333 | Individualizing Yoga to Fit Your Own Body & Life with Brett Larkin

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Optimal Body Podcast.

[00:00:08] I'm Doc Jen.

[00:00:09] And I'm Dr. Dom.

[00:00:10] And we are doctors of physical therapy, bringing you the body tips and physical therapy pearls

[00:00:13] of wisdom to help you begin to understand your body, relieve your pains and restrictions,

[00:00:18] and answer your questions.

[00:00:19] Along with expert guests, our goal of the Optimal Body Podcast is really to help you

[00:00:24] discover what optimal means within your own body.

[00:00:27] Let's dive in! Evo still has styles for every type of weather, every type of activity. So go down to the link in the show notes, check them out and make sure you use our special code T O B at checkout to get 15% off. I'm so excited to welcome my good friend, Brett Larkin on the podcast, who is a founder of uplifted yoga and the author of a new book Yoga Life Habits, Poses and Breath Work

[00:01:42] to Channel Joy and it's the chaos.

[00:01:44] Now we actually have this linked constantly in the flow of giving people this information about yoga and helping people feel better in their body. So I just really appreciate you being here. Thank you so much. Well, I'm a huge fan of your work, and so is my whole team. So happy to be here. So I kind of like to start at the beginning with

[00:03:01] people and why yoga? What first drew you into this world of yoga for someone with my personality type. I have high pits up fire which we can talk about and it's in a hot room. But that's actually how I started. So you know, thanks for that question. Obviously it flourished from there into something that completely transformed my life. This guy was not, I don't think we ever even end up dating

[00:04:20] and yoga became like the love story passion of chocolate, whether it's in the middle of the day, in the morning at night, it just tastes amazing. I use just like half a packet and do a little cup of hot water. I'm telling you, you gotta try this. So if you have not yet, we're gonna have that linked up in the show notes. That is drinkelement.com backslash optimal.

[00:05:41] With every purchase, you get a free sample pack

[00:05:43] so that you get to explore more flavors.

[00:05:45] And I'm telling you, if anything,

[00:05:47] just get that chocolate mentally. two. And for me, that was one of these pinnacle moments, you know, when you play a highlight reel of your life, where for the first time I realized the voices in my head that were telling me to do more, stretch more, which we can talk about, you know, be better, you

[00:07:00] know, no pain, no gain, push myself.? Not just the voices in my head, but I was like, wow, it changed how it interacted with people and what I chose to do and not do. Wow. I think that's so profound. And I love the quote that I don't know if you remember exactly who that instructor or that teacher was

[00:08:23] who came up to you and said that. But I literally started thinking kind of like putting myself out of a job because I have this big yoga YouTube channel or whatever and people are following along. And I think that's great. Like that's wonderful. And there's thousands of books about that already, right? Like teaching a particular style or a particular method. What I'm trying to do is really help people figure out

[00:09:41] what can I craft like a mixologist or an ap happening for me. And that's when I realized that it was time to go back to the drawing board. It was time to look at the history of like, where these yoga poses really came from, like how we got these methods and styles and rules that are commonly known today, re-examine some of those things.

[00:11:01] And what I ended up discovering is that I could craft

[00:11:04] something that was short, that was, you know, 15 of realizing as well myself, I had brought a new workout program that's super fun because it was stimulating me in a different way, but it took almost an hour or more to just set up and do all of it. And I was like, this is not sustainable. Sometimes I get to a workout after I put them to bed. I don't want an hour plus workout.

[00:12:21] You know, I need something that's going to be, that's going to hit what I am specifically

[00:12:25] needing.

[00:12:26] And that's what you're saying for yoga.

[00:12:27] And that's what I kind, and this book has a lot of footnotes in chapter three, which is about the history of modern yoga, like how did this all arrive to where we are today, is that when we look millennia

[00:13:40] ago, yoga was a spiritual practice.

[00:13:43] It was actually designed to dis you to unite with universal consciousness, to achieve a bliss state. We see this word samadhi as this state of ecstasy, or to get ready for your next incarnation, your next life. And the focus was, the body is annoying. It's pesky. It has these sexual urges. It needs to eat. And this is where we see a lot of

[00:15:02] these depictions of these yogis sitting on nails old as some of the Vedic text,

[00:16:22] but we do see pictures of poses in that.

[00:16:26] But there's not what he did. At the same time when yoga came west, his teachings kind of morphed and changed. And as things morph and change in order for mass transmission, that's when things get generalized and sometimes simplified and sometimes codified for good reason, right? To be like, to teach a method. And that's where we get these styles and schools that people are so attached to.

[00:17:42] Like I have a section of the book that calls the style is not the solution.

[00:17:45] I don't know if you guys get this question too, but most people when they're interested your intention and what you're looking for and so. Through all that you have learned now and where you have come like where do you land on what your yoga practice means to you and how you use it to center yourself. One of the key things i love everyone to understand is that yoga was never meant to be understood outside of the context of ir beta.

[00:20:06] and high fire like attracts like. So just like we talked about earlier, when it was time for me,

[00:20:14] however many years ago, to pick out a yoga class, as someone with high fire, what did I pick?

[00:20:21] Pot yoga. I was like literally like put me in fire like attracts like. So something that the book really tries to re- And it's the thing they'll resist the most. So the challenge for them, like if you are addicted to doing 108 sun salutations, that is so awesome. But the challenge for you, my guess, is like based on your personality type, what would be more actually challenging for you

[00:21:40] would be to, and I say this, I say indulge in what you want

[00:21:44] and then transition to what you need.

[00:21:45] That's like what responsible adults do.

[00:21:47] So like indulge in some sun salutations Oh, you know, I've seen a lot of people gravitate toward. It's like, oh, well, this is easy for me. So I'm just going to do this and this feels good. And so I'm going to lean into this without really having that awareness of I probably need the opposite. So in your book, do you actually teach people how to find what's dominant within their body? Yes. So there is a quiz in chapter two.

[00:23:00] And that's one of the first things we do.

[00:23:01] So we figure out, you know, are you air, earth, or fire

[00:23:05] dominant?

[00:23:05] Remember, we have all three. But they're fun. They're short. I think they're all five questions. And so you'll figure out your dominant element.

[00:24:20] And then the first part of the book is a little bit like a self-help book helping us

[00:24:23] understand what this yoga of awareness is because you can apply it to everything, parenting,

[00:24:27] your relationships. So, and it kind of reminds me of that first story that you that you told. And honestly, something that we tell a lot of people where we say you really shouldn't be pushing into a stretch. You should find your breath and find that stretch in a way that that you can harmonize with your body and work with the stretch so that you're working together rather than working against yourself.

[00:25:43] So can we unpack that a little more?

[00:25:45] Like, how do we embrace and use the concept of less is more? becomes a liberation because instead of beating yourself up, you actually honor your unique skeletal structure. Variability and joints is real. I mean, that's why at the Bolshoi Ballet in Russia, they don't accept people based on talent alone. They do x-rays. It doesn't matter how talented a ballerina you are. If you don't have a particular type of skeleton,

[00:27:00] like you're never gonna be able to dance

[00:27:01] the most difficult sections of Swan Lake.

[00:27:03] I like sharing that example because, I mean,

[00:27:05] this is reality. I mean, these are things that I learned over a long time. But do you guys agree with what I'm sharing here? 100%. Yeah. I mean, and that's where I think a lot of people, they get wrong with yoga. If they haven't really done or embraced it yet, it is this when you look from an outside and especially in our Western culture, it is just, oh, I'm supposed to be stretching

[00:28:22] the most.

[00:28:23] And even when I started the first time, which is the chapter that's more about the moving postures, things people originally think of when they think of yoga, like triangles and warrior twos and sun salutations and those kinds of things,

[00:29:40] that Ayurvedic principle of cultivate the opposite according to Ayurveda, right? I need to focus on strength and why all yogis need to focus on strength and should all also be in your community, Jen. Like that's why I love everything you offer because it is more focused on those targeted movements that they need for stability, right?

[00:31:00] While someone who has that no pain, no gain, they're muscling into to postures like our like our Arnold example, right?

[00:31:05] They need they need the flow. They need the the Lucy Guisey, right? You may not have had prior to that. It gives you so much more empowerment over the way you feel in your body and understanding on what you need to do in order to feel something different. And I think that is just so empowering. I kind of want to tap into meditation quick because I know when a lot of people think

[00:32:20] yoga, you know, there's this overarching, you first, then I can sit and meditate for longer. So I think it's really important that the thoughts into broad categories, and that's a great technique I love to give people because doing that right away shifts you away from being those thoughts. It's like you are the sky and the thoughts are the

[00:35:00] passing clouds. Another really important component in the framework I offer for the meditation is also a focus on regrounding your energy because the first two groups of people we talked about earlier in the episode, you know, they were meditating for spiritual

[00:36:22] enlightenment, transcending the body. So do it on its own. So maybe I just want to do the stretch segment. And that's it because I'm super overwhelmed and I'm tired

[00:37:40] and my baby didn't sleep and that's all which has a huge value, right? Yeah. So it's like everything is very mix and match and chewable. But the other thing you can do, and I've done this in periods of stress in my own life,

[00:39:00] is I do my physical practice in the morning, 15, it's really interesting, I think everywhere, but especially in the West, how much we've abdicated our health, right? It's like doctor, tell me what to do or health professional, tell me what to do or YouTube video, tell me what to do or Google, tell me what to do.

[00:40:20] And all of that has value.

[00:40:22] I'm not saying not to do that.

[00:40:24] I'm just saying what if we also cultivated the skill back to Vedic texts, looking at the history. There's so many gems of just little shifts, little things you can do while you're waiting for the tea to boil while you're standing in line. I have a lot about doing yoga in a car if you guys can believe it. The garage is one of my favorite places to do breath work. Even if someone got this book and was like,

[00:41:40] I'm not going to step on a mat ever, they're going to get so much out of it still because

[00:41:44] of the habits that are interwoven and I think this is going to be so beneficial for so many people. And of course, we're going to have it linked up below because I know at this time people can pre-order, correct? And there's some other stuff that comes along with that?

[00:43:06] Yes, if you pre-order the book, which I believe the ebook is $11, you get a free $197