Yamas and Niyamas for Mental Health with Dr. Brendan

0:00 Hey there, Before we get started on this week's episode, I would love to ask for your support by reviewing this podcast. We want to share yoga with as many people as possible and this free resource. This podcast is one of the ways that we can do that. And the best way that you can help support us is by giving us a review.

0:16 So if you go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever podcast platform you use, Scroll down until you find that star review and then give us some love. Thank you so much, and let's get started with this week's episode. Purely a mental health concept here is that the idea of cleanliness or purity can also lead to the idea of over control. And when we don't have control in other areas of our life, we often try to control things and some things that are very easy to control is like our

0:49 environment and is like our even our thoughts what we ate. And this leads us down, down an excess to certain mental health conditions. And again it's just important to be aware of this. So even there is a strong, even though there is a strong genetic basis to things like obsessive compulsive disorder or eating disorders, these things have a very high degree of psychological control involved in them. So when you notice that when people get stressed, they are more prone to wanting to control

1:21 their environment and that's great up to extend. But if you're always doing that, and you're you're always using that to control something, then it leads to complete dysfunction. Welcome to the Going Pro Yoga Podcast. If you love yoga as much as I do, then this podcast is for you.

1:38 We talk all things yoga related for teachers in order to supplement and complement and even support after a 200 hour Yoga teacher training. Or if you've never done a training before, this podcast is all about just learning more about yoga in an authentic way. Together with Paul Tioto and Byron De Marseille, we put together this podcast to provide you with a free resource to learn more about yoga.

2:00 Whether you want to share yoga or teach yoga or just practice yoga, this podcast is talking all things yoga related. And we're trying to talk from the teacher's perspective and also the student's perspective to make sure we get a full 360° angle on what yoga is all about and how it's evolved in the modern world. Welcome to our podcast.

2:18 Hey there. And welcome to the Going Pro Yoga podcast. Today's episode is a continuation of the previous episode, Episode 132, with Brendan or Doctor Brendan Doherty, who is a clinical psychiatrist. And the previous episode was all about integrating yoga and mental health and talking about the connection between the two. And then this episode today is really about digesting the yoga philosophy and interconnecting it back to mental health. So basically we've gone through

2:51 a couple of the yamas and the niyamas and kind of just broke them down, not just from a philosophical perspective, but an actual day-to-day life perspective in the world of mental health and well-being. So it's a very exciting episode, and this is again just episode 2 of this series.

3:08 We'll have multiple episodes where we continue the conversation with Brandon. Otherwise for this week as we talk about yoga philosophy and integrating it back into mental health, let's get started with Doctor Brendan Dougherty.

3:21 So welcome back to the podcast. We got Brendan in the house and Michael Henry in the house. So continuation from last week's episode, we talked about mental health and yoga. Well, first of all, hi, Brendan. Hi, Michael. So yeah, I'll be hosting a little bit more, just kind of asking Brendan a few questions about bringing in the aspects of yoga philosophy and kind of not necessarily challenging them.

3:49 But basically trying to bring to the table a lens of, OK, how do we make yoga philosophy a little bit more relatable in the sense of our day-to-day mental health needs or overall well-being needs. And we'll see if we can bridge some gaps there for you, the audience.

4:06 And yeah, that'll be episode 2, which is today, if you are just tuning into this one and you haven't listened to the last one, Episode 132 for my podcast anyway, where we talk about just the basics and the connection between the yoga and mental health and kind of bridging some of the the gaps there overall.

4:25 So it's a good episode. Definitely suggest listening to that one. We set the scene really, didn't we? Yeah, yeah, we set the scene and we're going to do multiple episodes on this topic to really just kind of unfold and unpack and kind of, yeah, have some fun at the same time. That's the plan.

4:40 Yeah, Sweet, cool. So. I'm a little bit this, this episode's a little bit more on philosophy and I feel a little bit intimidated about it because recently on your podcast you've had but Jeff, who is like the philosophy master and he has such a great way of speaking, he's such a, you know, beautiful human.

4:57 But yeah, so this is going to be different than that. But what we're going to try and do is relate it to more sort of mental health concepts. And of course, all these things exist in people's heads, sometimes in silos, yoga, Eastern philosophy, science, mental health, as we see in Western cultures. But they all crossover.

5:19 They're like big, like one big Venn diagram, and they all kind of relate to each other, but sometimes they just use different languages and hopefully we'll cross some of those boundaries today. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I mean, we're going to do our best. Yeah.

5:33 And it's going to be awesome is basically what it is. Cool. So let's jump into at least we'll we'll just drop. I'm going to just randomly pick a Yama or a Niyama from the list that I have over here and. For the sake of my like listeners in particular, because I know your listeners are going to be more acquainted with what Niyama and yamas are, OK, can you just, like, tell us what what is that concept? Oh, where's Vijeth when you need him? Yeah, so the Yamas and the

6:02 niyamas. No judging me on this explanation by the way audience, but the yamas and the yamas is what we would consider the yoga philosophy for. The aspect of you know when someone learns about yoga, there's the physical practice and the the yoga philosophy usually centres not all inclusively exclusively, but mostly around the yamas and then the yamas which is 2 of the branches of the 8 limbs of yoga. Where the yamas are more about, I want to say restraints within yourself or not necessary

6:39 restraints, but things to to practice within yourself versus the niyamas are more observances of the world around you and how to interpret or how to to live within that particular environment or the changes within the environment.

6:57 So ultimately what the AR is, I don't want to call them like 10 commandments, there are 10, five and five. But it's basically ways of trying to live wholly so that you can maintain a certain level of presence in different situations and relate it to different interactions and things that you have going on in your day-to-day life.

7:19 So when we talk about yoga philosophy, we're really talking about yoga lifestyle. Like how do we, how do we want to live and do we want to live in the yogic way? And interestingly enough, the yogic way and the philosophy of yoga has has a lot of crossover between other ways of living, whether it be religions or just, you know, different people's morals and ethics and stuff like that.

7:42 So it all kind of interjects into the same stuff. So yeah, we'll just kind of go. In last two questions on that. Yeah, of course not to get too distracted, but one is and not expecting you to know this, but is there like who came up with that these these two, these commandments or.

7:59 And and also just to clarify what you're saying. Well, is that the reason these principles are becoming quite popular and they're talked about a lot is because they're useful in modern life. And it's kind of it's yoga is a a way of like, it's a way of thought, it's a philosophy, but it's also really not so theistic anymore, is it?

8:27 What is theistic? Like, it kind of doesn't. It's got its own branch of philosophy, but it's not. They don't really care. They don't have like a God, or they don't have someone that they need to ascribe to. Right. No, I wouldn't say so.

8:41 I mean, it's more so about the connection with yourself, which some would consider God. So I think that's probably, yeah, there isn't a, I mean, 'cause you know, yoga can be applied in like Hindu philosophy or Hindu religion in India and stuff like that and Buddhists, same kind of thing.

9:01 You know, how do you differentiate those And there's different gods in each religion and but I would say yoga overall, you know, in a lot of situations they'll honor. But it depends on the practitioner, I guess, right. But I would say for myself, I don't really.

9:14 I definitely practice yogic lifestyle and I'm somewhat informed about certain gods and what they represent and I enjoy learning that. But I wouldn't say I'm a devotee of those entities, mostly just because of ignorance and not knowing enough or not having enough maybe connection to those particular things. But I also think it's kind of cool to learn things about like Ganesha for example, who's like the protector. And especially here in Bali, you see statues of Ganesha, who, in case you're not sure if he's the

9:46 the elephant God or at least elephant looking, and he is the protector. So a lot of these statues you'll see in the entrances of villas or homes or restaurants, which is ultimately there to protect and to create somewhat of a barrier into the entry of whatever establishment it is.

10:05 So those types of things, I'm like, oh, that's kind of cool to learn. I don't have one in my house. But you know, that's kind of how that might intersect a little bit with the yoga philosophy. But to answer your question, just to give myself a little bit of an edge, I actually quickly looked up just so that I'm accurate.

10:25 But the yamas and the yamas, the yamas and the niyamas originate from the ancient Indian texts and are outlined in the Yoga Sutras. And the Yoga Sutras I believe were created or at least maybe Co created most likely by Patanjali by Patanjali. So the Yoga Yoga Sutras describe the 8 limbs of Yoga which I mentioned earlier.

10:55 Ashtanga Ashta means 8. So Ashtanga 8 limbs of Yoga and the yamas and the yamas are being the 1st 2:00. OK. Yeah. All right. So. That's probably a good little, yeah, true point for that. Yeah, thank you. It's good background.

11:12 Cool. So let's let's just jump in. Yeah, I think we got a good foundation. So the first one that is I would say most people know this one because it seems to be the one that sticks is called ahimsa. OK, so ahimsa refers to non violence.

11:28 So I'll just read my little blurb that I have here and it also intersects a little bit with the mental health, at least what I have written here. So encourages compassion and non harm towards yourself and others. So non violence. So when we practice the himself, we tend to lead towards reducing the internal conflict within ourselves, increasing empathy probably for ourselves and others and and better our relationships, which is ultimately pretty important for our overall well-being.

12:00 I would say yeah, so nonviolence. So when I think about nonviolence, I mean, yes, this is a really helpful kind of little blurb that I read. But I think of things of like, you know, there's the physical violence. Like, you know, don't be hard on yourself. And if we relate this to, let's say, physical, excuse me, physical activity, whether it be the yoga practice or something else, but like, you know, pushing yourself when you're active, but also knowing not to

12:26 push yourself too far, right? So in a yoga practice that might be trying to do something that your body's not physically able or ready to do or maybe it's in a sport or an activity where you're pushing yourself and you're in a competition and you're like I'm gonna just keep going and keep going to the point where you end up causing self harm to your joints, your body and these types of things. So that to me is a practice of are you aware of your ahimsa and your non violence towards

12:54 yourself in a physical way? And then the second component I would say is more of the cognitive or mental approach. You could call it emotional approach to non violence as well. It's like how kind are you to yourself? I could say energetically or just like verbally, like do you say nice things to yourself or you're always like Michael, you idiot, like you should have.

13:14 You should have known what the yamas and the yamas were before this we started this podcast so that you could be, you know, like that's not kind to me to be able to hear my own thoughts or hear my own words. That would be a form of violence towards myself, right? Negative self talk I think would probably be the, I don't know if it's a clinical term, but basically the more relatable term.

13:38 And then the same thing like verbal abuse or verbal conflict with someone else. And how are you using words are you are you, what is it calling calling people names or just like saying mean things like that would be a form of violence. That'd be a Dick.

13:59 Yeah. And I also relate this back to nature as well. So like the violence with the the living things that are around you, like a lot of us are obviously very familiar with not being violent to like animals and dogs and cats and things that we accept as our domestic things. But what about the plants, you know, the trees and stuff like that?

14:17 Like, do you need to cut down that tree? Do you need to like smash through all this brush and just like cut it all up? Are you just like breaking tree branches and pulling off leaves and flowers for no reason? Because like every time you do that, it's a form of violence towards a living thing. And you know, while we do live in the world of nature and we intersect with these things and we plant trees, we cut them down and pick flowers and all that

14:40 stuff. It's more so a level of presence and bringing yourself to a level of presence to be aware of the violence that you will either move forward into or not. And then maybe possibly get curious about an alternative way of either treating yourself or the things around you.

14:59 Wow. It's so much you can bring out of like non violence. Hey, yeah, yeah. It's a big one. Really a big one. Yeah. Beautiful and. Or I really like what you. I mean you've been over this stuff before but you you picked up immediately that whenever we think of non violence, immediately we go to the idea of violence towards others. And that's just the start of it.

15:19 Like that's the obvious thing. Don't you know. Don't kick people. Don't don't don't do, don't like yell at them. Try not to do that. Not just cause, but because you know, from a selfish point of view, when you get yourself into those states, it's really unpleasant. Like it's not good.

15:39 Like you're not using the part of your brain, you're you're taking yourself away from your essence. I mean, yes, you need to be, have boundaries and protect yourself, but you don't need to typically be violent to protect yourself. You know, you can assert boundaries and be nice to people in ways that still respects your autonomy and yourself. So yeah, anyway, that's the first thing. Don't be, you know, I think it's a self-evident thing. Also, I just want to do a quick

16:06 disclaimer being health professionals just to say that this is, you know, not technically medical advice, but you know, hope that it aids in people's mental health. And then if you do want to look into these further or you're being triggered by any of this stuff to definitely seek out help because it's really, yeah, it's important And and you know, podcasts aren't a substitute for good, good medical and mental help. So I just thought I'd put that

16:35 out there. We didn't do that last time. Yeah, thank you. So that can relate to the previous episode as well. If you haven't listened to that one, or you did listen to that one, you can tackle on that disclaimer as well. Yeah, exactly.

16:47 Yeah. So I I really also liked how you talked about being nice to your body, not being nonviolent to your body. And our culture is a culture where, and this is not going to resonate with the David Goggins fans out there where or the perhaps even like the more military style where you need to push yourself to the absolute edge. If you want to do that, go for it. Like there is some value in that for some people who want to push themselves to the edge.

17:16 But in general, if you dissociate from your body, when you have to push yourself that far, there's an element of dissociating from your body because it's very painful, like to go for extreme runs or to, you know, deprive yourself of sleep or things like that. You're actually dissociating because it's not possible to to feel that to the extent that it's actually happening. So the kind of risk that you're running there is that you are losing touch with what your body

17:48 needs. And we have so many connections between our brain and our body through our central and peripheral nervous system that you're learning to cut those those tires basically and you're not able to respond to the natural cues. And our bodies have been trained over millions of years. So it's really important to listen to our body and treat it with care.

18:10 So if something doesn't feel right, listen to that. And you've also brought up the idea of being nice to ourselves. This is probably one of the key, the key things and where people in a perfectionist society or people that really want to do the best often have a default mode of criticism.

18:33 And unfortunately that often comes from our upbringings and the things that we hear as children get directly sort of placed in our mind and that self and turn into self talk. So if you're always, if you've always been told to do better, like you're not good enough, you know your B plus is not acceptable, whatever, you're going to turn that upon yourself, you're not going to be OK with good enough.

18:58 You're going to be putting that. You're going to be wanting to, yeah, you're going to be putting yourself down, and that's really unpleasant place to be. Again, there is a place. Some things do need to be perfect, Like if you're a surgeon and you're working on someone's heart or you're flying planes, or maybe you're just trying to ace a test.

19:23 Like sometimes perfection is great, but if that involves a level of self talk and that's making you unhappy, please be aware of that because that's going to affect your mental health. And when people get into these cycles of negative self talk, that's where you can, you know, you can lapse into things like depression and in general it's good to be talking to yourself like you are your best friend.

19:46 Probably many people have heard of this concept because it's been coming up quite a lot lately. But we often talk to ourselves and our partners in a different way than we would our friends. And so we can be more critical of them. We can be have high standards for them, but we're much better off seeing our partners and our friends as sorry partners in ourselves as friends, and just reframing talk. So, you know, you would be supportive of your friends, you wouldn't tell them to most of

20:13 the time they need to shape up. You would, you know, give them some leeway and if you stuff up then Oh well. You know, you didn't do so well, but you can do better next time or you know, it was a challenging day or whatever, but not to to talk yourself down. So that's a really important part of this him. So the other thing is you talked about being nice to the environment around us and the plants, animals, humans. If we think about what is really

20:44 makes us human, why is it that humans have been able to, you know, arguably do so well? You know, the humans are kind of, as a species doing so well in terms of population that they're destroying things around them because it's probably too many of us. And we're not treating the environment like we should in sort of evolutionary terms, at least until this point, we're doing really well.

21:04 And the reason for that is primarily because of our ability to be social and cooperative and we work in groups and so adhering to laws of simple reciprocity, you know, do one to others as you would have done, want done to yourself.

21:22 It's the same with plants and and animals. You know, the more you treat things well, the more they are going to treat you well and the better you can all thrive together. And you know, this is not in classic mental health textbooks, but it's a beautiful, beautiful theory that we can, we can bring from Eastern philosophy.

21:41 Yeah. That's great. I had a thought and it's gone. But I do glad. I'm glad that you kind of you brought all that into just a different lens and it was very helpful for me, I think. I think what I wanted to talk about was related to if it was words towards yourself, I can remember now, I knew I'd get there. And I think this was from one of the podcast actually with Kat Kabira, who she's been on the podcast a few times and she just said these words and I they just

22:16 stuck in my brain And it was, I don't know if she's the only one that's ever said this. I'm sure other people have said it, but she basically said I've never met anyone who's been too kind to themselves. How interesting.

22:28 Yeah, I like. That right, There's people who are over nice to other people and people pleasers and want to make sure everyone else is OK, and that's great, but it's not too often you meet someone who's just so good, so nice to themselves, right? It's usually quite the opposite.

22:43 The perfectionist, the hard on yourself, self talk this type of stuff. So never met anyone who's too nice to themselves. So maybe be that person. David Goggins that person. Be so nice to yourself in full throttle. OK let's let's let's keep it going. I like the the the idea of just kind of going into the next one and we'll just hit up a couple until we feel like we're done. Sounds good.

23:07 Yeah. So let's do let's jump ship a little bit. I'm gonna go into one of the Niyamas, which is like the observances Saucha who tell So saucha represents purity. So I'll just read what I have and then I'll give my spiel on it.

23:27 It basically refers to cleanliness of the body, mind and environment. Practicing Saucha can lead to improved physical health in a clear, more focused mind. So the way that you can interpret this cleanliness, this purity is well, there's many different ways, like how clean are you treating your body? Not just like on the outside, but like what are you feeding it?

23:52 Are you feeding it things that are going to help and provide nourishment to your body? Are you? You feeding it garbage? Quote, UN quote, right? The cleanliness of your your stature or not your stature, but your your physical out outside being like how like are you taking care of your hygiene and these types of things?

24:16 Like sure, that's all part of the cleanliness. Cleanliness is also just like the organization of your your surroundings, your life, your home, your bedroom, your drawer that you just throw everything in and it's the dump drawer, right? So all of these elements of what we would consider opportunities to practice saucha cleanliness and organization often is a reflection of what's going on outside is also going on inside. So with saucha, what is often

24:53 said is if you have or you, you know, if you're. If you're wondering how your mind is, look at your look at your your room, your office, your your workspace, your whatever space that you have and what does it look like, right?

25:07 Is it orally? Is it organized? Is it chaotic and everything is all over the place? Do you know where everything is or do you You can't really find where things are. That would be an example of maybe a practice soucha that's not as refined to be able to say OK, I know like I I feel very clean and organized in my external world and therefore that helps to support my internal world. And it's also used as a tool sometimes where if you are in your your own well-being,

25:38 feeling scattered and anxious and you're stressed because things are so much going on in your own mind, inside people will have a tendency to clean and get organized in their physical surroundings because that helps to make them feel more more in that state of being for their internal self.

25:57 So we call it stress cleaning, stressed organization and these types of things, which I think is really interesting. And obviously there's a ballot we don't want to like, you know, go too crazy with this. But the lifestyle itself is just, again, coming back to the presence and awareness.

26:10 It's not about judging yourself if you're not organizing cleanliness. It's, you know, if you're not eating properly, it's not about judging. It's about just becoming aware. And whatever that awareness is that presents, that presents, that gives you a certain level of presence, which allows you to, again, get curious about do you want to continue that or do you want to do something different? You know, is this organized lifestyle helpful for you or is this just organized lifestyle

26:39 helpful for you? Or maybe there's some sort of balance in between, you know, with like, you know, things in life going on, if there's a lot of things happening certain, maybe there's certain stretches where things are a little chaotic, but it also kind of feels nice to just let things be and then coming back to a cleanliness at some point.

26:54 So this is my kind of interpretation of this is, again, just not coming, not not bringing in the judgement of like, Oh well, I'm clean, I'm not clean. It's not really about that. It's just becoming aware of your cleanliness and your purity. Yeah, it's it is a tricky one in terms of it does seem like there's some sort of, when you use that word, purity or cleanliness.

27:17 It could go into a judgement or an elitism type thing where some people are saying if you're not eating clean or you're not washing yourself or you don't have the ability to or the time to, you know, clean your house regularly or whatever, that that's a bad thing. And so for me, like initially it's like, oh, that's maybe that's a bit outdated, maybe that's a bit, maybe don't worry about that so much.

27:47 But what I really like is that you've said it's an awareness. And it's not so much about the physical cleanliness, but a cleanliness of mind and an awareness of how you're treating yourself and what habits are good for you or not so good.

28:09 I remember reading The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, which of course is she's very famous and she has all these systems for, you know, cleaning your room, tidying stuff up and it literally does, it cleans your mind like for people that get a bit overwhelmed by things.

28:26 And I I still use some of her, her things and it's really helped me like to keep track of, you know only bring only keep things that bring you joy. You know it's been used in so many contexts now but I think that was her that brought that originally. But you know, there's also some people that have read that book or have been aware of this concept and they just don't give a shit.

28:49 Like their their minds actually thrive in chaos. And I love that because I think they're aware of it. They're like, you know what? I could be clean, but I don't want to spend the time or the money doing that. I'm pretty happy where I am. I've got my, I don't know, mattress out in my living room and I'm drinking wine out of paper cups and I feel perfectly happy and I I I applaud that.

29:14 I congratulate it. So what you said, you know, it's a it's a useful concept but primarily from I think an awareness level and and and thanks for bringing that to the conversation. The other thing that comes up is purely a mental health concept here is that the idea of cleanliness or purity can also lead to the idea of over control. And when we don't have control in other areas of our live, we often try to control things and some things that are very easy to control is like our

29:48 environment and is like our even our thoughts what we eat. And this leads us down down an excess to certain mental health conditions. And again it's just important to be aware of this. So even there is a strong, even though there is a strong genetic basis to things like obsessive compulsive disorder or eating disorders, these things have a very high degree of psychological control involved in them. So when you notice that when people get stressed, they are more prone to wanting to control

30:20 their environment and that's great up to an extent. But if you're always doing that and you're you're always using that to control something, then it leads to complete dysfunction. And often you'll see people with eating disorders that if they feel too much chaos or like if they've got a lot of trauma around certain things and they feel like things are out of control, then controlling what they put into their body or restricting what they put into

30:43 their body can be an, you know, an overcompensation. So again, it's like this is more a concept about awareness. Again, I'm just, I've ever repeat that because I think it's beautiful. The thing that, yeah. And by the way, it's not like again, this is not a a judgement on people who have these conditions.

31:05 If you do, if it is getting out of control, get help. But often people, if you're aware that it does have an element of control and you start to do an amount of, like, cleansing or saying you wash your hands 30 times a day when it's not necessary, like it's not the middle of COVID or something, or you're not in the hospital and you have to do that every day or you're punishing yourself, then that's probably too much. And that can be, you know, if

31:33 you're aware of that, then you can realize that maybe there's something else in my life that's going on that I need to pay attention to, Like I need to spend more time looking after me instead of controlling things that don't really matter so much. And the same with eating disorders. Some people will notice this in themselves, that they start to get really finicky around food.

31:53 But that's not, it's not about the food. It's about what else is going on in life. And so those are good warning signs, being aware of that. Yeah. And if that does happen, of course get help. The other thing is when it comes to purity, again, like I don't know if there's a a study that shows this or it's not something that I can necessarily improve.

32:15 I so prove that, you know, it leads to better mental health. But the idea of integrity, I think purity, purity of thought, being consistent with what you are doing and what you're thinking and what you're saying, kind of common sense means that that's going to align certain parts of you.

32:30 And it's just something. If you're feeling out of integrity, like you're knowing that you're lying when you shouldn't be lying. Like if you're if you're not being truthful with your word, if you are not doing things when you say you will do them. If you are doing things that aren't in line with your values, then that's going to eat away at your mental health because you're not going to be able to trust yourself. And again, coming back to the idea of, I was going to say leading an aligned life, but if

33:09 you can't trust yourself, then who can you trust? And then if you can trust yourself, then you can be nicer to yourself and you. You know that it doesn't matter what else other people say you can. You can still have a nice cohesive idea of who you are and move forward in the world with that idea that you're, you know, you're OK and I and just having that sense of integrity is really important to to a good life.

33:38 Yeah, yeah. So excuse me, I think about the spectrum of like, you know, we talked about him, so we were talking about SEOCHA. And then just the the level of like where where you are on the spectrum of these things, like the violence towards yourself or violence towards others.

34:02 And it doesn't need to be violence. It's just like how are you treating yourself? How are you treating the things around you? And you know, something like the David Goggins perspective, like, you know, it's good to push yourself, it's good to have self-discipline, It's good to like challenge yourself.

34:15 Does that mean you're being violent to yourself? No, It means you're moving along the spectrum, but if you get too far on either end of the spectrum, then it's too much, right? It's to the extremes. It's that's not good. So it's the same thing with Soucha and the organization. It's like it's good to be organized and it's also fine to not be organized.

34:30 But if you're too organized all the time and you're trying to control everything through your organizational, I don't know what you'd call it, but basically like a little little twitch type of thing, you just everything needs to be organized or my hands need to be clean all the time, then that would be, you know, a little bit too much outside of the the exploratory of curiosity of like, where am I?

34:51 And then obviously the opposite, where I just don't give a crap about anything and everything is just dirty and it's feral, right? And then you know everything in between, right. So again, it's again, it's not about judging like I'm clean, I'm not clean, I'm violent.

35:04 I'm nonviolent. It's like, where am I and where do I feel intuitively is authentic to me? And where do I know intuitively that I can improve? Where I should be able to, you know, become less violent towards myself or I could be a little bit more organized in my life and that actually might have an impact on me.

35:21 And and if you're not sure, you just try and then you see how that might actually do something for you. And this is the curiosity part, right. So just wanted to mention that. And then you actually did a great job of moving into, I think, what we can talk about, which is the next one, which is truthfulness because you mentioned a lot about that. So I just figured it was a.

35:39 Felt like a lot of wood salad, but I appreciate it. Yeah, no worries. So this goes back to one of the yamas. So the Satya Satya which represents truthfulness so involves honesty with oneself and others without causing harm. Satya can promote authenticity and improve communication and relationships, leading to greater mental clarity and reduced anxiety.

36:07 So you did say a lot of stuff about the truth already, and being truth to being honest with yourself, honest with others. So this one man, I got a lot to say on this, and I'm sure you do as well, but I'll just say a couple quick things and then I'll pass the mic. But this is really to me about trusting that you already know the truth, because the truth is already inside of you. It's whether or not you're listening to the truth. And now that might seem a little

36:44 esoteric. Part of these philosophies in this lifestyle is to increase your awareness. I'll keep saying this as to increase your awareness and your level of presence. So if you're present to the things that you're saying to yourself, to other people, the the truth of the matter or the truth of the of the concept or whatever it is that's being said or shared or thought, if you are actually truly present and connected with yourself, you will intuitively know whether that is true or not.

37:16 That is, you can almost call it like an intuition for me And also coming back to interconnecting, because I mean Niyamas, the Niyamas, these flies, lifestyles and stuff like that, they all kind of interconnect in some way, you know, even just us trying to talk about one, we end up talking about another one. So I think about whenever you tell yourself you're going to do something and then you don't follow through with it, right? Which would be, you know, very

37:41 typical thing of like staying in shape and building a routine and eating healthy and all this stuff. And I'm going to do this and then I don't do it right. So, OK, great, So you didn't do it, and that's fine. But part of you, if you continue this pattern of telling yourself you're going to do something and not doing it, you're not being truthful to yourself. And then there's you're, you're creating a disconnect between your own being, right.

38:04 All of a sudden yourself, you is not believing you whenever you say you're going to do these things. You know what I'm saying? So you kind of said earlier like, oh, you want, you want to treat yourself like your best friend. Like, would you do that to your best friend? Would you keep telling your best friend I'm going to show up for breakfast, brunch or whatever at 10:00 And then you just don't show up.

38:24 And you do that multiple times over your friends eventually going to be like, hey, dickhead, like, are you going to show up for what? You know what I mean. But we don't we don't do that to ourselves we just sometimes not interested. I shouldn't say we yes I don't want to generalize but it's common practice for some people to put a put aside their oh I said I was going to do this for myself but that's not important. I'll just you know what I said to this person is more important so I'm going to commit to them.

38:51 So now I'm thinking OK this intersects with non violence and and then also judging yourself and like I didn't do this and then you know maybe it's you can you blend it into the organization of the timing and the saucha and all this stuff.

39:03 But basically it just comes down to being honest with yourself and if you are going to do something or you're going to say you're going to do something and you do it, great. If you're not going to do it, then that's OK too.

39:15 But just you know, just tell yourself and be honest with yourself like I'm not going to be able to do that right. And then you can even interconnect that to outside or external promises, which comes up a lot for me when I'm working in business. And entrepreneurialship is when people will say they're going to do something and then they don't do it. And you know, there's some leniency there, obviously. I think it's important to have some leniency with that. But when it gets to a certain

39:41 point where someone keeps saying that, then you, you, you tend to not want to trust them anymore because they no longer become or feel like they're reliable on what they say. They're like, oh, I'm going to get this to you by tomorrow morning and then like 2 days later you still haven't got it.

39:54 And they have this habit of kind of creating this expectation and not following through on it. So then it affects, unfortunately, the Satya or the truthfulness of that relationship between that individual. And to be honest, when I notice those things, I make sure to again remember what is this about.

40:13 It's about becoming aware and present to the fact of the matter, the truthfulness. So do I judge the person whenever they do that? I mean, we're all technically judging everything all the time. But I would say that I'm not judging in an I'll way. I'm just noticing this is a pattern that this person has and it's affecting me in this particular way. So how do I want to approach this? How do I want to show up for myself or for her or this person to be able to make sure that you

40:42 know it doesn't interfere with the relationship and we can figure out how to improve this if there is improvement to be had, right. That's kind of how I would use this information as opposed to being like, this person's the worst and unprofessional and I'm not gonna work with them, right?

40:55 That doesn't really help anything either. I might eventually get to a point where I'm like, OK, this isn't working out. But again, I just want to highlight that it's coming back to the presence of the information, getting curious about it, and then deciding what do I want to do? And then also going back to not judging, you know, and these types of things to try to make sure as best as we can to find some calm stillness and make really clear decisions with basically anything in life.

41:26 And the foundation of all that is being truthful, right? And that's self knowledge. You know what, I don't have a whole lot to add to that. I think you've put it together really well. I'll just make a couple of comments on what I see is you mentioned about self truth and that's not an easy skill. Yeah, it's not an easy skill.

41:56 We get, we get there's all sorts of societal pressures, there's family pressures. There's ways that our minds that are moulded to basically deceive us of what our truth is. There's so many shoulds out there that we can lose track of what is true for us. And ultimately, if you want to live your best life, you ought to find who you are because then you're you. Unless you have that compass, you just keep moving the dial if you.

42:39 Yeah. So the first thing is in terms of who how you grow up, there's a lot of practices like, you know, making kids hug whoever even though they don't want to do that, they don't they they learn to if you make a kid hug whoever comes into your house, then they learn that hugging is more important than feeling their truth, which is that person is safe or not safe. Then if you're like another example of that is this is just some background.

43:15 You know, everyone, I'm a I'm a doctor, right? So. And I sometimes I feel like that was the right decision. Sometimes I don't, if I'm really honest. And a lot of I know a lot of people who got into medicine as well and they did it because either was going to make a lot of money or their parents said you're going to be a doctor or a lawyer.

43:33 You let me know which one and I'll send you there or or get out of the house. And they're not. They weren't able to get in touch with the truth of what it is they really want to do. Those are, you know, somewhat maybe some extreme examples, but you know, also pretty, pretty common. And there's all these things that guide us away from from what the truth is.

43:55 And then you probably everyone grows up and most families will have some sort of political or religious leaning. And the most, you know, the biggest factor about what we believe in or who we vote for is probably what our parents or family believe in will vote for. You don't get the chance to really get in touch with your your truth, And so finding your truth and yourself is really important, and that's a lifelong process for many people. I'm certainly going through it

44:28 myself. I have for many years. How do you do that? The simple things that you probably will know would be practices that allow you to speak or write freely and to get in touch with your body and to feel things. Because often again we will dissociate from what our truths in our body.

44:52 So you know, therapy is 1 find a good therapist and talk. If the the power of talking openly and without social social sort of constraints is really important and someone that will can listen to you and understand your truth no matter what it is.

45:06 Often we're afraid to express that because of social conditioning. Another one is just a journaling practice. So if you write down whatever's in your head everyday, you learn a voice, you learn to speak your voice. You know you need to share it with anyone and you learn what is right and what's wrong according to your internal compass meditation.

45:25 So just sitting and allowing your thoughts to arise and respecting them, you can let them go. You don't need to. If you get a a thought to do something bad, like hurt someone, that's OK. It's the hurting someone that you can't do.

45:39 So just sitting and accepting whatever thoughts come to your mind. And then there's more like, you know, somatic therapies. But of course, this is a yoga podcast. Yoga is one of those things that in the practice of moving your body in certain ways and finding out what feels good and what doesn't, that's actually finding a bodily type of truth that's going to help you understand yourself as much as much as possible.

46:02 So yeah, I think this idea of Satya or truthfulness is really and it's a way in the the essence of what it is to be authentic and to live live your best life as to to really clue into what it is, what's your true essence and and that's, you know, that's super important. I don't think anyone's going to debate that. Let's see, if you want to debate it, you can reach out to us at least.

46:31 We're like, we're like to be challenged. Or at least I do. I can speak for Brendan, but yeah, agree. Yeah. I think one of the things that you said, I mean, you said a lot of beautiful things. So thank you. But one of the things that you said was that it's a lifelong process of maybe not for everybody, but like, you know, your truth can change, right? When we say truth, it's not an absolute like I have a truth. It's like, no, there are multiple truths, right? And you have multiple truths.

47:00 Excuse me. So when we say things like a discovering your truth and finding your truth, it's really about the truth and the moment, the present moment, like what is true for you right now? You know. And this is something that I talk to my therapist about is often times we'll have conversations and will intuitively tap into things. And you know, she's got, she's got a way of words and questions that really work well, which I'm sure you can relate with. And often times the authentic

47:29 things that come through and it's that's giving me like the truthfulness in that moment. It might be different from two weeks from now. Whenever I have another session with her and I'm talking about something, the truth may have changed, right? Because energy has shifted, new information has come through. Things have been released.

47:45 Who knows? It's an evolving. Process. Exactly. So I think it's important to recognize that it's like, I need to like. I need to find my golden statue on top of the mountain. My truth, it's like, sure, yeah, that's a great, you know, thing to think about, to try to at least get into the process of exploring it.

48:03 But it's kind of like the thing about, you know, it's not about the destination, it's the process along the way. So you're going to find truths along the way and just recognize that the the path never ends. You're never going to get to the top of the mountain because when you get to the top of the mountain, you're going to see that there's another peak or there's another place to go or there's another thing, right.

48:20 So the truths that you are discovering of yourselves just helps you to connect more with yourself and then probably trust yourself more. And then ultimately you start to become more and more authentically yourself, saying yes to things that feel right, saying no to things that don't feel right, and also connecting with your true or essence right, which can go in so many different ways.

48:43 But he also said about, you know, a lot of truths that we adapt, we get from usually our our whoever raised us or our environment when we're when we're growing up, right, 'cause we're we're sponge. We're we don't even really know.

48:59 We're just kind of like collecting. We have information inside our DNA and all that stuff, but we're we're adapting a lot of truths of the surroundings around us. And I think now is for most of us who are adults who are listening to this podcast, you know, we're trying to, we're trying to uncover and find out, like, do you actually want to do that?

49:16 You know, especially if you're in your early 20s, like, did I want to do that? Did I want to go to school for that? You, you made mention to that, like, do I want to be a doctor? You know, did I want to do any of these things? Or was it that society and the environment and the people around me were just kind of like, you know, Bumper carrying me with the borders into that direction, that kind of like guiding me into that direction?

49:35 How much autonomy of choice that I have, how much awareness of my own truth that I have to actually acknowledge and say yes to this is. The fundamental thing that so many people of our generation are working with right now because 40 years ago, 80 years ago, it depends on your family, your circumstances, But your truth didn't fucking matter like it was about survival. It was about doing what you could to get enough resources, safety, whatever it was for your

50:08 family or for your community. But now many of us have that, so, which is great, wonderful. But what that survival meant was that we had to say goodbye to our truths. And so I don't really blame parents for doing what they want to do, but what they instill in us, because that's just the programming that was needed to survive.

50:28 Like that's come from generations or for whatever trauma we have. But now people here, they're like, doesn't feel right. I don't need to do what they told me to do. Like the family is important, community is important, but ultimately we need to.

50:45 It's becoming more important to tune into what is our truth. And actually, as long as we don't hurt others, that's the thing that's going to create more harmony. Because if we can express our truths non violently and live together in that, then I think the world is likely to be a better place. But we have difficulties doing this and expressing our truths properly.

51:09 Yeah, well said. Yeah, it comes back to that basic needs kind of thing that we talked about in the last podcast. Like, if we're not taking care of those basic needs, it's hard to kind of go to the next level. Yeah. Of Maslov's higher hierarchy of needs. So fortunately, yeah, most of us have that taken care of so we can explore these truths.

51:27 Like you said, I think it's awesome. OK, great. I am actually enjoying this. I kind of want to keep going, but it's been 45 minutes. So let's wrap up this episode and then we'll continue the conversation next week. Sounds very good to you.

51:43 Yeah. So yeah, basically just to kind of wrap up, we've talked about integrating or not necessarily integrating, but talking about how yoga philosophy and mental health kind of intersect and just kind of connecting some of the dots. So you know, if you've done a teacher training and you're learning about these himsas and satyas and in saucha, then we can actually relate it back to what does that mean for me in my life, Right.

52:07 So we did 3. Maybe we'll do more. Who knows? TuneIn next week. And I guess we'll find out. Sounds good. Yeah, that was great. Yeah, cool. Any final thoughts or anything that comes up for you before we close off today's episode? No, Sir, thank you.

52:25 I I I mean, I did my yoga teacher training over a year ago and we did talk about these, but it's it's great to come back to them and relate them to real life. Yeah, thank you. Agreed. Agreed. Thank you everyone for listening. As always, if you have any questions, you can reach and connect to either of us on the OR whatever we have in the show notes, probably Instagram or something to that effect e-mail And if you have any questions or anything specific that you'd want us to talk about if you're

52:49 enjoying this conversation, then please let us know. Feedback is always welcome. We encourage it. Otherwise, have a beautiful day and we'll speak to you next week. All right. Before you go, let me just tell you about the Going proyoga.com platform. O Right now you can go to goingroyogacom and check it out for free for seven days where you can actually learn more about yoga in the ways of alignment, queuing, sequencing, yoga, anatomy.

53:12 So that if you've done a 200 hour teacher training and you want to continue to learn, ractice and grow, this latform is definitely for you. So I definitely suggest checking it out goingroyogacom right now. You can try it out for free for seven days.