Yoga As Medicine With Tiffany Cruikshank (EP#30)

Tahnee: Hi, everybody, and welcome to the SuperFeast Podcast. I have Tiffany Cruikshank with me, which is very exciting. She's the founder of Yoga Medicine and an internationally renowned yoga instructor. The past 20 years crafting a methodology for teaching or practicing yoga, which kind of combines and melds the Eastern and Western ideas of medicine and her teaching is held up by her work as a holistic health practitioner, acupuncturist and sports medicine expert. Tiffany is based in Seattle and she teaches regularly for Yoga Glow and travels all around the world, and she's the author of Meditate Your Way and another really great book that I love that we'll talk a bit about later.

 

Tahnee: Her approach has helped thousands of yogis around the world to see their practice in a new light as a result of her innovative thinking and dedication to the practice, and I really wanted to start there because you're the founder of Yoga Medicine, which is just such a really unique and kind of wonderful way of positioning yoga within the kind of broader context of healthcare, especially as we look at evolution toward more integrative health east meets west and doctors getting interested in mindfulness. I'm actually a teaching on a 200 hour right now and I have two doctors in my training, which is really cool. Oh my gosh, so yeah, you could talk a little bit about Yoga Medicine and how that kind of came about.

 

Tiffany: Yeah. For me, Yoga Medicine came about as I was seeing patients and just seeing the need for healthcare providers to want to use yoga. I was living in Portland at the time when I first started seeing patients and working with a lot of other health care providers, networking with other providers and finding at the time that people really want it to be using it. This was probably over 15 years ago now, but there was such an interest in it. Definitely on the West coast too. I think the West coast is always a little more open minded, at least in the US than the East coast and doctors wanted it. But the problem was that there wasn't an access point and as anyone who's practiced yoga before knows there's such a broad variety of offerings in yoga, which is an asset, but it's also a limitation as an access point for people who want to use it more therapeutically or for specific injuries or illnesses.

 

Tiffany: So my whole purpose with creating Yoga Medicine list to help bridge that gap between healthcare providers and yoga and really bringing yoga into the wellness world. As a health care provider myself, I've always used yoga with my patients. It's a great modality for me to be able to give them things they can do on their own and to recognize, I think one of the brilliant things and one of the probably really essential things of any kind of complimentary medicine or holistic medicine is really the patient being an advocate for their own health and wellness and being an active participant. So giving them things they can do on their own at home is such an important part of that. It's, what's the difference between, just giving them pills or even herbs for that matter. I think there's a memory, at least with more natural medicines of us kind of thinking about how it's supporting these natural processes in our body versus just showing up and having your medicine delivered by a healthcare provider and being really inactive participant in your health care.

 

Tiffany: So for me, yoga was such an important part of people showing up and being an active participant and obviously with yoga students, which has always been probably the majority, well I guess not always, but for good chunks of my professional life, I've seen large populations, which were yoga students, which is great because they really want to be proactive and I found that my patients who did yoga regularly got better quicker usually. They responded to treatment a lot quicker and so I started giving it to people who didn't do yoga and found that they really appreciated it. Obviously everyone's a little different in how people respond is always going to be different but it was such a really important adjunct for me and my own professional work. So as I was teaching teacher trainings and I started teaching them out of my house in like 2002 and as I started kind of refining those, eventually it turned into Yoga Medicine is just a way to really make it official that this is this thing.

 

Tiffany: We do really try and bring together the best of east and west and acknowledge that there's such an importance to this tradition that we've done for so long but also now we have research and we have anatomy and physiology, which we didn't have then and how do we kind of loop those two worlds together, that's still really appreciates the value and the depth that they both provide. So, yeah, we like to really train our teachers to understand both to understand the east and the west, not that they're doctors, they're not diagnosing, they're not treating, but that they have this awareness, a deeper understanding of the body both to be able to talk with doctors as well as to be able to visualize this context of this person that I'm working with in a different way as well.

 

Tahnee: [inaudible 00:04:55] is something we're really big on that's super based in our work. So both of us have taught yoga and worked in that kind of industry and I think it really promotes this sense of, this capability and taking responsibility for your own wellness and your own wellbeing and that's obviously when you look at the limbs of yoga, what it's pointing toward and it's such a nice idea to position yoga within this landscape of all these tools that we have available to us and to really [inaudible 00:05:20].

 

Tiffany: I think in this day and age, there's so much in the yoga world, as a yoga teacher, as a yoga student, there's so many offerings and styles and different ways of applying it and for me, they all have a really important place. So by understanding the body a little bit better, both from an eastern perspective and in western anatomy and physiology as well as things like traditional Chinese medicine and other contexts, I can kind of at least get a better idea of what might be more helpful or a better place to at least start with someone so that I can navigate. Like there's not often a right or a wrong, there might be some things we avoid, but it's more just a matter of finding what's right for that person.

 

Tahnee: Yeah, and I think that's what's so unique about the eastern approaches. It's very much around getting a diagnosis or a treatment plan for the person standing in front of you instead of this kind of prescriptive one size fits all thing that we often, you know, I think it's happening less and less, but it was certainly how Western medicine operated.

 

Tiffany: I think we all appreciate that. You know, there's something really great to be had about figuring it out, like understanding it as a really valuable thing. But I think the point where we really identify it with it is where it becomes a hindrance because the reality is even if we have a diagnosis that may be is well suited to the condition that our bodies are constantly changing, that they're never from one second to the next, exactly the same. So being able to look at the granularity of our health and our wellness through a magnifying glass rather than just looking at this big broad brush stroke of a diagnosis, which doesn't always tell us very much, I think is such a valuable asset as any healthcare providers, especially anyone in the wellness center.

 

Tahnee: So you kind of started out with published them and an oriental medicine, but you've also got a really strong amount of [inaudible 00:06:58] which is what drew me into your work originally and I put in my $200 anatomy training is vague. I appreciate the challenge of teaching a lot of [inaudible 00:07:11] short period of time but I really would love to hear your take on how you kind of ended up where you are. We had a quick chat before coming on about your thought and I think it was just some really interesting context for the work you do now. [inaudible 00:07:21]. Would you mind sharing that with us?

 

Tiffany: Yeah. I think I've always been really curious. My early teens, I was a little bit of a troublemaker, kind of testing the boundaries and questioning things and my parents sent me off on a wilderness program as a way to, and lucky for me, there was an herbalist out there and you know I was 14 at the time and you can imagine as a 14 year old girl, any woman can imagine everything we can go through and our teens and trying to kind of find our place in the world and all these changes happening in our bodies. So it was really empowering to learn how to survive but meeting this man who was an herbalist and him taking me out on these plant walks, he was really excited because I was I think the only one who was really interested and he would take me out on these walks and just show me all of these things, all of the plants and different remedies.

 

Tiffany: For me it was so empowering to see that all of this was in our environment and so I came back and I studied with an herbalist, apprenticed with an herbalist, Peter Bigfoot I think was his name. I think he has some books. He just opened me up to this awareness of this world and how our best medicine is often found in the environment around us. So I was really intrigued by that and kept studying. I quickly finished high school because I knew that I wanted to really dig in deep into holistic medicine. So I started college when I was 16 and did all my premed, not really knowing where I wanted to go and in the meantime started apprenticing with a Chinese medicine practitioner who is also a zen monk. It was an interesting combination and really just fell in love with the art of Chinese medicine and how it looked at like kind of painting a picture of who this unique person is in front of me, where each pattern was very unique and complex to that person.

 

Tiffany: Rather, you know, I was looking a lot at naturopathic medicine and some other things, which I have a lot of respect for it and think very highly of now, but it felt a little bit more like symptom treatment and for me, I really like that Chinese medicine kind of made sense of the whole person. Not to say that they don't, because they do in their own way, but it was more of an art and this beautiful thing. So I finished my four years undergrad and medicinal plant biology and did my premed and then went on and did my four years of Chinese medicine and then did a specialty in orthopedics and sports medicine. I was the acupuncture is at the Nike World Headquarters for about six years and so I was the only one there and we had like 8,000 employees. So I saw everything.

 

Tiffany: Most of what I saw was orthopedics, but I started seeing, there started to be this influx of patients who were going through fertility treatments and at the time we were starting to get more research on Chinese medicine and fertility. So I went back into the course and got kind of a secondary specialty in that and saw a lot of fertility patients and women's health patients when I was there as well. Maybe 30% of what I saw compared to maybe the 70% of the sports medicine and Ortho stuff, but that was really fun. I had a whole wall of like babies that I'd helped with and really rewarding until I started traveling a lot. And you know, you have to be there very specific times, so yeah.

 

Tahnee: So you also started teaching really young, right?

 

Tiffany: When I was 16 when I went off to college, there really weren't any studios at the time and so I went to the small town called Prescott. It is in Arizona, a mountain town and there really wasn't any yoga. So my summer before I went, I got certified to teach yoga so that I could kind of bring it with me. I didn't really know what it would turn into, but yeah, I've taught ever since.

 

Tahnee: Before the Vinyasa days?

 

Tiffany: Yeah, well this was before Internet. So I had two pamphlets and one of them was during the summer, so I went and I had no idea. I actually called my yoga teacher and I'd only been practicing for a couple of years and gosh, I was only 14 so, he would pick me up or my mom would take me and it was one of those funny things, but I remember calling him and I think he was just confused because he didn't give me any help. I think I threw him off because he was like, who is this 16 year old girl who's been practicing for two years? So I ended up at the Ananda center, The Expanding Light in Ashram in California, which was very different than what I was practicing at the time, but it was very much focused on the philosophy and becoming enlightened and it gave me a really great foundation.

 

Tiffany: I think the philosophy and the subtleties of the practice, but definitely has changed quite a bit over, definitely before the Vinyasa days, over 25 years ago now I think. I lose track of years now.

 

Tahnee: Because people, I think a lot of them, or what was something I've seen a lot is people who just don't really realize they live in a world outside of [inaudible 00:11:28]. I always call it the old school [inaudible 00:11:33]. I remember when my mom was doing it. It was very, very different.

 

Tiffany: Yeah, and it kind of feels like we're going back there, which is kind of fun. I feel like this wave or this movement of people really simplifying and you know, as we get more research about yoga, we really start to see, oh, the depth and the simplicity. I mean looking at things like interoception and our mental health and our physiology and pain and just simple things like body awareness. Interoception is really, I'm equating that here at least to our body awareness and our ability to be really granular with that awareness.

 

Tiffany: Really specific with that awareness and the more specific and accurate we can be, the more helpful it can be for things like pain signaling and mental health. So it's really interesting to come back now that we've had all this time and all this research and we've taken all those deep work, you know, it takes so much work and money to do a research study and then you need like 10 of them to really get something good. So now all these years later we're like, oh wow, look at all these simple things. Just body awareness and just mindful breathing and mindful meditation. It's cool.

 

Tahnee: Yeah, it's a really powerful time. Especially in the states. I think Australia always lags a bit behind the scene.

 

Tiffany: Really? I felt that way when I lived there maybe six years ago but I feel like with the intranet, that's really less so now.

 

Tahnee: Yeah, I think Yin is really big in Australia, because it's so small. I still find like that, you know, even on my training yesterday, one of the girls was like, we better learn the power of Vinyasa sequence and I kind of, gosh, to myself and it's like, oh yeah, there's still that [inaudible 00:13:02]. So that kind of brings me, so your here or you're in Australia soon to do a program on women's health in particular, some sort of merging the eastern view and the western science, which is what you do so well as a teacher. So in terms of what you've seen, you mentioned women's health everyday. I'm just so astounded at how many things can go wrong in the reproductive system and everything from your PSLS and all the various kind of [inaudible 00:13:34] of that and then you've got, like your endo and all those kinds of things just on the menstrual side of things. Then you've got things like pull ups and earth's and ectopic pregnancies. It's just a-

 

Tiffany: Oh, yeah, now you start talking about pregnancy. That's a whole another world.

 

Tahnee: Even being pregnant was such a trip because, I started really looking into the TCM perspective on that and the different like elemental kind of controls at different stages and I was seeing an acupuncturist through my pregnancy and he's very, he's actually a mentor of mine now but just some of that stuff he was telling me, I was just like, this is so amazing and it's just not really common knowledge and I think it's such an elegant system now, like you said, for treating the individual but also for understanding. I find for myself it really helps me to understand myself and nature and people and kind of gives me this broad, I guess it's more broad strokes for me still.

 

Tahnee: I'm not as [inaudible 00:14:26] as aware of the details you are but for me like always, when women talk to us about their menstrual [inaudible 00:14:32] looking at the liver and the spleen and just kind of how we can support the kidneys and there's just these little kind of analogies or ideas you can use it are really helpful just to help people understand what might be going on in their bodies. I just wonder like what are you hoping to share and what are you hoping people get out of this coming training and what's Yoga Medicine take on this stuff?

 

Tiffany: I just think there's so much that we really don't know about things like Pecos and endo and infertility. There's such huge information gaps in our understanding of some of these more complex and newer things that we're looking at it because we weren't talking about Pecos and endo for very long now in the whole scheme of things and in fertility has become such a big topic. What I think is really brilliant about TCM is how it makes sense of all of these things that we really don't understand in a western sense and to be happy in that mystery, to not have to really know every detail. I mean though, obviously sometimes it's really nice to understand things on a western sense, but what's really brilliant, I think about TCM is how it looks at the fluctuations of the hormones through the cycle and then how that manifest in very unique ways by overlapping things like Yin and Yang and deficiency and excess and hot and cold and internal and external.

 

Tiffany: There's all these different ways to look at patterns that makes it really highly individual to the person, which you know, if you see 50 patients with Pecos, you're going to see some similarities but then you're also going to see a lot of differences between them, both environmentally as well as internally as well as just their own maybe genetics as well. So yeah, I think what I hope to do with this, and Chinese medicine can be very elaborate. You could study it your whole life and still have plenty to learn, but it can also be really simple and I think as a yoga teacher or someone using these practices for their own health, there's some big picture of things that you can look at, even though you know there are going to be layers to that.

 

Tiffany: It's not as easy as just one simple thing and that's the beauty of everyone being different, but there are a lot of resources and I think yoga gives us a great platform for self exploration to be able to see what's most helpful and experiment and have these tools to kind of look at how we apply these principles to our practice of Yin and Yang or excess and deficiency and really any of these women's health issues.

 

Tiffany: There is a layer of the simplicity of like, is it a deficiency or is this an excess? I think a good example of that is like with energy, when we feel tired, a lot of times we might feel really exhausted and really depleted and tired, but then there's also this exception of maybe we just ate a really big meal that we feel tired, which is tiredness from excess from eating too much versus what we normally associate with fatigue and tiredness, which is usually a deficiency in and maybe that's a kidney deficiency or a spleen deficiency. Now a lot of nuances and overlay to each of those. I think what makes this system really unique is that well, and there are others, you know, Ayurveda has some similar underpinnings that's very different, but that you can look at it with broad brush strokes and apply some generalities to it, but you can also dig in very deeply just like any specialty in western medicine as well.

 

Tiffany: Yeah, I think it's ability to make sense of what we can't explain is so valuable and why it's really being used so much in fertility. You see a lot of really great research coming out on acupuncture used in combination with IVF and a really significant increase in success rates when using acupuncture and sometimes herbs with those. What I've done is kind of distilled it down and applied it to the yoga practice, um, in a way that teachers can use and then again that students can use in their everyday life so that they're not dependent on seeing one. As a healthcare provider, I just hate that feeling of making people dependent on me. I always want people to have access to resources that allows them to learn and grow on their own, for people interested of course. There are people who aren't interested, they're probably going to go get a pill anyways or do something else.

 

Tiffany: So we just still down the basics. So in Chinese medicine there's different ways to diagnose. So the eight different patterns of excess and deficiency and Yin and Yang and cold and hot and internal and external, and then applying that to our yoga practices of how do we use things like Yin practices and restorative practices as a way to nourish deficiency and support someone who's really depleted versus movement, which is really important when they're stagnation and really anytime there's pain in Chinese medicine, there's an element of stagnation and here's where it gets really cool, I think is in Chinese medicine. If you look at the 28 day cycle, it's broken down into these four phases and each part is so different. So whether someone's working with infertility or Pecos or whatever other painful periods, PMS, menopause, we can look at how to support these different phases of the cycle to help create balance within that individual context.

 

Tiffany: For instance, I think one thing that's really interesting is that a lot of times traditionally, any other practice, we actually don't practice during our period and a lot of that actually has cultural nuances in it because women weren't allowed in the temples when they were menstruating and for long time they weren't really allowed to practice at all. So those cultural nuances have kind of seeped in and while I do think there is a place to kind of rest and appreciate this energy that's happening around our menses in Chinese medicine, it's also a really important time to move Qi blood downward so that you can actually shed the entire lining and prepare. It's like creating a fresh start. For many people, they often have problems later on in their cycle because they haven't completely shed the lining. So it doesn't set them up for a really great start.

 

Tiffany: So finding ways to move Qi blood, to move them around without depleting them. Again, it's going to depend on the person how exhausted or depleted they are and a lot of this is subjective, but then we move into the follicular phase, which is really about nourishing blood and Yin. So doing more Yin style postures and restorative postures and then ovulation, we've got to spark this Yang to start to move the egg through the tubes and start to create now the release of the egg happening now moving to the tubes and implantation and the warmth of the uterus to create a nice warm environment for the egg to implant and the nourishment there. So it's kind of a little bit different during each of those and that luteal phase and that was the last phase was the luteal phase there and finding a balance of both warmth, which happens for us in yoga through gentle movements and circulation, but also nourishment to help keep that embryo implanted in maligning and support the pregnancy of course as well. Yeah, it's fun.

 

Tahnee: Is it correlated to the generating cycles?

 

Tiffany: So I think what you're talking about is the five elements cycle, which is where each element is actually gives birth to another, it's called the generation cycle. One is the mother of another, but it's a completely different cycle. So I'm talking about is actually our 28 day, monthly cycle. Yeah. Sorry.

 

Tahnee: That's fine. I could have asked a clearer question I think. One of the people that I learned of and this maybe open to discussion, but [inaudible 00:21:14] it's really four phases and the earth is kind of this harmonious point in between transition and this idea of just sending Yin and then rising Yang and then I've kind of just, when you were talking about that, I was like, oh, I could sort of almost feel that same energy flowing around the kind of menstrual cycle. We need to have this descending energy and then this rising energy, this kind of constant flow from one phase to another, I guess in order for [inaudible 00:21:39] to manifest.

 

Tiffany: Yeah, and there's the descending energy of actually shedding the menstrual lining and then that lifting energy if you're trying to get pregnant in the luteal phase to try and support that pregnancy. Then a lot of people believe in Chinese medicine that the Earth Element is the foundation of all of the other elements. It is also present in all of the transitions. It's a transitional element. You can imagine it's kind of a grounding. The earth is that grounding quality as well but the earth is really connected to our digestion and so like many other forms of holistic medicine, the digestion in Chinese medicine is kind of the root of everything. Because even if I eat really good food, if I'm not digesting them well and extracting those nutrients, those nutrients are what are going to kind of build everything. All of my organs are dependent on and so the earth element, you know, obviously there's a lot more to it.

 

Tiffany: There's some people who believe the water element is the most important because it's like our reserves and our kidneys and our deep seated energy, this idea that we have this essence in our body that we're born with and when we run out of it, we pass on. So there's this idea of conservation of energy in Chinese medicine that's inherent and things like Tai Chi and Qi Gong and how we manage our energy, which is really important in our busy fast paced lives. Each of the organs I think shows up in its own way, which is a much longer discussion but you know, in the big picture, the earth element is really important for providing the essential nutrients to the rest of the body. Therefore, obviously in this modality, creating the blood to lie in the uterus, to create that preparation for implantation and to even create the follicles themselves, they're dependent on Yin and blood. The creation of all the vital substances are dependent on the strength of our digestion. So the earth element from Chinese medicine standpoint.

 

Tahnee: Yeah, and you do see that a lot in the science, that there's a kind of a correlation that's coming up between the help with the gut...

 

Tiffany: Yeah. You can't deny that. I mean, obviously we need, it's kind of undeniable, that we need to have not only eat good foods, but we have to be able to extract what's important from them and digest it well.

 

Tahnee: Yeah, and I think that's something, you can eat all the healthy food in the world, but if the digestion part of it's not working then you're really just-

 

Tiffany: Unfortunate. Yeah.

 

Tahnee: Okay. That's a couple of days, right? That's open to people-

 

Tiffany: Four days. Yeah.

 

Tahnee: You can come along if you're an [inaudible 00:23:52] or something as well. You don't have to just be a yoga teacher. It kind of expands someone's resume a little bit if they're in another natural health field.

 

Tiffany: Anyone who's really interested in, I mean we're going to go pretty deeply into the information and you know what I always do is give a background on more of the information to give a template for how to apply it to yoga because I don't really believe in a cookie cutter approach, but then we are really looking at it in the context of what's applicable to yoga because it can be obviously a much longer discussion of women's health and TCM, but looking at it as applicable to yoga. So if you're a healthcare provider, what you can use with your patients, if you're a teacher or a health coach or anything else, you know, tools you can use with people or we always get some people who really just want to learn for their own benefit. Maybe they have Pecos are endo or they're really just ravenous learners and really curious and interested anyone with a deep interest in the topic as welcome to come.

 

Tahnee: Yeah, that's awesome. So we'll put a link to that in the show notes for everybody who's interested. It's a really unique opportunity to get to see Tiffany. So if you can go along, please do. Doesn't come to Australia that much. I think it's just really cool thing. I mean when you're looking at, you know, because you started yoga so young and you would've probably, was it mostly for like the mental benefits at that point or were you also finding it helped you transition to puberty? Because I'm kind of having a daughter now.

 

Tiffany: I don't know. I mean I don't think I really thought about it that much of the time. It was really good timing for me because I had gone through this wilderness program and then right afterwards I saw this little wooden sign with [inaudible 00:25:17] yoga and a phone number on it. So it kind of just happened at the right time for me but looking back on it, I think it was these moments of feeling comfortable in my own skin. I grew up really athletic, running and playing competitive tennis and dancing since I was very little, LAS mostly. For me, I really loved the physicality of it, but there was always something more. It is, we know if you practice yoga, you know even semi-regularly there's something more that kind of draws you in and there's also layers of it. So depending on your interest, I think you can look at different things.

 

Tiffany: For for me, in my teens, I wouldn't have known this at the time, but for me, looking back on it, I think it was a coming home to myself and having those moments of feeling comfortable in my own skin. I really struggled as a teenager. I don't know if it was hormones or just this curiosity or this intensity. I was also teased a lot as a kid and that was really hard and my parents fought a lot and I just didn't really know where to find that kind of safe, calm place and for me Yoga was, oh wow, there's this place inside of me and not that I would put those words on it, but I wish that every teenager had. At one time I tried to go teach at a juvenile detention center and then I quickly realized that teaching teenagers is a whole another ball game.

 

Tiffany: I do wish that every teenager had access to it because I think of it like the owner's manual to your body and sometimes feeling comfortable in your skin even as an adult. Sometimes it's body image, sometimes it's interoception of being able to notice what's happening physiologically in our bodies, which is part of assisting all of these normal processes and the organs and some of it's stress, you know, regulations. There's so many great things I think yoga can be used for, but as a teenager, yeah, I think that would probably be my summary of it.

 

Tahnee: It's interesting that you said about body image because I have a history of eating disorders and yoga really helpful in kind of moving past that and feel like at this point in my life I can't even recognize that person even though it was me, you know, and I noticed you had a book called Meditate Your Weight. I don't want to offend you, but I was curious as to why [inaudible 00:27:13]-

 

Tiffany: I love that you brought that up because people, I feel like that book is so misunderstood. It was actually my way of helping people find a healthy body image and move past diets and weight loss. If you've read the book what you see, is that, toward the end it's really guiding people to let go of like move away from the scale, move away from this attachment to, I mean even to us, we have a very strong attachment to what we think health is and what we think a healthy body look is, or a healthy body weight is. For me, one thing I've always thought was really important with my patients is getting them to really attach to what they feel like. I also think that that motivates people more because once you start to feel better, you get that positive feedback and for me it has much more staying power than just looking in the mirror and be like, oh wow, I lost some weight.

 

Tiffany: I look better. It's harder to really, at least for me to motivate myself and my patients with that even though people really like that, they like the quick stuff. So my first book was the detox. It was a workshop that I did every January as a way to kind of give my patients these tools that they could use for themselves and it's a 30 day detox, mostly nutrition and home remedies and a little bit of herbs, a little bit of yoga and meditation. I think one of the big things I've found that the people who didn't respond, you know, there's always a few people who don't respond to anything.

 

Tiffany: One of the biggest hangups I found that people had who, especially those who didn't respond to that, was the mental side of things and how can we see ourselves and these hangups that we have that meditation is so brilliant for and obviously there's so many different reasons, health benefits for meditation as well, and there's some pretty good research now on meditation, but for me it was changing how I relate to myself and how I see my health and really kind of revamping that and so it's a guide to people who want to learn how to meditate.

 

Tiffany: I have a lot of students of mine who have been long time meditators that have enjoyed a different kind of perspective on things. You can just start with two minutes a day. It doesn't have to be an hour. I remember when I went to my training it was like, you have to at least two hours a day of meditation and 60 and that was overwhelming, but yeah, it's really accessible. It goes over some of the research behind how meditation can be helpful. I kind of struggled with the name because it does say your guide to a 30 day retreat weight loss, but I really wanted the publishers to say improving your body image. In the end I went with it because what I really wanted was I was thinking about all of the people in the weight loss section getting all this crap and all these like fad diets and all this awful advice and ruining their metabolism with all these extreme diets.

 

Tiffany: I wanted to give something really helpful and I wanted it to be in that section where people who really needed it would find it and would find something really valuable instead of doing it just for the yoga people because I knew that there would be a little bit of negativity in the yoga world around weight loss. I just wanted to get to the patients who needed it.

 

Tahnee: I was doing some research on it and reading some of their views and I really noticed that a lot of people that weren't yoga people were saying how it really changed how they related to their bodies and I think you really obviously was successful in that.

 

Tiffany: And the yoga people who have read it have said really great things too. I think people who don't know and they see that weight loss and I don't blame them. I mean for me Yoga is not about weight loss. It's about coming home to myself and making peace with myself and finding something that's healthy from what I feel, not what people tell me I should do. Although, obviously science and medicine and tests are always helpful too, but yeah, it is really funny how much cultural crap is interwoven into our idea of health. I think it's great to question that.

 

Tahnee: I know for me, I replaced my eating disorder with health [inaudible 00:30:38] you do not want to go to dinner with [inaudible 00:30:44] I think that's been a big transition for me over probably the last five years. Letting go of that idea of this perfected state of health that doesn't exist, you know?

 

Tiffany: Yeah, it's true and it's hard. I know when I graduated from Chinese Medicine School and I know most of my peers and I had a lot of friends going through naturopathic school and I think the people graduating from that felt very similar that there's a period of recovery afterwards where you know so much information about all the bad things in the world around you and there's a point of maybe a year, maybe five years, maybe 10 years, I think I'm still trying to find that out of like there's a place for indulging and there's a place for letting go, letting down our boundaries and social aspects of food. I think the balance is always the hardest for us though, at least in my experience, it's so much easier for us to do all or nothing to go on those extremes then, to navigate the middle path, I mean, which is yoga, which is always the hardest in the health modality too.

 

Tiffany: Nowadays, every day you see a new article come out with five things for better brain health or if I have things for better digestion, five poses for you know, memory or five essential oils for your health. You know, all of these things and it's overwhelming and I think there's a part of us too that has to make peace with the emptiness and the space between the doing and not having to be perfect. I know that's definitely something for me too, the perfectionist in us and when you get out of something like natural pathic school or Chinese Medicine School, there's this period of like you kind of have to let it all go and let yourself come back to more of a normal thing can realize the place of everything and toxins are good for us. They actually in moderation, they do train our immune response and train our body. Obviously most of us wouldn't want to live in a bubble.

 

Tahnee: I think that's is something Bernie Clark talks about really beautifully, like to anti-fragility model of the human body and how appropriate stress with appropriate rest gives them.

 

Tiffany: Yeah, I agree. He's kind of more that physics side of it. So applying that healthy stress, which in the orthopedic side is very important too. I agree. Or you know, we look at stress now too, and stress is such a hot topic, but this idea of use stress being positive stress. They did a study a while back where they took the medical students, which they often do and I know it wasn't medical students in this one, I'm sorry. They took two groups of people and what they did was they educated one group about how bad stress was for you and how negative it was for your health and all of the detrimental effects on your physiology and your organs and everything. They took the other group and they taught them about how important stress was for helping to motivate you and keeping you moving forward and how helpful it was in the positive aspects of stress in what they saw was the effects.

 

Tiffany: I don't really remember the specifics of it now, but the physiological effects afterwards of their responses to stress were very different. So to me this is the yoga looking at our mindset, looking at our perspective. It's not about having this perfect understanding because we all experienced stress, but it's about being willing to look at and notice those responses rather than going through the autopilot. For me it's like going in your closet and turning on the light to find what clothes you want to wear rather than just going on in the dark and picking out something and maybe that works. That might be fun too. I think for me yoga is about turning on the light to be able to kind of see what we're working with and navigate that, which is so important because our mindset is huge.

 

Tiffany: It changes everything. I mean we see now Harvard, they have for a while actually a whole department called the department of Placebo. When I found out about that, one of them is actually a really well known Chinese medicine doctor. When I found out about that, I was like, it's yoga. I mean like this is the power of the mind and this is huge. We all associate the placebo effect as a negative thing, but the placebo effect happens in every research study and it's the power of our mind to heal, which is incredible.

 

Tahnee: Yeah, because it's something like 30% of positive results can come from to placebos.

 

Tiffany: A big portion. Yeah. In fact it's a huge portion and things like antidepressants to as well, which is, there are some interesting studies around as well.

 

Tahnee: It's a funny one with placebo because we work with herbs and I obviously teach yoga as well and sometimes I guess I have this like solved out that it's just people's minds. You know, [crosstalk 00:34:46] I was talking to my brother about this and he was like really like [inaudible 00:34:51] scientific, he was like, it's kind of what works. I think to an extent there's some truth in that as long as people aren't being fraudulent and kind of-

 

Tiffany: Of course, yeah. It's like who cares? I feel the same way because I, very conservative household. So I always have this little scientist in the back like thinking about the western side of things, but we have this negative context of placebo but who cares? If you feel better, does it matter? And as we start to look at things like pain, what we see now, and we actually know very little about the nervous system compared to some other parts of the body and the brain and pain. We're learning a lot, we look at something like pain. The pain is happening in our brain. It's a communication issue and obviously if you're in a car accident or you have something happen, there can be real damage to the tissues.

 

Tiffany: In a lot of cases, especially with chronic pain, a lot of it is this communication and our interpretation and then obviously that our experience is being colored by all our past experience and emotions. It's such a really interesting topic and gosh, I think yoga is such a necessary part of the pain movement now too and looking at options for working with pain.

 

Tahnee: Yeah, we were talking about [inaudible 00:35:54] and in the training yesterday because it's such a subjective experience. Like one person will call, you know, you've got on one side of the scale, orgasmic birth and then you've got the, Oh my God, give me an epidural. People are having physiologically more or less the same experience, but one person's interpretation of those signals is very different mothers and I think what I've experienced, because I had really chronic lower back pain in my twenties which was more emotional than physical. Yeah, I'd have really found that, it's having this new relationship with sensation, which gives me like a vocabulary that's much broader, which I can then go into another language if you only say like three things and you don't have much of an experience.

 

Tahnee: It's kind of really clouded by your ability to communicate and I think the more we learn to listen and hear the scope of communication coming from the body of the mall, we're capacitated to make, like you said, turn the light on me and make illuminated choices about [inaudible 00:36:44]. I think, you know, what's woven really deeply into yoga philosophy as well, it's been such a, something I really found with you as well, like you really brought in a lot of that western kind of research and their studies, which hope, I think the western mind really relax into the practices of yoga, I think.

 

Tiffany: It's hard because I mean to even say what you said that your back pain was mostly emotional is a hard thing to say because pain is real. The pain is the same. For all you know, someone could be digging into your back, you know, who knows what going on there and even things like disc bulges we see now there are a lot of people, huge sectors of people who don't have pain, who have these really significant changes in the tissues. So it's kind of throwing the whole system on its head a little bit. I think when you're in pain it's hard to relate it to an emotional cause that I know with my husband, he was having lower back pain recently and I was like, Oh isn't that funny because you're having so many struggles at work right now.

 

Tiffany: I know they did like a [inaudible 00:37:41] on people with lower back pain on and the biggest correlation they saw was people who were unhappy at work [crosstalk 00:37:47] I was like, isn't that funny? Interesting and I get it. He has a hard time really connecting. Like he wants an answer, like he wants me to work on is QL or he wants me to give him some yoga poses or something and I'm like, I'll definitely do that and oftentimes that'll be helpful and it doesn't matter. I think the placebo effect is as a yoga teacher, why wouldn't I want all of that? That's why I think it's so brilliant to weave in Eastern and Western medicine so that I speak to the student I'm working with on their level in a way that means something to them so that what they're doing is meaningful.

 

Tiffany: Whether that's herbs or yoga or pharmaceuticals. I think that meaningful interaction is really important that they can kind of wrap their head around it without maybe even having a strict diagnosis, but the purpose for it, how it's working so that each time they go and they take that thing, they're thinking about that. I think it's kind of a little controversial, but they've done research on using actual placebo pills or they actually have them now you can buy placebo pills online, they actually sell them and supposedly people get results with them.

 

Tahnee: I think I saw a study that said 30% of people using those feel [inaudible 00:38:53].

 

Tiffany: There's different colors that respond better for different things. It's really funny, but I think 20 years ago to think of that as being a hypochondriac or it being in your head but the reality is that our brain is controlling these things. It's regulating the healing response, it's telling our body how to respond and it's powerful. So how we intervene with that, you know, Yoga is kind of a sneaky way or Pranayama and meditation as a sneaky way to intervene in that system that otherwise is automatic.

 

Tahnee: Yup. That's what I think you know an [inaudible 00:39:25] practice does so effectively as it intersects the breathing and the meditation. Ideally, you know, if someone's got that cued in and they kind of have the awareness to do it, but you also use like you've got this book on meditation, Your Detox book. I read that a very long time ago when it was still the black one. Yeah, I was really impressed by the non-prescriptive scope of it. It was kind of pick the bits that work for you and I came out of, like I said, I replaced kind of eating disorders with health. I was fasting and doing all these hardcore like hardcore cleanses, like 21 days [inaudible 00:39:57].

 

Tiffany: Like 30 day detoxes?

 

Tahnee: Yeah, not like yours, which is nice and gentle but like really nasty ones. I obviously give myself some dramas doing that. It was such a livable program I think under a way of kind of exposing yourself to different ideas. It's like breathing practices and then there's us and there's food advice, you know, recipes. That's really when we look at health, it's not just one thing, right? It's it's holistic kind of whole life approach.

 

Tiffany: Yeah, I think it's that tricky thing that I was mentioning before too is noticing that it is multidimensional without being overwhelmed by the fact that it's multidimensional. Because then you can wind down all of these rabbit holes of doing this for this and this for this and this for this and this for this and I think one of the things that's brilliant about yoga is that we can learn all this about it now and understand it and again that can bolster that mind body effect, that placebo effect, that positive effect, the power of the mind, but the flip side of it too is that we don't necessarily have to understand at all. I think just going through our practice and noticing the things, and I think one of the most powerful tools in yoga practice is being able to notice it without having to judge it, without having to interpret it, without having to diagnose it.

 

Tiffany: I think it's a really powerful and magical place that a yoga teacher can live in and not be their healthcare provider, not giving the diagnosis, but taking them out of that and taking them into their experience in their body to not have to judge it or label it as good or bad or right or wrong. The breath is changing. The breath is different. Wow, that feels heavier. That feels lighter. I feel that more on my right side. I feel more movement on my ribs on my left side, to just notice the texture and the nuances of our experience and even things like discomfort though, you know, we're obviously not trying to put people in pain, so we're usually moving out of painful positions, but noticing areas of discomfort, especially in things like meditation in a safe way. Being able to sit with and notice how they change as you look at them, because again, the sensation is not in the tissues.

 

Tiffany: The pain is not in the tissues. There's actually no pain receptors, [inaudible 00:41:48] receptors so they're detecting extreme changes in the tissues, but to be able to look and sense and sit with it and leave space for it without having to go through this western diagnosis and medical understanding, I think is a really powerful place. As a yoga student, if you attend yoga classes, remembering that there is power to just being in your body, noticing the breath, feeling it. I really think probably a lot more powerful as we are able to really embody the practice, what I call it, embody it, which is noticing the breath, feeling the experience and being in it rather than, I think there are times when we can just go through the motions of our practice and maybe not get as much out of it. Who knows?

 

Tiffany: I still think you're probably getting something really valuable out of it, but we can go through our practice really mindlessly two and zone out through our practice and I think having the courage to step into our practice with our eyes open and to look and notice and breathe and listen and show up for ourselves as a really powerful thing.

 

Tahnee: Well, we actually asked the students what is yoga yesterday and we have this emergency doctor who is Irish and does cross fit and he's just not your typical yoga body and [inaudible 00:42:55] absolutely beautiful. He said, "Yoga for me started physical," but he's like, I'm mentally so much stronger and it's given me so much courage and I'm braver in my work. I was just so like inspired that that's the place, starting his teaching journey from because I thought, that's a really powerful message I think. Yeah, that made me happy to hear.

 

Tiffany: I love that and I think the beauty of yoga is that there really is something for everyone and it's not that one is better than the other. We kind of tend to put our own judgment on top of that to say maybe that one's not as good or maybe that one has these flaws in it. And I think there's something really valuable and precious in each one and the beauty of it is that within the yoga practice, I think one of the hindrances is it does require us to show up and be present in our bodies enough to discern what will be most helpful for us. Sometimes that takes a little learning curve to understand not just what you feel during a practice but after it or maybe some guidance from a teacher or training but it does require us to show up and discern and listen.

 

Tiffany: Once I have that, I have this really powerful tool that I can use, not just in my yoga practice but in my life. I can listen and show up and learn and I think being able to extract the judgment, which is not an easy thing. I think it's a lifetime journey is also how we learn empathy for ourselves, how we learn empathy for the people around us, how we heal cultural issues and community issues and such bigger topic as well. So it has these waves of healing that affect us on so many different levels as well through one simple underpinning of this awareness to be present and mindful and nonjudgmental in our attention to ourselves, and then allow that to ripple out into how we relate to the world.

 

Tahnee: I love that about Yoga Medicine, the [inaudible 00:44:37] service is a part of that structure too and I think we do tend to find, and it's something that I hear a lot with yoga students is they start to want to give back or share what they've learned. You know, it just becomes this kind of, once you've found a certain degree of contentment, I think that you really want to see that spread. I think it's a really powerful sort of side effects of yoga as a practice as well.

 

Tiffany: Yeah, I think one of the things the studies find too is that yoga is not part of it. That it's hard to kind of look at the effects of the research studies is because it also affects our lifestyle. So it affects a lot of times our decision making by kind of noticing these things and service work is one of those that often comes and I model a lot of our teacher trainings after my own medical training. For me going through my internship and working in drug and alcohol centers, in domestic violence centers, in adolescent centers, it really was important for me to kind of not only work with different demographics, but keep a remembrance of the big picture of our interconnectedness in our communities.

 

Tiffany: As a yoga teacher, I think it's easy to feel and anyone really any job nowadays to feel overwhelmed by all we have to do to keep up in this modern day life. I think doing service work really puts things in perspective for me. Each time I come back and the work that we do, it's just such a great reminder and such a great powerful way to also work with stresses. It puts things in perspective too.

 

Tahnee: So I guess on that choice around lifestyles, just out of curiosity [inaudible 00:46:03] traveled like so much. I remember one time looking at schedule and just thinking, good Lord lady. You seem to really thrive as well moving around a lot and I was curious as to, it's something we get asked about a lot with trouble, like so many people seem to get really knocked around by it and my partner and I have our little tips and tricks, but I was just curious to hear how you do it. Are you traveling as much at the moment or is it-

 

Tiffany: I'm definitely traveling less than I used to be. I have definitely found a really a nice balance. Maybe a third of the month I'm traveling. At one point it was like maybe 70 percent, which was hard. I wasn't seeing patients as much of that and that was more brief, but for a long time I was, gosh, I was seeing 60 patients a week and then traveling on weekends and going away for a few weeks, a year to lead trainings and it was a lot. I mean I think everyone's different and you really have to find what works for you, but having those things, those routines that you go through is so important and my routines have definitely changed over the years. I've always had my powder bag that I take with me, which has usually consisted of some sort of protein powder and then all sorts of different vitamins and herbs and usually some adaptogens, whatever I'm feeling like I need most of the time.

 

Tiffany: Maybe some Rhodiola or some Cordyceps or Ashwagandha, probably some of my favorites and then maybe some glutamine or vitamin C powder, probiotic powders, Greens powders I always put in there because they helped me kind keep my digestion regular. Then I have a good protein powder that I like called Mediclear Plus by Thorne and it's a nice one. I like it because it's got hypoallergenic proteins but it's got some good supplements to support the liver detox pathways as well. You can eat pretty well on the road if you're careful. You can always find some veggies and some protein usually anywhere you go or a salad with something, protein of your choice on it. If you're vegetarian or Vegan, it's a lot harder. I eat fish and things, so it's be a little easier for me but you can usually find good sources, but I mean there's so many things.

 

Tiffany: The oils, even there's always the little things, so it's never the same. I like having a little bit of the detox stuff in there and then one of my strengths has always been sleeping, so that's been an asset for me. Luckily when I get somewhere, usually I can sleep really well, so I always just try and make sure that if I'm arriving at night on a long flight, that I stay up kind of as much as I can during the flight, which isn't always very much because I like to sleep on planes and if I arrive in the morning to try and get as much sleep as I can. I used to have a very specific ritual around, I would sleep and then I would wake up and then I would sleep. It's just so hard. You can't plan all of that. I think there's also again, an outlet, a mindset to it.

 

Tiffany: I think for people who really hate traveling for work, it can be a lot harder and I don't necessarily love traveling, but I love my work and I love the people when I get there and I do love planes because I love this time where I can unplug and just watch as many movies as I want and sleep as much as I want even though now a lot of them have internet on the plane, you are kind of undisturbed and so I have this weird appeal of it and I think having that positivity is helpful and having all these little things. I bring some needles with me and sometimes will do acupuncture on myself. I have like a little I cover, I bring with me to help me sleep better at night. Sometimes I bring oils or herbs. I mean it kind of depends on where I'm going.

 

Tiffany: Yeah, the protein powders are regular and I have gotten stopped in customs once or twice, but they always let me go. They test it, it's always on the US side. Leaving [crosstalk 00:49:24]-

 

Tahnee: [inaudible 00:49:26] when I travel. I think they're amazing to travel. So came in through El Salvador one day to get into the US and they were like about 10 people crowded around me like [inaudible 00:49:37] looking at me and they got me off to the side and I was like, oh my God. [inaudible 00:49:43] eventually.

 

Tiffany: You'd be surprised how few times that you know, because it looks really sketchy. I take big bags of powder with me, enough for like 10 days and it looks really sketchy. You know, it's white. Sometimes it's kind of brownish. Sometimes it's a little greenish. You'd be surprised how few times I've been stopped, which is kind of funny now [inaudible 00:50:04] because they're probably going to get stopped the next time. One time I had them come in like they brought on the bomb squad. I mean this guy who had, [inaudible 00:50:11] in his shirt and he came in and it was this big ordeal and sure enough they swab it and do all this stuff and like 10 minutes later and this red alarms going off later like, oh, you're fine, you're good to go. I was like, can you tell me what it was? He's like, oh, there's some regular household items that can set off, the alert.

 

Tiffany: I was like [inaudible 00:50:29] after he's held me up and down in front of everyone several times for like 10 minutes. Surprisingly that's only happened a couple times of the hundreds of times I've done it.

 

Tahnee: I think they're mostly worried about liquids [inaudible 00:50:44].

 

Tiffany: Yeah, they always let me go. They always figure it out. I think not that I wouldn't take protein powder with you, but I really swear by it because if you start your day with, good sources of protein are harder to find on the road and if you start your day with a nice balanced blood sugar, at least for me, some of those vitamins and things that are harder to get or that I feel are helpful. It's just nice I think to start and have one really good meal a day, at least.

 

Tahnee: I feel like the detox thing is so important because I'm in Bali right now, just like the chemicals in the bedding, you know what we're talking about before, knowing what you know about health and [inaudible 00:51:17] so much but, I know that Dacia's papa is a kind of supported, a little bit more than usual. Then I'm like, you know, I can handle this.

 

Tiffany: It's true and it's so hard because we are learning so much about the toxins in our environment around it and at some point I feel like you have to let it go. At least for me personally and remember that our bodies, I mean obviously you want to do your best in your world at home and to control those things and be healthy, especially if there are health issues going on. There's some really important information we've learned about these things, but at some point you've got to let it go and believe and trust in the resilience of our bodies that they're really made to adapt and respond. Every system you see, this as a repetitive theme and the Fascia is the system we're learning so much about now, which is really interesting but about, the resilience of all of these different tissues, they're adaptable and they're responding to the needs and responding to demands.

 

Tiffany: Obviously we don't want to put too much of a burden on them. They're just like poor toxins in our body. I always have this analogy of, you know, I love it when patients come in in their 30s or their 40s. I see it often like in their 40s where they're like, oh, you know, I'm just getting older. I've got this bad knee or I've got this or that. I'm getting older and I'm like, first off, you're only in your forties so yes, there are some changes that are happening slowly and yes, things are always changing of course. I always like to think of if you had a plant, obviously plants are different than us, but if you have two plants and you pour bleach on one and miracle grow on the other, they're going to look clearly very different.

 

Tiffany: We don't talk about, oh, that plant looks so old, but you know, it's such a controlled environment and the longer we live, the longer we can pour bleach in our bodies, the longer we can wear them down and obviously there's a natural degenerative process happening, that if we're lucky enough to live long enough will happen. That's the beauty of the spectrum of life. But there's also all these other things that we can pour into our body that we can control and regulate somewhat and do the best, but also believe in the resilience of our bodies and that positivity and bring all these positive, little reminders with you on your travels, whatever that might be. Oils or powders or eye pillows or pictures or Mantras, whatever that is to help keep that positivity, supporting that resilience I think is important.

 

Tahnee: I really, really agree and I think we've tried to [inaudible 00:53:35] especially since having my daughter, first of all traveling without kids is like the best. [inaudible 00:53:40] all the movie time to myself. Also, we try and have, like at home we try and eat really clean and we don't use chemicals in our house, minimize our exposure to things. We also accept that is a part of our lives and we have quite a busy schedule and that's okay. Like sometimes she'll eat the gluten cracker and it's not the end of the world. I think having a child really helps [inaudible 00:54:07]. We would fast rather than eat at one point, my partner and I like, we were really difficult. Yeah, and I think that's something like now obviously I still some of the oils that we're bringing over on the boat, on the island, I want to know, it's like, oh my God, I'm trying to [inaudible 00:54:29] but beyond that, you know what, I'm going to eat some stuff I don't normally eat or something.

 

Tiffany: Yeah, I've been on the extreme side too. It's good to find that balance and there's definitely a time and a place for the extremes and therapeutic modalities when you're working with specific illnesses or issues. I think those extremes can sometimes be necessary and really important to stick to but sometimes it's also really important to find that balance and you come back. I know, and kids are a whole nother realm, which is tricky. I know our daughter, my husband's kids, he has two kids, our kids, his kids, my inherited kids. With teenagers, it's even harder, as they grow up and go to school and they start finding things like soda and gummy bears and all these things. I don't claim to have any answers for parenting other than [inaudible 00:55:14] has always been to be a good listener and they have questions I'm there, and to try and lead by example. Yeah, I mean, gosh, with teenagers so much, they're learning and finding from school and friends and having to keep up with, gosh and now the digital world, social media.

 

Tahnee: I'm very glad I'm not a teenager in this time.

 

Tiffany: Yeah, just take it slow, enjoy it. Then the hormones come. It's enough. It's like, you got all this stuff going on and it's so hard to watch. I know on the other side, I remember when I was a teenager, I had such a hard time and struggled myself. I can see our daughter, she's so much easier than I was, but I still watch and I'm like, oh my gosh, I would never want to go through that again. I don't even know that I have the answers here. It's such a hard time of life and yeah, it's tricky to watch from the other side now.

 

Tahnee: I think your approaches sounds epic and so we can do have compassion and pay attention and [inaudible 00:56:16] and hope for the best.

 

Tiffany: Yeah, hope they make good decisions and when they don't hope that they learn something valuable from it. I know I've learned in my most valuable lessons from all the mistakes that I've made.

 

Tahnee: Yeah. I think it's part of living. I'm conscious of time. I really appreciate you having been here with us today. I know that you're very busy, so it's a real pleasure to talk to you and I just wanted to let everyone know, again, Tiffany's going to be in Sydney, Australia from June 6 to 9 this year, 2019. She'll be done running a program on women's health and specifically how yoga can help with that, but it will merge these two worlds of east and West [inaudible 00:56:54] so beautifully. So please go along. I'll post the link in the bio information at the bottom of the podcast page and we'll also share it out on social media if you find us through social media. So yeah, I'm hoping to be there Tiffany. I will just trying to work out dates my partner's away and we will try and see if we can make it happen.

 

Tahnee: Yeah, I really appreciate your time and I hope that everyone listening, they can get along to that. They can pick up a copy of one of your books or catch one of your classes on yoga glows [inaudible 00:57:23] go to online studio and I really love your classes. Thanks so much.

 

Tiffany: Thank you. Yeah, and thanks for having me and yeah, if they just hop on yogamedicine.com they can find out about everything we talked about, the book, the service project, the teacher trainings, the Sydney one is on the calendar there and yeah, our teachers, they can find a teacher like yourself, one of our Yoga Medicine teachers near them if they're students.

 

Tahnee: [inaudible 00:57:43] we have people all around the world, so that is updated pretty regularly from what I see. Kind of post program dates in Spain I see and even in Africa maybe and also-

 

Tiffany: That was a while ago, yeah, and we have online courses too for people who can't make it.

 

Tahnee: Oh, yeah. Actually our team did your yoga international course on the Chinese medicine kind of foundation.

 

Tiffany: Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. I have an intro to Chinese medicine on there. Yeah.

 

Tahnee: Really good and really helps my foundation, they're understanding. Yeah, so I'll put a link to that as well because we found that really helpful and also your website. All right, well have a beautiful day.

 

Tiffany: Thanks for having me.

 

Tahnee: My pleasure and I will catch you soon. Thanks Tiffany.

 

Tiffany: Thank you. It's always nice to have some good questions and good conversations, so I appreciate the thoughtful questions.

 

Tahnee: Thanks for being open to that. I was like, well I hope she's not offended by Meditate Your Weight [inaudible 00:58:33]-

 

Tiffany: No, I love that you brought that up because everyone thinks that and it's hard. I totally get it. I mean, I probably wouldn't read it if it weren't my book. If it said weight long, it's nice for people to know.

 

Tahnee: I read all the reviews and I was really, I worked in publishing for about three years and I remember the absolute drama between what the author thought the book should be and what the marketing [inaudible 00:58:53] I'm like, oh my gosh. I was probably thinking, I bet there's some publisher pressure. I think what I really appreciated about your work is how accessible it is and I think it makes it accessible, right? It's not this where we sit there and meditate on your [inaudible 00:59:05] stuff, which I love.

 

Tiffany: I felt like the yoga people get a lot of that, but the population who doesn't, and I've seen a lot of the patients that I've seen over the years to have been non yoga people and I see those people and those people that really needed that work. I mean there's so much talk about body image now and self care and self love in the yoga world. Though I wanted to hit that on its trending moment. I think it would have been really nice and the people that I work with would have really loved it in the yoga world. I think it was definitely more needed in the non-yoga sector.

 

Tahnee: I think that's great. All right, well thank you so much and yeah, lovely, and I'll see you soon.

 

Tiffany: Yeah, thank you. Have fun in Bali.

 

Tahnee: Thanks. I will.