Jivana Heyman 0:17
Hello, welcome to the Accessible Yoga Podcast. I'm Jivana, and my pronouns are he and him. I'm joining you from Chumash land, which is Santa Barbara, California. And I'm so glad you're here. Hope you're doing well. Thanks for joining me. I really love this conversation today. I get to speak with Dr. Yasmin Bedi, and she's really special because she's a gerontologist, which is a doctor for older folks, and she's a yoga therapist, and she combines both of these traditions in a really beautiful way in all of the ways she offers her work in the world. And I love to talk to her, I love to learn from her. She's taught for our previous program, The Art of Teaching Chair Yoga, and she's on faculty for our new training, which is Accessible Yoga for Older Adults. I think you'll really enjoy this conversation today, because we talk about these essential issues of aging and grief and death, and it can be a little heavy, so I guess I could give a content warning that we do talk about death a little bit, if that's something that you don't want to hear about today, I totally get it. We don't go into it too deep, but it definitely comes up in the conversation. So I hope you're open to listening and to learning from Dr. Yasmin Bedi.
Jivana Heyman 1:42
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Jivana Heyman 2:38
Hi everyone, and welcome. Welcome, Yasmin. Thanks so much for being here. I wondered if you could introduce yourself a little bit for our listeners.
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 2:47
Yes, well, thank you for having me. I'm Yasmin Bedi. I live in the UK, and I'm a medical doctor that works in the NHS, in the National Health Service, and I'm also a yoga therapist, and I've done a few courses with you, with an upcoming course.
Jivana Heyman 3:07
Oh, yeah, right. I know, I'm excited to have you involved. I love meeting you and learning from you, and you know, and I think that's why I want to talk to you today, just because I find that it's really interesting to have your experience as a medical doctor, and also as a yoga therapist, and especially around working with older adults, which is something you know, I'm just about to have my birthday, so I'm getting there, I'm 59. (Happy birthday!) And you know, having watched my parents get older and then pass away, and now dealing with my mother-in-law, who's quite old and challenged in many ways, just so conscious of that, and I just think it's something for all of us, you know, and that's your expertise, right? So maybe you could tell me more about what is your actual like, what you're doing? You're helping older adults, right?
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 3:55
Older adults, so my I'm a medical doctor, and I've had training in sort of general medicine and lots of different specialties over the years, but I've been specializing in older adults since 2013 and where I currently work, older adults is 85 and over, but within the wider NHS it can be sort of over 65, over 75. So there's a range, but actually the needs of older people, you know, younger people also have the same needs sometimes, so sometimes we will see people much younger than 65.
Jivana Heyman 4:35
So, is it a clinic that you work in? I wonder, is it structured?
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 4:38
I work in a hospital, I'm mainly at the in the emergency department. I'm based in the emergency department, seeing the new admissions coming in, either trying to make a plan to sort of ensure that they receive the care, the medical care they need, right from the get go, to follow them through, or to try and turn them around and get them home with all the community teams to support them to prevent coming back, and plugging into various clinics and things.
Jivana Heyman 5:13
And so you see, like, the older people who come into the emergency room?
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 5:17
Yeah, after they've been seen by the emergency doctor.
Jivana Heyman 5:20
Okay, I was gonna say it sounds very intense, that environment.
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 5:24
It can be. It's often... there's always something happening. I've actually been watching The Pitt, which is an American ED drama, and I watched it. I was like, oh yeah, this sounds like my... (Really does it?). Yeah.
Jivana Heyman 5:42
Okay, I haven't watched it, but maybe I should now, just to see what you're dealing with.
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 5:47
It's a very busy environment.
Jivana Heyman 5:50
Yeah. And also, it seems like an emergency room type of situation is people who are just in a very intense emotional place, and yeah, so that feels like it adds to it, not just busy, but a kind of intensity.
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 6:07
Absolutely, and actually, when, when we've got older adults with lots of needs, lots of medical conditions, maybe they're not as mobile, or they need more care, you're supporting them, but also the family. And often that's when lots of family appear, or family dynamics come to the front, and you've got to have quite in-depth conversations, often about things that people don't like to talk about, getting older, becoming more unwell, and you know, potentially dying, which is going to happen to all of us at some point.
Jivana Heyman 6:42
Yeah, wow.
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 6:44
And having those, you know, right at the front door means it's not a surprise to them later down the line, but sometimes it can be a shock that they've just arrived and we're having those discussions, but it's so important.
Jivana Heyman 6:58
Right, and so you do that, you have to tell people like you're dying or your family member is dying?
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 7:04
Yeah, yeah, and talk about resuscitation, and talking about, you know, is it going to be beneficial if you become more unwell to go to the intensive care unit with lines everywhere, or if we just do care, normal ward-based care? And it's amazing how many people have never thought about those things, even very late in life.
Jivana Heyman 7:31
Yeah, it's amazing. I often ask the groups that I teach, not the students so much, but the teachers that I train, I ask them, you know, how many of you think about death on a regular basis? And it's kind of half and half, you know, like it seems like half of the world thinks about death almost daily, and the other half just doesn't think about it at all. It's just so interesting the way we deal with mortality in general, and it's interesting considering yoga teachers too. I would think yoga teachers and yoga therapists would be more conscious of death, because it feels like that's what we're really... it's like yoga is preparation for that. (Yeah, absolutely.) Preparing us to face that. Yeah.
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 8:10
I mean, we end a yoga class in shavasana, which is the physical position that we associate with death, the corpse pose.
Jivana Heyman 8:22
Right, every class we're preparing, that's what I always say. Every class ends with shavasana. Then I would say, well, and then you can roll to your side and kind of curl up into a fetal position and get reborn again. So you can have that experience of death and rebirth in every single class, if you want to. I mean, again, a lot of students, I think, aren't ready, but I feel like for yoga teachers is good to bring that up to the forefront. In fact, I just want to say, regarding yoga therapy, I had an experience once. I went to the, do you know the IAYT, the International Association of Yoga Therapists? I was involved very early on when they were just creating the standards for yoga therapists, and there was a meeting they had called the meeting of schools, and they would talk about what the standards should be for yoga therapists, and there was no discussion of death or grieving, and in these standards, and I was shocked. (Wow.) It was so focused on healing and curing from a medical, very Western medical model, and I was just really shocked at that. And I said that in the meeting, I just feel like you're missing out on maybe the most important part.
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 9:25
Yeah, yeah. And I think, as yoga therapists, we will see people that are carrying grief, and that's a really important part of what we do.
Jivana Heyman 9:37
Oh my goodness.
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 9:40
And it doesn't need to be grieving the death of a person, it's a life event, it's, you know, all these transitions, it's so important.
Jivana Heyman 9:49
Yeah, right, our own illness or disability, or the illness or disability of our close person in our lives, or their death. And I mean, I guess as we get older it's just unavoidable to face death. I mean, you're going to lose your people, we're going to lose everything, basically. That's what yoga teaches, right? You're eventually going to lose everything.
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 10:09
Absolutely.
Jivana Heyman 10:10
Yeah, wow. And yet, you're so like, I don't know. I feel like you feel so very calm about it, and I guess you've just been talking about it a long time.
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 10:26
Yes, death has been my constant companion since my 20s, but I think my relationship, you know, I never really thought about it in myself, but life happens and you lose the people you love, and then you are forced to face up to your own mortality. And actually I find it quite comforting having been with people that have passed away, luckily very peacefully, like actually that looks beautiful, and hopefully I will share a similar experience, and that gives me hope. And it's so natural, and I think I was brought up with animals, and my animals did not survive for long when I was very young, we had fish and things, and that was almost, yeah, understanding how life is. Loving something with all your heart, and then letting it go.
Jivana Heyman 11:29
And what happened in your 20s, you mentioned? Is that when you started this work, or was there something else?
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 11:33
So that was when I started to focus, sort of my medical... became a doctor, and while I was at medical school I worked as a home care person. So my mum had retired to Wales, so I drove around these Welsh villages, these very stoic Welsh people, but I realized, you know, I found people on the floor with broken hips, and then you'd get a phone call a few days later, they passed away. And you'd see this deterioration of these very frail people, and that was where I really understood that there's something really special in supporting this population, but also that these transitions happen suddenly and unexpectedly, and there is a way that it can be not so painful, if that makes sense. There's a way to manage it and deal with it, and actually incorporate it into life. And then as a doctor, I saw a lot of people pass away, and then my mum died, and that... yeah, and so all these things have just become, yeah, a bit of a companion. I think lots of doctors will either be very open about talking about it or won't want to talk about it. Again, like the general public.
Jivana Heyman 12:58
Yeah, now I had a similar experience with it, because I came out as a gay man during the AIDS epidemic in the 80s, actually, and then in the 90s I was just surrounded by death. I mean, I lost so many people, I could name 20 people easily that died. My closest friend, and yeah, and then I worked at an AIDS hospice for a while and got to be around that too. So, I mean, but it's like you, it's just, it became kind of a... I mean, it's still traumatic, but it became something that you get more used to. And yeah, when people died peacefully, it was incredible. That's not always the case, though, in what I found, especially because I was dealing with people who are mostly in their 20s and 30s who were dying. And there was a lot of anger, and just a lot of pain and suffering. That made it hard, so it really seemed like it went either way. Yeah, but I'm curious about the yoga connection? About how that forms your work, and have you always practiced?
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 13:55
No, so I started a formal practice 15 or 16 years ago when I started Hatha Yoga, Satyananda, or the Bihar School of Yoga, and that was my sort of formal practice. In my childhood, so I'm mixed heritage, my father is Punjabi Sikh Indian, and my mum was British Church of England, so I had both sort of in my childhood. In Sikhism, there's a lot of service and contemplation, and so like the idea of contemplation of life and things like that has sort of always been with me. And service, watching the community there give so much, and just wholeheartedly. It's just part of who they are, and I think that has very much shaped how I see things. I've lost the thread of the question.
Jivana Heyman 15:01
That's so interesting, your yoga connection. But I'm curious that you didn't get involved with Kundalini yoga, because that has Sikh roots. Although both Kundalini and the Bihar school both have abuse, I just have to say, as an aside, right, they both have a lot of abuse. That's so interesting to me about Kundalini yoga is just like the power of that tradition, you know, the Sikh influence.
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 15:23
Yeah, and that's one of the reasons I never got involved, because I discovered the Hatha Yoga tradition first, and then I discovered Kundalini, but it was the Sikh like element that I just, I felt I'm not sure, so I just never went there.
Jivana Heyman 15:42
Did it feel like it was being used or something, or like it felt...?
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 15:46
No, it was people taking like our names, like.. and I just.. yeah, I just felt.. I don't know, there's something about it that made me feel uncomfortable, I think, and so I just observed from a distance. But the reason I started yoga was because my mum said, 'You're very stressed, you work too hard, you need to go and start yoga.' I think that's the main reason everyone does it.
Jivana Heyman 16:18
A lot. That's pretty common. That's great,
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 16:21
Yeah, and I got real benefit in a really short time, and I found it a place where I could, I don't know, just connect with myself really, and it helped me to delineate between work and leave things there, and then come home, do my practice, and I was in this space.
Jivana Heyman 16:47
And then you did you start teaching soon after that?
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 16:52
It was quite a few years later. I did my teacher training, and then I started teaching just before the pandemic. I did my teacher training just before the pandemic, and then I did my yoga therapy training a few years later, and that's because, I read by accident, I think it was a little paragraph in my yoga teacher training about yoga therapy, and I was like, oh my goodness! This is what I want to do, because, like, geriatric medicine is very holistic, we look at the whole element, but we can be more holistic, and I saw that yoga therapy was what could add those extra layers and depth and perspectives that is missed in modern medicine.
Jivana Heyman 17:48
And has it? Has it changed the way you do your regular... the way you serve as a doctor has been influenced by that, by your yoga?
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 17:59
Yeah, definitely. I think actually seeing patients, it's definitely grounded me. I'm much more mindful. I'm able to sort of focus, be more direct and more focused on the patient, so my mind isn't all over the place, which often you'll find that doctors... you know. But I incorporate, you know, if I'm seeing someone, I will incorporate asana. When I assess their breathing, I might ask them to do a little sort of a natural breath, just to see, you know, where we are. And sometimes, you know, I've had a few cases where physiotherapists have come to me and said, well, they can't walk. Like, well, what did you do? We tried to sit them on the edge of the bed, so I'll go back to my, like, right, let's work with the ankles, let's do the full joint freeing. And then I've got them sat up, and I'm like, okay, can you please come back, because he can walk! And it's just five extra minutes.
Jivana Heyman 19:01
Wow.
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 19:02
And yeah, and I think my questions are probably more thoughtful, not just, you know, your typical medical questions, going into the different layers, different koshas to get a better understanding of someone.
Jivana Heyman 19:16
That's amazing. Well, your patients are very lucky, I just have to say. I mean, to have that, well to have just you, but also that perspective is just, I think, pretty unusual. It seems to me, I mean, I maybe have a limited perspective on it, but it seems like a lot of medical doctors aren't necessarily open to incorporating yoga. I don't know why, it seems like maybe it's this merging of different philosophies, you know, different systems. They're both, they're both very powerful systems, right? Western medicine, and like Eastern, actually medicine too, Eastern medicine and Eastern science. And I think it's incredible to intersect them, to allow them to come together. Why not, right? Use everything you can.
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 19:59
If you've got the tools, and you've got an ability to support someone with something a little bit extra. Why not use it? I mean, early in my medical training, I was very much a type A personality, did extra degrees, did all the courses, was really driven, and then my mind was completely closed. Everything was about what the Western medicine says, and it was really coming to yoga later, and really experiencing myself and other general evolution allowed me to see the greater benefits that it can bring.
Jivana Heyman 20:39
Yeah, I mean, I think that's the goal of yoga therapy, is what you're describing so beautifully, actually. And I don't know how often it really happens that way, or just merging two traditions. I do see, like, I get a lot of people in my trainings who aren't necessarily yoga teachers or yoga therapists. I get a few doctors, but usually it's more PTs, OTs, people who work in that, you know, work with the body, but really want to learn how to adapt yoga and bring yoga into their offerings - which I think is really sweet, actually, really beautiful. What about you? I wonder, could you talk a bit about your own self care? You've mentioned how you were really stressed, and then yoga helped you. Does it still help you? Are you still finding that balance?
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 21:26
I think my relationship with yoga has changed from more of the asana based. Now I am more contemplative, more meditation. I still do my asana practice, but I think it's almost like a reset, a recharge, come back in the present. I think a lot of it is about being present, experiencing the now, and then, yeah, just allowing what has happened, or what could happen, to just be out there and just being really, really present. And I find that if I don't take the time to do my practice, I get quite anxious about things, I get very stressed, and it's a big difference if I don't. So I always... it's very rare that I won't do a practice of some kind. And even if it's just a yoga nidra, right down on the floor, but then it's something. Taking that time to really self care, and I think during Covid it was very much needed within healthcare, and I think a lot of people started to do these things, but it started to slip, and I think there is still people that have maybe didn't get the support they needed, and I think that is affecting a lot of healthcare settings, and I think bringing this to other healthcare workers is really important as well.
Jivana Heyman 23:02
To bring yoga to them. (To bring yoga, yeah.) Do you work on that? I mean, is that something you...?
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 23:07
So I've done some projects over the summer for the last couple of years. So it was last summer, and then the summer, not the summer before, the summer before that. I did a six week thing, where once a week we did a yoga practice, and then we would talk about, you know, diet. So, in hospitals, the canteen is full of terrible food, so it was like healthy eating, working with the mind, doing cardiovascular, but also taking the time for yoga, asana, yoga nidra, meditations, contemplation, diaries, and things, and reflections, and that was well received. And then, but at the moment, my current project is doing yoga... so we have been given money recently to prevent deconditioning in a certain subset of our older persons on our inpatient wards. So I'm now working with physiotherapists and occupational therapists to do a once weekly yoga class, and I've been doing that for a while, but I was just me and it was really hard, now I have a team.
Jivana Heyman 24:23
A team, just so I understand, you're working inpatient, so these are people, patients in the hospitals, you bring them together in a group? It's a group class?
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 24:30
Yes. We bring them together into our sort of activity room, they each have a therapist with them, and then we're doing this group. We have a little bit of music, as I've said in a last teaching session, that music helps to create a distinction from that medical life. And we just do a gentle class, we take frequent pauses because they get tired, but because we have a therapist with each of them, we can get them up onto their Zimmer frames. We can do standing things. They're not going to fall, and yeah, it's been so much fun. The therapists love it, they see it a time away from the ward. It's still in progress, but we have funding. I mean, no one ever gives funding to do a yoga class, and after the session we have tea and cake and a chat.
Jivana Heyman 25:28
Oh, great. Oh my gosh, that's amazing. What do you think is the most important element there, like with [...]? I mean, do you think, because I feel like there's a lot of confusion in the yoga world regarding strengthening, and you say deconditioning, but I mean, in terms of conditioning. I think, because a lot of the research and the conversation is often with younger, very fit people, and they're really not aware of the needs of older adults, and so I feel like it's a completely different conversation when we're talking about that in this context. Do you know what I mean? I guess that's what I'm... it's a leading question, because what I wanted to hear you say is that it is, that yoga is actually a relatively safe way for people to get stronger and more flexible and increase mobility, and that is kind of invisible in the larger yoga world. Just the power of these practices for people who, who aren't ready to go for a run or do weightlifting, right? I mean, probably all of us, but also particularly those that need extra support.
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 26:31
I mean, it's so powerful. There's so much research that's been done, but it's difficult to find the right age group to do the research in, so there aren't many studies. But they all show that if you do, you know, regular practice often around working with the legs, so strength training the legs, but also working with the core, because obviously we have our muscles of our back and we need to maintain our sitting balance to sit and stand, working with balance, are so important to either maintain mobility or maybe improve mobility. And then you can add in those functional elements, so making sure people can still draw their curtains or comb their hair, and then we do the joint freeing for the arthritis, and if they can get into that routine, you know, before bed or something, there's definite benefits. And also, when you're with a group, you have a connection, you form a connection with each other, with the person that's supporting you, leading you, and I think you know it's just so precious to have that connection. And for someone to actually spend time with you, because we can't rush these things, whereas you know, if in a medical setting, everything is rushed, because there's always more and more people to see. But having that specific time, so it's so important in this group, and it doesn't need to be big. You don't need to do the primary series to get the benefits in this group. It's really, maybe for you and I would be very straightforward, but when you have no muscle mass, being able to stand up from a chair could be a huge win
Jivana Heyman 28:20
Huge. I mean, the kind of independence that comes from that is just remarkable. If people haven't worked with older adults or with disabled folks, it's hard to share that, you know, just the meaning in that, the ability to do those kind of functional things, like you said, by themselves. The independence that it brings and decreasing danger, to make people strong, strong enough to be able to walk without fear of falling. I just think it's just incredible.
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 28:52
So important.
Jivana Heyman 28:53
Amazing, yeah.
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 28:54
And I think, you know, you mentioned grief earlier, but this is the population who are likely to have the most life transitions, and they have, you know, perhaps medical conditions, they're not as strong or as independent as they used to be, so they need the emotional support as well that comes from doing yoga. It's so much more. It works on so many levels.
Jivana Heyman 29:26
Right, the community pieces is huge, because these are individuals that tend to be isolated in our culture, in Western culture, maybe, especially, older folks and disabled folks tend to not get that interaction as often. Do you also teach in some other locations? Is that true, or are you still doing that? I mean, I don't know how you have any time for that!
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 29:49
Well, I do one-to-one sessions online, so I only really work with two people at a time, but that's anyone, not specifically the older folk. I actually prefer to work with them in person. So yeah, I mean, I moved house, and now I just have one person that I'm doing one-to-ones with, which actually just works really well, because, yeah, the time. The other thing with work-life balance is I am now part time from the medical world. I do have more time, but I found the more time I have, the more time I want just to myself!
Jivana Heyman 29:49
Yeah, that's what happens, huh? Yeah, well, you know, you deserve it. You deserve it, especially as you get older yourself, right? (Yeah.) You create more space. That's one of the themes, you know, of this season is balancing self-care and service, and I feel like that you just spoke to that in a way, that the more time you have, the more you want. It's really kind of incredible, isn't it? When you're in the routine of just serving others all the time, and then all of a sudden when you stop, it's kind of incredible. That happened to me during Covid. I used to, I used to travel almost full time, and teach around the world. I mean, it was amazing. Like, I'm so lucky that I had this opportunity to travel and, but it was exhausting.
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 31:13
I imagine, all these flights and hotel rooms!
Jivana Heyman 31:17
Yeah, and just like, yeah, being in different environments, different food, I didn't have a regular routine. It was very hard to have my practice be strong enough and exercise and all that stuff. So, Covid was kind of a blessing for me. And then I got to move a lot of things online and not travel as much, and also for my family, I got to be more present, but for myself physically, I just got to spend more time caring for myself, and that really shifted everything. Yeah, I just feel a lot better. So it's been amazing. So I hope you get that too. I hope you get lots of time for yourself.
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 31:53
Yeah, I definitely do. Now, wait. I know you were in Australia recently weren't you?
Jivana Heyman 31:59
Yes, I was just there. So I do a few trips a year now, which is great and really amazing, but nothing like I was doing. I mean, I was on the road full time before, so this has been... it's great. Yeah, and I'm coming to the UK. I'm going to be teaching in Dublin, and then London, which is my next... well, no, I'll be in Chicago, but then I'll be there in September. Anyhow, I know. I hope to get to be with you.
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 32:22
Yeah, I'm gonna be there.
Jivana Heyman 32:23
Oh, good, that's awesome. Yeah, we get to be together.
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 32:26
Yeah!
Jivana Heyman 32:27
Thank you so much for this. I don't know if there's anything else you want to share or any thoughts. I mean, I guess I do maybe have one last question. If it's fair, I mean, just because I think you have such a unique perspective. I wondered if there was maybe something about yoga that you think is particularly helpful? I know you've kind of mentioned a few pieces, but is there something that those of us that are getting older could be holding on to or being conscious of in our practice? Like, is it the yoga nidra, is it the calming practices, is it the active ones? Like, I'm curious if you have thoughts or any in particular? Especially with older people, you know, like, as we age.
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 33:04
So I guess with older people, I think it depends, because I think you need some active practices, because it's very easy just to become sedentary and not have that stimulation, particularly if there is loneliness, but equally you need to balance that with the relaxation to allow the body to, you know, heal, digest, repair to occur, and as we get older, we need more time for that, so that's really important, and to support sleep and digestion. So actually my answer is we need a completely balanced approach, everything in moderation, just with complete awareness of how we move through life, I think.
Jivana Heyman 33:08
Okay, that's great advice.
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 34:03
Thank you. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks for your time.
Dr. Yasmin Bedi 34:06
Thanks for having me.
Jivana Heyman 34:07
All right. Take care.
Jivana Heyman 34:18
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Jivana Heyman 35:09
Okay. Welcome back. Hi, Deanna.
Deanna Michalopoulos 35:12
Hello, Jivana. How are you?
Jivana Heyman 35:14
I'm good. I'm good. I just had my birthday, which is always... I don't know, kind of intense. Like, birthdays are kind of intense, especially as you get as old as I am. But how are you?
Deanna Michalopoulos 35:25
How did you celebrate?
Jivana Heyman 35:26
Oh gosh, we did a bunch of stuff. My family visited the weekend before, and then a friend took me out for lunch, and I went out to dinner with my husband and his mom, so that was sweet. My kids aren't around, so that was a little sad, but I'm also glad that they're not, because they're adults now, and I want them to live their lives. But you know, I turned 59 and it just feels like I don't know, I feel pressure. I'm not sure why something about that, you know, on the edge.
Deanna Michalopoulos 35:56
That's so interesting. Pressure, you just say that.
Jivana Heyman 35:59
Yeah, I don't know what it is. I just feel like I have a lot to do. I don't know, I just feel like I have to, yeah, a lot. There's a lot to do. I don't know how to describe it. Anyway...
Deanna Michalopoulos 36:12
A sense of purpose is good for everyone at all ages, so that's incredible.
Jivana Heyman 36:17
I guess so. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that way. It is good. It's good to have a sense of purpose, and you know, time is limited, so I just... I realized that, and especially as the numbers creep up, you know, because I'm trying to balance. Well, as the theme for this, you know, season of the podcast, I'm trying to balance my self-care and my service, and so this theme is for me personally, because I'm going through this like emotional time, just trying to find that balance, where I am spending more time, you know, taking care of myself than I used to, but I think part of it is my age, that I know that I need to do that now. I probably always should, but now I can see the difference it makes, and yet I still feel like I have a lot to do. So, yeah. Anyway, How about you? How are you doing?
Deanna Michalopoulos 37:01
Yeah, I am good. Things are good, and like you said, it's like my time here in Germany is coming to an end so quickly, like within a matter of weeks, and so it's just a reminder to savor every moment, because just time passes.
Jivana Heyman 37:15
Yeah, it sure does. Wow, that's incredible. Time is so interesting.
Deanna Michalopoulos 37:19
And also I kind of wanted you to share that you planted a tree.
Jivana Heyman 37:22
Oh, yeah.
Deanna Michalopoulos 37:24
Now everybody knows I plant myself questions - and answers to your questions.
Jivana Heyman 37:27
Well, you were kind enough to give me a gift, actually, of a gift certificate for my favorite nursery. I actually got two trees, one is a pomegranate and the other is a Cara Cara orange tree. And I'm so excited because - I made it reel, and I didn't share it yet, I made a video - but I'm redoing one whole side of my yard that was a mess. It was an old driveway, and like, the dirt there is really bad. So I actually paid a crew to come in and dig it up and bring in new dirt, and it's been something I've wanted to do forever. So this is like my gift to myself, and so those trees are going to go in there and other stuff. I'm very, very excited to have a new garden project, because my garden isn't very big, and so there's only so much I can do with the space I have. And yeah, I'm so excited about those trees. The pomegranate is so cute, it has like little flowers that are like little tiny pomegranates, that's the cutest thing I've ever seen. So, thank you. Thanks for that amazing gift, that's very sweet.
Deanna Michalopoulos 38:26
Oh my god, I didn't want you to mention that, but I think there's something really beautiful about, like, planting something new on your birthday, like you mentioned that you're feeling a certain way about your age, and you're feeling some pressure, but that's such, like, an act of hope, and also just incredible, like you know, I'm planting a baby tree!
Jivana Heyman 38:43
Well, actually, gardening has taught me patience, so I'm not a patient person, just like wanting to get things done right away, and gardening is the opposite. It's just like you just follow nature's timeline, and everything happens in time and there's really no pushing it at all. You know, just let it go, and actually planting trees remind me of that. And it's so little, it's really, it's like maybe three or three feet tall. I mean, it's a cute little thing, but I know it's going to be big, it'll probably be like a 10 foot tree at least. But I'm trying to enjoy that stage. It reminds me of my kids, when they were little, I always wanted them to be bigger, you know? I was like excited for that, and then now that they're bigger, I'm like, oh, I miss it when they were little. So I think it's just a lesson in enjoying the moment instead of waiting for something else.
Deanna Michalopoulos 39:38
There's sort of a parallel to your conversation with Dr. Yasmin.
Jivana Heyman 39:41
Yes, thank you for bringing it back. Oh my god, I love her so much. I am so grateful to her for speaking with me and sharing about her life. I've just been very intrigued by her. Isn't she cool?
Deanna Michalopoulos 39:54
I mean, incredible. And the work she's doing in the world is invaluable right now.
Jivana Heyman 40:00
Yeah, and she's very humble. I have to say, even in the interview, I feel like I don't know if it really came through, like the amount of information and knowledge and wisdom that she has, because I've heard her speak. She's taught for a previous program of ours, you know, The Art of Teaching Chair Yoga, and it was really awesome, and that combination is hard to find someone who is an actual doctor and, like, really established in Western medicine, but also has such an incredible understanding of yoga and that yoga science and that tradition and values both equally, which I find just, yeah, incredibly compelling.
Deanna Michalopoulos 40:41
I really loved just how she brought up the fact that, like, there's such a human side to what she was saying. Like, how, as yoga therapists, often you're dealing with just various kinds of grief in the people you're working with, right, and just how in tune and empathetic you have to be to even tap into that and recognize that, because I feel like you know, probably a lot of older adults go to doctors and feel very misunderstood, or you know, it's just kind of in-out. Whereas I would want her to be my doctor, I would want her to be my mother's doctor, like that would be incredible, and yoga therapist.
Jivana Heyman 41:15
Yeah, no, it's so true, I think so many of my students over the years are dealing with grief, if not all of them. I mean, it's just such a common theme in our lives as humans, but especially older folks, you know, I think we're facing that. Not only our changes in our own body and lives and capacity as we age, but also there's that grief around ourselves, but also grief for the loss of others, you know, our friends or family passing away, and it's just kind of the nature of aging. Grief is part of that process. So I think her awareness of that is really, yeah, that was really good to hear. And I talked about that too, didn't I? About how I was surprised that the IAYT, when they were first creating standards for yoga therapists, they hadn't included death or grieving as one of the things that therapists need to be trained about, and it feels like maybe the most important piece as a yoga therapist, that's what came up in almost every yoga therapy session I've had. Maybe not, I wouldn't always talk about death, I wouldn't say the words, but it was so clear to me that if people are dealing with disability or illness or age-related issue that was at the top of their mind or maybe their heart, you know, at least they were feeling it. Yeah.
Deanna Michalopoulos 42:40
I mean, there are some psychologists who say - we may have touched on this before - who say that let's just like, whether you're conscious of it or not, like death, and it just, it's looming nature for every single human being, it's just a driver of so much of our behavior and our decisions, like it's just a matter of whether we're conscious of it or not.
Jivana Heyman 42:57
Yeah, and that's really what draws me to yoga, I think, in the end. I think, because I was exposed to death very early through the AIDS epidemic, I had so many friends die when I was in my 20s, that I realized this is the nature of life. You know, death is just part of our experience, and it's a huge piece, and that drew me to spiritual practice. And so I guess I feel like yoga offers some answers and some relief from the suffering of the grief that's connected to our mortality and also to the death and the loss of those around us. I feel like there's still a lot of people who don't want to talk about death or think about it consciously. It's still there. I think it's unavoidable, the sense of like clinging that is the nature of human life, that yoga just gets. Yoga just speaks to it so clearly, you know. The yoga teachings just address it straight on. I love that about yoga. So you've seen the Gita, like it's just literally the first thing that Krishna teaches Arjuna, is that we all die, but the spirit is eternal.
Deanna Michalopoulos 44:10
I mean, you touched on this too, but it's we practice death in every single yoga practice in shavasana, that's just a piece of the practice that I think a lot of people don't realize until they're kind of maybe deep into it. What we're doing here, it's not only a rest, it's like a practice of letting go, as Dr. Yasmin said.
Jivana Heyman 44:10
And actually, you know, I think a lot of us avoid death and loss by not - we don't live intergenerationally so much anymore. We often don't live with our elders and people that are facing death, and often I think we can avoid it in modern life. Unless you work directly with older folks or in medical settings, you might be able to avoid it until it happens to you, but it's too bad, because I do think that it's such an important piece of, for me, of daily life to reflect on my mortality and to remind myself of that loss. I think it makes life more precious, actually. Anyway, so I appreciate Yasmin, and I'm so grateful that she's on our faculty for our programs, and that we get to learn from her, and yeah, there's just a lot there. She has a lot to share, and such an amazing perspective, like I said, of working with older people as a gerontologist and also yoga therapist. It's really incredible.
Deanna Michalopoulos 45:36
I just want to also just bring forward something she said that was interesting. I mean, she shares her practice with her colleagues as well, like people in healthcare, they're desperately in need of self-care as well. It's just a stressful field right now, and it just made me think about, like, when we're learning the practices and tools of yoga, it's not only for ourselves. And, yes, we interact in the world in different ways, but just sharing what we learned is so valuable. I learned that from Indu Aurora, just asking why would somebody take this training, and she said, you know, like, it's maybe not only for you, maybe the topic isn't necessarily impacting you, but it's going to impact someone in your circle, a family member, someone in your community, and then you'll have tools to share with them. Such a beautiful way to think about the practice.
Jivana Heyman 46:24
Yeah, I love that. Well, it kind of reminds me of our theme again, this idea of self-care. Like, do you do self-care just for yourself or does it actually support those around you? Because I find that when I take care of myself, I can see that impacting my family. The better care I take of myself, I see my husband doing that too. Rather than me just like lecturing him or telling him to do something, I can just do it, or I could teach him what I've learned. Although he's kind of had enough yoga, maybe, just from me, from being married to me for over 30 years!
Deanna Michalopoulos 47:00
And I have to say, you know, as a daughter of a single mother, she was working so hard to care for me and my sister, and like, you know, I really respect that, and she hustled. At the same time, I really wish she took care of herself, because it would have been a model for me. So I just want to give parents, especially, permission to pause and like take care of yourself, because your kids are watching, and I think they'll gain a lot from that.
Jivana Heyman 47:24
Yeah, that's so true. I was also raised by a single mother, and I mean, my dad was around, but they split when I was young, and I definitely think she was in need of some self-care. She was really at her wits end a lot with five children, so I agree. I think yoga really saved me when I had little kids, especially. Wow. And now, still does! Yeah, well, there's a great book, actually. Do you know, Sarah Ezrin has a great book out on yoga and parenting. I can't remember the title, but that's a good one, if people are looking. I thought about writing a book about yoga and parenting, and then I just... I don't know, I thought I just need to practice and not talk about. I just need to practice. I do talk about it in my books, I think in Yoga Revolution I have a lot of stuff about parenting, but yeah. Oof, parents, and also people who care for their parents, like I can see now, you know, when I'm older, that caring for children and also caring for your own parents as they're aging, that's a lot, either way.
Deanna Michalopoulos 48:32
Yeah, caregivers have quite a job. To have a job and then another job of caregiving.
Jivana Heyman 48:38
And actually teachers, like yoga teachers, we're also caregivers. And then people like, in the medical profession or service industry. A lot of people just are so naturally generous and giving of their love and kindness and energy, it's just incredible. Those people also need to take care of themselves.
Deanna Michalopoulos 48:58
Yeah, this is true. Also, if you're not like naturally prone, I think it's a skill you can learn. I think that the empathy and willingness is down there, you just have to find it.
Jivana Heyman 49:10
I hope so. I hope that's true.
Deanna Michalopoulos 49:16
Well, I am excited to report that we have a voicemail, and I'm excited to hear your response to this, and so I'm going to go ahead and play it. And this is a message from April.
April 49:27
Hi, this is April. Big fan. Listen to all your podcasts and attend Accessible Yoga Trainings about once a year for a few years now. In your opening podcast this year, you mentioned how many yoga practitioners will go to Buddhism to fill in the meditation piece, and I'm one of those people. My 200 and 300 hour YTTs both left me longing for more meditation, and I live close to a residential Zen Monastery, so I went there, and I have a teacher there with 50 years of experience, which is rare, and there's a large sangha, and all of it is so precious to me. I've been active there for about 10 years. So my yoga and my Zen practices sit side by side, and I'm okay with that, although for a long time I thought I had to choose sides, which is kind of funny to me now. They can just coexist just fine. Really, it's the depth of practice at the monastery that makes it so meaningful, and that's hard to replicate, except maybe at an ashram. Can you share what meditation practice was like living at an ashram? Thank you.
Jivana Heyman 50:37
Oh my god, that's such a great question. And thank you so much, April. Wow, thanks for sharing that, and for listening to the podcast, and taking my trainings. And I just want to say that I'm so happy for you. Like, I think what you're describing is amazing, that you found a sangha, a community of spiritually like-minded people is one of the best things you can do in life, and I'm just, I'm thrilled for you, honestly. And when I said that, I didn't mean to say that yoga teachers should necessarily practice in the yoga tradition and not go to Buddhism. I just meant to say that we don't have to, that it's not necessary to go to Buddhism, that we have a meditation tradition in yoga, and I think, hopefully, you understood that. It's just contemporary yoga practice isn't necessarily known as a place to go for meditation, and that makes me kind of sad, because the teachings are there, and the practice is there. And you asked a question about ashram living, and I never really lived full time in an ashram. I actually managed an ashram for over 20 years, but because I had a family, I couldn't actually live there. But I spent time, I would visit our residential ashram for weeks on end, and used to travel to ashrams all over the world. These are all through Integral Yoga and through Sivananda, the Sivananda Vedanta organization. And I definitely got a sense of that practice. It meant a lot to me. Within interval yoga we would normally do three meditation sessions a day that were quite long, usually about an hour or so each, and they encompassed usually having an altar, lighting the candles, bowing, and then chanting a lot, like it'd be many, many mantras, and then extended pranayama, and then a long period of silence, ending with more mantras and more dedications, and chanting, and prayers for universal well-being. And that would happen, like I said, three times a day, morning, noon, and night.
Jivana Heyman 52:55
At the Sivananda ashrams, usually there were two sessions a day that were longer than that. Oh, and also the morning sessions in Integral yoga would include a talk, a short talk. And Sivananda would usually be, you know, longer sessions that started with a long, long period of chanting, like 45 minutes of chanting, and then a long period of silent meditation followed by a talk, so the whole thing would be almost two hours long. And then an evening program that was similar, so one was like three kind of medium length sessions, and then the other place was two very long ones. I think it's probably similar to what you're doing. I'm guessing, to be honest, actually, the more I study the interconnectedness of yoga and Buddhism, the closer they are, I think they came out of the same place. I think it's unclear exactly which came first and what influenced what. I mean, there are obviously yoga teachings that came first. I would say that that's clear because of the timeline, but so much of yoga that we're doing now is influenced by Buddhism. Anyhow, I'm not a Buddhist scholar, so I tend to avoid talking about Buddhism, other than to say, more like, hey, look over here, we have something too, like, we can meditate in yoga, and that's that's a huge part of our tradition, like you said, not only in ashrams, but just in the teachings themselves. And that's really what I'm focused on.
Jivana Heyman 54:24
I'm not encouraging people to go join ashrams in yoga. In fact, both the organizations I mentioned have abuse and in their traditions, and so I would say be cautious about joining them. What I'm trying to say is that we have the teachings in in the yoga tradition, and I think without meditation, we've actually stripped the very core of yoga away, and that's that's part of why I think we're left with this very physical, exercise-oriented practice. Which isn't bad, you know, exercise is awesome, and asanas are amazing, but even if you talk about asana, like, what makes an asana an asana versus exercise, and I would say it's meditation, it's the meditative quality. So, I guess my point is simply that we need to remember that meditation is the heart of the yoga teachings, and if you want, or if you're interested, that is a good place to find practices to guide you inward into that meditative place. Even if you don't consciously know that, I think any yoga practice will naturally do it for you. I think what we love about yoga, even if you're doing it just for physical exercise, I still think asana will bring you into that meditative flow. It's just a natural outcome, that's literally what all the practices of yoga are designed to do. So, it just kind of is already happening anyway. So, part of me feels like maybe I don't need to write this book because it's so obvious, but I'm doing it anyway. Anyway, I hope that was helpful, and thanks again, April, for that great question. What do you think, Deanna?
Deanna Michalopoulos 56:06
First of all, I'll say yes, we do need your book, as someone who's getting to read it right now, we do need your book. Keep going. And I'm curious, what does your meditation practice look like these days?
Jivana Heyman 56:16
I mean, my practice is kind of like a miniature version of what I described, where there's a lot of mantra. I have an altar, I light a candle, I bow, and that's a big part of it, the sense of like surrender. And my altar isn't built around any guru anymore, it's built around nature and the people in my life, mostly people who passed on, that I feel like were my teachers, like my mother and grandmother, and my friends who passed from AIDS, and just the people who have been teachers for me in a deep way. And so I try to connect with them through my practice, but basically it's about spending time at my altar, mantra, pranayama, silence, and then dedication with more mantra. Yeah, that's what it is, pretty much.
Deanna Michalopoulos 57:08
And that's every morning, is that like the first thing you do?
Jivana Heyman 57:12
Yeah, I mean, I have to say, sometimes I do it after I get back from the beach, depends on how I feel, but usually it's the first thing I do, yeah. I mean, it's a big part of my life, to the point where I feel like, when I'm traveling... I think that there's a Bhakti Yoga element that I think I don't talk about very much, but the devotional piece about the altar that I'm trying to bring out today, a little bit, just to mention that. But I think having a kind of sacred space is so important for me, and it's just a tiny little table I have over here, but it's like a reminder of important things in my life. And so I was going to say, even if I'm traveling and I'm not physically here, I can picture it in my mind, and that calms me down just to picture it, so I think there's value in having a space. Even if you don't have a lot of space where you live, to have like a shelf or like a window sill where you place a few items that are meaningful to you, and you can imbue that place with meaning. Actually, that's what Tracy's new book is about, right, partially? Tracey Stanley has a new book coming out about ritual, and part of that is about creating altars, creating rituals in your life. I think that rituals are so calming and soothing and supportive, especially when you're not feeling great, you know? I like to go to the altar when I'm not feeling good too, and it makes me feel better.
Deanna Michalopoulos 58:38
Thanks for sharing that. I think that's helpful to know, like your personal routine as well. And yeah, you don't talk about your altar very much, and I think it's good to know that that's an option, because that's not really... you know, you can go to a yoga class, like, you know, at a studio, you're really not going to get that kind of information, even though that's...
Jivana Heyman 58:58
Yeah, I think some studios have an altar, but it may not be personal. I don't think we're usually trained in that piece of it, and that's the whole point, is that if it's not personal, it's not going to have meaning. So it doesn't need to be any particular thing or any altar that anyone else has, you know. It's actually better if it's not, if it's yours, and it's just stuff that you like, and that makes you feel something. I'm not going to say makes you feel good, necessarily, but it makes you feel, and that you can go there. Like I said, you create a space when you're feeling good, you can practice when you're feeling good, so that when you're challenged, when things come up, you go there, and it'll feed you. And that's an amazing thing to have, and that's true of the practice in general, but I think the space also helps. And it may not be an actual altar, it could be a space, I think, in nature, you know, like there's places I like to go regularly, like in my garden or at the beach, or trees I like to visit around my neighborhood. They have a lot of meaning for me. I find that certain places in nature are just so incredibly powerful in terms of, it's like being at an altar, just because it can kind of get me out of my head, and I think that's really the key, yeah, to just connect with something else. I think sometimes we talk about it in language that feels so... what's the word? I don't know, like super spiritual... like you have to be like a really, really spiritual person to be able to like, connect with a tree, but do you though? I mean, can't you just look at a tree, like, and just think, wow, that's amazing. Do you know what I mean? Like, that's the feeling, like amazement or awe. Just to not have your mind thinking about whatever your daily stuff is. That's the key to me for a practice, and that could be anywhere.
Deanna Michalopoulos 1:00:57
Yeah, absolutely, that's beautiful. It's like a touch point, connecting to spirit, something bigger throughout your day, and I definitely resonate with, like, you know, paying visits to your favorite tree, tree beings, greeting them. I think that's important.
Jivana Heyman 1:01:18
Yeah, that's important, it is important. Anyway, that was a great question. I love when people leave us voicemails. I'm so grateful for that. Really, isn't it nice to hear someone else's voice?
Deanna Michalopoulos 1:01:31
It is nice! I invite anyone to leave a voicemail. You can leave a question about yoga, you can leave a response about the episode. We'd love to hear your insights and reflection and questions. Again, you get like your own dharma talk and mini workshop from Jivana, so don't hesitate.
Jivana Heyman 1:01:50
Well, I hope it was useful, April. Thank you again, and also thank you to Yasmin for this great episode. Thank you, Deanna. I don't know if there's anything else you wanted to share.
Deanna Michalopoulos 1:02:02
No, we'll leave it there. 'Til next time.
Jivana Heyman 1:02:05
Thanks, everyone. Bye.
Jivana Heyman 1:02:15
Before you go, I just want to mention one more thing, and that is our Accessible Yoga Mentorship Program. It's a really special place where we come together as yoga teachers for peer support, encouragement, to learn, to answer each other's questions, and to practice together. It's such an amazing way to find that support that yoga teachers so often need. And I'd love for you to join us. I lead one session a month, and then Rodrigo Souza leads the other, and it's a great way to stay connected and keep improving your teaching. You can find more information on our website at accessibleyoga.org There's also a link in the show notes. Hope to see you there.
