sink in or how did
the meditation go? Yeah, my brain is generally pretty empty anyway, so
it's it's pretty it's pretty easy for me to do that. No, but
but yeah, it just kind of happened, uh, serendipitously that around that
same time. For the past like a couple of months or so, I
had been like very intentionally trying to like flex my meditation muscle, like I've
been trying to get better and better at it. So that was a very
welcome surprise. I was like, oh, okay, okay, I have
a little bit, I have experience with this. Yeah, the other stuff
stuff I don't know, but I'm comfortable with just sitting down and close my
eyes. It's great they gave you the time for that. You know,
some classes are like, oh, shivasana, and then like two minutes later
they're like, hey, have a great day. Yeah, it's not like
that's not it's not the focus of that style or studio. But like you
just have to keep trying and find like your right time of day maybe like
an evening class. It's just like leads to it a little bit better than
instead of the morning of like all right, I gotta get to my list
today, like let's get this going. Yeah, I see that for sure.
And another interesting thing that I noticed doing it. I don't know if
this is just a hot yoga thing. Well, honestly, yoga is.
It can be strenuous, so you know, I felt after we were done,
but before the meditation, I was like, Okay, I'm whooped.
It was like a serious workout. And for me, when I have been
like exerting myself and getting like exercise that buzz immediately afterwards, it shuts off
my brain anyway, Like I have pretty bad ADHD sometimes and well really all
the time, and working out or exercising is one of the things that turns
it off. So I noticed like it was really easy for me to get
into like a semi meditative state because I was already kind of buzzing off of
that exercise. So it was a pretty profound experience for me. I enjoyed
the heck out of it. I need to get back to it absolutely.
Historically, like not so much with our Western culture, but I believe the
asanas, which is the physical practice of yoga, were designed to make your
body stronger, you know, to improve your endurance for sitting oh wow,
long sitting long meditating. So you know, if they could work out these
barriers in your mind, or work out the barrier that like forty five minutes
or class, you're like, oh this is dumb, wim I'm here,
Like, just the more you go, you start to see that endurance build,
and you know, we're not sitting around for hours a day meditating,
but that was the true purpose of you know, breaking up the stagnant pockets
in your spine so that when you could sit for long hours and meditate,
you had this just like really open antenna. Wow. Okay, so then
they've been they've been married from the start, then, yeah, that's incredible.
Yeah. My intuition about yoga is like it's it's much older than we
think. I mean, the you know, Hinduism, if I can recall
correctly, Hinduism is the oldest recorded religion on a mankind, and it's estimated
to be five thousand plus years old. And it's like they've been doing these
kinds of practices, you know, since since five thousand years and most likely
beyond. And like I feel like yoga, I feel like there's a few
key esoteric sciences they cross over into, like that Atlantean wisdom. I feel
like I feel like there's something deeper to yoga here, and it's like something
like we are truly the microcosm of the macrocosm. And I believe it's possible
that you know, whether it's mudras or specific yoga poses, or maybe there's
even phrases. There's there's verbal phrases that people can speak that are like ancient
wisdom that have a secret power behind them. And I wanted to say I
didn't want to cut in, but my introduction to yoga was a little bit
different because like I knew there was something spiritual to it, but I was
coming from a Pentecostal Christian background, where like when I was younger, my
pastor said, don't do yoga, don't do anything to get you into a
trance, because it'll let them demons in. You know, you know what
I mean. And then we had members of the CIA coming around to our
house, you know, you guys all know the story and recommending to Dad,
like, hey, you should really consider yoga, particularly kundalini yoga.
I was gonna ask what that was the question. I had to say it
tonight for my mom. My mom was like, please ask what was the
question? She was like, what is the style of yoga that they all
referenced. They all say that you know, they get them help them like
remote view and things like that, and they all say like a style of
yoga, but they don't name it. So I assumed it was, but
yeah, and they started recommending that to us, and it's like, whoa
wait a minute, I've never heard of this, and that kind of like
caused me to be fascinated with yoga. I don't practice it every day.
I don't practice it regularly, but it's like, you know, that doesn't
mean we can't believe it doesn't work right, No, and not at all.
You're it's meant to come back to. I think there is a time
where it's really beneficial to create some regularity with it, because that way you
just start to understand your baseline. You understand your mental baseline, your emotional
baseline, and like how your body speaks to you. And if I can
offer anything to everybody about yoga, like as as a movement provider, that's
it. All of these potential really old wisdoms and like magical wisdoms you're describing.
I think the gift of having a human body is to feel with it,
to experience with it. So the baseline for me came from yoga in
a sense that I was like, oh, I thought I was this really
athletic person. I thought I was good, and I can't even sit in
pigeon pose, you know, which is like a really deep hip opener,
and it made me just remember all of my old surgeries and fears and so
like the stuff that comes out of you, the physical experience that are offered
by learning where your baseline is that I would recommend just trying to come back
to every once in a while, because then, let's say you've took a
year off of yoga, the first time you get into a pose, you're
like, who I've I've been doing it myself, you know kind of thing,
and night there. I think Nick you said earlier, there's a barrier
that people will just like stop going. I think guilt is one of the
highest reasons to not get back to yoga because people don't want to see how
far they've fallen off. Oh wow, that's interesting. I love what you
just said. By the way, like the greatest gift of the human body
is to feel, because like spiritually that I don't know, it's like that's
the only reason that we are here, you know what I mean, is
to feel. I believe that, you know, if you believe that we're
all like these little pieces of this like eternal energy or whatever energy doesn't like
see things, or taste things, or feel things. But that's the gift
of the human body. I love the way that you phrase that. That's
so cool. Oh thanks, Yeah, that was one of the things that
kind of inspired me writing the book, The Gift of Healing Hands. It
sounds like I'm talking about my gifted healing hands, but really I'm talking about
that you. Everybody has the ability to kind of learn more about their body,
how their body is speaking to them. What you just said, like,
we may not all be like I'll put it in right, you know,
in rhyme and bloods sets this term. We may not all be like
visual experiencers. But when you're in the presence of something like way greater than
you people who are really attuned to their body, that you can feel changes,
you can feel shifts. So the more that you have some type of
organized movement practice to get all of the humanness and like the you know,
the negativity of life office, I think you just are, you know,
have less less barriers to that. I think it was ton top there you
go. I think I was tongue tied a few minutes ago. I said,
that doesn't mean we can't believe it doesn't work. I think I meant
to say, it doesn't mean we can't believe it does. Work hard to
clear that up. But Marina, when we were on the phone the other
day, just kind of like touching base. You have talked about how you
had some anecdotes about, you know, situations where through your practice you've you've
found you know, people have recovered from things, and we didn't get into
detail about that, but I would love to hear some of your experiences where
you've like live witnessed people releasing traumas or healing certain illnesses and anything you can
think of in that regard. I would just love to hear about that.
Yeah, if everyone's not like super we talked about being a layman and yoga
still to this day, chiropractic is still you know, a little bit out
there for people. My job is to assess the movement of your joints,
so not just your spine, but I'm looking at the whole body to see
how you move, how your brain speaks to everything. So my chiropractic yoga
practice really started very physical. I just care you know, people only come
to you when you're in pain usually, so it starts as like chasing pain
and then I just started having these like really interesting experiences where, you know,
I was practicing in Oklahoma, I may say, so, you know,
you're in the center of the Bible belt. I could really be careful
with my verbiage, right. You gotta like know who you're talking to.
You ask them up front, like what's your faith system? Like before I
start spewing. People just really put a lot of power and belief down there,
religion or not belief. So I could, you know, be the
best doctor in the world. But if someone was dead set that no,
you know, Jesus put his handle me on Churts on Sunday, and that's
why my back pain's gone. I'm just happy that they're feeling better, you
know, just kind of move on. But you know, my very physical
practice started to blend into more of what I'll call like emotional pain practice.
I was discovering that these patterns and people were coming up like certain sayings like
oh, you know, I feel stabbed in my back or something like these
metaphors, and I would at the beginning, it was very embarrassed to ask
people like, hey, when you said this started last week, Like did
you have a fight with somebody? You know, there's this a sense of
betrayal or it took me many years to feel comfortable to have these conversations.
But then when I knew that it was related and that it was relevant,
now I just get right to it. First time I meet somebody, if
they mentioned this like crazy stabbing pain they woke up with two days ago,
I'm going to ask, and I will say some of the combination, like
you're asking some stories. You know, physically, when you get adjusted,
it can be a little jarring, right You're you're waking up. Yeah,
yeah, you're you're disrupting a joint capsule and you're waking up the neurology right
there, there's a lot of chemicals that come out and like amplifies every sensation.
So people can already just be a little like before for a second.
But now with my experience, I know that if you do not address the
emotional story in an injury in an area before you adjust, it does not
always go so well and interesting. Yeah, but in early practice, I've
one time adjusted this woman like I'm trained to do in school. Nothing.
It was very safe everything about it, But I didn't have that, like
I didn't trust my intuition yet so I kind of just rushed it. She
wanted to be crunched. People will say like, oh, can you go
fast? And I adjusted a part of her spine and she, you know,
her legs shot up. It worked in a chiropractic sense. But she
started crying. She like it's like she's like I think, you know,
I don't feel good, and but I just like watched her like kind of
ride it out. And I mean maybe in my mind, like a new
practitioner's mind, is like the end of my life. But you know,
maybe fifteen seconds went by and she just settled down the table, was like,
I feel open, like something, you know, some space in her
that she had forgotten she could talk to, or that her brain forgot to
take control. Was there. We became, you know, doctor impatient for
you know, years after that and have sealed whatever portal. I just punched
through the door, and ye our way kinder ways to release those sort of
things. And you know, back in that early time. Another crazy story
was a young woman who had just had a baby and maybe saw me like
a couple of months after and I was just guiding her verbally through visualizing her
delivery, and she sat up and projectile vomited in my office. What No,
So that is an example of rushing somebody, of trying to like remove
an emotion from somebody who was not ready to process it. Yet she didn
knock him back as expected. Gosh, and I of the people you still
think about many years later. But no, I would know how to make
her feel way safer in her body. You know, discuss certain things that
I get this intuitive sense come out of her, and then you know,
take her through a little mini meditation, a little guide and meditation. You
know, there's many times it's just like simple movements like whoa, my shoulders
heart For six years after this conversation, now it doesn't or that kind of
stuff, But I would say those are the craziest like eye opening early experiences
that changed my direction of chiropractic is amazing. There's a lot of amazing manual
therapies, but something was going on and I needed to like learn a deeper,
more intuitive practice and that was yoga for me. Wow, whoa,
that's fascinating. So then it sounds like there's also some sort of relationship between
the spiritual or the emotional, and it is. It is the word chira
pre her practicing no is like this the like the delivery. Yeah, gotcha,
gotcha. Yeah, it seems like there's some relationship there because I mean,
you know, do they teach you in in school that that there's an
emotional relationship with those things or is that something that you intuited school has to
teach you like very you know, research, reproduct you know, things that
they can reproduce and research, you know, very insurance based science. Yes,
certain schools are a little bit more philosophical than others. They've got roots
in like a little bit. When I was a student, I was really
hard headed. I want nothing to do with like the woo woo. So
I always just here you are and here. I think it just like took
after you graduate and you get set free, like you know, I allowed
myself to be like a woman healer, not a not a man practical like
I was taught to be. So that's awesome that I like that fascinating Yoga
to me feels like an internal massage, you know what I mean. Like
my wife and I actually she's right here, say hi. She and I
got into a practice for a while back in what the Fall, The Fall
Jimmy Winter. We got into a few months, we were going to yoga
every week and it was hot yoga and I can't remember the terms, but
the terms you said earlier, what is it visanna vnyasa. Yes, it's
like that style, like you were explaining exact movement and it's a little more
brutal, and you know, by the end you're like you're begging for death.
But I want to say afterwards, I always felt like the equivalency of
how it feels when you get a massage on your muscles. It felt like
that on the inside, like there's there's there's definitely there's definitely like an immediately
therapeutic effect from doing Maybe that's because it was hot yoga and the heat combined,
you know, loses muscles. I don't know, but it felt amazing
and I wanted I was just gonna say, but my first time ever doing
yoga many many years ago, probably eight years ago at this point, I
had this session and they were the instructor was explaining there's this muscle down here,
like in your hip region, called the soas muscle that stores trauma,
and they were making us do this stretch and I don't remember how to do
this stretch, but I was just curious on your take about that, like
about the sas muscle, if it's if there's anything to that doesn't really store
trauma. Have you seen any experiences where people have actually like cried when they
do you know what I'm saying. There's this like viral TikTok trend right now
where they're like stretcher so as muscle and they're recording themselves crying and stuff,
like what's your take on that. What's a deep muscle? So that could
make anybody cry if you get in there there. So a specifically is part
of like your very deep core line, So a line of muscles that is
string attached all the way from like the outside your temple all the way down
through to the arches of your feet. So it goes through all of our
deepest levels of tension, you could say. So like when people are nervous
or have potentially some you know, traumas, like you're calling it, some
PTSDs will the body will try to look for stability, So maybe you clench,
maybe you clench your butt, maybe you suck in your stomach, maybe
you hold your breath. There's a lot of these clench sites along this deep
core line. I wouldn't say the so is specifically is the king of storing
traumas every cell in your body. I believe ken right right. I think
most people, just in our modern movements, we don't we walk forward,
bike forward, jog forward, sit in a forward facing position. So the
so is just tends to get super tight. Yoga is one of the only,
like weird different planes of motion that wakes us up and breaks us open.
So hip classes will bring some good stuff to the surface. That's for
sure interesting. But you think the trauma stored all over the body? Oh
yeah, yes, it's in the DNA. Bro. It's deep in there
as it is in DNA, and it's just thinking about like we always talk
about vibrations on the show, right, And I say, wait, because
you know I'm always here, You're with us. Hey, I'm listening.
I'm talking to you in my mind all the time. And you go tell
your mom she's our buddy. Yes I will, She'll be listening for sure.
Yeah, you just talk about like you said a macrocross on a microcosm
earlier. Every little cell in our body has its own perfect little environment of
charge around it. That's why we're this huge accumulation of hopefully a synchronized system
of charges. When you have a event that offends that charge, it can
leave the cells in that area hypercharged or lacking and looking for to latch onto
other charges to balance it. So we can get real nitty gritty, but
I'll keep it simple. Your body saves memories of moving with the emotion that
it affiliates the movement with. You might have to explain that one yep for
nick, I got it, I got it. Well I'm not okay,
really I need to hear the part of your brain and I won't get into
that, but the part of your brain that's I got a psychology major,
so I actually would really like to hear the part of your brain. Okay,
the amygdala, the the limbic system, the limbic system of the brain,
and a couple of different different things. But the limbic system is where
it's going to store our memories. Our memories tied to the emotion that we
experience during the memory. So that can get really it's it's a normal process.
It's super helpful for us. But if you when you roll your ankle,
as is the easy example explain to patients, like when you rule your
ankle. All these things go through your head right like shock, shame,
humiliation, maybe because someone just washed you fall off the curb every time now,
even when your ankle's not feeling you know, sore. Every time you're
you start to roll your ankle again, all these bread flags go up to
the brain like whoo woo, woa, we didn't like what happened last time.
You better stop real fast so it shortens your muscles and doesn't let you
go. That way, you can get this burst of humiliation and shame for
no reason. You could just be like sitting at your desk, like I
just walk to get water. What happened? So yoga is like the ultimate
opportunity to put yourself in extreme positions that you haven't maybe done a long time,
and a lot of those memories come up. Wow wow, that makes
a lot of sense. Also, it's cathartic, it's lots of grass.
Then you just like you have to feel it. That's just the easiest way
to not take someone's word for it. You know, learning about your bodies
step one, But then someone kind of has to show you where you know
you have this belief in your body it can be changed and then you feel
completely different. You're like, oh, now I believe you. Yeah,
well, I think you have a particularly interesting point of view because you you're
I mean, you have all of this medical history and then now you you
marry that with yoga, like you've You've said multiple things in this interview,
like you know, was it would you say the soas or soa as the
muscle going from the top all the way down to the bottoms of your feet,
and it's you're always moving forward, you're sitting forward. And that's why
yoga like stretches and breaks that it helps you stretch that thing that doesn't get
stretched very much. I mean that alone is like, you know, it
clicks in my mind. I'm like, oh, that's why. And then
also what you just said with traumas being related to specific motions and how being
in extreme positions can break that, Like I knew that talking to you was
going to be profound, but I mean it's like I'm it is fully clicking.
Now. I've always felt like this vague. I don't know the thing
about yoga where I'm like, it's awesome, I get it, but I
don't like fully understand, like how why yeah, yes, And now I'm
getting it. I wanted to share two I'm sorry, I wanted to share
two little anecdotes with you. So my grandma, she'll be ninety in just
a few months, and she's she's very healthy for for a woman of her
age. I mean, I'm telling you, she really gets around and like
she would shock you. She doesn't have any underlying illnesses or anything like that.
And she's she's pretty darn good, great shape for an eighty nine year
old woman. And one thing that ever since I was a child, that
she has always bragged me about and she still will do it to this day.
Shit Well, I mean I say brag, it's more like, look
what I can do, you know what I mean, not brag, but
she'll she'll reach right down and she'll touch her toes. And I got that,
Yeah, she can still do that. She could touch her toes.
And that got me to thinking, like, you know, my grandma's eighty
nine. Is she's so proud about how she can touch her toes. I've
never met anybody else her age be able to just get down and do that,
and and it got me thinking like maybe there's something to that. Her
whole life, she's she's made it, you know, like back then when
we were in school, it was like you gotta do the toe touches at
the physical exam and pete, you know what I mean. I think maybe
her generation was encouraged to do that more. Maybe I'm just making that up
in my head, but I know that my grandma has been doing this her
whole life as just a general daily practice. Gets out of bed and touches
her toes, and I'm like, you know, she's probably stretched. It's
not yoga, but she's wretched so much of like her hamstring, her calves,
her lower back, and it's kept her loosen, limber and pretty healthy
and lively. And I got to think, and there's something too that there's
got to be so in the past, like I don't know, a month
or two. I don't do it every time, you know, every time
we shower. We're not always just like have all the time in the world.
Sometimes you're in a rush and you gotta go. But like in those
times when I'm like, let me just chill for a minute and take a
shower, might be TMI, but whatever, grow up. Not you guys
the ones out there listening that might think it's TMI. I'll let the hot
water run, and you know, I'm usually playing Solfeggio's in the shower now
in addition to like every night when I sleep, I have this waterproof jblung.
I hang it on my like my little soap rack, and I just
I play frequencies in the shower and I boom it too, like I'm showering
not only in water, but in frequencies, you know, And I'll let
the hot water run, and I just like I'll just like slowly just not
just like touch my toes, but I'll just like stay there for the heat
in the water and the moisture and the frequencies and just like stretch as long
as I possibly can. And I have to say, it feels incredible.
Yeah, I feel like it has been a practice that I will never quit.
It just feels so amazing, like from like that internal massage we were
talking about. Yeah, there's a couple I mean, of course, like
you got to be in like a safe place, a safe warm up whatever.
I can't just like they say this, but usually when I when I
would teach classes and I would get people that I could see them like and
there's a couple of poses like that are steep forward folds that people usually bail
from. I know they've been prepared for it, so it's safe. And
I would usually say when you want to get out, stay for five breaths.
Could you explain that again for Nick again? Yeah, I think that
your forward fold in your shower, which also that is a marriage decision to
allow you to play salvagi frequencies like that. Well, what would you feel
like, Oh my gosh, turn Well, she's not in the shower every
time, some like Bryan shower. Oh well, it's in the shower.
Sometimes I do shower alone. But but and also I did want to say
this. This is a yoga pose that I learned. I think it's like
you don't reach out with your fingertips and touch your toes, but you actually
like fold your arms up like this and just freely hang. Are you familiar
with that one? Amazing? It's amazing. Yeah. So deep flexion,
which means bending forward like that, is the most pull on your nervous system.
So when you back bend and you go this way, it's more of
like a joint compression. But when you really bend into a ball, you're
like pulling on that nervous system. And if the nerves don't slide very well
through your muscles, your fashion, maybe a joints blocking something from sliding,
your body's going to tell you about it. So it sends out these alarm,
these alarms. It says, WHOA, what are you doing? We've
gone too far? Stay you know, stay here or get back out of
it. And I can see people start to shake or like you can tell
they're not breathing anymore. They're not actually experiencing the benefits. And I would
say, hey, close the eyes, stay for five breaths in and out.
Yep, five breaths at you or max. You know, obviously,
don't hurt yourself, but it's in your mind so often that you're approaching discomfort.
And we do not like to be uncomfortable. But that's where a lot
of the changes are made in those just like five, you know, close
to your barrier, close to your mental barrier. And then the breath is
like what I describe as like could the control all delete of a computer?
Wow? The breath tells yeah, the breath resets the neurology. And it's
just the bridge between the systems that we can control, like muscles like bending
and the systems that we don't have to think about. You don't tell yourself
to breathe when you're sleeping. You don't tell your heart to pump. So
breath is the only thing that can hop between those two worlds. Breath is
like the thing when mastery is achieved of the breath to a degree, you
can control those automatic systems. I mean, it's it's pretty amazing. You
guys are like this one. And the last few months, my dad and
my mom and my sister have been really in the wim Hoff breathing and you
know, I don't live in the same town as them, so like I
you know, every few weeks or months, I'll go through. And the
last time I was in town, we did a wim Hoff breathing session and
that was just I highly recommend it. Just go to YouTube. Pick like
a ten minute guided wim Hoff session. It's insane. It's it's tough.
You know, you're doing a minute and a half long breath holds. You're
working up to this. When I was a child, I was always scared
of like drowning or I have this like weird subconscious fear of like deep ocean
water and sharks, and it's like I'm a great swimmer, but it's like
I don't want to drown. I don't want to be outstranded in the ocean
or something and knock my head. And I can't say, I don't know,
it's just a it's an irrational fear. So I never really cared to
hold my breath for a long period the time. I think the longest I
ever did as a kid was like forty seconds, you know, but sure
enough doing wim half breathing. I was holding my breath for a minute and
a half and I could have kept going and going and going. And by
the third breath hold, I felt this strange sensation where I started to become
really lucid, and like this incredible tingling was happening all over my body.
I was holding my breath, I was in a meditative position holding Mudra's and
I had my eyes closed, and I just kept thinking, like, lean
into the discomfort. It's making me stronger, It's making me stronger, Like
you were saying, that's where I brought it up. You know, the
barrier in your mind where discomfort is and the breath is the bridge between that.
There is something very profound to what you were just describing in my experience.
Yeah, I can't say I practiced swim half breath. I have a
lot of patients who do, and I just always recommend if you are someone
who suffers from like a little bit of an excessive response to emotional triggers or
things like that, you can hype yourself up. You know, you can
put yourself into a little bit of a state of panics. So you want
to do it with friends, You want to do it with somebody who knows
what they're doing. I'm the opposite Ryan. I find that I start to
get freaked out when I have no air. So in yoga, there's something
called a box breath. They'll describe like count three seconds inhale, hold it
for three seconds, exhale for three you know, six seconds. Usually the
inhale is doubled for the exhale, and then I have people don't breathe back
in yet, So you make up this little like box as you inhale hold,
exhale hold. The exhale hold is when I see a lot of emotions
come to the surface because someone's you know, thrown in their face of that.
We don't have the resources that we need to survive potentially if you kept
like this, you know, if you ever got hit in the stomach and
like I've definitely got my wind knocked out me playing soccer growing up, Like
you are conscious trying to tell yourself to breathe and you cannot breathe, right,
Yeah, you're like a prisoner in your own body. Like the same
is what I was describing, Like that's one of my you know, like
not being able to breathe in general, not not even just with the water.
Yeah. So the the holding the exhales have always been like more of
a personal practice for me. I feel I was a singer, so I
feel good with holding my inhale. But it's it's really powerful to just tap
into that part of your mind that controls those things all day long, even
you know, if you're conscious of it or not. I'm glad you brought
up box breathing because I told you I had two stories I wanted to share
with you. You just so remember I had set my wife and I had
been going to this yoga place. Well, we were going Fridays at three.
We were doing like the hot yoga thing, and then one week she
was like, do you want to do like a what was it. It
was like a crystal bowl frequency meditation, sound bath, sound bath, and
I was like, cool, whatever, that sounds awesome, let's do it.
Are you listening to frequencies? So we get there and they're like laying
all these mats in a circle around us with you know, around a practitioner
who's entire jobs. She didn't speak a word, she just played these balls.
And then there was a yoga instructor who was like guiding us through these
extremely gentle poses. Like we didn't stand up or sit up. It was
like you lay down, you might slowly roll over and like lay your arm
out like it wasn't even like you know, downward dog and stuff like that.
It was yeah, very gentle poses. And the whole point of this
was meditation. And it was about an hour and a half and towards the
end of rolling through the poses, she had to start doing the box breathing.
But the way she had to do it was four in, four hold,
four out, four hold. So it's like just this constant cycle and
she was guiding us through, accounting the seconds, telling us exactly how to
breathe to where we didn't even have to think about it. And I promise
you. I had an out of body experience. I remember like feeling this
incredible pressure on my third eye area and just kind of like blacking out,
not in like not in like a bad way, but blacking out like I
was not awake, but I also wasn't just like in a nor normal state
of sleep, and I just kept feeling this incredible pressure on my third eye.
It kind of like I didn't have a specific dream or anything, but
when I came to at the end, I was like, what the hell
was that? Yeah, this this was definitely something to it with the breathing,
the meditation, the crystal balls, which they were tuned to certain frequencies.
It was. It was bizarre. Let's just they have a gong there,
No, the gong gets me. That was probably the first time I've
ever felt like, like you said, like an under body experience, like
felt like a shape shifter, like when the gong hit me and I just
you hear it, but your whole body hears it, and you feel like
you resonate, you get just get bigger. You're like this dissonance. So
every time I hear it gong, I'm just like who I know. I
gear up before class when I see one, I'm like, please use it.
The sound balls. The first time, I was at a yoga class
and I was laying in shravasana, this corpse pose at the end, eyes
closed. I saw her sitting up front with these bulls. I've never heard
them played in a class before. And if Nick, have you ever been
in a room with sad bolls? Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Yeah they
sound like they're moving, and yeah, I genuinely thought this woman was walking
around like playing sad balls around my head because it was like hitting me.
It was hitting me in my throat, but like on one side. So
I assumed she was over there. And when I woke up, you know,
came out of the meditation, she was sitting up front and had never
moved. So that was my first Like obviously sound travels, you know,
and affects your body in a really powerful way, but that was where like
I had resistance that Like that's how I view It's like they had resistance there
that needed to be broken up by that frequency. So they're really cool.
Yeah, it's awesome. I have to ask about acupuncture, like do you
actively practice acupuncture now that I live in New Jersey? No, Unfortunately,
it is not in my scope to needle anymore. But I practiced in Oklahoma
acupuncture and then now I just use the meridian system, So I basically am
practicing acupuncture without inserting needles. Just like Yoga's system of the subtle body.
They believe that prana is flowing through your body and it flows through the chakras.
Acupuncture has a very similar view on that. They just call it different
things, right, everybody's talking about the same thing. Oh yeah, yes,
Their subtle body medicine is meridians. And there's these lines of chi or
you know, life force that flow through you, and they all correlate.
The main twelve that people would know about correlate with an organ, and just
like the chakras tend to have these temperaments of like you know, let's say
the heart chakra is a very love affected place, or the root chakra is
a very fear affected place. The meridians and the organs that house these flows
usually have a temperament as well. So let's say like people who are suffering
with resentment and bitterness, and they may have actually have liver issues. So
these these organs and not in their cellular physicality like chemically if you went to
a doctor, your liver may be fine, but do you an acupuncturists They
believe that your liver is not working, you know, harmoniously with other organs,
and it's preventing this lovely flow of vital energy in your body. So
they would needle along the liver meridian or its counterpart to kind of like bring
you back to a nice threshold of equilibrium. That's amazing. When you start
talking prana and the vital bodies, I'm like, you know this, Yeah,
this is some exciting stuff. Yeah. I would say to anybody who's
never had acupuncture, I just kind of call it mandatory meditation. Oh cool,
got needles in you, so you kind of have to lay there,
kind of have to take it. So when you go to a true acupuncturist,
you may be laying there for forty five minutes to an hour with you
know what I consider these What I mean, metal is a conductor with electricity,
right, so it's just like affecting the electric circuit of your body.
You could have some really cool experiences. Something you said there reminded me of
Louise. Hey, are you familiar with Louise? He absolutely, you said
that like it's believed in acupuncture that you know, there may be certain organs
that when we have traumatic experiences or certain emotional responses, that particular organs might
not be working as well well. Louise, Hey, if I remember correctly,
it's the she wrote books about healing through certain affirmations, like certain cancers
and certain illnesses come from certain subconscious beliefs. Like like, let me explain
it like this, Like when we have certain subconscious beliefs, we actually are
self afflicting these illnesses. We're sort of like manifest them. It's it's like
a mystical alternative view of you know, diseases and things like that. And
like if you dive into it, it's like there are specific affirmations to heal
uh specific illnesses. And I have a friend, a very good friend named
Larry who he's let's just say he's he's in Dad's book. He was instrumental
in introducing us to multiple officers in the CIA, and he has a lot
of resources at his disposal. I've witnessed some people that he knows personally who
were actually healed of very profound, uncurable illnesses through hypnotic regressions. And he
was just like a big believer in a lot of these mystical, esoteric healing
arts, and which is one of the reasons he was so interested in my
dad and why he was flying us out there for study and things like that.
And like the Louise hay stuff always kind of hit me a certain way,
like the concept that you know, we're actually manifesting a lot of these
illnesses ourselves with our beliefs supposedly, you know, and what you said with
acupuncture just kind of remind Yeah, no, I'm really familiar. I'm sure
she began kind of the progression that turned into hay House Books and hay House
publishing companies, so you know, almost like all of the top prominent self
help healers in that prescriptive transformative health world are hay House books and a lot
of her She'll describe like the symbolism of diseases, the symbolism of pains as
metaphysical, meaning like above the physical. So in medical world, there's something
called psychosomatic pain, meaning like you have this kind of psychological not necessarily like
an imbalance, but because it doesn't need to be chemical, you could just
have this image of yourself as let's say limping, and you know, the
goes down to the soma psychosomatic. It will tell your body that you are
susceptible to blank. And the more you tell yourself that, the more your
body will I believe, shape yourself to match the belief. So I really
like Louise Hay's work. She doesn't have the movement component that I think is
the next step. It's like if someone I could fix someone's back, but
if they're dead set that it's going to hurt when they've bend forward, their
body will not let them do it. Yeah, they can tell themselves.
Yeah, you could tell yourself I'm strong, I'm strong, I'm strong.
But if your body doesn't believe you, it's not gonna do it. So
there's this freedom of like seeing to believe and seeing not clean movement, but
seeing free movement is like one of the easiest medicines to just like steam,
you know, build up a little progress and motivate yourself that you can heal
yourself. That's deep. I'm really glad we had this conversation because I feel
like, even for the listener out there who has no interest in yoga whatsoever,
you have provided what I believe to be a lot of very profound wisdom
in the healing arts. I mean, this has been a really awesome conversation.
Oh great, did you have a good time? Oh my gosh,
absolutely. I It's like, yeah, I just get I'm so passionate about
this, right, It's like we could probably talk forever. Well, we
gotta have you on again so that we and then we gotta yeah, because
there's so much to cover. I was gonna ask about Kundalini. We'll wait
for next time. Okay, Well, I mean you know that that I
would like to know your thoughts about Kundalini, pars about Cundalini. Yeah,
I'm not I'm not trained as a Kundalini teacher, so I can speak to
it as you know, just being in the yoga world and my experiences with
it. Kundalini yoga is a branch of yoga that focuses on kind of this
reserved store of energy. They believe it lives at the base of your spine,
so maybe the lowest chakra, a lower gland. And I just had
a really great discussion with my friend Thomas shut who is a Kundalini teacher,
and I'll try to use his verbiage. He describes it as a reserve of
your highest potential just sitting down there and through practices like yoga, through breath,
through just living our lives, and you know, we can with intention,
we can help this energy kind of work its way up to higher points
of our system and completely shift our vibration. It gets a bad rap because
usually that upward spiral of energy is depicted as snakes, and that really freaks
out people who don't understand like the pure component of it, Like any practice,
any spiritual practice, you can, you know, turn it into a
bad thing if that's who you are. But a lot there's a lot of
religious you know, resistance to the word kundalini. So I would say anybody
listening who are has already turned their ears off because we said kundalini. It
does not need to be dark. It is just about learning how to allow
your control, like how you control yourself versus learning how to control yourself vers
letting a lower version of yourself be in control. Gotcha. So it's not
it's not like a specific different style of yoga. It's more of an intentions
thing or a mentality. It is both. It's a lot of repetitive breathing.
That's called breath of fire, where you're trying to like not necessarily win
halfwa but like a yeah something. Yeah. So you're pumping energy through breath
through intention. So there's a lot of breath repetitive movements. It's all about
like ego eradicator, like getting getting like the humanness out of the way to
allow this energy freedom to pass through you. Oh cool, that's that's awesome.
Yeah. I mean if the if the CIA guys and all those other
people are coming out of the woodworks and telling Ryan's dad and needs to look
into Kunalini, that like set off a little light bulb in my head,
like it's important for some reason. It was the first time and I ever
had seen shapes like when you lay down and meditate, you know, maybe
you're kind of talking to yourself. You may see some people walk through your
brain that you saw that day. And then I just had never experienced like
this rapid, fluid progression of just losing myself into this world of shapes like
just a wild you know movie, And that was what Kundalini kind of opened
up in my mind. Now what you know what it means, I'm going
to spend the rest of my life learning. But you definitely tap into something
different than staying in these like physical poses through a practice that is outside of
Kundalina so interesting, so cool, just like an energy work focused yoga.
I love that. Wow, Marina, I hope you had as great of
a time as we did, or yeah, I mean I hope. I
hope I leave people with the sense that they can start yoga. You know,
we know I don't. I really like to like overwhelm people. And
it really is exactly what you just trust that like the day that you walk
into a class, it's the right day. You may not be your favorite
teacher, your favorite style, but maybe the person next to you on the
mat you were supposed to meet. Like, there's just always something really powerful
that comes from the community around yoga. So keep trying give it a chance.
I hope you'll, you know, fall in love with it like I
did. No, I think you definitely broke it down in a very absorbable
way, like a very approachable way, and in a in a spiritual,
positive, uplifting way as well, like I want to go do yoga like
right now, Like honestly, after this conversation, I think a lot of
people are gonna go give it a try. People, go on, try
it. It doesn't need to be long. Just just sit, move briefe
and go get cracked. What Oh chiropractic lunch. Oh, cry, crunch,
crunch, caitated crunch, caviated, capitated cat joint cavitation, Oh,
my gosh, joint cavitation. Okay, capitation. All right, Well,
hey, listen, thank you so much for coming on you guys in person,
if you're listening, if you're not watching, that was a kiss.
And anything that you feel like you did you get everything off your check?
Is there anything that you feel like you've missed? I mean, I think
someday we definitely should touch base with some like details of shockers. That would
be awesome. Oh yes, yes, yes, okay, cool, cool,
cool, Yes, all right, well you know how we in the
show, right I do? Okay, you're ready? Yes? Three?
Two one? Weird things happened in the backyard. Let's house said, so
weird, kind of close. You're too like spiraling on the end. No
enough, man, Wow, it's come. I never know shanging happy