Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to ball your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. What
Speaker 1: are we talking about today, Julie, Well, before we start
Speaker 1: talking about some yoga, have something to say. What's that all?
Speaker 1: I never can go that. I like how your own
Speaker 1: has kind of like it has kind of a twang
Speaker 1: at the beginning of like kind of sounds like a
Speaker 1: Jonas Janis Joplin kind of an home Yeah, my mom, Ye,
Speaker 1: I'm right, mom, Okay, yeah, yeah, that's we We are
Speaker 1: going to be talking about yoga and and uh, not
Speaker 1: just the explosion of yoga in the West, but um
Speaker 1: about some of the things that have come to light
Speaker 1: recently about the ben if it's yoga and I guess
Speaker 1: sound of what you could say are risks, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's uh, we should we should point out here
Speaker 1: and all of this that neither of us are experts
Speaker 1: in yoga by any stretch of imagination. However, yoga is
Speaker 1: a part of both of our lives. How long how
Speaker 1: long have you been taking yoga and practicing? Um about
Speaker 1: fifteen years now? Wow? Ye see, so you've you've really
Speaker 1: been at it. I've My wife and I started taking
Speaker 1: it two or three years ago, so we're still fairly
Speaker 1: new to it. But it's really it's really become an
Speaker 1: important part of our lives and an important part of
Speaker 1: my life. I feel like it I've benefited from it
Speaker 1: in that I'm in I feel like I'm in better
Speaker 1: shape physically from it. I feel like it aids my relaxation. Um,
Speaker 1: I can't count the number of times where I've gone
Speaker 1: into yoga, maybe in a bit of a bit of
Speaker 1: maybe not a full on huff, but you know, I'll
Speaker 1: be a little stressed out at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: I've been trying to you know, at the end of
Speaker 1: a Tuesday, I've been trying to get stuff wrapped up,
Speaker 1: us specifically wrapped up often for this podcast, you know,
Speaker 1: getting getting research under wraps. And then then I go
Speaker 1: to yoga and I'm all kind of a bundle of
Speaker 1: nerves and all these thoughts going, you know, this way
Speaker 1: and that, and then I come out of it and
Speaker 1: I'm just in a different state of mind. I'm much
Speaker 1: more relaxed and and uh and focused state of mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the thing. About yoga. It is transformative,
Speaker 1: and I think that that's why it has taken off
Speaker 1: so fully, particularly since the nineteen nineties, because people have
Speaker 1: discovered that even if they're a casual user of yoga
Speaker 1: so to speak, um, you know, and they do a
Speaker 1: power yoga or a big room hot yoga, they're going
Speaker 1: to find some sort of the effects there and say, wow,
Speaker 1: for for a space there, maybe even just for five minutes,
Speaker 1: my body completely relaxed, and more importantly, my mind, uh
Speaker 1: you know, followed in line and I had a bit
Speaker 1: of a peaceful moment. And that is the secret behind yoga, right,
Speaker 1: this this sort of tranquility that it promotes in our minds,
Speaker 1: in our bodies. I keep coming back to our Centaur
Speaker 1: episode where well, I mean they could, it would be interesting.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what kind of poses they would get into,
Speaker 1: because you don't think of horses is really being a
Speaker 1: big contortionist, that kind of stiff legged um. And you know,
Speaker 1: you horse enthusiasts can correct me if I'm wrong on that,
Speaker 1: But you don't really see him doing a lot of
Speaker 1: poses out there. So yeah, I feel like a center
Speaker 1: would be limited. But but in our center, but podcast
Speaker 1: we pointed out the the the idea that modern humans
Speaker 1: we often think of ourselves, we think of the mind
Speaker 1: body connection as a rider on a horse. We are
Speaker 1: the rider, or whether our brain is the is the
Speaker 1: rider and the horses our body and our horse is stubborn,
Speaker 1: um lazy, their problems with it, and our mind is
Speaker 1: in its own thing, and then the mind the rider
Speaker 1: inevitably gets angry with the horse, and there's this conflict
Speaker 1: between the two and uh. In various philosopher's New Age
Speaker 1: fingers have have made the argument that we are essentially
Speaker 1: a center, that we're really this mind and body, this
Speaker 1: this single entity combined of the two, and the more
Speaker 1: we're in touch with that, the easier time will have.
Speaker 1: And yoga, in my experience, really feels like um. It
Speaker 1: underlines that that vision of the mind body connection. You know,
Speaker 1: because you because like I said, you go into the yoga,
Speaker 1: you're you're just all mind a lot of the times,
Speaker 1: or maybe you're you're all mind with like one other
Speaker 1: thing like oh, your knees bothering your your your your
Speaker 1: teeth are bothering you. You're you know, whatever happens to
Speaker 1: be the one part of your body that's giving you
Speaker 1: the most, that's getting the most attention at the time
Speaker 1: you enter that in that room with that mind body connection,
Speaker 1: and when you leave the ideas that you're more in
Speaker 1: touch with the body. Right, that's the idea of yoga.
Speaker 1: So that's a union between the mind and the body.
Speaker 1: Um so. And and that's what we will see played
Speaker 1: out actually in sign typic studies when we we speak
Speaker 1: a little bit more about that later, um, But we
Speaker 1: should probably talk about how yoga came to become so
Speaker 1: popular here in the West and um why it arrived
Speaker 1: at our our doorsteps. Um. Particularly I'm thinking about a
Speaker 1: woman named Indra Devi and her her real name or
Speaker 1: her say her real name, but her name is was
Speaker 1: Eugenie Peterson, and she was a popular Indian star. She
Speaker 1: studied under Jagannath g Gune, really important guy in the
Speaker 1: history of yoga and actually trying to um put some
Speaker 1: scientific method behind this and and and scientific rigors to
Speaker 1: examine yoga and its benefits. And he actually established an
Speaker 1: ashram in India devoted to the scientific study, and he
Speaker 1: was an advisor to Gandhi. But anyway, Indra Devi studied
Speaker 1: with him, and she actually moved to Hollywood and taught
Speaker 1: yoga to other actors, including Glorious Wantson, Greta Garbo and
Speaker 1: Mary Land in Rome. She was really the first yoga
Speaker 1: teacher to the stars, but people don't normally associate yoga
Speaker 1: with her. It's more with our friends the Beatles. Yes.
Speaker 1: In fact, we have an article on the Sunhouse stuff works.
Speaker 1: Did the Beatles induce yoga to Western civilization? Which is
Speaker 1: a kind of a yes and no article, But they
Speaker 1: does go into George Harrison who studied satar under Rabbi
Speaker 1: Shankar in India, and he sort of became involved in
Speaker 1: um different aspects of yoga and meditation, particularly with a
Speaker 1: yogi named the Maharishi. Yes. And and he's definitely the
Speaker 1: name that that tends to stick in people's minds when
Speaker 1: they think of of of importing yoga into Western culture. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so you know, actually you can see how that
Speaker 1: influenced their their musical careers, not just even their personal careers,
Speaker 1: but you can hear the music from that time, um,
Speaker 1: and not just the satar, but these these different melodies
Speaker 1: that are Eastern melodies, um that sort of pervaded music
Speaker 1: at the time. But anyway, so they sort of brought
Speaker 1: that UM, these ideas of meditation and trans transcendental meditation
Speaker 1: in particular to the US, and the maharishi is someone
Speaker 1: who a lot of people began to follow, especially UM
Speaker 1: through TM transcendental meditation. UM. So today we have twenty
Speaker 1: million people in the US alone who are practicing yoga. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're practicing a variety of different types of yoga.
Speaker 1: We're talking about this the other day. Yoga in a sense,
Speaker 1: modern yoga in the in the States and Western culture.
Speaker 1: It has this kind of viral aspect to it where
Speaker 1: it seems to spread from carrier to carrier and UH
Speaker 1: and it kind of adapts itself to each new host.
Speaker 1: So that so that after a while you have these
Speaker 1: different versions of this endless variety of yoga that's UH
Speaker 1: is branching out and evolving from patient zero. UM, who
Speaker 1: I guess would have been color responsive. Um. So, so
Speaker 1: just to name a few you, UM, there's a whole
Speaker 1: list of these right at the front of The Science
Speaker 1: of Yoga by William J. Broad, which we are basing
Speaker 1: a lot of this podcast on. By the way, this
Speaker 1: is a really great book. We cannot um cover in
Speaker 1: its entirety because we would talk for ten hours. But um,
Speaker 1: but we are going to touch on some of the highlights. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we'll touch on it some more and and certainly
Speaker 1: pick up that book if you're interested in this. But
Speaker 1: at the very beginning, he does a great job of
Speaker 1: just laying out like some brief overview material, and he
Speaker 1: mentions a number of the styles of yoga. The first
Speaker 1: one he mentions any sara, which is which is actually
Speaker 1: the one that I tend to practice. It's a great one,
Speaker 1: by the way. Yeah, yeah, I find it. You know,
Speaker 1: it's nice, it's kind of it's flowy as an upbeat philosophical,
Speaker 1: philosophical side to it, you know, and uh, I've benefited
Speaker 1: from it. Which which variety do you tend to I
Speaker 1: started out with my anger, which is really uh, I
Speaker 1: guess you would call it precision yoga. It's very specific.
Speaker 1: You hold the post for a long time. The idea
Speaker 1: is that you want to get the postures right before you,
Speaker 1: you know, really sort of launch yourself into yoga. And
Speaker 1: um half of course, which is sort of a catch
Speaker 1: all for for a general yoga. UM, that's actually very
Speaker 1: old yoga based on tantra yoga, which we'll talk about
Speaker 1: yea and in a separate podcast. Yeah, but yeah, so
Speaker 1: that those are a few, and then there's a tanga,
Speaker 1: there's a bickram or hot Yoga, Hot Yoga TM by
Speaker 1: the way trademarked it. Um there's Kundalini, Vanyasa, all sorts here,
Speaker 1: power yoga. UM. I actually saw not too long ago
Speaker 1: a class that was I think it's like death metal yoga.
Speaker 1: What I'm like kidding, it's get the Young Blood Gallery.
Speaker 1: Really they do it to to death metal. They do
Speaker 1: it to death metal, is my understanding. UM. So, as
Speaker 1: you say, like there's each iteration brings with it a
Speaker 1: bit of flavor from from that person. Which yoga for real? Men,
Speaker 1: that's the one we're talking about. The Diamond Dallas Page,
Speaker 1: the former wrestler has been advocating. And you know, you
Speaker 1: can get into these various styles and you can make
Speaker 1: some criticism or even legitimate criticism of some of these
Speaker 1: styles based on on science or tradition or you know,
Speaker 1: or what have you. Certainly some of them are are
Speaker 1: more in touch with the roots of yoga than others. Um.
Speaker 1: But it's it's it's adapting itself to new styles that
Speaker 1: like the people who would be interested in Diamond Dallas pages,
Speaker 1: yoga class or yoga DVDs or whatever he's selling, are
Speaker 1: rather different from the people that would necessarily be up
Speaker 1: for any sorry yoga and uh and so in a
Speaker 1: broad sense, I'm totally in favor that, you know, well,
Speaker 1: I think the cool thing about all these different branches
Speaker 1: of it, are these different styles, is that you do
Speaker 1: get a fuller understanding of what yoga is. Even if
Speaker 1: you are doing something like power yoga or death yoga, UM,
Speaker 1: jazz yoga, jes jess Han's yoga UM, you know you're
Speaker 1: gonna take something away from anger yoga and a different
Speaker 1: thing from any sara and And it doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: one is more correct over the other. It's just it's
Speaker 1: very different. Maybe not the death metals so much, but
Speaker 1: that is what makes it such an interesting practice, but
Speaker 1: also so incredibly difficult to study scientifically, right because it's
Speaker 1: not like you're standardizing it and you're saying everybody do
Speaker 1: these poses only sure bick Rum, right, because I think
Speaker 1: that is actually he's got those uh poses trademarked. But
Speaker 1: but you do have all these different things going on,
Speaker 1: so it's it's hard to wholesales say Okay, we're gonna
Speaker 1: study yoga because it's just this one thing and it's
Speaker 1: not the other reason why it's hard to studies because
Speaker 1: big farmer really isn't all that interested. Yeah. William J.
Speaker 1: Brod does a great job of stressing this in the
Speaker 1: book that all Right. So who funds research, specifically who
Speaker 1: funds medical research? A lot of time it is big
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical companies who are interested in finding that next big drug, which,
Speaker 1: on one hand, they want to find the next big
Speaker 1: drug that's gonna be very beneficial for human health, but
Speaker 1: they also want to find the next big drug that's
Speaker 1: gonna make them a lot of money. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: that's just the nature of the beast. Uh, say what
Speaker 1: you will about it, but that's how it works. So
Speaker 1: when you're looking at yoga, um, with very few exceptions,
Speaker 1: you're not looking at something that can be turned into
Speaker 1: a product or a pill. I mean, unless a major
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical company wanted to open a studio. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's not the kind of thing that's gonna gonna have
Speaker 1: an immediate pharmaceutical tie in or benefit. So no, you're right,
Speaker 1: because it's not like you can take this pill that's
Speaker 1: gonna lower your cortisol levels, your stress hormone levels, increased
Speaker 1: testosterone levels in some cases, um, you know, reduce your
Speaker 1: metabolic rate. I mean that you're right, there's all these
Speaker 1: different things going on in yoga that you just couldn't
Speaker 1: take a pill for. So hence the disinterest on the subject.
Speaker 1: So you see, you see plenty of studies. They've been
Speaker 1: countless studies. I mean, I'm not countless, but there have
Speaker 1: been thousands of studies just in over the past decade
Speaker 1: or so people looking into yoga signs of yoga. But
Speaker 1: it's often more of a side product. It's not necessarily
Speaker 1: like a it's not like a huge extensive of study.
Speaker 1: In most cases, it's not one of these things where
Speaker 1: you have, you know, hundreds or dozens even of of
Speaker 1: individuals that are being subjected to REDI study. In some cases,
Speaker 1: they're they're looking at one individual. There, there's not we're
Speaker 1: not talking about deep, um inquisitive scientific studies. In many cases,
Speaker 1: they're more sort of side studies to researchers, core funded interests. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and William J. Rod does bring up the point that
Speaker 1: a lot of the studies that he came across, and
Speaker 1: I think he looked at what a hundred years worth
Speaker 1: of studies were conducted in India, and so there are
Speaker 1: a lot of them are a little known studies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not necessarily the kind of thing you can just
Speaker 1: do a search for and then purchase the study for,
Speaker 1: you know, or yeah, whatever outrageous price they're charging on
Speaker 1: the UH in the journals. But yeah, you'll be outside
Speaker 1: of of easily obtainable UM medical documents and what. I
Speaker 1: think that just as a side note that William J.
Speaker 1: Broad did a really good job of trying to bring
Speaker 1: all these different studies to light, because he is talking
Speaker 1: about a hundred years worth of studies, some of them
Speaker 1: being conducted during a time when there was an m
Speaker 1: R I or various different technologies available to us. And
Speaker 1: then he actually went through some of that material and
Speaker 1: myth busted some of the erroneous studies that came up
Speaker 1: because of this idea of you know, there weren't there
Speaker 1: wasn't double blind studies and some of them, um so
Speaker 1: some of the conclusions that were drawing were wrong. Um
Speaker 1: or just trying to go and sort things out and
Speaker 1: look at other studies that try to corroborate these older
Speaker 1: studies later on. That is a massive amount of work.
Speaker 1: So I did want to bring that up because, um,
Speaker 1: you know, when this book came out, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of um rancor from the yoga community because he
Speaker 1: does talk about some things that may be difficult to
Speaker 1: hear right now, um, in terms of the risk of
Speaker 1: yoga that we'll talk about later. You saw people responding
Speaker 1: to him on on some of these message boards and
Speaker 1: these yoga publications where they were just like, like, why
Speaker 1: does he hate yoga so much? Why he practicing it
Speaker 1: for forty years? Yeah, he was just I mean, he's
Speaker 1: a science writer who has practice yoga for years and years,
Speaker 1: like since the seventies. I believe it's it's just it
Speaker 1: is and has been a part of his life for
Speaker 1: a long time. And he had been wanting to bring
Speaker 1: these two together too. I mean a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of the questions that he tackles in this book
Speaker 1: are things that that he'd been wondering about, but he
Speaker 1: didn't really have you know, he hadn't taken the time
Speaker 1: to actually study them and do the research and find
Speaker 1: out what science can tell us about yoga. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you can actually tell him this book, you've read it
Speaker 1: from from cover to cover, you can tell that he
Speaker 1: loves and respects it and does it as much as
Speaker 1: possible and will continue to do it. Um that My
Speaker 1: hope is that ten more books respawned from this book,
Speaker 1: clarifying the science even further. A lot of the negative
Speaker 1: stuff that can out really was wasn't as much the book.
Speaker 1: I think that that New York Times article that that
Speaker 1: broad also wrote that post the New York Times, and
Speaker 1: it was the title of it, how yoga can wreck
Speaker 1: your body exactly. That's it. And it's one of those
Speaker 1: things you know that makes the rounds, it shows up
Speaker 1: and feels Facebook feeds. In many cases people don't even
Speaker 1: necessarily read that kind of thing, you know, it goes
Speaker 1: that gets just shot around an email and the instant
Speaker 1: messages sending is yoga is dangerous. This thing that you
Speaker 1: told us was was easy that everybody could do, that
Speaker 1: everyone could benefit from, and it was low impact and
Speaker 1: it was all you know, hippie dippy and care free
Speaker 1: could kill me. Uh And and that comes as a
Speaker 1: revelation to a number of people, I mean just just
Speaker 1: as a general idea that this thing is is not
Speaker 1: um without its risk. Well, the yoga community didn't want
Speaker 1: people to shy away from the practice of yoga or
Speaker 1: just kind of altogether on based on this one aspect
Speaker 1: of it. And that happened either, And I don't think
Speaker 1: Rod does. That wasn't his intent. No, I don't think
Speaker 1: it was either. And she actually didn't select that title. Um,
Speaker 1: the editors it's more clickable, right, Um, so you know
Speaker 1: he's but anyway, that's what they took issue with. So
Speaker 1: let's you know, that's a good point to sort of
Speaker 1: launch off, launch off of and talk about what are
Speaker 1: these myths or what are these sort of wrong headed
Speaker 1: thinking that have come out of yoga. Well for starters, Um,
Speaker 1: yoga has its roots in mysticism, and uh, anything with
Speaker 1: its roots and mysticism is going to carry that up
Speaker 1: through the plant, you know, up through the years. So
Speaker 1: there remains a certain amount of mysticism at times and
Speaker 1: in various um incarnations of yoga, even in Western society.
Speaker 1: So it just it just depends on the h on
Speaker 1: on who you're listening to. I mean, the claims that
Speaker 1: have been they about yoga have have ranged from just
Speaker 1: sort of uh, you know, simple simple claims about various
Speaker 1: health benefits to being able to defeat evil and achieve
Speaker 1: immortality and uh and survive buried alive underneath the earth,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean so it it just runs a
Speaker 1: game that on who you're listening to well, and the
Speaker 1: live barrel is one that he that William jaw Jay
Speaker 1: Broad spends a lot of time on because he says
Speaker 1: like this is this example, um, that was around the
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty seven I believe in which this one Yogi survived.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put that in scare quotes. Um a live
Speaker 1: burial for forty nights and forty days. Those numbers. There's
Speaker 1: probably a reason why those numbers were selected, right because
Speaker 1: they have a religious uh relevance. Forty days, forty nights. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, he this this uh supposedly survived this live burial,
Speaker 1: and this really stuck with people in their minds that
Speaker 1: that yogis had these incredible powers and that they could,
Speaker 1: with their spiritual prowess, really become superhuman. And I'm talking
Speaker 1: specifically about a poon Job Yogi who was a mystic
Speaker 1: showman and who underwent this this live burial in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty seven before the maharaj and uh, you know, he
Speaker 1: was rewarded pretty richly with a pearl necklace called bracelets
Speaker 1: and pieces of silk, and supposedly, again the centuries were
Speaker 1: looking after this making sure that he wasn't breaking out
Speaker 1: and having a little midnight snack or whatnot. Um. But
Speaker 1: this was not uncommon to have this sort of showman
Speaker 1: aspect of yogis back in the day. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it was, and we'll discuss this some more in our
Speaker 1: are are more tentric ly rooted episode, but U But yeah,
Speaker 1: the the the yogis of old were we're kind of
Speaker 1: they were showmen. They were kind of Carney, So it
Speaker 1: was kind of a Carney industry, um, which is why
Speaker 1: I find it particularly funny that Diamond Dallas page is
Speaker 1: uh is benefiting from yoga we'll both physically and economically
Speaker 1: because he's a showman. He's a showman. He comes from
Speaker 1: pro wrestling, which is which is very much a Carney business,
Speaker 1: and then yoga and its roots is based is basically
Speaker 1: a Carney business with these guys going around making outrageous claims,
Speaker 1: sort of duping the marks into thinking that they're doing
Speaker 1: outrageous uh feats of strength or will or spirit and
Speaker 1: and then getting a little pay for it. Well, and
Speaker 1: some of them really were spiritually committed, but you know,
Speaker 1: they did need to survive and so sometimes they would
Speaker 1: undertake these pseudo magic. Some of them also were kidnappers. Right,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that protection schemes. I mean, it's really
Speaker 1: when we say it was a carney business, by which
Speaker 1: I mean it was kind of um morally suspect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we're not exaggerating. It was broad goes into this. Uh.
Speaker 1: People hit their children. People hit their children, People were
Speaker 1: wary of them. And you know that some of these
Speaker 1: yogis were considered Some of them were totally on the level.
Speaker 1: Some of them were very spiritual men. Some of them
Speaker 1: were Charlotte's okay, and so you know, the live burial
Speaker 1: probably wasn't happening or um, the yogi had someone on
Speaker 1: the inside helping to get out of that situation. I
Speaker 1: think that the for that particular Punjab yogi that was
Speaker 1: something like a six by four. Oh no, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about this is when gone. This is the guy who
Speaker 1: started the ashram in Indian nineteen twenties to begin scientifically
Speaker 1: studying h yoga. He actually tried this out, tried out
Speaker 1: this live burial because he thought I really wanted. He
Speaker 1: really wanted to prove that that yogis have this superhuman
Speaker 1: forty days forty nights ability to be buried alive. And
Speaker 1: so he re enacted the burial with another really gifted
Speaker 1: showman yogi, who by the way, wore trunks out of
Speaker 1: tiger skin because that's just how you know, bad this
Speaker 1: yogi was right. Now, some of them went around naked
Speaker 1: as well with the beard. Yeah, beard so long that
Speaker 1: it kind of created a working um. So anyway, Goods
Speaker 1: research team sealed him into a six ft long four
Speaker 1: ft wise six foot deep chamber which was sealed in
Speaker 1: brick and entered only by an air tight door. This
Speaker 1: Yogi lasted only eleven hours the first time, and then
Speaker 1: eighteen hours a second time. Did this like eleven more
Speaker 1: times because he was like, really, I've got to find
Speaker 1: this this one yogi who can do this. But it
Speaker 1: turns out that, I mean that's impressive. Eighteen hours. Um,
Speaker 1: eighteen hours is achievable, you know, to be in this
Speaker 1: air tight chamber without food or water. Um, but forty
Speaker 1: days forty nights is not. This is a huge myth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we get into the same showman area that you
Speaker 1: you see with professional illusionists, with with a Houdini or
Speaker 1: what have you. Accept there's this, uh, the spiritual element
Speaker 1: that is coated over it. The problem with it is
Speaker 1: that when you when you have this sort of inference
Speaker 1: of power that you could harness, then you start to
Speaker 1: see it trickle into modern day mythology of yoga. And
Speaker 1: Broad does a really good job of uncovering this and
Speaker 1: talking about these these myths of weight loss that are
Speaker 1: achievable through yoga. And I believe that this was um
Speaker 1: this is because many of the studies that were erroneous
Speaker 1: again came up and sort of suggested that you could
Speaker 1: lose weight, and you can lose weight with yoga. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've I've left weight with yoga. My wife lest weight
Speaker 1: with yoga. It's it's it's certainly possible, and people do it.
Speaker 1: But but it's ana aerobic, right largely unless you're doing
Speaker 1: something like oshtanga or you're doing you know, a program
Speaker 1: of forty minutes of sun salutations, um, you know. But
Speaker 1: most yoga routines are not that, and they have a
Speaker 1: ton a ton of benefits, but you're probably not if
Speaker 1: you're gonna go for straight aerobic weight loss. Yoga is not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if weight loss is your primary goal, then then
Speaker 1: then then yoga should probably not be your primary weapon
Speaker 1: in the five Yeah, let me throw some stats at this. UM.
Speaker 1: American College of Sports Medicine recommends that exercise or straw
Speaker 1: on fifty of their maximum oxygen uptake reserve, and Texas
Speaker 1: State University researchers UM who are trying to get to
Speaker 1: the bottom of this, found that women walking briskly on
Speaker 1: a treadmill use about forty five of their maximum reserves,
Speaker 1: while women doing a yoga routine used justent of the reserves. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that right there is is sort of giving you
Speaker 1: the math of like, well, you're not probably going to
Speaker 1: reach the amount of calories burned to really lose weight
Speaker 1: during yoga. Another two thousand and five study, this one
Speaker 1: by the University of Wisconsin, found that their half a
Speaker 1: sessions of yoga were burning just one and forty four calories,
Speaker 1: which is similar to a slow walk. Okay, but with
Speaker 1: the benefit here that that UM that a lot of
Speaker 1: people are getting is that they're losing weight because once
Speaker 1: you begin to practice yoga, you sort of slowed down
Speaker 1: in terms of your intentions and you're thinking and what
Speaker 1: you're doing to your body and what you're putting into
Speaker 1: your body. So a lot of people when they begin
Speaker 1: practicing and broad talks about this, to have this awareness
Speaker 1: of Okay, I'm not just eating, uh, you know, stuffing
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff into the whole. I'm stepping it
Speaker 1: into me. I'm building a new body out of this food.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a gateway, uh, to a better mind,
Speaker 1: body understanding. Right right, So you all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you just say, oh about corn dog? Those ten corn dogs?
Speaker 1: Do I really need ten corn dogs? I don't think so.
Speaker 1: Or you begin to fill up and you become aware
Speaker 1: that do you no longer have these sensations of hunger
Speaker 1: and you quit eating. And that is a huge benefit
Speaker 1: of yogurt, because it does. It's gonna gonna stand weird.
Speaker 1: But hanging out in a pose for five minutes and
Speaker 1: feeling uncomfortable, We'll put you in a situation where you
Speaker 1: become very intimate with the thoughts in your brain and
Speaker 1: the sort of loops that go around in your head.
Speaker 1: And it really is a mini meditation. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I will find myself, you know, you put myself one
Speaker 1: of those poses and then I'll remember that I'm not
Speaker 1: thinking about whatever was occupying my mind NonStop. Um, you
Speaker 1: know previously. I mean, for example, UM, I recently had
Speaker 1: a couple of wisdom teeth taken out, which um, and
Speaker 1: I'm I'm in my thirties, which means that it's a
Speaker 1: lot more in ten. It's apparently this has been my
Speaker 1: what I've gathered because when I when I did get
Speaker 1: him taken out, all these people were like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I had them taken out in high school. And it's great.
Speaker 1: You know, they you can take a few days off
Speaker 1: and they ge some pain medication. It's no big deal.
Speaker 1: And you know it's maybe it's not any big deal. Um,
Speaker 1: you know when you're in you're fifteen or sixteen, Well,
Speaker 1: when you're in your your thirties, it's it's it's awful,
Speaker 1: and it's it's uh, it's this awful thing, this this
Speaker 1: awful violation of your mouth that just sticks with you
Speaker 1: for for for weeks to follow, and and so and
Speaker 1: and so I'm constantly thinking about it. And then I
Speaker 1: found that, you know, going to yoga, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I'll be in imposed like I'll be in um uh
Speaker 1: pigeon pose or something you know, which, which I find
Speaker 1: is a good one where you're you're you're all, you're
Speaker 1: all tensed up, you're in this pose. It's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I wouldn't I don't want to describe it as uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: but it is. You have to submit. Yeah, you're very
Speaker 1: present in what your body is doing. And then I
Speaker 1: would find myself just completely forgetting about what my mouth
Speaker 1: was doing, you know, and uh, you know which I'm
Speaker 1: not saying it allowed me to you know, erase pain
Speaker 1: or something, but it made me forget about the thing
Speaker 1: that I was constantly punching my brain in the face with. Well,
Speaker 1: but then it's reducing your stress too, right, So I mean,
Speaker 1: we know how the whole pain loop um and the
Speaker 1: biofeedback works. So if you can interrupt that, which yoga
Speaker 1: does a great job, then you can see the pain.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people will say like, actually, there
Speaker 1: are there are several different things. When you get in
Speaker 1: that sort of flow, people will say that they have,
Speaker 1: you know, this interruption of pain. And some of that
Speaker 1: is music. Some people who have chronic pain UM, if
Speaker 1: they perform music or sing um, they can they can
Speaker 1: stop that cycle. Or yoga is another good example. Um,
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean what I'm saying weight loss aerobics,
Speaker 1: that's probably not gonna be your path to to you know,
Speaker 1: dropping twenty pounds instantly, but you know, a yoga regimen
Speaker 1: is definitely going to help in the long term, just
Speaker 1: in terms of you being able to get your head
Speaker 1: around you know, how your body is working and what
Speaker 1: you're doing to it. Yeah, I mean a lot of
Speaker 1: its breathing to just becoming conscious of of everything you're
Speaker 1: doing at a given moment. What are my limbs doing,
Speaker 1: what is my breath doing? And again just becoming conscious
Speaker 1: of body well and getting getting comfortable with discomfort. Right. Um.
Speaker 1: Metabolism this is another thing um that comes up in
Speaker 1: terms of weight loss or just overall fitness. UM. In
Speaker 1: a two thousand and six study by physiologists Miasandra as Shaya,
Speaker 1: she found that regular practitioners cut their basil metabolic rate
Speaker 1: on average by This is excellent, right, This means that
Speaker 1: you're becoming much more adept at managing stress. By gender,
Speaker 1: it was an eight percent reduction for men in an
Speaker 1: eighteen percent reduction for women. But this has led to
Speaker 1: a reduction in basil metabolic rate that no longer now
Speaker 1: requires as much food and calories to stoke metaboli. Uh,
Speaker 1: your metabolism. Right, So in other words, when metabolism drops
Speaker 1: to these degrees, the body doesn't need t corn dogs, right,
Speaker 1: And if you continue to eat those corn dogs with
Speaker 1: reduced basil metabolic rate, you're going to gain weight. Ah,
Speaker 1: this is the bummer part of it. Right. So if
Speaker 1: you you get in the habit of yoga, but you
Speaker 1: don't necessarily break the habits of eating that are yeah,
Speaker 1: that are happening else Yeah, and now when when? And
Speaker 1: I don't know the specifically specifics of this because broad
Speaker 1: doesn't really go into this to saying to the degree
Speaker 1: that these people were yogis like, you know, did they
Speaker 1: practice three hours a day or you know, twice a week.
Speaker 1: Did they have a certain certification with a certain style
Speaker 1: of yoga which you get into whole hour of certification
Speaker 1: that are required. Yeah. You know, if you're doing oshtanga
Speaker 1: or something that's a little bit more rigorous than you're
Speaker 1: probably your basil metabolic rate probably isn't going to drop
Speaker 1: quite as slow. But the point is here is that
Speaker 1: you know, you you know, they used to think that okay,
Speaker 1: you could do yoga just as well as dogging, and
Speaker 1: you get your heart rate up and you'd be able
Speaker 1: to burn as many calories. But that's not happening here.
Speaker 1: But that's still this is good news because we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about it in a little bit. But um, lowering
Speaker 1: your metabolism is huge hate ability, and in fact, it
Speaker 1: would really make sense, particularly if you were a yogi
Speaker 1: um turn of the century who couldn't find a lot
Speaker 1: of food, who was having to sort of batten down
Speaker 1: the hatches of energy. To to have the skill to
Speaker 1: to lower your metabolism would be great, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you could guess you do some means of
Speaker 1: coping with with hunger, I mean real hunger and that
Speaker 1: you know Western I need tin corn dogs hunger, but
Speaker 1: legitimate hunger. Okay. Another claim that comes up is oxygen Like,
Speaker 1: if you do this this routine, your body is going
Speaker 1: to be flush with oxygen um. And certainly you you've
Speaker 1: become you become conscious more conscious of your breathing, and
Speaker 1: as you're you're getting your heart rate up, you are
Speaker 1: breathing more. So you can under stand where this idea
Speaker 1: comes from, right, But it turns out that no matter
Speaker 1: how fast or flow. You breathe, you get generally the
Speaker 1: same amount of oxygen into your body and into your brain. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't really matter. Yoga does not it's not
Speaker 1: going to change the amount of oxygen that you absorb.
Speaker 1: What changes, and this is actually can have several different ramifications,
Speaker 1: is the amount of carbon dioxide in your system that
Speaker 1: all of that breathing. And so there's something like the
Speaker 1: cabala body breath. This is called the breath of fire
Speaker 1: skull shining. Wait, wait, is this the one where I inhale?
Speaker 1: I go, yeah, like you have that one? Sorry everybody,
Speaker 1: but yeah, that's how it gets. And basically what you're
Speaker 1: doing is you're taking your your belly button and try
Speaker 1: to you're forcing it against the back of your spine,
Speaker 1: and you're breathing really fast and now for your nose.
Speaker 1: But your stomach is like a rubber band. It keeps
Speaker 1: going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
Speaker 1: And then I breathe that. Yeah, well that puts a
Speaker 1: lot of carbon dioxide into your blood. That that feeling
Speaker 1: like you're about to pass out. That's why it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily it's I mean, it's not necessarily bad for you,
Speaker 1: but of course. Um. You know, there's a whole list
Speaker 1: of things that of the reasons why you probably shouldn't
Speaker 1: practice it, like if you were pregnant. Um. But anyway,
Speaker 1: that's sort of this idea of Okay, we're getting all
Speaker 1: this oxygen. You're just replenishing your vile organs with oxygen.
Speaker 1: That's not necessarily the case. Yeah, I mean you get
Speaker 1: into situations with a lot of stuff in yoga where
Speaker 1: you're you're putting your body in a position or you're
Speaker 1: doing something with your breath where it allows you to
Speaker 1: feel something that you don't normally feel, and an awareness
Speaker 1: of your body that is not normally present. So it's
Speaker 1: very easy then to layer some some fiction on top
Speaker 1: of an experience and making into something it's not right.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, though your body is undergoing
Speaker 1: these these changes that are are affecting your mood. Um.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about that in the benefits a little
Speaker 1: bit more. Um. I mean there there's there's real manifest
Speaker 1: station here. Now. I don't want to want I say fiction.
Speaker 1: I don't want to imply that putting a little a
Speaker 1: layer of fiction or you know, or myth or whatever
Speaker 1: on top of a sensation can't help you maybe understand
Speaker 1: and empower you, uh to a sense. I don't want
Speaker 1: to just completely discount idea serpents and chakras and what
Speaker 1: have you. I think it's it's all, it's all valid. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the power of storytelling, right, we talked about that,
Speaker 1: putting a little power of storytelling on top of this
Speaker 1: weird pain that is going through my leg. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: I think it's totally fine. Now. I think we should
Speaker 1: take a break. Yeah, we probably should. Yeah, when we
Speaker 1: come back, we will talk about some of the risks
Speaker 1: and then some of these incredible rewards, including those Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that pose, Well, we'll talk about a potential account
Speaker 1: of you. All right, we're back. You can you can
Speaker 1: go into child's pose now and uh and we'll venture
Speaker 1: into the into the second half of them. No, no,
Speaker 1: you you stay in pigeon. Okay. Alright, So William Jay
Speaker 1: broad rancor yoga community, and specifically because he talked about
Speaker 1: some of the risks, um, when he is talking about
Speaker 1: the risk, he's talking mainly about the neck region. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's important to note here too that like like
Speaker 1: my yoga class, the many class I go to, uh,
Speaker 1: my teacher is really great about stressing. Hey, don't overdo it,
Speaker 1: you know, come in, UM do what's comfortable for you.
Speaker 1: Don't try to compete with yourself or with other people
Speaker 1: in the class. Don't trying to impress anybody, and and
Speaker 1: you know, be mindful of the risk. Not every class
Speaker 1: is like this, and not every practitioner or potential practitioner
Speaker 1: rather is going to be that mindful of all this.
Speaker 1: You get me. I mean, that's that's how most of
Speaker 1: these injuries happen. It seems like people come in and
Speaker 1: they either get into a moment where I'm going to
Speaker 1: try to impress this person or or I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: what I feel like I should be doing and not
Speaker 1: what my body is telling me to do. Yeah, and um,
Speaker 1: you know William J. Brod does he he does bring
Speaker 1: that up. He says, there's this sort of neophyte problem
Speaker 1: to it, right, because if you don't really know how
Speaker 1: to get out of the poses and how it affects
Speaker 1: you yet, then you probably shouldn't try some that that
Speaker 1: um are more extreme or UM put more extreme pressure
Speaker 1: on your body. And UM, like I was telling you about,
Speaker 1: I was in a class and I go to I
Speaker 1: take close of the y m c A. So you
Speaker 1: get people that will come in like forty five minutes
Speaker 1: into a class and they'll be advised, Hey, it could
Speaker 1: be dangerous if you start a yoga class forty five
Speaker 1: minutes in and then you know this. I watch somebody,
Speaker 1: like an overweight person in socks go up into wheel
Speaker 1: and they did not snap in half and have to
Speaker 1: be carried off to the hospital. This time you can. Yeah,
Speaker 1: wheel is a backward bend and it's basically going up.
Speaker 1: I think sure everybody is familiar with the image of
Speaker 1: the ridge right where you're on your back and you
Speaker 1: go up into bridge. This five earls can snap in
Speaker 1: and out of this, no problem. Um, But it's it's
Speaker 1: a it's really um. It's it takes a lot of
Speaker 1: effort to get your body up in that position and
Speaker 1: you're essentially your head is upside down, your neck is
Speaker 1: crooked back quite a bit. And this is what Broad
Speaker 1: is talking about. He's saying that these poses that really
Speaker 1: bend your neck. You know, these ninety degree angles are
Speaker 1: putting a lot of pressure on your cervical vertebrae. And
Speaker 1: what a lot of people don't realize is that there
Speaker 1: are vertebral arteries that are basically looping themselves within this
Speaker 1: framework of vertebrae up in your neck. So it's like
Speaker 1: sort of this intricate um snaking of these arteries. So
Speaker 1: when you're bending your head back that much, you're putting
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of pressure e pressuring pressure. Um. And
Speaker 1: so he's talking about in poses like headstand. I think
Speaker 1: everybody's familiar with that, shoulders stand and which you swing
Speaker 1: your your legs up over your head. Yeah, kind of
Speaker 1: like the bicycle thing that you would do in elementary
Speaker 1: school gym. Yeah, if you're in your back um wheel again.
Speaker 1: And then something called plow and plow is that Actually
Speaker 1: when I just said shoulder stand, I was just um
Speaker 1: talking about plow um. When you're in shoulder chain, you
Speaker 1: just swing your legs over. Oh yes, okay, yeah, so
Speaker 1: they go over your head. So basically anything that puts
Speaker 1: torque on the neck. So again these are not well
Speaker 1: known arteries. And the problem here is that everybody is
Speaker 1: structured differently. So your your the way that your arteries
Speaker 1: loop in there and the way that your cervical vertebrae
Speaker 1: are are going to be different from another person. In
Speaker 1: other words, or some people don't have much room in there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's the thing. You go into a class like
Speaker 1: this and people start going to a pose, it's it's
Speaker 1: easy to fall into the thinking, oh, that's what our
Speaker 1: bodies do, that's what my body should do. But everyone's
Speaker 1: body is different. Sounds cliche, It is cliche, but it's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he says, like, there's no m r I machine when
Speaker 1: you go through the doors of yoga studios, so it's
Speaker 1: not like you know exactly where you're the oddities might
Speaker 1: be in your framework. Yeah, I mean, on a very
Speaker 1: simple level, not everybody can touch their toes. Not everybody
Speaker 1: should touch theirs, you know. And uh, when you get
Speaker 1: into much more um, when you when you get into
Speaker 1: this neck region, when you get in the vertebrae, um,
Speaker 1: you can have potentially devastating results from pushing things too far. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, what he's talking about is, Okay, let's say
Speaker 1: you tork those arteries and then you tear them. Um,
Speaker 1: you get some blood clots there, right, come on the post,
Speaker 1: the clot sales up to your brain and you have
Speaker 1: a stroke. That's the problem. Now he's saying that this
Speaker 1: is very rare, so we shouldn't. Yeah, we shouldn't all
Speaker 1: you know be uh, you know, like, oh, this is
Speaker 1: gonna happen tomorrow. It is very rare. He's saying, you know,
Speaker 1: something like three cases a year, and of those three
Speaker 1: d cases, less than five result and death. Um. But
Speaker 1: he is saying that it's something that people should be
Speaker 1: aware of. Personally, I don't do a headstand or Childer's
Speaker 1: stand or any of that anymore, and I haven't for
Speaker 1: about five years now. UM. But he the problem here
Speaker 1: is that, um, you know, case after case of someone
Speaker 1: in their twenties and their thirties coming out of a
Speaker 1: pose and then having a stroke anywhere from you know
Speaker 1: then to thirty six hours later gives you this gray
Speaker 1: area of well did that really cause the stroke? Because
Speaker 1: you know, correlation is not causation, as we know. But
Speaker 1: he is saying that the problem here is that we
Speaker 1: don't have you know, medical Um science hasn't really said
Speaker 1: let's study these strokes in yoga in earnest and try
Speaker 1: to figure out what's happening. But he's saying there's enough
Speaker 1: cases of really healthy people practicing yoga who have had
Speaker 1: strokes that we should stop and we should look at
Speaker 1: the evidence here of how tenuous this artery is um
Speaker 1: and how we should respect it a little bit more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean respect is respecting the body and respecting the
Speaker 1: limitations and fragility of the body is important, because that's
Speaker 1: another thing about coming into something like yoga if you
Speaker 1: if you haven't, And yoga appeals to a wide number
Speaker 1: of people, but it often appeals to people who have
Speaker 1: not been all that physically active, who do not have
Speaker 1: a lot of experience or any experience with sports or
Speaker 1: athletic related injuries. I mean I was, I'm the same
Speaker 1: way like prior to yoga, my main the main thing
Speaker 1: I ever did with swimming, which is very low impact.
Speaker 1: You know, I never injured myself swimming. Uh, maybe I
Speaker 1: balked my head, you know on the concrete once or twice,
Speaker 1: but that I can remember. But but for the most part,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna strain something or be limping around after
Speaker 1: you've done some laps. Uh. You going to yoga, it's
Speaker 1: a different story. And if you don't have experience with
Speaker 1: straining too hard and busting something, you're inevitably gonna end
Speaker 1: up on that, you know, in that class where you
Speaker 1: you do go a little too far and then for
Speaker 1: the first time you're you learned what it's like to
Speaker 1: to to to to suffer you know, sports or athletic injury. Okay,
Speaker 1: so into that point, I'm gonna bring up bit Chrome
Speaker 1: and I'm not picking on Bickram, and Broad is not
Speaker 1: picking on Bickram either. He's just saying that when you
Speaker 1: heat a room to a hundred and four degrees hundred
Speaker 1: and three degrees degrees um, what you're doing is not
Speaker 1: only are you making everybody sweat um last night's dinner
Speaker 1: out um, which always you know, culminates into a great
Speaker 1: funk in the in the yoga room, um, but what
Speaker 1: you're doing is is you're creating an environment in which
Speaker 1: the joints, the muscles all get very loose, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you feel like, oh I can do
Speaker 1: all these incredible poses. I am gumby. But he's saying
Speaker 1: that what happens is that you are pushing your body
Speaker 1: to its outer limits. That in normal conditions, in a
Speaker 1: normal conditioned room, um, with normal temperatures, your body would
Speaker 1: be telling you, hey, this is too much, don't do this.
Speaker 1: So he's saying that that is very injurious in a
Speaker 1: sense because people are going beyond their odder limits. Like
Speaker 1: my teacher always stresses that if you're you're you're in
Speaker 1: a posed each should not hurt. You know, there's that
Speaker 1: level of I am stretching, I am You know that
Speaker 1: that I'm I'm that that I'm engaging the muscles and
Speaker 1: I'm engaging my my bones. But I should not feel
Speaker 1: like I am hurting my bones and my muscles, because
Speaker 1: that is a clear sign you're pushing the boundaries and
Speaker 1: you're just you. You know, you're potentially just a slight
Speaker 1: tweak away from an injury. Yeah, this has when ligaments
Speaker 1: and Carl nch get torn right and over and over again.
Speaker 1: Too broad. His said that he's seen this um in
Speaker 1: studies with with hot yoga. Um, you know, you you
Speaker 1: run a risk of dislocations and springs. I mean it
Speaker 1: just goes on and on. And I have taken hot yoga.
Speaker 1: I've I have actually really enjoyed it once I got
Speaker 1: over the fact that I felt like I was in
Speaker 1: a jungle trying to survive to my next breath. But um,
Speaker 1: but I did understand, like, you know what, I need
Speaker 1: to take it easy here because I do feel like
Speaker 1: I could just pop up into wheel, you know, in
Speaker 1: two seconds here, and what is that doing to my
Speaker 1: body under these extreme circumstances. Um? Okay, so enough with
Speaker 1: the downer stuff. Let's talk about telomeres and all these
Speaker 1: really incredible things that yoga does. I mean, we're not
Speaker 1: just talking about strength, right, because you're you're using your
Speaker 1: own body weight to to increase your muscle mass right
Speaker 1: when you're in these poses. Um, it's creating endurance, balanced flexibility. Um.
Speaker 1: But also something called autonomic control. Okay, for starters, we
Speaker 1: have blood pressure. We have seen in studies that yogis
Speaker 1: are able to manipulate, um, control over their blood pressure, which,
Speaker 1: as we all know, that's a that's a good thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, and been able to want to say, manipulated
Speaker 1: bring it down right, not not rocking it up. Well.
Speaker 1: Hence the again this idea that you know, some yogis
Speaker 1: are were supernatural, um and could do these superhuman strengths. Um.
Speaker 1: But here's a here is actually a sort of superhuman thing. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a mind over matter example. UM. Researchers show that yogis,
Speaker 1: or at least one yogi in Broad's book, could create
Speaker 1: a gap up to eleven degrees across this palm, a
Speaker 1: gap in difference of times between his body in his palm. Um.
Speaker 1: So this is why scientists have begun to take interest
Speaker 1: in Yogi's because through the scientific lens, you can really
Speaker 1: start to see parallels to animal hibernation. We've talked about
Speaker 1: this like suspended animation. How can how can we harness
Speaker 1: this mind body connection to manipulate our bodies to do
Speaker 1: really things that they're not supposed to do or superhuman
Speaker 1: things like this. Yeah, and so if I mean, if
Speaker 1: you're you're able to adjust blood pressure, I mean we're
Speaker 1: talking about improving cardiovasca health as as a whole. Uh,
Speaker 1: and this can affect such factors as you know, um
Speaker 1: it's high blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, um, and and
Speaker 1: even you know, tinker with the proteins that involved in
Speaker 1: blood clouding on a beneficial way. So so that's good.
Speaker 1: And the other just really incredible thing that I found,
Speaker 1: um in in Broad's book was this idea of telomeres
Speaker 1: and extending them. Yeah, we've we've mentioned before telomeres and telomeres.
Speaker 1: This gets down to these little um like DNA shoelaces
Speaker 1: that kind eventually begin to unravel and as they unravel,
Speaker 1: thus is the process of aging. Things start to go downhill.
Speaker 1: Your body starts to suck and uh that's all she wrote. So, uh,
Speaker 1: we we have seen that that yoga, of course reduces stress,
Speaker 1: and then in reducing stress, one can actually reduce the
Speaker 1: unraveling of those telomeres and the eventual suckage of said body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it turns out that stress is one of the
Speaker 1: things that erodes the tips of of UM DNA, right,
Speaker 1: this is and this is what tel moras, the enzyme
Speaker 1: can come in and deliver more genetic information and actually
Speaker 1: extend those tips. So stuff like disease, um, you know,
Speaker 1: chronic stress that's going to whittle away at our biological
Speaker 1: clocks because that's really what telomeres are, these biological clocks
Speaker 1: that are kicking. So if you can lump more material
Speaker 1: and it extend these DNA tips, then this is a
Speaker 1: sort of fountain of youth. And when I say this, UM,
Speaker 1: I don't mean to say like, oh, you know, you
Speaker 1: know indefinitely, if you just do yoga, we're all going
Speaker 1: to live for the rest of our lives. Um. But
Speaker 1: it does show that yoga can slow biological aging and
Speaker 1: a Harvard physician and health superstar Dean Ornish. I'm sure
Speaker 1: a lot of people have heard of him, looked at
Speaker 1: twenty four men who took up his health regimen. The
Speaker 1: subjects were aged fifty to eighty and did yoga for
Speaker 1: an hour days, six days a week over three months,
Speaker 1: and they had their tel Mara's levels. These ensign levels
Speaker 1: taken before and after the study. And in addition to
Speaker 1: the decline in the cholesterol, as you say, blood pressure,
Speaker 1: in general anxiety, it was found that the post yoga
Speaker 1: subjects tell Moray's levels shot up by that to me
Speaker 1: is wow, I mean, whoa, That's a reason to do
Speaker 1: yoga right there. Yeah. And then there's also little something
Speaker 1: called gabba, which is not not yogaba kaba, but the
Speaker 1: neuro transmitter that is tied in with the heightened moods.
Speaker 1: If you've ever been a supplement junkie, then you've probably
Speaker 1: run across GAPA pills at your local health food store
Speaker 1: and it's a low levels of GABBA have been linked
Speaker 1: to depression and uh so Broad reported that scientists from
Speaker 1: Boston University School of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and McLean
Speaker 1: Psychiatric Hospital found that the brains of yoga practitioners showed
Speaker 1: increases in GABBA levels um. And apparently it was more so. Uh,
Speaker 1: it was more prevalent in more experienced yoga practitioners as well. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's something uh rise in the regular practitioners, and then
Speaker 1: in newbies it was just rise. But that is still
Speaker 1: a significant amount of gabba neurotransmitters hanging out in your brain. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Less stress, I mean less stress is less stress, So
Speaker 1: that's great, but less stress less less uh, decaying of
Speaker 1: the Tell me here's longer life. It's all good. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then here's one more thing to throw at you,
Speaker 1: because I know, I feel like we're starting to sound
Speaker 1: like a Ginzoo NiFe commercial, but here we have. It's
Speaker 1: the immune system. Um. Also it benefits from yoga. The
Speaker 1: vadgist nerve which runs from the brain stem to the
Speaker 1: torso um. And by the way, that just has etymological
Speaker 1: roots with vagabond, right, because it's a sort of vagabond
Speaker 1: of your body, this this nerve. UM. We know that
Speaker 1: the nerve central action is to regulate and slow the heart,
Speaker 1: this nerve, but more recently we found out that also
Speaker 1: regulates the immune system and it helps to fight inflammation,
Speaker 1: and so there have been studies with people who suffer
Speaker 1: from rheumatoid arthritis who have really found that poses that
Speaker 1: flex their spine and stimulate the Vadgish nerve are finding
Speaker 1: a lot of um, a lot of benefits to being
Speaker 1: able to walk without pain and all these great things.
Speaker 1: And of course it's nature's viagra. Yes, yeah, And we'll
Speaker 1: we'll get into the the sexual benefits of yoga in
Speaker 1: our additional podcast that we're doing this week on yoga,
Speaker 1: which was titled Yoga Sex Magic, So tune into that
Speaker 1: one if you want to hear more about it. But
Speaker 1: but studies have shown that yoga does lead to improvements
Speaker 1: in one's sex life. So yeah, we'll leave it at
Speaker 1: that in your imagination. So we're gonna since we're going
Speaker 1: a little longer, I'm gonna skip listener mail on this episode,
Speaker 1: but I do want I do think we should leave
Speaker 1: everyone with with some encouragement, uh, some added encouragement for yoga. Um.
Speaker 1: And we're both yoga advocates, so we're gonna advocate it here.
Speaker 1: And I'm just gonna say, if if yoga sounds at
Speaker 1: all interesting, give it a try, and not just one
Speaker 1: try give it a couple because the first time I
Speaker 1: took yoga, I did not like it, and I do
Speaker 1: not think I would have gone back had my wife
Speaker 1: not been interested in trying get some were I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just it's not necessarily gonna grab you that first time.
Speaker 1: But but if you know, give it a chance, and
Speaker 1: give various styles a chance. Like I said, maybe Black
Speaker 1: Death yoga is you're there, are definital yoga is your thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe diamon Dallas Page just yoga is your thing or
Speaker 1: or you know, and it's all gateway. Maybe you get
Speaker 1: a taste of it and then you find something that's
Speaker 1: really more suited for what you want. But there's a
Speaker 1: lot out there on the buffet. Yeah, and I know
Speaker 1: that I love my studio because they cater to pretty
Speaker 1: much everyone under the sun. So if you have some
Speaker 1: physical limitations, there's cheer yoga, there's um yoga for depression
Speaker 1: and anxiety relation yoga. There's there's yoga for veterans actually
Speaker 1: as well in my studio, which is great, um Nato yoga.
Speaker 1: There's post Nato yoga. There's you know, yoga for for
Speaker 1: mothers in their their their their infants, so there's there's
Speaker 1: a wide variety of stuff out there. So yoga for magicians, Yeah, yeah, probably,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna doubt anywhere at this point. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: look around and you know, and if and if yoga
Speaker 1: definitely isn't your thing, you know, find something some sort
Speaker 1: of activity out there. Um. If nothing else, just try
Speaker 1: to think a little bit bit about your breathing during
Speaker 1: the daily life and see where it takes it. Let's
Speaker 1: do it now, Okay, So where can you find us?
Speaker 1: You can find us on Facebook where we are stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind, and you can also find us
Speaker 1: on Twitter where our handle is blow the Mind. And
Speaker 1: you can also send us a line at blow the
Speaker 1: Mind at discovery dot com for moral this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Does it have stuff works dot com