[the] Mindful Soul Center Podcast Interview Episode
In this interview with Susan Rodway-Hall of Yoga Therapy Stockport, we spoke about her journey into yoga, how it has evolved, ways women can be supported in menopause and perimenopause, energy block releases, rage in perimenopause, moon cycles, awareness and self-compassion. Susan guides us through a breathing exercise for relaxation too. Have a listen, learn with me and share this interview with your friends.
Guest: Susan Rodway-Hall
The Mindful Soul Center Podcast Interview with Susan Rodway-Hall, a long time practitioner and teacher, she is the co-creator of the Happy Hormones nutrition and yoga plan. Susan is a registered yoga therapist, Thai yoga massage practitioner and Druyoga teacher. She believes that simple, therapeutic yoga techniques can help people to live their lives with more ease. She has a special interest in adapting yoga for women’s health, and in particular how it can help women who are navigating the physical and mental challenges of perimenopause and the menopause. Amongst the variety of yoga training she has completed through the years, she has a specific certification by the British Wheel of Yoga focused on menopause.
Yoga, Menopause and Happy Hormones, an interview with Susan Rodway-Hall
Follow and/or Get in touch with Susan here:
Website: https://www.yogatherapystockport.co.uk/
The Really Happy Hormone Plan Event Link for a four-week wellness experience with Susan and her co-host.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yogatherapystockport/
Susan Recommends
She also recommends Uma Dinsmore-Tuli’s work here -> YoniShakti.
And her book: Yoni Shakti: A Woman’s Guide to Power and Freedom Through Yoga and Tantra Revised and updated edition
Music in this episode includes:
Birds by Silent Partner
Cast of Pods by Doug Maxwell
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Interview Transcript
Note: This transcript has not been edited so there may be some errors.
Welcome to the mindful soul center podcast. My name is Amy Adams and I’m your host and guide on this journey today, before we get started, ….ANNOUNCEMENTS
Now let’s get started in today’s episode. I interview Susan Rodway-Hall. She is a yoga therapist Thai massage therapist and Dru yoga teacher. She specializes in women’s health, focusing on perimenopause and menopause, but she didn’t begin there. I’ll let her tell you how she got started.
So originally I did the sensible things and went to university, got a job and worked in the corporate sector for many years, and then I had children and it was a huge shift for me. Partly because I wasn’t actually in a full-time job. I was on a contract, so I didn’t actually have a job to go back to. And I, I yeah, I found I really needed the time for me and that’s when I first started practicing yoga and that really helped me connect with my son bond with my son and support me as a, as a new mom. And yeah, then I kind of developed and thinking, okay, I’m really enjoying this and I can see the benefits and I don’t have any work at the moment. And don’t really feel like going back to working in an office again. So I started investigating how I could use yoga as, as, as part-time work whilst I was having a family.
And so originally trained in baby yoga postnatal, yoga, prenatal, yoga, and had all my work based around there and had another child to fit into the equation and then started developing that or yoga. I do after my daughter was born, I had developed hormonal migraines. I started taking an interest in the menstrual cycle and how that was affecting me and how my yoga practice could support me in, in managing that. And now I know my babies are quite bigger and yeah, am I, you know, obviously I’ve got older, my peer group has got older and realizing that there’s not much out there for the perimenopausal women in terms of education in terms of support and particularly holistic support. So yeah, I’m developing and redoing what you know what I think my yoga practice is how it’s evolving for me, trying to empower myself to, to have a more easeful menopause as I kind of had in heading that direction. Yeah,
So I do think that that’s very much needed. I actually have already gone through menopause and years ago. I probably even when I was going through a menopause, I probably wouldn’t even say that out loud because there’s so much shame and a weirdness about women transitioning in our lives. Like even any of our big things, even with having children. I mean, these are our big things. We go from like the maiden mother crone kind of whole thing. There is a process, but we don’t have the rituals that we used to have to have. I mean, I’m not sure that, you know, I don’t know a lot about rituals historically, but I do believe that some of them existed and the way that people lived, it was different. It was more communal in many ways. And people, women actually had the opportunity to support one another in ways that now I think we’re maybe coming back to that, but I feel like there was a huge disconnect from the whole transition from this kind of like industrial age to all, you know, women working, which I fully support.
I’m not, when I talk about this, I just want to be clear. I don’t want it to be like, Oh, we’re all done. We need to go back to the olden days. No, we can be powerful, strong women, but I think we all really desire this kind of support and nourishment that we get from one another. And it’s much more difficult with our scheduling and the way that the, that we’re evolved in society. So maybe I, I would say, especially in like the US and Canada and Australia and Europe in general, I mean, I don’t really know how the stress levels are for other parts of the world, but I would say this is a real common problem for women. So I did do some reading cause I was very curious about the Dru yoga and it did the one thing that popped out in my mind was like an energy block release. So I don’t know if you could just talk about that for a moment because I thought that was, I mean, I think this is a huge problem. Like we have all these things coming at us and we do get blocked. I don’t know. Maybe if you could just talk about yoga is so we can kind of understand. I know that I don’t know that it’s directly related to like menopause or whatever, but I, I am curious just so our audience can understand what that is.
Yeah. Well, Dru, in essence is a, a soft, gentle flowing Vinyasa style of yoga, a lot of emphasis on, yeah, let’s say flowing movement, coordinating the movement with the breath. There’s quite a bit more repetition, particularly in the energy block release sequences, which I’ll talk a little bit more about in a moment, but the, the lineage of it is yeah, actually I just started doing North Wales. Believe it or not like
A Druid. I mean, this is like,
No, it’s not, it’s not a druid at all. The, there was a family who relocated a Hindu family relocated from Kenya in the sixties to North Wales, him and community of people came together when they all met at university and started learning about the teachings of yoga. And these teachings are kind of handed down from parents to children or young adults as they were, as they were at the time. So there was this yoga teacher and I kind of collected collected students. And yeah, it was all based on the teachings of Gandhi and following the teachings of the Bahgavad Gita as well. And they kind of formed it into this, dru yoga style. And dru is from Druga which is the name of the North star in sanskrit. So it’s the still point. Certainly the Northern hemisphere is there’s still point in the sky that all the constellations revolve around.
And that’s the whole idea, the whole premise of dru yoga. It’s finding that still point within yourself, whether that is still stillness through movement stillness, through meditation, stillness through breath work, because you know, life is always busy and stuff’s always happening and changing it is. Can you, can you sit in that point of stillness when everything about you is moving and sometimes it moves really fast and we get a chaotic life and it’s really hard to sit still or be still and centered in yourself. And sometimes it moves a little slow and that makes it, it makes it easier. As you said, one of the, one of the key features of dru yoga is, is this idea of a, an energy block release and a every dru yoga class I teach has an, he brought release sequence in it. And there are a number of them, the theory being that actually, if you want your yoga to be potent and effective and therapeutic, then you actually, you need to release any trapped energy in your body because then the prom is going to flow better when you do your sequences or posture work or, or relaxation or meditation, whatever it is, you need to kind of unblock it and release it.
So in true yoga, there’s a lot of emphasis on having soft joints and our different styles of yoga have different opinions on this. Particularly is kind of polar opposite to kind of like Iyenger,ubut there’s a softness in the joint because that’ll allow the prompter to flow more freely. So particularly with energy, but really sequences. Some of them are more esoteric and it’s all intention and the movements are really gentle. Some of it is more physical based,ubut certainly the, the foundation energy release really is all about releasing the spine. And as you release the spine, you get the prana flowing through the chakras, you know, releasing those relating to those points. But it’s also, you know, the shoulders, the hips, the knees, the ankles, it’s just kind of a really lovely therapeutic kind of warm up, really that grounds you and connects you and brings you to yourself. So you’re kind of letting go of whatever whatever’s going on in your life, so that you’re in a really optimal place, but then doing your yoga practice.
Right. Nice. I like that because there are so many different styles and I think that’s why I wanted to actually call attention to it too, because while one out of my own personal curiosity and so people could learn about it, but there’s so many styles and it gets very confusing. So people hear the word yoga and it’s, it’s just, it’s such a catch-all for so many different things. And it’s just not one thing. So I really liked this idea of purposefully creating some kind of flow or this energy block release, that’s it.
And also it’s, it’s kind of looking at all the different layers that you could have almost not quite simultaneously, but you know, some styles of yoga is both physical based and that’s great. And then their energy work will be happening. And then it is shifts that were happening because just because of taking the physical form of whatever you’re doing, but with do yoga, we’re consciously looking at the physical movement, the breath work, and the intention behind that and okay, is a beginner. You might not be able to get all of those. It might just be, you know, challenging enough to get your body in the right position or some approximation to the right position. But as you move forward and you get more familiar with the movement, then you, you know, you incorporate the breath and that can be really lovely and calming, and then the intention behind it you know, what are you hoping to achieve? You know, something like mountain pose, you can use standard mountain, you can feel strong, you could feel still you could feel empowered. You could feel earth and grounded with the feet in the, in the, you know, the connection with the earth, or you could feel lifted and spacious if you focused on the crown of the head and that, you know, as being so much of the mountain. So this is different aspects you can put to that. And that works through, on
Any of the yoga. I do that. I like that idea because yeah, I always try to embody, I always look at the word of what the pose is. And I mean, like an easy example to like a mountain was a beautiful example, but like even tree pose too, I really try to get into that whole idea of being a tree and being rooted in the earth. And I mean, I kind of joke about it sometimes because even when I’m teaching and I, you know, sometimes might fall over a little or something, I just think, okay, well, the wind’s blowing me today, you know, but I really love this aspect of embodiment of what something is and the different things that relate to it. It’s not just one little thing. I love the idea of the layers because that’s what the yoga too. I think people, sometimes they approach it as just okay, a physical practice, but then there is that you just go deeper and deeper and deeper than just the endless teachings too. I think for, and I love the idea of yoga as a way to come back to yourself and to be still and to be present in the world without all of the chaos
Conversation moves into a topic about women and the various changes in their life, especially relating to hormones from maiden mother to crone
In general. I don’t really feel like, and I hope this is changing. We do see small changes here and there, but they’re not always supported during pregnancy having children and even kind of get left behind. And they’re like, like you said, even the contract work, it’s something that, you know, these kinds of protections for women, or they’re not necessarily nurtured and taken care of because there’s ways to get around having to deal with maternity leave and, and supporting women in these things. But we also do take on the bulk of the work of supporting elderly parents and you know, the bigger familial re traditional responsibilities. And again, I want to be clear, I’m not saying that men don’t do this, but typically we’re still in this kind of structure where it is more difficult for women. And on top of it, they’re managing their professional lives.
So, but I think with having children and obviously it’d be that it disturbs a lot of people’s lives for various reasons, especially the first one. And while some people maybe can do it more ease than others, but I think in general, I think the children and also obviously puberty is our problem for smaller people, but we’re not, I don’t even know if yoga would help them. And I know that also with menopause, it can be very messy for some people, for me, it was messy for other people. I know that it, you know, they just go it and it’s no problem, or they just have minor symptoms. And there’s also so many different symptoms. So I think it’s interesting that like this has, you know, the motherhood part of it has changed, but then you’ve kind of stuck with it to go into the perimenopause and menopause, taking care of people with that. I know that you’re a menopause yoga accredited teacher. I’ve seen that you’ve studied actually how to help women with this. And I was wondering with their professional lives, not being supported when they come to yoga and there, or not just yoga, but I know that you have like a program that you’re working on, how, what is like some, some of the things that people would learn though, through something like that? Like what, what are the things besides the general assanas or poses that would be taught?
A lot of it is a sense of community, you know I think women particularly really respond to, to talking and to having an environment where they can share, should they feel able to share. So there’s that kind of community of like-minded people all going through the same thing and kind of normalizing it a little bit, but it’s, you know, everybody’s got something going on and that works just as well with pregnancy and, you know, with being a new mom as it does this, this ageingstage of life as well. So typically in a workshop, but not so much in a, in a yoga class, but if I was running a good workshop, but yeah, we were to have some kind of circle time women to actually express how they’re feeling and just to be heard, actually, you don’t necessarily need to fix people.
This is what I’ve kind of discovered. There’s a power in just being heard and listened to, which is really, really quite potent the there’s such such a huge range of symptoms and experiences. And it’s so, so much dependent on the individual woman now how their menstrual cycle is how their hormone levels have been and how they’ve lived their life and actually related to their menstrual cycle and their experiences of being a woman up to that point. So that influences how they could feel whether that comes out as a physical symptom, whether that comes out as a more mental or emotional symptom. So it’s certainly when I went one-to-one with somebody it’s, it’s very much finding out where, where is the imbalance? Where is the help? Where is, where is this collection of symptoms? Cause it usually is where is that collection of symptoms leading and what does that particular woman need?
So for instance, yeah, if it manifests itself as too much heat in the body that could show so energetic heat, and that could show us having hot flushes of having night sweats, it’d be physical symptoms, or it could show as being irritable, being angry, having menarage, you know, actually a term for it now isn’t that it’s not just rage, it’s menarage specific. So it could take on a physical form or a mental or emotional form kind of just having that safe environment to experience things from and how you would work with that would be different. So you could use cooling practices to cool the systemic energy in the body. And that might be slower movements, or you might actually need to burn off that heat in a controlled way. So certainly with that, with that example, you could go either way on that one.
It might be, you need to call as much as possible, you know, have the advice to have natural fibers, not drinking spicy foods. So it kind of brings in lifestyle choices as well. Or you have that choice of maybe to, to embrace the heat and accept that you’re going to get hot and sweaty and do it in a controlled way. So some women will find that go to hot yoga class will actually really work for them because it’s perfectly acceptable to sweat a lot. It’s going to happen. It was a pretty poor, hot yoga class if you’re not at the end of it, isn’t it. And being able to do that in a controlled way, let it all out. Then that means I have less hot, hot flushes during the day or the week that follows, but everything, everything needs to be unique to the woman.
So it’s kind of get these techniques could help for these kinds of conditions and these kinds of experiences, but you need to play around with them and see what works for you in general, with a menopause yoga class, you’re looking at relaxation as well. It’s creating that, that field of acceptance of what you’re going through. It’s creating a safe space just to be just to be you and to accept whatever happens comes up in that, in that space and to let go of stress because I mean, health-wise, I think just about any health conditions made worse by stress, but particularly around menopause. So the more of the stuff you’ve got going on, the more likely you are, I think to actually have symptoms. But some of that stuff is within your control. Some of that stuff is without your control. You know, if you’ve got a big demanding job and you just want to carry on as normal, then that’s going to create or potentially create problems. You know, if you’re caring for an elderly relative or if you’ve suffered loss and I’m going through grief, then obviously that’s, that’s a form of stress on the body as well. So it’s the same. Yeah.
And take care of things. Yeah. I think that’s, I think getting permission to even doing that too, like you said, like a high pressure career or something like that, if somebody else can even say, you know, cause maybe their family might say, Oh, you need to chill out or whatever, but they might get angry at their family for saying that. Whereas if they’re working with other women and people can say you’re normal, you’re okay, this is our life. And you know, you’ll get through it and have that space for them and giving them tools. That’s I think that’s really beneficial. I mean, my own mom, she had a menopause when I was a teenager. And of course, as a teenager, I wasn’t really paying a lot of attention to her problems. So she died many years ago. And then when I went through menopause, she was gone and I didn’t really have somebody to even ask questions of, I mean, of course there’s books and things like that.
I think it’s really great to have these resources now and it’s becoming more in the public consciousness, I think, and less shame about it because I know that somebody said something to me once about it and really it’s, it was the truth. Yes. You know, I’m going through menopause. They asked me something about it and I felt so enraged by I’m so bothered by it. Like how dare they talk about menopause with me? You know? Like I just, I felt like it’s an inappropriate or whatever I decided, and I got over it in a few minutes, but I think but I still remember it. I remember that moment because I was like, I had to come to some kind of acceptance that my body was changing and whether I liked it or not, there was no other way to do it. So I really love this idea of having the community for this.
Is there something that you could maybe like give a technique to the audience, whether it’s maybe something like a breath thing or maybe describe something that they could do if they find themselves in a city, you know, they’re kind of going through something and to kind of bring them back to the center. Is there something I know that it’s, we’re not visual, so we can’t have a demonstration necessarily, but is there something maybe verbally that you could just mention as something somebody might be able to do to kind of bring themselves back to themselves for a moment?
Yeah. I mean, it very much depends upon where you’re at. I, I had, I had a routine appointment with the nurse the other day and I haven’t been in the doctors for ages anyway. And I haven’t been in since lockdown started. So I had to ring on my mobile phone a special number. So they would come and open the door to let me in. Then I had to sit in this waiting room that had, you know, plastic wrappers on half of the chairs and signs saying, don’t sit on these chairs. And there was plastic, plastic sheets up and things to divide us. And I sat there and I could feel myself getting stressed. I could feel the adrenaline flowing in. And I was thinking, you know, there’s no need for me to feel stressed. I’m perfectly safe. Everything’s fine. But I could feel myself reacting.
And eventually the nurse came out and said, I’m just going to be a few more minutes longer. And I thought, right, I’m going to sit and breathe because I can feel I’m getting warmed up and there’s no need for it. I’m going to sit and breathe. But because I already was agitated, it did help to a certain degree because I would’ve just sat there getting more agitated, but I’m aware it wasn’t as effective as if I’d been at home. So it’s kind of choosing your points. Yes, I can. I’ll, I’ll guide you through a breathing or breathing technique. Now something very simple, but if you’re using it, if you’re at that point of kind of crisis or even going towards that point of crisis, you might find it really hard to actually access it and you might need to either practice it more often. Cause daily daily practice is great.
So as I’m sure, you know, being a yoga teacher, you know, you get the most benefits if you actually practice things on a regular basis so that it becomes second nature so that when you use it, it’s, it’s much easier to kind of get in that groove, but it also can also help pups afterwards. Actually, you know, you’ve been been stressed or been agitated or been worried as you feel yourself, start to calm down. And for some people that can take quite a long time for the adrenaline levels to come, you know, turn back to normal, you could use it to kind of accelerate that normalizing. Does that make sense?
Yes, it totally does. And actually, I’m so glad that you mentioned that because one about the repetition, because I mean, in anything like an athlete or in anything we do, whether it’s creating art or music we practice, and this is something like doing it daily, there are parts of it that it’s going to take awhile, but it will become second nature. And I think that’s the beauty of it. So thank you for mentioning that about always trying to tell people you really should practice, even if it’s 15 minutes a day, you know, but of course they’re like I’m busy or whatever, but I really would like, I mean, because you can’t, it’s hard to even tell somebody in words that, you know, like you can say it, but unless they actually experience it and feel it and feel the benefits of it. So that’s why I like to have challenges and things to, to get people, to do the repetition for a few days. And then, then all of a sudden they realize, Oh wait, this feels good. So anyway, so yeah,
It is, it is getting it to that second nature level. And it surprised me that, you know, I couldn’t do that. I’ve been teaching yoga and practicing yoga for what 13, 14, 15 years. And I couldn’t get myself to that place. You know, two days ago. And I, I, you know, using techniques that I use regularly. So if that’s me, I mean, it helped. And it was, you know, but it was kind of a marginal help.
I think that’s also another great point though. Like we’re all just humans period. So, and there are going to be times in crisis moments or whatever where you’re going to get to that thing. And, but sometimes like we’re not rational all the time either, you know, COVID has created this environment that is unexpected too. So I, that’s why I feel like these tools are especially important now because what, that maybe you feel like you couldn’t have even come back to yourself immediately, but you had the awareness to do the breath. And then maybe if that happened 15 years ago, that wouldn’t have even been something, it could have been a full blown panic attack, something, you know, so I feel like, you know, we’re always evolving and changing. So, and I love, I mean, one of the things too is a lot of people look to yoga teachers or to other teachers and they put, which I think is a beautiful thing, goes, you want to trust your teacher, right? There’s also
Really, we’re just here to guide you to be so that you yourself are the person that is having the experience and learning. So anyway, sorry, a little tirade over there, but, but I just love, because I think those things are so important. Like we’re, everybody’s human, even the most, you know, famous person that we put on a pedestal, you know, that like, I just we’re all the same in so many ways. So anyway, so yeah. So my role as a teacher is to empower people towards self-awareness. This is what I feel was happening a couple of days ago. Yes, I’m, self-aware enough to know that I was getting stressed and could feel that as a physical thing, self-awareness aware enough to actually try and do something about it. Also self-aware enough to know that it perhaps wasn’t working as optimally as I would like it’s a half a self-compassion just to sit with that, knowing that I was just taking a small step which would be helpful rather than expecting it a perfect technique and you know, calm to descend within seconds. Yeah. Anyway, so yes. Now we’re going to take a short break before Susan guides us in a breathing technique.
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I have this whole thing, you know, your breath is your most available tool. And when you work with your breathing, you can naturally influence your heart rate. So that if you are agitated, if you work with your breath, you will bring the heart rate down. And so calm the body and able to get that relaxation response. I’m a little bit more active in the body, which is usually what we need. So this is, this is just a very simple technique, certainly for using it. Perimenopause, menopause, and perimenopause and menopause. You can think about whatever symptom you have or however you would like to use it. So if you’re feeling agitated, you might like to invite calm. If you’re feeling angry or you might like to invite peace or forgiveness, even if you’re feeling, you know, got achy joints, then you might like to release, release that pain and let go of it.
So you can kind of tune in, give yourself what you need with what I’m going to describe. So yes, with breathing, you could do the standing up, but you might want to do it sitting down, probably be preferable to do it sitting down. If you’re sitting sure, you’re welcome to sit on the floor. If you’re feeling super yogic, but sitting on a chair is also equally good. Make sure you’ve got your feet connected with the floor so that the feet are anchored and grounded, connected to the earth, allowing the spine to be tall and lifted so that you’re not slouching at all. And they said enables the, the lungs to have the space to actually breathe a little deeper. And then yeah, if it’s comfortable and you close your eyes or maybe just lower your gaze turns where you were, I mean, you could do this on a, on a train or sitting on a park bench where you might like to have a little bit more per kind of peripheral awareness and then tune into your breathing. So you just notice the in breath, you notice the out-breath just following that breath, inviting your mental awareness to stay focused on that breath, the in breath flowing in the out breath, flowing out and taking as long as it takes to allow that process to be natural and to be smooth with breathing techniques, you want the breath to feel super comfortable, super easy, no strain at all.
And then inviting that the in-breath and out-breath to be about the same length breathing in, breathing in, breathing out, breathing out, breathing in, breathing, in, breathing out, breathing out, but obviously doing so at a speed that feels right for you. And you may find as you focus on your breath, that you’re breathing naturally starts to deepen and you can allow that to happen. And then when you feel ready to, you might like to invite the out-breath to become a little bit longer than the in breath. You’re breathing in, breathing, in, breathing out, breathing out, breathing out. And as you made that, out-breath just a little bit longer than the in-breath. You could allow yourself to release, to let go of what no longer serves you, whether that is excess heat, whether that is mental unrest, whether it is imitation or aches and pains, just let it slowly slip out in a way, just like the breath. And you can extend that process for however long. You can either maintain focus or however long you feel you need to let go of what you need to let go off. Cause sometimes there might be a resistance.
Well thank you for teaching everyone how to do that because I think this is a beautiful way to that is so true. I mean, we forget. And actually that’s the first thing that happens when we get stressed is often will be our breath is very shallow. So and our body really needs that oxygen to function and it does create the calm. So, and our heart rate to the connection of the breath to the heart. I mean, I think we forget about all these things, especially when we’re stressed, because who wants to think of anything and you’re like, ah, everything’s going wrong. So thank you for sharing that. So I know that you also have other things in your toolkit, like you do Thai massage and then even Indian head massage. So I’m just curious about the time massage, because I personally I’ve had shots and massage and I’ve had you know, deep tissue massage and I know a little bit about massage, but I’ve never experienced time massage. And I’m wondering, what is it about time, his eyes that, is there something about it that makes it a unique from the other ones? Or was it more like kind of shiatsu
It’s it’s a little bit light shot soon. The fact that you do it fully closed, laying on a futon and you get manipulated into positions, certainly with the Thai yoga massage that I do, it’s partly like assisted yoga postures. So you might, I might move a client into kind of like the tree posts and the lying down position. It’s partly energy work. And so you actually massage the energy lines in the body. Obviously in yoga, we call those noughties and Thai yoga massage. They’re called sun lines in traditional Chinese medicine. That’s more meridians, but that same kind of thing features that I believe in shout suit as well, so that, you know, you can’t be massage in the feet and then affect a different part in the body. So you’re bringing out an overall wellness for their escape to stretch if that’s what people need, if it’s, if something’s affecting them on a physical level that they need to actually release tension from a joint, but there is scope actually to work with more energetically, you know, a little bit like you were doing Reiki, I suppose, you know, you can use the hands to direct the energy and free the energy, but you also using movement as well, which actually Reiki, Reiki doesn’t date.
Right. So, and what about Indian head massage now? What is that actually, I’m not really. I mean, cause I know that there’s like I forgot what they call it on the opposite part of the body on the feet. I know that there are people that do like a kind of pressure points. Yeah. That’s what it’s called. Is the head massage kind of similar where you’re thinking about something like that or no,
It might be possible to, I’m sure there probably are complimentary therapies out there that have kind of mapped to the school or whatever different, different bits. But certainly the way I do it is more as you know, is a, hands-on potentially with oil as well, but it depends on the clients, but we actually do the shoulders, the neck, the face, the head, and yeah, because we’ve got all these lovely cranial nerves coming through the jaw and you know, we do a lot of talking. We do a lot of ITI using the jaw muscles. It can be quite a commonplace to hold tension and it’s a very easy place to actually be able to relax, to bring, you know, to get that relaxation response more active. Again, it depends turns on people, but and, and adapted where if we’re carrying a burden, we feel that through tension in our shoulders and it doesn’t have to be like a big, heavy books up burden, pretty emotional burden.
You know, you can, you know, you feel that through the neck and shoulders and it’s common to feel tension to the neck and the shoulders. So actually consciously just relaxing that part and easing that part can have huge therapeutic benefits freeing up the throat chakra. If I say it’s bringing up the jaw and releasing tension and energy from the head, I know when I work with clients, sometimes you can actually feel it, you know, people’s heads, cause it just got so much going on in them. So in that case, you know, we did head muscles is actually really good cause it just, it releases that gives it an outlet. Obviously
There’s two. I mean, and I wasn’t even, because I just think head massage, I just think, you know, somebody who’s rubbing your head like
We do. When I do it, I kind of blend a bit of Thai yoga massage with it as well. So I’ll go down the arms and into the hands to help help with that relaxation response. We move into the top of the back, the shoulder blades so that the shoulders, the neck, the face and the head, they actually touch our heads very much. But in, in yoga, there’s, there’s a whole load of holiday points. You to have the Bindu point at the back, which is, has a strong kind of spiritual, spiritual connection. So, you know, since I’ve been doing Indian, had UNO and I washed my hair differently, I’ve made sure I get my, you know, my finger tips in and I give my head a fate, a head massage once I’m with them having a shower and washing my hands.
I mean, even people who go to the hairdresser or have some kind of treatment, you know, they love getting their hair washed by someone they’re doing that, you know, thing that we don’t even do for ourselves. So, yeah. And I’m actually it’s very interesting about the jaw too, because I think we forget that we hold tension here too. I mean, because I know even while I’m doing some yoga poses and it’s funny because somebody will say to me, Oh, well you said, relax your jaw during that pose. And you know, it’s amazing like that you realize that other people have the same tension or whatever and I’m thinking well, yeah, because I’m usually going through whatever’s happening a lot of times in my body. So I remembered to tell people, okay, relax your jaw, relax, relax a specific muscle or something. Yeah, I think and even just bringing the awareness to that.
So, and of course that is like having like a huge treat, having any kind of massage and somebody caring for you and releasing that kind of tension. That’s awesome. So I, I actually, I didn’t even really think about that cause I don’t really, I haven’t seen that very frequently offered. I mean, I know that it exists. I thought that’s very interesting. So what is a resource that you think the listeners could benefit from that maybe it could be anything as a person, a book something that you would like to share with the audience?
Yeah, so there’s a fantastic yoga teacher and yoga therapist and trainer in the UK called emergence mortali and she has written this amazing book about women’s yoga and how you can use yoga at each stage of a, of a woman’s life. Going from puberty all the way to, you know, very old age, the techniques and practices she’s gotten now are phenomenal. She has a website with it called www dot [inaudible] dot co.uk. And within that, there’s a big resources section and with downloadable relaxations or you can nidras, which are great. So I’m big into relaxation and actually, you know, consciously relaxing the body as a way of letting go of all the busy-ness and the doing let alone any stress that you might have going on in your life is a way of kind of recalibrating the body systems. And she’s got some beautiful ones in that for different ages and stages of women’s life. So there is one in there, the paramedicals one in after menopause and post-menopause, but it’s yeah,
Actually thank you for sharing that with us. I will put, so just so the listeners know I’m going to put all of the links, everything that we’ve talked about, how you can get in touch with Susan and all of the different things that she does. So we’ll have that in the show notes and in the description in the podcast. So you’ll find that there, now I do want to ask you, you are collaborating with somebody for a kind of holistic program that’s coming up. Can you tell us a little bit about that happy Mormon fan? I think that’s what it’s called.
Yeah, the really the really happy hormone plant, because that’s what we want to have a really happy hormone. So yes, we got on the 2nd of November, we’re running a four week course together. My friend and colleague is a nutritionist. And obviously I’m using my yoga therapy skills as to how you can actually bring about hormonal balance in a more natural way. So obviously we’re looking at diets, we’ll be looking at lifestyle. There’ll be a toolkit to yoga techniques to use whether that be movement, whether that be meditation or breath, work or relaxation, get a bit of a thing coming on here. Relaxation is a cake. And yeah, so you can really kind of empower yourself to, to know what to actually do. You know, a lot of the time we might, we might recognize that our hormones are out of balance, but actually not know what to do or not feel supported in knowing what to do best. Cause there’s a lot of conflicting information out there. So right now we’re putting this package together. So there’ll be online, online tutorials and videos. There’ll be some live contents. There’ll be the Facebook group to support everybody with any, any there’ll be Q and a Q and sessions. There’ll be a doctor sheet to try for the four weeks as well.
I will also put information on how you can learn more about that and get in touch with Susan about that as well. So I wanted to also ask you one more question about the moon because this is something that some people follow and some people don’t and like women’s cycles are often associated with the moon. And I know that some people, you know, they have their cycle on the full moon or they have it on the new moon and some people are trying to adjust themselves to it. I mean, do you have any thoughts about that? And like, what if you feel like that’s beneficial or if that’s something that’s not in the realm of your kind of practice or,
Well, I’ve, I’ve done a lot of work myself looking at this and my both my parents are scientists. They’ve got scientific background are brought up in a household, which is very logical, very scientific. And so I’ve come to the whole of my yoga practice with a little bit of scepticism of, I didn’t really get this energy stuff. How does it all work? And the thought that the moon could influence us as individuals it’s like really, but it’s been my, my journey, my experience actually it does. So, I mean, I says one way is that yes, the moon, the moon full moon or a new moon has a different energy. It has a different energetic pole. So you know, the theory is that you know, we’re 70% water. So therefore that moon’s gravitational pull would affect us. I mean, I know the counter-argument for that is, well, you know, compared to the oceans were not really very much water to have, have an effect, but you know, you make your own, your own decision.
But I, yeah, I mean to get actually in sync with the moon cycles requires you to have a menstrual cycle that is 28 and a quarter days because that’s what the moon takes and you know, most of them don’t, or, you know, there’s, there’s a variation. I’ve never been on that. So I’m always, sometimes I’m in sync with the moon. Sometimes I’m out of sync with moon, but I feel I can tell the difference when I’m operating a full moon, administrating it, a new moon feels quite different from when it’s the other way around. So yeah, there, there is something that, and if you look in nature, there’s a lot of, a lot of a lot of the reproductive stuff happens around a full moon, whether it’s plants, algae, whether it’s animals, it’s, it’s all there and relating it to perimenopause and menopause.
It can be a way that if you’ve been quite in sync with your cycle and are quite aware of your menstrual cycle, it’s a way of actually managing, having irregular periods or not having a cycle at all. But you could attune yourself to the way the moon is. There’s a, there’s a lovely book by Alexandra Pope called wild power. And this talks about menstrual cycle awareness and that actually you have different energy levels. So you think about it with a, with a new moon when you just get that Crescent, you’ve got that kind of emerging Luna energy just as you would do, if you were finishing your period and you kind of start to be engaged with the world again, as you come to the full moon is there’s lots of potential energy there. And if that’s linking to, you know, when you’re ovulating, then you have typically at that stage, you would have lots of energy.
Usually, you can burn the candle at both ends and feel okay about it. And then as the moon starts to wane, you know, your energy levels can kind of just tail off a little bit. And you had had towards a quieter spell as you head towards that pre-menstrual time. And then you have kind of a new moon phase is when you’re resting and having your mind in there, having your, having your parents. So to kind of all, all fit, but to say doing that, perhaps if you’re not magistrated, you can still connect to those energies that kind of, okay, the new moon, I’m going to plant seeds of what I might like to accomplish or plants, plant ideas of what your intentions might be. Then you can watch them nurture, maybe have the opportunity to bring them to, to blossom it around the new moon and then harvest whatever you’ve done as you go back to that new moon phase again, is that making sense?
He does. And, well, actually one of the things that I had to come to on my own because I didn’t have a perimenopausal or menopausal yoga teacher to help me my journey at that time, actually, it’s part of the reason why I got back into yoga was my whole journey of not feeling well, but I do go through a cycle, even though I don’t have an actual period. And so I think some women may not even know that, like, I didn’t know that that would still be, it would be in my awareness, so to speak that I didn’t even cause my body still does, even though I’m not having the whole full-on flushing out. I am still have feel bloated. I still even get hungry. Because I know for me, like some people have obviously different symptoms, but those were mine where I would get very hungry when I would first get my period.
And just for a day I felt like I could eat everything on the planet and then I would have gone, but I still go through, I mean, I don’t feel like I want to eat quite the entire planet now on that, but I still do have this cycle where I feel bloated and just all these things too. So there are still like, even though you’re not having some of the physical aspects of it, you’re still doing, you’re still connected. We’re all connected to nature. And I think we do forget about that sometimes. So I just wanted to share something that I didn’t even realize I would have, I just thought it was going to end. And then that was going to be it because it’d be like flat-lining or something
Tides, isn’t it that you have, you have the more energizing energy that kind of fits you and builds you and where you’re able to do more, but that has to be balanced just like the yin and yang with the quieter more, self-reflective more drawing in energy as well. And you need to both. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for taking your time today because I know you’re very busy with children and teaching women and teaching yoga, and I really do appreciate it and I’m sure that everyone here will have a real benefit from listening today. And can you just share your website before we close off? Yeah, sure. It’s yogaherapystockport.co.uk.
I’m so glad that Susan decided to have this conversation with me today. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did and be sure to leave a review on Apple podcasts music in this podcast includes Cast of Pods by Doug Maxwell and God fury, but Ano Domini Beats until next time Namaste.