Mark Stephens ~ The Evolution of Yoga Sequencing and Adjustment Techniques

Mark Stephens is a highly respected and influential figure in the world of yoga. He is a prolific author, having written several books on yoga. Mark runs an Online Teaching Yoga Academy and has a podcast called The Yoga Room Podcast. His expertise spans across various domains such as yoga, bodywork, and the integration of therapeutic yoga in different systems including the prison system. He is known for his dynamic approach to teaching, his extensive knowledge of yoga history and anatomy, and his dedication to making yoga accessible to all.

Visit Mark on his website: https://www.markstephensyoga.com/

Key Takeaways:

• Transformative Impact of Yoga: Mark shares how yoga has the power to transform lives, particularly for troubled youths in juvenile systems.
• Adaptability in Yoga Instruction: The importance of understanding individual conditions and intentions when teaching yoga to ensure safety and effectiveness.
• Evolution of Yoga Practices: Insight into the historical context of yoga’s rise in the West, including influential figures and cultural phenomena.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Exploring Yoga and Wellness with Mark Stephens
• 3:52 The Evolution of Yoga and Hippie Culture in Santa Cruz
• 11:04 From Eighth Grade Dropout to Academic Pursuit
• 19:49 From Troubled Teen to Activist and Yoga Advocate
• 33:45 Transforming Juvenile Facilities with Yoga Programs
• 38:48 The Healing Power of Yoga for Traumatized Youth
• 42:58 Innovative Yoga Teaching and the Importance of Adaptability
• 49:15 Balancing Mandates and Preferences in Yoga Practice
• 59:41 The Evolution and Impact of Yoga Practices on the Body
• 1:08:49 Balancing Effort and Ease in Yoga Practice
• 1:14:16 Challenges and Insights in Ashtanga Yoga Practice
• 1:15:36 Debating Hypermobility and the Role of Fascia in Yoga
• 1:20:06 A Deep Dive into Yoga and Personal Growth

Transcript

0:33

Welcome to Native Yoga Toddcast, so happy you are here. My goal with this channel is to bring inspirational speakers to the mic in the field of yoga, massage, body work and beyond. Follow us at @nativeyoga and check us out at nativeyogacenter.com. All right, let's begin. I'm delighted to have you meet my guest this week, Mark Stephens. Please follow him on his social media or go check him out on his website, markstephensyoga.com also follow him on YouTube at@MarkStephensAuthor, he has a podcast called The Yoga Room podcast. You can find that on his website. You probably already know who Mark Stephens is, if you don't.... He's written several books. He has an Online Teaching Yoga Academy, which you'll see on his website. And he has recently wrote and written a book called Yoga for Better Sleep. And as of August 6, the audiobook is available in all the places that you can find audiobooks. This is a good conversation, and I learned so much, and I just really am amped off of the energy that I just got a chance to receive from Mark and his enthusiasm, his experience, the amount of time he dedicates to transmitting yoga information, and his thoughtfulness and his ability to ask questions and to really investigate, I think you're going to find this incredible. On that note, thank you for being here, for supporting, for listening. Let's begin. I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to have Mark Stephens here with me on the podcast. Mark, how are you feeling today? I'm feeling well. Thank you Good morning, or rather, actually say good afternoon to you, yes, for having me. Well. Thank you so much. You're Are you joining me? From Santa Cruz, California. I am beautiful. I've only had a chance to visit. What an amazing place, what a beautiful spot. What's the weather like there today? It's it's, well, still 10 o'clock in the morning. So I'd say it's about 65 degrees heading towards the mid 80s. I'm in the Santa Cruz Mountains. If I drive 10 minutes down to the coast, it's foggy and chilly, kind of in keeping with Mark Twain once said that the coldest winter of his life was a summer in San Francisco. It's similar here. Anyway, it's beautiful. I feel lucky to be here. It's my hometown. I was born and raised here. Oh man. Well, on that note, I read your bio, which, by the way, is amazing. I recommend everybody listening to visit your website, Mark Stevens yoga.com, and for to read your bio. And one of the reasons that, or the first thing that really caught my attention was the is the picture of your mom practicing full cobra pose in around that area. And what was the date of that was like 1930 1am. I right on 1931 19 she was born in 1923 what a cool photo of your mom. I think she was like eight years old there and and just to even see a black and white photo like that from the 30s, and just to think about your mom already being introduced to yoga, and to be practicing in that time frame, and for you to have that history in that area, that's that's pretty amazing. They live farther north in in Humboldt County, and will come down here to Santa Cruz in the summertime. Gotcha, I'll have holidays. So they're there in the San Lorenzo River, which is a stone's throw from me here. I learned to swim in that river, nice. And just to be clear, she's doing a yoga form, a yoga posture. She's also being a little girl, just playing around the river with her sisters right there. I wondered about that, that dog. I wonder she's not has a she was being a kid, just kind of doing these things that she had seen. She wasn't doing yoga some, some way that she was doing a practice. She was playing around, doing some contortionist thing that I think a lot of kids were doing in the 30s, because it had become very popular in the press with all these touring yogis doing contortionist, you know, demonstrations around. The country at that point in 1930 in America, who would have been the influencers from India that your mom potentially would have seen was Yogananda in the United States at that point. Yet Yogananda is not here at that point. There are several others. There's an interesting phenomena that happens. And back, we back up a little bit to get at it, and that is that at the 1893 World's Fair, in conjunction with it, there was what was called the world Parliament of Religions, and they invited this Swami from India named Swami Vivekananda to give a talk. And along, in conjunction with this talk, which it really is the formative moment in the introduction of yoga to the west, he wowed the audience, not just with explaining a perspective on how we can get at qualities of consciousness and awakening. And it was very much a spiritually oriented talk at the Parliament of Religions. It wasn't about Chaturanga, up, dog, down dog, but to get their attention even more. He had a few yogis there with him who demonstrated yoga postural practices, and that really wowed the audience, because now he was, he was he wasn't just talking about how this approach to kind of spiritual practice is one that involves embodiment, the body, body, mind as a whole, but he showed them doing these fantastic kinds of things. This led to a flood of yogis coming from India, gurus, or sometimes self anointed gurus coming from India from the turn of the century, really is when it really took off for the next 20 to 25 years. And they toured the US and Canada, to some extent. And these their entourages, they, they, they each was trying to outdo the other in terms of, like the the very acrobatic, gymnastic contortionist kinds of things that they did. And indeed, we see that a lot of what they were doing was very clearly tapping into circus performance art, circus contortionism, as well as acrobatics and gymnastics. It wasn't necessarily so much that they were showing us practices that were deeply rooted in India as they were in an already globalized culture, physical culture and all. But anyway, the point of that is this was all over the newspapers and magazines of the day, and so where exactly, say, my mother found the idea, or she and her sisters and friends found the ideas or the inspiration. It was everywhere in the culture at that time, as far as I understand it. And we don't have any significant influencers such as early ones Theos Bernard, in terms of American influencers in New York in the mid 1930s Theo Benard is a hugely significant player in bringing yoga into the US, at least, and then certainly Yogananda. But Yogananda is more post war, post World War Two. What year were you born? I was born in 1958 I'm about to turn 66 any minute, any actually nice. What was your What was your take on your realization of the Beatles and The influence the Beatles had with yoga. Yeah. So again, as a kid, for whatever reasons, probably lots of them, the Beatles weren't so much on my radar screen. I was into other music, I don't know. I think that I was more into more kind of hard rock and roll or something when I was a younger kid, but in the 60s, I wasn't even attuned to that. I wasn't attuned to say music in those kinds of ways. But my family was how to say we didn't have a television. We didn't we had radio. We listened to radio broadcasts maybe once a week together, like sort of Family Radio Hour, but we had no television, and there was definitely no music projecting through the house. And so we were somewhat insulated from a lot of what was happening in that aspect of culture. And I think one thing is sort of brought us to some realization of things. In fact, my first ever observation of yoga was here in the San Lorenzo valley where I am, where around 1965 66 so I'm like seven, eight years old. These very colorful vans and busses and cars started to show up with people with long hair and funky clothes and things we had never seen in a in a very, what was then a very, very, very conservative area. And it was a shock to our parents and everyone, I think, of their generation, but for kids, it was fascinating. The point is that these were the early hippies. And, you know, people that were on the bus, the Mary franksters and all came to the San Lorenzo Valley. You know, cannabis was in the air. Psychedelics, I'm sure, were in the bloodstreams and our swimming hole, the Garden of Eden, just a little ways from where I'm about a kilometer down the river from here is the first place I ever saw yoga. It's also first place I ever saw sex. And as we saw these kids down there, I can do what they were doing, right? They were smoking weed and doing these things. And so there they were doing these, these forms that I would only later come. To realize that they were doing yoga and that they had found those practices somewhere. And I don't know just where those particular people found them, but so early on here, yoga is happening the Beatles. I don't get that connection to Maharishi and all that connections, particularly in George Harrison, until much later, when I'm more interested in learning about yoga histories and all man, I love hearing these stories because I love the evolution of the hippie culture. And obviously you were in ground zero being in Santa Cruz, I'm I had a chance to live in Humboldt County in 1992 and it was a incredible experience, and I'll never forget it. I am such a beautiful part of the country and in the world, and amazing that you got a chance to experience all that from that kind of initial starting point. I did notice in your bio, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that you said that you dropped out of school when you were in eighth grade. Is that correct? It is and and now you're, you're a doctor. You have a doctorate, so I don't, I have all but my apologies all my dissertation, my bailed out. Okay, gotcha No, I'm happy to tell that story. Okay, sure, so. How do you go from leaving school in eighth grade to seeking academia, and how did that transpire? Let's see. To start, I mean, I also note that in that long first person bio on my website, I grew up in a family, not just in sort of spiritual seekers, but people very my parents, very connected to the environment, the natural environment, and all who gave us a sense of spirituality, both in sort of formal ways. My mother in particular, was a Christian fundamentalist, but where they also found a sense of spirit and spirituality in nature, and got us sort of imbued that in our daily our daily lives were connected to sort of experiencing that in the world. Both of my parents were also educated. They'd gone to university. My mother taught nursing. She was really she had been in a different generation. She probably would have been a doctor, I don't know, but she was of that level of interest in medical sciences and all and my father also. And so we grew up in a house, I guess I mentioned before, there was no television, there were lots of books, and we also played like crazy inside and outside. But we were brought up to learn, and it started really, really early. It was not a Waldorf type experience where you choose to read if you want to by the time you like, eight years old. We were reading at three years old and so and so I started learning and it was and loved it. I loved the experience of learning and and so things changed a lot. My mom died when I was 10. She had breast cancer and then developed into brain cancer, and so she died and and we moved south to the Mojave Desert, and my my brother, my father's brother, lived, and so I lived there in the upper Mojave for during my teen years, when I first arrived there, it was a tough transition, and by the time I was into eighth grade, I was also a latch key kid. I got in a lot of trouble and ended up in juvenile institutions, initially, Los Angeles County, central juvenile hall, foster care and other such places, in and out of those places, and pretty early on, with a very strong anti authoritarian attitude and a lot of anger, frankly, a lot of anger about things that were happening in my life. I faded out of school. I faded out, dropped out of school, and by the time I was 14, I had a fake ID that said I was 16. I had a job, I worked, I got a fake driver's license. I was living with some friends. I didn't go to school. Those times when I accumulated 60 high school credits at Central Juvenile Hall High School LA County, one of 19 juvenile institutions in LA County, and so which I would later work in as a, as an as a teacher, and then later a senior administrator consultant, many years, many years later. But anyway, so a few things happen in there, and they also connect to yoga. And one of those is that I was getting stoned a fair bit, which I don't recommend for adolescents. I don't think it's generally good for the adolescent brand, because a massive rewiring. There is, in fact, a massive rewiring, cognitive rewiring, that occurs during adolescence. And I think that a lot of kids that are that are consuming significant cannabis, for instance, are not doing themselves a favor in terms of their cognitive development. Love happy to have a focused conversation on that at any time, or any of these topics, for that matter. But so the where I'm going to this is to say that getting stoned, but also exploring other things, other medicinal sorts of plants. It was in that experience that I, one time had an experience which was Wow. And I was all the while during all those years out of school, reading like crazy. Someone had given me a copy a collection of books. Called the great books, which is the great book to the rest of world from, you know, early Greeks to mid 20th century literature. And I'd been consuming that literature from when I was pretty young, and so I still had those books. Was reading like crazy, interested in learning about everything. And that sort of, that psychedelic experience, let me say, Wow, there is something else going on here that those books didn't talk about, what is this and and that a friend said, oh, you know, you know, there are all these books on Eastern philosophy and metaphysics that get at those questions. And there's these radio broadcasts at night with Alan Watts on Pacifica radio, and he's talking about Zen Buddhism and yoga and all these things. I'm like, click, click. I didn't go, click, click, click, click. Didn't exist. That day, I turned on the radio and I went to a library and I got some books, dt, Suzuki's books, and a number of others. I started to dive into on Eastern philosophy, and not just Indian, but Eastern, as in Chinese philosophy, Daoist, other philosophies. And so what happens there? Oh, and then, on a radio broadcast, Alan Watts, he's talking about yoga. At some point, I'm like, What's yoga? And so, you know, he's describing it to some degree. And I went to the local library and I found a book on yoga. It was Richard hiddleman's 28 day yoga plan, and he had had a re I learned later, he had a TV show, and all along with Lily's full on and others at the time, not with her, but at the same time. So I got this book, 28 day yoga plan, and poured through it, and had all these pictures of postures, like trying these things out. And I was with that for a few months, and went back to the library, and I found there only one other book on yoga. It was titled light on yoga, like BTS, Iyengar, like serious book. Still, got home 50 pages on philosophy and history, I was like, wow. And then these practice plans, like a five year plan, I was like, Wow. I dove in. And so for about a total of two years there, I was 1617, at that point, I started to to read about and practice yoga without the benefit of a teacher coming full circle on your question, How did I get from there to academia? I was in and out of getting in trouble at the time and not doing smart things, just not making good, intelligent decisions. Sometimes, I think I did. I had really strong support, particularly for my brother and sister, who are both a little bit older than I am, two and three years older, and a lot of guidance from them along the way and kind of keeping me more on the rails with everything. Because I think we I might have helped them as well, but, but when I was 16, I faced a situation where I was either going to get in serious trouble or they were going to be either going to the military or go to university, go to college. I'm like, Well, how do I ever get into college? I haven't been to high school. And they said, Well, just that year, there was an exam introduced in California called the California high school proficiency exam, not the GED general education diploma, which is for if you're 18 or older. This was for kids who were 16 or 17 who wanted to test out of high school to either go work often, farm working kids, or other kids wanted to go to the family business or wanting to go on to college. And they were like, here's this test. If you take it and pass it, you can go right to college. I'm like, really, with no high school? They were like, yes. I was like, give me the test. So I took the test, I passed the test, and I enrolled at the local community college, and I never looked back. I got super involved in all kinds of things at the campus, especially my academic studies, but also it's where I got already involved in political work in the local community, particularly, as I note in the biography, doing work around police brutality in the in the area we where I lived in northern LA County in the Mojave Desert. And then once in college, more, started to open up to me on the political ran in the political realm, I got really involved in things on campus. Student Body President, I ran, ran student government, not ran. I was in student government at all how to say so I never looked back. I went from there to transferring from there to the University of California campus here in Santa Cruz. Came back home as soon as I could, frankly, and and went from there, from there going forward. So that was a long winded response. No, thank you. That's fascinating. I can relate to a lot of that, and I love to hear how you've taken a non traditional, leaning back to traditional, and weaving out of traditional and but ultimately, your love for learning and reading is what seems like the basis for everything you've been able to do, that's incredible mark. I love hearing that story and that trajectory, and also that you got into social justice issues in I'm thinking this was like late 60s or early 70s at this point, when you said you were mid mid 70s. Yeah, 74 I want to say. We got involved with. It was called the Antelope Valley Police brutality Action Project, and it was also organized through a local ACLU chapter in the Antelope Valley, which is a desert Valley in Northern LA County that had originally been a ranching community, and it became a military Well, the Air Force Flight Test Center is there, and also Air Force plant 42 which is where a lot of its most secret aircraft are built and tested and and so, you know, like stealth bombers, and back in the day, you know, you choose would fly through there anyway. The point is that it was, it was, it wasn't the most culturally enriching place for kids to be, I would say. But a lot of other things were happening. There was a pretty vicious law enforcement apparatus there, in terms of the way they dealt, particularly with people of color, most emphasized and in the Palmdale area of the Antelope Valley, but also with others and working class kids like myself. We're often, often not dealt with very in a very how to say, the way one might hope that law enforcement might as I think most law enforcement officers do, respect human beings and respect people's rights and things like that. Lot of respect for law enforcement generally, even as some will go off the rails. And I noticed that you, in your attempt to continue to study and learn, found that in your what you from when reading your bio, what you observed with what was actually going on in the society around you, that you saw there was a slight disconnect in terms of the academia and the philosophical side, or the study side, and then what was actually going on, and the fact that then, full circle, you were able to bring yoga programs into prison programs. Is that correct? Because if we jump a little further ahead, I mean, I know I'm jumping way ahead, because you have a significant yoga curriculum available for those of us students and teachers you have teaching yoga, a book you've written called teaching yoga, a book called Yoga sequencing, which I have, which I absolutely love, a book called Yoga adjustments. You have a book that's more recently put out called Yoga for better sleep, and a book on yoga therapy. Can you tell me a little bit about your work within the prison system, and how you've been able to affect people's lives with yoga in that environment. Thank you. Yes, I want to be I want to sort of be clear about one point in cases it was please not clear in what I said before, just in order to go, to go back a moment, in order to go more clearly forward. That is after I got into, when I transferred out of when I went to the University of California, Santa Cruz, by that time, really, even when I was in the community college, I didn't do yoga anymore. I did yoga. I played around with it for a couple of years with those books. Never a teacher. So it's not like I have a continuous practice from that time, I basically forgot about yoga all those years in university and but what I very much dove into activist social change work, and that's stayed with me to this day. I'm still active in my community, so and try to be active in other ways. It was matters of society and the environment and all around the world and so many years after coming into academia, after studying here in Santa Cruz and then working for a few years in Los Angeles, I went down there for a summer job doing environmental activist work. That summer job turned into a long term position with that organization. I was working for Ralph Nader at the time, and before he ever ran for president, and all years before. So I worked, was working with him and others, doing activist environmental work in LA and at that time, went to graduate school and dove in deeply to grad, to a doctoral program at UCLA, and deep into that program was there in that program for seven years, nearly finished when there were a lot of things happening in LA that were extremely complex, socially, politically, financially, for many people, just a very, very difficult place, also a wonderful place, by the way, an incredibly diverse region, and there's so many wonderful things, la often gets a bad rap. I love LA in many ways. But anyway, the point is that I didn't sign up for academia to be purely in academia. Never had that idea. I had the vision from the beginning of having one foot in academia and one foot in activism and blending those, using each to inform the other. And my academic work focused on matters of politics and society and social change. And as I'm saying, that in order to do well in graduate school, you have to really focus on that work. Not that I was still involved with things in LA, politically and all, socially and all, but I really focused on that. But as things got. Very, very it was. This was the height of the gang wars in LA. There were more kids being killed per year in LA than at that time that the Middle Eastern conflicts in the Irish, Northern Ireland conflicts, which were at their their hottest point in decades. I'm studying that every now. I'm studying the whole Irish conflict right now reading a book called say nothing, which is fascinating. And I'm also writing a book called The Reformation, about the Catholic Protestant Reformation, and to try to understand the Northern Ireland conflict, I'm learning it's so fascinating to juxtapose absolutely what's going on, but I want to interrupt you. No, please, please, lots of people who are being killed and maimed in those environments in the Middle East during that time, and in Northern Ireland. But combine those, and there were more kids under juveniles, kids in LA County alone, that were being killed and maimed every year. And so in relation to that, as I mentioned earlier, 19 juvenile prisons in LA County, and some of them, like really hardcore kid, I mean, kids who are doing horrific things, who also came from horrific backgrounds, both, you know, victims and victimizers, if you will, and and so, you know, guns are everywhere, drugs are everywhere. And so the point of that is that I decided to dive in, to get involved, and I took a leave of absence from the from my graduate school program to do so, and I started working as a day to day substitute teacher in Compton, Unified School District. And that led, yeah in Compton, yeah, which was, which was in the middle of all of it. What year is this? What year is this mark? This was in 19 9019, 9019. 90, wow. So from there, Compton, unified school district gets shut down because there was a bunch of corruption happening in the school district. They got turned out shut down by the state of California. Was called AB 1200 they invoked it and took over the district. And there was the corruption involves having people on the substitute teacher payroll who didn't exist. And so they just cleared the rank. They just got rid of every substitute teacher. I still wanted to work with these youth that I was working with gang members, mostly gang members, I should say, not just gang members. And I asked around, and someone said, Oh, they're hiring at these schools in those juvenile prisons. I'm like, Oh, I know those places. I remember those places from my own experience. So a month later, I got a job as a substitute teacher inside of Camp David Gonzalez, A juvenile lockdown camp, prison camp konstantino wire walls as a secure facility for high end juvenile offenders, if you will. And and that led to a regular teaching position, that led to developing programs in those pro in that system, that led to other work in there. Well at the same time, or right about that time, I was also stressed out. Had terrible breakdown with a girlfriend. I was confused about what I was doing with academia, and someone said, you should try yoga. I was like, oh, and I went to a class. It was Steve Ross who, by the way, I highly recommend Steve Ross's one book is titled happy yoga. He's a popular la teacher, one of the first to play music in a yoga class. He makes yoga fun. Steve Ross happy yoga. And had it not been for his lightheartedness, I might never have gotten into it. I wasn't looking for anything serious, but I got it. I got in there. I was like immediately I remembered from my own experience, but I was also hearing him and engaging with other people in a class for the first time. I went back the next day, the next day, I got into it. And so so I was already doing I was doing yoga when I was now working in those juvenile facilities. And so I continued with that um, curiosity about yoga and this work that I was doing. And some years later, after I had completed yoga teacher training, some years later, in 1995 i i started teaching yoga to some of my students in the classes, kind of as Pe physical education, just informally and this. And then the principal the school said you could do this even more in these environments. You could bring yoga in here. So I've been teaching the yoga in that way. The principal had worked with one to see more of that kind of a program. I was now working at the at the central office level of the county, LA County Juvenile court schools, and went to my the head of the department, head of the division, and asked him, What do you think about bringing yoga in these facilities? He was like, let's talk the probation department. They run the facilities, and I knew the Chief Probation Officer, Barry naidorf, really well. I'd worked with him a lot that time, and he said, I love the idea, let's try it out. So at the same camp where I'd originally taught, I went back in there teaching yoga as an after school program. So I was shirt and tie administrator consultant during the. Day, driving out into the mountains to an isolated facility at prison camp in the mountains to teach yoga in the afternoon. Wow, and it was also inspired by a project that we had done where we brought six Tibetan we Barry Bryant in the Somalia Foundation brought six Tibetan monks from Dharmasala to LA, first at Chicago, then to LA to work with inner city kids, and he discovered that they were in greater especially harder core kids were in greater concentrations in these camps, sort of concentration camps of you almost. And so Barry had brought these Tibetan monks. I had facilitated him getting these Tibetan monks into Camp David Gonzalez, there was a supportive administrator there. So I done. I went on the in the wake of that, took advantage of Barry Bryant's work there as well, and organized yoga inside foundation to more more formally establish a program, a consistent program, of yoga in that facility. It had a palpable, demonstrable, evidence based impact on the kids that were in there rates of violence inside the institution, classic, classroom attendance, classroom, excuse me, classroom, sort of performance, if you will. Classroom, academic performance increased. It had a palpable, measurable effect. And the chief probation officer said, I want this in all of our camps, all of our facilities. Wow. So 16 camps, three juvenile halls. We set about to do that. And so formalizing that with yoga inside foundation, I started to train teachers how to teach in that environment I didn't really know much about I wasn't a qualified yoga teacher trainer. I would say I was qualified to teach yoga. I was a very beginning teacher still, but I also had insight into the conditions of the kids that we were working with, the youth we were working with, and the institutional environment. And that was one of the greatest challenges. It wasn't the kids, it was the institutional environment, including a lot of staff that didn't want us in there and didn't want yoga in there for all kinds of reasons. And so navigating that was a learning experience. And as this took off, LA County, Unified School District, I had connections there where I was also working with them. Is that, is it administrative interface? They said, We want yoga in our schools. Have a lot of schools, a lot of schools, million kids right in school, literally. Okay, so we started expanding into schools, starting with their alternative education, continuing education, excuse me, continuation schools and other alternative education programs and special education programs that then led to it going all over the place. It sort of took off. That is, they would the LA Unified people would share it with their colleagues in other parts of the country. And they were saying, you know, Minneapolis, New York police bringing these programs. So it went like wildfire. And by the end of 1999 we were in something like, I think, 150 locations by 2002 and like 250 locations, eventually 300 all over the US, in schools, shelters, prisons, mental health facilities, Drug Rehabs and all. So that's kind of the the long and the short more the long of that is the yoga inside. I love hearing that trajectory. I mean, I think the fact that you had the direct connection in the beginning from having your own challenges as a youth, having been in some of those facilities as a child, and then connecting to yoga and being able to like speak that language, I can see how this would have evolved. And I love the fact that you just kind of like you said, I wasn't like, a really experienced yoga teacher, but I was able to speak that language. I can understand where they're coming from, I guess. I mean, that's incredible, that you were able to then expand it on that level and provide this type of outlet for people that need it probably more than any of us, and I'm curious, can you share an anecdote or story of maybe one of your first times interacting with youth where there was potentially hesitation and reservation, and what type of skill you brought into the table to kind of break that barrier Down? Was there some type of event or experience where you thought, how am I going to get through on this? This seems almost impossible, but then you employed some type of skill that was able to break that barrier. I love that question. So I think that in working with anyone in these kinds of environments, and institutional environments, we might call them generally. It's I thought I find it's really important to find ways to develop trust, to develop a sense that I don't suggest that you're coming to going to their level in some way, but rather meeting them where they are, greeting them where they are receiving. Affecting them for where they are. When I was a classroom teacher in those environments, most of the classrooms, desks were in rows. Everyone had a textbook, and there was an order to be absolutely quiet from the room. And basically, people were kids were taught to like, maybe look at a chapter, take notes and regurgitate it. As soon as I had my own classroom, I put the books to the side. We set up the classroom in a circle, and I brought in the daily newspaper. With the permission of the authorities, I brought in the daily newspaper, and I was teaching social studies. They had more to teach me than I had to teach them that I really learned to listen to them and to draw them out and rival gang members in the same room talking about events in the community. It was a way for them to feel empowered, in a way, for them to feel heard, and also for me to learn from them and to thereby better give them guidance about a whole variety of things. So with yoga, it's quite similar. I'll suggest that one wants to find ways to develop bonds of trust, and, by the way, in those that first facility, when I was a teacher, there, I stayed after school with some of the other teachers and staff and played basketball with them, taught them Ultimate Frisbee, introduced a gardening program. We got a grant for a ropes course. So I tried to do things that which I engaged with them in ways that were fun their kids, even though some of them were well, at that particular facility. They were all in there for either murder or attempted murder. They're pretty hardcore kids in terms of violence and all like hardcore kids, but they were still also kids, and they would laugh, they would cry, they would have various kinds of experiences. They had all kinds of impulse control issues, of course, of all, and this is the height of Austin as the gang wars, but a crack at so and so. Coming back to, more specifically, to your question, ways of sort of connecting it really in particular kinds of experiences. One of the most shocking disturbing to me, and it was a it led to an epiphany for me about working with these kids, was noticing the very first time that we taught a yoga class in shavasana that several kids could not be still. It wasn't that they weren't open to it. In their mind, they were, I think they wanted to be still, but there were neurological impacts of drug. Some of them were born addicted to track crack. Their mothers used crack during the pregnancies. They were literally born addicted to crack. We often don't remember this period in our history, in the US, from 30 years ago or so, when this was happening, it was a big thing in LA and so here you have these kids. Some of them have bullets still lodged in their body from being shot. They never removed some of the lead from their body out of just a data thing on how many pounds of lead, or tons, or something where kids in LA County juvenile facilities, but they could not relax like the neurological effects and visceral organ effects of crack and other drugs had that impact on them. And so it led to then start doing the classes in a very different way. I was deeply into Ashtanga vinyasa yoga during this period of time, by the way, at that time when I started teaching, I think I was, I was deep in second series when we started, yeah, second series when we were doing yoga inside foundation. So I was very into, like, acrobatic, gymnastic yoga. And I'm thinking, Ah, these are, like, young, they're fit. It's like this, let's, yeah, primary series of talking about exact energy right? Yeah, no, no, no, no, all right. I mean, they were fast, yeah, to play with it, right? But it wasn't appropriate with this and that. Yeah, I'll explain why just a moment that is they, they love playing with things like a chaturanga. They're like, Oh, hey, you want to have a push up contest? I'm like, Sure. And they can usually do way more than I could. They're like these trauma they lifted weights. And weird thing about juvenile and adult prisons is they give people weights to get stronger through their muscles and punching bags to hit on, which I guess can be cathartic, but it often leads to the whole idea of being a more testosterone male. Yeah, aggressive and all with your energy. And it doesn't necessarily release the anger, it sometimes increases. It all suggests. But notice they were strong, physically fit kids, and they loved playing with the arm balances. I was eventually on third series and teaching of all kinds of really tricky arm balances, and all floating into Bakasana From down dog kind of thing. They loved playing with those things. But what I came to discover really early is that what they really wanted, and they expressed this to me, where we would have group, we would have a brief debriefing, but to conversations close, opening and closing circles with these classes, like, what's going on? Basically, what was what those circles were about, and what they most wanted was quiet in the institutions, it's no easy. There's always sound, even at night, people are making noise and and you don't know when a staff, or many staff people going to come in and rattle the place up. They wanted peacefulness. They wanted quiet. What they really wanted in their yoga practices wasn't vigorous vinyasa for. Low what they really wanted was restorative yoga. Yin doesn't exist yet. Paul Greeley hasn't written his little book the yin yoga a quieter practice. They wanted a quieter practice. They wanted to slow down, and they wanted permission and opportunity. They wanted it to be okay, to be quiet and to find ways to be more still. So it was really the epiphany for me came about when observing students at the Dorothy Kirby Center secure psychiatric facility. So think of kids who are. They've done horrific things, horrific things, but they're also in a secure psychiatric facility. They've almost all of them grew up extremely abused, extremely abused. And plus now add the drug element to that, really, really difficult cases, as we would call, they were called really complicated kids. And again, it was there observing this that it became abundantly clear we were in Dorothy Kirby Center pretty early on in developing yoga inside, pretty abundantly clear that there was a different approach that we needed to take there. And so there was much more focus on breath practice, pranayama practices that were calming practices. There was much more focus on guided meditation and simple postural practices that focused on reducing tension, and at the same time, we would sometimes play around with, do you want to try a handstand? You know, get their attention that kind of way. But so by the way, the other point I was just making that talk quickly is that I also learned how very little my yoga teacher training prepared me for teaching yoga generally great, let alone in that environment. But really, what I most want to emphasize is how most yoga teacher training programs, still programs are teaching cookie cutter approaches, rather than how do we work to understand the unique conditions of this diverse array of people in our class or in our community and give support to them based on where they are, how we learn to listen to them and let our students become our own best teachers. I think that's a critical part of every yoga teacher's mission is to learn to listen and honor our students and engage with them in ways that are based on where they are, not where we think they should be, or want to take them. Wow. I mean, I'm speechless. Mark, in a good way, I can't that's inspiring. So thank you, and it's just like I could just feel your enthusiasm and the way that you just got in on this and just dove so, so head first into the deep end and and came back to the surface. You know, successful, it sounds to me. I mean, just to just even have one experience where you can work with somebody, where you could even actually get to the point where you were able to understand they just wanted to slow down and have the permission to find some quiet. I watched one of your videos on YouTube, and you were talking about with these social justice challenges. And I think you filmed the video. It was a breathing practice video filmed, I believe it was May of 2020, so we're like at the height of the pandemic, everyone's sheltered down. And you had made mention that there's situations where potentially people can't breathe, but not necessarily from, you know, a disease or an asthma or coronavirus or whatever, but just the pressure of living, like the intensity of that pressure and those environments that you just can't breathe because there's so much societal pressure, and so from that, I thought, Oh, this is going to be such an interesting conversation. And I really am thankful to hear this, because when I read your book on sequencing, it's very detailed, methodical, precise and easy to understand. And I do want to bring us down a little down a little bit of a path, and just asking you some anatomical elements that I picked up from reading your book, and one of them was to be alert and aware to in some vinyasa sequencing programs, the technique of, say, going from Ardha chandrasana in the Iyengar style of half moon, where we're balancing, say, on our right leg and our right hand's on the floor and our left leg is in the air, And we're lifting our left hip up to then rotating on that hip and being able to bring, say, the left hip down, and that repeated full body weight on one hip, and then the movement of lifting the pelvis up and down that you just kind of kind of present this idea of like, let's see if that's actually a good idea or not. Yeah, like, if we do repeated movements like that, and it wears down our hip joint, do we really want to do that? And so when I read that, it just, it opened my mind, because I hadn't come across that theory yet, and it got me to start, then thinking a little bit more about, what am I doing. Oh, what am I doing? Like, and what am I doing in my and is what I'm doing beneficial over the long haul. And then another video I watched, which I love you, you presented this question of why not, and I love the way you were. And I know I'm jumping around a little bit, but you're taking a note so I don't forget what you're saying. You're getting me to think you're getting me to think outside the box. And I love that, and I and I feel like I'm thankful for that. I feel like your your teaching has really inspired me and helped me now to have this chance to actually meet you and speak with you and hear the dynamic of your whole kind of growing up to this point. Oh man, I'm just this is awesome. Thank you. Can you speak a little, of course, can you speak a little bit about for us that are practicing and teaching yoga, blending this idea of, why not? Why not give it a try? Why not try something a little different? What? What could be the harm in just exploring? I'd love to hear any thoughts and ideas you have. I hope that was a specific enough question for you. We could go back to the questions, okay? I mean, I heard so thank you. I think there's two technical specific question, yeah, moving from certain forms to other forms, and they're affecting the joint, and particularly the hip joint in and I'll come back to that in just a second here. And then the other is I hearing is, why not try something a little different? Why not play around with it? So I'll say that if there's one, and I've said this before, by the way, probably been recorded saying this, there's one word that's become most frequent in my narrative overlay in my teaching these days is play with it. Play with it. I want my students to play with things now, as I say that, and by the way, I had a convert an email exchange with another kind of big influencer teacher here in the San Francisco Bay Area A few weeks ago about this very question of half moon, Triangle Pose, kinds of transitions I'll come back to and he kind of framed it as he says, I'm not into mandates. Like, Well, I'm not mandating that's like, they don't, don't ever do that. But he says, I want my students to do what they prefer to do. I'm like, Well, that's an interesting continuum from mandate to preference. I want to frame it in a very different way, like, hard and fast rules. Is there anything in yoga terms of postural practice that I would say don't do very little. There are some asanas that I think are inherently problematic, inherently likely be injurious to most people. The classic of those that I highlighted in a recent newsletter is set to Banda, not to be confused with Setu bandha sarvangasana bridge pose, but Setu bandhasana is also called Charlie Chaplin pose. So you're lying on your back, and you're probably on the top of your head, and your feet are out there in front turned out. That's why it's called Charlie Chaplin pose, because of the way the feet are turned out in that way. And your hips are up, everything else, your arse off the floor, your head is all the way back, you have extreme hyperextension. The neck full maxed out cervical hyperextension. The photo I posted on my website is Akina McGregor demonstrating it with the caption saying, so I'm like, don't be afraid to try this. And I'm like, with all respect, she's in a wonderful teacher and a huge and beautiful, amazing presence in the yoga community from your state, by the way, so I understand that. Yeah, I know her. I am friends with her. Yes, okay, you can share this with anyway, I'm going to continue with what I'm saying then is that I think that that posture is insanely problematic for the cervical segment of the neck. It puts extreme pressure the CT three cervical nerve outlet is likely to cause nerve damage over the long run, over the short run for some people, aside from conditions of well, do you know your students neck condition? Do they know their students? Do they know their own neck condition? What qualities? How old are they? Is there any arthritis in their neck? How are their discs? Is there any degeneration? Well, if they're over 25 there is, how old are they? What are the even younger people can have a variety of issues in the neck. I would not teach that posture now. So that's, I'd say mandate. Okay, no, I'm not going to write it. I'm not going to, you know, you know, propose a law that you're arresting your practice that posture, but I'm going to strongly discourage that. I'm with you. I'm with you. Importantly, okay, so more importantly, I want to give my students informed guidance. I'm with this teacher, this yoga teacher here in the San Francisco area, who was saying, you know, mandate to preferences like, okay, preferences, you. So when I very first went to a yoga class, very first class I ever went to. This also ties back into why not try something a little different? The teacher said to sit comfortably. So I was sitting. You can't see my legs, but I'm sitting in a cross leg position on a stool, actually, and I sat comfortably slumped over with my hands and my elbows on my knees. My knees are up this high off the floor. I was really tired. I was lifting weights and doing triathlons at the time. I was like, it's tight, really tight. I could not touch my toes without bending my knees deeply. And anyway, the point is that teacher came up. The teacher came over and said, try to sit up. I'm like, I am sitting up. They said, Well, without your hands on your knees. I said, well, then I'll do this again. And they say, Okay, well, sit on these blocks. So I sat on the blocks and did this again. I said, Well, why are you doing that? Because he said, Is he comfortable? This is comfortable, yes. And like so if we only ask our students to do what is comfortable, to do what they prefer. There's also this idea in yoga philosophy of some scaras. I suggest some scars, huh? That they inherited, you know, sort of conditions of life, and some say prior life, whatever. But the idea is that we come to our practice with conditions. What are those conditions? And sometimes they are such that our habits are so habitual, we don't recognize them as habits. And so you might stand in what I call slump Asana, it's comfortable, or with your weight all the way out in one hip, just standing around like waiting at the grocery store line or something. How are you standing habitually comfortably? So taking that into a yoga practice, if we always suggest to our students, well, do what feels good, do what you prefer, they might very well stay with that. I think the role of a yoga teacher is to respect and honor. Try to understand where that student is coming from. Understand their conditions and their intentions, and ideally, their intentions are somewhat informed by their conditions. If they ever recently sprained wrist your intention today should not be to practice your handstands. Just wait a while till you heal your wrist joints, for example. So, so with that as teachers, I think our role in part, is to provide our students with informed guidance, and that informed guidance based both upon our personal experience, but be careful with that aspect, because what works for me might not work for you or anybody else. So we need to be careful and generalize them from our own experience, say, Oh yes, this is what I do. So everyone try this. No, we are diverse, so we want to try to understand that diversity, listen to respect our students, and then give them guidance based on their conditions and intentions and what we understand. And ideally, that's a dialog. It's a conversation there, and I suggest to my students, well, I'm going to give you some suggestions, ultimately, defer to what you want to do. I'm not here as an authoritarian figure in your life if I think you're going to do something, if I think you're doing something that really will be problematic for you, I'm going to tell you that. I'll let you know that in a respectful way. So now let's come back around to this question of triangle and half moon, for example. And so the idea here is so talk a little bit in anatomies, if you will, in certain forms. We could describe the hips as being in we could postures as being internally rotated and others as externally rotated. And then we could also look at these qualities of internal and external rotation, and specifically standing balancing postures. And it is standing balancing postures where I have the concern about what's happening in the female acetabular joint, in the hip joint, if you will. And so in in a warrior three, if you imagine, this is a femur, thigh bone. And this is a femoral that could be the lesser, the greater. Trochanter, the femur. That bone right there, the ulnar bone. This is a femoral neck, and that's the head. And the head goes into a socket called the acetabulum. Is a deep socket. Cartilage on both surfaces, eliferal ligament, helping hold it all together and other ligaments. Is a strongly supported structure, labrum, giving additional support, as well as musculature where I can happen to describe all those ligaments and muscles, if you want. But the idea here is, if I was in Warrior Three, and I'm my hips are level, this is the other hip over here. And so I'm in Warrior Three, and most of the weight in my body is on that hip. Why only most? Because, well, some of the weights below and it's on the that leg, so that weights not there, that's going down there. So here I am, and I'm probably not 100% stable. Oh, by the way, as you're as I'm describing this, ask, keep asking, who's hip? What condition is that hip? Don't get too tripped out on what we see at Cirque du Soleil or the Olympics. I watched gymnastics the last couple of nights, incredible. We are not all those gymnasts we want. Don't necessarily go try everything that they're doing right? They're locked out hyper extended elbows. Be careful. You know, talk to a gymnast when they're 50 about how their joints are doing. Now, okay, so what are the conditions of this hip? How old is this person? Where are they in the life cycle? Regarding women, say 70% of students in yoga classes globally. Massimenos, well, how old are they? Are they in their mid 40s or older? They have osteopenia, osteoporosis, advanced osteoporosis. Is there arthritis, aside from age? Well, increasingly so with age. But is there osteoarthritis? Is Is there any arthrosis? What's the condition of that hip joint? Is there joint laxity? What are the various conditions of that hip joint? But here we are with all the way the body, bearing down on it, and we rotate in this way, and we open to say, you're, you're, you're open in this way, from warriors tree or revolved half moon to half moon. You're taking this hip that's over here, and you're stacking it, or you're already in Half Moon. How did you get there? Maybe from triangle or warrior two or extended side angle pose, Utthita, parsvakonasana here, vijana, too. Oh, externally, rot standing postures. So maybe you're transitioning into it. You have your hip stack, and then you rotate this way. That rotation with the full weight of the body bearing down the femoral head. This is not walking up and down stairs where you're in flexion, extension, flexion, extension. This is moving. And it's not moving from warrior one to warrior two, internal to external, or revolve triangle to triangle, internal to external, with both feet on the ground with very different biomechanical forces in the hip joint. I'm talking about with with one leg standing postures from internal to external. That force in that movement, excuse me, introduces forces, biomechanical forces here that can begin to stress the femoral neck, especially and cause a condition called femoral neck syndrome, which are microfibers, become fractures and a greater weakening, especially if one already has an unfavorable condition such as porosity, air porosis, osteo bone porosis, that becomes a significant problem. Now, interesting little side note to this is the person who first suggested this to me at that time, a fellow a student, was also someone I apprentice with for six months, Shiva, Ray, and Shiva, if anyone is so, I call her sometimes I love Shiva. By the way, the queen of creativity. She is he was a dancer. Did her master's degree at UCLA in world Arts and Cultures. The Dance Department basically did her master's degree. His Master's thesis on history of Hatha, yoga and tantra. She was a dancer in her heart. I know that from knowing her really well. Personally, she and her husband, James, back in the day, really close friends. I apprentice with her and and also assisted her on retreats for years. She knew human anatomy and physiology really well, and when she got into designing different creative flows and all, it might seem like she's, if I use this written this term too many times, off the rails in her creative sequencing. Kiva is dialed in with an understanding of Kinesiology. She studied dance Kinesiology. She had a deep insight. So it was Shiva Ray who first suggested to me that this is problematic. She was the very first one. So I was like, really. And I was like, Really, I don't feel any problem with that, you know, you know, I don't feel any problem with that. She says, Well, you know, let me explain a little bit more. And she did. And I then went a little further way, further in. Well, maybe she has as well, but from where I first got from her, that is, I went much deeper in trying to understand that force by looking at a variety of different studies about hip movement, particularly in dance. Why in dance? Because there's studies that look at it. Try to find a deep a study anywhere in the in the literature, out there of research, anywhere a published study that looks in detail, in detail at biomechanical forces in the human body, with any kind of significant methodology, valid methodology, like the number of people, the diversity of people, and the way it's tested, how it's shocking to me that we don't have those. There's nothing out there. Look at Chaturanga up, dog down, dog, who's done a study to look at what happens in the shoulders, the hands, the wrist, the arms and the spine. And Chaturanga up, dog down, a serious scientific study. No one now, some people say you don't need those studies. Just feel it from inside. I love the idea. My second Teacher, teacher after Steve Ross, my first real, substantial teacher, I studied with her a few years is Eric Schiffman. So Eric was, you know, had studied from when he was 17 in India with Mr. Iyengar, when he was 22 he met Joel Kramer. He describes this in his book from 1996 I think it is yoga, the spirit and practice of moving into stillness. How he met Joel and Joel Kramer taught him this method of being guided from inside lines of energy. Playing the edge. All these concepts came from Joel into including two seminal articles he had published in Yoga Journal in the mid 1970s Well, Joel never went back to Pune, never went back to study with Iyengar. He took that method and ran with it. Popularized it as Joel had already basically retired. Rather, he didn't retire. He disappeared to his little house on the bluff of Bolinas Bay in north of San Francisco with his partner, Diana alstad. Yes, I met Joel in 2009 he became a very, very dear friend. He passed two years ago, three years ago, excuse me, two and a half years ago, November. So he became a very, very dear friend and a bit of a teacher. He rejected that title, that relationship with me. We became really good friends. He very much convinced me of the importance of that idea of being guided from within. You feel what you feel in there. But I need to go a little bit further than that. I want to I think, and I say this, I write this, the best teacher you'll ever have is alive and well inside of you, and much of this practice is about learning to listen to that teacher and honor that teacher. But as much as I am open to my inner teacher, I want other teachers to give me guidance as well, especially teachers with a trained eye, with a deeper understanding of things than I have, whether about whatever aspect of practice it is, from the contemplative, the energetic aspects of practice, to the pure postural, whatever it is. So half moon to triangle, problematic, triangle to half moon. Excuse me, back away from that revolved half moon to half moon or warrior three to half moon, close to open hips or open to close on the standing leg. Problematic. I'll suggest that said, What do I say to my students? Play with it, but as you play with it, I want you to please be aware that there are these potential possibilities here. I still demonstrate what not to do, Todd, and I'm not always sure that's the wisest thing to do, demonstrating what not. Yeah. Hey guys, look at this. Don't do this. Yeah, yeah. And after a while ago, often I'll demonstrate. Why did I do that? Next day I'm going, Ah, I wish I had shown that. You know, feeling it in my hip. The last little comment, as I mentioned, hips is on this. I'm not going to out anybody who hasn't already outed themselves on this, if you will. Hey, it's increasingly clear that many teachers such as myself who've done extreme contortionist practices think first, second and third series Ashtanga, or any of the say to any half of the postures in light on yoga. So it's not just one style or Bikram method or whatever, a method of deep practices of yoga. Many people who've been doing it for long periods of time now, we're finally getting the 20 and 30 year studies, not in their formal studies, but we have the people who have a disproportionate number of things, like hip replacements, absolutely blowing out lower backs, significant knee issues and so well Joe Kramer, who was a Huge influencer of yoga in the 1960s here in California, I mean, he introduced Anna forest. He trans Judith Lassiter. A lot of people came through Joel early on, not necessarily introduced to yoga by him, but hugely influenced in the 60s and 70s. Many of Joel had dual hip replacements. He suggests to me that much of the issues he had in his hip resulted from things he was doing, as I did, putting both legs behind your back, and then doing other things with your legs there, arm balances and a variety of things. Dwiprosis in the yoga, dressana, forms and all and beyond that. In third and fourth series, anghast, Jill Miller writes about it in her where's that book? It's right there. Bindi yoga, yes, she writes the forward to that book about her hip replacement. So Jill taught at my LA yoga center when I had that studio and she taught. I loved Jill's classes. She come up through Anna forest yoga, she was had her own deeper learning of anatomy, much as I've gone way beyond my original teachers and learning about anatomy and kinesiology and all Jill had deep insight, and at the same time as I was dealing with deep insight, I'll suggest still teaching extreme contortionist forms. I don't think it was necessarily the wisest way to go. I'm really seriously questioning this dharma. Mitra is another teacher, if you talk to him, and I encourage you to ask him about his body, and talk to Richard Freeman, who completed fifth series of Sanga vinyasa, about his low back, and ask them about the how they teach yoga now compared to how they taught it 20 years ago. I think a lot of us of that generation, and there are who have been teaching yoga for longer. I've only been teaching yoga for 27 years, so I've been teaching it for 47 years. Ask them and practicing consistently. Ask them about their practices and their teaching after all of that, Okay, I'll stop. No, I'm just like in full agreeance. I can't agree more, Mark, and I think that's why, at the time that I read your book. So I was unaware of my completely blown out lower back, and now am aware of my completely blown out lower back, and having done all the second series back bending day after day, getting pulled in, catching my heels, catching my heels in kapotasana, legs behind the head every single day, and, you know, not listening to my body until it got to the point where I couldn't walk, I couldn't get out of bed, right? So, um, and now, as a teacher, and still loving Ashtanga Yoga and still holding down in my sore Ashtanga room every day, I will not pull on somebody in the kapotasana. I will not. I am not trying to get people's hands to their feet. I mean, I just can't, in my own conscience, after feeling it my own body and what sort of unfortunate things can occur, I don't know that. I can necessarily say 100% that the kapotasana back bending into the grabbing and the pulling was the main source of the dysfunction. I've suffered falls, I've suffered hospitalizations due to bad injuries over the years. I've been extreme sports and all that. But I agree with you, and I'm so happy to hear this. I'm so thankful for having this conversation. I think this is of absolute importance, and I think that if we obviously, we're learning from experience and we're suffering the consequences of our experiences at the same time. I don't regret I'm glad I did. I feel like I'm still learning now to move in a completely different way, and I'm thankful for the opportunity to relearn everything all over again, and how humbling it it is. And I but I, I'm so happy to hear this from you, and to know that I'm not alone and that there, that we are able to share this information with other people that are up and coming. Now the hardest thing, that thing that I grapple with, is that in my 20s, had I'd heard you say this, would I've listened? I don't know that I would have. Unfortunately, I mean, I, I'm with you, and I just, I got so much exhilaration out of the practice. It was so fun. It was so exciting. I mean, it was like every day, I couldn't wait to get there, and it was just so amazing. Now I, I'm, I just, I'm just happy to have this conversation, because I think it is really important. And I, and I am enjoying having conversations with students and letting them know. I just want to let you know I have a bad back and and what I'm showing you is there a way we could do say Camel Pose. I really want you to listen to your body right now. And if you are feeling anything that is telling you not to do this like it is important to start listening to those signals early on. Don't wait. Don't wait until you're getting that MRI and the doctor saying, let's fuse you together. Let's bolt you together again. And when I got that diagnosis, I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, who this is not the vision I had. This is not I got into yoga thinking I was going to be that 8090, year old guy doing headstands and being super fit and having no problems or pain in my body at all. And now I'm a little like going, Wow, whole if I'd had but again, we are where we are. We learn from what we learned. And now I think this conversation is very important, so thank you for May I say a few more things. Yes, please. Yes, please. So here a few things I get the point about say younger people who won't hear it. I was an adrenaline junkie. I think from when I came out of the womb, I was like, into it, whatever it was. I used to build and race very fast motorcycles, cafe racers. I also crashed to them. I got into rock climbing. I was an AMGA certified rock climbing guy. At one point. I was hardcore rock climber. And I also, by the way, no one's ever been hurt rock climbing. They only get hurt rock falling. And I fell a few times, right? Kind of a joke there, but yes, but yeah. I mean, I got, you know, a dislocated shoulder skull fracture from falls recently in my food orchard, up pretty high on two ladders, positions of balance with a chainsaw to trim off the top of an old persimmon tree. I had to escape leap, and I sustained two compression fractures in my lumbar segment, l1 and l3 compression fractures, which you think of you'd have if you have osteoporosis. I don't have osteoporosis, but I have compression fractures. So injuries happen, and they also, they also, they also happen in yoga, there are a few things that you said I want to come to that is, one of them is that is about and talking with younger students as well, not just younger all of our students, about what it means to have a balance between efforts and ease. This is a constant thing, fear of sukham, Asana, stability and ease, and to have a balance of effort and even in cultivating Thera sukham, if you will. What are the signs? How do we know where we are? How far is far enough? I have this sort of saying playfully. It's not about how far you go. But how you go and when you said about, you know, acknowledging listening to things like pain, the signals that come to us, it's so important. The little thing I used to tell myself in practice, oh, it's just a little pinch, like the sitting bone. It where the hamstring originated, the ischial tuberosity, the sitting bone, that little, it's not called Yoga, but we use, or the tendon starts to phrase like a pensions and says, Oh, this is a little pinch. Student says, Oh, it's just a little pinch, low back, oh, just a little a little pinch, those little pinches or tissues saying, Please don't do that or back away. Take it easy. Approach it differently. Yes. And so how do we convey that to our students? I think there's a variety of ways to try to convey it to them in ways that don't make them walk on eggshells. We don't want to, because that is another problem. Oh, you know, at the risk of injuring this and the risk of injuring that, you might maybe try this, but, oh, but be careful. Then they're all tight, they're all scared, nervous, and that's going to be a problem that might lead to injury or burnout, or whatever it is. So finding that balance is really, really important. I'm very curious how well this is with deep respect to Tirumala Krishnamacharya, yoga genius gave us much of the yoga. Most of what we have today in yoga comes, you know, his progeny, from Toby Joyce to a sexual predator. I must note to Iyengar, also a problematic character, I'll suggest, in his authoritarian ways, but also brilliantly insightful. Yoga teacher gave us all those props, Jessica char and others who come Ramaswamy and your Devi, who come from Krishnamacharya directly. Krishnamacharya, brilliantly insightful. Okay, let's just take primary seriously. Dangar vinyasa for a moment. Marsh Asana. D, well, Setu, bandhasana is in there. So is marsh in A D, okay, consider what's in a d1, foot in lotus, the other foot is drawn in. Flex tip, flex knee, wrap around that direction. Wrap class. Well, aside from the fact that a very small part of humanity will ever be able to do that pose. One of the reasons Brian Kess bailed out of us at Yoga works, we were all students together there and started doing what he would call power yoga. He couldn't do Maharishi Nadi. There's no way steps would ever allow it. And meanwhile, we're asked to do all these forward bins and back bends throughout the primary series. There's a lot of potential stress to the lumbar segment, the spine, especially lumbar segment. And yet, we have to wait to get the second series to do the absolutely best posture for strengthening and developing the muscles through the lower back, shalabhasana, little locus a, Locus B, not necessarily C, because your arms are out. It's a lot more force in the lower back, because the the the how far you are from the focal of the lever, if you will. But, but locus a, Locus B, sort of low cobra. Really good for developing the muscles the lower back, for developing the multifidus, their spinal rectors, the qls and hip extensors. All of this helping us develop the foundation upon which to have a safer, deeper back bending practice and other aspects of practice by strengthening that set of posterior chain, if you will, muscles that we develop and and so why do you have to wait to get through primary series and back in the day, when I came up to Ashtanga, you had to have, they call it mastered. I don't necessarily like the term primary. That is, you had to be able to do primary without losing your breath, without any difficulty in moving into and out of an Asana. Only then, with my teacher at that time, Chuck Miller, say, okay, you can go to second series, which had a key, a gate at the beginning of it called pashasana. Very, very difficult. Tie you up in the noose, like your first one, not allow you to go to the second posture, exactly deep, like the chair rappers, you know. So you wouldn't get the second posture crown, crown chiasana, until you had Thiru sukum Asana with pashasana. That was the gatekeeper. So Well, I think he came around one day and said, second I was like, oh my god, I'd wanted it so bad for so long. Second Series. He waited. He made me wait until he knew I didn't want it or think it was thinking. I wasn't thinking about it. I was in my practice. He came by one day and said, second series, Asana. So I did push Asana. I started to go and cry on to go in Karan pashasana Only today, and for three months it was only pashasana. You wouldn't let me do yes, until I had pasana, I couldn't go on. Yes. The point of that is that I had to get through that and crown chiasana before I can get to basic, simple Locust Pose. Why? And we could then look more closely at the primary second and third series. Those are the ones I know well from personal, direct practice. But many years I don't I know of fourth I've never done a fourth practice, as in, in a consistent way. I played around with it and and that was one of the reasons I jumped off the astonishing tram like I'm not going to do that to my body, just it. Hey, look at four series. It's like, wow, okay, I'm inspired as extreme as you can go one direction, as extreme as you can go the other direction, yeah. And that's, you know, this, I'm working on something now, on hypermobility. I might write something more. A number of books out there, bindi yoga, bindi people, and there are a few other good folks out there on it. How far do you need to go? What's How far is far enough, and for what reason? And especially if you are already hyper, have hyper mobility in some of your joints, or all of your joints, why do you need to go further? And there are some that would make the case that well, frankly, some in the Yin community, and Bernie Clark, who I love, but we've had this discussion on my podcast, will suggest that you only, you know, activate, fulfill Wolf's law if you create significant force in that join. And so it's not just a problem to hyper it's not a problem that you hyperextend. It's beneficial to hyperextend because it's only there that you're getting the adequate force of bone to bone to stimulate osteoblasts and maintain the health of the bone. And it's like, I don't think so, that puts asymmetrical force against those bones. I started questioning, where's the cartilage in that joint, and creates other problems for great insight of that, I highly recommend a minute book by maybe one of the greatest osteop, excuse me, orthopedic surgeons ever in the world. His name's Roy meals, and the title of his book is bones I know really personally from surgery on my brother 50 years ago, literally 50 years ago on my brother for and Roy, by the way, does microscopic limb did before he retired, microscopic limb reconstruction. So you get your hand chopped off, like, literally, your hand chopped off. He puts it back together and can make it work. He understands bone, ligaments, muscles, fascia, tendons, nerves, all of that. And anyway, so his book bones, very insightful. And then talking was really two years ago, in preparation for the for the podcast with Bernie. He's like they say to do, what to do, what to go beyond range of, you know, healthy range of motion and and had a force in there in that so think of triangle pose with a locked out knee, or tree pose the locked out knee. And many in the yoga committee are saying, not only is that not a problem, but it's beneficial to your bones. Take another look. Is all I want to suggest, is that. Take another look at that, at that question. And I'm happy, by the way, if you ever want to have a few people on your podcast and have a panel discussion, discussion, debate, happy to loving, kind and respectful way to engage with other people on all those sorts of questions. Oh, I'm so glad you brought that up, because just yesterday, I have someone who's been sending me debates, and I've been watching debates across all different topics, and I thought I need to create a debate podcast, and I'll be the moderator. Let's get to oppose. I don't say opposing views, but just maybe slightly different views. And so thank you, Mark. I'm going to take you up on that, and I agree on probably 98% of everything in the world history, philosophies of yoga, aspects of practice, the beauty of Yin, the beauty of Yang, aspect the details of human anatomy and physiology. But there's a couple percent where we don't agree and more than happy to engage with other people, including around the question of this is a big one, I think, is the way that fascia is discussed today. Most teachers refer to the fascia, the fascia. This is, well, which fascia? Yes, squeeze your skin. You're squeezing the deep dermal layer a type of fascia, the IT band, which is a very dense, high collagen, low elastin. This is high elastin, low collagen. It's a very different fiber, very different tissue. The tissue that surrounds your visceral organs is also a type of fascia. There are at least 12 different types of fascia, and so the idea that the fascia is a thing, a system even called the fascial system by some or as Paul Greenie writes in his for other Paul, I've known him before. He was a young teacher. He was a Taoist yoga student with all of us in poly zinc classes that Yoga works in Santa Monica, Yin Yang. He ran with the yen, and he writes on the beginning of his book that fascia is the primary organizing principle of the body. Like, really, let's have a conversation about that. So please organize it. I'd be happy to respectfully come on and listen. And thank you share. Thank you, Mark, keep it. Yes, I'm excited. I mean, I knew I was very excited for today's conversation, but it's far exceeded my expectations. I'm so appreciative for you to donate your time, your knowledge, your what you've learned over the years, and to explain it in a way I feel is down to earth and we can under. Stand. I'm so excited for for our listeners to get a chance to meet you, if they already know you, to get to hear, get to hear some of your ideas. I look forward to having future conversations, Mark, because, man, so cool. I like how you blending all this together. And I just am really honored. Thank you so much for taking this time, and I thoroughly enjoyed this, and I can't wait to have more opportunities to learn from you, because I I really do value what you're bringing to the table. Todd, I really appreciate what you're doing here with your podcast and your what you bring to your sensibilities and your openness. I appreciate very much you invited me to be your guest, and I've enjoyed this not so much. A conversation is me talking too much, but as you look at my books, there tend to be rather voluminous books. I'm here to listen to you. Everybody gets to listen to me all the time. I want to hear you. So thank you for sharing and for offering that. Yeah, man, thank you. Well Until next time. Beautiful. Thank you, Todd. Thank you, native yoga. Todd. Cast is produced by myself. The theme music is dreamed up by Bryce Allen. If you like this show, let me know if there's room for improvement. I want to hear that too. We are curious to know what you think and what you want more of what I can improve. And if you have ideas for future guests or topics, please send us your thoughts to info at Native yoga center. You can find us at Native yoga center.com and hey, if you did like this episode, share it with your friends. Rate it and review and join us next time. Well, yeah, now you