The Manifestation lab

From Hardship to Healing with Mindfulness, Yoga & Energy Medicine with Dr. Lynn Rossy

• Kelly Howe • Season 1 • Episode 28

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Have you ever been touched by a story of transformation that resonates with your own struggles and aspirations? Dr. Lynn Rossy joins us on a heartfelt exploration of her life's journey from personal hardships to becoming an eminent health psychologist and mindfulness maestro. Her narrative is a beacon of hope, filled with lessons from the 12-step program and the spiritual wisdom of the Course in Miracles, alongside influencers like Marianne Williamson. As Lynn unveils her path toward a Ph.D. in psychology and the unfolding magic of intention-setting, you'll feel inspired by her dedication to Kripalu Yoga, retreats, and the practice of energy medicine.

This episode is a treasure trove of insights on how joy and spiritual connections can act as catalysts in the healing process. We share stories of overcoming the challenges of sobriety with humor and lightness, emphasizing the upliftment that joy brings into our lives. Lynn's experiences in the lively landscape of Los Angeles serve as a testament to the importance of maintaining our vibrational energy high and our sense of discernment sharp. You'll gain a fresh perspective on how a child's bond with nature can plant the seeds for lifelong spiritual growth, and how navigating social environments requires a balance of personal development and worldly wisdom.

Our journey culminates in a profound discussion about the impact of energy medicine and yoga on physical and emotional healing. From the inspiring stories of healing and breakthroughs to my own experiences with energy medicine in palliative care, we illuminate the possibilities that these ancient practices hold for modern-day ailments. As we delve into muscle testing and the value of teaching children grounding techniques like tapping, you'll learn how these tools are not only accessible but also transformative. Whether you're looking to manage grief, improve your well-being, or simply find solace, this episode is a guiding light towards a more integrated and holistic approach to health.

To connect with Dr. Lynn Rossy visit:
http://lynnrossy.com/
https://www.instagram.com/tastingmindfulness/

As always, to connect with Kelly go to http://www.kellyhowe.co or visit @kellyhowecoaching on IG or FB.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Manifestation Lab. This is your host, kelly Howe. From the grounded science to the mystical and unseen, we're investigating this big experiment we call life and finding what really works when it comes to manifesting a life that sets your heart and your soul on fire. Welcome to the lab. Okay, welcome back to the Manifestation Lab. I have Lynn Rossi with me today. I'm so delighted to be sitting here with Lynn. We have so many things in common and Lynn, by the way, I've had people for years be like do you know Lynn, do you know Lynn? I think we just like. Our vibes must be similar because for years and years, people have asked me if I know you and then, when I started telling people that I was going to have you on the podcast, everyone was so excited, so so delighted to be here with you. Before we jump in, I'm going to give everybody a little bit of an idea of who you are and what we're going to get into.

Speaker 1:

So I've Dr Lynn Rossi. She is a health psychologist and an expert in mindfulness-based interventions for the workplace stress in eating. Her mindful eating books are the mindfulness-based eating solution. In Saver Every Bite. I was able to read both of those. They are delightful, so grateful that you have that work out there. Lynn also teaches.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to mess this up Kripalu, yeah you got it, I got it, yay, so she teaches.

Speaker 1:

Kripalu Yoga locally here in Columbia, Missouri, and Energy Medicine Yoga online to people everywhere. She leads yearly yoga and energy medicine retreats in exotic places. Those retreats look incredible. I know, I know it, she's currently working on Eat and Energy Medicine Practitioner Certificate and sees people individually for energy medicine here in Columbia, missouri. So welcome, lynn, it's so great to have you on the show. Oh, it's my pleasure, it's a lot of fun to be here.

Speaker 1:

Yes these are so fun. I'm really looking forward to see where this conversation takes us. So let's just start with. Let's go way back. Okay, so you're doing all this really amazing work in the world. You've written a couple of books. You've been teaching this energy medicine and yoga for a long time. But what did life look like before all of this, and what was it that life threw at you? That kind of threw you into the energy healing world?

Speaker 2:

Oh, we have to go way back.

Speaker 1:

It's a big question, so let's just jump right in, right.

Speaker 2:

Well, I grew up here in Columbia, but when I was 21, I left and went to California, which was really something I needed to do. I needed to get out of Columbia and have a change of scenery, and that went really well for quite a while, and then it didn't. I moved from San Francisco down to LA and met somebody that wasn't that good of a person and it was pretty disastrous. I met him, married him and left him within a year because he was a pathological liar, and so it was pretty devastating to me. I got involved in drugs pretty quickly after that.

Speaker 2:

La's a great place to get involved in drugs and I was really running away from life. I was running as fast as I could in any direction, but my life and I did that for a few years bottomed out on that and ended up in the hospital with a 30-day treatment program that saved my life. But I knew the weekend before I got treatment that I was either going to die or I was going to get help. It was really clear to me my body was breaking down. I had to get crutches out of the closet to walk because my body was so exhausted from running so fast. I did everything that would make me go faster, if you can imagine. So I did get into recovery. I got into the 12-step program, which was great. My real first spiritual path was the 12-step program. Shortly after that I met Marianne Williamson. She was in LA, hadn't made it big yet she hadn't written her book Return to Love.

Speaker 2:

I know I love her. So I got very involved in the course in Miracles and shortly thereafter my mom gave me a call and we weren't very close at the time because we had not been very happy with one another when I left for California 14 years previously, and so our relationship wasn't very close. And so she called me two days in a row, which I thought was strange. I thought, oh gosh, somebody died. And she said I had this message from God that I need to call and ask you to see if you want to come back to Columbia. And I thought, well, okay, and I knew immediately. I knew immediately I was coming back. I didn't tell her that, but I did you felt?

Speaker 2:

it. I felt it. I had a dear friend at the time who, when I told him about coming back to Columbia, he said oh, if you go back, you've got to go to school. He was just so clear. I mean he was like an angel I had my mom was an angel at the time he was an angel to me and he just put a thought in my head, planted a seed that I hadn't had there, and I thank him to this day. I know Todd was, you know, my little angel and I said, oh yeah, sure you know.

Speaker 2:

And I had been working at the time with Mary Ann Williamson's project called Project Angel Food and working with men with HIV, AIDS, and I was really moved to work in that area. And so I came back when it's psychology and got my PhD. I mean so, and from then on my life has been guided. I mean, it was like I was led to live instead of die, and I was led continuously. From that point on, I had the right people placed in my path that supported what I wanted to do. I would set an intention and then things would miraculously just appear.

Speaker 2:

I was at a little Quaker church in the middle of an Iowa cornfield, listening to a man talk about the course and miracles, and I thought I need to deepen my meditation practice. I just had this real clear sense I can still see the corn outside. But I had this and I thought I need to deepen my meditation practice. I had one through the course and miracles, but I knew there was a little more. There was something in this idea of stillness that resonated with me. So I came back I was in graduate school at the time and the next thing I did was run into a woman named Jenny Morgan who became my Buddhist meditation teacher.

Speaker 2:

And then, about a month after that, I became aware of John Kabat-Zinn and the really new research that was coming out on the mindfulness based stress reduction program and my path began. You know, I started studying in the Buddhist tradition and in the secular tradition through John and trained to be an MBSR teacher, trained to be a Buddhist teacher, and so much of my career at the university was around mindfulness and I developed the mindfulness practice center there and taught these programs for many years. And I had Susan Even, who was the director of the Student Health Center, who kept sending me on training programs and supporting me, and so I just had people put in my life that supported what I did and it was successful and, as long you know, it kept being successful, so more people kept supporting me. And then I went over to the wellness program for faculty and staff, also supported by another dear friend, to teach mindfulness to faculty and staff at the university, and that was also the university.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And you know, after 10 years I was invited to do the keynote at the mindfulness conference in Worcester, massachusetts, and people were just astounded at what we had accomplished here. And I'm like I don't know how it happened. You know, I mean I really just put one foot in front of the other and asked can you help? And it happens. I mean you have to ask. You know, and I've had a lot of people come up to me from time to time and they're like, why isn't, why aren't things happening in my life? And I'm like, well, are you asking for what you want? Right, because I know you talk about manifestation and you asked me that question in a questionnaire and that just came to me because that's what I did do. I would show up. You have to show up, you have to do the work and you have to ask for what you want. And it's amazing what the universe will give you if you ask for it. It is amazing.

Speaker 1:

It is amazing and just to go back a couple of steps, when you have those moments with people and they're divine messengers, yes, there is a vibration to that. Yes, it's like you know I was supposed to hear that and I know that you've probably also been in the position, like I have, where messages flow through me and later I'm like I cannot believe I said that so directly or so succinctly. It just doesn't feel quite. I don't know how I wrote two books?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly Right, I'm still waiting.

Speaker 1:

I'm writing a book but, my God, I have not found the flow with it yet. Yeah, I was told recently that whatever is going to happen for me in the next 18 months is really going to like tie it together and make it easier so it flows. Oh, okay, yeah, so I'm setting that intention that that is going to be the case.

Speaker 1:

But, yeah, it is amazing, when you start to tune in and tap in, how those people just show up. So, going back to that week before you ended up in the hospital, at that time did you have any sort of spiritual beliefs? Did you have any sort of anything like that now?

Speaker 2:

Not really. I mean, I was brought up in the Methodist church, you know, but I had kind of I rejected everything that stood for, anything that my parents stood for at the time, you know, and I was, yeah, just not really exploring anything of a spiritual nature at all. So it was almost like I died and was reborn. I mean it really is. I mean, when I look at that person, who I was before and then after I died, I was literally, I mean, I was seeing angels, you know, and I don't know if it was the drugs or not, but I really did feel like something was pulling me out of the quicksand. I basically looked in the mirror and saw my face and I said I don't know who you are, I don't know who you are. I can remember this so clearly. I don't know who you are, I don't see me, and that was it. You know, that was it.

Speaker 2:

And the minute I hit, I was in the Beverly Hills Recovery Program and I was supposed to show up at eight o'clock in the morning and I couldn't get there until five. I just couldn't get it together, you know. But I finally made it and I slept for two days straight and then woke up and I was healed. I had no desire to use, I had no desire for anything. I mean, it was just I was one of the lucky ones. Really I was one of those ones that didn't have any problem with it at all and I got to tell you LA is a pretty fun place to get sober in.

Speaker 1:

Well, that's good yeah.

Speaker 2:

Because I mean it's just, it's fun, it's a party.

Speaker 1:

It is.

Speaker 2:

Because there's all kinds of celebrities that are in 12 step and they go to the meetings and tell all these funny stories. So it's entertaining. And I did say at the time I said if I'm going to do this, it's got to be fun. This has to be fun. I'm not on, I'm not on board, you know, and I think I'm kind of like that in a lot of my life. You know, if it's not fun, I don't want to do it. There has to be an aspect to it that's joyful. So joy is like it's my mission. I love that, I know. So joy is my, I don't know. I think it's my superpower.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 2:

And if we?

Speaker 1:

all can have more joy. We raise our vibration and we manifest. It's easier to ask it's easier to receive. Absolutely. It's just, everything gets easier and so many of the clients that I work with and I'm going to completely, a thousand percent, put myself in this bucket but it's like sometimes I get so freaking serious about things, you know, like serious about my work and serious about spreading this message, and you know, it's just, it takes away the goodness and it blocks us from actually accessing the universe, god you know.

Speaker 2:

So I'm talking to myself here, okay, good, and everyone else you know.

Speaker 1:

But I don't know if you ever fall into that trap where it's like all of a sudden you're like God, I'm just so serious about this. I'm not really having fun, but not for a while.

Speaker 1:

Good, Good for you, that's where I'm headed, I'm headed. Sometimes I forget. I'm like what am I doing? I know this is not fun. Like what am I doing, oh my goodness. So thinking back to like really younger years, you seem like a very old soul, you know. You. Just you have that vibe 100 percent. And so many people when I talked to them when they were children, they had a spiritual connection but like the church didn't really resonate. Does that is?

Speaker 2:

that part of your. Yeah, I didn't mind the church. I mean, when I was younger, much younger, I enjoyed a lot of activities, Activities of the church and that kind of thing, but that's not where I think I connected to my spiritual side. I think it was out in nature. I think it was out in nature and I do remember having an abiding sense of fearlessness.

Speaker 1:

I'm so envious of that because I came into this world afraid of everything, which is why I tap Lynn. It's why I tap all the time, because I'm a scary cat.

Speaker 2:

I really don't remember being I was not fearful, I remember being just really fearless and I just didn't feel like there was any reason to be afraid. And so to me, looking back, I feel like that was my spiritual connection in play right, and I learned to be fearful when I moved to San Francisco and LA. I had, I had to because there were people that would pray on young women, you know, and they did, and I was naive, I was from the Midwest, you know, and like I trust everybody, you know I'm a really trustful person.

Speaker 1:

Well, and people in the Midwest are different. They really are. Every time I'm in a different state and you know friends that I grew up with that moved to the West Coast or the East Coast. They're like the Midwest people are just different. They are friendly. They're friendly. You know I so I haven't been to LA that many times but since I'm thinking about it, my first experience there now, I was younger and I had a friend who was taking us to all these like bars that were kind of posh and really not my vibe, anyway, not my thing. But I remember being like like sat down to get a drink and just started trying to strike up a conversation with a bartender. He would not talk to me. I wasn't somebody you know in air quotes.

Speaker 2:

So I was nobody.

Speaker 1:

And that was my experience the whole time in LA and I was like I hate this place. I'm sorry, but like I just was like who are these people? I'm just used to like talking to everybody.

Speaker 2:

It's who you know you know, it's how you look, it's the, it's the image that you put out there. It's Hollywood.

Speaker 1:

And I was 22 and I looked damn good.

Speaker 2:

But I wasn't.

Speaker 1:

thank you, but you know, like I wasn't somebody. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I wasn't. You know a name I would never go back and live in LA. I mean, I just wouldn't. I loved San Francisco at the time. I was a great thing. The move down to LA was to marry this guy. That turned out to be a liar and you know all that.

Speaker 1:

And I know that. I mean I have friends that live in LA now and they're not in that scene at all.

Speaker 2:

They're you know there's also a great scene.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

You know I got sober there. I found my spiritual path there, so you can find it. You just have to be careful about where you go and what you do Discerning, yeah, very, very discerning, yes, okay.

Speaker 1:

So you go through all these trainings, yeah, and you have all this wisdom. What are you working on right now?

Speaker 2:

Okay, so I left the university in 2017 and I was still doing the mindful eating program that I developed and researched until about a year and a half ago. A year and a half ago, I got a very clear message that I wasn't going to do this anymore, that this was the last class I was to teach. I was also the president of the Center for Mindful Eating for a long time and I just got kind of burned out with it. You know, I really did. It was great, I loved doing it. I loved the people that I worked with, but I was done. That's another thing about me. It's like I'm very decisive.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think I'm not.

Speaker 2:

I am not confused.

Speaker 2:

I mean it was over. It was a good run. I put it to bed and I didn't look back. So I had started in 2020 when the pandemic hit. I was trying to go back to Kripala to do my 500 hour continue work on a 500 hour training program, but the pandemic shut that down. So I got an email from Lauren Walker, who's the founder of Energy Medicine Yoga came over you know my email that she was going to be doing a foundations level training online of Energy Medicine Yoga and I thought, well, okay, I'm sitting here doing nothing, let's just do this. And it was one of the best online training programs I've ever done and I'm pretty particular, so it had to be good and I met a lot of great people through this program. I learned a lot of great stuff. I started teaching Energy Medicine Yoga and then I continued to do some of her advanced trainings. Now Lauren studied with Donna Eden, who developed Eden Energy Medicine, and she was a yogi, and at one point she thought why don't I put these two together? I can do a little yoga and then do a little tapping, or I can do a little yoga and hold my source points. All right, you know. So there's a really beautiful blend of yoga and the energy medicine in the energy medicine yoga, Well, I did that for a while and then about a year ago a little over a year ago I taught a program that I developed.

Speaker 2:

I love to develop programs, Okay, and I have no fear in teaching and, you know, in sharing things.

Speaker 2:

So I had developed a program on changing your habits. That I did in a January you know it's January, we're setting New Year's intentions and I thought the energy medicine would be good for that. So what I learned in the process of doing that was there was a lot about energy medicine I didn't know and I didn't think I was going to get it the way I wanted it through the programs that I was doing anymore, and so what I wanted to do was go ahead and go straight to Eden Energy Medicine and their foundations programs and learn from them. So I ended up finding this great place or training program in Asheville, because the year one training is all over the country. I could have gone to Kansas City or St Louis, but I had been given the name of somebody to see online with an issue I was having with my body and I had seen this woman. She lives in Bend Oregon and she sees you online and she really helped me heal pelvic floor disorder sacrum issues online over Zoom in three sessions, so I was pretty happy about her.

Speaker 2:

And then, when I was looking around, I saw that she was teaching with another woman, sarah Allen, who I had learned from in some of my advanced trainings, and she's like head faculty at Eden Energy Medicine and both of them have taught together their best friends for the last 30, 35 years. So, and I also happen to have a dear friend who lives in Asheville who I've met through the Energy Medicine Yoga that I could stay with. So I headed to Asheville in June.

Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh perfect, yeah, so maybe tell us a little bit more about energy medicine, like because I know a little bit, I know a decent amount, but I want to talk like for somebody who has no idea what that is. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

So it starts with Donna Eden, right? Donna Eden, oh gosh was a person that was able to see energy from a child, since she was a child and her family is inclined to be able to see energy. So she would see light or she would see colors or she would see different things inside the body and outside the body of many people that she would run into. She thought it was normal. Nobody told her it wasn't so when she was in her 20s and she was diagnosed with MS and with some kind of heart disease and told she should get her affairs in order because she wasn't.

Speaker 2:

She was like on death's door, yeah another six months and she had two kids and she's like I don't think I want to go yet, you know. And so she started working with her own energy. She could see energy. She could see where she thought it was stuck or stagnant or not moving the way it should, and so she just started playing around with it and working with it and she turned 80, like a few weeks ago.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, she's so at least last time I saw her she was so vibrant Like the energy just pours out of that woman oh yeah, it pours out of her. Yeah, it does.

Speaker 2:

So what she came to learn after she did this and after she began to meet other people doing other types of energy modalities, was that what she was seeing actually maps on the traditional Chinese medicine meridians in the body and the chakra system in the body and all of the energy systems from all these different traditions.

Speaker 1:

They're thousands of years old and she can see them, and she can see them Validate it. It's like Validate.

Speaker 2:

It's like a way of teaching it. Then, right, it was like, how do I teach this? But if there's things already in place that have been known for thousands of years, you can just map on to those she touched for health, I think was the organization that she got involved with and began to learn more about what she was doing, so she was able to take these techniques and then teach them to others. And then she wrote a book called energy medicine and you know, the rest is history. She's got you know hundreds and hundreds of practitioners across the world and many other people that take advantage of her, you know she's a lot of free stuff out there to yeah she has a lot of free stuff out there.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely yeah, so that's how it all came to being, you know, many years ago. It's.

Speaker 1:

I love her work. I love her work. I found it in 2013 and I got you know. The universe gave me this instructor in Chicago for my very first EFT course and really, might you know, like my introduction to healing at all, because I went through nursing school I didn't really learn a lot about healing. I learned a lot about how do we make you feel better, how do we support, what medication do we give for which thing, but we didn't really learn that much about healing and I didn't recognize that until I was working as a nurse. But in 2013, I went to a training in Chicago with Valerie Liss and she was exactly what I needed because she was all kinds of woo, woo. I didn't even know I was into that stuff yet, but she was talking about energy medicine and she was talking about manifestation practices and things that I was, you know it like, spoke to me deeply and I didn't even know why, but I felt like my soul light up when she was talking about these things. So I'm like making notes furiously and then went home and started ordering all the books she said to order and so that was my introduction.

Speaker 1:

But I really got to use energy medicine a lot with my dad while he was on his cancer journey for palliative care, for just comfort, for pain. He was, he had liver cancer and he was just hard on his body. He, you know, I grew up or I grew up with him struggling with a lot of addictions and that was a lifelong struggle for him. Even though he had spans of time where he was clean, he just, you know he would relapse, but he was hard on his body, lynn, he was really hard on it. So when he was sick, he just he wanted to feel better and so he would.

Speaker 1:

He would take all of his Xanax, right, or he would take all of his. It wasn't Xanax, it was, oh, another anti-anxiety medicine. I can't think of what it is right now. It'll come to me when I'm not thinking about it so hard. But he would like take all of it and it would make him feel better. He never seemed out of it. You know he would feel better, but he would run out of it before the end of the month and then they wouldn't write a script for him because they didn't want him to be dependent on drugs. But I'm like he has terminal cancer.

Speaker 1:

At what point. Like you know, that was like a whole thing where I was like we would give our dog more medicine, we would write another prescription for our dying dog. You know it just doesn't make sense to me in a lot of ways, but I also understand. Right, they're trying to not create people dependent on medications. Anyway, he would run out of his medications and he would have severe anxiety and his body would really I mean, he would struggle, he'd get nauseous, and I would go over and I would use the energy medicine things to balance his chakras and even like, do things like balance his meridians and sedate some meridians and flush them and all of that so.

Speaker 1:

I got to see it and he always and you know as a man who struggled with addiction his whole life his response was I can't imagine how useful this would be in a rehab setting when somebody's detoxing and rebalancing the body, because he would, we would get him feeling better so fast. It was amazing. It was amazing to witness and he was totally open to me experimenting and trying anything, so that was that was pretty cool.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, it's, it is phenomenal work. So I guess you know, are you, you're working with clients doing this now?

Speaker 2:

So yes, I am some. We, as we learn new techniques, we come back home and we're asked to practice them. So it started out with me just asking people to come over. And you know, friends, you know like, can you come over so I can practice on you?

Speaker 1:

I'm always here for experimentation, by the way. Okay, good, I give myself over to you whatever you want to try.

Speaker 2:

And then, as the year has progressed, I've, you know, run into people that really need help, you know. And so right now, what I'm doing is I give my first session for free. If you want to come to see me, I'll give you a free session and then, if you felt like it was helpful and you want to come back and do more than I charge like a student rate to people, so I haven't seen a lot of people. You know I'm busy with a lot of sounds like it.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and I'm still kind of in the learning, training mode. So starting in year three I'll be a lot more open to a lot of people, but right now I'm being fairly selective in seeing just a few a week. But I've seen, you know, I've been following some people over time that have some, you know, pretty severe or prevalent chronic issues and it's just really fun to see how much benefit they get from it. It's powerful.

Speaker 1:

It is powerful. It is so incredibly powerful. Excuse me, I there's. There's been several things I've that I've worked on myself and had pain disappear, or times when I'm waking up at three o'clock in the morning and I start working on my gallbladder and liver meridian, because that's the time when they're the most active, and then I sleep like a baby. I mean it is incredibly powerful. It's also really complicated.

Speaker 2:

Can we talk about how much?

Speaker 1:

you're learning in these classes, Because I've I've looked at them and I've read her books. I think I have three of her books and I also have the energy medicine yoga book. Okay, I just I think it's all amazing and I've looked at her courses before and I'm like, Holy moly, there is so much. So, you guys, this is, this is like going to med school but it's energy medicine, it is so complex.

Speaker 2:

I know I have a demo test next week and you know I have to know all the meridians and the muscles to test them with. I've got all the source points, all the alarm points, all the neuro lymphatics, all the neurovascular, the sedating and screening. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1:

I know. I mean, do you guys hear that there's so much? And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Speaker 2:

Oh no, that's just the tip of the iceberg. That is the tip of the iceberg?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, could you talk about the muscle testing that goes along with that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so it.

Speaker 2:

This is one of the really neat things about energy medicine is that I don't have a you know like a formula, like, oh, okay, so this person comes in and I'm just going to follow this little you know formula for how to treat you Right, which happens a lot in medical care, right? No, what happens is is that you come in and I find out what muscle or what yeah, what muscle I can use to help you communicate to your body, right? So oftentimes I'll use the gallbladder test or the spleen test, and so if I use the gallbladder test, you just have your arm out and what you do is to see if you've got a testable muscle, right? And so you just put a little pressure on a person's arm and they're strong. And then you pinch, you do a spindle spell, spindle cell pinch to the muscle that's associated with that meridian, and basically all you're doing is turning the muscle off.

Speaker 2:

And when you turn the muscle off, that muscle should go weak, and then you strengthen it again and you're strong, so you get a testable muscle. So I know that in general, this is strong, and so if I go to other places in your body and that muscle becomes weak, that means something is going on.

Speaker 1:

There's a blockage there.

Speaker 2:

So you're actually talking to your body in the language it knows? Mm-hmm, it doesn't know English or any other language. Right, right, no spoken language, but it does have a language and energy medicine helps you to learn that language so that you can test others, you can test yourself. You know there's self-testing, people can learn how to do. But I've done a lot of substance testing with people. I don't do anything. That's medication, you know, prescribed medication. But people will bring, like herbs and supplements and food.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, bread Eggs.

Speaker 2:

Eggs, yeah, and so it's really fun to see what does the body need today, right?

Speaker 1:

And you can just hold it right and then test the muscle and the few body doesn't like it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so that's a spleen test because spleen is the meridian that's associated with metabolizing and, you know, integrating food into the body. So you always use the spleen test to do that and you find out is it helpful, is it harmful, or is it neither. Right, because it kind of falls in a three category Some things aren't going to hurt you but they're not going to help you either, right? So you want to have about 85% of your food in the it's helping me category and then the rest in it's not hurting, not helping, or it's hurting, yeah. Yeah. So it's good information, it's information you can use or not use. Up to you. You know we all do things that aren't that good for us sometimes and you'll be fine, you know. But in general you kind of want to know what's making your body healthy, right? And so you can do energy testing like that. But you can test the meridians to see if they're under, they're over, you can. Also there's pulse testing that we've been doing, which tells you if the meridian's over or not.

Speaker 2:

And there's just some beautiful practices that I do and I love to do these. One of them is called the black pearl, which is holding the neurovascular on your head in a particular fashion, over a period of time which brings about this really amazing. It's called black pearl sanctuary for a reason. It's like you're going into a sanctuary. You know the peace and the calm that you get in going to a sanctuary. It calms the nervous system at a very deep level and when your parasympathetic nervous system is activated which is the rest and digest response your body has time to heal. But most of us are running around in the sympathetic nervous system activation so much that the body doesn't heal. When you're stressed and running around like that, you have to allow the body to rest and so some of these techniques that one and there's one called deep electrics and rejuvenating electrics that I do that help people's bodies do the work of healing, which is just really beautiful.

Speaker 1:

It is amazing what our bodies can do when we allow it to fall into a state of relaxation and surrender. How much can happen, and so fast. It is amazing. Yeah, it is amazing, and you're right. Everybody runs around not everybody, but the majority of us run around really frazzled, even when we think we're doing okay.

Speaker 1:

Our nervous system is like oh you know, and I don't know about you, but I had a pretty relatively easy go during COVID. But I didn't escape the frazzledness of that time period, even though I was safe in my home and pretty much everybody's been healthy in my family and I wasn't put through the ringer like some people were, but just the energy of that time was deeply affecting my nervous system, even with all the tools and all the things and really trying to take care of myself. So I think so many of us are still kind of hanging on to just the last four years.

Speaker 2:

We have, because our energy, so there's kind of some principles of energy that I think are really important. So energy wants to move right and it needs space to move. That's why, doing the yoga with the energy medicine, you know you're stretching your body out. You know, like when you do a side stretch you're stretching out the spleen and the liver and so it's like, oh yay, I've got room to move here. You know, because if we're just kind of crunched up and sitting all day, energy's not moving right. So we want to do things that gets the energy to move and give it space to move.

Speaker 2:

And then energy moves in these patterns that we've just talked about the meridians, the chakras. There's all these patterns that take place in the body and even in our mind, with thoughts, you know, our thoughts get patterned and sometimes this energy forms habits that aren't that healthy. So energy can start moving in the wrong direction if you keep going there all the time. Right, but it can be repatterned. So energy medicine and energy medicine yoga helps you to repattern your energy flows so that you have a healthier body and mind and heart, right. The energy has priorities. The biggest priority is to keep you alive, but we get in the way of that a lot right. And then the energy is affected by our thoughts, by our environment, anybody that we come in contact with. So sure, when we're in an environment that's really challenging, like the pandemic, everybody's gonna feel that you can't, even though you're at home and you're not interacting.

Speaker 2:

Because I was home too, I work from home, you know. So I'm like, yeah, this is fine. You know, I'm just doing the same thing. I always do, you know. But it was different, you know. I mean, the studio shut down and there was things that we had to do differently, but overall I wasn't as impacted as many people were. But you can't help but be impacted. You can't hide. You can't hide, you can run but one thing I did learn is you can run, but you can't run.

Speaker 2:

Right, you learned that you did.

Speaker 1:

Yes, I've learned it in my own ways as well. Still learning, still learning right Different layers of learning. I know very. Yeah, I feel the onion. I feel the onion yes, you know, I really felt like a lot of it was global consciousness stuff and just being aware, like I was so aware, of how the energy of the world felt. You know, and it was just. You can't run from that, you know. All you can do is do what you can to rebalance and stay present and go inside.

Speaker 1:

But inside I was like why are you all frezzled? So I had to go deeper, go deeper.

Speaker 2:

Go deeper. Yes, amazing.

Speaker 1:

I love this. I wanna get back to the Kripalu yoga. What is specific about that type of yoga?

Speaker 2:

Well, so Kripalu Yoga Center is in Linux, massachusetts, and it's the largest yoga center in the country, I think, and it was started out as an ashram and there was a student of Swami Kripalu who started it, and then he brought Swami Kripalu over from India, so it's named after a Swami that came over from India. Swami Kripalu was an amazing individual and he was somebody who meditated like seven hours a day or something. Actually, he was in silence for I don't know how many years at least seven, if not 15 years, yeah, the man was, and so he would just write on a chalkboard. You know, don't worry, be happy, or something, yeah, but his student, who later fell from grace, but that's a whole other story, as many people do in the spiritual world. But when it was an ashram, it was a very tight community. And then they bought eventually this big old monastery in Massachusetts where they started this yoga center, and what happened was the Kripalu kind of technology, if you will, is that when you become very, very tuned to your own nature and to your own body, that the body itself will begin to do the yoga. You're not doing the yoga, the body does the yoga for you.

Speaker 2:

And so I spent a month at Kripalu to do my 200 hour back in. I remember it was in 2012. And at the end of 30 days of doing yoga consistently, all day, every day, it was pretty intense in an environment that has got so much energy. They took us into this big room, huge yoga room, and they started leading us into a yoga practice. And then they just let us go and they had spotters all around the room and seriously, my body took over and started doing the poses for me. And at one point and people in my classes my Kripalu class always laugh because they know I have this special relationship to the boat pose At one point it took my body into boat pose and it wouldn't let me go.

Speaker 1:

I hate boat pose.

Speaker 2:

I hate it. I love boat pose.

Speaker 1:

I mean I hate it because it's hard for me. I need to strengthen my relationship with boat pose. Yes, you do.

Speaker 2:

But I was just there legs up arms in and I'm like, wow, this is really interesting. And I stayed there for quite a while and then it released and I'll calm down and I can't say that that's happened to me since then, but I did get to experience that and I really. We try to lead from a very meditative place and we try to lead from the body instead of your mind, because your mind is always telling you to do too much, go too far, compete with somebody next to you, compete with yourself 20 years ago or whatever, and it's about getting out of your mind and getting into the sensations of the body and the breath and letting that guide you. It's a mindful yoga, it's a meditative yoga. I mean, we do the same postures as every other yoga class does and there is a bit of a flow, but it's not a vinyasa flow, it's just putting postures together in a sequence that makes sense. But it's done.

Speaker 2:

It's a real spiritual practice. I lead it and it's a spiritual practice for me because I know that when I do yoga and I open space in my body and I come into that place of stillness and I move my body and leave space for the energy to move. I'm really in connection with myself and in connection with my real self. My real self is not affected by the thoughts I have or the emotions that I have or the things around me. There is a still space within me that's still and silent and at peace. It's the self with a capital S. It's not the self with a little S. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Oh, it's beautiful.

Speaker 2:

It's beautiful.

Speaker 1:

This has been so fun. So fun I knew it would be. I used to have a pretty consistent yoga practice Around the time my dad passed away. I really that was my go-to for my grief. And where you talk about the energy wanting to move, it was like I got to this place. I was good about letting myself cry, but I could just tell that it was like stuck, like I was just heavy and I could tell it was grief. And it was a really humbling experience for me, I think, because I knew that I was gonna go through grief, but I was.

Speaker 1:

I went into that process like I have so many tools and I'm gonna be able to take care of myself and I know what to do and I have the time to do it.

Speaker 1:

I'm gonna do it, you know, but there's a certain you know certain amount of it. You can't rush and you can't coax yourself into. However, yoga for me was my medicine and as soon as I would get on the mat and I would lean over, it was like that energy would start to flow and so when I, when I have people come to me, or if I'm just in conversation and they're, they're working through grief and that's the thing that I always recommend is getting into a yoga practice. I did end up having to stop because I was just dealing with some hip and back issues and was getting more and more unbalanced because I was so imbalanced, but I'm hoping to get back to that because it is. It is getting to that still point inside, and I think I have had yoga classes where I feel like I'm not really there, but my body's, my body is following along and I'm somewhere else, and that is the best feeling and it's like you know, I was a dancer growing up too.

Speaker 1:

So so dance was like that too, where times where you were just like I'm not thinking, but I, my body knows what to do, and that was always the time when you we felt like those movements were coming through every cell in your body.

Speaker 2:

And so many people are not embodied at all. Okay, I've been teaching embodiment my entire career and breath. You know I said I was joke about getting a PhD so I could teach people how to breathe. All right, you know, seriously, because nobody breathes. I just gave a presentation yesterday and I'm like I don't hear anybody breathing. You know, take a breath.

Speaker 1:

I Think that I I believe that that is part of how we contain, because going along with that and not being embodied it's. It's like part of how we contain our emotions, because we haven't learned how to let that flow in a healthy way.

Speaker 2:

Well, but people don't even know like. So I always teach the triangle of awareness, which is how does your body feel, how is your mind, what are you thinking and how are your emotions? Or how is your heart? And when you ask people that they're like what?

Speaker 1:

No, I know I do. I do feel like it's getting better. You know, people are starting to wake up and be like. Maybe I do need to deal with these Emotions and know what's going on in my body and it's a foreign concept.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we're not taught this. It's not their fault, it's nobody's fault. It's like we should be teaching children from kindergarten on up and they are in some places, but it should be, you know, across the board. Kids get it. Kids are so amazing. When you teach them these skills, they get it. They get it.

Speaker 1:

They're still so tuned in.

Speaker 2:

Oh, they ship so quickly. Yeah, I love it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, when I do tapping with kids. I mean it is just, they'll be a 10, just so upset, and then five seconds later they're like wow, that feels better. Like isn't that amazing? Oh, it's so fun to see them shift. They don't have the lifetime of crap to their toting around. So I think that we're both, you know, teaching the same thing. Yes, and I love, I love everything that you're doing. I am so obsessed with the energy medicine stuff.

Speaker 2:

I wanted to take those courses for years and kids were little and you know, and it's a big commitment, a huge commitment, yes, it's a huge commitment, but I'm so excited to have you here locally doing that and teaching it, so let's end with that.

Speaker 1:

I know you have a class coming up. Maybe tell us about that.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah. So if you want to come see me in person, I'm going to be doing an introduction to energy medicine and energy medicine yoga over at osteo strong on Monday, april the 15th, from 530 to 7, and Probably want to call over there, I would have not have the number on me. Oh, here we go. You can email Trudy, tru-d y g, cm 115 at gmailcom and tell her that you want to come and I'll be talking about some of the things that we've talked about today, but also we'll be practicing together and you can ask your questions, because right now we don't have anybody that can call in and say hey, you know, and so I know people have a lot of questions a lot of times. So come to, that's an hour and a half and we can just play around with energy medicine. Love to have you there, it sounds fabulous.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it sounds amazing. And then talk about I know that you do zoom sessions and you teach yoga classes, so how can people find yeah, so I have an online Energy medicine yoga class at 530 on Wednesdays.

Speaker 2:

Or, if you can't come, sign up and I'll send you the recording because I do record it and send it to people later, because I got people all over the country taking that. And then in person, I teach at yoga soul, which is over in the North Village Arts District, at 430 on Fridays, and so those are two things. I also my website is real easy. It's just Lynn Rossi, calm. It's Rossi with a Y, and Then I have retreats that I teach in. Right now I'm just doing Costa Rica, but I've got a couple of more spots for my women's retreat this fall In September, last week of September, on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica, which is in the jungle by the beach, and it's amazing. I went last year, I'm gonna go again this year. Couple spots left there, and then I'm just gonna start opening up my Pure Aveda retreat, which is in Costa Rica, next January, february, which is at a beautiful retreat center that I've gone to many, many times and it's a very, very special, rejuvenative, restorative.

Speaker 1:

I hear such good things, I know and last year was.

Speaker 2:

It always gets better like every year, I'm sure, better, better, better and I have a friend that comments and teaches that with me, who is also an energy medicine practitioner. So we do yoga and we do some energy medicine and we mix it all together. We have a half day silent retreat, which is really cool. The food is amazing, the weather is perfect. I mean, yeah, sign me up.

Speaker 1:

So just to end the any energy medicine. This just popped in my head. She's the clarify, and that is that this is something to work with a practitioner on Deeply held patterns. However, there's a ton of free material out there and so much of this people can learn on their own. Am I right? Absolutely?

Speaker 2:

and I have some videos. Actually, if you go to my website, I have the energy medicine, yoga, wake up. I have the daily energy routine by Donna Eden. It's 14 minutes, which I do every day, and it's on my energy medicine page, real easy to find. I have Just recently, as of today, put a wind down Practice. So people go okay, great, I'm awake, but I can't go to sleep. What am I gonna do? So Lauren Walker recently gave us a Practice for winding down before you go to sleep at night. That might help within Somnia for people, because I know it's a huge problem. So I just got that on my website today. And If you go to my other recordings, I have tons of recordings Related to mindful eating and just mindfulness in general, and a couple of yoga some yoga videos on there as well. So beautiful.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much for being here. This has been so fun.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, thank you, thank you, pleasure, thank you for asking me. You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you.

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Kelly Howe

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