Discover Holistic Healing With Yoga For Cancer Care

Introduction and Praise for Stacy McCarthy 0:00

Well, Stacy McCarthy, you are my favorite yoga teacher. In fact, you are the only yoga teacher that I've received yoga from for the last number of years. So. So the bar's low. Is that what you're telling me? No. It means that I will not do yoga if it's not from you. love. So thank you so much. I mean, I think this is as such an important. And for people out there, I mean, you you get the the fitness, the the fitness award of the year internationally, all over the world. I mean, you were the instructor that, you know, the whole world voted on as being the best.

And so and so you come with a huge amount of skill sets and abilities and training and, and over and above all of that, you're just an amazing human being with incredible, beautiful heart. And and I just love hanging with you whenever I have the opportunity. So, so it's always, always a pleasure. So thank you. well, right back at you, we just came off a beautiful week down in the Riviera Maya. So we're still kind of flying high from that. So talking about cancer, I mean, cancer is obviously a very scary subject for a lot of people.

And with that comes a lot of fear. and with that fear we're holding. Right. It's kind of like we're holding on to that energy as it's like, you know, we're we're trying to control our fate. We're trying to control, you know, every you know, the outcome. And there's so much control. And with that control, there's that that lack of emotion, lack of flow, lack of breathing. And that's where I think therapies,

Yoga as Support Through Cancer and Fear 2:06

like yoga can, can become such a powerful tool. and it also has a lot of kind of spiritual, practical aspects, you know, that that comes along with it. So and do you mind kind of telling it your philosophy in regards to, you know, how yoga can be a be that kind of a tool in this process for people going through this journey? Yeah, yeah, I would love to and I, I do, I do have some, some background in working with a lot of folks, through their cancer journey. And, you know, most people are coming to yoga really thinking that yoga is about touching their toes.

But on the way to touching your toes, you're going to find out that it's really about touching your soul, that it's finding stillness in the middle of all the bombardment of the external stimuli, all the chaos in your life, all the disease in your life that is coming back and finding the stillness within. And this is really the journey of the yoga practitioner. And so years ago, one of my dear friends, she's a yoga teacher and, and she had cancer. She, she developed breast cancer. And we wanted to do something to help raise awareness, around the subject of yoga and cancer.

And then we had another friend who was running a very well known yoga studio, and he came down with cancer. And so we started working with, a large facility in Southern California called city of Hope. And we developed this, this fundraiser called yoga for Hope. We started small kind of a community, you know, type of event and fundraising with, you know, 100 people. And we grew it over the next few years to a thousand yoga practitioners center field at Petco Park, which is the big professional baseball field in San Diego for the Padres.

And we grew it huge. And and around that, one of the things that we really discovered, on this journey is that, you know, what is really the benefit of healing the body if you're destroying the soul in the process? And so we were raising funds to give free, yoga sessions and free art therapy to people who couldn't afford it. And what we were discovering along the way is that it's truly being able to find the stillness within. When we are faced with some of life's biggest transitions and cultivating a practice that allows you to again and again, over and over, when the mind is just freaking out and it has all those same redundant, recycled, unnecessary, unnecessary thoughts and emotions that are contributing to more and more stress in your body.

How do you cancel that? How do you get rid of those thoughts and emotions and come back to your center? And so that's much of the work in my teaching is helping people, come back to center to come back to that stillness within through a variety of techniques. One is through putting the body through some stress, through some discomfort, through the yoga poses. Because when we learn and these yoga poses, which for most people is pretty uncomfortable, the body is tight, it's maybe weak. And learning how in the middle of that discomfort can you come back to your breath?

Can you come back to the breath? Can you focus on the breath? The mind starts gripping and and holding the bodies, gripping. It's all locked up. It's hard. Can you soften both physically, mentally, emotionally, energetically and spiritually so the energy flows more freely and through these different techniques of really addressing the whole person physical, mental, emotional, energetic and spiritual, and bringing that into harmony. Now the body is really free. Energy flows easier. The mind is not so locked up.

The body isn't gripping constantly. So yoga has these beautiful, beautiful techniques, that when practiced properly, consists gently. You start to heal. And not just the body, not just the body, but most importantly, your mind and then your spirit as well. And and you're talking about kind of bringing the body into a little bit of discomfort and, and obviously, you know, human beings, we always try to avoid discomfort. We always try to avoid pain. We try to avoid fear. We try to I mean, and so here you're then choosing to step into that.

Yeah. Well what what are the benefits of that. Do you feel. And in the whole scheme of things. Well the journey we the beginning journey.

Finding Stillness, Breath, and Inner Balance 7:00

So if we start looking at the whole person through the lens of yoga, practicing, the first layer of the body is really your musculoskeletal system is the most outer part of the body. And when that is imbalanced, when the musculoskeletal system is imbalance, maybe there's weakness in one part of the body, but we're overly strong in the other part of the body. That's an imbalance. So, you know, we don't want to we're going to discover through these different asanas, which are the yoga poses, where we're weak, where we're too strong, where we like a piece of iron, where we can't lift our arms over our head freely.

Where are we? Like a wet noodle? We've got no stability, no strength. Where we can hold ourselves stable and balanced. So we're looking at the body without judgment, but with exploration of how do we bring it back into balance. And so when we're in these uncomfortable poses, we're just exploring where we are literally exploring the body and noticing within the body what is out of balance. Because better to find it in a yoga pose and let it come out up here rather than waiting and those conditioned patterns with them body show up later on, whether that's through injury, disease in the body in some way.

We're bringing it up through the yoga poses. We're learning how to breathe into it. this is uncomfortable. Can I keep my breath very steady and even can I keep my focus in one spot? My eyes aren't darting around, but I'm very focused. And can I breathe into that? Can I deliberately and consciously soften into it a little bit more, calm my breath, come into it and make friends with it? And so we we start with the body. When the body starts to open up, we have all of these thousands of energy channels that are running through the body.

Now, when the bodies align, the muscles are stable, the bones are aligned, there's a safety, there's a cemetery, there's a balance to our musculoskeletal system. Now all those energy pathways start to open up, and your energy starts to move through the body, through the vehicle of your breath. So now we're really moving the energy through our body to those places where it might be stuck. And we're moving it through the body. So it starts to fuel the entire body. And then when we move past and we've got the musculoskeletal system, the physical body, we've got the energy body, and then we have the mind.

And the mind is the most important part of all of this, because the mind, if the mind is really stuck, now it's going to keep us in to these conditioned patterns, within the body and within the mind. So there's saying, negative thoughts and emotions, especially when we're going through a crisis in our, in our lives. You're going through a health crisis. Those negative thoughts and emotions are going to be pounding, pounding at your mind. And you've got to learn how to stand guard to the doorway of the mind and what you're going to let in.

So yoga teaches this process of really how to cancel those negative thoughts and emotions and bring in more powerful thoughts and emotions. So healing thoughts and emotions, it starts to help you, learn instead of expect tation of what you expect, of what you think should happen and instead step into appreciation. Can you replace all the expectations of what you think and just come into a point of appreciation? You're starting to shift your consciousness now into a new place, out of the sympathetic nervous system that fight flight, freeze!

you're gripping your holding and into a more balanced state of your nervous system of healing and harmony. And it takes conscious work. It takes literally over and over again, your mind wanders back to those negative thoughts and emotions. Can you stop? Can you notice, deal with my mind again? There it went again. Can I gently, without any judgment, come back to something powerful and I'll share a little story with you. So, four years ago, at the height of the pandemic. 20th December 2020, literally the height of the pandemic, when all the hospitals were, you know, jam packed with people.

I had a traumatic bike accident when I went over the handlebars of an electric bike going downhill. The front wheel just fell off. I went over the handlebars. I don't remember anything except a wheel shaking and waking up in trauma care and I was completely knocked unconscious. The whole side of my face was jacked up. I'm talking tar and asphalt down to the bone. My I was lit, tar and asphalt. And for a long time after that, as I was healing and going through a lot of different laser treatments.

And then there was almost like tattoo removal, trying to get all of it out. I remember I would walk along and I have a beautiful property where I live, and I, and I was really I love gardening and I was taking care of my garden. And instead of seeing the beauty in my garden, I would walk through it and I'd see everything that was wrong. I would say, oh, that tree's dying. It's got to come out. Oh, that needs to be removed. Oh, this is dead. That's what I would see. And I literally was looking at the world through angry eyes because of this traumatic thing I was going through.

So I saw the world through angry eyes. And I'm like, this is wrong. I teach this. So I came up with a mantra that every time I caught myself in that negative thought and emotion, oh, that's that's falling apart. That needs to be fixed. I would say this mantra, I see everyone and everything with abundant joy and unconditional love, including myself, my health and my healing. And by golly, there was times I would say it up to 40 times a day I would walk around. I catch myself in that negative thought and emotion and I'd stop, cancel that thought.

I see everyone in everything with abundant joy, unconditional love, including myself, my health and my healing. Now here's an interesting thing. When I had those angry eyes I had developed along with all this scarring, I had developed something called a collision on my eye, which is really ugly. It looks like kind of a giant wart on your eyelid is not a pretty sight. And you talked about the award I won. So this award was the, 2021, idea world Health and Fitness Instructor of the year award. Very big award.

Me, I'm a yoga specialist, so winning that was really pretty special. in that world. But I was having to give a big talk to literally, you know, thousands of people, as the recipient to accept the award. And like weeks before I developed this chelation on my eye with my angry eyes, seeing things negatively and I thought, this is not good. So that's when I started the mantra. And guess what? My eye healed. I started looking to the world through the lens of my eye, through love and through compassion and through joy and learning to let go of my expectation, let go of my expectation of my face.

Ever come back? Will this, you know, let go of that expectation? I just started appreciating where I was. So in this journey of healing with dis ease, it's so important that we start focusing on the what if and live right here, right now with appreciation for what do we have. And this we talked about this a little bit earlier, Michael, before we jumped on air about the practice of Shavasana or the corpse pose in a yoga practice. So for those of you who may practice yoga, you may know at the end of the practice.

So we we put this, this active practice of all of these yoga poses stressing our body, being a little uncomfortable, finding our breath, softening where we're hard, and letting go of that grip and the sheer vastness at the end. And this is really a bridge between the active practice of bringing us into balance and the state of meditation, of learning

Healing Through Mantra, Acceptance, and Shavasana 15:30

how to let go, of allowing our body to recover, allowing the muscles to relax. And this is very difficult for people going through a traumatic health illness to learn how to relax and recover. Because we're in this state of gripping. And the word shavasana literally means the corpse pose. So what are we doing each and every time in this corpse pose, we're reminding ourselves of the impermanence of life. We're literally cultivating an attitude of detachment and acceptance towards the transit touring nature of our existence, knowing that everything is impermanent.

And we can use this as a time for introspection, for reflection, and for connecting with a higher power, to experience a sense of oneness with the universe and bring ourselves back home. And through the practice of Shabbos, into this corpse pose. It's a teaching us how to make friends with death. Now this sounds I mean, it probably sounds very morbid. However, when the number one fear the number one fear in life studies have shown is the fear of death. Number two is the fear of public speaking. But the fear of death, when we have a fear of death, we are literally walking around with a constant state of micro contraction in the body.

This is at our subconscious mind. It's not conscious, but when you have a fear of death at the subconscious mind, which is running 95% of our programing, we're walking around with this all night mini contraction all the time. The body can't relax and recover. But when we learn this practice of letting go in Shavasana, and it's at the end of every one of our practices, we're taking this practice of tiny little deaths over and over again, so that now we can live life fully. Now, in the moment. Once you've had a near life death experience, talk to people who've had one.

My traumatic bike accident was a near life death experience. And when I came out of that, there was a new appreciation of living life fully. It's this I'm a tea fanatic. Is this my last cup of tea? I better really enjoy it. It is my last conversation with a friend. I better let down my guard and really talk honestly. So we learn how to live life fully. Because you never know when life's going to pass. We don't know when it's going to pass. So this practice of shavasana can be so profound and and so beautiful.

in the connection to our inner self and learning this practice of acceptance. And, and when we do, life can really be fulfilling, and we stop gripping and we stop holding and clenching, but we literally let go, and we allow ourselves to live fully. Yeah. So it's so beautiful. It's so beautiful. I mean, when I, I mean, when you're talking about these things, I'm having an image kind of where, where a tumor is, you know, the environment that it's that hardness that exists there and the kind of acidity, the toxicity that develops around that and, and the importance of kind of moving energy through that, bringing oxygen, bringing life.

and just kind of flushing that with, with, with love and with instead of, of having, holding that, that kind of like you're looking to be angry. I or the, the, the I that's just looking upon the world as you know what. What's it doing to me? Why? Why am I suffering? Why is this happening to me? But then taking appreciation, I have this breath. God gave me this breath, And then allowing that breath to fill you, fully and then also in the yoga practice, you're then seeing kind of where things are stagnated, you know, where am I holding that, that kind of negative energy or where am I allowing tumor environment or cancer environment to exist, you know, because I'm, I'm, I'm protecting that area or I'm afraid of that area.

And so I'm not letting breath move through that area. I'm not letting energy move through that area. Yeah. And you're treating it. You're treating it as an enemy. And when you treat it as an enemy, it's it's gripping and it becomes hardened. So it's also this practice of, of learning to truly realize that it's there to teach you something. And I know this sounds crazy, but even, you know, as a child, we set up things to protect us. So, you know, if you had a parent that maybe was an alcoholic or abusive or whatever, you set up certain things to protect you, maybe it was you found out that if you were funny or you could tell jokes, that you could get away with a little bit more.

So you set that up as a part of your personality, or you set up certain protective things within you to protect you from harm. This is the way genetics is set up. But what happens is if we carry that with us through life, it's going to develop into something else. It's almost like there's a wonderful story about, someone at one side of the river needing a raft to get to the other side of the river, and they have the raft, and they take the raft to the other side of the river. But when they get there, they keep carrying the raft with them through the forest, through the woods.

And here they are, like dragging this raft with them everywhere they go, for protection, to hold something inside rather than when they get to the other side of the river, thanking it and saying, thank you for protecting me. You were doing something for me because I needed that. And I'm friends with you and thank you for that and letting it go. And sometimes with illness and disease, we're holding it to as a form of protection. I know it sounds crazy and we're angry at it. Maybe, but can we just make friends with it and make friends with it and say thank you?

You're protecting me from something. Thank you. And I'm good. And just send it, love. I mean, we get very aggressive in our minds about things. And when you get aggressive with your mind, guess what? It's going to persist more and more. But if you can make friends with it, you can make friends with those thoughts and say, you know what? I know you're you're trying to do something to protect me in some way. thank you for that. And you know, I'm letting go. I'm letting go. And now it's not going to have that hard hold on you and this is the work.

It takes work. It takes a lot of work to sometimes let those hardened patterns in us go. And that's what yoga does. We call them some scars of this conditioned existence we develop it with, and maybe it's developed in the body. Maybe it's in your emotions, in your heart, maybe it's in your mind, but it's learning how to break through those patterns and develop better patterns within our, you know, physical, mental, emotional, energetic and spiritual state. Yeah. And and you talked about that kind of the grasping that that the holding on and, and and I it's interesting how I see kind of the, the people that are holding on to life the most.

They, they usually don't have as good of an outcome, you know, because they have because of the fear, because, you know, they we have that fear of loss and, fear of loss of of the moment. We have a happy moment and we don't want to lose that happy moments. So now we're holding on to that. And by doing that, we're then kind of isolating the rest of our being. And we're judging the rest of our existence, as something that is, is not good. So, so that grasping component becomes so important that we, we allow, we allow things just to evolve and be grateful for whatever that is instead of just thinking that this is the way it has to be.

And if it's not like this and then I'm not going to be happy. but instead just kind of opening up for what? What God is giving us, whatever that gift is, whatever that moment is, and just accepting it and breathing into it, you know, whatever that may look like. And it's kind of like you walking around in your garden and you're you're now seeing all the beauty there. Yeah. Because there's so many beautiful things, but there's always going to be something that we can judge if we really want to. Doesn't mean that whatever that is is as bad as just.

We are looking at it from a different point of view. So if we're able then to see it through from what it truly is, we're able to see the beauty of everything, even death, right? Because we're looking through it through anger instead of love. It, you know, in, in when you think about it,

Letting Go of Grasping and Living in the Present 25:00

when we're constantly looking at the future, all it does is creating society. You're like into the future. What's going to happen? What's going to happen? Anxiety, anxiety. When we start to just stay stuck in the past, it can cause depressive states. It's like, this is how it was and you're still stuck on that. So it's really learning how to live in the present moment with what is now. you know, there's a, you know, everyone's heard of the proverbial, you know, glass half full or half empty, you know, half full.

You're you're an optimist, half empty. You're the pessimist. But really, the way to look at things through more of a yoga lens is just seeing the glass crystal clear as what it is, not putting that layer of good or bad on it. This is just what it is. And accepting that. And in the practice of yoga, we have so many tools. within the practice. One of them is something that's, called Santoso, which means contentment. It means learning to appreciate all that you have and seeing the perfection in where you're at.

So regardless of what's happening, can you still see the perfection in whatever's going on in your life in some way? It's there to serve you. And can you appreciate what do you have? Because you have things that some people are praying for that you're taking. You know, you're taking for granted. And at the same time, we have something called to pause. And that is really putting in the discipline effort towards your journey. So we have to have both. We want to put in the discipline and the devoted effort towards our journey, but at the same time, we want to have a sense of content and appreciation for where we're at.

And it's this balance. So it's everything is always coming back into balance. We can't go too far in one direction and too far in the other. We have to keep coming back into balance. to really so we can't go too far in the future, too far in the past. Just come right here to the present moment. Because right here, right now, everything's okay in this moment. This breath is okay in this moment. And that's why, you know, I we're talking about the breath. You know, each breath is life given. Each breath is right. At this moment.

We don't worry about the breath. Ten, you know, ten breaths. And the future of ten breaths. In the past. And it's this breath right here. And that's why it's so powerful in yoga. Then to kind of ask here, then in a place where maybe it's it's a little discomfort, then by just kind of focusing on, on that life giving breath. Yeah. That's given to you at that moment. That's right. And that's why the breath in, you know, in training the the breath, every time you notice those negative thoughts and emotions, can you come back.

Just take three deep breaths and maybe you create a mantra like I did. A mantra is a mind vehicle. It's literally Greek directing your mind, towards something else. That's what it's doing. So when you start to feel that stress coming up, maybe you can cancel it immediately. Take three deep breaths and and replace it with serenity. Just in this, in this moment, in these three breaths, there's serenity. And you may have to do that over and over and over again, because you are retraining your mind.

And the mind is very tricky. It wanders about every 4 to 11 seconds. I mean, basically, we're all a little A.D.D. at this point, right? It's always wandering. And so where it wanders is where you have to really stand guard. And, oh, there I go, down that rabbit hole again. So same thoughts. Can I cancel it, do something, maybe, you know, clap your hands, you know, or let out a big sigh. Something that tells your mind to stop it. Stop going down that rabbit hole. Come back. Take a few deep breaths.

Move your body moving your body is so helpful in redirecting your your mind. because again, your body becomes the mind. The mind becomes the body. So when your mind is aggressive with its thoughts, that's you're going down. Those stress, the worry, the tension, the judgment, embarrassment disappears. Appointment, anger, blaming, complaining, all of that. The deep seated rage when all of that's just bubbling up. You're in this, you're in the stuck mode. You've got to move your body, move your body.

Because if you get stuck in that, the mind's got to have someplace to go. So it's going to find it in your body, it's going to find it somewhere in your body. And it's going to say, hey, you're not paying attention. You keep thinking this, no, I'm going to come in your body in the thigh five something in your body. So now your body has become your mind with it, and it's trying to wake you up. And this is what I'm talking about. We were designed to have this self protection. And so when the cancer comes up, it's trying to tell you something.

You know, some people, some people just need a whisper and they hear some people need something big, that big knock upside the head. And that is, you know, the injury like I had over the bike. I you know what? I don't blame the bike in some way. I caused that it was trying to wake me up to something, you know, so so, you know, it's it's learning to wake up to whatever's happening and know it's there to tell you something. Are you willing to listen and are you willing to, you know, do that deep dive and and stand guard of your mind.

So how does a person, you know, let let's say they, they've been diagnosed and, and obviously very scary and they're, they're going through their journey. What are some kind of initial steps that you would say that, you know, take if I was you if I was in that position, this is what I would suggest, you know, this kind of pose, this kind of, meditation, this kind of yoga, I mean, won't be kind of the next step for a person to take. So the next step is really, depending on where you are starting.

So if you're a true beginner or, true beginner to yoga, to meditation, and I put those two together because yoga in itself should be a meditative practice when done properly with breath and done properly with the work of the mind is simple poses

Simple Yoga Practices for Beginners 31:30

move your spine in all six directions and you can do the seated. If you don't have the energy to get up and stand up, you can do it seated. So you can certainly, you know, inhale and reach your arms up and you can exhale. Just fold forward. And by doing that you're moving your spine and flexion and extension with your breath. You could move your spine side to side so you can reach up inhaling. And as you exhale you could lean to the side. You can inhale come up. You can exhale. Bring the dome down to inhale reach up.

You could exhale over to the side. You're moving with your breath. You could inhale come up. Exhale arms down. You could take a little twist. Bring your left hand to the right knee. The right hand behind you. Inhale. Lift the chest. Exhale gaze over the right shoulder. So now you're internally rotating. Inhale to center. Exhale the right hand to the left knee. Inhale lift your heart and then exhale. Gaze over the left shoulder. And as you inhale come back to center. And then you could sit quietly for three breaths and just observe your mind and just be present.

If your mind wanders, you just gently come back to your breath and your training over and over. So something that simple many times a day, just moving the spine in all six direction is getting your energy flowing. Moving it properly with your breath is starting to increase the energy flow through those energy channels. And then standing guard to the doorway of your mind again is, you know, the oh gosh, here comes my crazy thoughts, gently, without any judgment, come back to the breath. So something is that simple.

If you have more energy, stand up and do it. We sit too much. We need to learn how to move our body in different ways, to keep the energy flowing so you can do those movements standing up more energized. You feel a little bit better now, you know, bring it into more of a full practice. So the key is to meet yourself where you're at. but moving the spine in all six directions every day, can really be a game changer. And doing it properly with your breath, can be a game changer. And then most importantly, be consistent with it, because consistency is key.

you it's not like you ever really feel like doing this. So you have to have some discipline. You need to do it. You got to be disciplined about it. So be disciplined about it. And at the same time, treat yourself with compassion. The thing that brings you back again and again is not the Nike way of doing it, of just do it. Like force yourself to get there. But of breathing it, you know, just come to the practice. However you can be accepting, work intensely with it. You don't have to move through that, just come for it.

But at the same time treat yourself with compassion. So this is really kind of a game changer. And through the practice of yoga where, you know, I said that, you know, people think yoga is about touching their toes and they're trying to force to get somewhere. You're not forcing, but you are working intensely because it's uncomfortable and you're working with breath and you're learning how to strengthen where you're weak. You're learning how to find space where you're hard and you're doing it with your breath, and you're doing it with compassion, and you're doing it with devotion and discipline to become the best version of yourself.

Because yoga is a practice into the body, through the body, so it's bringing you in to a deeper part of your inner self to find lasting peace through this vehicle of your body. Yeah. And the spine. I mean, here you're talking about the spine. I mean that it's so it's so much energy. I'm sorry. I have all the nerve flows to all the different areas of the body. And just being able to kind of open up that area. And that's an area where the most of us, we have rigidity. Yeah. We have, you know, certain vertebrates, they kind of lock up.

And so we protect them and we have very constricted motions to protect them. And then the nerves to those locations of the body, and they can be the area where the tumor is at, or can be an area where maybe the thymus or the spleen or, you know, parts of your immune system that do not get simulated, or the liver where we're not detoxifying, you know, to get rid of the toxins that are needed to. Yeah, that yeah, we need to flush it out to have a clean environment because, yeah, a tumor is a toxic environment.

So just opening up that nerve flow, that energy flow, you know, with with such a simple movement. Yeah. Because here. How long did that take? I mean, you, you can do that three minutes and you've, you've done a lot already. Yeah. You could start your day five minutes of doing this and maybe you do it at lunch and then you do it at dinner. You see most of your body's these four corners right. It's our torso that's most of our body. And the spinal cord, of course, you know, it's coming from the deep rooted core right up to the brain.

This is like we're all those nerves. As you just mentioned, all the nerve endings are going. But also from the energetic standpoint, this is where the primary energy channel is running from a same place way down from the, you know, the coccyx bone right up to the crown. This is where the energy or primary energy channel is running. Then we have thousands of others. But if we can keep our spine open from a physiological standpoint, we have more symmetry and balance and safety in the body. Because we are aligned properly.

We're not slumping and slouching. We're not collapsing the chest, we're not bringing the chin forward. We're this becomes congested and we're we're literally guarding our heart in this position. But we're actually now bringing the body, our physiology, our physiology into into alignment. And when our physiology is in alignment, guess what? All of a sudden your psychology your mind works with it. So for example, think about this when someone's depressed and when we have a life threatening illness, depression usually follows pretty closely behind right where we are stuck in these thoughts that are not serving us.

And what happens? Our physiology then shifts all of a sudden when someone's depressed, where are their shoulders? Where or where is their upper body? Usually it's rolling forward. Our chest is collapsed. Regarding our heart, right? So our physiology is down here. Our hearts not lift or not expanding open. We're not breathing fully. Our lungs are diaphragm, our rib cage. Everything's collapsed. You can't even breathe fully to move your energy.

Spine Mobility, Energy Flow, and Whole-Person Healing 38:30

Where are the eyes? When someone's depressed, they're gazing down at the dirt. They're gazing down at the floor. Rather than gazing all up in wonder. And all at the universe. And what is their breath? When you're depressed and you're holding it in? It's short, it's shallow. You can't even take a full breath. So when our hearts lift at when our body is aligned, all of a sudden we're breathing fully. We have more light in our eyes. Our body feels safer. And when the body feels safer now all of a sudden you're starting to let go a little bit and the body doesn't feel safe.

You're in that micro contraction all the time of fear. So the body and the mind work together. The body becomes the mind, the mind becomes the body. This is the body. Mind connection. And as you start to feel a little bit better in the body start to open up, all sorts of things start to shift. You start to notice how you're eating, you start to notice what's fueling you. You start to notice when you're dehydrated because all of a sudden you're breathing. You're aligning your body. You start to notice the thoughts you let in.

So all of a sudden, the body, the mind spirit start to come back into balance and harmony. And now you've addressed the whole person. You're working holistically to heal yourself. And this is this is truly the journey of yoga. Yeah, yeah. It's so it's so, so powerful and so powerful. So if, if an individual I mean just just doing this practice and it to me, I mean you have the principle of, of like, you know attracts like you know, so if we express life, if we breathe life, if we, you know, look up we have open heart, we have, you know, we look upwards, you know, rather than can I down towards dirt, you know, sort of say then we will, we will attract that energy.

and that is those shifts, you know, first mental, you know, spiritually, mentally and then physically will then start to then remodel to express the energy that, that we are then attracting, because that that's who we are now, as we were opening up. Yeah. That's right. What you put out in the world is what comes back to you. Right? So if you're putting down all of this down energy, that's actually what you're attracting back to you. So if you're putting out that different energy, a lighter, more loving energy, that's what comes back to you.

And, you know, and then when we're in and the other thing is, is when we are healing, we're in a state of healing. When we have disease, you're you have the diagnosis, you have the cancer diagnosis. You know, there is that there is that holding in that holding in and energy can't fully move that way. And so now we're blocking our energy and we're starting to close off the heart. And this is where we really need the heart open and receptive and full of possibility. and so it can make a huge difference just changing your physiology and learning some simple, simple things to help.

No, I'm not saying this is easy. I am by no means saying this is easy. This is takes practice and practice and practice. And so it's something that I hope, for everyone listening, that you will cultivate this for a lifetime, not just when you're passed, when you're, you know, you're past this, but that you're going to cultivate it for a lifetime, and start to make this living happier, more joyful, more loving, and less closed off part of just your life, you start to notice the negative thoughts and emotions we have.

you know, we're bombarded by external stimuli. We're bombarded by the media, the pings, the rings, the notifications. All of this noise outside of ourselves is just pounding,

Finding Inner Peace and Connecting with Stacy 42:30

pounding, pounding on us all the time, all the time. But what I hope you will cultivate is through this practice of yoga, this connection with your inner self, which is so much more fascinating and beautiful than anything that your senses can perceive from the external stimuli. So all that noise of telling you this and that, this and that outside of yourself, if you can just come back to a deeper part of your inner self and find the beauty within, things are going to shift. Things start to shift when you connect to that place of inner peace.

So this is what I hope for all of you, for your journey is, is that we come back home to yourself. I love that. Well stay safe. I, I mean that that's such a beautiful final load. So I don't want to add anything to it. This is just perfect. As perfect. Thank you so much. And, how do how do people find you? Because I know that, you have, you know, because people that are novices and wanting to kind of start this journey, where can they find you? Yeah, well, I welcome everyone. I literally teach all, all levels.

I have an online platform, yoganamastacy.com is my website. yoganamastacy.com It's kind of a play on words yoga. And then the word namaste, which means the divine light in me vows, honors and sees the divine light in you. And when you're in that place, when I am in that place where one. So it's a play on word from some of my students. NamaStacy N A M A S T A C Y, my name. link to it. But if you just Google Stacy McCarthy, it will lead you to my website. And, and I have an online platform, and if you want to learn more, you want to go deep.

There's lots of options for you. I do a lot of trainings, a lot of workshops. I travel all over the world. I'm also on course on social media, both Facebook and Instagram. @yoga_namastacy So I would love to connect with you. I'd like to help you on your journey and I, I, and help you, like, really connect to a deep part of your inner self and find lasting peace. Right. Thank you so much, Stacy. Always such an honor. Such a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Michael.