Category: Yoga

Health & Fitness, Massage Therapy, Meditation, Yoga

On Getting Comfortable with Uncertainty

heather

The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty that you can comfortably live with. – Tony Robbins

Week 5 is done, Man!  In case you don’t know, that’s a riff off of a quote from Adventures in Babysitting, a movie I haven’t seen in probably 15 years, but that quote has always stuck with me – Dishes are done, Man!!

Anyway, I’ll reel myself back in to the point.  Friday marked my 5th week of classes at CNS.  We celebrated with a quiz in anatomy.  Fortunately the teacher dropped some heavy hints the week prior, so we were all pretty prepared.  After hours of study, I got a 93% on the 10 question quiz.  I missed one.  Ninety-three percent is a solid grade.  I am mostly happy with it.  I am a little unhappy with it too, though. I wanted 100%.  I wish I could get to the root of this drive for perfection, so I could unwind it and be satisfied with what IS.

I think it has something to do with always being a people-pleaser and identifying myself as the “good girl” who gets good grades.  It’s a huge part of my self-identification, and my way of trying to control what I was able to control as a child.  I could reduce conflict in the world around me by getting good grades.  And it got me positive attention.  I don’t NEED to get good grades for those reasons anymore though.  But that coding is still strong within me.

But, overall, I am satisfied and a little less anxious about my success in this program.  As a wise friend told me, if I HAD gotten 100%, it may have set false expectations and made lower grades in the future tougher to deal with.  I set a reasonable bar with my 93%. 🙂

Enough about my layers!  Let’s get on to the purpose of this post – being OK with uncertainty.

This topic came up in class on Friday, when the teacher was discussing some new research that indicates that massage therapy does NOT increase blood flow.  This was the one thing that almost everyone agreed was a positive result of massage therapy.  Welp… now it looks as if that is in question too.  Anecdotally, it seems to be true.  From direct observation, it seems to be true – just look at how red the skin gets after being massaged.  If that’s not an increase in blood flow, what is it??

It was a timely discussion, however, as today one of the YTU teachers I follow and greatly admire posted  this article about the Myth of Symmetry in Yoga.  The title of the article pretty much says it all.  The author references several studies that indicate that symmetry in the body (symmetry of muscles, posture, and leg lengths) is irrelevant to sensation of pain.

So…the school I am going to is FOUNDED on the concept of symmetry.  With each treatment, we do an 84-point analysis on the posture to identify imbalances. The chief imbalance that can drive many of the others is a lower limb length inequality (LLLI – aka one leg is shorter than the other).  We are taught that the limb length issue must be corrected first (via lifts in the shoes).  If that is not fixed, any bodywork provides only temporary relief.

So this article is in direct contradiction to what we are taught.  BUT!  BUT! I did not read the studies the author referenced. I clicked through to a few of the summaries, though.  In my quick pass-through, it appeared as if the studies were not done over an extensive period of time.  Perhaps an LLLI does not cause much pain until later in life or until an unusual stress is placed on an imbalanced body?

One thing that I have noted in all my reading about diet and exercise over the past 5 years, is that “Science” is constantly shifting.  Eggs are good!  Eggs are bad.  Coconut oil is the bomb!! Coconut oil will give you heart attacks! Stretching is good for you!  Stretching will compromise your joints and make you unstable!  Yoga will save your life!  Yoga will bust your shoulders all to hell.

So, again, we waffle back to center.  The truth lies somewhere in between.  Balance (which is oh so close to symmetry…) is the key.  If we really do exist in a quantum field, where everything exists in multiple states until it doesn’t, each person’s Truth varies.  We all have different perceptions, experiences, and DNA that alter how we experience the world.

So, thus, I start my journey into being comfortable in the unknown, trusting that I am in the right place at the right time, gaining knowledge that will help me understand my body, your body, and the world around me better.  With this knowledge, I will eventually be able to help people who share a similiar quantum experience.  If we both look really quickly to the right and see the same thing, then someday I may be able to help you if you are in pain.

Hope you are having a great weekend – getting outside, spending time with loved ones, spending some time in the peace and quiet.  If you’ve had any experience with dealing with  challenges to your foundational beliefs, I would love to hear how you tipped-toed through to the other side.

Take care!

Health & Fitness, Massage Therapy, Meditation, Yoga

Week 3 – On Contemplating Change Vs. Implementing Change

heather

Today was the first week of normal classes at CNS.  Monday we had Basic Massage. Tuesday was Advanced Technique. Wednesday was Business. Thursday was more Advanced Technique.  Friday was Anatomy and Pyshiology. I’m concerned about my success in A&P because I cannot yet spell physiology correctly.  Wait! I think I just figured it out!!

It’s been a super interesting week.  I really love the Tech and A&P class. They are taught by the founders of the school and their passion really shines through in their teaching. You KNOW that they believe that this form of therapy changes lives. Not only does it change the life of the patient, but it has a domino effect and changes the lives of the people the patients interact with.  This is a Difference Maker.  It is so fulfilling to be surrounded by that kind of conviction and knowledge.

During the Tech class, we learn the  neurosomatic techniques. This week we learned how to address the muscles in the front of the neck – infrahyoids, suprahyoids, the deep anterior cervical muscles (the muscles that connect to the vertebrae), the scalenes (the muscles that move your neck from side to side) and the sternocleidomastoid – the muscle that flexes, tilts, and rotates the neck.

These are super impactful (is that a word??) muscles to treat.  Treating these can help immensely with ear, jaw, throat, and shoulder pain, thoracic outlet syndrome, and migraines.  However, they are a….sensitive area to treat.  There are lots of trigger points in these muscles, and one of the treatments involves moving the trachea out of the way.  So…  It’s really important work with lots of benefits, but it’s also work that requires a lot of trust and practice.  People just aren’t used to therapists fiddling around with the front of their necks!

My first A&P class was Friday.  The teacher is…just amazing. You can tell he really loves the material and believes 100% in it its importance.  He is lively, animated, funny, and super knowledgeable- which is a must, if you are sitting through 4 hours of anatomy lecture.  It was totally overwhelming.  Completely. He also told us that over 1/2 of the first term students fail their first anatomy test. I have never failed a test.  I don’t know how I would deal with that!! I hope I don’t have to find out.

I took copious notes and also recorded the session.  Today I used the pomodoro technique to tackle studying.  With this technique, you focus 100% for 25 minutes and then take a 3-5 minute break (which I used to roll out my upper back, shoulders and pecs with the Yoga Tune Up balls).  I found that knowing that I only had to work for 25 minutes relieved some of the anxiety I was feeling about tackling this huge subject!  At first I really struggled with how to approach studying.  But once I started looking at my notes, looking at the pictures in my Thieme book, and tying the two together (and reminding myself to BE PATIENT), I felt so much better.  The terminology started to make sense.  The names of things in the body actually do have some logic to them, and that started to present itself as I worked.

I did about 4 pomodoro sessions and then took a long break.  I, uh, watched Miss Congeniality.  It’s a really excellent movie, actually.

But now I’m going to go back and do some more homework – I have some reading to tackle. I like to read before I go to bed because I feel as if the information just kind of floats around in the ol’ brain pan and settles in better that way.

Tomorrow I am meeting a couple of classmates to practice my neck-spearing technique (aka treating the superficial anterior cervical muscles).  Then I’ll do some more studying, meal prep for the week (steel cut oats, quinoa, and BBQ pork in the Instant Pot). Hopefully I will figure out a way to have some FUN tomorrow.  Figuring out fun stuff is actually quite challenging!!

Oh! I guess I should circle back to the whole theme of this post – change!!  I was talking to a dear friend of mine who has been with me step-by-step as I contemplated coming to this school.  She is intimately familiar with all the doubt, fear, and indecision I was experiencing.  My therapist said I was in Decision Purgatory, and that is the perfect description.

Well, Angela and I were talking about my current state, and I told her that living in Florida and going to school just feels, well, normal now!  She reminded me of how petrified I was of making this change. It made me realize that CONTEMPLATION of change is the really scary thing.  Actually EXPERIENCING  the change is NBD (no big deal).  You just deal with it, like you deal with everything.  The Ego is a funny thing. I’ve been pretty entertained lately by watching its machinations.  Between lots of reading of Kiran Trace and listening to Matthew Kahn’s podcast, I’ve realized that it’s all about awareness without judgement. I can FEEL whatever I want to feel, and that is 100% OK.  I just need to observe how I feel and let that be OK.  I’m doing a lot of “Huh.  That’s interesting.”

Hope you are having a fabulous Saturday.

Take care,

Hlo

 

Health & Fitness, Paleo, Uncategorized, Yoga

On the Importance of Movement

heather

Where have I been, you may be wondering??  Well, let me tell you. It’s a story that begins at the latest last summer and at the earliest back in high school, with a few milestones in between.

I’ll start at the most recent beginning, which is last summer.

For the past several years, especially since discovering the primal diet (thank you Mark Sisson!), I have felt very compelled to share with others the fascinating things I was learning, namely – we have the power to heal ourselves without the use of prescription drugs and surgeries.  As I started to eat better and move my body more regularly, I noticed a huge improvement in my level of anxiety, my body composition, and my energy levels.  It was nothing short of amazing. I wanted EVERYONE to know this.

But I struggled with the best way to share this message. I was not content with sharing this information with only the interested friend or family member (or the uninterested family member 😛 ).  I wanted a more Official communication forum.

Consequently I ventured down the yoga teacher training path.  Teaching yoga fed my deep curiosity about the body, philosophy, and spirituality. It also gave me an avenue to share what I was learning with others.  I LOVE teaching, especially those classes where the students and I are on the same wave length, and everything just…gels.  Amazing. Total Flow state.

Yet, I still yearned for more. I was/am working full-time at a fairly stressful job, fitting in classes and workshops where I could.  I clung to the job because I have a HUGE need for security, safety, and a financial safety net.  Yet, I wanted to do more with the health and wellness sphere.  But I was running out of hours in the day and energy to do both well.

I was super discontented and unsettled and stressed, and I felt as if my life was being used incorrectly by me.  So I started meeting with a psychologist who is also a yoga therapist – a woman who marries west and east and blends science with spirituality. During the first session I explained my plight. She had me write down my intention. I wrote “My intention is to find my purpose and follow it fearlessly.”

A day or two later on the Yoga Tune Up Teachers Page, I learned about a pain treatment modality, neurosomatic therapy, that focuses on posture to analyze the root of issues in the tissues.  It is a form of manual therapy, but it also adds in the component of corrective exercise (so patients don’t just revert back to old patterns of behavior).

I was intrigued!  I called the school and ended up speaking to a man just a year younger than me who just quit his job in real estate to go back to the school.  He was SO HAPPY. Over the next few days we talked for a few hours, as he answered all my detailed questions about the program.  This system of treatment gelled SO WELL with what I had been learning in YTU, and it also made intuitive sense to me.  It was a natural fit for the style of yoga/movement that drew me as well.

For the next year, I would torture myself with deciding whether or not to take the plunge and do this program. I would talk to students from the program, hear their remarkable impressions of the program, how much they loved it, how they wished they could do it again, how great it was to help people that no one else could help.

Yet I waffled. How could I leave Iowa? How could I ask Tim to completely change our life?  How could I leave my parents????  How could we leave our adorable house that we spent 14 years making perfect?  What would I do for money?  I had grown very accustomed to the lifestyle that my stressful corporate job provided, to be honest.

I was confident that I would love the training program. I was sure that this career path would provide more fulfillment, joy and flow than being a business analyst at a bank.  I knew that this career would give me opportunities to learn and grow in a field that is fascinating to me.

So, what to do?  On the one hand – security, family, safety, knowing what tomorrow will bring.  On the other hand – lots of potential, room for growth, greater understanding of this vessel in which I live, but also insecurity, lack of predictability, increased expenses, and a move 18 hours across the USA.

I finally decided to take the plunge.  Tim is joining me on this crazy adventure. We are breaking out of several years of comfy habits and routines which is absolutely terrifying but also exciting.  As we are fixing up the house, cleaning out 14 years of accumulation, I realized that our comfy life was also kind of stagnant.  We had swung too far off center, and we needed a massive shake-up to reach equilibrium again.  Much like the body needs constant movement for optimum performance, life needs movement and change as well!

I hope to continue writing as we progress through this experience together, but I will have to see what this new life looks like.  I will be working part time and going to school part time, but hopefully I can still find time to write!

So this is already a super long blog post, so I better sign off.  Thanks for reading!

 

Health & Fitness, Meditation, Uncategorized, Yoga

After further thought…

heather

My students Thursday night asked me a couple of questions that I was not really prepared to answer.  I tossed out the first thing that came to the top of my head, but after further reflection, I have more to add. It takes awhile for my brain to get into gear!

Question 1:  What is the biggest change I have noticed with doing yoga regularly?

This one caused a rush of conflicting thoughts in my head, even though it seems like a simple question.  A lot of this tumult of thought circled around, “I don’t actually DO yoga regularly!”  I have a varied movement practice – I jog a couple of days a week, I lift a couple of days a week, I attend a yoga class once every couple of weeks, I do one of Jill Miller’s videos once or twice a week.

I’m conflicted about even calling myself a yoga teacher, in point of fact, because I feel as if it can give people the impression that I practice 6 days a week for 90 minutes everyday, and I can do handstands and splits and crazy binds.  I can’t do any of that stuff, so I don’t teach any of that stuff.  I help people understand their bodies better with the aid of the Yoga Tune Up® balls and mindful mobility and strengthening work.  We crawl, we swing, we roll, we look at pictures of muscles in books.  Is that “yoga”?  Technically yes (as I understand it), but I fear it’s not what people typically consider yoga to be.

So once all of that darted through my head, I settled back on the question – what is the biggest chance I have noticed?  I told the class that after taking the YTU Level 1 training, I noticed that I felt myself stacked over my feet better – like I wasn’t leaning forward all the time.  That was the biggest change for me.

And that is true, but, upon reflection, what I have really noticed from my mindful movement practices is that I have more Awareness now.  I notice when my shoulders start to creep up around my ears, I notice when I start breathing shallowly, I notice when random parts of my body tense up (like my hands or my belly), I notice (with a slight bit of detachment) when I feel annoyed or angry, I notice when my mind is going a million miles per minute.  Sometimes I just notice these things. Sometimes I notice them and then try to change them – I will stretch, or roll on the balls, or reflect on whether it’s worth it to get angry about this situation.  That Awareness is what I have noticed most from doing yoga.

Question 2:  Does it ever get better, or do you have to constantly work at it (re: muscle tightness)?

My answer to this was, you really do need to keep working at it.  You can’t just roll and relax and be done with it.  You need a relaxation maintenance package. 🙂

And that is true!  But what I forgot to mention was that if you change your habits (especially postural habits), you can start to alleviate tension all over the body.  For example, if you stack your ears over your shoulders, it releases strain in the back of the neck, the back of the head, the tops of the shoulders, and the jaw.

So, while you still should continue to move your body as much as possible (whether in “yoga” or some other mindful movement practice), if you move your body BETTER and use Awareness to re-position yourself in a joint-stacked position, you will over time reduce pain and tension in the body.  Instead of trying to fit another exercise class into your day to keep yourself supple, you can continuously adjust yourself as you are walking, reading, doing the dishes, working at your computer.  As Katy Bowman always says, Stack Your Life!  Improve your mobility while doing the other things in life you have to do.

I’m still not sure that fully answers both questions, but if I wait until I have a perfect answer, I will never get this posted!

Hope you are having a great Memorial Day weekend and that you can get out outside, put your toes in the grass, laugh with your friends and family, and eat delicious food!

 

Health & Fitness, Meditation, Yoga

New Yoga Sequence on YouTube!

heather

Hey-O!  I’ve gone and done it.  I bought a new microphone, so I could film some high-quality yoga videos. I plugged the mic in, did a 2 second test, and replayed the video.  NO SOUND!!  So I plowed forward, sans microphone, filming a 30 minute video.  Come to find out, you have to REMOVE the mic from the phone during the replay in order to actually hear the audio. Live and learn, right??

Anyway, the point of my rant is not my lack of technical prowess, but rather the fact that I filmed a 30 minute yoga video that will help with spine health.  The video is not amazing.  You can’t see the left side of my body.  BUT, you can generally get the gist of what I am instructing you to do, and you will feel better in your gorgeous bod if you do what I am instructing you to do, so I’m calling that a win.

Here is the link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCXubOPoS9s&feature=youtu.be.

Enjoy and let me know what you think in the comments!

Health & Fitness, Meditation, Uncategorized, Yoga

Where Worlds Collide

heather

Last week I attended the Iowa Women Lead Change Conference in Cedar Rapids, IA.  It was a really amazing conference, with a lot of thought-provoking speakers.  But what really blew my mind, was that when I went to the Dubuque Yoga and Oneness Festival two days later, a lot of the same concepts were presented.  The scientific research community is finally starting to prove to the the corporate world that what yogis have been saying for thousands of years is actually true.

Here is a brief overview of the cross-pollination – it centers mostly around how 1) we are all connected and 2) the words we use with others and ourselves have a powerful impact on bodies.  I’m presenting this in list form because lists make my brain feel good. 🙂

  1. Action conquers fear.
  2. Progress not perfection.
  3. We underestimate our ability to recover from failure.
  4. Most people talk themselves out of their dreams.
  5. Stop telling yourself what you are not good at – Growth mindset vs. Fixed mindset.
  6. Women are critical to business success because we have a drive for meaning and purpose.  We have strong communication skills and are relationship-focused.
  7. MRI – Most Respectful Interpretation
    1. Interrogate reality – consider your filters: attitudes, beliefs, truths, opinions.
  8. Act from a place of values and vision.  Be authentic!
  9. Pause boldly – don’t let the amygdala (your ancient brain) boss you!
  10. BREATHE to bring the heart into a coherent rhythm and by doing so increase brain performance.
  11. Relaxed brains have more Aha! moments.
  12. We need Periods of Silence in our lives.
  13. Screen time dulls your capacity to think.  After 90 minutes of screen time, take a 20 minute break.
  14. Choose your words wisely.  An employee’s brain lights up when they hear positive words from her manager.  When she hears negative words, 11 regions shut down, and the effect lasts for hours.
  15. Emotions are contagious.
  16. Saying Thank You to an employee releases oxytocin (feel good hormone) in his brain.
  17. Yoga helps get your body into a coherent state.
  18. True failure comes from not trying.
  19. Mindfulness practices are a good way to deal with overwhelm
  20. Our brain does best when we are around others who care about us.
  21. Exclusion lights up the same parts of the brain that are lit up when physical pain is felt.
  22. The brain is hard-wired to belong.
  23. The ancient brain is kind of a jerk. It’s an efficient jerk though.  It quickly grabs on to patterns and integrates them to make decisions.  That is where stereotypes begin.  But we can PAUSE and consciously react differently.
  24. We cannot multi-task!!  The brain just toggles really quickly between tasks and loses 20-30% productivity in the process.
    1. Busy-ness does NOT equal productivity.
  25. We need Rest, Stillness, Mindfulness.
  26. Be mindful of outsiders and pull them in.

Based on that list, where do you think I learned that information?  At the Yoga Festival?  NOPE!  That is what all these smarties and PHds and authors at the conference shared with us!!

But that is basically what I learned at my day at the conference too.  Our thoughts, our heartbeats, our cellular material are all intermingled and shared with the people around us.  Where do “I” leave off exactly, and where does “Other” begin?

I think this article is already long enough, so I will hold off on sharing more from the conference for now. I hope you found this information as interesting as I did!  If you want to learn more, you can check out the following people:

  • Carey Lohrenz : http://careylohrenz.com
  • Sallie Krawcheck: https://www.ellevatenetwork.com/team/sallie-krawcheck
  • Jenn Bleil: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-bleil-28a5765/
  • Jill Saunders: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillsaundersprofile/
  • Dr. Steve L. Robbins: http://slrobbins.com
  • Jeff Masters: http://www.jeffmasters.net

 

 

Health & Fitness, Yoga

Foot Rollin’

heather

One of my favorite things to do with the Yoga Tune Up® balls is roll the bottoms of my feet. It’s also one of my favorite things to teach.  It’s one of the most impactful areas to roll out. It relieves tension in the whole back body line, brings amazing awareness to the feet, and just generally blows peoples’ minds. 🙂

I made a 5 minute video showing how to roll out the feet. You can watch it here.  I only demo one foot, but don’t forget to do both feet (of course!).

I follow Katy Bowman’s advice and try to “stack my life.”  I keep a pair of YTU balls at work, and I roll my feet assiduously when I am on conference calls.  My feet are much more nimble (and bigger – I grew a shoe size!) now.

Let me know what you think in the comments!

Health & Fitness, Meditation, Yoga

The dangers of learning

heather

I just returned home this morning from my 5th Yoga Tune Up® training, the Core Integration Immersion. If you take a body and chop off the head, arms, and legs – well, not only would you have a horrible mess, but in the chunk left over, you have a good representation of the area we learned about in this immersion.

We spent each morning doing a core integration practice which consisted of rolling on the therapy balls to bring awareness into the tissues, and then we activated those tissues in typical Yoga Tune Up® fashion, which means activating them in fun and weird atypical ways. YTU is typically very atypical (see photos below as proof).  Thanks to our teacher, Dinneen Viggiano for taking these pictures!

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As with all trainings that I go to, I leave feeling as if I know NOTHING!!  The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know.  It’s pretty annoying to keep bumping up against one’s own ignorance over and over again, yet I keep doing it!!

However, I know that once my brain gets a chance to recover from being overstimulated, the information starts to soak in, and a tiny piece of a massively complicated puzzle clicks into place.  I integrate and absorb what resonates with me.  The feeling of overwhelm starts to subside, I get the pleasure of sharing my new knowledge with other people who will find it useful, and then I start thinking about what training class I am going to go to next.

Once I get a chance to digest all this information with both the brain in my head and the brain in my gut (yep – there is essentially another brain in that there Core), I will write some more posts on what I learned.  I also promised my brother a short video on how to do Uddihyana Bandha (a diaphragm exercise that has an insanely long list of benefits), so I will make a post about that as well.

So, thank you for reading, and more to come!!

Health & Fitness, Yoga

On Becoming a Roll Model

heather

Well, it’s official!  I attended The Science of Rolling, Ball Sequencing & Innovation, turned in the homework and took the final. I am now a Certified Roll Model® Method Practitioner!  What does this mean, you ask?  It means that I can guide you through some really amazing self-myofascial sessions that will leave you feeling more relaxed, taller, and more attuned to your body.

One of my homework assignments was to create a 5 minute video where I teach all the rolling techniques.  The video is below.  This was our first shot, and it was chilly and overcast, so I called it good.  I learned a lot that I will incorporate into video #2, if/when we make it!  The video will give you a general idea of what I mean when I say either “ball-rolling” or “self-myofascial release.”  This sequence will also help relieve tightness in the ankles and knees (great for runners!!).

[vimeo 189527194 w=640 h=360]

Calf Mash from Heather Longoria on Vimeo.

Basically you use the grippy, pliable Yoga Tune Up® therapy balls to lengthen muscles, relieve tightness and tension, hydrate tissues, and just generally make you feel better in your body.

I have been teaching these techniques at a yoga studio, private club, in private lessons, and in corporate yoga classes, and everyone falls in love with the balls after their first session. It is unbelievable how much change you can effect in the body with a few minutes of strategic rolling.  Self care is the best form of health care!

That is my update for now. If you are interested in finding out more about Yoga Tune Up® or the Roll Model®, hit me up in the comments or use the Contact Me link.