3: Geoffrey Roniger - The Alchemy of Yoga in Cultivating Presence and Self-Compassion

00:01 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Oh, it's just wonderful to be in your presence. Page.

00:04 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Oh, I love you so much and I love what you do, so I want to start by sharing something a conversation that I had the other day with a 19 year old and we were talking about life, and she pauses in the middle of the conversation and she just says, well, what do you do to feel good? And I had to really pause for a second because I didn't just want to give her all the things and I really wanted to tune in to what have I done in my life that has had the most positive impact, and not give her 15 things. And the things that came out of my mouth were hand on the heart, hot water with lemon and yoga, and I thought isn't this interesting that all three of those things get me more in my body? They're immediate and I knew about none of them before I was 40 years old. So my interest in having you is just because you've centered your life around yoga. You've had this incredible journey to be embodied and know who you are and live what matters and all those things that I'm interested in, and I really want you to help us demystify yoga.

01:14

What is it about? How have you explored it, and one of the things that I've loved about you and your life and your practice is that it's not fancy, it's real, it's everyday. So this is for the people listening who maybe are yogis, the people like me who are in between. I practice yoga, but I don't necessarily consider myself a yogi, and it's for a person who maybe is intimidated by yoga, has never tried yoga, doesn't realize how beneficial it could be. I wished that I would have known about it when I was 19. So I know you're nodding because that resonates with you, because I'm sure you've heard people say that. Well, you start us. You know what is yoga, what is it, and did you find yoga or did yoga find you?

02:00 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Yeah, what a great opening segue. Because it's almost heartbreaking to me to hear that you didn't know about those tools until you're 40. Because I just feel like this should be. These are life skills and tools that everyone should have from the time they're very young. And then you said that I wish I'd known that when I was 19,. Well, that's the exact age when I started. Oh no, what? Oh, I love that. And I just got. I mean, I've told you the story before, but I kind of got dragged to the class by my mom and my sister and Taylor, who was my girlfriend at the time now my wife and they were going to Melanie Fowers Estanga yoga class in.

02:43 - Paige Nolan (Host)

New York City, New.

02:43 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Orleans and I said, okay, sure, I'll try it. I mean yoga. It sounds a little weird or mysterious to me, but I'll. I want to see what it's like, I'm open to it. Right, and within five minutes. Page I just fell in love with the way I was moving, the way I was breathing.

03:04

fully, I was engaged by the challenge of the practice, the physicality of it, right. So, coming off of being a high school athlete, I was like, ooh, this is not just lying around or chanting or any of the other stereotypes that most people have. This is quite vigorous. And I walked out of that first class noting two things really, in particular. One my back felt great and I didn't even realize that it had been stiff prior to going in there, right, but I was like, wow, my back feels light and loose and free. And then I noticed as I was walking to my car that I wasn't anxious.

03:51 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yes, that's, that is my big takeaway. My first class, it was the same thing. I was like wow, I am centered.

03:57 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Yeah, there's an absence of anxiety that had I hadn't realized had been under the surface for so long. And so it was those two things the positive feeling of having been enlivened, moved, engaged, awakened, and then the absence of something that was kind of problematic and at a low grade level in the background of my life for the 19 years prior to that moment and that started me on the journey. I really wanted to do nothing other than that. So for five days a week I went to Melanie's class, Even when I went back to Vanderbilt listeners might know that Paige and I went to college together, yeah, and I would save up, you know, $12, maybe a month I was spending on the one public class that I would splurge on right, Because I had a student budget and it just felt precious to me going into a studio learning about this great art form and I was also doing VHS for people who remember that existed these tapes.

05:15

right, I had Rodney Yees Yoga for Energy.

05:17 - Paige Nolan (Host)

VHS tapes. How did you find Rodney? Was he recommended?

05:22 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

to you, yeah, and the studio in Nashville where I was taking classes just said oh, if you're looking for home practice supplements, then check out this tape, you'll love it. Yeah, and I did. It was a very minimal instruction, it was filmed on Maui and it was just this beautiful sequence that I did religiously forever. You know, then I graduated from Vanderbilt, was a European studies major, knew I wanted to live in Europe, so me and a couple of friends went to Ireland for six months where we lived and bartended slinging Guinness to old men, hearing their stories. That was pretty fun.

06:03 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Were you practicing yoga while you were in Ireland?

06:06 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Oh yeah, oh yeah, all five days a week for sure. And then when we moved to Edinburgh, scotland, after that, I somehow, as fate would have it, got a job as a carpenter's assistant helping to renovate this 19th century church into a purpose built yoga studio. And I was getting free classes there at the time, immersing myself in the tradition. But, gosh, it was so consuming. It was like that's all I really wanted to do. I remember sitting on a park bench in Edinburgh having maybe my first midlife crisis this is age 23 saying what would I do with my life if money wasn't an issue?

06:50

Yes and that wasn't even in consideration. What would you do?

06:53 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yeah.

06:54 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Like Mary Oliver, what would you do with this one precious life? And I said I'm not getting up from this bench until I can authentically answer that for myself. And the only thing I could really come up with was, well, I would study yoga. I want to study it, not teach it, I just want to learn more about it because it was so intriguing to me. It was really a worldview shift, coming from a classical Western education to hearing and learning about Eastern philosophical ideas. That was a big departure for me and a departure in worldview that was philosophically captivating and is physically so satisfying.

07:40 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Were you studying it in an academic setting? Like immediately did you start studying it? No, just learning books or reading the books that my teachers had recommended. Yeah, self-study.

07:52 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

But then when I moved to San Francisco after my European work visas ran out, the first thing I did was to seek out a teacher and I went across the bay to Oakland Piedmont Yoga Studio, met Rodney and just absolutely fell in love with his version of the practice and it was kind of surreal right to have taken his class on VHS for all those years and then to be in person with him. And his practice was so poetic. The way he was describing the inner body and the inner landscape was just otherworldly for me. I hadn't thought to relate to myself in that way ever. He was a different form, so not going down the whole rabbit hole of the style that I started learning when I was 19,.

08:41

But by the time five years later, at 24, I was learning a style of yoga that was slower in pacing, more precision oriented, using more props, as you see in the background here, like all ropes, chairs, things to support the body and to help it essentially find a certain balanced alignment and ease, yeah, and so I think, if I could even that's kind of like the historical background of my relationship to it, right, but I think at the heart of it has always been this pulled toward embodiment, and I would consider myself more of a soma-naught, like an explorer of the body, like astronaut soma-naught right.

09:25

A soma-naught, a bodily explorer. Primarily that's been my interest. Yoga, I would say, was just a means to access that exploration right. So it's not the goal, but it felt like a valuable tool that helped me toward a larger goal of becoming more fully embodied.

09:50 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Did you even know the difference, you know? Is that? So, if you ask it this way, when you referenced earlier, it was so captivating because it was so different Is that the difference, the difference between being inside and aligned and in your body, versus the way you were living and I would say it's very much part of Western culture for us to live outside the body, in the head Is that distinction? Was that the thing that was so compelling?

10:18 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Yes, and then I would also say that the first style of yoga that I learned was very hierarchical in terms of how you learned, like you were given a pose by the teacher and when you were somewhat proficient in it, you were given the next pose and then it was like climbing a ladder right, so there were rungs, and that's very attractive to the Western mind because you keep wanting to contain something new right. I was definitely trapped in that hierarchical ladder scheme for a while in terms of I'll only be a valid person when I have a take of the third level or whatever you know it was like a carrot on a string day in front of you.

11:03

That was running afterwards and you know, I think that's also part of the time of life. So between age 1924, where I felt pretty invincible, I was a wilderness or an instructor for a Woodard's Adventure Company, I was leading outdoor trips and felt like I could hike from New Orleans to Canada like no problem, and so it didn't seem outside of the realm of possibilities for me to think that I could keep climbing the ladder all the way to the end, right.

11:35

And so, even when I remember setting these goals for myself at age 21, saying, okay, three things I really want to do with my life, hike the entire Pacific rest trail which is from Mexico to Canada right Trek the entire Annapurna circuit, which is a three week circuit around the Himalayan mountains in Nepal, and I wanted to master all 200 of the poses in light on yoga.

12:02 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Oh my gosh. Even saying it, I'm like, oh my gosh, 200 poses yeah and I really thought I could do it right.

12:11 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

But then after a while it just the bottom fell out. I completely realized that that's not the point. That attainment, that achievement, the mastery orientation, completely dropped away, because after you're in this practice for long enough, you realize that there is no such thing as mastery. It's just an ever unfolding and deepening mystery.

12:34 - Paige Nolan (Host)

And is that, Jeffrey? Is that what comes from engaging, the practice, that many times falling out of the pose, realizing the limitations of your body, and you have that switch of oh, this isn't what it's about.

12:48 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Is it because of those experiential, you know, steeping yourself and the experience of it, that the shift comes Totally, because it just has a way of humbling you and of eradicating the ego point of view. I mean yoga. You ask what is yoga? So liberation from the egotistical point of view would be a good definition. Liberation from the feeling of separation right would be another way, an alternative way of saying that. So it does that in a pretty systematic way. Every pass where your ego tries to get a leg up on a pose or get better, it's just got this incredibly sophisticated way of knocking you back down, bringing you back down to ground and really reminding you that that's not the point. And so, really, going back to Rodney, it's just his poetry, in a way, of describing the inner body made me realize that the pose wasn't the point but was rather just a bridge to get you back home in yourself.

14:05 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yeah, Well that in my line of work, the thing that comes to mind is education, so I'll help a lot of people start something or pivot from something that they've already been highly educated in and they want to go into an area that they're less educated in. And so for me, that it makes me think you're talking about a sequence of poses and looking a certain way, holding a pose, a certain amount of time. That brings to mind when I'm in conversations with people about well, I have to go get this degree and I have to have this certification, and I have to. It's exterior, exterior, exterior, which to some extent, is not a bad quest If you're filling a gap in your skill set or if you need that network behind that certification program, if you need something to be bolstered, to be confident.

14:53

But the real point is to have the experience of whatever that new thing is that you're doing and to come home to what you really want to contribute through an offering, whatever that offering is. But that takes a minute. It sounds like you were in that journey at a younger age, even though age doesn't matter, but at a younger age because it's inside your body, you have access to it, whereas I'm talking to people who are midlife, who have had a certain amount of years and time in a career path, that they are then questioning that career path or going deeper into it or leaving it. But it's the same concept I think of the outside of your life versus the inside feeling of your life.

15:37 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Aaron Powell Totally Paige. And so that interiority versus exteriority, the way our whole society is set up to praise and reward external gains, that's the environment that we find ourselves in. There's very, there are very few mechanisms for interiority, for contemplation. It's not so much valued, and I think because of that, the classic midlife crisis age whatever 40s, 50s or something is this recognition that I haven't cultivated that inner side and so I have a yearning to go into that domain. And then the other thing you said was so right on was this sense of impoverishment we have, where I realize at a certain point that the material acquisitions, they haven't fulfilled me in the way that I really wanted, and so I am seeking that career change that can satisfy a certain need for creativity or expressiveness, right, or that moves beyond just earning a living, which is funny too. It's not so much earning a living but earning and earning.

16:58 - Paige Nolan (Host)

That's what a lot of people are doing. You're earning and earning.

17:06 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

And that, essentially, you've just traded the symbol for the reality, right, the symbol of the thing, the dollar bill, is not the substance that that dollar bill can provide, and I'm just-.

17:22 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yeah, and it's kind of shocking, you know, I feel like it's kind of surprising, like and that goes to show you how powerful the cultural messages are You're breathing the air, you're in the water of it. You know we're the fish in the water of it. So then when you achieve the things and you check the boxes and it doesn't equate to a certain emotional experience. It's much more dynamic than that. It's a mixed feeling situation. Everything is a mixed feeling situation. It's hard not to be surprised. You're like wait, I thought this was gonna I was gonna feel a certain way when I got this.

17:55 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Right, yes, and it's the dissatisfaction of that revelation is can be kind of jarring and kind of sad.

18:07 - Paige Nolan (Host)

It is yeah A loss of innocence, I think.

18:09 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

There's a grief that comes with that, for sure, and I've just felt that really strongly. Obviously, it's been more exacerbated in recent years with social media, but I've just felt for a long time that people are more invested in the image of themselves or the way they would like to present things they've done right, rather than the actual experience. So you and I go to a restaurant in Orleans and if we walk in the restaurant grab the laminated menu ooh, this looks really good. And then we walk outside the restaurant and take pictures of ourself with the menu and then we post it like, hey, look, what a great time, great meal we had. Well, we didn't actually eat anything, yeah, we just walked out with this paper which is the symbol of the menu items, right, yeah, so I feel that that's. That confusion is at the heart of a lot of our suffering and sorrow, and one of the aims of yoga is trying to get people more in touch with the domain of felt experiences and realities rather than abstractions, right?

19:19 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Well, I think that's definitely true in my yoga practice. Like I will catch myself looking in the mirror or looking at other people practicing. You know, right there that's exactly what we're talking about where I'm like oh, I'm not in that pose, I'm not flexible, like that. I mean you can feel it in real time and then it's like okay, go in breathe. I think that's why it has helped me so much with anxiety is because my experience of anxiety and the nature of anxiety is to be outside of yourself.

19:46

You're disconnected from your body and so in those moments in the studio, in the heat, I like I prefer hot yoga most of the time, but I've done other kinds of yoga.

19:58

But I think when I really started to feel the benefits of it around mental health was in the heat, because you're kind of you feel a little bit challenged by the heat, and then if I looked up and got distracted or compared or got competitive, it was an immediate you know there goes the benefit of it.

20:15

But when I stayed in and found my own edge whether I fell out, whether I didn't fall out just stay on the mat, have a deep breath, and then you get to the end of the class, it's like, if I can do this, I can be on an airplane, if I can do this, I can go have the hard conversation with my boss or with my teenager or with my husband. You know, it's all that reorganizing yourself around the breath and that moment inside your body, rather than giving the fear and what could happen in the future. And I, just as far as the practice goes, I feel like yoga has given me the experience of that way, more than reading about the science of anxiety, which you know, I've read so many books about anxiety Right but it's so well said and guess what I still get anxious Right totally.

21:03 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

It doesn't quite do it. It just puts us back in abstraction and in theories. But the taste and feel of being at home within yourself is priceless and that is medicinal, I would say.

21:18 - Paige Nolan (Host)

So did you have a shift away from being the student to becoming the teacher and do you feel like you had to find like your own philosophy around it and step into kind of leading a particular take on yoga?

21:34 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Yeah, great question too.

21:35

So now I'm in my 21st year of teaching and so it's been an ongoing process of trying to find my own voice and my own, what resonates for me philosophically, what I think works. What do I mean by works? Right, yes, okay. So in the yoga program I did Rodney and Richard Rosen's essentially two year nine hundred hour training program and halfway through it a good friend, my best friend in the program, actually said I'm opening my own studio in San Francisco and I need to fill the teaching slots. So would you please teach Wednesday at seven am? Like please, that's the last one I have. And I'm like no, no, no, I'm not even finished my program, I'm not ready to teach yet, I have nothing to teach.

22:22

And she just kept at it and wouldn't let me, wouldn't take no for an answer. So she convinced me to teach first class, my cousin Megan, who is an art student at San Francisco. She shows up with her friend. We had a great time. Second class nobody shows up. Third class one person show, you know. Fourth it was like that, like really small numbers, and I was just. I felt like the practice of teaching was helping me as a practitioner, because it's like didn't Joan Diddyon say how do I know what I think unless I write?

22:57

Yes, yes, if you don't write, you don't know what you're actually thinking. In the same way, if you don't try to teach, you don't know, in some ways, what you think about the practice, or what you're doing right, Absolutely.

23:08

So it was really helpful in that regard and I just felt like it was. I wasn't treating it as a certainly not a career path, but not even something that I wanted to do anymore. It was. It was kind of an adjunct teaching was an adjunct to learning, that was enforcing my learning process. And then I mean gosh, a whole slew of events. I got asked to teach some private clients by one of my yoga teacher friends who is leaving town, and I really love teaching one-on-one lessons. I still do to this day.

23:41 - Paige Nolan (Host)

I feel like this is the most why? What is it about that?

23:43 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

It's much more effective for a person to learn without the pressure of comparing themselves to yeah, like in my example, perfect example, what is so-and-so doing compared to me? Oh, I'm not doing that strong or that flexible whatever. When you're one-on-one, so much of that fear drops away and it helps me creatively because I'm able to customize the practice to what a person really needs. I love the intimacy of it.

24:17

Some intimacy and efficacy are considerably higher in a one-on-one setting. And then I think that just helped me essentially transition page to be doing it for work. So I was in the yoga school, right, I was waiting tables at Rosa's Cafe in San Francisco. I was teaching some private lessons, teaching that one class, and so I could wait tables all day and run my butt off for the same amount that I was getting for teaching a private lesson right.

24:51

And then a man who would always come to the restaurant, who I'd wait tables on. His name was Tony Sanchez.

24:58

He was the protege of Bicrim Chudre so progenitor of hot yoga right or Bicrim yoga, and this is so. Tony Sanchez was Bicrim's main student. He had a split with Bicrim and kind of created his own brand of hot yoga. Anyway, he's like look, I'm closing my studio, moving to Baja, mexico. I have these two corporate groups and they pay $250 an hour for a lesson. Would you be interested in auditioning to go teach them? And I said, of course right.

25:31

That sounded like a pretty good wage like twice as much as I was making an awaiting table shift right, and so I went to salesforcecom. Mark Bagnoff, their CEO, was a huge proponent of yoga meditation and they liked me in the audition. They hired me and I was teaching them three days a week the in-house teacher for salesforcecom for years and that kind of led me to teaching other corporate groups, kind of. At the end of my San Francisco days I had an architecture firm who I was teaching, a think tank called Urban Revision design firm, a biotech company, and I would just drive around to these different companies and try to share the what I thought would be the most beneficial aspects of the practice with them, and so that's kind of you see how it's also another version of teaching people privately. It's teaching a smaller group with a specified interest in it, right?

26:33 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Well, I think that when I'm listening I'm putting the dots together about how you arrived to your approach that now you've taught in New Orleans and I've been a part of and I've watched you form your business and it's evolved and kind of landing on your philosophy around yoga. Because in those smaller groups you're having such the immediate feedback of what's landing, what's helping and what's not helping. And so I'm curious were there principles in your training or from classic yoga that you had to leave in order to find who you are now? Because and I'll add this caveat I find you to be so relatable in yoga.

27:11

You know the way you approach. It is yoga everywhere. Every time. You know I go do a pose in the backyard before some of my client calls and I think of you because you were the yoga teacher who and I am for Boyd, my husband too same. You know like you've just had an impact on us, like straightening up, like put your shoulders back when you're at your computer, like that's yoga. I don't know that I would have gotten that broadly from yoga. I got that from you. So did you have to find that philosophy by leaving something classical and was it okay? You know, to leave things.

27:46 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Yeah, great question, that's so good. I did leave behind, as I said, that kind of ladder achievement based mindset. I did start to leave behind a lot of just conventional poses or forms that I think were actually hurting people rather than helping them, and I really embraced props.

28:11

So for those who don't know, props are supports, various forms of supports that essentially help the body find better balance yeah, and more ease and without. So I'd been teaching prior to that, with very few props, but when I would go into salesforcecom and see people whose lower backs were aching and who suffered from tension headaches and migraine headaches because they were constricting their shoulders towards their ears sort of perpetually.

28:50

I started to try to help bring their attention to what they were doing, essentially what they're doing to themselves that might be contributing to their problems. So sitting with your pelvis in a certain orientation compromises your lumbar spine and makes it feel dull and achy. Constricting your shoulders toward your ears does help or contribute to some of these headaches and other ailments. Right, and so if I could just say hey, Paige, drop your shoulders away from your ears. You might be able to follow that instruction, but maybe you couldn't, or maybe you think you're dropping your shoulders away from your ears, but you're actually lifting them higher up toward your ears.

29:36

So when I would get a strap and loop it around someone's shoulders and have them pull on it in such a way that the shoulder blades were dropping down and their neck was freeing up, then they would have an immediate experience of the words I was trying to say. Right? So it's back to that whole symbol versus reality. The words are the symbols. I'm trying my best to lead you in a good direction, but without the experience, the touch that a prop gives, then you have no way of again tasting the real texture of the experience. And so embracing props to me was giving people. It was producing better results in the fact that people were feeling better. They weren't debilitated by their migraine headaches. They felt like, hey, this yoga thing is making my back feel better because, paige, I'm actually more aware of how I am when I'm sitting at my desk and how I am sitting on the bar or in a muni or whatever right, and that's what you're talking about that yoga doesn't have to be a pose.

30:43

It's more of a conscious awareness of how you are relating to yourself, how your body as a whole is relating to the larger body of the planet. And in that way again, the poses might have helped you find some of those relationships, but they're not the end the ends in themselves, right they're just means to getting you to again feel something. So does that kind of answer your question about.

31:15

I believe, yeah, I basically left behind the more exercise oriented forms of yoga that were just getting you to move really quickly and sweat and they're great for a lot of people that's great hot yoga vinyasa yoga, flow yoga awesome, Like when I was 19,. That's. What drew me in was a more dynamic athletic form of the practice At almost 49, so almost 30 years later, right, that doesn't appeal to me at all.

31:47

It doesn't work for me or help me, and so when I'm teaching these corporate folks or I'm teaching private clients, many of whom were older, I started to change the way I was teaching and practicing really started becoming more therapeutically oriented and less exercise oriented.

32:11 - Paige Nolan (Host)

I guess you could say and then when I became more invested, or like when I had more time in New Orleans to actually do privates with you and visit the studio, and you were really refining your messaging around yoga, the thing that so benefited me about your practice is this word balance, and that's what makes me think of using the props and the shoulders down and moving it away from exercise and cardiovascular and just strengthening the body to bringing the body into balance and to be aware of the conversation happening within the body. Was balance always something compelling to you? How did you land on that and how do you experience that now, both in teaching balance and yoga? But I'm also curious about how you balance yoga with your life, like when you get pissed off or you're a dad and you're a husband and you've got local family and tons of friends there. What is balance for you as an idea?

33:13 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Yeah, great question. I mean, my high school senior yearbook quote was balance is everything.

33:18 - Paige Nolan (Host)

No way. So I think yeah yeah. That's so cool.

33:22 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

So it has always been a value, a core value for me. And we have to differentiate between, when you say balance, do we mean balancing on your head in the middle of the room, do we mean balancing on one foot in tree pose, or do we mean this larger version of balance, which is balancing your energy. If you are too amped up, a balancing practice would be something that calms you, quiets you down somewhat, right? Yeah. And by the same token, if you're too lethargic and can't seem to get off the couch, well, for you to feel balanced is to do something that's uplifting, energizing, that raises you up slightly, right. And so the balance of energetic properties is something I've been more attuned to in the last, certainly, decade or so.

34:20

And then, when I think about balance in terms of, let's say, the balance of strength and flexibility, right, people who typically show up to yoga equate yoga with just stretching, right? Yes, and they soon realize that when you put yourself in a strength-oriented pose something like a warrior too, or whatever, where you're engaging the muscles of your legs, you're not really stretching that much at all. You're contracting a lot of things, right? That's a big misunderstanding. People think yoga is stretching. It's not, and that other people could say. From the other end of the spectrum, people think that yoga is just strengthening or doing some Instagram show the arm balance, right, yes? Well, what they're missing is the aspect of the practice. That's more about softening or opening, right, yeah. And so are you familiar with the term dystonia? D-y-s-t-o-n-i-m.

35:21 - Paige Nolan (Host)

I mean sort of, but not enough, where I give us a reference point to it.

35:24 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Okay, so basically that's the medical description for imbalanced muscle tone. Dislike, DIY, that's something that's um, that's disharmonious or not working properly. So in the dystonia model, or let's say the dystonia spectrum, you've got hypotonic, which would mean having less tone or insufficient tone. Not enough tone, that would be someone who's joints are hyper mobile, who doesn't have enough strength. They, um, they get joint dislocations or are generally lower on energy. Because the system is is just integrated, it's not held together as well as it could be right. That's what would be hypotonic. Well then you have hyper tonic, which is too much tone. That's the, the stiff shoulders, the overbound chest, the rigid leg muscles, the gripped buttocks, pelvic floor, Leg is too much tone in the system right?

36:28 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Okay.

36:28 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Okay, so in the on the dystonia spectrum, hypotonic, hyper tonic well, guess what page? There's no word for the optimum. I've asked countless physician friends and occupational therapist friends and physical therapist friends hey, what? What's the, the word for the ideal? And no one can come up with the answer. And the reason is our whole language. Well, our, our, our system is oriented toward identifying problems. Right, my dad went to medical school and told has told me countless times. I learned for four years how to identify and categorize diseases, but they never told me about what it was like to be healthy.

37:13 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yes To live well right.

37:15 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

So allopathic medicine, as fantastic as it is, it has some limitations because it's orientation is toward problems, right? So I kind of had to come up with my own word. It was if there's what's the opposite of dystonia, um, okay, so dystonic would be like the other adjective right, like imbalanced muscle tone. So then I came up with equitonic, like equal tone balance, tone right, and then that sounded a little bit too much like a gin and tonic or another alcoholic beverage.

37:50 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Right yeah.

37:52 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Then I changed it from dystonia or dystonic to eutonic EU right. Like euphoric or something that's positive. So balanced tone in the body is is eutonic. It's the right, the capacity to engage and the capacity to release. And it's very hard to describe because, again, we don't have that many models of it in our culture, we don't even have the words for it, people don't even know that's possible. But through these practices you just start to discover that sweet spot in between place.

38:28 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yeah, right, gosh, I love that. I love that the first syllable is you, because you are the experience. You know like you identify it through your felt sense, experience, which is what you were talking to us about earlier. Right, exactly.

38:46 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

So it's not outwardly, it's not where, it's not what the teacher can do, what your neighbor can do.

38:51 - Paige Nolan (Host)

You need to find the right amount of the right blend of tone in any situation, in any situation and what I've loved about working with you, jeffrey, is that it's a conversation. That that's the other part of it. It's the balance. But you're in conversation with balance. It's not a fixed point. And here I am and I think about people listening who play a lot of golf. I know a lot of people who play golf and you never know how you're going to play. You could feel so skilled one day and then the next week you go on the golf course and you feel like you're awful and all that was wasted time. So it's always a conversation with the elements and how relaxed you are, and I think that's balance at large in our lives. I think that's how we experience balance.

39:41

And you really were the one to introduce that concept to me of being in conversation with your body, and I didn't even know I had a body until I was pregnant with those twins. I mean, I got pregnant with twins and I was like what is happening? Because prior to that it was just my body has a symptom. I need to take Advil so I can keep going. You know whether that symptom was soreness, or maybe I was hungover or nauseous, whatever, or it's like just get rid of the symptom.

40:12

There was no. I had no concept of living in my body, and I think that's something I hear my clients talking about. I see it across social media now. I think it's an idea that's gotten a lot more airtime, it's getting its day in the sun, and I think it's because we've become so separate from our bodies, with our devices, that to drop in, people don't know what that is, and do you see that in your practice? Have you seen the difference working with students who come in, like me, who don't even know they have a body, and then you're taking them through either privates or intensives or classes and you see them become more embodied and tell us what that looks like and how you experience that as a teacher.

40:57 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Yes, so well said. And I'll take it a step further, because it's not even that I have a body, it's, I am a body. So it shows up at various little moments where it's like how come I can say there's a problem with my feet? Or let's say, like this page, because you'll hear this in every yoga class you take. The teacher will say stretch your arm forward in front of you. Stretch your arm forward in front of you.

41:36

Take your leg back behind you. Who's you? And who's the leg? Yes, who's you? Your arm forward in front of you.

41:45 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yeah.

41:46 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Wait, my arm is part of me right. So we're living in this weird. We have this chauffeur principle where we conceive of ourselves as a little guy or gal or they or whoever in living in the head. Who's like behind this fictitious control panel that's hitting buttons and hearing sounds. That's our sense of ourselves, that we're this person that's riding around in a body and it only occurs to us to tend to that body, to take it into the shop for Advil or whatever when something goes wrong with it, right, and what yoga starts to make you realize is that there is no division whatsoever between mind, body, emotions, spirit.

42:32

It's one whole thing. There is psychophysical spiritual unity.

42:39 - Paige Nolan (Host)

That's it.

42:41 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Psychophysical, all of yourself, and so to reclaim and remember that you're all of yourself is incredibly healing. And what you're talking about, too, with respect to people being even more drawn out of themselves with technology, is look at the classic example of someone who goes to a sporting event or a Taylor Swift concert or whatever, and they're watching the event through their phone. You're at the event, dude, you pay the ticket to be there in, to be there live, right, but you're watching it through a secondhand experience, and I used to get kind of angry about that. I wanted to just grab their phone and say yo, dude, you're here, look, listen. And then what I realized is that people have to do that because they don't know that they're there.

43:32

Yeah, wow, that's powerful. They're not present, so they need the recorded experience to remind themselves. It's not even about texting your friend hey, look, how awesome the Bruce Springsteen concert was, like. That's kind of the braggadocious, exteriorizing attitude, right, is that they need to look at it again to see and know that they actually were there, right? And that just feels, again, impoverished to me. It's like we're a culture of people who are trying to eat pureed soup with a fork and we're getting a little bit of it, but the rest is dribbling down our chins and spilling. You don't get the full taste. Yeah, the full nourishment, full nourishment.

44:18 - Paige Nolan (Host)

I think about that so much with parenting, because I taught preschool for several years and then I had my own kids in elementary school and the jockeying that you have to do to see your own child at the performance, because there's so many cell phones in the air, and my experience of it is feeling the collective fear that we have that if I witness this moment that is so beautiful, even referencing the moment, like even remembering, while I'm speaking right now, the image of children on a stage singing like these things that they've worked so hard to do and they're so innocent, and it's so awesome and funny and beautiful, it's just beautiful to see children that way and if you didn't film it, it's so fleeting, it's so in your face how fleeting it is. And then it's like, well, what if I forget it? You will forget it. That is all of life. It is that fleeting.

45:20

So I think to live in that vulnerability and that it's like, well, I've got it filmed and no one is ever going to look at the three hour video of the nativity performance when your kid was two. No one that you, first of all, you're going to lose your phone or you're not going to upload it, or who has that hard drive? I don't know it's like, it's that feeling of, just like you're saying, the only thing we really have is having the experience being in the body. I am a body, this is my whole life. It's just this one moment, and that's invigorating and it's terrifying Both at the same time.

45:56 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Well said. It's invigorating and terrifying, and I mean to your point too. I love it, the three hour notivity, her notivity video, Like I've told you before and listeners might find this slightly incongruous because I love yoga but I also love the New Orleans Saints.

46:16 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yes. I'm a diehard, it's both Anne and Jeffrey. I can't. You cannot live in New Orleans and not have your black and gold on on a Sunday, please.

46:23 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Right, that's just that. That's part of our balance, right? Yes, so top five best days of my life, you know, number one marriage, or my wedding day with my wife. Two, three, four are going to be the birth of my children. Number five is watching the Saints win the Super Bowl in Miami. I was there, right, I was live and Taylor and I ran down to. You know, the confetti is coming down and the Saints players are kind of running around the field and they're setting up the big stage for the Lombardi presentation. Well, taylor, I run down right to where the field is and Reggie Bush, our star player, like, runs by us and Taylor goes, reggie, and she, like, she's like who that Reggie? She's waving at me and he looks right at us. He stops running, he looks at us, points at us and then just gives us like a big fist pump and then he keeps going. Well, my sister-in-law video, that whole thing, right? Yeah, I've never watched the video once. I don't need to.

47:19

I don't care yeah.

47:20 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Because I was there. Yeah, I, no one can ever take her from me.

47:25 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

They locked eyes with him. He saw me. We had an exchange. Oh my God, it was incredible. I don't where is that hard drive that was on a freaking. This is like before good iPhones, right.

47:37 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yeah.

47:38 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Those little I don't even know. But I don't know where it is and I don't care to see it. I don't need to see it, and I think that's one of the lessons that any embodiment practice or or internal arts form practice will give you.

47:51

And I'm not bound to yoga either. That's why I rebranded as yoga unbound, because, as I said, I wanted to differentiate myself from the more conventional trends of exercise oriented yoga or even to the tradition itself, like you know. You asked are there certain things that have fallen away? Well, I spent 10 years teaching the Bhagavad Gita and the yoga sutras and having philosophy discussions with my teacher trainees, and so much of that has just fallen away.

48:26 - Paige Nolan (Host)

for me, where it's no longer all that, relevant, yes, and isn't that great that you can evolve? I mean, that's, that's a beautiful thing about owning your own business, you know, on just that, that level of it. But also, I think, that idea that we are here to teach what we came to learn, you know, it's similar to what you said earlier. You know, you, you are teaching and you're here to teach, but you're never, you've never, stopped learning about it, and so what resonates does fall away and you know, other things come in, and then you bring your depth of understanding to us, you know, and then there's an exchange there. That's that's alchemical, I think. You know it's always a relationship, and that's another thing you mentioned earlier. You're always in relationship.

49:14

And when I think about embodiment and yoga, one of the things that has helped me the most is breath work, just breathing, and before I did any breath work or you know again, that's another thing that's out there, like breath work, you do box breathing, you do this kind of breathing, you know all these different types of breathing, but for me, the portal was being on the mat, falling out of a pose, taking a deep breath, breathing through a pose that I'm holding, taking child's pose, which everybody should know, everybody should. When you guys finish this episode, whether you're driving, take child's pose. I mean, it's just breathing through some experience of your body being a certain way and you are mindfully, you know, bringing your attention to your body and that's the breath, and I think yoga is just breath, maybe. Yeah, I think so too.

50:13

Did you have anything else on your mind?

50:15 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Oh, just I love what you said about how I'm not a finished, completed, polished teacher.

50:23

I'm still learning and evolving and sharing the journey with everyone, and so the real substance of my teaching comes from all the mistakes I've made and what I've learned from them Little experiments I've done within the laboratory of my own body, how those experiments have gone and how you know. Hopefully, when something's favorable, then I try to share that with another, and it just reminded me of your earlier comment about how I managed to integrate yoga in my life. Well, anyone who's close to me would know that sometimes I don't integrate it that well at all.

51:06 - Paige Nolan (Host)

That's like me, and I teach intention a lot. A lot of my job is around being intentional with your life. Live what matters. That's the whole thing. And the other day I felt so busy and scattered and my husband Boyd was like well, have you set an intention? And I was like no, and he's like why don't you stop Like what's your priority? You know, because we've done a lot of that work together too. So he fully called me out.

51:33 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Yes.

51:33 - Paige Nolan (Host)

I think that's so real.

51:35 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Yeah, so real and so helpful to be in relationship with a partner or with a friend who can mirror that back to you, Right? So I've had many examples. But a few years ago I was playing tennis with my brother and I'm just yelling at myself, I mean out loud, I'm like, damn it, Jeffrey, I'm cursing myself out about how poor my backhand is and we're on the changeover, you know, between games and he's like dude, you should really try taking one of your classes sometime because you could learn a lot from the things that you're teaching. Yeah, that kind of thing Like, oh I'm, I'm not walking in the walk. I would never talk to anybody. Any of my students, like that, never talked to my children like that Right, I'll never be that mean.

52:21

And yet here I am doing myself Same thing with a couple of winters ago, when you and Boyd and the children came in for Christmas, right, and he and I took a mold ago played disc golf. Oh yeah, a couple other dads joined us so we had like 10 kids and we're rolling around city park throwing frisbees at a basket. I mean it's the most like ludicrous but just fun thing to do, right, and because a lot of the kids hadn't played before. I'm just giving us some pointers on how you actually throw the thing Right. And we're a few holes in and my oldest son, xander, he just he walks up next to me, he goes, he's like dad, you're funny man.

53:03

Have you noticed that every time that any of us throw the frisbee you're immediately complimentary? You point out the positive, one positive thing about what they did like oh good, shoulder rotation, that's it. That good, good, whatever velocity, good release, like I'll say something good. And he said the second you throw a frisbee, that's anything less than perfect. You say, god damn it, jeffrey, yeah, is that type of epiphany that I'm not always treating myself the way I aspire to treat others and that's a kind of a gut punch right, because I would like to bring those things into better alignment to if kindness is really my number one value kindness and wellbeing.

53:53

Well then, why is it that I can be so kind to animals or elderly people, or children or students, but I'm so harsh with myself?

54:04 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yes, gosh, a lot of people listening will relate to that. I relate to that. You know it's just again. It's not that you would never have those moments. I think it's your rate of recovery when those moments happen, that you're aware enough to realign, and again that's falling out of the pose and taking the breath and returning home. Yeah, you know, back here I'm compassionate, I'm heart centered, I'm forgiving, but it is.

54:34

I find that to be very challenging to apply that to self. It's way easier. I am way more generous with others, especially our children. You know especially young people, because you're rooting for them and you know on some level that you are a role model, whether you're conscious of that or not, you just know because you're the adult in the room. So I can kind of rise up in that moment. But when it's just me and me, it becomes very adolescent, immature. You know I can have a little tantrum with myself very easily. But I tell you what that's to me, that it's the breath. You know when you can turn back and say, wow, I've got to be back with you. You know me in the middle, rebalance recenter. You know, find where I am and just meet myself there really Totally.

55:29 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

I love it. So the title of the podcast is I'll Meet you there. I'll Meet Myself there too.

55:34 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yes, meet Myself there. I wanted to ask you about spirituality because earlier, when you talked about the totality of yoga, for you that it's psychology, that it's spirituality, that it's your life, that it's a physical expression I'm really curious about this Do you think yoga has to be spiritual and do you find that yoga is your spirituality? Because and I ask that because some people, I think, are like, oh, I'm not spiritual, I'm not doing yoga, so I'm curious about the person thinking that. And then I think of some other people who say, oh, I'm not spiritual at all, and yet they have these practices in their life that I would consider a version of spirituality. Yeah, so I want to know from your experience, your take on that, the relationship between those two as you feel it and as you've experienced it Awesome.

56:26 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Yeah, so I always go back to the Krishna Murthy quote, where he said to be spiritual is to be sensitive to life.

56:34 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Oh, I love that.

56:36 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

It's just so broad right Beautiful. And it requires no formalities or even rituals. It's about a certain, a particular way of paying attention to the miracle of being alive, and I think that's what you're doing with 31 days of gratitude. You're reminding us of ways that they're little practices of just looking and sensing the bounty yeah, that's, that's around you, right? So to be sensitive to life and that doesn't mean to just be sensitive to all the positive things, right, there are horrific things happening right now in the world.

57:18

We have multiple wars going on, and so to be sensitive to the plight of people who are really suffering as well is a part of spirituality, about being to me, it's about being connected to a larger, whatever you want to call it the largeness and fullness of life. It's to me spirituality is more of a sensation than any sort of idea or ideation. It's not a concept. It transcends, as I said, rituals. I think it's more of a sense of feeling connected to the largeness and the fullness of the fabric of life. And so how does one get that sensation?

58:19

I mean it can happen in any, all sorts of ways, right, some people's spirituality is the collective effervescence that's a term by the French sociologist Emile Durkheim, right? The collective effervescence that they feel in the Superdome when saints won their first playoff game in you know 2001. Like I saw grown men weeping, crying, hugging, that was. That was spiritual for me. People feeling connected, even if it's just to the largeness of the city and the what the team meant, to their civic pride, like. I think that's a spiritual experience. I think, for others, going out in nature, I mean, have you stood under Yosemite Falls? I've done so multiple times jaw dropping.

59:17

Like you you're, you're dwarfed in some ways by that larger presence, you know. And so it's like the David White quote in his poem Everything is Waiting for you, where he says surely even you at times have felt the grand array, the swelling presence and the chorus drowning out your solo voice. Surely even you at times, surely everyone at times has felt this grand array, a swelling presence where their individual self was eclipsed by this larger self, the chorus drowning out your small stories, your solo voice. Right? So I find that if I don't have routine nature immersions that I feel, I start to feel spiritually impoverished. Yes, I lose that connection. So that's important to me. I get it, man. I mean, some people can find that through music.

01:00:23

Yeah, some people can find that through other forms of performance or through their athletic endeavors. I've talked to a lot of endurance athletes who talk about spiritual epiphanies that they have on a long run or something the sense of deep swathes of compassion that come through and acceptance and real belonging that they somehow experience through their given pursuit.

01:00:49

So your initial question does yoga have to be spiritual? No, yeah, not at all. It can be. In my opinion, it can be totally utilitarian If that's where you want to meet it. If you're just that golfer who has back problems, okay, use the practice in such a way that it's just enhancing the quality of your game and your life. That's fine. But yoga's got a way of sneakily starting to make you more sensitive to life. Yes, and that same golfer who initially just learned a couple of cool twists and feels oh my god, my drives are getting longer, my back feels better, I'm recovering more quickly from my three hour Saturday golf houting.

01:01:33

The yoga is kind of insidious in that it's planning seeds of connection and awareness, and that same person might start to inexplicably break down in tears at their third grade daughters. Yeah, performance, because they've been opened up in some way. Yeah, they've been made more sensitive. So go ahead, man, approach it. If you're you've never done yoga and you're skeptical, okay, approach it. And where you are, and I would wager that if you stick with it long enough, these, some of these spiritual underpinnings will also start to work their way in. And they can't help but do that Because, as I said, yoga is working on the premise of wholeness, of the unified self Psychophysical, spiritual.

01:02:28 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yeah.

01:02:29 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Unity.

01:02:30 - Paige Nolan (Host)

What do you feel like the biggest gift of your yoga practice, your personal practice, regardless of teaching and running a business around it? What is the gift of that in your life?

01:02:41 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Well, for one, just the gift of well-being, the fact that I get to walk around feeling great, yeah, okay. So in the beginning you could tell, like our friends in San Francisco would be, like you know, jeffrey, why are you, are you so obsessed with this yoga thing? And I would say like, well, my back doesn't hurt anymore. That's the like, that's all. That's almost from the dystonia model right Like it did hurt.

01:03:09

Now it doesn't hurt, but okay, if we take Deepak Chopra's, health is more than the absence of disease. It's not just that it doesn't hurt. My back feels buoyant.

01:03:20 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yeah, I eat supple.

01:03:23 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

I can walk around the streets of Barcelona last summer with my eight-year-old girl, my daughter, who's 60 pounds. She gets tired of walking around the Segrada Familia. She's tired. I'm going to put her on my shoulders. I can carry her for a mile and have no back problems or pain whatsoever. In fact, my back feels strong and supportive and great right. So the gift of feeling buoyant, easeful in just some movements and everyday functioning. I think you can't really put a dollar value on that. You know, I think in dollar terms I've got, let's say, $387 in my check, in my savings account. Really, I only have $387 in my savings account, but in my yoga, in my health account, in my well-being account, I have $387.

01:04:19

Million dollars yeah is what I feel like, so I can withdraw from that account all the time. Yeah, I mean, knock on wood, I get sick, like maybe every five or ten years. Yeah, so it has given me, I believe, a radiant immunity.

01:04:36 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yeah, it's a beautiful invitation, because I think feeling good is Actually not a measure of success enough in our culture, right? You know, it gets to feel good. You get to feel good in your body, you get to feel good in your life. The relationship gets to feel good. You get to check in and Decide if that thing that's being recommended to you or if that thing that your friend is doing, or the cold plunge that Anybody and everybody on Instagram wants to take a picture of it, might not work for you and and your, whatever your wellness practices are and just the way you are in your life.

01:05:16

You know, I think it goes back to Can we get better and more attuned to that conversation within ourselves and Ask that question does this feel right for me? Is this true for me? And I've had a Long journey with that, because for so, for so long, I think, especially as women, you're taught to make sure it's right for everybody else. You know, does everybody else Feel great about this? In fact, when you and I did a private years ago, I remember I was leaning forward on my toes, which you were able to identify within two seconds, you know and and to be able to receive and be more balanced instead of like ready to go, you know, and Up an atom and who needs me, and but to be back and it's still hard for me and yoga to to expose my heart. I've told you that before like.

01:06:08

I can't really bend over a chair. That's something I haven't learned how to do, just be that out and exposed. I'd rather be forward and going towards people and it's just little Self-awareness, you know, just being in relationship with that. It's not right or wrong. I don't ever have to bend over a chair potentially in my whole life. Do it back then. But the openness and I do want that experience it does feel good to receive when I can breathe through that and be aware of my capacity and I just think that's so beautiful. That that's been a gift of yoga to you. It's a gift that you offer in your teachings and I think just Making feeling good, something that's relatable, it's not mystical, it's not competitive, it's not out of reach, it's a conversation.

01:06:56 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Yes, so well said and it's, it's, it's a human Birthright. I feel like, yeah, so yoga shouldn't be the Province of an elite group of people or socio-economic level. I think it's just for all humans.

01:07:15 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yeah, and yoga anytime anywhere, yeah for everyone.

01:07:21 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Body, any type of body which is yes props are so great because they can. They can accommodate the shapes to your bodies, propensities.

01:07:31

I also think it goes back to the fact that we are just deficient on the words of positive well-being, yes. So I had to create my own eutonic yes, tonya, right. And in the same way, I think you and I, as writers and people who like to play with words, we're trying to get words that are more Generous and and maybe more accurate Descriptors of the positive states of feeling well, right. I'll never forget the Krista tippett interview with Vivek Murthy.

01:08:06 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yes, so good ever that one. Yes, I love Krista. I know we both share a love for her we love Krista tippet.

01:08:13 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

And For those who don't know, vivek Murthy is the surgeon general of the United States. Yeah, and I rewound this one 15-second clip maybe 10 times in a row, because I couldn't believe my ears. The surgeon general of the United States said we need to reorient our entire healthcare system away from fear and toward love. Oh, can you believe that I rewound it again? Did you really just say that? I?

01:08:41 - Paige Nolan (Host)

love.

01:08:41 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

I'll say it again we need to reorient our entire healthier system away from fear and and toward love, and so this love part, the positive Principle, is what I'm wanting to Experience more and to share more and to talk about more and to let people know that it's okay to To receive more. Yes, you know what? One little word that has really changed my perspective on breathing is the word take.

01:09:21 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Take a breath about that.

01:09:22 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Yeah, take a breath when I hear Someone say take a breath, or if I tell myself to take a breath, or the yoga teacher says that the word take implies a sort of Shortage and it makes me feel anxious about needing to reach out and grab it. Yeah, take a breath implies that I don't have it there, it's in short supply and a better horde something. Yeah this, though, it's day one of the pandemic and I'm in Costco and I better take as many of the paper towel rolls.

01:09:53

And I remember those days. Yeah right, so take a breath. How does it make you feel right now If I say page receive a breath?

01:10:02 - Paige Nolan (Host)

way, better Way better page.

01:10:05 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

How about page accept a breath Great.

01:10:09 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Great, because for me, when you said, take a breath, it reminds me of when I'm upset and somebody says calm down. Right, I can't stand that like I want to be upset right now. Don't know, no one in the history of the world has calmed down because some loved one turns to them and says calm down. It's one to get more upset.

01:10:28 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

It does. It makes you more annoyed.

01:10:29 - Paige Nolan (Host)

I've been observed.

01:10:30 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

This all the time.

01:10:31

How about the movie airplane from 1980, right when the poor woman's having a panic attack on the airplane and people are lined up down the aisle with Billy clubs punching back or, you know, boxing gloves, and every one of them is grabbing her and shaking and say calm down, get a hold of yourself, right, and just making her freak out more. Well, take a breath. Although well-intentioned instruction it on an energetic, subtle level makes me feel anxious actually. Yeah, and and when I Flip it the other way receive a breath, accept a breath, there's plenty of breath all around you I naturally relax into the present moment I read I receive More than I would have had I been yeah, you know, taking and grasping you know I Love that so much.

01:11:27 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Thank you for offering that, that reframe. I think that's so beautiful and Really useful Hmm. Yeah, it's like yeah, who who doesn't need a breath? We all need to receive a breath. We all could accept a breath.

01:11:43 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

And it's a but. It's all around you. Yeah, like you said, we're the fish swimming the water. There's breath going in and out of us all the time.

01:11:50 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yeah omnipresent.

01:11:51 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Just, it's actually more about relaxing and opening yourself up and becoming more absorbent. Yes, yeah, so I don't know how that relates back to the. Oh, we're talking about Vivek Murthy and just how we were more we need to change our Language in order to be more positively oriented toward love and toward Wellness. And and I wanted to touch back on one thing, spirituality, wise that you bought up a while ago. Um, we talked about this connection the larger fabric of life for the yeah.

01:12:28

That's the, the grand array, the swelling presence, the chorus drowning out your individual voice. Well, one time my teacher Rodney, he went through like a year-long phase where he kept talking about how the seat of the soul is right in the center of your chest. Mm-hmm and how he had learned that from his teacher. Because I anger and how we should be doing these Supported back bends and hard opening poses in order to get contact with the seat of our soul, right?

01:12:56

And it just never really resonated with me. I couldn't. It's it kind of harkened back to that same chauffeur principle of like, yeah, this, why does the soul need his, his or her own seat, their seat, whatever what the soul should seem seems like more Boundless than that, yeah, restricted to some body part, right? And so I don't know. I've just kicked around. What are other ways of conceiving of the soul? And I was taking the garbage out at my house one Sunday night this is a couple years ago and I just frozen my tracks and I dropped the garbage bag and almost like keeled over because this thought came into my mind which is what if the soul doesn't exist in the body but the body exists in the soul? Oh, I love that In the larger soul, right? Yeah? And these moments that we have of being more connected as we are in nature, or to People at the concert, or in the.

01:14:02

Superdom, yeah, in the Superdom. What if it's just the recognition that you, your individual self, is kind of de identified with that Narrow one of you and it's re identified itself with the larger hole? Yeah, that's soul.

01:14:21 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yes, right.

01:14:23 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

I mean another story distinction it's.

01:14:25 - Paige Nolan (Host)

I think the distinction is am I leading with ego or am I leading with soul and my body? You know, not necessarily that it follows, but that it's the biggest energy wins right. So it's like the soul energy. When you're in those collective situations, when your vibration is high, we remember that it is really about that, yes, really about that expression, way more than it's about Some sort of egoic proving of your worth.

01:14:54 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Mm-hmm, 100%. And the story that just popped in my mind about that was going to the Super Bowl. God, your listeners are gonna think I'm like I Was. Just I was given the ticket. I wouldn't buy a Super Bowl ticket myself. That's way out of my price range. When I was given a free ticket to the 2012 yeah Super Bowl between the 49ers and the Ravens, that happened to be in the Superdome right. And I show up after having taught Several private lessons and a four-hour teacher training course, right, I'm meeting my two. My brothers-in-law is that. He said brother-in-law or brothers-in-law, you get the idea. They're the ones who gave me the tickets, right? Well, they came from eight hours of drinking Like old-fashioned. They were just wasted when when they show the game.

01:15:47

I come in having eaten like a banana and green juice and I'm just been like doing all these Fabulous breathing Exercises and whatever you know. So we're just we're coming from a different place. I met them at the seats right like about 20 minutes for the game starts. Well, this 49ers fan behind us was, I guess, kicking my brother-in-law's chair. My brother-in-law gets mad at them. They exchange words within two minutes. They were about to get in a fist fight. I mean, they're like there it was really violent the way they were just Addressing each other right, and I'm thinking, great man, like now I'm gonna. Dilemma, I have to kind of help protect my brother-in-law but at the same time I don't want anybody fight like how can I be the piece here? How can I walk that talk right and guess what page? The Sandy Hook Elementary Choir of fifth grade singers comes on, wow, and they start singing America the beautiful and you could hear a pin drop in the.

01:16:51

Superdome. Now, within two minutes of us hearing them sing my everything, the tensions between my brother-in-law and this fan behind him completely evaporated. Yeah, and it. And all of a sudden they saw that their humanity in each other, that it cut through so hard when you hear a choir of kids.

01:17:17 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yes.

01:17:17 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

I'm from the school people who don't remember the Sandy Hook tragedy, the massacre there, right? I'll just remind you that those children who were murdered, or Human beings, right and we all see ourselves in them.

01:17:35 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yes, way.

01:17:36 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Yes, and them and ourselves. And so when you say namaste, the end of a yoga class, which really literally means I bow to thee, and some people interpret that as you know, the light in me recognizes the light in you. Well, it's that same Phenomenon that my brother-in-law and this fan experience. They didn't say namaste to each other, yeah, but they felt what it meant and, yes, they. All of a sudden, then they, they realized this is ridiculous to be fighting. They bought each other a beer, shook hands and now we're just in a more peaceful State for the rest of the game. Right, beautiful, and I think that's what we need more of is those, those bridges right between us as fractional People, and and more bridges between the parts of ourselves that are kind of warring.

01:18:31 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yeah, and that's yoga. I think that's yoga, that's the unity, that's that's all of it unified, and and when you have that collective unity, then you can meet the other person, with the person with whom you were in conflict. It's like, if you're, if you're in a situation where You're invited into that space, you receive that space. I think that's yoga.

01:18:56 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

I do too.

01:18:56 - Paige Nolan (Host)

That's what it's about.

01:18:58 - Geoffrey Roniger (Host)

Yeah.