Shownotes
In today's healthy episode, Niya Bajaj, a holistic yoga therapist, discusses her one-on-one customized approach to yoga therapy. Niya highlights the significance of intentional eating, connecting with the land, and savoring homegrown produce for overall well-being.
Learn more about Niya and her therapy at: HolisticYogaTherapy.ca
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Transcripts
Hi and welcome to the You World Order Showcase podcast. Today we are speaking with Niya Bajaj.
::And she says tentatively, Niya is a holistic yoga therapist.
::She is here to share with us all the stuff about that. I'm so excited to have you with us here and find out what you're doing and how you're being the change you want to see in the world today, Maya.
::Thanks so much, Jill. It's lovely to be here. I'm really excited for our conversation.
::Who? So how did you get started? What's your story?
::My story so I am for people who are listening to this and not watching a video. I am of South Asian descent, so yoga has been part of my.
::Life since I was born, but interestingly not the yoga that most people think of. It wasn't the physical movement practice because as a kid.
::And as an adult, I live with chronic joint pain, and so movement was actually really difficult for me. I didn't move very much as a child and as a result of not moving very much as a child, I wasn't. You know, I wasn't a small child. It was quite heavy. And that, of course, that kids have a hard time, especially those of us who may.
::Have grown up in the 90s.
::Peak diet culture or peak heroin chic when you don't have that body type.
::People aren't as nice.
::So it was it was not the easiest childhood and so.
::Glad we're past that in society.
::Yes, though there are, there are troubling pieces coming back up. I don't know if you've seen the girl dinner.
::Trend or women are having, you know, a glass of ice has dinner for me really echoes those dangerous 90s diet culture trends, just rebranded for a new generation. So I have some concerns, but.
::UM.
::Is as I was growing up other practices from yoga were a big part of my life, so a lot of the Ayurvedic ways of.
::Looking after yourself?
::I was drinking turmeric lattes well before they were cool, because that's how you soothe the store soap and my throat in my house. You know, you drink milk.
::With turmeric in it.
::Or I remember my grandfather teaching yoga philosophy like people would come to our house and literally.
::Sit at his feet and learn about you know how to.
::Live thermically how to use the principles from yoga, and so that's what I was exposed to a lot.
::And then you know, as I got older, it developed an eating disorder in part to sort of manage that body image experience that I was having. And I was also really anxious. And my dad said, you know what, maybe you should go to.
::A yoga.
::Class. You might feel better.
::And he says he didn't mean to, but he somehow signed me up for a seniors class at the local Community Center. So I walked into this room of, you know, 65 year olds. The teacher was very confused about why there was a 13 year old in her class. But she let me stay. And in doing that practice, it was the first time I was able to feel at home in.
::The body that I.
::Which for 13 years of feeling like it wasn't home, was a really novel experience, and I looked around and I saw all of these people, you know, well into their lives, who also really felt at home. And I thought, umm, if I keep doing this, maybe I'll be able to feel like them consistently.
::Maybe I'll be able to be comfortable in the body that I have.
::And so I've sort of dropped in and out of different parts of the practice.
::And as my as I progress through university and you know higher pressure situations, my eating disorder got worse and eventually it got to the point where I was like, I need to do something about this or I won't be able to function properly. I didn't have any energy my.
::Joints hurt even.
::More I wasn't able to stay awake consistently. I developed a narcolepsy, so all kinds of awful things.
::Were happening in my 20s and I needed something that would support me. That wasn't, you know. Oh, go take a sleep study, get an inconclusive result and then be on this medication for the rest of your life. That may or may not help you because we don't really know if you have the condition.
::And so I was looking for something that felt a little bit more holistic that felt a little bit more accessible and that was aligned with practices that were already part.
::Of my culture.
::And so started doing yoga, injured myself doing conventional yoga. And you know that large scale one-size-fits-all studio model pinched the nerves in both of my shoulders, which was great. Couldn't lift my.
::Arms over my head.
::Then they've done that.
::Yes, yoga injury is really common. People don't really talk about it. And so I was looking for a way to use the practice.
::In a way that wouldn't hurt me because yoga is not supposed to harm.
::2 And so I ended up working with a yoga therapist who developed a customized practice for me that helped me come back to that sense of feeling at home.
::And to relearn how to be in a relationship with my body in a way that.
::Wasn't harmful. How to relearn my relationship with food? How to manage my weight in a way that is sustainable so it's not. Oh, you know, I'm my arms look bigger than they should be. I'm going to walk for three hours.
::Because there is still, there's still a little bit of that mentality, and COVID definitely made it worse. My eating disorder is very much about control, and so you put me in a situation where I can't make decisions about whether I go outside and who I see and what.
::The world is.
::Like and it cropped back up and so I was actually at that point in the middle of my yoga therapy training and it was really nice to be able to adapt the practices for myself.
::And find a way through that experience and in doing so I was like, OK, well, I'm able to do this for me. I've seen how helpful it is. I know there are a lot of people out there dealing with similar things. Eating disorder is probably the most prevalent mental health condition in the world that no one talks about. We talk about depression. We talk about anxiety. We don't talk about eating disorder as a mental health condition and we don't talk about it as a disability.
::But it is.
::All of those are related to eating.
::And so I figured if I found this way that is complementary to Western medicine, it's not an alternative to seeing your psychiatrist to, you know, seeing a talk therapist. But it complements all of that. And I figure if I can offer that to folks in a way that is accessible then.
::That is, I guess part of my Dharma part of my.
::Work in this world to do.
::That's how I got here. Long winded answer.
::To your question.
::No, it's great. It's.
::It's something that's really needed and so many people.
::I personally when I was.
::Maybe 14 or 15.
::I lived on a base in Japan and my mom brought home.
::A. A yoga book.
::So I learned yoga in a.
::Book the positions and you know when you're 14 or 15 you you're just like your body should be able to do anything. And I actually tore cartilage in my knee from doing the Lotus position incorrectly because you know, I didn't have anybody to help me.
::A practice that was, you know, designed for my body. I don't share that with many people, but now everybody knows. That was my first experience with yoga.
::But I have practiced yoga off and on over the years and I do love it. I do understand what you're talking about when you're when you say you're in your body, you feel at home.
::It does.
::Give you that sense.
::But it really helps if you have somebody that can help you.
::Wander through the positions, but not just do it as an exercise, which happens a lot in in Western society. It it's more of a holistic practice and I love that you have holistic in your title because it's more than just you know I'm going to go.
::Do my exercise for today I'll.
::Do the yoga thing.
::It's kind of a lifestyle and.
::You want to talk to the lifestyle aspect of it a little bit.
::Yeah, absolutely. And I think about sort of yoga. There are 8 limbs of yoga, the movement practice. The Asian practice is one of eight. So if you, if you were to think about it, sort of, we were to divide it up into parts, though, it's not something that you we necessarily divided into parts. So that's 1/8 of the whole practice. Other parts are things like the pranayam practice or the breath.
::Right.
::Which is the tool that you use to regulate your nerves.
::And for folks who are familiar with Neo Polyvagal theory and all of the really awesome research happening in that space, yoga taps into your breath, which is, you know, it activates your diaphragm tones, your Vegas nerve. And so you can use it as a practice. And you can combine it with the movement so that, you know, if you're in.
::Of physical posture that is a little bit stressful for your body and you start to notice your breath pattern shift from something that's slow and smooth and regular to something that feels a little bit faster. You're, you know, you notice that fight flight transition. You can use your breath to come back to that regulate.
::State or if you notice that you know you're in maybe a slower.
::Form of yoga.
::Practice or more in practice and you're, you know, checking out mentally because sitting in your body is feeling uncomfortable and you're just tuning out entirely. You can use your breath again to come back from that dorsal vagal state into a space that is more regulated. And as you build that capacity in the movement practice, you can then use it in other places. So when you get that really aggravating.
::E-mail from someone that pushes you into fight flight. You can use your breath to tap back into that regulated place, or if you find yourself overwhelmed and sort of dropping into that space of disconnection again, you can use your breath to come back, and so taking that practice off the mat can be really powerful.
::But for folks who, like me, are still living with chronic pain, the notion of like, you know, doing a movement practice is inaccessible. You can visualize the movement practice, and it has similar benefits. The, You know, act of visualizing either circling your wrist or turning your head or whatever it is that would be helpful, can still help relieve some of that muscle tension and still build those neural pathways so that as the pain is really.
::You can come back into doing those physical practices and continuing to use your breath to regulate.
::So there's tons of really powerful ways to adapt that, and as you do that, you get to know yourself not a lot of us spend time getting to know ourselves. I find anymore. There's a lot of external noise, less time, sort of wondering why did I react that way? What drives my direction? What drives my actions? And in that knowing you're better able to make decisions about things like your career.
::And your finances and who you spend time with. And so you can use the yoga practice for all 8 aspects of well-being for folks who are familiar with the research that Doctor Margaret Schork is doing around sort of your physical well-being, your intellectual well-being, your emotional well-being, but also things like your environmental well-being.
::Yeah, it's really fascinating. And the part about.
::Just thinking about things.
::Has an impact on you physiologically.
::I've had friends that had. Well, I'll tell you a story about this one friend of mine. She's a she's a karate instructor. She's like.
::1/8 degree.
::Black belt or something and camp OK.
::Body, but she had surgery before. She had to do it. I think she was doing a belt test or something, but she was going to need to be really on point, but she just had surgery.
::So she couldn't.
::Actually practice. But she just practiced in her head and.
::That she didn't lose really anything.
::Thing, of course, she'd had years of muscle memory in there, and that kind of plays in a little bit, but just you can people that play the piano, they can't practice in the physical world. They can practice in their head and it really does work.
::UM, but I've never really had it.
::Tied to doing yoga, I think that's really interesting.
::So how do you?
::Work with your clients. When you when you help them.
::Organize their life.
::So we.
::The work is one-on-one, so unlike sort of, oh, I'm going to yoga and you end up in a room of 50 people with a teacher who doesn't know your name and gives you a practice, and you just hope it works out and that you feel better at the end. My work with students is one-on-one we do a full bio, psychosocial spiritual assessment. So it's pretty intense. And the point of that is to get to know all of the factors.
::That will impact your practice.
::Because if I just know what movement feels like to you and I, you know, design an hour long practice and you only have 10 minutes to do it.
::You're not going to do it. You won't see success so.
::It's a lot.
::Of you know, what would you actually like to achieve in the practice versus what I think you should achieve? Because I'm not an expert in your lived experience, I might make some suggestions for folks who are, you know, unsure about where they would like.
::To go, but it's really the initial conversation is what would you like to achieve in the short term? So in the next, you know three or four weeks, particularly if there's pain or there's a joint.
::Issue we might address those things that make practice more.
::Possible. And then in the medium term, what are your goals? I have a lot of folks dealing with burnout now, you might.
::Be seeing this too.
::So it might be you know how do I manage the exhaustion? How do I find the energy to do the things that I want to do, and then in the longer term it might be either disease prevention, you know, diabetes ones in my.
::Family and I'd like not to be diabetic.
::Or I'm already living with heart disease or obesity or something else. How do I manage that condition so I can still have the?
::Quality of life that I want.
::And then from there we Co design A practice because again, I'm not the I'm not the expert in anyone's experience except my own. So we test some things. We might test some movement. If folks are curious and that would be helpful for them, we might build in a meditation to that movement practice. We might add some chanting or some sound, particularly for folks who are having trouble regulating their nervous system. Sound is really powerful.
::We usually close with a breath practice, so whether you know we're looking to build focus, in which case we might use something like an alternate nostril breath. Or if we're looking to calm the nervous system. If it's usually quite agitated, we might use a cooling breath in the summer warming, warming breath in.
::Winter and so the practice is adaptive too. I see students fairly regularly because as things change in your.
::Life your practice should change also.
::And it is an additive practice, so it's not stop this. Don't do this. It's you can continue to do that, but maybe add this on top of it and over time you see the benefits of the additive practice and the less useful practice just falls away naturally because it's.
::No longer serving you.
::And I'm just like.
::Covers it in the bottom the.
::Old thing just goes away because there's.
::No room for it anymore.
::I like that. I like how.
::That how that works and how does how does the eating part?
::Come into this.
::Yeah. So the sister science to yoga is the science of Ayurveda, which translates literally.
::To the science of life.
::And a lot of the lifestyle suggestions, the eating suggestions that diet suggestions come from that very evidence based very ancient traditional practice. So depending on how intensely someone would like to work with me, it might be we figure out what your constitutional type is similar to traditional Chinese medicine and then we can select foods that will help improve your digestion.
::That's an area struggling with or we might sort of set up your eating for each season, because also the seasons change. Different food is naturally available, and so you might make different choices in different seasons for folks who are less interested in sort of really diving into IRA, that it might just be reconnecting with food in a way that's.
::I don't know about you, but I have days where I'm just like standing over the sink, getting calories in because I need to go.
::To my next thing, because there's only so much time and I, you know, love to sit down and like candles and do all of these things that like I have 5 minutes between meetings. If I don't eat now, I'm gonna be hungry.
::Yeah, nobody likes that.
::Not who I want to be, but to sort of reconnect with food and so really slowing down and it doesn't have to be every day at every single meal, but maybe once a week. You know, you engage with food in a way that's meaningful for you. You engage with all of your senses, even if it's just for two or three bytes. Right. Notice the texture of something. Notice how it.
::Maybe notice how the taste changes as you chew.
::Maybe you chew the 22 times that you're supposed to and see what that experience is like and see if that makes your jaw sore because you haven't done it in a long time. And just like reconnecting with the thing that nourishes you in a way that feels nourishing, and I encourage people to do this in community because it can be really fun to hear about how everyone experiences the same bite of food differently.
::That can be really positive, really beautiful way to build a relationship and for some people it goes deeper than that. Some of my students serve, you know, they start with that and they're like.
::Oh, I like.
::This intentionality I might try and grow some of my own food and like really connect with the full cycle of it, which you know for folks in Canada and maybe in other places in the world, there's conversations about reconciliation.
::With indigenous people whose land we are on reconnecting with the land in a meaningful.
::Way can also be really powerful to restore your wealthy, and so that might be part of the practice as well in terms of intentional eating like starting from seed and then intentionally consuming food that you have grown and observing how that nourishes you versus something that you might acquire in some other way.
::I've heard that.
::Food when you grow it yourself, it chemically changes to adjust to you.
::And it as you eat it and it, it becomes part of who you are. Anything that you take into your body. And this is really a.
::It's a really important point that most people just.
::Zoom past in their life, but anything you put into your body will become part of your body.
::Looking at whatever thing it is that's not really food that is presented to us that.
::We believe is going to taste good, but it's really just going to poison us and.
::Wreak havoc on.
::Our body and it's going to make us feel so much worse in the long run.
::Then then had we made a different choice?
::Yeah, in both yoga and Ayurveda, there's the notion of prana, like chi in traditional Chinese medicine. That's sort of not the universal energy that makes up all things that you can access. And so in yoga, the practice is sort of to set your boundaries so that you're not giving off so much energy that you don't have enough for yourself, but you're also not closed off to the energy.
::Around you.
::And when it comes to eating, you sort of the instruction is to choose foods that are chronically rich, so that have not been so processed. There is no energy left in them, even if they're even. If there's material left in them. So foods that you grow or foods that are grown locally to you that don't travel thousands and thousands of miles are just richer sources of crime.
::Part of your intentional eating practice might be observing how you feel different. You know, if I'm eating, I'm in Toronto and Canada, so if I'm eating, you know.
::Locally grown strawberries.
::My energetic experience is different than when I'm eating strawberries in February that have, you know, come in from Mexico. I might still crave the strawberry, but I might then decide and remember that you know that June.
::Strawberry tasted much different, and so I might just wait until next June, which you know is a long way away in February when everything is Gray and dark and miserable. But it's something to look forward to as opposed to sort of fulfill this immediate need to be like, I want strawberries now, even though they just taste like cardboard and water.
::Yeah. And there's a difference between going to the store and buying raspberries and going standing in your.
::Backyard picking them off your own Bush.
::I love raspberries and.
::I have cultivated a patch. It's my patch. I'm the only one that eats those raspberries and I go out there every day during the summer. And I just feast on them. But I have to wait all year. I think yesterday was my last chance to really enjoy them because I think we're getting into the colder weather now.
::UM.
::But I know next year.
::They'll be back and there's.
::So nice this year.
::I feel the same way about tomatoes. I am a condo dweller, so I have a balcony so I cannot serve. Perennial plants are a little bit difficult, but every year I plant tomatoes and I wait all year for those tomatoes and I look forward to them. So in February I'm already mapping out which tomato seeds I'm buying and there's this beautiful cycle of anticipation of effort, of gratification. And then you get to sort of.
::Anticipate again, which can be really love.
::And there's a.
::Different flavor with a tomato that you pick on a sunny day, and that's just like perfect brightness. It's like.
::It is like candy. It's just like it's so sweet and so delicious and so much flavor.
::That you can never get in a grocery store, ever. It just, it's just not possible. And it's I fail to see the point of buying tomato.
::It's just like they're.
::They agree with you.
::Just a big disappointment.
::I agree with you. I've been teaching so my partner is very lovely and not always tuned in to this kind of experience and so he gets really excited when he sees heirloom tomatoes and so occasionally in February he'll be like, ohh greenhouse heirloom tomatoes. It's like, please don't bring me tomatoes unless it's August. That is the only time of year I want to eat it. Tomato, because that is peak tomato season.
::I'm OK to wait for the rest of.
::I don't want a tomato sandwich in February and that's where that intentionality comes in, because as you start to cultivate the practice of intentional eating and again doesn't have to be every single meal. But if you know that hot August afternoon, you spend that time with those beautiful tomatoes and you realize the potential that they have for joy and sustenance and nourishment.
::You don't want to not have that experience.
::In a different way.
::And it is an experience.
::You can even cooking. I love to cook, but I like to really cook. I don't like to just assemble things and.
::Slap it on the table.
::When you do that sort of intentional cooking and you bring all the foods together and you really work on having the best possible ingredients, and then you sit down to a meal with your whole family or your friends. It just has such a rich experience.
::To the whole thing and it's.
::It changes the process of ingesting calories.
::Yeah, very much so. I was listening to one of my favorite cookbook authors talk the other day. Food is really powerful to have difficult conversations because we're when you're sitting down to a meal with people, there is a sense of sort of shared community shared understanding. We're coming together.
::To have an experience and it can be easier to broach more difficult topics in those spaces because people are just generally more receptive to each other. So even though you don't agree about something, you can still sort of safely explore it. Maybe come at it with curiosity and humor.
::And so it's a really powerful way of just building community, improving relationship both with yourself and with other people and nourishing each other both in, you know, the literal way of consuming food and engaging with joy and love, but also, you know, learning more about each other, building community, which, you know, opens up other value, other ways of being.
::And being well.
::Yeah, like mental health.
::Which is.
::You know.
::All of these other pieces.
::And when you eat intentionally, you're more likely to.
::To feel better and be happier because you're not just allowing the chemicals that.
::Are designed to trick your taste buds into thinking that their food to invade your body, and really it just.
::It interferes with the chemical reactions that are happening in our bodies at all times I.
::Mean you have thoughts?
::Thoughts generate a chemical reaction that happens in your body and the whole body mind connection.
::It's just being.
::In tune and connected between.
::Your head and your body and the space around you and what you're what you're bringing into that space and what you're allowing to become part of who you are it.
::It's just really.
::If you can slow down enough to appreciate all.
::Of these little pieces it makes.
::Light the quality of life so much better.
::Yes. And there's also sort of, you know, the gut brain piece where if you are eating sort of food that is real food and not food, that has been heavily processed, that impacts your microbiome, which impacts how your gut produces all those awesome neurotransmitters that help you balance your moods and balance your emotions. And so there is that whole aspect to it as well. Or when you start eating intentionally and you observe.
::How you feel? Different, right? There's all this conversation about mindfulness and noticing. And while it's great to be able to notice, what do you do after you have noticed? Right? You eat something that's really heavily processed. You notice you don't feel so great. Then what happens?
::Maybe then.
::You make a different choice.
::And some days, you know, that's what's available. There are days when you know, I'm running from meeting to meeting. And the most I can do is pull a super process protein bar out of my bag so that you know, again, I'm not hungry and I'm not exhausted at the end of the day and no judgment, that's what I needed to do to get through the situation. But if I can make a different choice and, you know, eat some fruit and some nuts next time, maybe I'll plan and.
::Back. So I feel even better.
::And it's that sort of taking that mindfulness and yoga can be a really beautiful practice for folks who are having a hard time finding their way into mindfulness because for a lot of people, sort of, I'm going to sit and be mindful can be.
::Difficult if there's a lot of stuff.
::Yeah, a minute is a really long time when you're first starting out.
::Feels like an eternity, but if you're being mindful in a movement practice, which is a lot of where, it's sort of the asana practice comes in, is mindful observation of what things feel like day after day after day. If you do the same practice, you cultivate that capacity to notice, and then you cultivate the capacity to make change based on the information that you receive, and you can do the same with food.
::Yeah. Now you can and you.
::Know just because.
::You had to eat the protein bar that's highly processed doesn't mean that the whole rest of the day is a total waste. And you may as well just, you know, dive into the bucket.
::Of ice cream too.
::You can recognize.
::That this was an emergency situation and I did the best I could with what I had on.
::Hand and reward yourself for that.
::OK.
::That's the decision I made and I know that later I'll be able to make other decisions that maybe are a little bit.
::Better for me and it will balance it out. It's not an all or nothing thing. It's just little changes and little decisions that you can make along the way.
::OK.
::Yeah, one of my teachers likes to call them opportunities for choice. So instead of I must. It's, I get to choose to and then you can make a decision that feels aligned with your values aligned with where you are at that moment in time. And it helps maybe cultivate some neutrality for those of us who have a lot of judgment attached to certain foods or types of foods or ways of eating, just cultivate that. You know, this is what I needed to do in the moment.
::So I could keep doing the thing that.
::I needed to do.
::And that's OK, I move forward.
::And continue to make choices.
::And don't beat yourself up.
::For it, because you know it's we're just.
::Living a life.
::Humans, being sometimes more humans doing than humans being, but at least trying to be.
::Yes, yes, it's getting back to the beings part.
::That is the work.
::That is, it work indeed so.
::You do have a gift that you give people. It's called intentional eating on your website. You want to talk about that for.
::Just a second and then.
::Yeah, it's a short guide that you can download and use and share, whether you know want to print it and put it up by the place where you eat or you want to have, you know, save it on your phone as an image or share it with someone that you think would benefit from it. And it just walks you through all of the senses that you can tap into to engage in an intentional eating practice. So you start, you know, just by engaging with your sense of sight.
::What do you see? Have you ever really looked closely at this piece of food? Or, you know, if you choose to use a beverage, you know, have you noticed the color? Have you noticed how it shifts on?
::Time and then you transition into what do you hear? Because sometimes food has sound. When was the last time you listened to this food? If you've ever listened to it, and then you engage with smell, you explore taste in a few ways. And then you consciously swallow and you observe the process of swallowing, which I don't know that very many people ever pause to notice. What? Swallowing.
::Feels like and like when you can stop noticing the swallowing.
::And you can repeat that exercise as often as you look like. I know some of my students who are parents like to do this with their kids because kids are super vocal about all of the things that they're seeing and hearing and feeling. And so that could be really, really fun. But you can also do it by yourself. It's like a moment of quiet contemplation. One of my students does it every morning with, you know, her first cup of coffee.
::She's like, it's so lovely to engage fully with that. And then I feel better connected to myself and I can move on with my day. So yeah, take it, use it in whatever way is helpful for you. Share it with whoever would benefit from it.
::Like the coffee one.
::I only have One Cup of coffee a day and I look forward to it the next one. All day I drink tea, the rest of the day, but in the morning I like this One Cup of.
::Coffee and it's so.
::Good. And I buy really good coffee and it smells amazing. And there's a little process.
::Making it.
::Yeah, they can. They can be really beautiful ritual. And then this this really the process of slowing down can really help you savor something that you might otherwise take for granted.
::Especially in a world that is quite rushed and I know for folks, it's September now as a folks are, you know adjusting to back to school rituals and I don't have time to do these things to deliberately take.
::And it doesn't.
::Take very long, you can take you know 2-3, maybe 5 minutes if you want to give it a full.
::5 minutes to take that.
::One sip or that one byte to just connect with yourself, which we don't have to do.
::And then the rest of your day can be whatever it needs.
::To be, but you've had that moment.
::Yeah, slowing down. Just have a moment. Really important. So what is the one thing you want to leave the audience with today?
::Other than exploring intentional eating.
::I would like to leave your audience with a reminder that they always have their breath, so if you're ever.
::Feeling you know.
::A little dysregulated, whether.
::You're having a hard time focusing or you're really upset about something taking that similar moment to pause and really just breathing into the bottom of your.
::Rib cage.
::Slowing that down can really make a big impact on how you feel. And you, I mean, if you can't breathe, definitely go get help, but usually our breath is accessible to us. And so you always have this really, really powerful tool.
::To help support your Wellness to help it be sustainable in a way that's.
::Useful for you.
::Breathing. Just breathe.
::Breathing can do so many wonderful things for you.
::I recently learned the box breathing technique.
::Ohh yes.
::And I started practicing at night when I'm trying to go.
::To sleep and it.
::It just works so incredibly well for me, it's.
::Where I used to lay.
::There for hours now, it's just like.
::5 minutes. I'm out.
::If it regulates your nervous system so well, and for folks who box breathing, I find some people are uncomfortable with the hold after they exhale. So the four 7-8 breath is also really nice just to develop the capacity to start to hold. We have it's so powerful because it immediately impacts your nervous system.
::Just like.
::If you don't.
::Know what box breathing is? It's.
::You breathe in for the count of four. You hold it for the count of four. You breathe out for the count of four, and you hold it for the count of four. Breathe in for the count of four. It?
::It's just I.
::Think it's the rhythmic pattern of it too, as you're thinking these numbers in your head and it's just like it's so relaxing and you.
::It's like it shouldn't be and you're just breathing, but it just.
::It works so well.
::I think it helps people tap into the being part of human as opposed to the doing.
::Part of human.
::I agree so people can get a hold of you by going to your website.
::Absolutely it.
::I can give it to people that would be helpful. It is doubly www.holisticyogatherapy.ca because I am canadian.com will not bring you to me.
::Yes, definitely. Remember the CIA and we'll put that link in the show notes below and Niya. It has been so wonderful chatting with you today. It has been a lovely conversation.
::Thank you so much for having me.
::I had a really good time.
