Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello, everybody. Welcome to Health Chatter. Today's show is on yoga. Yoga, yoga meditation, the whole thing. And we've got a wonderful, great guest. And I can say that because he's my yoga instructor. And he's really, really good. He's really good. So I'll introduce him in a minute. We've got a great crew. that really helps our shows be successful.
And it includes Maddie Levine-Wolfe, Aaron Collins, and Aaron is also doing our recording today. Deandra Howard did the background research for this show. Matthew Campbell is our production person. Sheridan Nygaard helps us with marketing and transcribing all the shows for us. So wonderful group, great colleagues, and I appreciate them a lot. Lawrence Jones. is my co-host for Health Chatter.
And we do a lot of chatting, not only on the shows, but offline as well. So Clarence, good to see you today. And Dr. Barry Baines is our medical advisor and provides a medical twist to some of the health chatter that we do. So Barry, good to have you with us. Human Partnership.
is our sponsor, great community health organization, does wonderful things out in the community to make us all a little bit healthier. That's HUMAN, H-U-E-M-A-N, partnership. You can check them out at humanpartnershipalliance.org. Wonderful, wonderful community organization. And you can check us out at healthchatterpodcast.com. You can see all the research.
You can see a transcription of any of the shows that we've done. I believe we're closing in on our 140th show on health chatter. So it's been quite a ride. So thank you to everybody. Today, yoga. And we've got a great guest. Really, really great. Tori Schaefer is the Senior Director of Yoga at Lifetime Health.
fitness and lifetime has i don't know how many clubs around the country but almost 200 now over 200 wow almost almost 200 yeah wow unbelievable and a nationally recognized meditation yoga and sound healing practitioner i will tell you this um i've taken classes with with with tori and um He really brings a creative bend, no pun intended on that one, to yoga. And it's very, very enjoyable.
It really, really is. And so it's great. He teaches all the different types of yoga, and we'll be talking about those today. He's got a wonderful background in music, performance, teaching. So thank you. Thank you, Tori, for being with us today on Health Chatter. All right. Yoga. So let's start with maybe a little history. Maybe that's a good place to start here. All right. Yoga.
It goes back a ways. So maybe you can respond to that a little bit. Yoga and history. History.
Oh, how far do you want to go back, Stan?
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Chapter 2: How does Tory Schafer blend music and yoga practices?
So mindfulness is where that meditative quality comes in, is the mind. And then the somatic. So somatic is, I'm starting to call it more and more a buzzword. It seems to be really popping up through 2025. I have a feeling it'll be there through at least 2026. But somatics is anytime that you're mindful around sensation that is at the body, breath, or mindfulness in anything.
And so a typical class at Lifetime is going to start with two to three minutes of just allowing you to show up. And I think that is truly key to any practice that anybody does.
So whether you're going to go run on a treadmill or lift weights, go for a walk in nature, give yourself two to three minutes to simply, you know, sometimes putting a hand on your chest will help you just ground and connect to you and start to listen to your body because we get too caught up in life and everything else that's around us that we forget that
We don't love ourselves as much as we could. And go, where am I feeling sensation? How do my knees feel? And the key to this, because as soon as we start to feel, oh, my knee's a little achy, the mind wants to tell you a story about why. Going, ah, yeah, that's from when I was young and I was doing foolish things and I fell down. Go, thank you, mind. I know that you love dramas.
That soap opera can be there. That's fine. But let me just accept what the sensation is as a sensation. And that starts to bridge the two. And then after a couple minutes of just observing the mind and the body as it is, you just slowly watch your natural breath in and out. And that just helps to calm the nervous system.
It takes you from the sympathetic state, which most of us live the majority of our lives in, that fight or flight type of place where the nervous system is overcharged, to a parasympathetic state of I'm willing to be here as I am, almost radical self-acceptance in some ways.
And then once you get your breath going, in a typical yoga class, I'll use the one that Stan comes to, which we call root, which is what we would call a hatha-based class, which hatha is a funny word in yoga because it truly is the umbrella for any physical form. But the word itself translates to hot, which is hot sun and ta, cool moon, which just simply means there are oppositions in life.
And within that, there's oppositions in your body. So can we start to feel the... profound effect that when I wiggle my fingers and press them into the ground, that has an effect on the stability that's going on in my rotator cuff and my shoulders. So if I have sore shoulders or elbows, am I aware that my fingers actually have a role to play in the integrity of the stability in my joints?
And so we'll just take a little bit of time to somatically, mindfully work through these little micro engagements, which helps us become more aware of the body. Not only that, it becomes an extra little pump in your body.
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Chapter 3: What historical context is important for understanding yoga?
But you remind the students to breathe. You all of a sudden give them the opportunity to recognize how does my mind respond when I'm dealing with stress? And then you teach them to breathe. So hopefully when they're off their mat, they can go, that's right. I don't need to always give in and react to the environment I'm in. I can actually choose how I wanna step into the environment.
And going back to being in Minnesota, I hope you listened today because I am truly touched by how many people are going out and being activists. The one thing that I think is truly important is I believe activism has a beautiful thing and has a platform for change when we come from a place of love. and a place of truth.
And it's really easy in this world today, because you see so much divisiveness. I might have just made up a word there. But when something doesn't go the way that I truly believe, I point a finger and go, no, you're wrong. And as soon as we start doing that, the ears shut, we no longer are able to listen and a conversation can't happen. But it's coming from stress.
But if I can slow down and take myself from sympathetic to parasympathetic state, and I can go, I know my truth. Okay, I wanna speak my truth. How do I do that with kindness? And when I do it from a place of love and kindness, I'm more open to having conversations and understanding their perspective.
Hopefully they'll get a little bit of my perspective and that's always gonna hopefully build community with purpose. And I think those are key elements that when you do have a consistent yoga practice or meditation practice, by the way, when I say yoga, that includes learning how to breathe, That means moving your body in a way that is helping you connect.
It's helping to calm the fluctuations of the mind and do anything that brings light and joy into your life, whether that's singing, dancing, moving. Those are all things that we should add more of into our lives before we go step into these hard conversations, whether it's with significant others or at jobs or just in the political state of what we are.
Yeah. Words of wisdom here. Barry, I'm going to put you in here. You know, so, you know, so Barry's, you know, a retired physician and, you know, I'm just curious, did you ever recommend yoga to any of your patients?
Yeah. Yes. And, you know, again, as I mentioned before we went, we went on the air, I've been every morning I do about a 10 minute routine of I'll just call them yoga stretches. It's a kind of little combination of some yoga stretches, but just, you know, again, all the parts of my body. And I had to laugh a little bit because usually when I do that, I say, oh, okay. My shoulder today. Yeah.
My right knee, you know, as I, as I do, but it's, but it's okay. You know, it's, it's okay. My recommendations though, tended to fall more in breathing and meditation and arenas overall.
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