Mindful Movement With Yoga

Stacy McCarthy

Thank you Michael. It’s so good to be here.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Well, let me the kind of go through who you are for the audience. You are an award winning health and fitness leader. You are an accomplished businesswoman, captivating speaker, respected educator. You’re an associate professor in the kinesiology, health and nutrition department where you co created the Yoga studies certification program for your contribution to the field of health and wellness as a seasoned mindful movement educator and integrated wellness Thought Leader States is honored as a 2021 I. D. E. A world fitness instructor of the year. You know, world fitness instructor, not just in your town, not just in the United States, all over the world, a prestigious award recognizing superior instructional abilities and positive influence within the global health and fitness industry Stacy’s recognized for health and wellness coaching, yoga and mindful practices, positive psychology interventions, culinary, whole food plant based medicine and treatment of various chronic disease and conditions. How cool to get to be in your studio today.

Stacy McCarthy

Thank you, wow, that was a long intro. But thank you, you know why it’s long and you know this Michael, the longer you’ve been on planet Earth, the longer your bio becomes because you have more to contribute.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Is that the truth that you kind of look back at the bio. Yeah, I did. That. That’s right. I forgot about that, so yoga is such a powerful tool and do you mind kind of letting the audience know why you fell in love with it, you know why this became your direction? I mean you are a fitness expert so you’ve kind of guided a lot of gyms and kind of headed a lot of gyms so why yoga of everything that you’ve done?

Stacy McCarthy

Yeah, it’s been a beauty journey. So I started right out of college with a degree in exercise physiology. I loved fitness. I taught all the group classes, I did all the latest trends and I loved it but it was really breaking down my body quite a bit. I was having constant injuries and a lot of overuse type of things and one day I happened to see someone coming out of a yoga studio. This is almost 30 years ago, I’m aging myself. I saw someone coming out of the yoga studio and they just had this beautiful inner peace about them and yet at the same time they kind of you know like looked like they were very balanced in the body and they just had this beautiful essence and so I met the teacher and he just was a great connection and what really drew me to yoga and now not so much fitness was the difference between as I studied with yoga and I studied with the Master in India I studied with some of the best here over many, many decades. 

What switched it for me is that yoga is a system of health. It is a science of health, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Exercise. I love exercise. I think exercise is wonderful. But exercise is really different fitness exercise from health. And sometimes people confuse these two things. So fitness is the ability to perform some sort of maybe athletic activity or an exercise. That’s fitness. You can do this exercise, you can perform an athletic activity. Whereas health is really, it’s a state where all the systems of the body, your nervous, circulatory, digestive, lymphatic, hormonal, all of those etcetera, working optimally. And so yoga is a practice of working with the whole person of all the systems, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual and it can enhance someone’s athletic ability, someone’s exercise. But it also is a complete system of health standing on its own. So in our busy world today, sometimes it’s hard to do everything at once. Yoga is this practice that is really looking at the whole person. 

So that was, that was the one of the things that I felt just intuitively and in my body the longer I practiced, certainly not at the beginning at the beginning, I’m like, oh my gosh, how is this so hard? How am I so tight? I’m in this? I’m in the fitness industry. How is this so imbalanced. But with practice with time of kind of deconstruct seeing a lot of the things I knew and rebuilding them through the practice of yoga. My body became a little more complete and so my body felt more balanced, but more importantly my mental and emotional state became much more balanced. There was an awakened calmness and I just felt a deeper connection to something bigger than myself quite honestly, that kept me coming back again and again. So that really took me towards yoga. And when I started I was really looking at how I can merge the gap between fitness and yoga? How do I get people on the mat because they come because they want, you know, they want the exercise component of it, but how do I take them a little bit deeper. So they keep coming back again and again and they feel that deeper connection with themselves. So that’s really what got me so excited about the practice and the science of yoga.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

And you’re truly a testament as to the benefit of yoga. I mean I had the blessing of taking a few morning classes with you and I realized how graceful and beautifully you did it and with such ease and how lack of grace and how lack of ease. I did it on my side. So it is really fascinating with somebody that has been in sports and you know done you know, martial arts and all these different things, you know, even though you have that background that that centered nous and that connection between your spirit, your mind and then also how it expresses itself with your movement, you know, with your body through yoga.

Stacy McCarthy

Yeah, well first of all, everybody here should know that Michael is someone who walks his talk, we were part of a group called the holistic leadership council and he was one of the people who got up and it was early, early, early in the morning and would come to my yoga class every morning walking his talk and I think, you know, I didn’t start off that way. You know, the reason that the poses may become a little more easily for me now is because I’ve had a regular practice for decades, decades and decades. And so one thing that I’d like to clarify is that a lot of people, the reason they don’t do yoga is because they think yoga’s about touching your toes and they’re like, I’m too stiff to do yoga, whatever excuse it is, but yoga’s about touching your soul. So the true practice of yoga is the ability to create a stillness within no matter what’s happening on the outside. So yoga, the word asana, which is what we do in the poses. Asana, a yoga pose. 

That word actually translated from the Sanskrit language of yoga means to sit, can you sit still with yourself without your mind just jumping around like a monkey from tree to tree. So a regular practice is there to generate health, it’s there to help us. We put ourselves in these weird positions, People are like, oh it’s like a pretzel, it’s so weird. We keep challenging ourselves to test the tensile strength of the mind. Can we breathe steadily? Can we stay focused on our breath while we’re in a position of uncomfortable? So on the other side of the discomfort of the yoga pose is freedom. And if you’ve ever practiced yoga, you probably know this, you’re like really, you’re kind of uncomfortable, you’re breathing, trying to focus, but then when you come out of it, there’s this sense of freedom of more openness and over time with a regular practice that freedom accumulates. So each time you practice, you’re creating more freedom in the body in the mind. And so it doesn’t matter if you can touch your toes, how stiff you are, where you begin. 

Our ego will tell us we’re not good enough, but you have to, I always tell in my classes, the ego is not your amigo and yoga, the ego is going to really have you comparing and judging and criticizing probably yourself. And if you can let that go and just be present with your breath and just do the best you can, you will continue to come back again and again. And that is what I love. You know, it’s not about fiscal prowess, it’s not about showing off, it’s about being able to be centered and also you’re absolutely right. You do have to let go of your ego and to do that a lot and and by letting go the ego and just focusing on what is important, just the simple things like your breath, you know, and because the breath kind of brings you back to that center each time as you’re doing these kind of odd, you know, odd poses, but you know, they are very specific to open up flow of energy in both physical and mental emotionally. So it’s not just about, like you’re saying, it’s not just about being flexible and being able to hold something, it’s about the spiritual journey and the mental emotional journey as you are using the body of vehicle for that.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

That’s right. It helps us to really become conscious of kind of our conditioned existence, those habits that we have over and over again, that maybe aren’t serving us. So the postures themselves are a beautiful practice of bringing light into the dark places of ourselves. Whether that’s in the body, maybe you’ve ignored a shoulder and it’s getting really cranky yoga brings some light to them and says, Hey, did you notice that your shoulders, your arms not lifting like it used to, it brings some light of awareness there into those shadow places in the body and in the mind and this is this is one of the most profound parts of a yoga practice to be able to notice that the self discovery, the creation of your own inner body wisdom is really a very profound part of the practice.

Stacy McCarthy

Yeah and that awareness you know because all of us, we deal with belief systems, we deal with traumas and we we tend to because they’re uncomfortable. We store them away in different areas of the body and wherever they’re stored and we are then developing a little bit of dysfunction within that area and so and we are then starting to operate in life kind of maybe we think we are operating fully but in reality we’re operating at 30% of what we of our full being. So by using I mean what I notice with yoga is that it then brings like you’re saying, it brings to light those areas where we have stored emotions, store belief systems, store traumas, you know, stored protection, you know because we feel threatened by the world you know? So then we are protected and we close ourselves in by using the tools of yoga were then opening up so we can then You know live fully and instead of thinking we’re 100% while we’re in reality or 30% we get to experience what a true 100% is.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yes, yes without judgment and without competitiveness in comparison.

Stacy McCarthy

Yeah, exactly. So what can people that are starting on the journey and say they’re new to yoga and there they are thinking, well this, this sounds like something that I could really benefit me. What, what can you tell them to? You know what kind of process will look like? I mean, are you going to feel the difference in two months? Are you going to feel the difference in a year? What kind of benefits are you going to experience? So that they can have that as a carrot and understand the process as well. So everybody is different and every mind is different. So people come to the practice with different physical challenges, different mental or emotional challenges, so it can look a little bit different for everyone, but a consistent practice. If you are consistent, you’re practicing at least at least twice a week and then maybe supplementing in something shorter in between over a period of time. Again, this is a practice, it’s not a goal that you’re like, okay, I did yoga and now I’m perfect, my whole everything is perfect. 

I no longer have the crazy thoughts and my body is perfectly healed. It is a practice and we’re off always rediscovering. So it takes, it takes a commitment to want to feel this good and so give yourself a little bit of time, make it very, very consistent because not only will it start to first work with your body, but then secondly, it’s going to really, really start to work with your overall lifestyle. It can, it can be trickled down in to noticing what you eat that, Oh, I noticed I didn’t really eat great yesterday, it was maybe too much junk food and now today when I did my yoga practice, I felt stiffer, I felt more tired, you start to notice these things at a deeper level and then maybe you noticed that you were really stressed out and your emotions were all over. 

You notice it on your yoga mat, it is a place for a seat of awareness to notice what’s going on in your daily life, so that again, it’s shining that light on it. You can then make the appropriate changes of what needs to happen. Maybe you just, you’re eating really well and you know, I’m a little more open today, or I’m a little stronger today, or I have a little more energy today, so all of these things that starts to work together for the whole person and that’s really the big carrot is that it has this one wonderful trickle effect into your entire lifestyle, where you begin to come consciously to your habits of your movement, your consumption your thoughts, and it’s addressing the wholeness of your health, mind, body and spirit. And this is the biggest carrot that yoga has is that you’re looking at yourself as a complete self as a whole self.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

And I’d like to, you know, something that you talk a lot about and I’d like to kind of highlight that a little bit and then get back to some practical aspects of the yoga, you talk a lot about the big three, you know, and I know you bake that in right now in your description, can you just kind of give a little highlight? Obviously yoga is such a central component, your movement, central component, but if you would give kind of a broad highlight as to what the big three are, so that you and individuals not just focusing on one component to recognize it’s a wholeness aspect that that you need to look at.

Stacy McCarthy

So, what I teach a lot of is what I call mastering the Big Three. And while we could break down everyone’s habits, both good and bad into, gosh, a lot of different endless categories. I like to simplify it into three areas that really encompass our whole lives our lifestyle and that how you move, how you eat and how you think. And so these three areas, when we really come to them, they create the framework of our lifestyles as a whole. And so this is the practice, this is why I had talked the difference between exercise and health in movement. We have a choice of many different movements. The beautiful part of a practice that is a mind body practice. Yoga, tai chi, qigong things that our mind body working with your mind and body together. These are practices that again are helping you with the mental fluctuations that we all have, and it’s also helping to heal the body from the inside out. 

So when it comes to movement, I am a very big advocate of mindful movement, of being very mindful of how we move and then eating what we put in what we consume again, both eating and thoughts. This again is going to represent our overall lifestyle and how we feel. So the big three, I just put them into these bigger chunks and then within those, I break it down into small rituals, conscious intentions that we do um on a regular basis, daily basis, so that it becomes who we are, and it helps change our identity from someone who maybe doesn’t do them to someone who does. So, for example, on all of these, when you change your identity, you’re a healthy person, this is how your rituals and your habits become easier. It’s like the difference if you’re a smoker and you’re trying to quit and someone offers you a cigarette, that’s probably a terrible example for regenerative medicine, but it does make sense. If someone offers you a cigarette and you say, oh I’m trying to quit smoking, then your brain is telling you you’re still a smoker, you’re just trying to quit. 

But if someone offers you that same cigarette and you say, I don’t smoke your brain tells you your identity if you’re not a smoker. And so it’s the same thing as we switch our habits consciously that if someone offers you that junk food and you just say I don’t eat that, rather than saying something, well, I’m trying to lose weight or I’m trying to eat healthy, you just say no, thank you, I don’t eat it. Your identity is you are a healthy person and you don’t eat that versus I’m trying to x y z eat healthier, lose weight because in your identity is still stuck in that you’re not a healthy person.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yeah, I love that because we become who we identify with. So if we identify with, you know, I’m on this journey which is great, you know, I’m trying to but if we identify with I am a healthy person, what you’re doing then is that your it’s like a command to the universe. And you draw in practices diet thought patterns that reflects and resonate with your identity, which is that I am a healthy person. And so yeah, I love that. I really love that. So for a person that that’s wanting to start, I mean, we have, you know, people, they work in an office, they their business people, they have, you know, a few moments here and there, you know, things that they can do where they can kind of break away and and do maybe some poses that is easy to do and also if you don’t mind kind of letting people know what are the benefits and what what what is that doing to you as you’re doing these these posters. So what are some of the ones that you really love that would be practical and good to do.

Stacy McCarthy

Okay so in the example of your at office or you just don’t have a lot of time I would say first thing in the morning when you do have time I can teach you just like something that’s very simple. It’s like five minutes. But here’s the importance of it. One, it’s going to move your spine in each direction so that you’re waking up your spine because your spy mine is going to be the most important part. If you only have one thing to work the spine so that your cervical, your thoracic, your lumbar spine all feel balanced and mobile and so working the spine. And the other thing that happens is from an energy standpoint. And without going too deep into the energy, our main energy channel. The central energy channel within the body runs within the spinal cord. So we’re running right up through the spinal cord, your main energy channel. And when we move the spine effectively we’re waking up your energy we’re waking up your prana, your life force, your energy channel. 

So if you don’t have much time in your day doing just this quick warm up that we can do right now would be a great start and then if you don’t have time in the morning or you didn’t make time in the morning at lunch, do it at lunch. Try not to wait till all the way until the end of the day. Try to get it in early as much as you can or do it three times a day. If you’d like just to increase the energy with this, I also use the breath consistent breath with the mouth closed and the inhales and exhales through the nose also are creating more energy, more clarity and vitality for your mind. So we’re not just working the body, but we’re working the connection of the body mind connection. So just these simple movements connected with your breath connected with opening up the central energy channel and moving your spine can be super powerful in your busy day and it won’t take a lot of time. So if you’re up for it and you’re watching right now, why don’t you stand up with me? If you’re in a place you can stand up and we’ll take a few minutes to move your breath and move your body a little bit. All right, shall we do it?

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

I love it, yes.

Stacy McCarthy

Okay, very good. Alright, so here we go. I’m in my yoga studio. I am in San Diego. It’s very warm today. That’s why I’m in shorts, you can do this barefoot, you can do it with your shoes on, it doesn’t really matter. But the first thing I’m gonna do is just align your body. So one thing that’s really important to do every day is to start your day with great posture. You may not even notice that you stand a little slumped or you stand to one side, You may not even notice that. So a simple thing of aligning our posture each day goes a long way. So we’ll align your posture for maximum energy for great great energy flow, but also so that everything is aligned and then we’ll do some movement and then we’ll just come back to center and at the end just coming back to center and taking a moment to just feel a connection with yourself. To feel powerful, to feel grounded that you took a moment and feel really good about it. All right? 

So as you stand, I want you to bring your feet hips width distance apart and parallel. Sometimes we don’t even realize we stand like this. We stand like this. So can you bring your feet straight ahead and parallel, start to lift up the lower belly and release down the tail. Sometimes we don’t realize we stand like this or we stand like this so you’re lifting the lower belly as you release down the tailbone. This brings you neutral into the pelvis, stack your shoulders over the hips, your outer arms in line with the sideways, turn open your pumps and just let your fingers spread, You’re stacking the joints, ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, ears and crown of the head so all the joints are stacked and now begin to press down the feet firmly until the energy draws up and your kneecaps lift the front of the thighs firm so the quadriceps engage, continue to lift up through your lower belly. Your ribcage hugs in but the collarbone spread and the shoulders release back and down so your bones are along, your muscles are stable and the musculoskeletal system has balanced and cemetery. And this checkpoint each day goes a long way so that when you move through the day you may notice that you’re slumping and slope and you may notice that you’re standing too much to one side and you bring yourself back to center. 

And now I’d like you to take an inhale through the nose with your mouth closed and exhale through the nose with the mouth closed. Let’s do that again. Inhale through the nose the mouth is closed. Exhale through the nose with the mouth closed. We’re gonna keep the same breath. It’s about a five count in of five count out and we’re gonna add movement to it. Inhale, reach your arms up towards the ceiling, Exhale, bend the knees hinge from your hips. Bring your hands to the shins. Inhale halfway, lift as you lengthen the spine and then exhale, fold back in inhale, press down the feet lead with your heart as you reach up to the ceiling, touch the palms and maybe gaze up and then exhale, Bring your arms by your side. So we’re taking the hamstrings out of it and we’re working with your low back inhale reach up. Exhale hinge from the hips. So I’m bending the knees. Hands can come to the shins maybe to the ground. Inhale it’s a halfway lift, extend the spine. Exhale, fold it back in, inhale, lead with the heart as you reach back up. Maybe the palms touch. And then exhale, bring your arms by your side so you can do this as many times as you’d like. You’re warming up the low back with your knees bent just warming up hips and low back. I took it out of the hamstring, lateral bending inhale reach up, you’re still moving with the breath. 

Exhale your left hand, takes the right wrist. Inhale reach up high and then exhale, lean to your left side and this is a lateral bend and moving the spine sideways. Inhale, come back up to center. Let’s do that again. Exhale to the left side. Your hips move to the right and inhale come back to center one more time. Exhale to the left. Your hips move to the right inhale back to center. Exhale, bring your arms back down by your side. Inhale. Let your heart lift as you reach up your right hand. Take the left wrist. Inhale you’re extending up and then exhale to the right side. Let your hips move to the left. Inhale, come back to center. Let’s do that again. Exhale to the right. The hips move to the left. Inhale up to center. One last time. Exhale to the right hips move to the left. Inhale back to center. Exhale, bring your arms by your side. So we’ve done flexion and extension with the spine. We’ve done lateral bending with the spine. The last one we’re gonna do is twisting with the spine. 

So I’d like you as much as possible to keep your hips level your pelvic girdle stable and you’re gonna twist from the thoracic spine and the cervical spine. So this is going to be stable and we’ll twist from here. Inhale, reach the arms up. Exhale, bring your right hand forward, reach your left arm back, inhale, come back to center. Exhale, bring your left hand forward and your right arm back again. Inhale as you reach up, you’re extending. Exhale the left arm, reaches back the right arm forward. Inhale back up to center. Exhale left hand forward. Right arm back inhale, reach up to center this time bring your palms together, bring your thumbs down to your heart center. Just bow your head towards your heart and take three full even breaths. Take this moment to connect to the energy of the heart. The heart holds an energy center, it’s called the chakra which is a place of love, compassion and gratitude. Now you’re tuning into the heart and you’re keeping your focus on these higher emotions. You’ll be unable to hold the stress, the worry, the tension, the judgment, the embarrassment, disappointment, anger, fear that can’t be held at the same time that you’re holding the energy of love, compassion, ingratitude. So each day you have the choice of carrying around the lower thoughts and emotions that contribute and facilitate stress. 

Where you have the choice of connecting to the higher emotions of oneness, gratitude, love and compassion. It’s your choice, release your hands and open the eyes back up to center. Very nice. So that was just again you can put this together. So if you remember we warmed up your low back and hips with the forward folding, reaching up and folding forward. We warmed up the sideways through your lateral bending and then we warmed up the twist. So most of the twist is happening where you need it most, which is the thoracic spine And then the Hips stay fairly stable. They don’t move as much in that direction. But the thoracic spine, this is the area that we need to move to open up the posture muscles of the mid back again, awakening and counteracting some of the slumping and the slouching that happens during the day. So just simple, simple movements. And I think I have a bonus for you. That has a little 20 minute at work out, it’ll be a little more challenging. But it’s something that you can work with to work with your breath and you’ll just modify through and then I have some tips as well on mastering the big three and an ebook that I think I gave to Michael to send to everyone as well at the end.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much. I think one of the biggest reasons I really want to make sure I got this interview is that I could one more time get to do yoga with you.

Stacy McCarthy

Thank you. Yeah and everyone, I mean, gosh, you know, I’ll send you that little sample and if you want to explore yoga more, you have more questions, feel free to reach out to me. You know, there’s nothing that brings me more joy than turning more people onto this practice because I truly believe from my heart that the more people that are practicing yoga the more they feel a sense of well being and because that they’re feeling better in their own mind and they found this comfort of their own mind that then when they go out into the world, they’re just better people out in the world as well and we all know we just need more more connected to people in the world.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Well, thank you so much. I want to make sure that we get because I felt that this was so important to so people have this powerful tool because you can talk about regenerative medicine without I believe something like this, like like yoga, tai chi, qigong creating these these rituals that we incorporate every day in order to be able to anchor who we are as a person and anchor goodness, anchor piece anchor. You know all these these higher vibrations like you’re talking about rather than than walking around in fear, anger, guilt and all these negative emotions you know because none of those, it doesn’t matter how well we eat, it doesn’t matter how much we exercise, doesn’t matter you know how many pills would take. You know stem cell I. V. S. It doesn’t matter if you don’t anchor yourself in these positive emotions.

Stacy McCarthy

That’s right, that’s right. And and you know this practice of yoga is one of the again it takes work, it’s not a pill you pop, it’s not something that is a quick fix but it is a practice that when you have that sense of well being that you feel from the practice it will keep you coming back again and again. Most people quit something because they leave either exhausted or tired especially exercise programs or they just don’t you know they might get that momentary high but you shouldn’t feel that way after something. You should have this beautiful sense of well being and feel really really good awaken calmness on the inside a balance of the body and when you have that it helps you come back again and again and again and you realize that eventually it’s like brushing your teeth that you need to do it just like you brush your teeth to keep that sense of well being, that indestructible sense of well being.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

And I feel better already, you know, just doing the exercise with doing the yoga with you. So talk a little bit about the power and the importance of rituals because it seems like you’re kind of alluding to, you know, like brushing your teeth. I mean something we do every day. So what is the importance of rituals in our daily life?

Stacy McCarthy

Yes. So rituals are really, it’s an action with intention. So when we have a ritual, we’re doing it with an intention, it transforms our unconscious habits into conscious meaningful rituals. And when we work to bring out our best self with full intention into the day. Today, patterns that, you know, are shaping our lives and we’re trans in forming who we are from the inside out a ritual. So we have a habit. So, for example, maybe every morning you wake up and the first thing you do is you grab a coffee, that’s a habit, you don’t even think about it. A ritual would be something that you’re doing with a clear intention where you wake up, you know, instead of first thing of grabbing my coffee, maybe I’m gonna get up, I’m gonna move my spine. Everything is very conscious, you do it and eventually it does become a habit. 

But to start off with, you were very conscious and you had an intention to do that and then it becomes over time a habit. Whereas a habit is something you may have just done without even thinking about it and then you just kept doing it over and over and the next thing you knew, it’s like, oh, this has become my habit and there was no conscious intention to it. So setting up rituals, the best success that I’ve seen and when I’ve worked with people is to have systems for me, I’m a big believer in systems. So for example, if you want to get on your yoga mat every day or you want to get to a mindful movement practice, have it set up in the spot. So for example, this is my work. So I obviously have a spot. But other people in my family, they have their yoga mat in a specific spot that’s always staring at them so that they get up and they use it in the kitchen have systems set up that are in your kitchen if you want to wake up every morning and have a fresh juice, have your juicer right there ready to go. It’s looking at you. It’s like make me a juice or maybe your spider mix or smoothie maker, it’s right there and you have everything ready to go. Or you’re you’ve got instant ha water for your healing teas, whatever it is, have it there in a system ready to go, so that it supports your ritual have patterns before you go to bed of what you put in your mind and what you think of first thing in the morning, these are two powerful areas. So I have specific rituals at the end of the day that I go through the day’s reflection. And then in the morning I have a specific meditation that I do to start my day. I have specific mantra. Mantra translates the Sanskrit word, the language of yoga to mind vehicles, specific things that we say to direct our mind to have our mind travel in the direction that we want to go. So setting up these systems is going to be very important to your success and the ease of which you are able to do this because if they’re not set up and ready to go, it’s just too easy to fall into our unconscious habits rather than our conscious intentions that we want.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Love that. Yeah. And you know, like I can’t remember who was, it was somebody that I interviewed on one of my radio shows, but he had a practice or ritual that he was creating is that every time I walked through a doorway, you know, he was saying, I am blessed. So, that way the doorway becomes a trigger, you know, always thinking I’m blessed and and so that way, and he is identifying with, you know, this is who I am. I am blessed. And so yeah, so that it becomes so important and and also like you’re mentioning, you know that it’s that transition, you know, transition from sleep too awake and then from awake to asleep. It’s kind of where you’re in that in between world where your mind and your brain and your body is so impressionable. So it becomes such a powerful time to then utilize that moment to really program who you are. I mean, if it is, you know, you’re wanting, you know, say that I’m successful or I am loved or I what however it is the mantra that that an individual would use. It becomes such a powerful moment during those transition times because you are so open for suggestions at that time. And that’s why it’s so important to not watch violent movies right before you go to bed.

Stacy McCarthy

That’s exactly right. And you know, your conscious mind has about 40 bits of information per second, whereas the unconscious or the super subconscious or super conscious mind has a million times more than that. So, when we first wake up in the morning, we still are a little bit in that subconscious state. And this is a great time to program your mind. And I love the example you gave Michael about I am blessed that your your friend every time you went under the door, I’ll give you, I’ll wrap it up with maybe a story that’s helpful as we talk about these monsters are these mine vehicles at the height of C0V!D in 2020 I was riding my electric bicycle and the front wheel started to wobble and the next thing I remember, I was in trauma care and the wheel had fallen off. I went over the handlebars face first three days before Christmas, height of C0V!D. I landed on my face the whole side of my face and it was asphalt and tar embedded all the way down to the bone and the men trauma care and it’s very busy and they just stitched me really quick. 

And then when I came out, my face literally looked like tattoos all over my entire face and I’ve had like nine different types of procedure tattoo, remove all this stuff to get it out and it looks pretty good now. But during that time while my face was, you know, really inflamed. And I kept, and I kept reflecting on the accident and stuff, I was knocked unconscious. I found myself, I’m usually a pretty happy, optimistic, you know, person. But I feel I found myself walking around and finding the negative out in the world. Like I would walk, I have a beautiful garden here where I live and I’d walk around instead of seeing the beautiful flowers blooming, I would see something dead that needed to be removed. It’s like everywhere I looked, it seemed to be a negative and that’s what I was finding rather than the beauty and what happened is I ended up getting this weird stye on my eye and then it turned into, I’ve never had a stye in my life. It turned into this thing called the chalazion, which it got really big, it kind of looks like a giant wart on my, I like very big and this was right before I was accepting the award, you talked about the World Health and Fitness instructor of the Year award and I had this giant thing on my eye and I’m like, my award was coming up and what I realized is that I was seeing the world through angry eyes.

There was some sort of deep seated anger and rage in me from this accident that you know, it had its repercussions and cascade of things and so I had some sort of deep seated rage or anger and I was seeing the world through these angry eyes. So I found this mantra, I see everything and everyone with abundant joy and unconditional love, including myself, my health and my healing. And every time I would say something I would think something negative, I would say something negative, I stop, I do that mantra. I see everyone and everything with abundant joy and unconditional love, including myself, my health and my healing and guess what the Malaysian and these things don’t go away easier, easy, the sky, It started to dissolve and it’s never come back. They’re notorious for coming back and I had to do that sometimes 50 times a day. That’s how many times I was allowing my mind to drop into negativity. And unless we are awake and aware and really noticing things, we don’t even notice how many times we say a negative word, we think a negative thought and literally sometimes 50 or more times a day I was catching myself with a negative thought and I would say my mantra and I still do it to this day. In fact they do that mantra every morning and every evening still because it was so powerful for me. So these mind vehicles, these are really, really profound ways to bring a little bit more awareness to how we think.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

That’s a powerful story. That’s a really powerful story. And I also wanted to kind of highlight that you know after the accident. I mean we’re talking about rituals and sticking to rituals. Did you take a break from your yoga practice?

Stacy McCarthy

I didn’t, I did not, I did not take a break. And here’s the other thing that I want to share with you. Like all of you probably out there, you know, we’ve had our trials and tribulations and things that happened. Some of them are physical, some of them are emotional. My yoga practice stays with me no matter what. And I’ll give you another example a few years ago, I had to have knee surgery and it was so bad. It would lock up and one day I literally had to I was leading a retreat and I got up in my knee, locked up. I couldn’t even walk. I had to go on my mom’s walker and get up on stage and lead this retreat on my mom’s walker. And the reality is I always get up in your practice doesn’t always look the same. There’s your practice changes with what’s going on in your life. So after knee surgery, I would have to sit up on three or four blocks to do a pose that maybe was very simple for me. But I still did it. I didn’t quit. I modified, I’d continue on. And so if I can encourage anyone, we have to let go of things are gonna change through life. 

Maybe it’s just aging. I’m 60 years old now. What I do now does not look exactly like it did 30 years ago, it looks differently. But some things have gotten better and some things aren’t as easy. And so you don’t quit. Even if all you can do is sit and breathe, do that. If you sit and breathe and you do your mantra work and you’re having the right thoughts that’s enough. So you do what you can, you modify what you can, but you keep that ritual going and that’s the powerful powerful part of a ritual that conscious intention. That’s okay, I can’t walk. I’ve got to use a walk. What can I do with this? Oh I got arms that work. I have another leg that works my spine works. There’s other things I can do and I would do what I can. So this is the beauty of a yoga practice. Anyone I’ve worked with people in hospital beds after my mom had a stroke, I could work with her doing yoga. O you can wiggle your fingers, breathe in, spread your fingers wide, breathe out, clench your fingers in. So there’s this is all yoga. The Instagram gets all the popularity of like the contorted poses. But as I said from the beginning, yoga’s about touching your soul. And it is about you having the exploration of yourself, that discovery of who you are at the deepest and most profound level and finding lasting peace. This is the practice of yoga.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Love it. And that it’s just like because we have to eat and we have to poop every day. I mean we got to bring in good energy and then release the bad and it’s a good thing and we do that every day. So we need to do that also through rituals through habits through, you know, like yoga by reinforcing that pattern of always bringing good things in bringing life in and flushing out the negativity. You know, looking for where tensions are that’s inhibiting us from living fully because at the end of the day, we’re here to have joy and in order to be able to have true joy, we need to be connected and we need to remove the resistance. And the defense mechanisms that are not serving as well anymore may have served us at a time, but the ones that we are still holding onto because it worked at such and such time for such moment. You know, we don’t need to anymore. And so it’s important then to make sure we develop patterns and practices to to move through all of that. 

Stacy McCarthy

Yeah. And I would also just say with that to not judge either way to not because not judging the negative and the positive but just knowing they’re both there and we have that choice. You always have the choice of which one you’d like to choose. It doesn’t mean that you know because I do yoga a lot that I don’t get angry that I don’t get fearful. Of course I do. But having the tools to balance that out that’s powerful. So this does not mean that you don’t experience full emotions that there is that negative things are going to happen. Things happen. But the tools to help you get through them, that’s the powerful part of it that you get to choose. You find yourself too much in the negativity come back, come back to that powerful place and replace it. There’s a beautiful yoga sutra the yoga sutras are small gems of yoga from potentially and there’s one that’s in Sanskrit is called, which I absolutely love. And what it means is cancel negative thoughts and replace them with a more powerful optimum thought. So yes, we are going negative thoughts are going to happen. But can you have the seat of awareness, Catch yourself whatever that takes. Maybe it’s a clap of the hand, Maybe it says, hey, whatever it is, catch yourself and now replace it with the thought that you would prefer to have. So instead of me looking through angry eyes, I wanted to see everything with love and joy and it was just conscious thought. It’s not that the negativity doesn’t happen. I don’t need to sit there and judge it. Oh, I’m so negative. This is horrible. All I have to do is cancel that thought and replace it.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

I love that. And I’m being in place like you mentioned, not in a place of judgment because a lot of times and we feel that we should do better. We should do. You know why did I do that? That wasn’t good enough to be in a place of observation and being in the moment rather than thinking that have to achieve this or achieve that, but to being in that space and observing and breathing and just connecting with it now and instead of being elsewhere.

Stacy McCarthy

Yeah, because the heart surrenders to the moment. Where’s the mind judges and holds back. So we’re all up here in our head if we can come back here to the heart and that’s why in our short little movement, I just came back to the hardest as a practice that I do on a regular basis and just bringing the hands to the heart, thumbs to heart, whatever. This helps with brain heart coherence. So just know that the heart is willing to surrender to the moment right here right now, where is your mind? It’s going to judge and it’s going to hold you back. So again, it’s working without going to deepen the neuroscience, this brain heart coherence as well.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

So I would like to now get back to the big three, you know, and I know we spoke we talked a lot about it already, but if you can so you have you have the mind, you have, you know what I mean? Your mindfulness, your thoughts, you have your movement, you know, you exercise and then also you have what you’re eating. So and then we touched upon rituals. You you mentioned a few things you know in regards to rituals, in regards to your your juicer, you know in the morning to kind of have a juice or that are there some some kind of other examples that you can give, you know for the big three that people can take home and and utilize and and to to really solidify these good practices.

Stacy McCarthy

Yeah, of course, of course. So again, rituals, I think as we mentioned more morning and evening are so, so powerful. I can do a couple of things. And the evening, one of the rituals that I do that can be very helpful for this. Again, the study of yourself, I can’t think of anything more important to study than yourself. And so this is a practice that is called the gift. And so when I go to bed at night, I do a contemplation of reflection on my day. And so I look at throughout the day and we can do this together if you’re here and I can take you through it. It can be a very meditative thing. But if you just close your eyes for a moment, Just take a nice big inhale and just an easy exhale. And I’d like you to take a moment to notice all the gifts you’ve received in the last 24 hours and the gifts there’s the gift is not how big or how small, but I just want you to go through the day and notice the gifts you received. So maybe in the morning someone made a cup of coffee for you. Maybe someone walked the dog. 

Maybe someone made the bed. Maybe someone sent you a gift you received it in the mail. No gift is too big or too small. So what are all the gifts that you’ve received within the day where someone helped you, even if they’re being paid and they helped you? You went to lunch, Someone took your order, someone cooked the food someone gave you the food, someone cleaned the dishes. These are all gifts you received. Someone picked up your trash. These are all gifts. Even if someone’s getting paid. These are all gifts you’ve received in the day. So take a moment and notice all the beautiful gifts you’ve received in the day. Again, some could be physical, some could be kind words. Some could be someone teaching you something, You could be watching a summit and you learn something. This is a gift. Someone could have helped you heal. And these are all gifts of the last 24 hours that you received. And now take a few deep breaths just allowing yourself to center around all the beautiful gifts that you’ve received. And now I’d like you to consider and contemplate all the gifts that you gave in the day. So maybe you woke up in the morning and you were the one that made the bed or maybe you woke up in the morning and you fed the dog or the cat, maybe you were the one that took someone out to dinner. 

Maybe you were the one that provided information or education or healing or help. And as you go through the day, realize all the gifts that you gave on this day. And again, even if you’re paid for those gifts, there’s still gifts that you’re giving to the world and no gift is too big or too small. But notice all the gifts that you’ve given in a day and now take a few deep breaths, allow yourself to just bask and all the gifts that you gave and all the gifts that you received. And now the third part of this meditation is the most challenging for most people because in this part You’re going to go through the last 24 hours and you’re going to notice any time or any place that maybe you were a hindrance or maybe you caused a problem. Or maybe you were unkind. Even if you didn’t mean to be most of us are very kind and considerate people. But throughout the day maybe there were times in the day where you were maybe unconscious of what you were doing or you just weren’t present in what you were doing and it caused harm or cause discomfort. It was just not very thoughtful. So maybe you were going to the grocery store and you have a trader Joe’s near me. 

The parking lots always crowded and maybe there was a great parking spot and someone was walking to their cars. So you stopped and you thought I will wait here while they get in the car while they had a stroller and they had to get the baby in and while you were waiting a long line of cars were all backed up behind you. And so you caused this problem for all the people waiting while you blocked the traffic to get the great parking spot. You didn’t mean to, you didn’t know but yet you caused this discomfort for others. So there’s nothing too big or too small. Maybe the dog was on the bed sleeping and you scattered the dog off. You kind of pushed the dog off. Maybe you caused this problem for the dog. So again, it’s not that you intentionally were trying to cause a problem just unconsciously. 

You did. And this practice of self awareness when we reflect through our day allows us to wake up the next day and maybe be a little more aware, a little more conscious before we fly off the handle or before we forget to say thank you. And we become a happier, healthier, more compassionate person in the world and then gently open your eyes. So this is a beautiful, beautiful practice that allows us each day to reset ourselves and just notice that every single day that we’re receiving gifts, we’re giving gifts out into the world. There’s that reciprocity, but there’s also a time where we may be causing a hindrance or a problem unintentionally, but it still happens. And so if we go through this process, it allows us for the next day to maybe be more aware, more awake throughout the day and catch ourselves when we do this. And I know this practice has certainly helped me in. So, so many ways to go through my days with a little more ease with a little more joy in my heart and a little more love in my heart.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

I love that, I love that. Well Stacy, it is always such a pleasure. It’s always such a joy and you bring so much exuberance and love and and you know, to the world through everything that you do. So what where can people, where’s the best place for them to find you because you offer so many courses and trainings and you know, for people that want to pursue them, want to pursue this.

Stacy McCarthy

Yeah, well the best place to reach me is probably via my email S T A C Y, [email protected], that’s my business name, Y O G A Yoga. And then like the word namaste, N A M A S T A C Y dot com. You can also find me on the social media outlets on Instagram yoga_namastacy Facebook, on twitter. I’m on all those, not as much on twitter, mostly on Instagram is the primary one, but also use Facebook and then of course at my website and I have, I do, I have several yoga teacher trainings coming up. I also offer online classes. I have all kinds of things always coming up and I would love love love to connect and even just answer questions. If you have questions, just say, hey, you saw me on Michael’s show, regenerative medicine on this beautiful summit and ask me whatever you want. I’m happy to help you.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Wonderful. Thank you so much Stacy.

Stacy McCarthy

Thank you, Michael,

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Thank you.