Guest: Megan Nolan of Yoga at my Desk
The Mindful Soul Center Podcast Interview with Yoga at my Desk’s Megan Nolan (formerly Vitality Wellness Maui) Megan specializes in teaching people how to do yoga at their desk! She is a yoga teacher and personal trainer and gives us the dirt on active sedentary, sitting disease and the benefits of proper posture and breath. We also discuss negative self-talk and the harm it can do to a person.
Yoga At My Desk
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Music in this episode includes:
God Fury by Anno Dominii Beats
Birds by Silent Partner
Cast of Pods by Doug Maxwell
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Interview Transcript
Welcome to the mindful soul center podcast. My name is Amy Adams. I’m your host and the producer of this podcast.
Recently I had the pleasure of interviewing Megan Nolan of vitality wellness. She specializes in teaching people how to do yoga at their desk. In this episode we discuss posture breath sitting disease, active, sedentary awareness, self-talk, and much, much more. I hope you’ll enjoy this episode. Before we dive in, I have just one announcement. The mindful soul center now has a new network. It’s free. It’s similar to Facebook except for there’s no ads. It all focused on yoga, meditation, philosophy, art, music, all of the things that make life interesting. Please join us. It’s www dot mindful soul dot center.
Hi, Megan. Welcome to the mindful soul center podcast and I’m really glad that you’re able to take some time from beautiful Maui. Is that correct? Yeah. Well, we want to know about that in a little bit too. But for everyone who is listening today, this is Megan Nolan and she has a business called Vitality Wellness Maui
And works with various people helping them too. Sit up straight there. That’s really the very simple version. No, but I’m going to let Megan tell you a little bit about herself just as an introduction to get started.
Great. Thank you. I thank you so much for having me. Yes. So I live on Maui, my business Vitality Wellness. And in my work I am a personal trainer and a yoga instructor and I help people integrate the tools of yoga into their Workday so that they can optimize their health both on the physical level and their mental level so that, you know, basically as you said, sitting up straight, balancing the effects of working on a computer and oftentimes slouching a lot when we work on the computer. Right? And so helping people activate their postural awareness, their body awareness, their awareness of their breath and so that they can have time to keep their body moving, keep it strong and quiet their minds so that they can bring their stress level down, which then helps to focus and be more creative and helps people be more productive. And so it’s beneficial for the individual, for the person. And then it’s also really beneficial for the business because it has trickle effects into their health and into their, you know, how much they’re at work and how much they’re doing when they’re at work. And so it’s, it’s a really beautiful trickle effect because as you know, yoga is powerful and affects us on so many levels simultaneously. So it’s really fun to share these tools with people.
Yeah, that’s great. So but yeah, I think when we think of Maui, I mean, at least when I think of Maui, I don’t think of people working at desks and behind computers. I think of like paradise, right? So, but you know, everybody, everywhere, we’re all a lot of us. That’s what we’re doing now. We’re sitting behind a desk and in front of a computer and, you know, it’s funny now actually, as I’m sitting here speaking with you, I feel like I have to say that I have that effect. You sure that I’m not slouching over and, but I mean I think spine health is so important. And I just, I’ve had some little minor issues here and there with my back, but I think I probably wouldn’t have even had them. Maybe if it, if I wasn’t sitting all the time. I mean has really, I, I don’t, is it 24, seven?
But I feel like we’re right. We weren’t designed to be seat seated all the time. We were designed to be moving and living a life and doing things. So what inspired you to kind of focus on that part of yoga? Because a lot of times people think of yoga and they think of, and I know you’re a personal trainer also, but you think of yoga as like, well some people still think of it as kind of Whoa, Whoa. And but you do, you kind of think of people like burning incense and you know, living in peace, love and harmony kind of idea a little bit. So it almost is not that it’s a dichotomy, but the kind of like work world, which is very production oriented and people grinding out stuff. And then like how did you, how did you even come up with the idea to think about going to speak to people about yoga and teach them different movements?
I’ve been doing this for about 14 years and pretty much the whole time I’ve been doing it I’ve been working with business professionals in my personal training business and so they were presenting with a lot of chronic consistent symptoms from sitting down a lot. And so it’s always been part of my focus with my private clients and then with my students that were coming to class that were dealing with the same things. And so it was, it’s always sort of been a constant in my work. And then I realized that there was a bit of a gap between people either exercising at home or going to a yoga studio or going to a gym. And there was really a need that hadn’t been filled yet, at least here on Maui that people need to learn. As you said, people are designed to move and they need to learn how to take these little movement breaks throughout the day because exercise is great and it’s very beneficial.
But an exercising for an hour a day or doing an hour of yoga doesn’t counteract the effect of sitting for eight hours. It’s called active, sedentary, so it’s great that people are exercising, but unless they’re taking little breaks throughout the day, it isn’t really as impactful or beneficial as it could be. So really important to give people tools to learn how to just take little movements and they may be just hadn’t realized that you can do yoga anywhere. Like you don’t have to be at a yoga studio with the incense and the crystals and the whole shebang. You can do yoga anytime, anywhere, right in your chair. And really, as you know, yoga is ultimately a breathing practice. And most people when they’re slouched, they will a, it’s physically 30% more difficult for them to breathe properly, and B, they probably aren’t even aware of the fact that they’re breathing.
And typically people take short, shallow breaths, which all combined triggers more stress. And so when they’re taught to even just sit up and take a couple of deep breaths, that’s so powerful immediately and long term. And so I just thought, wow, wouldn’t this be a great opportunity to bring the tools to people where they spend most of their day? Yeah. It was like, okay, this is great. And people have been really, really receptive both on the individual level. You know, I work with entrepreneurs, small business owners, and then people on the, you know, upper management levels as well because they know the impact, you know, and sometimes it’s a bit of a conversation and they need to understand it from the productivity side of things. But ultimately people want the people that they love and their team members to be healthy and happy. And if I can show them and help them do that, then you know, people are really open to it. So it’s been, yeah, it’s been a really great journey. And so it’s been about two years that I’ve been focusing on yoga at work and workplace wellness.
Well, I think also the great thing about it is that you’re normalizing it because I think sometimes there are people that are into doing yoga or doing different things and maybe would want to stretch at work, but they might feel very self conscious. Like [inaudible]
They’re in a open platform with other people working and they’re not necessarily gonna want to get up and stretch or do something. I mean maybe they’ll walk into the other room or something, but it’s like you’re normalizing like this is something that everybody can do and making it more accessible. Because I think one of the things that I
Learn from what, what you had said on your website about how you [inaudible] it’s you kind of, what was the word that you used? There was a thing that like your, you want to make yoga accessible like, and not intimidating and fun. I think maybe the word was fun that you use, but it was great because it was like, I think that’s one of the things too. People think they hear that word and they don’t really, I don’t know. It is scary cause it has like this kind of association with it too that you’re already supposed to, you know, you see pictures of people doing poses and stuff and you think you’re already supposed to be doing that. Like, and you don’t really know that you can just be simple things to I and also there’s the other spiritual part of it, which I, I think yoga is a spiritual practice, but if your management brings in that teaching, then they’re, you know, they’re creating the culture there that it’s like, okay, like you can [inaudible] be, get, be getting up and doing stuff and not I dunno, I mean maybe offices have changed a lot since I used to work in one, but I think that it was something that wasn’t really normalize like it should, do I agree? Yes. There definitely needs to be a shift in workplace culture and acceptance around it and have it be sort of introduced from the top down or from somebody who’s already into it. And they, they kind of open people’s mind to, as you said, it’s not that crazy twisty pretzel poses that you might see on social media that it can just be these small little movements. And so it’s, it’s one of those things that once people start to do it and they feel the benefits and they feel the effects, then they want to continue. And now that more research is coming out all the time about the impact of chronic sitting, people are really understanding the need and like ultimately necessity for people to be breaking up the long periods of sitting because it literally, like, there’s a term that’s now been quantified, they call it sitting disease.
So it’s a collection of risk factors that come from sitting for a long time. Weight gain around the midsection, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, high blood sugar, all setting the stage for a variety of chronic diseases. And so that’s basically, you know it’s a common theme now because people are sitting so much in there working on a computer. So integrating these tools, you know, and they may seem a little out there at first, do people, cause they’re like, Oh I don’t want to do with stretching. I don’t want to wear my yoga pants at work or what have you, but you don’t have to. And like the way that I’ve designed it in the way that I share the tools is that people can do it right at their desk, even in their work clothes. Like I’ve taught yoga inside every single power plant that we have here on Maui.
You don’t have many. We have three, but I’ve been inside of each one teaching yoga. A group of gentlemen all were in their coveralls and their work boots and they hadn’t done anything like that before. And so at first they were kind of a little bit reluctant and very playful and fun with it, but they loved it, you know? And, and so that’s kind of speaking to the physical side. They were sort of getting the experience of stretching and connecting to their body. But as you mentioned, I like to lighten it up a little bit and really help them connect ultimately just back to their breath and teaching them to breathe. And so luckily here, at least being Hawaii, like the, the ha the breath is such an innate part of the cultural experience here. And so there’s a reverence to the breadth already that people understand.
And so they’re really open to it because it’s part of the culture here is understanding that we are connected to each other by way of the breath and that we’re all connected to the earth. And so there is already sort of a overlying theme of spirituality here, at least that people are more receptive to it. But I can also explain it from the scientific perspective. If people are not interested in that sort of side of things, if they want to know what happens when I breathe deeply and how it activates the vagal nerve and yada, yada, yada can talk about it from that perspective as well. And so those people are like, Oh, there’s science behind this. We will yoga stops, you know, digest and understand and enjoy instead of being like coming at it with this pretentious tone of everything and you should be able to do this, that, and the other thing. It’s like, no, that’s not necessarily all this necessary is that you’re here and that you’re just breathing. So it’s kind of fun. It’s kind of fun to open it up to people a lot more and give them a chance to do it.
Yeah, I think that like the whole breath part of it too. I didn’t even realize when I, I did yoga many years ago and then I didn’t do it for a long time and when I went back to it, I didn’t, I never really consciously made the connection that really it was the breath. That was the whole benefit for me. It was like at some point I had like this realization. I was like, I just, I’m breathing really deeply and well and I had a very bad habit of smoking in the past at some point. And when I quit smoking,
I mean I know that, you know, it was poison or whatever. I was killing myself fine. But I was actually taking deep breaths When I was smoking. And then I realize afterwards when I stopped smoking that that was the thing that I didn’t miss smoking. I missed good deep breath.
And and then when I started doing yoga again, I was like, ah, this is like the deep breath. I’m getting my deep breaths now without having the poison. So it was really like, kind of fascinating to even like re have that realization for myself because I didn’t really feel like I missed cigarettes because they’re terrible. They smell and all that other stuff. But but I mean, I think I really, I think the thing that I, I never realized why I missed it. It wasn’t even like the addiction part of nicotine or something, but, and I realized it’s because I was breathing because you know, and also like at work we would go people would take breaks together and go have a cigarette, you know, so you’d actually take that like instead of having a, like when you didn’t smoke anymore, I know this is kind of like a strange like twist on this conversation, but you know, it was like a thing where you did that where it was kind of acceptable for everyone to go and meet and have a cigarette and then come back to work and like necessary like maybe if you went to have like a little group yoga break or, you know what I mean?
It seems so normal. So
Yeah. And that’s one of the things that I do is a breathing break and it’s kind of the, the the take on that, like people going out for a smoke break, but they’re not going for a smoke. They’re going to breathe deeply, which is what you’re saying you were doing at the same time. Right. But they’re, they’re doing something healthy and beneficial for their body instead of smoking cigarettes. But yeah, it’s kind of, it needs to get normalized in that sense because it’s normal for people to take breaks and go out to smoke. But it’s weird for them to take a break and breathe, breathe. That’s where we got it a little bit skewed. And so yeah, I think that that’s something I thank you for mentioning that actually cause I think that’s something I could present as well. What do you think about this?
Yeah, I mean, and also I do feel like breathing it does settle your mind and, and that’s such a huge part too of like if you have clarity, like you said, it brings out creativity and all these things. They have studies that show all of this stuff then any, we’re telling people get these benefits by doing it. It seems like an easy decision to start to make these like little break
s and do that. How did you get into yoga itself though? Like did, do you do personal training like fitness stuff before and then later yoga or vice versa?
I’ve always loved to exercise, like you’ve another girl. I would like go running and I was dancing and this, that and the other thing. And so when I went to university, I didn’t really know what to study and my parents were sort of nudging, AKA pushing me to go to university. And so I just of randomly out of sitting there chose to study gerontology, which is the study of aging. And so after I graduated from there, I was like, Oh, I can’t do that. I’m way too empathetic. I can’t be in that setting, this, that and the other thing. And then I’d always been exercising. And so I thought, well why don’t I approach aging from the preventative side and you know, help people stay strong, stay healthy, both on the physical, mental, emotional levels. And so I became a personal trainer, but I was practicing yoga already.
But I became a personal trainer first. And then I started to see that I was not really relating to how hard people were pushing their clients when they were exercising. Like really that sort of like, go for it. We’re going to work out till we bomb it sort of mentality. And I was like, ah, that is not okay. And so I decided to do my yoga teacher training. And so that was second but only by like a year later. And then after I did that, I realized there was, there’s a very obvious overlap between, you know, postural awareness, breath awareness, muscle activation when you’re exercising. And that’s also there in yoga, you know, on the physical layer and then you go deeper obviously with yoga. But we could bring in those elements because they were already speaking the same language sort of, and then sort of start to weave in the, the mind body connection in that presence and the activation from that inner sense of stability and strength that comes from the yoga practice.
And so kinda pretty much started weaving them together right away. And so that was in 2005 when 2006 do you have like a particular style of yoga or like a, not an idol but like a role model maybe of like the does some kind of practice or is it more just like general, like Hatha yoga or are you into like some other styles like [inaudible]? Well, the style that I was trained in with a hybrid of Iyengar and Ashtanga yoga, and my teacher called it Vijayana. And [inaudible] is the Sanskrit word for inner knowing. And so it’s based largely on the myo Fashional meridians. So myo is muscle and then fascia is connective tissue. And we have these meridians throughout the body and you can feel them when you’re in poses, you know, you can feel it coming up from your foot to your leg and up into your torso.
Like if you’re doing triangle pose, for example. So these mild fashion meridians basically are the lines of stretch and the lines of pole that we see in the body. And, and we can feel in the body when we do poses. And so my teacher use those to help us understand it from an anatomical perspective, but also from that energetic perspective of activating the body engaging. So that’s the Iyengar element of things like very specific alignment to the body and, and very much of an internal of the body. And then she didn’t do much Ashtanga to make it vigorous. But like I like to bring in a little bit more, almost like a cardio element. Just like doing things within poses to elevate the heart rate a little bit to give that cardio element. And so my current teacher practices in a really similar way, it’s very Iyengar based, but has a bit more of an intensity to it.
And so yeah, I guess it all falls under the umbrella of Hatha yoga. But now it’s more specific to me is, is spinal health and spinal mobility when I’m talking to people that are sitting like this all day. So it brings in a bit of an element of qualities. I haven’t studied pilates officially, but like bringing in an element of that for the different connections that we work on in core activation. So [inaudible] it’s a hard to answer for me to give that answer, you know, cause it’s like I’m sort of taking what I’ve learned and sort of woven it together with exercise. So do you have a favorite quote that inspires you? The one that I always think of BKS Iyengar. I would say that the mind is the hardest thing to adjust in any Asana. And so it’s talking about how much the mind will wander.
And so really like getting the, the mind to hold steadiness is, is the most challenging thing. You can twist your body into all sorts of positions, but to get your mind to be still, it’s the most challenging thing, at least for me. And so it really, it’s, it’s been a really powerful tool to at least become cognizant of that and start to really try to train my mind to be steady. And then that sort of leads to the second one because my second one is a Rumi quote. And that would be to live life as if everything is rigged in your favor. And so it’s really speaks to the need to stay attentive to the way that you’re, you’re thinking in the way that you’re talking to yourself. And that is, you know, controlling the mind from the first quote and staying in that place of receptivity and openness and trust, you know, because for a long time, I mean it’s definitely still whispers at me here and there, but for a significant portion of my life I dealt with pretty serious depression.
And so I, my, my tendency was to have a very negative lens on life. And so it was, I was kind of creating a self fulfilling prophecy, if you will. You know, cause I was like, nothing’s working, this is hard, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then of course, nothing’s working. It’s hard. And so really to take a step back and practice with my practices, with intention and, and be really diligent with my morning practices and my self care and starting to be come more aware of what I was saying to myself in my head. Because when I realized what I was saying to myself, I would never say anything like that to anyone. Like it was you. And so really training the mind and becoming aware of the mind and pruning out those old thoughts and then starting to create a new dialogue and start a new story has been a powerful piece of transformation for me. And so yeah, I guess those, those two quotes kind of feed both into that and have been really helpful for me to start to kind of guide my next chapter.
Well, this current chapter, but yeah. Well I mean I think depression, it skews everything. But I think the realization that you were you would never speak to anyone else like that is so significant because
It’s, it’s hard to kind of take a hold of that though I do to say, all right, I can change my mind. Like what is it? If you change your mind, you can change your world. It’s so powerful to kind of take back your life by not allowing
Yourself to be mean to yourself.
I think the most important piece in that is initially becoming aware, which is the yoga of it. Cause I, I didn’t even know that I was doing it for so long and I was hearing it, but I was until I started taking a step back and, and viewing it and wondering like, why is this happening? Why am I doing this? The other thing, and realizing that as you said, there’s always a choice. And I never really occurred to me that I could think different thoughts. You know, I was like, this is the way I am and this is how I am and this is what I do and dah, dah, dah, and realize like I am creating those thoughts. They’re not just happening in my head. It’s like I can consciously choose different thoughts. Like I can refute that thought and then consciously choose to tell myself the actual truth, you know? And so I think what happens is people are so running that narrative over and over and over that they’re maybe not even aware that they’re doing, you know? And it’s become like this like quiet murmur, hum in the background all the time that they just aren’t even aware. And so that’s like one of those things is, I forgot I was trying to remember this statistic, but it was something like [inaudible],
Well we have 70,000 thoughts. You just read my mind. I was going to like pop out and say that about like the 70,000 thoughts every day.
And it’s like, that’s 50 thoughts a minute. And I forget what I was trying to start. I was trying to remember was how many of those are negative depreciating self-talk? And I can’t, I can’t remember. But it was something alarming and it was like, man, we got to learn to be more gentle. And I’m like, and so just, yeah, it’s an interesting thing. And so it’s been a big piece for me and brought me a lot of peace, which is good. So yeah, it’s, it’s one of those things we have to, we be, can, can become the conscious creator of our thoughts and therefore be the conscious co-creator of our reality. So it’s like trickle effect, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And that is like my big theme lately. I don’t know, it’s just been coming up so much lately for me. Like, because sometimes people can feel like what they’re doing isn’t making a difference, you know, like bigger problems, like bigger issues. So, or even small things, they don’t, you know, they don’t even realize that all these little actions that you take can, they do not only help yourself personally and then when you’re more fulfilled and feeling better then you’re able to help other people. But like, just simple things like, like recycling or something. I don’t know. Like how, because you know, I think this big overwhelmed stuff too that happens with these bigger problems in the world. You know, they create all this stress. So then we’re sitting at our desks and we’re thinking about stuff like, and we’re not doing anything about it.
And anyway, I’m going down a rabbit hole here, but it’s something that I feel like all these like little actions that we take, I think ripple effect. Like we have no idea how much we don’t always see the end result. What I really want to say is like I had just received something from somebody. Something that I thought was basically a huge failure which I had put like my whole heart into. Then months later I get a message about how it actually helps somebody and you’re thinking like the whole time, but like this whole, I’m creating all these like things about it in my mind and then I dunno. So I think like anything that we do, even if we think it’s a failure can affect other people. What is, what is something that you think would be a good book that somebody might benefit from?
I think a new earth by Eckhart Toley is an excellent book. It really, it helps us, it gives you a lot of perspective on the stories that we tell the narrative and understanding,
You know, that We can be conscious with our thoughts. We can be the importance of being present with the aliveness of our body and how the ego is in inevitable part of our personality. It’s like our shadow. We have a body, we have a shadow. And so, but just learning to dissociate from it a little bit and reconnect to the soul, reconnect to this spirit. And so, I mean it’s yoga, but it’s life. You know, it’s like he, he’s such a beautiful, eloquent way of writing and it’s very clear and he shares stories in it that he’s, you know, he’s really was challenged so many times in his life and that’s given him a depth of understanding. And so that would be my recommendation for sure. Oh, that’s awesome. I really liked him a lot. I remember when the power of now, like that was my first thing that I ever had from him.
And he’s, so I like watching some of his YouTube videos sometimes too, because he’s so peaceful, cute little man. And so I’m an addition to that is if you get the book and you read it chapter by chapter, he and Oprah are like besties. And so they did a 10 week series of the book and each week they went through a chapter and she asked him questions. They had questions from readers, he talked more. And it was like a deep dive. It was like doing Oprah’s book club with [inaudible] like wow. Yeah. It was really lovely. I would definitely suggest that as a compliment and it’s available on iTunes and Spotify and so it was a while back, but I’m sure you can find it. But yeah, it’s definitely worth following along with that while you read it. Cause it was like the third time I’ve read the book and, and that really took it to a whole nother level with him.
Yeah. Yeah. Great interviewer. And then to have him to really like clarify anything that’s, yeah, it was lovely. And then you’re listening to his voice so much that when you read the book, it’s almost like you can hear him reading it to you in your head and sweet boy. So it was great. Yeah. He kind of reminds me of like kind of like, I mean I don’t want to be insulting to him or anything, but I do cause I don’t think this is insulting and he has like this Elfin quality and like Yoda, you know, but it’s like he doesn’t look like Yoda but he’s still got the L he’s got that whole Yoda ELO. Yeah. I don’t think he would be insulted by that because a, he doesn’t really have an ego, but B, he’s like, he’s so beautiful and pure that I think you would take that as a compliment.
Would you please share your website with everyone and also tell us a little about you have a giveaway or do you have a video on there that people can access? So maybe you could just tell us about that. Sure. Yes. So I would love to share with your listeners. I have a 10 minute video that I created that is to help people ease their neck and shoulder tension, which has a cute popular name called tech neck. So you know, 70% of the world’s population is dealing with this tech neck now. And so it’s a 10 minute video that includes both stretches to get rid of the tension and exercises to activate core muscles to help people sit taller and hold stronger posture. And so that’s available on my website, which you can go to. That is yoga@mydesk.yoga. You’ll get my desk, got yoga
And I will be putting that in the show notes. So anybody who’s listening, you’ll be able to find that there. Thank you. Yeah, so well, thank you for joining me today. I really appreciate you taking the time to be here.
You’re welcome. It was fun. I really enjoyed that interview and I hope you did too. If you liked this podcast, please leave a review. It means a lot and helps other people to get to know about it. Until next time.