Is Stretching Hurting You? & One Yoga Pose That Can Ruin It for You | with Yogi Aaron

Key Takeaways:

- Who are you without your fear???  and Who are you without your story?? - What IS on the other side of fear, is limitless possibilities.

- Muscle tightness is a sign of muscle weakness.

-  A great way to deal with fear and anxiety, is to be in the Present with what is immediately in front of you. Focus on the immediate problem/situation, and the first most important thing you can do to address it.

***Life is tough, get a helmet!!! ;)

Have you ever considered the intricate dance between your muscles and everyday movements? A dropped ingredient while baking a gooey butter cake uncovers a metaphor for muscle activation that's as surprising as it is informative. As we unravel the myths around muscle tightness, this episode reveals the real talk on proper muscle engagement. This candid conversation flips the script on exercise-induced pain, shedding light on the significance of muscle function for injury prevention and a harmonious body.

Finally, we journey into the realm of Tantra, stripping away the common misconceptions to expose its essence as a transformative meditation practice. This segment challenges us to ponder the role of our fears and whether we cling to them more than we realize. With a nod to the strength found in groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, we explore the commitment needed to let go and evolve. Aaron's insights offer a fresh perspective on embracing our limitless potential, encouraging listeners to rewire their approach to personal growth and yoga.

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Yogi Aaron's Book: Stop Stretching!: A New Yogic Approach to Master Your Body and Live Pain-free

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Yogi Aaron's Pain Free Series 

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Transcript

Kertia: 0:01

Hey, there you're listening to the Other Side of Fair Podcast, where we talk about how personal affairs has hindered your ability to take that next step that will get you to where you aspire to be. What will it take for you to stop playing small and start playing big? Let's get into it. Happy holidays, guys, wherever you are in the world. This episode was recorded weeks ago and I truly enjoy this conversation with Yogi Aaron speaking about his new approach to getting people to live a pain-free life. But before we get into it, I want to remind you to head over to my pot inbox and send me a voice recording of your feedback. I promise I listened to them all and I've linked that below this episode. Alright, now let's get into it. Yogi Aaron, thank you for being here with me today, so excited to have this conversation with you.

Yogi Aaron: 1:03

Thank you for having me here. It's a pleasure to be here, all the way from Costa Rica.

Kertia: 1:08

Wow, oh my gosh. I wish I was in Costa Rica right now. I'm in.

Yogi Aaron: 1:14

Toronto, it's beautiful.

Kertia: 1:16

Oh, it's cold. And look at my in this costume.

Yogi Aaron: 1:21

I used to live in the Northwest Territories, right by Yellowknife well, in a place called hey River, and of course you know that area has been in the news a lot recently. What are the armpits of the world? But it's a lot of forest fires there. So, it's been kind of interesting, just kind of watching that from afar. But yes, I am very familiar with cold weather, so I don't envy you at all.

Kertia: 1:51

I envy you highly, but I really love to have this conversation because you've had such an interesting journey from Canada to you were in the mountains. Where was this again?

Yogi Aaron: 2:07

In the Himalayan Mountains, the.

Kertia: 2:08

Himalayan Mountains.

Yogi Aaron: 2:10

Yes, new.

Kertia: 2:10

York to Costa Rica. I find that so amazing. You have now developed this new yoga technique that right now you're saying that stretching is it's not the best way to go about doing yoga, which might be a little bit confused into some people because yoga involves so much movement that requires the body to stretch. So just wanted to like put that out there. But I really want to start with the fact that you mentioned that you had this horrible accident. You crushed your leg and I want to know how it is that you go from crushing your leg to doing what you do right now. How has that influenced what you were doing right now and what were the challenges you had to overcome going through that experience?

Yogi Aaron: 3:07

You just starting off with a doozy right out of the gate? No, like how you doing what's up. Just tell us about your crush leg experience. So I was in the Himalayas it was actually in 2007 and I was leading a group and we were coming down a mountain and a bulldozer was rolling down the mountain and hit my leg my femur broken half, literally like the X-ray looked like that, they were kind of like a break, but it was a mess. So you asked me a couple of loaded questions and, from a physiological standpoint, let me just talk about that first.

Yogi Aaron: 3:47

I was already starting that hike by the age of 35, I was already dealing with a lot of problems in my body. My back was seizing up all the time. My neck was seizing up. I had shooting pain coming from my neck down into my hands. I had knee problems. On that particular hike I actually had a knee brace and I was walking in a way that would try and limit the amount of stress being put on my knee, because I knew that any kind of stress would just put me in agonizing pain. So I was already in a weakened state, which, again, I was 35. Now, if you're on the outside looking in, you would have saw me probably like you see me now, full of youthfulness and vigor and vitality, which I am right now. But when I was 35. Absolutely. By the way, just for your listeners to know, I make fun of myself a lot, so please don't take anything like that seriously. That's just me having a good riff at myself. But I was seriously in a very debilitated state. So getting hit by that boulder and then breaking my leg and having to recover from that was not easy and definitely a lot of old weaknesses made my recovery harder. In the long run it just kind of exacerbated a lot of problems and I'm just going to come back to the boulder story, fractured leg story. But then six years ago I ended up in an emergency room. So I was 45. So pretty much 10 years later I ended up in an emergency room with an orthopedic surgeon saying to me that I might need a spinal fusion in my lower back. So there was definitely. I think it just kind of exacerbated a lot of stuff.

Yogi Aaron: 5:35

But the other side of it too is, for me, yoga. One of the things that you said at the very beginning is a lot of people think of yoga as a lot of movement that requires stretching, and for me that's what yoga was really in the beginning. I did yoga to stretch. I did yoga to deal with muscle tightness. What I didn't realize was that the yoga was actually making me worse and all the stretching I was doing was actually causing more problems rather than actually helping me. So I it was very fortunate to have met my teacher in yoga. I was probably around 29 at the time, 28, actually was about 28 at the time and by the time I met Rod, for me yoga was very much a physical thing that introduced me to more of the spiritual practice of it and introduced me to more of the breathing practices that were involved in yoga. I always kind of say that all of that prepared me for that one moment, because you know your listeners need to understand like I was 27 kilometers, 26 kilometers away from any help.

Yogi Aaron: 6:44

I was sitting on the top of this glacier. I was fractured, broken, literally, and there was no firewood we're on a glacier, so and the temperature was dropping, and there was a moment when I thought, like this is going to be it. All of the work that I've done in my yoga prepared me for that moment and has gotten me through that moment, and I think that one of my biggest takeaways is to take gratitude in every day that I have, because the truth is, I feel very strongly that every day since then has been a blessing. The boulder could have hit me in my spine and paralyzed me. The boulder could have hit my head there's just so many other scenarios that could have played out and or I could have froze to death on that mountain, and there was a point when I thought this isn't going to be it and I had to be content with that, and my yoga practice also helped me to be at peace with myself in that moment, rather than a screaming lunatic.

Kertia: 7:43

That is crazy. What are the fears that came up for you when you went through? Of course, one of the first things is oh my God, I might die. But in that recovery process, was there any doubts in your mind? Were there any fear based thoughts where you were thinking what would my life look like after this and how will I be able to go about living my life the way I've been able to live it after this?

Yogi Aaron: 8:11

Yeah, definitely, there's been all kinds of fears that cropped in Obviously as I was sitting on the mountain side on the glacier and my femur is broken, it's like, okay, if I actually get off this mountain, how am I going to teach yoga? What am I going to do? I mean, my whole life was about movement. My whole life was about presenting a certain kind of mobility, if you will, certain kind of aesthetic, and that was taken away in that moment. And then, of course, when I got back to New York, how am I going to pay for the surgery? How much is it going to cost? You know, it's like all these fears come up and I remember this has been kind of like one of the mantras sometimes, because sometimes I get into even today, like even in these days, I get into these situations where there's like things that pop up.

Yogi Aaron: 9:06

I was getting these guests, who were also friends of mine, out of Bluosa the other day when it was my yoga retreat in Costa Rica in the jungle. There was a huge storm that previous night. It had rained all night. Whenever there's a lot of rain in tropical countries, one of the side effects sometimes is trees fall down. So our taxi was coming to us and had to stop because his enormous tree fell down. And yet he was still about four kilometers away from Bluosa. So I was running around trying to figure out how to get these guys out of there. It was five o'clock in the morning, so we got a car for them coming and one of them said so, the car is going to take us, how are we going to get to the end or the rest of the way, or something like that. And I said one problem at a time, like stop thinking about the what ifs, let's just take care of what's in front of us. And so when I was coming down the mountain, that's kind of was my mantra. It's like, okay, let's just get to the next step, or let's just be in the present with what is in front of me.

Yogi Aaron: 10:19

And to answer your question, how did I get out of fear when I got home? That was just constantly. It's like what is the problem or what is the situation in front of me? And what we tend to do is think, oh, my God, I've got to get to the airport or else I'm going to miss my flight, and then I'm going to be three days delayed getting back home. Instead, look to what can I manage? Like, okay, my first issue is I need to get here. Then let's think worry about the next thing, and so that's kind of like. What I did was when I got home it was like what's the first, most important thing? I need to take care of me. I need to be able to walk again, so I need to get myself to therapy. You know, so that was sort of my process in getting over fears, just taking every next step in, next small bite, one chunk at a time, or one bite at a time. It's like how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time, right?

Kertia: 11:15

Yeah, I love that you said that, because that's exactly my strategy and that is exactly what enables me to accomplish a lot of the things that I've accomplished. Because I found that whenever I focus so much on the end goal and all the things that I had to do to get there, Sometimes I didn't even know what I should do to get there right, and so I go into this state of panic because I'm just like I need to get there but I don't know how I'm going to get there. So when I kind of refocus my thoughts on the present moment and what I can do right now, and then tomorrow comes, I do that again and say what can I do right now? And the next day comes and I repeat that I find that I get to the end of it. I achieve what I need to achieve and I didn't drive myself crazy getting it done.

Yogi Aaron: 12:03

And it was probably more of an enjoyable experience.

Kertia: 12:06

Exactly so. I love that. You said that I want to know your mission to help people to live a pain-free life. Was that from that experience?

Yogi Aaron: 12:17

Yes and no. It's really more from my experience of living with chronic pain. And I live with chronic pain pretty much on and off. I mean it wasn't like consistent but it was on and off. But when I did have chronic pain it was really bad. I mean there was moments where I would wake up in the middle of the night and feel like someone was driving a knife into my scapula, into my shoulder blade, and couldn't sleep and was just disturbed everything.

Yogi Aaron: 12:48

And so I reflect I'm a very driven person, driven and experiencing life, driven in my work, driven in whatever I put my mind to, and every time I would have crippling pain in my life, I just become debilitated, I can't do anything. So it's just my own reflection on living with pain and knowing if I'm that debilitated, and then listening to other people's stories about how it's hard for them to even just function or do the most mundane, simplest things because they're just in so much pain. So for my perspective, I just feel for those people so much and the sad thing is that we don't have to. Most people don't have to be in as much pain as they think they are in. That, to me, is one of the biggest, most depressing parts about all of this.

Yogi Aaron: 13:43

A lot of people. For example, they have crippling shoulder pain. It's usually a symptom of just some muscles not working properly, but they don't know that. So they go to a yoga teacher who's trying to stretch them even more so and more so. Or some people have back pain and they end up doing these yoga postures which end up making it a thousand times worse. And so that's what drives me is just to kind of correct that, those erroneous perceptions and false knowledge that people have about the ways to fix pain. Instead, let's actually help the body do what it's supposed to do.

Kertia: 14:16

Can you tell me more about your technique? I think it's called Ayama, right? Yes, that's correct, and that is, see, not so bad right.

Yogi Aaron: 14:26

That's so bad, no.

Kertia: 14:29

And it's focused on muscle activation. Can you break that down so that the listeners can?

Yogi Aaron: 14:35

understand this. So a yama, which is the technique, what I call stands for applied yoga, anatomy and muscle activation. So one of the key parts of that is the muscle activation part. And why is muscle activation important? So, in order for muscles to work properly, there needs to be a communication system between the brain and the muscles, Basically when, like, you're just kind of sipping that drink right now, that delicious looking drink too, and as you bring that cup up, there's muscles that have to work. Okay. So you want to go from point A to point B If I want to walk across the room, I'm going from point A to point B If I'm cooking before you. We've jumped on this call. I'm actually making a butter gooey cake. It's delicious.

Yogi Aaron: 15:23

And so I'm making it for someone special, but yeah, this one, I have to send you the recipe.

Yogi Aaron: 15:29

But, this one. So when I was making I dropped something on the floor. I had to bend over and pick something up. So what is moving my bones is muscles, and this is something that we've kind of forgotten or steered away from. Muscles move bones and muscles stabilize joints, and so what happens to a lot of people probably a lot of your listeners can relate to this is that when they bend over, they go oh my God, my back is tight, and so what's really going on there? The reason why the tightness is showing up in the back is because none of the core muscles, the abdominal muscles, are shortening properly. So when you bent over to pick up that thing off the floor, the core muscles weren't engaged properly and so the body tightens up as an instability.

Yogi Aaron: 16:19

What we want to do in a Yama, from an Yama perspective, is now get the core muscles working properly. So there's a connection between the brain and the muscles. We want to make sure that highway of neurons are firing properly and the air go. That's where we bring in muscle activation. So muscle activation helps to reestablish those connections between the brain and the muscles so that when you fold forward, when you bend over to pick that thing up off the floor, whatever you drop that, the muscles are shortening properly. And guess what happens when muscles start working properly? You don't get muscle tightness. Muscle tightness is always a sign of muscle weakness and unfortunately we address muscle tightness as the symptom instead of us addressing the cause. So when we address it as the symptom, we try to stretch it out, which actually then makes it worse.

Kertia: 17:15

I love that that explanation breaks that down so perfectly Connecting the brain with the muscle, connecting the muscles and which muscles will want to do and how to do it.

Yogi Aaron: 17:30

And a lot of people think, like, well, my brain's connected to your muscles. No, it's not honey, I'm sorry. Most of us are walking around with, I would say, like 50% of our neuromuscular systems been compromised. And that's the fascinating thing about humans is we will always go and do, we will always move from point A to point B. We will recruit whatever we can to do it. The problem is that we end up recruiting the wrong muscles.

Yogi Aaron: 17:57

Our body will recruit, and that's why a lot of people, when they bend over to pick that thing up off the floor they drop their back will seize up all of a sudden because the back is like screw you, I'm tired of working so hard, so we're just going to tap out and we're just going to seize up everything around here and put everything into a protective state.

Yogi Aaron: 18:19

So that's what ended up happening. There was one time I was in the shower and it was after a month of stress and I was leaving teacher training at the time and I was really, really stressed out. I hadn't been taking care of myself properly, and so I reached up in the shower to grab my shampoo bottle, that heavy bottle of shampoo. Guess what happened? My whole neck seized up on me. I just went like a little up and reached up and my whole neck seized up on me. So that's what happens to us when we get into a stressful state. Our system is depleted, it's run down, and then the simplest little task like looking over your shoulder to say hi to a friend you can really kinks something up, really, really, really badly.

Kertia: 19:07

That's true.

Kertia: 19:08

I want to ask you because what occurred to me while you were speaking about this is, of course, when we walk, when we do certain things or even when we exercise, we are not using all the muscles, we're not targeting all the muscles.

Kertia: 19:23

So this is how I'm thinking about it and I'm saying, okay, wow, it makes sense, because even on a normal day, when you're bending and there are so many different ways that you can do the same thing, right, and there's always a better way to do the same thing. So I'm thinking that now, when you're bending or when you're doing all these things, reaching for something, not activating the right muscle, the right muscle group in order to allow you to do that movement, I guess it will result in overuse of the muscles around the peripheral area of that. And then when you have that, that's when you have the issues, because you're consistently activating, trying to compensate for the muscles that you should be using, that you're not using, and then you end up overusing or incorrectly using the muscle group around that, and then that's when you get that pain and that tightness. So that's what I got from that.

Yogi Aaron: 20:23

So I just want to ask have you read my book? Because you said that perfectly, if I would almost pass you like on the spot for one at Yama, yeah, because you nailed that. Like you hit that like so far out of the park that nobody's going to find that ball. Awesome, that was just perfect.

Yogi Aaron: 20:44

And what ends up happening with those muscles that get recruited, as you, you know, reflect it back to me. Then those muscles end up getting stressed and overused and traumatized and so a lot of people think like, oh, I'm going to go to the gym and I'm going to feel this intense soreness. Well, yeah, muscle ache is normal. If muscles haven't been used in a while and you start working out, yeah, that muscle ache is normal. But the other pains in the joints, that's not normal. And, like with bodybuilders a lot of bodybuilders and anybody who does any kind of form of exercise a lot of times they get pain right in the shoulder, right Just above their bicep in the shoulder. That is a clear sign that you're using the wrong muscles. Pain should not be there. And so we definitely want to make sure, like, the right muscles are being, you know, are activated or working or firing properly.

Kertia: 21:42

Yeah, I love that and thanks come, please. It's pretty much science, right? Yes, and knowing the body, how it works, how the system, because it's all connected. Yes, right, it's kind of like when you have a disability, something else usually chips in to compensate for that disability. And so the same thing happens with muscles, right. When you are not using the right set of muscles, for whatever reason, the other muscles will then get activated to try to compensate for that. And when you have that repeatedly happening, then that's what creates an issue, because of overused and misuse.

Yogi Aaron: 22:24

I would say the other muscles get recruited.

Kertia: 22:27

Yeah.

Yogi Aaron: 22:27

That are worked. And you know, just for your listeners to kind of conceptualize that too, sometimes I'll use, like a three leg, a dog analogy, like if a dog hurts one of its legs or paws or something all of a sudden, it will still run with the same amount of enthusiasm, but it learns to compensate very quickly. Yeah, and you see, that happen with nature is fascinating. Nature always finds a way to compensate. However, with humans especially, there's a price to pay. Eventually we can get away with underusing certain muscle groups, like a lot of people just don't use their core muscles, not because they don't have them, just because they're not connected. But then that's going to put a stress on the back which will catch up with you, and it caught up with me at the age of 45 when I ended up in the hospital.

Kertia: 23:20

Yeah, I love that. That explanation is very clear and puts it all together. I want to know what are the dangers of doing certain yoga poses. I know the last time we spoke you told me one of the huge ones was child's pose, yeah. That's a huge favorite for a lot of people. Let's talk about that and anything else. Any other pose that is right out there.

Yogi Aaron: 23:47

Well, definitely child's pose. And then the opposite, which is hugging the knees to the chest pose. I would encourage your listeners to listen to episode six in my podcast series because I kind of go right into it about why and the stuff like that. I'm not going to be able to fit that whole conversation in right now because I know we're on the clock. But, yeah, definitely child's pose. And then the opposite, which is knees to chest pose. The other big ones, I would say, is any kind of form of hip openers.

Yogi Aaron: 24:20

So anytime you do something to open the hips and again, if you think about what's going on, especially in a pose like child's pose, you're over stretching two major groups of muscles and you're forcing three different sets of muscles to shorten. Well, actually two, two sets of muscles to shorten. And when I say shorten, like if you extend your arm out and then you bring your hand to your shoulder, okay, so bicep is what brings the hand to the shoulder, correct? But now don't do this, don't do this. But just imagine if you bring your other hand to the wrist and then you push the hand to the shoulder. What you're starting to do is not only over stretch the tricep, but you're now forcing the bicep to shorten beyond what it can shorten. So that is what causes stress to that connection between the brain and the muscles. Because of that stress that external stress, by the way then you're now going to start shutting down all the muscles. You're not only going to shut down the biceps, you're now shutting down the triceps as well, and sometimes you even negatively impact the synergistic muscles, the surrounding muscles.

Yogi Aaron: 25:48

And so when child's pose, you just think about what you do in child's pose, and I don't know about you, but when I practice child's pose in the past, I come out of child's pose, I can barely move. It's like your body just feels sluggish, it just doesn't. It's happened to me, yeah, and you're like oh okay, well, I just need to warm myself back up again. And so you think about like, if a lot of people are doing that consistently throughout yoga class, they're going into this damaging pose. They come out and they join the rest of yoga class and they become more debilitated because now more of their muscles are just not working properly. So, child's pose, any kind of hip opener and, of course, line on your back bringing your knees to your chest I would just avoid all of those.

Kertia: 26:36

So what would you say? Because we are advised that, before we exercise, stretching is good. It helps you to prevent injury. What do you say to someone who, because I exercise and trust me, I stretch before and after?

Yogi Aaron: 26:52

What are you going to?

Kertia: 26:52

say to me about that Stop stretching.

Yogi Aaron: 26:57

So first of all, let me just say two things and then I'll respond to your question about what to do. But if you know that stretching makes you weaker, why would you stretch before you work out, like if stretching is going to negatively impact your muscles and you're actually going to walk into your workout weaker, why would you do that? And then, once you do workout and theoretically you should be stronger why would you stretch to make your muscles weak again afterwards, like after you work out? You're strong, you're resilient. Well, I'm assuming part of your question is well, how do I get my muscles prepared? Do some muscle activations. If you're going to work out in your chest, do some upper body muscle activations. Do something to make sure that the muscles in the upper body are working properly. Then go do your workout, and not only are you going to reduce dramatically the risk of injury, but now you're bringing more of your muscles to the game and your joints are probably going to be more stabilized.

Yogi Aaron: 28:04

And then a lot of the thing is about well, how do I increase my range of motion? I need to improve flexibility, quote, unquote. I don't like that word, flexibility, by the way, because it's got so many negative connotations around it, but what you really want to do is improve mobility. Well, what is moving your bones? Your muscles are moving your bones. So, if muscles move bones, what do muscles need to do in order to move bones? They need to contract, they need to shorten. So, therefore, if you want to improve mobility, start to improve muscle function, get the muscles of your body working better. So, therefore, you have more mobility.

Yogi Aaron: 28:44

My teacher, greg, always says flexibility makes you more vulnerable and open to injury, and so flexibility always leads to vulnerability and vulnerability always leads to injury. But when you have stability, aka your muscles working properly and doing their job properly, then you have all the mobility that you ever want. So the goal is, therefore, is always improve muscle function, and I have this on my YouTube channel. I have a couple of videos like this, but one of them is like these five practices or exercises or something muscle activations will make you more flexible, and you know we use the word flexibility for SEO, I know.

Yogi Aaron: 29:29

But, it's just basically like okay, fold forward, try and come into a forward fold and see how far you go. Now let's do these five exercises, come back and do the forward fold and all of a sudden you notice oh my God, I've got way more range of motion. It's really cool. So just by improving muscle function, we not only get healthier, stronger, but now we're increasing our mobility.

Kertia: 30:01

I love that you mentioned that, because I saw the YouTube video and you had your friend. She was on a table and you're having her lift her leg and I saw the difference. Yes, I know you're telling the viewers to try it if we don't believe it, but I could because I know I move my body a lot. I've done yoga, I work out, I do all the things. I've done the things so I can tell. I saw the difference. I was just like holy crap, I need to try this.

Kertia: 30:30

So, now I'm just like okay, so now, instead of stretching, I need to activate my muscles. Before I work out, and I need to. When I'm doing yoga, I should bend my body and move my body in a way where but it's activated and utilizing the right muscles, instead of stretching or over stretching or misusing the wrong muscles. So yeah. I thought that was pretty cool.

Yogi Aaron: 30:56

I wanted to ask you actually saw like you could see the difference in before and after. I love that. I love that you were like that pain, that much attention, because sometimes you can miss it, but it's dramatic. And I've done that demonstration, leading at myself. So I've gotten myself stronger and then done the demonstration, then I've done the child's pose or the knees to chest pose, and then I'll come back and talk, I'll lead people, because I'm doing it on video. I'll lead people through it and I remember the last time I did that I was like I lifted my legs up and then I was like, no, not doing this anymore, coming back down because I could feel the stress in my lower back. It was a revelation to me again, just like how damaging child's pose is and how it just debilitates all of you. So that's really cool that you saw that.

Kertia: 31:49

Yeah, I saw the difference.

Yogi Aaron: 31:52

I want to just say one other thing. So, when you're doing your yoga poses, yes, you want to come in from trying to activate, but also like if you're doing a standing forward fold, instead of trying to go as far as you can, maybe only go to 30%. So, if you like, as a standing forward fold, if you bring your hands to your waist, you inhale, now exhale, only, come forward 30% and just pause there for a moment and then come back up and just kind of go in and out of that several times and then maybe, if you don't do it, it's fine that you don't get brownie points, but maybe increase it to 40%, maybe increase it then to 50%, but no more than that. And in this way you start to develop what the awareness of what is actually moving the body. You're also not causing more stress to your body and also now you're creating more stability.

Yogi Aaron: 32:53

One of the important questions that yoga people need to ask, and they never really truly answer this question how much flexibility do you really need to have to be happy? And so a lot of us are like oh, we have to touch our toes, why? Why, you don't have to touch your toes, and touching your toes will not make you a happier, more productive, better version of yourself. I promise you.

Kertia: 33:24

I love that, I love this conversation because it gives me a new perspective on that mind, body, health and connection and how you can go about truly taking care of yourself, because I remember I've done child's pose many times and there are sometimes when I feel horrible after coming out of that thing, right. So when I saw your video and I saw the difference between how I even tried it myself, to be honest, and I was just like what is wrong with my butt muscles, Like what's going on with my glutes? It's not happening and I do squats, I do lounges, I do all these things I'm just like, damn, what have I been doing all this?

Yogi Aaron: 34:08

time Using the wrong muscles.

Kertia: 34:12

Yeah, I'm trying to, like, you know, remember your instructions. You're telling her to keep her hip down and I'm just like, yeah, keep your hip down, lift the leg. I'm just like, shit, it's hard, it's hard. But after doing it over and over, I saw the difference. So not only did I see it, but I tried it for myself and I was just like, okay, he's onto something, this is good, I like it.

Yogi Aaron: 34:39

All we're trying to do is build that neuro muscular connection. That's it.

Kertia: 34:44

Love it.

Yogi Aaron: 34:45

Everybody here has got muscles. A lot of people just don't have muscles that are being used, and so if we get them using their muscles properly or that's not the right word but if we just improve that neuro muscular connection, your body will just start automatically using the correct muscles. And so this is happening at unconscious level, and a lot of yoga teachers like to pretend or think oh, I'm engaging my muscles. No, honey, you're not engaging your muscles, I'm sorry, it's just not happening. You can think you are, yay, good for you, but that doesn't mean that you are at a bio mechanical level, and so the way that what where I'm working at is is at the level of the autonomic nervous system and you don't have control necessarily over that. What we can do is try to improve the communication system. That's all we're trying to do.

Kertia: 35:42

Amazing Sounds good to me but in my you know, upset some people A little bit.

Yogi Aaron: 35:50

You know what One of my favorite quotes I heard recently get a helmet. Life is tough. Get a helmet Okay, God, that really tickles you.

Kertia: 36:08

Yeah, no, like that one.

Yogi Aaron: 36:13

It is true. I mean, like, come on please, and you know, if people don't have to agree with me, it's exactly. I just like, if you want to continue making yourself weaker by stretching, God bless you. You know, that's not my problem. I'm not here to help those people. I'm here to help the people that are looking for answers for how to live more pain free, how to become pain free and how to manifest and live their life purpose. If that's the lane you want to drive in, come and talk to me.

Kertia: 36:45

All right, all right.

Yogi Aaron: 36:48

These are the big leagues here, honey. I love it. I love all of it. If not, get a helmet, I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself. Watching you laugh has been the best part of my day, oh my goodness Hilarious. I love it though.

Kertia: 37:09

This is good Laugh, it is good.

Yogi Aaron: 37:11

Yes, yes, very good for the soul Lift your vibration right. Yes, absolutely.

Kertia: 37:19

Speaking of vibration I wanted to talk about. You spoke about meditation and I want to know about the meditation that you need to do to manifest your life purpose. What is that?

Yogi Aaron: 37:34

It's also one to get out of fear as well. And so when I was traveling from, I actually took the train from East Coast to West Coast and I don't know what the heck I was thinking. It was one of the dumbest ideas I've ever had. But it also gave me a time to reflect the dumbest idea because it was like over. It was like three and a half days on the train, on Amtrak this is not a plug for Amtrak, believe me, don't do it but it gave me a lot of time to think and reflect and just sit with myself. But as I was taking the train, I was experiencing an enormous amount of fear in my that was actually penetrating my heart, like my. I could feel my blood pressure rising Fear of, like you know, I was going to New York with like literally no money in my pocket. I didn't know anybody in New York at that moment, really, and I didn't know what I was going to do. I just knew I was going to New York and I was going to just do my best to make it happen. I ended up, when I got on the way there, just feeling that fear. I paused for a moment and I went into the fear for a moment and I asked myself self what it was on the other side of the fear. And that's when this kind of meditation practice kind of dropped in on me. And it was. You know, what's on the other side of fear is limitless possibilities. And so I was like wow, limitless possibilities. And then then that was when this bovena, this affirmation meditation came in, which was I am opening myself up to the universe of limitless possibilities. I'm opening myself up to the universe of limitless possibilities. And I remember sitting in that space of limitless possibilities and being open and the fear just dissolving around me. You know the grip of fear, and I could feel the tentacles of that grip just letting go. But what also started to happen and was left in its wake was like creative inspiration, indomitable willpower to go out and create and manifest. And so that has been a very powerful meditation practice that I've come back to since then many, many times, and I actually teach that practice as one of my final practices in my teacher training. There's a whole practice that I do around it, because when we are open to the possibilities, fear loses its grip and inspiration and creative power is left in its wake. Just interestingly, you know, being open to the universe of possibilities.

Yogi Aaron: 40:29

I ended up meeting my Tantra teacher, rod Stryker, about eight months later, who and just for your listeners, tantra has nothing to do with sex. So that, which is something else. So I learned about a lot of people think Tantra is about sex. The actual word Tantra literally means to become limitless, that you become limitless, and so Tantric practices, which come in all shapes and forms and again, not sex is really all these Tantric practices are to help us move beyond limitations of mind. Ultimately, that's what the goal of Tantra is is to help each of us become limitless. So I just found that so fascinating that this affirmation drops into my space. I call it a spiritual download, sometimes Like a spiritual download comes in and then, eight months later, I'm learning about Tantra and that it's about becoming limitless. So the point is like when we tap into that limitless potential, we are unstoppable.

Kertia: 41:36

That is amazing. As you said, it's so interconnected with this issue of the fears that we experience, because when we sit in that space of experiencing our fears and you know our mind is going around and just cycling around all these fearful ideas, it really does limit to you, right? Because from that is where a lot of our limiting beliefs are born. Right out of that fear and that meditation, I open myself up to the universe of limitless possibilities.

Yogi Aaron: 42:16

That is amazing.

Kertia: 42:18

I can think of myself like literally sitting there and saying that repeatedly and already knowing the kind of impacts that will have on me, because you're telling your brain, you know, doing it repeatedly it's signaling to your brain to believe this thing and so when you can do that, all the other beliefs kind of just begin to fade away and that's when you begin to sit in this space of just calm and reducing that anxiety. So I love that.

Yogi Aaron: 42:54

Yeah, yeah, thank you.

Kertia: 42:56

That is amazing.

Yogi Aaron: 42:58

Thank you.

Kertia: 42:59

Is there anything that you use I should say that you use when you have to deal with I guess it would kind of be the same thing, right that type of meditation, dealing with difficult situations, challenges, situations whereby you wouldn't know the way forward.

Kertia: 43:18

Because for myself at the time when I used to Operate from fair based beliefs and perceptions, it really affected my ability to appropriately deal with situations as they presented themselves to me or deal with people in my life in A way that is less harmful to myself. I should say, because of the fearful beliefs I more often cause harm to myself Than others. Sometimes it could be the other way around for some people, but for me it showed up whereby I was causing more harm to myself than to other people because I really Betrayed myself in a lot of decisions that I made. So I love that just came out of my own fair based beliefs and perceptions. So how can we combat that or Move through that? I know that this meditation definitely is one huge Gateway to open in your mind up to the possibilities on the other side of fear. Is there anything else that we can include in our practice to kind of help us to get through those moments?

Yogi Aaron: 44:32

Well, one of the this is going to sound a little bit glib and again I might ruffle a few feathers of people listening here but the question that a lot of us need to ask is you know, in this this is a question we should ask ourselves a lot of many things, not just this particular question about fear. Do we really want to live in fear? A lot of us are truly attached to our fear, and I'm not saying that if you don't become attached, that you're not going to be afraid, because when I was going from West Coast to East Coast on that train, I didn't want to be in fear, mm-hmm and, and I could feel the suffocating effects of that fear, and so I wanted to get out of fear. I kind of turned to the divine and said, hey, can you help me? Yeah, that's when I got that spiritual download, like I am opening myself up to the universe of limitless Possibilities.

Yogi Aaron: 45:31

But a lot of people are addicted to their fear. Their fear gives them reason, their fear gives them purpose. You know, a lot of people are afraid of all kinds of stuff and and it feeds into their Narrative of who they think that they are. And so you know in my book. Stop stretching. One of the questions that I ask people it's in the third part is who are you without your pain? And the same. I could just easily, very easily, change the title to who are you without your fear.

Kertia: 46:04

Yes.

Yogi Aaron: 46:06

And so, yes, it's one thing to say. I'm opening myself up and some of your listeners might try and go. I don't feel any different and didn't do anything for me. Then my next question would be well, do you really want to let go of fear?

Yogi Aaron: 46:20

Yeah and that's a hard question to ask people. I don't come out and directly ever ask that of my students, but there are different ways that I do ask that question and one of the ways that I ask the question is who are you without your story? Yeah, and are you willing to let your story go? Because if you're not, I can't help you. I just can't. You know?

Yogi Aaron: 46:44

You look at people who go to Alcoholics Anonymous, a a one of the number one rules that a has you. If you know somebody, you cannot bring that person to a. A. That person has to walk through the doors themselves, I think, and you cannot force somebody to go to program. I mean, you know, some cases judges try to do it, but if the person doesn't want to change, then there's no change, and a recognizes that you have to take that step. You have to get yourself to the meeting every day. Nobody else is gonna do it for you, and so, from that sense, a lot of us in the, in this sort of Spiritual, quote-unquote world, if you will, or the spiritual work or the self-help work, we fail our people a lot by asking them that one question Do you really want to change?

Kertia: 47:37

That's a very important precursor that is so true because a Lot of us, we walk around and we're literally attached to our pain, because that is where our narrative comes from. I am suffering, yes, I am a victim of this. This is my story and because I'm a victim of this, this is who I am because of it and this is what I do because of it. So that is a really important point that you just made.

Yogi Aaron: 48:09

Yeah or or, and we see this a lot and I don't want to turn this into a political discussion, but we see a lot of the public discourse to these days is like I'm a victim, so therefore you owe me and so. But you know, once you take that victim this away, then what are you left with? Nobody's gonna owe you anything. So it continuously feeds our narrative and again, if we're stuck in that story, we're never going to be open to possibilities. And I've come across numerous people in my path who Asked me for help and then they just I give them the pointers. Nothing ever changes. I asked them next time how are you doing? How's life treating you? Oh Well, life is really hard and nothing ever good happens to me. And yeah.

Yogi Aaron: 48:58

Well, yeah, I mean cuz I don't say this to them, but in my mind of thinking that's the same story I heard last week and the week before and the week before that and the week before. Yeah, here's a helmet. Oh my god, I hope you don't get a lot of cancellations.

Kertia: 49:24

Should we call it the helmet of accountability?

Yogi Aaron: 49:27

Oh, that sounds good. No, I think you should just title it life's rough, get a helmet Lord.

Kertia: 49:41

I love this, though. I really love this conversation. Is there anything else that you would like to share with the listeners that will be helpful to them in any ways, any techniques that they could use on a general daily basis? You know, like I don't know people get up. They stretch when they get up. What can we do instead of getting up and stretch anything that you have to offer?

Yogi Aaron: 50:05

First of all ask yourself Do you want to feel better in life? So get honest about that. If you are honest and you said yes, then let's make it happen. You asked me like what is one little thing that people can do every day? I'll tell you my number one secret pose, which isn't really a secret, but sometimes it's called Superman pose. And so you come on to your stomach and you lift your legs and your chest up as high as you can off the ground. You lift your arms up a little bit, doesn't really matter but you just lift up the the chest and the legs up as high as you can. Do that every day. Do it for six seconds, come down, take a little rest, do it again for six seconds. Repeat that six times every single day.

Yogi Aaron: 50:51

After 30 days, you're gonna have a very strong back and You'll have a back that's working much better. You'll probably even notice that your glutes are also working a little bit better as well, because it also gets into Engaging the glutes. Other than that, I would suggest to your listeners go to my website, yogi Aaron, calm and Tap into and get like some of these freebies that I have. I have seven days to becoming pain-free, which I hope you'll put in your show notes, but that's a way that people can get tapped in, and then I also have the. Somewhere in my website there's the affirmation series as well. I have a lot of freebies, so if they just go to the website, get plugged in and they'll be able to get all of these beautiful Freebies that I've got going on.

Kertia: 51:38

Amazing. Thank you so much for this conversation. I really enjoyed it.

Yogi Aaron: 51:43

Thank you for having me on. I just love talking with you so. Absolutely we'll do it again soon, sometime.

Kertia: 51:50

Hell yes.

Yogi Aaron: 51:53

And it'll be bring your own helmet.

Kertia: 52:00

You're killing me and, as usual, thank you so much for listening. Go check out Yogi Aaron's work on his YouTube channel. You'll also find some great freebies on his website. I've linked everything below this episode.