Become One Living
Welcome to the BecomeOne Living Podcast. While yoga maybe the entry way into a deeper understanding of self, we invite you to dive even deeper into your practice. Here we will explore the transformative power of yogic philosophy, anatomy, and mindfulness.
In each episode, we embark on a journey through the rich
tapestry of yoga, drawing from various traditions and perspectives. From the ancient
teachings of The Gita to the mystical insights of the Akashic records, we delve
into the timeless wisdom that has guided seekers for centuries.
We bridge the gap between science and spirituality, exploring
the fascinating intersection of neuroscience and anatomy with yoga. Discover
how understanding your body's inner workings can enhance your practice and
overall well-being.
We also explore cutting-edge techniques like Internal Family
Systems and Neurosculpting, offering practical tools for personal growth and
self-discovery. Our goal is to equip you with a holistic toolkit for navigating
the complexities of modern life.
We’ll share our endless hours of study and insights, providing
you with a deeper understanding of yoga's core principles and how they can be
applied in today's world. Whether you're a seasoned practitioner or just
beginning your practice, there's something here for everyone.
Delve into the world of challenging entrenched beliefs, welcoming fresh perspectives, and unraveling unnoticed habits through our podcast. Join us while we discuss a wide range of topics and how yogic principals can weave its way through all facets of life. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
Join us on this enlightening quest for self-discovery, healing,
and personal transformation. The BecomeOne Living Podcast is your guide to
unearthing ancient wisdom for modern-day living.
Subscribe today to embark on a thought-provoking journey towards a more enlightened and informed self.
Become One Living
An Introduction into the BecomeOne Method
Our longest episode yet! Join Jody as she brings you through her BecomeOne Method. In this episode we discuss how to integrate neuroscience and Internal Family Systems (IFS) into your yoga practice. Jody has masterfully combined functional methods with yoga’s eight limbs to create a unique and holistic experience. Here we clear up common misconceptions and delve into the importance of understanding skeletal segments and muscle groups to adapt poses to individual needs.
Transitioning from a high-energy environment to a state of relaxation is no easy feat, especially for those coming from bustling cities. Jody reveals her method of easing participants into their practice through functional contemplation and movements. Discover the crucial role of interoception—recognizing internal signals such as hunger and tiredness—and how it ties into embodying yoga teachings. We'll also debunk myths about emotions being stored in muscles, emphasizing instead the nervous system’s role in emotional reactions.
The episode goes beyond the physical, exploring the Become One Method for a deeper connection to self. Learn how this approach empowers self-discovery, encouraging individuals to focus on feeling and understanding themselves rather than just feeling better. Through self-inquiry and the practice of yoga's eight limbs, Jody highlights the importance of present-moment focus and self-allowance.
We would love to hear from you! Email us at becomeoneliving@gmail.com or reach out to us on Instagram at BecomeOne Living.
Greetings. How are you?
Speaker 2:Hello everybody.
Speaker 1:Welcome to To.
Speaker 2:Become One Living.
Speaker 1:A little information for my friends. We are dog-friendly here, so if you hear growling or papers ruffling or any little sounds, we have a little Nunu and a little Chewy here.
Speaker 2:They're welcome.
Speaker 1:They're welcome. Yeah, we love them, but if you hear those things, please forgive us, but we can't leave these little guys home, right? So that's what it is, thank you. No, we can't leave you home, dan. That was my line. My name is Jodi Dahmerstadt-Boizitz.
Speaker 2:And my name is Dan Boizitz.
Speaker 1:Dan is my husband.
Speaker 2:Jodi is my wife.
Speaker 1:It's just we're being silly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you got to be silly sometimes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, having fun, welcome. This episode today is about the functional approach to yoga and the become one method, how I've taken this functional approach that I learned and synthesized it, adding in neuroscience and IFS, internal family systems with Dick Schwartz, and brought it together in a class and the class then has all eight components of the eight limbs of yoga, so that the class that you take is the whole system of yoga and is not just asana and breathing. And, by the way, if you all didn't know this, pranayama is not breathing In the eight limbs of yoga. Some people think pranayama means breathing and pranayama prana means life force. So pranayama is actually techniques to enforce, enliven and train and guide your life force.
Speaker 1:Now, breath does that, but it doesn't mean breathing, so anyway.
Speaker 2:It's a little just like everything else. It's a little more deep. Yes, it's a little more in depth, as you introduced that I was like okay, synthesize, Okay, this is Jodi sharing the tools and techniques she's used her entire life and that she's embodying and sharing as a package for people to discover, explore, get to know themselves better. It's literally, you embody what you're offering.
Speaker 1:Yes, I do, and I don't share anything or teach anything that I don't do.
Speaker 2:Magnificent.
Speaker 1:And what do I mean by that? I don't teach. I would not teach meditation when I was younger because I didn't meditate. And I would have teachers or studio owners say can you teach meditation? And I'd say no, and they'd ask why. It's easy. I said I don't do it, that doesn't matter. No, it does matter to me.
Speaker 2:To me it matters.
Speaker 1:So the functional approach. There's two aspects of the functional approach that I share in my teacher training, and it's this I share in my teacher training, and it's this. The one is when you understand skeletal segments and muscle groups, you can skillfully adapt a pose according to the human in front of you. Now what does that mean? It means every joint in the body moves a certain way. That's it. It is not different for anyone unless an injury and a trauma. We realize that. So let's just get that out there. We understand no one is ever 100% ideal. That's not what we're working towards. We're looking towards allowing someone to function at their highest capacity in this lifetime, with all they've experienced. So one in the functional approach is you have to have a basic understanding of the human body Done.
Speaker 1:When people say anatomy isn't that important, it is not the names of the anatomy but understanding that your shoulder joint behaves and functions in a certain way. Right. And some of the cues that are used in the past don't support the function of the shoulder joint. Example pull your shoulder blades down your back. That's not a functional cue, because when the shoulder blades, your blades, move down your back, when they pull them down, they pull the arm bone down and it can create compression, it could create thoracic outlet syndrome, it can create tingling down the hands. If you don't understand how these joints and bones move, your cues may not be supportive. So one is you got to understand the body a little. The second thing is you have to know the purpose of the pose.
Speaker 2:Love it. Why you're doing it?
Speaker 1:Why are you doing it and what muscles are moving away from one another that are creating a sensation Like warrior two? You take your legs really wide and the reason the width of the legs matter is to stretch and move your adductors, your inner thigh muscles, away from one another. Therefore, any other cue doesn't really matter if you don't know the purpose.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So the functional approach came into my life after brain surgery. So, january 2014, I had brain surgery and I'd go to yoga classes and I couldn't function. Nothing I could do. People were trying to align me and adjust me into these shapes. I wasn't able to do it. The functional approach allowed me to do yoga because it's this feel this in your hamstring. How you feel it, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:As long as you're feeling sensation in that muscle group.
Speaker 1:That I'm offering. So not everybody feels a forward bend in their back. And so, let's say, a teacher says, oh, you want to feel this in your lower back, but I don't. I must be doing it wrong. No, my friend, you're not. You just don't feel it there, that's okay. So the functional approach is one understanding again, your knee joint is a hinge joint. It hinges like a door, like a door opens and closes. That's what the knee joint does. That's why going from warrior one to warrior two doesn't make sense anatomically. It's not that you're going to hurt your hip, but eventually, if your foot is planted and you keep moving one to two, one to two over and over again like Dan spoke in another podcast about body work misalignment repeated over time creates injury. So if you were twisting your knee or torquing it, it could eventually add little tears or become a tear.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and effect into the hip girdle, yeah, yeah. I think that what you've created is really intelligent in terms of approach and in terms of honoring the uniqueness of the bodies. And you know, knowing how all the joints move, how the body moves and functions, allows you to then, even on a greater level, honor the uniqueness, say, of each body from one body to the next. As you know, and you've learned and have discovered for yourself, you know, people's bones, from one human to the next, have different structures. Even though it's the same bone in a human body, sometimes structurally they're a little bit different, which affects one human's ability to get into a figure four position versus another.
Speaker 1:Yes, and that's an example. In the Become One method, which is a therapeutic, functional approach, we don't say line up heel to heel or line up your feet heel to arch. We don't use those guidelines because we don't know what the head of someone's femur looks like. So what is the femur? The femur is your leg bone, your upper leg bone or your thigh bone, and how it sits into your pelvis is different. That's what Dan's speaking on. It's different for everyone. Me, I can wrap my leg around my head right now and I could do that almost my whole life. That means that's the way my bones are built. It's where my femur is positioned. Now, dan is probably never going to get his leg near his head Never and he's fairly flexible, wouldn't you say?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just I have that tight spot around like glute minimus and TFL that restricts. I'm not even sure if it is skeletal or muscular. Yeah, so I'm built different and I'm never going to get into.
Speaker 1:And how do we know, my friends, if it's skeletal or muscular? Here's some guidelines. One is if you're doing yoga for five years and something's not moving, it probably is skeletal. And an example is in baddha konasana, or butterfly pose, you're stretching your inner thighs and in this pose, when Dan sits almost cross-legged, his knees go to his ears, his knees go to his ears, my legs just fall open. And he's been doing yoga 15 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Maybe even longer, longer. So I'm not going to make Dan here's functional sit in that pose because it's not benefiting him. So what we also do in the functional approach is give people two options of poses to say, hey, dan, you may not feel this doing this shape, try this shape. So that's one. It gives freedom to people. Yeah, options to explore. And the second thing I want to share is what I've done is I've studied neurosculpting, which is founded by Lisa Wimberger We'll talk about that on another podcast and in neurosculpting I started to then take courses on neuroscience and what I've learned is there's a way you can move the body to help create induction, to induce or create an environment for relaxation to occur in your yoga practice if it's sequenced in a certain way. And that's what we share in the functional therapeutic method called Become One Method. And let me share with you all listening how can you do that for your students or for yourself? One is start with movement. People come in stressed. People come in to your class in fight or flight.
Speaker 2:You got to shake it out.
Speaker 1:You got to shake it out and for one wherever. You're listening to this. If you don't know, we live in New Jersey and the traffic in some areas and congestion, traffic and noise.
Speaker 1:Now and we live, me and Dan, live near New York City, so we live in hustle and bustle. People are running into my class. Let's say, and all of a sudden I say to you lay down and relax. Lay down in Shavasana and relax. That is almost impossible for someone to change a state that quickly, to go from rushing in or trying to get there on time to complete eyes closed and relaxation. It's scientifically impossible to go that quickly five minutes into I'm relaxed, I'm relaxed. To go that quickly five minutes into I'm relaxed, I'm relaxed, especially with all of the stimulus we have right now. People are listening to the radio, they're listening to podcasts.
Speaker 2:Instagram, youtube, social media it doesn't stop.
Speaker 1:So what we do instead is you come in, you sit down and we share something called a functional contemplation. Other people call it a Dharma talk. I don't. I'm not Buddhist. I'm not giving a Dharma talk. I'm giving you a contemplation. And why is it functional? Because it's purposeful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it helps draw you in.
Speaker 1:Yes, and it is similar to the yamas and niyamas. Here is something I'm sharing with you, my friends, that I want you to think about in your life, and then how it relates to others. So you start to inquire, or you're invited to inquire from this talk or offering I'm sharing with you. Then from there, that doesn't last more than five minutes.
Speaker 2:Well, Unless it's, you.
Speaker 1:Unless it's me, and then it can go on for hours and I apologize to anyone listening if that's happened, but I just love this stuff and what I do next is bring you from seated to tabletop for cat-cow and I get you moving. When you move the spine in flexion, that means around your back and in extension, when you open the front of your body and you continually do that, your neck moves. When your neck moves, it starts to stimulate the 10th cranial nerve, which is the vagus nerve.
Speaker 2:The wandering nerve that innervates all the visceral organs.
Speaker 1:Yes, and that is the new trendy nerve that everyone's talking about.
Speaker 2:Sweeping across the nation. Yeah, everyone's talking about Sweeping across the nation.
Speaker 1:Yes, but the good news about it is, if you get someone moving, also breathing and moving it also releases muscle tension. Now stay with me when you start to move and, yes, shake it out, or just breathe and move in a rhythmic matter your muscles start to relax and as the tension dissolves from the movement, it goes from your body up to your brain and says brain, jodi is breathing more, deeper, longer and she's stationary. I think she's safe.
Speaker 1:Nice longer and she's stationary, I think she's safe, nice. So the body informs the brain in that moment and says we can relax, we can go from heightened arousal or anxiousness and nervousness, we can tone it down a little and take a breath. So, cacao, and then we keep going and we keep moving and the first 20, 30 minutes of class, barely any instruction, with all movement linked with the breath. I'm not saying fast, I'm saying movement linked with the human in front of you's breath to get them into their body. So after 20 minutes I then have everyone pause and say notice where you are now, what do you notice? Because what I have learned through IFS and studying neuroscience we have lost a connection with our inner signals called interoception Meaning. Most people don't know when they're tired, most people don't know when they're hungry.
Speaker 2:Ignore when they have to go to the bathroom.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:That type of stuff.
Speaker 1:If you don't know those signals, then you don't know your body, and if you're not listening to your basic needs, how can we say we do yoga or even teach yoga to to embody this practice more and more, how can you embody these teachings? That's why I like the functional approach, because it's purposeful, meaning if I'm cranky or tired or my back hurts, I can do movements of yoga that are movements I do every day to help me function in my life. In my life. Something else we do is we stretch, and I'm going to recommend this to yoga teachers out there hip flexors, hip flexors, hip flexors, quads, hip flexors those are the muscles I suggest opening as soon as you can. And quads are the front of your thigh muscles and your hip flexors are the muscles that hold your upper and lower body together. They attach in your legs and go up to your ribs, go up to your spine.
Speaker 2:Sorry, Into your yeah, into your low back.
Speaker 1:And into your low back. This muscle is called the psoas and some people say, oh, the psoas holds emotions, or the psoas is the sole muscle. And I'm going to tell you a little secret no, it doesn't, no, it doesn't. And another little secret your muscles don't hold emotions. I'm going to say that again your muscles do not hold emotions. Now you have made. How many of us have heard that? I hear the crowd going wild.
Speaker 2:I hear everyone going.
Speaker 1:I did. I did. What are you saying? You're wrong. Hear me out. Your nervous system, your nervous system, holds the reaction to situations. So your nervous system holds the reaction and the emotions let's say, and that informs your muscles. Our muscles don't hold emotions. Hey, bicep, are you happy today? How are you doing? Wake up, be happy. It's so weird, but when you say that to someone too, I've had teachers say your pelvis is an emotional graveyard. No, that's what they told me, dan.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, I got so scared I'm like wait what's happening in my pelvis? That's where I hold everything there's gravestones.
Speaker 1:You hold your emotions in your pelvis. That's what someone said. Now, is some of this perhaps correct? Yes, yes and no. We have our intestines that sit in our pelvis, and the cells that make up our intestines are the same cells that make up our brain tissue, and that is why it could feel like we hold a lot of emotions there. But we have hair in our intestines and that's like when your hair stands up on your arms Follicles yeah.
Speaker 1:The hair stands up on your arms. That's what happens in your gut Right Now interoception. If you ignore when you get butterflies in your belly, if you ignore signals from your gut saying I have a pit in my stomach or I got butterflies or I got agita whatever, saying I have a pit in my stomach or I got butterflies or I got agita whatever, if you ignore that, you're now cutting off your connection to self. And then you say I want to be intuitive.
Speaker 2:Well, good luck you don't even know when you have to take a poop. Yeah right, You're not trusting your signals.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So this functional approach of yoga is, oh my God, it's a way of living. It's a way of living, and I used yoga to live life because I was just surviving.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:I lived frozen. I lived where I was malnourished, even when I was eating, where I was malnourished even when I was eating. Because if you are in freeze or fight or flight especially freeze you won't digest food. What does that mean? It means if you've had a trauma, an illness or something scary a car accident your intestines could shut down because they say Jodi's in danger. Why do we need to digest? We need to keep her alive. Yoga helped me realize the reason my belly wasn't working was because I was scared to death. I was frozen.
Speaker 1:The practice of the functional approach says we don't care what the shape of the pose looks like. This isn't a performance. You know handstands. Who cares? What I care about is can you live in this body that you were given for this lifetime and be friended? Can you feel the signals, the call and answer it? And I couldn't for years. So I kept showing up on the mat and showing up on the mat and doing asana. So the functional approach also I call this. I created neuro sequencing so we move people to help them say oh my God, my muscles are relaxing, now my mind feels a little clearer. Then we stretch the hip flexors for multiple reasons, but here's a major one your hip flexors connect in your spine, where your diaphragm connects Sure.
Speaker 2:You can share some fibers right way up there, l4, l5 with the diaphragm, yeah.
Speaker 1:So your diaphragm and these leg muscles, your leg muscles, your hip flexors, they share fibers. If you're sitting all day or you're rounded over posture, your hip flexors can get short and tight. They impact the movement of your diaphragm.
Speaker 2:Okay with that.
Speaker 1:Now what does that mean? Short shallow breath means anxiety. Short shallow breath means anxiety. Short shallow breath means fear. It can mean or increase depression, Lack of oxygen. And that's why, In this method and the functional approach, we stretch hip flexors a few times before we start to open the legs up in warrior two or triangle. We penetrate that area and I've been told, after 30 minutes of this method, people say they feel complete and they can leave.
Speaker 2:Yeah, say they feel complete and they can leave.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So if you're a yoga teacher or you do yoga, I invite you to explore this Cat-cow. Some sun breaths and then low lunge, high lunge, low lunge, again hip flexor, hip flexor, and then come and stand at the top of the mat and notice what's available to you.
Speaker 2:I feel like that after the first 25 minutes, the first half hour, I feel, oh, I could come to Shavasana. It feels pretty complete, especially if you get a quadricep stretch in.
Speaker 1:Yes, after all of that, we have a quadricep stretch, because everyone's quads are tight nowadays. So you open that and now we have the ending poses. And the ending poses aren't five breaths, eight breaths, ten breaths, they're three to six minutes. I'm going to say that again. How we wrap up our class is with a three to a six minute poses, because the person's moving and moving, and moving and moving. They're focusing dharana, dhyana, focus, meditation and dropping in. So in yin they're yin-esque poses, they're yin poses. We do yin at the end and we hold the poses longer to allow the person to be with themselves in an edge, which means you have a sensation that could be uncomfortable. So now you're not only building a physical capacity to be with discomfort, you're building an emotional and mental capacity to show up for discomfort and mental capacity to show up for discomfort.
Speaker 2:Cool, it's been a lifetime in the making. You've been developing this for quite some time and being influenced, but also health concerns and then adding in a great meditative meditation practice. Your mindfulness to your practice is super, super diligent.
Speaker 1:I never meant to do this, to create this method. It came out of necessity to function, because yoga now offers music and playlists, which is fine, it's lovely, but years ago there was never music. Traditionally there was no music in yoga. Even in Ashtanga, which is one of the first systems of yoga created, there was no music. It was your breath. So now we have music which could add a layer of distraction and I would have teachers.
Speaker 1:Years ago I was the director of teachers years and years ago and when I was the director of teachers I would ask the teacher why did you do that? Because it's fun. I wanted to be creative and creativity and choreography is for dancing. It's not for yoga, Because the more poses that are added and the more complex poses that are added, the more the mind is distracted. So something also about the method that I teach there is no music, it is quiet in the room and simple, basic, repeatable poses that are challenging. My last class was simple, basic, the peak was challenging. People left saying wow, that was hard. I'm not saying make your classes easy peasy, but the more poses that you have, it also means the less time in between or in the pose to meet yourself and to arrive.
Speaker 2:And that's a beautiful place to be.
Speaker 1:What I wanted and what I want to offer you all that are listening. I want my practices to impact my life and I want to be able to measure them to some degree, that they're measurable, that I feel nicer, I feel less reactive, I smile more. I want to know this is working and I don't need to go to yoga class to do that anymore. I could do my own practice at home and I'm able to sustain because I've now embodied it and I've become the teachings. Anyone can do that. Anyone can become the teachings, but you have to practice them. And you have to practice them, my friends, as if it was life or death. It has to be your focus. It can't be a side gig. It really cannot. Mine was life or death. I felt like I was dying inside and I was still doing yoga. It wasn't helping. Nothing was helping. Therapy, body work nothing was sticking. And I finally said what are you doing? And that's when the functional approach came in. I was still doing poses and tucking the tailbone and pulling my shoulders down and feet parallel. When you backbend, I lost Jodi in that. That's not how I'm built. I walk like a duck. I used to walk like a duck and you're telling me, fix my feet and then bend back. No wonder why I hurt my back.
Speaker 1:So this came along, not through wanting to create or be right or prove wrong or make this better. It's not. You have to decide, my friends, how deep you want to go. How deep below the surface of the practice are you willing to go? And eventually, there needs to be stillness and silence in the meeting of oneself. Until that occurs, we will continually play with all these external things. Well, that didn't work and that didn't work. And one day I sat like the Buddha. The Buddha sat under the tree, under the Bodhi tree. He sat there and said I'm going to sit here until I become enlightened. And enlightenment to me is not levitating or floating or living in the ethers, it's being able to live in this world, be of this world with consciousness, compassion, consciousness, compassion and clarity. I am of this world, I pay my bills. And neutrality. How can I stay neutral in what's happening and not be a victim to the world?
Speaker 1:So these practices formed because I thought how can I make 75 minutes, 90 minutes of a little eight-limb practice, so that people can take this and use it when they leave the room, not say, oh, I feel good after yoga and they keep coming back to feel good. But feeling good isn't enough if you have to keep coming back every day to yoga class, yoga class. What can you do off the mat that will change your life and relationships? Because when you go to class, you go, you shake it out, you jam out because there's not many that don't use music, and then you leave and you're like, oh my God, that was great. And then someone cuts you off and you flip them, the bird. Yoga goes out the window. I invite you to turn towards whatever you're doing with everything you have and not let go. That's what changed my life.
Speaker 1:So when people say you meditate every day, so when people say you meditate every day, I say yes, I meditate every day, every day, every day, even on vacation. It's a lifestyle. Even when we visit my mom, even when we go anywhere, I wake up and I meditate for me, for the rituals and the relationship with self. It's a relationship with self. It's not a regiment. Yoga is not a regiment, it is a relationship with self. So the functional approach adds this freedom, not for you to do whatever you want, but an exploration to get to know yourself in this body as it is right now, because, yes, I do believe everybody can do yoga, and I know some people don't like that. Everybody can do yoga. I can teach anyone yoga because I understand the body, how it works, and so if you come in and your body doesn't work, I know how to adapt it, or I know how to guide you to adapt it. That's the functional approach, not hanging on cues.
Speaker 1:Cues navel to spine. Don't say that, because that's not how the body functions. Navel to spine will draw your belly button into your back. Your upper body hinges forward, your shoulders round. Your tailbone tucks. Now you're shortening the front body and you're saying walk around like that. If y'all could see me, I'd get up and demonstrate what that looked like, and it's weird. You would not want to hang out with me if I did that. You'd be like what's wrong with her. So a different cue is below your belly button. Draw your belly in towards your spine and up towards your ribs. Below the belly button, though, that's where your abdominals start. They start at your pubic bone, not at your navel. Dan is still here, by the way, but I could just keep going and going and going.
Speaker 2:I love this stuff and I wanted you to get really thoroughly explain what you're doing to become one method, but there's plenty of times through you explaining this that I think of energy work and body work and how they interrelate with one another. It's a lot of these things are, like I said before in another episode, is like simultaneous. You get to explore and discover two very powerful things all at once and get to know yourself deeper. You get to know yourself so well that you be kinder to yourself, that you be kinder to your greater world and you impact that way your entire life and its trajectory. And so you know you get to a place where you just won't I don't know, I don't know whatever it is there's things that we all do that you get to a place where you're like okay, you know I've had enough of that, that just doesn't suit me anymore.
Speaker 2:And this journey helps you discern what you'd like to have in your life and what you'd prefer not to do with and deal with. And it's not good or bad, it's not judging, it's actually feeling. It's deeply feeling, it's deeply listening, it's deeply experiencing for yourself what you'd like to be around and what you'd like to be in and how you'd like to be in the world. This is your life in a nutshell. To me, and our life is that pursuit, by way of the tools, of bringing calm and ease to life.
Speaker 1:The functional approach, the Become One Method, isn't about feeling better. It's about getting better at feeling and knowing who you are.
Speaker 2:That's it, it's't about feeling better.
Speaker 1:It's about getting better at feeling and knowing who you are. That's it. It's not about feeling better and some people say, well, yoga makes me feel better. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying these practices I don't do to get a result. I know scientifically it's proven and from the people that have walked the path before me it's proven. These eight limbs, these eight steps work. If you don't inquire about yourself, you're never going to change and you become a victim. If you don't know who you are in relationship to yourself and other people, you will become a victim or a martyr. They did this to me. They did that. It's not psychologically based, but it is in this way.
Speaker 1:When you do asana, the third limb, you're with you. So if you're angry at the world, you're angry at yourself on the mat. If you bully yourself like go, you could do it, go, go, go, go, you're going to bully yourself on the mat and you probably bully other people. So the mat is the reflection. Now the functional approach also does this. This is how it becomes empowering.
Speaker 1:It says do you feel this here? And you could say no, we'll try this, try that. And you don't just let someone do whatever they want. You have the shape low lunge. And if you said, dan, I don't feel it there, I would say well, try to go wider, left, right or longer. Do you feel it now? No, bring your hands here. How about now? Yes, perfect, stay with that, stay there. So I use questions. Here's the other technique in the become one method. Or as a yoga teacher ask questions, don't tell them. I tell people what to do because I want them to do a sun breath. Right, do this, do this, do this, do this. But if I'm in a pose, I say do do you feel it here? And I point to your inner thighs and they look at me and say no.
Speaker 2:I say okay, move your feet try that and you get to the try this and but and I inquire and then I inquire.
Speaker 1:Now they have to answer, and answering is empowering because most people don't even know what they want, they don't know what they feel, and after my class they'll say I don't know what just happened. They don't even know the components that went into it. But all I did was potentially help them down-regulate their nervous system, calm down a little and then take a bigger breath, then stretch their inner thighs, move their spine in six movements and then hold poses longer so they have an opportunity to be with themselves and ask them what's here now? That's the IFS piece. The internal family systems is asking what's here now, not what happened 40 years ago. What's here right now. Notice this and is this helpful?
Speaker 1:The other day I was doing yoga therapy, my yoga therapy and I was listening to a recording of a colleague and she said at one point allow your body to guide you. And I felt like I got smacked in the face and I said allow. What does that mean of doing and teaching yoga? Allow? And I asked myself do I allow myself anything? Do I allow space? Do I allow time? Do I force? And in that moment I was reminded that I was so caught up in construction and life, and leases and business that I didn't allow Jodi to be, and business that I didn't allow Jodi to be. That's why I do yoga, so this method is based in neuroscience. It's based in the philosophy and practicality, because if it ain't applicable to my life, I don't want it. If I can't apply this stuff, then take it away.
Speaker 1:The functional approach to yoga and the become one method is a method of wholeness, and it's about living yoga, and the word yoga means communication of the mind and the body, so you start to live this life, in which you are led by something way deeper than yourself, and it's that innate energy that lives and thrives within you, and they're all practical pieces, so, if you have any questions about the functional approach or the method, you can reach out at becomeoneliving at gmailcom, and you can follow us at becomeoneliving on Instagram. Yoga is a gift that was passed down thousands of years and then asana hundreds of years ago. If you commit to the practice daily, even for five minutes, it will change your life. You, though, have to be willing and wanting to actually change your life, because yoga will propel you into change and shift over time. May you invest in yourself so that you can live your fullest potential. My friends, thank you so much for joining us.
