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Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: Lord volgelbomb here. Sometime around the start of the twenty

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Speaker 1: first century, mainstream America found out about yoga. Other mind

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Speaker 1: body disciplines, including acupuncture, chiropractics, and meditation, have gained significant

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Speaker 1: followings here during that time, but yoga's rise was meteor

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Speaker 1: In two thousand and three, market data showed that fewer

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Speaker 1: than two percent of US adults practiced it. By twenty sixteen,

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Speaker 1: nearly fifteen percent of Americans over the age of eighteen

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Speaker 1: were engaged in the discipline, and another thirty four percent

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Speaker 1: we're thinking about giving it a try. A Yoga is

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Speaker 1: a tough discipline to define. The National Institutes of Health

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Speaker 1: describes it as a meditative movement practice combining physical postures,

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Speaker 1: breathing techniques, and meditation or relaxation. But it's not really

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Speaker 1: something you do, at least not in the way that

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Speaker 1: you push ups. It's more of a state of mind. Technically,

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Speaker 1: the highly physical practice that most Westerners think of as

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Speaker 1: yoga is just one of a large body of yoga disciplines,

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Speaker 1: some of which are far more spiritual than sweat inducing.

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Speaker 1: Most scholars trace yoga's roots to ancient Indian religious practices

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Speaker 1: typically associated with Hinduism. The Sanskrit word yoga means connection.

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Speaker 1: The yoga state is variously defined as relaxed attentiveness, a

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Speaker 1: balance between body and mind, and tranquility. Whatever yoga is

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Speaker 1: to whoever is practicing, it can facilitate intense emotional release.

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Speaker 1: Many sources cite resting postures like corpse pose as common

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Speaker 1: settings for tears. A backbends, which are considered heart openers

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Speaker 1: in yoga, make the list as well, but hip openers,

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Speaker 1: particularly pigeon pose, seem to win the anecdotal vote if

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Speaker 1: you're unfamiliar. One stage of pigeon pose looks something like

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Speaker 1: a forward split, but the front leg bends and rests

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Speaker 1: on the mat, causing the hip flexer to open. In

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Speaker 1: another variation of the pose, a sleeping pigeon, the upper

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Speaker 1: body folds over that front leg, and the forearms and

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Speaker 1: forehead may rest on the mat in front of the knee.

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Speaker 1: An advanced expression of the pose, called one legged king pigeon,

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Speaker 1: incorporates a backbend where the foot of the back leg

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Speaker 1: touches the head. For the article, this episode is based

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Speaker 1: on how stuff Work spoke via email with yoga teacher

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Speaker 1: and mindfulness coach Daniel Shankin. He said, I'm going to

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Speaker 1: make a T shirt one of these days that says,

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Speaker 1: in pigeon pose, nobody can see you cry. One time,

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Speaker 1: I cried in pigeon pose every time I went to

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Speaker 1: class for three months. He explains that he wasn't in pain,

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Speaker 1: he was just deeply sad. House Stiff Works All spoke

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Speaker 1: by email with Joseph Lopez, a Denver based yoga instructor,

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Speaker 1: who said that he's also cried in sleeping pigeon quote.

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Speaker 1: For me, it's always the hip openers that trigger emotions

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Speaker 1: the most. I don't always cry, as sometimes I get

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Speaker 1: really really pissed off. Lopez, who has been practicing for

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Speaker 1: ten years and teaching for seven, thinks it may be

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Speaker 1: a matter of where we store the emotional gunk of

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Speaker 1: feelings that we don't express. He said, I carry my

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Speaker 1: anger in my hips, so when I open them, that's

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Speaker 1: what gets released. That sort of concept is a common

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Speaker 1: take on the phenomenon, which seems to draw from the

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Speaker 1: Eastern philosophy of chakras. There are seven traditional chakras that

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Speaker 1: mark the points in our bodies where energy supposedly flows.

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Speaker 1: In this understanding of wellness, a block in that energy

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Speaker 1: flow can cause physical and psychological damage. The second chakra

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Speaker 1: is linked to emotions and tears and is centered around

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Speaker 1: the pelvis. The idea is that unblocking that chakra by

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Speaker 1: opening the hips could lead to a sudden flood of emotion,

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Speaker 1: something like the unconscious exploding into consciousness. The science has

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Speaker 1: started looking at the effects of yoga on the mind.

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Speaker 1: A March twenty seventeen study found that yoga can ease

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Speaker 1: the symptoms of major depressive disorder, and other research has

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Speaker 1: found that it reduces anxiety and stress and induces feelings

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Speaker 1: of happiness and unity with the world beyond oneself. But

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Speaker 1: science hasn't done much to elucidate the mechanisms responsible for

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Speaker 1: yoga's emotional liberation. How Stuffworks also spoke by email with

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Speaker 1: doctor Timothy McCall, who practiced internal medicine before deciding to

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Speaker 1: study and teach yoga therapy full time. He reports having

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Speaker 1: once cried after performing a series of backbends, but that

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Speaker 1: this phenomenon hasn't been investigated scientifically to the best of

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Speaker 1: his knowledge. A one plausible explanation, he says, is simple

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Speaker 1: awareness a quote. Have you ever had the experience, say

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Speaker 1: on the beach or in the middle of the woods,

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Speaker 1: when you get quiet inside and just become part of

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Speaker 1: what's going on around you. Sometimes in that moment you'll

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Speaker 1: get an epiphany. Maybe you need to quit your job

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Speaker 1: or get out of an unhealthy relationship. This might be

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Speaker 1: something that you've known deep down but have been overlooking

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Speaker 1: during the grind of everyday life. And it can work

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Speaker 1: that way with emotions too. McCall speculated they may be

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Speaker 1: buried deeply or sometimes just below the surface, yet out

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Speaker 1: of our conscious awareness. When we get quiet and introspective

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Speaker 1: in yoga practice, those emotions might come to the fore.

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Speaker 1: It may be that yoga's focus on conscious breathing, postural alignment,

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Speaker 1: and physical sensations, as well as the interactions between those factors,

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Speaker 1: leaves no room for the noise of daily life. Suddenly

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Speaker 1: we can hear something deeper. Ultimately, neither science nor yoga

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Speaker 1: practitioners really know why yoga can bring emotions to the surface.

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Speaker 1: Maybe we never will, but McColl says that these types

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Speaker 1: of breakthroughs are useful. As a yoga instructor, he tries

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Speaker 1: to let them be and for many practitioners. Part of

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Speaker 1: yoga is letting go of the hows and whys. To

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Speaker 1: this day, Shankin has no idea why he cried in

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Speaker 1: Pigeon Pose for three months, but that doesn't matter for him.

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Speaker 1: What matters is that he quote finally felt safe enough

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Speaker 1: to express it and let it go. At the end

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Speaker 1: of the three months, the crying stopped on its own,

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Speaker 1: and my hips were much more open as well. Today's

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Speaker 1: episode is based on the article Yoga makes people super emotional,

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Speaker 1: but why? On how stuffworks dot Com written by Julia Laton.

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Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks

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Speaker 1: dot Com, and its produced by Tyler Klang. Four more

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Speaker 1: podcasts to my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.