a podcast on Yin (& Yang) yoga, meditation & the Chinese Medicine approach to health. the simple psychology and philosophy, science and art of wellbeing.
This episode I talk with Paul Grilley on his finding of and understanding of the Taoist Teaching of the Nei Jing Tu - a visual guide to the yogic experience.
language! consider these common yoga teacher terms: "modification" - something one does if a student can't do the full pose "variation" - a variation on the standard - normally for more advanced students. this language is a problem. because it makes it seem that there is a 'standard' pose we all should work to... and we could all get there if we work enough. those who can do the standard teach everyone else (cos they can) and invite those who can to push it even further with 'variations' (for advanced people). this leaves the vast majority who cannot do the 'standard' and have to 'modify' (and get given all those cues to 'improve'). and how does that feel? exactly. i want to you to consider that dropping these words is not being politically correct, spiritually liberal or inclusive. this language is bad because it is bad anatomy... come join me :-D
injury is unavoidable in life. we move too little or move too. and very often we have no idea why we injured ourselves. i offer my insight from years of practice and working with those in extremes - too little or too much... my answers may surprise you :-)
I am delighted to welcome best selling author, Western Medical Doctor & Acupuncture Educator, Dr. Dan Keown to the podcast. Dan's take on what Qi and Chinese Medicine is have lit up the Chinese Medicine world. With his Western medical background and ability to translate the complex Chinese Medicine into modern ideas we can understand, Dan is an absolute gem. Come join us!
Former Principal Dancer of the Scottish Ballet and freelance choreographer, Eve Mutso joins me. Now a board member of Indepen-dance, an inclusive dance company for disabled and non-disabled people and Yin yoga teacher, Eve takes on her journey of success, injury and life after professional dance. come join us.
Benoy Matthew is a registered physiotherapist, currently working in London, United Kingdom. As a clinician since 1998, he treated injuries ranging from minor ankle sprains to complex multi-trauma sports injury, but now specialises in hip and groin injuries for serious sports men & women. In a recent interview with the BBC, Benoy commented that many yoga teachers came to him with injuries which he felt could be avoided. I am excited to welcome Benoy and explore how we can all be smarter, more compassionate with our bodies in our Yoga. We talk about Benoy's 3 pillars of a good physical workout - stretching, cardio, strength (and how we need to have them all), how we are all different and how to identify difference between muscular pain and joint pain. Come join us.
Yoga students often their yoga history from yoga schools & gurus with specific viewpoints or spiritual takes on the world. This is great but potentially sub-optimal. Because they learn from a certain point of view, Yogis often miss out on a neutral, factual take on yoga, the ideas and the (crazy) characters in the 8,000+ years of the yoga story. Join me to listen to the facts without (so much) dogma!
High performance sport is a world balanced between the extremes of under achievement and injury, between the golden moments of glory and the dark psychology of failure. Sports Recovery Psychologist Matilda Mayne joins us to delve into her discovery of yoga and how it relates to this fascinating culture of human achievement.
this week is cool! i meet up with fellow acupuncturist and mugwort specialist, hannah swift. mugwort is a prize in chinese medicine. and acupuncture really should be combined with moxa argues hannah as we dig around on the beach for this ever-present, but totally ignored, under our nose european herb. even acupuncturists aren't using it enough which is weird when the chinese word for acupuncture - zhènjîu - infers needles AND moxa, not just needles. put it in your tea, smoke your body with it, get it in your life. https://www.yellowempress.net/
in yoga, meditation, spiritual practice, self-improvement and all these pursuits, we seem fixated on transformation, improvement and refinement. i propose we don't see our yoga this way. it should be a place free from all that pressure.
welcome! i have just come out of our latest yin yoga and variable anatomy teacher training and again have been shocked by how unconfident many yoga students are with exploring yoga poses (placing THEIR OWN hands and feet WHERE THEY WOULD LIKE to put them) and disobeying cues by yoga teachers. in this episode i list a few very obvious examples of movement outside of yoga that break the alignment cues we hold so dear and that many yoga teachers enforce. and if others break our rules. why can't we? teachers need to stop telling people they are doing poses right & wrong. and this means they need to be better educated.
coming again from my teacher training bedroom in milan! talking more about meditation, the core of the yoga practice. yoga is not about getting fit. really yoga (and medtiation) about staying... even when your mind doesn't want to stay with what you are experiencing and going through in life. this is the opposite of what we tend to do. we tend to either avoid what we are thinking and feeling... or we compartmentalise and ignore. this is bad for your mental health. medtiation is about staying and watching what goes on inside you... and then you begin to see what thoughts really are.... NOTES: training coming up (this fall) https://www.dhugalmeachem.com/meditate
live from my attic in milan! meditation is about being your best friend... no matter what. this simple definition is empowering. no spirituality, no super powers, not even necessarily liking it all the time... but is nurturing an ability to be there for yourself... no matter what. NOTES: training coming up (this fall) https://www.dhugalmeachem.com/meditate
coming to you live from milan! is yoga meditation? i certainly think it could be. a practice to allow you to take whatever comes at you in life. if your yoga is not helping or if you have been in yoga a long time and it doesn't seem to be as powerful as it once was... i propose a different way of thinking about your practice.
re-cast! i was recently a leader with atman way's 'silence the guns' meditation marathon to meditate for peace in the world. come join me for my 30min seated meditation practice. we focus on the experience of individuality - and how we can break this down - and therefore understand each other. come join me.
acupressure and myofascial release are getting more and more popular in yin yoga and yoga in general. as it becomes more popular, weird and just plain wrong claims are being made on social media about what massaging or placing massage balls on these places will do. in this short episode, i argue claims like these are erroneous, even dangerous because they leads yoga teachers to make spurious claims about the power of acupressure.
this week i'm getting romantic. i don't mean that kind of romantic. i mean the romance of getting out of your head.... the art of getting out of your head is not limited to postural yoga and meditation. a popular (but kinda out of fashion) approach was poetry. come join me for a meander through some old buddhist monk rambling; misty mountains, gentle rivers and tea.
language! consider these common yoga teacher terms: "modification" - something one does if a student can't do the full pose "variation" - a variation on the standard - normally for more advanced students. this language is a problem. because it makes it seem that there is a 'standard' pose we all should work to... and we could all get there if we work enough. those who can do the standard teach everyone else (cos they can) and invite those who can to push it even further with 'variations' (for advanced people). this leaves the vast majority who cannot do the 'standard' and have to 'modify' (and get given all those cues to 'improve'). and how does that feel? exactly. i want to you to consider that dropping these words is not being politically correct, spiritually liberal or inclusive. this language is bad because it is bad anatomy... come join me :-D
yoga is often seen to be a lot of effort. sometimes, we even boast to others (and ourselves) how much effort we have put in. we wave around certificates and accomplishments. but really, yoga is the opposite. it doesn't have to be hard. it should be really obvious. come join me to consider the lazy way...
Every week on this podcast we talk about yoga. This week, I thought we should actually practice some. So, I'd like you while you're listening this week to find a quiet place to sit down. Just for 30 minutes. And we'll sit together.
injury is unavoidable in life. we move too little or move too. and very often we have no idea why we injured ourselves. i offer my insight from years of practice and working with those in extremes - too little or too much... my answers may surprise you :-)
I am delighted to welcome best selling author, Western Medical Doctor & Acupuncture Educator, Dr. Dan Keown to the podcast. Dan's take on what Qi and Chinese Medicine is have lit up the Chinese Medicine world. With his Western medical background and ability to translate the complex Chinese Medicine into modern ideas we can understand, Dan is an absolute gem. Come join us!
we often define health as physical. but these days mental and emotional health have (finally) seeped into people's minds. finally. drugs, surgery and antibiotics are not the first port of call here and your doctor cannot help. come join me as I propose a model of health based on a very old (simple) idea.
i recently saw an acupuncturist post that yoga teachers make them squirm when they talk about chinese medicine - i have to say, sometimes me too! here I talk about what chinese medicine is and then talk about some things that yoga teachers really shouldn't say if they're gonna talk things chinese med. come join me :-D
i am often asked what happens on our hatha yoga tt. i am asked as many people know i am a yin yoga teacher trainer. but yin yoga is only half of my practice and half of what i teach. what is the other half about? come join me in this recording of our recent live open evening event.(and next our new 200hr program starts - come join us)
Former Principal Dancer of the Scottish Ballet and freelance choreographer, Eve Mutso joins me. Now a board member of Indepen-dance, an inclusive dance company for disabled and non-disabled people and Yin yoga teacher, Eve takes on her journey of success, injury and life after professional dance. come join us.
as i think about the last 30 years of movement and meditation in my life, I reflect on how it has changed... many are afraid of letting go of practices or disciplines that have worked in the past. sometimes, change is inevitable.
happy new year. first 2022 podcast drop! how much & how hard should we practice postural yoga? i am often asked this question and people are often surprised at the answer. come join me:
i am joined by popular yin yoga author and teacher, gabrielle harris. we talk about gabrielle's wonderful book, her guide to becoming the yin yoga teacher you can be.
i have a massive library of yoga books. here i cherry pick 2 must haves. you know me (or you don't). which books will i choose?
i had a great first yoga teacher training. my teacher was guru-like, my classmates were lovely... but very soon after it was clear that some people felt empowered and.... others didn't... that was/still is a shame. the simple reason - a lack of true anatomy knowledge. that we are not all the same. this lack creates haves and have nots. gurus and the rest. the rockstars and the forever students. and... and it is totally avoidable.
i am joined by author and yogi, tori lunden. in tori's wonderful new book, "how not to teach yoga" she invites to totally reconsider the role of the yoga teacher in our communities. www.torilunden.com @badatyoga
do you find you think a lot? a lot? well, this is not a new problem. it's been around for a long time. in this short episode, i read you a few little stories from the daoist treasure trove. a man whose neighbour loses a sheep. another who robs a bank. and it's their mind which causes trouble. come join me.
We're back! In this short episode, I introduce myself. I'd like you to know a little about me and where I've come from. This episode is taken from a "meet & greet event" recently. We begin sitting for 5 mins. I then talk a little about my 500hr Yin Yoga and Wellness Training Program I bring to my little corner of the yoga world. The ending is sudden as I cut before we had a Q&A Session. Come join me!
In this longer episode, I present the whole thing on why we do Yin Yoga the way we do. Why we relax our muscles and some of the basic aims for the practice. This lecture was taken from a recent workshop so includes a Q&A at the end and an invitation to join us on our upcoming 200hr Yin Yoga training program... all online for these COVID times. Come join us at: https://dhugalmeachem.teachable.com/p/yyttonlinesales1
Exercise! We love it. We do lots of it. It is often very intense. I want to reframe our idea in this first lecture of 2 or 3 into thinking about soft exercise and what it is good for. Come join me.
This is the last in our mini 3-part series on "why we meditate". Cos no-one seems to have an idea! This week, we focus on "being with the moment"... and riding it, whatever happens, no big deal. So many gurus and spiritual teachers seem so relaxed and chill.. how do they get there?
What is a quality we are nurturing in meditation? Well, really it is an ability to completely experience ANYTHING which comes into our mind, our consciousness. How do we do that? It is not complex... come join me.
We're back! So many are confused by meditation and are not sure why they are doing it or what is supposed to happen... Let me explain. Come join me.
Hey! In this episode we consider living in the now as a way of experiencing eternity. We are inspired by chapter 23 of the Tao Te Ching. In the last 30mins we talk about bodily sensation in the Yin Yoga practice. Come join us!
In this episode we consider the Yin-Yang symbol as a metaphor for the human experience. In the last 30mins we consider safety in yoga practice. What does it mean to be safe? Is that a valid approach to yoga? Join us :-D
In this new format of our podcast, now recording live, I lecture on the Daoist idea of Freedom in Eastern Philosophy & from the Dao De Jing - Chapter 21. In the second half of our time, I take a question on how yoga body muscles are different from gym bod and why gym people have to take it slow in yoga (and yoga people should do the same in a gym). To 30 mins - Freedom! Dao De Jing Chapter 21 From 30 mins - Q&A, Why do gym bodies find yoga hard?
In this new format of our podcast, now recording live, I lecture on the Daoist idea of non-intellectualization from the Dao De Jing - Chapter 20. In the second half of our time, I take a question on 3 strategies yoga teachers can take with beginners who find the challenge of yoga in their minds and their bodies. To 30 mins - Against Intellect, Dao De Jing Chapter 20 From 34 mins - Q&A, How do we deal with challenged beginners?
In this new format of our podcast, now recording live, I lecture on the Daoist idea of Simplicity from the Dao De Jing. In the second half of our time, I take a question on whether Range of Motion and health are the same thing. To 30 mins - Simplicity, Dao De Jing Chapter 19 From 34 mins - Q&A, Range of Motion and Health: Are they the same?
Andrea Boni is a dedicated meditation practitioner of over forty years and a meditation teacher for over twenty. Based in Rome, Italy, Andrea teaches globally to students of all levels. Here Andrea talks to us about his 45 year meditation practice which has been his anchor in a colorful life and what it has bought him in times of trouble, in times of joy. For the last 15 minutes, Andrea guides us through an "Intimacy Meditation", a meditation with our intimate, physical self... Come join us.
Benoy Matthew is a registered physiotherapist, currently working in London, United Kingdom. As a clinician since 1998, he treated injuries ranging from minor ankle sprains to complex multi-trauma sports injury, but now specialises in hip and groin injuries for serious sports men & women. In a recent interview with the BBC, Benoy commented that many yoga teachers came to him with injuries which he felt could be avoided. I am excited to welcome Benoy and explore how we can all be smarter, more compassionate with our bodies in our Yoga. We talk about Benoy's 3 pillars of a good physical workout - stretching, cardio, strength (and how we need to have them all), how we are all different and how to identify difference between muscular pain and joint pain. Come join us. ---- FIND BENOY HERE: Twitter: @function2fitnes Clinic: https://lifeplusclinics.com/ Find below links of the studies Benoy refers to: https://jisakos.bmj.com/content/3/4/229.abstract https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1360859217301225 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17457300.2015.1032981
I fly through 8,000 years of Taoist mythology and at least 3,000 years of Taoist philosophy like a drunken monkey this episode. Taoism has given birth to Chinese Medicine, art, music, yoga and meditation and much else. But it is relatively little understood and that is a shame. We often draw on its wisdom in our Yin Yoga training program and many students find it mysterious, confusing and inspiring in equal measure. Prepare to lose your head, grow your Qi and be water my friend. Come join me.
Suzee Grilley is half one of the Yoga world's most beloved Teacher Training partnerships. Together with with her husband, Paul, their "Yin Yoga" has become one of the world's most popular postural Yoga styles.Yin Yoga is non-muscular and non-sweaty. Suzee and Paul always say Yin is only half of their physical practice. Today, we talk the other half: Suzee and Paul have created & choreographed several "Yang" Yoga sequences over the years of their long yoga career. Come join us and listen to the story of the context and function of Yang for their Yin.
Australian Yoga Biz Guru Ali Rogers joins me this week to talk about the contradiction that is the yoga business. How do Yoga teachers sell themselves without selling out? Is there a way of being on social media without being shallow? And how can your yoga business be more Yogic, not more business-like... Come listen!
Yoga students often their yoga history from yoga schools & gurus with specific viewpoints or spiritual takes on the world. This is great but potentially sub-optimal. Because they learn from a certain point of view, Yogis often miss out on a neutral, factual take on yoga, the ideas and the (crazy) characters in the 8,000+ years of the yoga story. Join me to listen to the facts without (so much) dogma!
Ex-New Yorker, Ex-Yoga teacher Nico Anders joins me this week from Melbourne to talk about her journey into unchartered territory. After sneezing and finding herself with terrible back pain, Nico found herself navigating the waters of what to do when yoga doesn't work for your body. Is yoga only poses and meditation, or are there other paths to happiness and health? Join us!
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