How to put your life in balance physically, spiritually, and mentally
@mindbody.dodd
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@mindbody.dodd 〰️
Natalie Dodd, Licensed Therapist
Do you have a dream of curating a life in flow? Being able to approach life’s stress, grief, and hardship with a blend of mind, body, spirit connection? Then this post is for you.
“My mantra this year has been expansion within discomfort.”
Do you have a dream of curating a life in flow? Being able to approach life’s stress, grief, and hardship with a blend of mind, body, spirit connection? Then this post is for you.
Natalie is a licensed clinical social worker and registered yoga instructor 200 hour. Her work focuses on blending yoga with mental health. She is trained in trauma sensitive yoga and has brought this approach to psychiatric hospital programs, yoga studios, led workshops that address burnout, chronic stress, and attachment theory. Currently, she is a private practice clinician and works with her clients to make a bigger connection to themselves through spiritual relationships.
Natalie reminds us that when we allow our physical bodies to sit in our emotions, move our bodies, and move our experiences with an intention of healing, we learn safety in discomfort.
My goal for this interview was to understand how we can put our lives into balance spiritually, physically, and emotionally- particularly as we move from Spring into Summer.
With that, let’s welcome Natalie to the blog.
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Why do you think yoga plays so well into therapy?
All of it is integrating how to live a life of balance; curating a life in flow. Life comes with stress, grief and hardships. In mental health, one of the reasons we seek help for that is because we become stuck in that place of grief or hardship. Basically, we find ourselves in a place in our lives where we are out of our comfort zone and unable help ourselves. Yoga helps to ground us and shift back into a flow state. It can provide a blueprint that can help people have the tools to navigate their way out of a hard time.
In the West, we think of yoga as the asanas (the movement). Asanas help us to move our bodies and move our experiences. If you use yoga with the intention of healing, it can help to release stored emotions. Yoga will meet you where you are. You can also learn safety in discomfort. Yoga can teach you how to breathe through discomfort and overcome mental hurdles.
My mantra this year has been expansion within discomfort. There is a huge difference between I am uncomfortable and I am unsafe. We get those two so blurred sometimes. More times than not you are not unsafe, you’re just uncomfortable. Learning the difference between these two will build your confidence and build trust within ourselves. So doing a practice like yoga, really puts us in a position to practice and create a lifestyle of experiencing, not trying to escape, or avoid.
How do you personally attune your mind and body to seasonal transitions like spring into summer?
We want to focus on spirit to tap into the seasonal changes. We are witnesses to seasonal change and can use them to our benefit. Pay attention to your natural rhythm and be mindful of the season. At this time, it’s Spring leading into Summer and this is a time of rebirth and growth. Our creativity is blooming and energy is rising. Give yourself that big morning stretch, fill yourself with energy from the Earth- grounding would be a good practice this time of year. Tap into creative projects, this is the time to start planning those, scheduling vacations, play and adventure together. These are higher energy endeavors. Also, eating for the same purpose. Pick produce with high water content and focus on hydration. You may find that you can get by with less caffeine and more sunshine. Lean into the longer days- go outside early in the morning or later in the evening. Seasons are a reminder of change. And right now we are in a season of higher energy, so let’s use that to our advantage.
Are there any rituals or routines you recommend for clients to help them feel grounded and inspired during seasonal changes?
I am a huge advocate for living your life in alignment with circadian rhythm. So that would mean, start your morning in the sun. Try not to look at your phone for the first 30 minutes. Go outside and ground, look around, ask yourself “What’s the energy of the day?” “Do I hear the birds chirping?” “What am I hearing in my environment?” Use the day for what it is offering. Take advantage of the longer days- walks after dinner and visit farmer’s markets for seasonal produce. That’s actually what our bodies were designed to crave.
Can you share a specific breath work or grounding technique that you use with clients that blends both yoga and therapy?
I like to incorporate the understanding of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. So many of us get really trapped in the sympathetic nervous system and we may not notice it but that’s why we see so many chronic stress conditions. In my practice, I remind my clients to breathe. This sounds so simple, but too often my clients are breathing really shallow, which is part of the sympathetic nervous system. So I train them to think of breathing as a balancing practice. Every time we breathe in, we are activating the sympathetic nervous system- our fight or flight. Every time we breathe out, we activate the parasympathetic nervous system- rest and digest. So we are always in this rhythmic motion of breath, but sometimes we get caught in just the inhale and we don’t engage the full breath through belly, chest, throat, which allows the parasympathetic nervous system to get activated. So when we intentionally activate our exhale, that is an indicator to our body that we are safe. That’s also why you hear a lot in yoga classes cues about your breath, particularly your exhale. Reminding us to breathe through discomfort.
When I work with clients, I will have them practice by breathing in for a count of 4, breathing out for a count of 5 or 6. This is going to activate your parasympathetic nervous system and bring in a sense of clam. On the converse, if you want to energize, you can breathe in at the count of 2 quick inhales. And do a stair stepping breath. This is good for clients who have low energy or may be depressed. But generally, my clients need to ground, so we focus on the exhale.
Either way, once you understand that the breath in activates the sympathetic nervous system and the exhale out activates the parasympathetic nervous system, you have so much room to play with how breath can meet you and motivate you. It’s that unspoken language that’s louder than our thoughts at all time, we just don’t pay attention to it.
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So there you have it. Tons of insight on how to shift our energy to meet the changes in the seasons, how we can get comfortable with the uncomfortable, and ways to use our breath to activate our nervous system. It is easy to lose sight of the natural rhythms of our bodies and our earth, but if we learn to listen, we can take simple steps that make major shifts in our awareness and energy.
I hope you loved this post and learned some valuable information. Stay tuned, because next week I will be back with part 2 of my interview with Natalie.