Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome, my outside the box thinkers to the anti aging Unraveled Podcast, where I am your host, Dr. Lori Gerber. In this podcast, we will explore the fascinating world of personalized anti aging medicine that considers the whole person inside and out and how all systems are interconnected to each other. In today's world of modern medicine, we often find ourselves like just another number in a system that prioritizes quick fixes over sustainable and more natural solutions. Well, let's get ready for a paradigm shift in health and beauty. We look far beyond treating symptoms and aim to get to the root cause of our health and cosmetic issues. This podcast is your go to source for all things natural, outside the box and innovative in integrative medicine and cosmetic dermatology. So sit back, relax, and get ready to dive deep into the world of functional medicine and aesthetics. With me, Dr. Lori Gerber. Let's take a trip down the real skin revolution pathway together.
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the next edition of Anti Aging Unraveled. I'm really glad to have you all here. It is getting cold here, and I have the heater on in the basement and looking at our next guest, you guys, and he's in the warmth. So I'm a little jealous, but I'm really glad to have you all join us. We are going to continue our series of guests right now and talk about integrative health, spreading the integrative movement, if you will, making it a mainstream event. I want to make sure you guys all know everything that's out there for health and wellness, and that is my goal for 2023. And 2024 is to really align us all because we have so many ideas and we really need to work together to really bring health to you as a patient and to take control of your own health. So I have Yogi Aaron, and I will tell you guys, he was one of the first guys that I matched with on Podmatch. Super exciting, and I'm really glad to have him on. So he's extremely sought after yoga instructor trailblazing really new paths, maybe controversial paths, which we'll talk about in yoga. Unorthodox perspectives on stretching and flexibility and how sometimes they cause more harm than good. So we're going to talk about how he can relieve pain through his I'm going to probably say this wrong, but it's ayama right, ayama so. It's a yama. So it's Applied Yoga Anatomy and Muscle Activation, which I love the name basically a revolutionary approach to creating strength and engaging muscles and activating them instead of stretching them out. So he is the only one that teaches this guy, so I'm really excited to have him here. And he has an online platform for you guys, the Yogi Club, which we'll talk about so that you can take advantage. And he teaches it as well. And he has an amazing retreat in Costa Rica that you can take advantage of as well. So Costa Rica has a special place in my heart. He knows. So I'm going to get there. So anyone that wants to join me, please, we're going to go. This is on my bucket list for 2024, for sure. So he's very funny, super fun to talk to. So welcome. I'm really excited to have you.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: Thank you so much for that intro, Doctor. And yes, we have to get you to Costa Rica.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: Yeah, like I said, I'm an honorary Tika, lived there for a year, one of my favorite places, truthfully. So we're going to go, and I'm really excited, and I do yoga regularly. So when I did Match and we kind of started talking, I found this really interesting because I'm not flexible. I've never been flexible. No matter how much yoga I do, my hamstrings are just attached to literally my neck.
My hamstrings, they don't stop at my butt. They go all the way up, and they're so tight. So my shoulders are attached to my ears. And I always look at people that are so flexible and say, wow, that's super impressive, but, man, could that be good for you. And then as I started doing what I do as well, I noticed a very interesting pattern of overstretching and injury, and so, yeah, so I'm kind of excited to start talking about this, but I want to talk a little bit. I thought your background was fascinating, so I'm going to start there.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: I know you might not want it's a big hole, so just let's watch out.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: Let's dive in. Because you came from a really nontraditional family, right? So let's talk a little bit about your upbringing. You tell us your story. I loved when you told me your story before, so I'm really excited to share it with our listeners.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: Well, I don't know where you want me to begin exactly, but I did grow up and actually in a very traditional Christian household. But by the age of around 1314 years old, my mother, who was like I was trying to think of a nice word to use a very energetic, pentecostal Christian, completely flipped the script and went the opposite direction and became extremely New Age. And actually, I think both of those moments really shaped me. My Christian upbringing kind of created the platform for me to have fellowship and create community. And that is something that laid the groundwork for me, opening up my yoga retreat in Costa Rica. And many times before that, I've always sought out trying to create community and bring people together to support each other.
And then when my mother got into the new age thing, that laid the groundwork for me to access the power of my mind, which then led me into yoga and really kind of opening up my mind to the universe of limitless possibilities, not afraid to take risks, and knowing that the only thing that could get in my way was me. So I have a lot of gratitude for both of those.
But of course, with my strong religious background, I was very kind of not really interested in yoga. I just didn't feel like I wanted another quote unquote, spiritual path to follow.
But I did end up getting into yoga. But I was very like, this is, for me, just about the physical. I don't care about the spiritual. I got into yoga because, like you, I was really tight. And as I got into stretching, part of it, which is why I got into yoga, I quickly hurt myself. I remember my back seizing up on me, and I was 18 years old at the time, and I thought to myself, my God, is this what getting old feels like?
And of course, if you talk to people about why they stretch or why they think they should stretch, the top two answers that I've consistently found is that I need to stretch to be younger, to look younger, or I need to stretch to be healthier, because stretching is the way to be healthy. And I think those are two really good goals. I mean, who doesn't want to be younger and who doesn't want to be healthier? However, what I quickly found out was that the stretching was hurting me. Well, I didn't actually quickly find that out. There was something that kept happening as I was stretching. I kept hurting myself. And as I went to yoga teachers and say things like, I've developed back problems, they would just say, well, you need to stretch more and more and more. You need to open your hips. There's this guy out there, he keeps showing up on my Facebook page and with his advertisement, he's like, you've got back pain because your hips aren't open. And I'm like, Dude, this is such the wrong thing to be teaching people. Well, how did I find out it was the wrong thing? Because by the time I was 45, I ended up in the emergency room of a hospital with an orthopedic surgeon telling me, you're probably going to need a spinal fusion in your lower back due to herniated discs. Actually, I've got two areas in my spine where there's disc herniation and in my lower back. At that moment, it was so bad that I could barely walk.
I pray to God I never have to experience that again. But that moment was an eye opening moment for me because I had to take serious stock of was what I was practicing and was what I was teaching the correct path? And was I harming other people? If I was harming myself, how many other people was I harming? So that kind of made me think about things very differently. And that kind of questioning led me into muscle activation technique. Now, just for your listeners to understand, I do not teach muscle activation technique. Muscle activation technique was a systemology developed by Greg Roskoff, he's school's located just outside of Denver and it's really a therapeutic technique that's taught to practitioners to use one on one. So an mat therapist, we learn to diagnose where is their muscle weakness. Diagnose is the incorrect word. Assess where there's muscular weakness. And then we go in and we basically, for just simplistic terminology, turn muscles on. So the reason why there's a lot of pain in the body is because muscles aren't working properly. That neuromuscular connection has been compromised. So we go in and we repair it, basically. And I was just completely blown away in the course by many things. But two of the top things, one, I didn't know anything. I thought I knew a lot and I realized everything that I knew was basically pseudoscience, which then made me realize like, oh my God, yoga teachers don't know shit.
And the second thing I realized was like, stretching is really damaging us because stretching inherently shuts muscles down. So I said earlier, muscle activation turns muscles on. Stretching does the opposite. It turns muscles off. And it's as simple as like you walking into a room, a dark room and flicking on a light switch and boom, there's light. That's exactly what happens in the muscles. Many of us are walking around with muscles that are just not turned on and muscle activation turns them on. So then I started to create this approach, a yama, which is this I don't want to say it's an integration of muscle activation technique, but it's taking some aspects of muscle activation, aka no stretching, and then also bringing in some of the isometrics and bringing that into a yoga practice so that we actually leave stronger and with our muscles working properly. So that's it in a nutshell.
[00:10:36] Speaker A: Amazing.
I'm thinking about muscle activation as more of a neuromuscular junction. Neuromuscular pathway as opposed to we were talking about a second ago and I wasn't thinking about it this way. Dos we learn muscle activation. That's something that we learn how to do. Not the trademarked version, but a form of muscle activation. And we know that our neural system, our nerves in general, can dictate pain, right? And whether or not the reflex pathway, the muscle strengthening, is working.
And this is me being a modified yogi. Are you taking more of the poses? Kind of like your tree poses, your standing poses, your holding poses, and you're applying that muscle activation to those poses? Is that kind of how that works? Or are you actually pushing on a muscle to activate while you're doing the yoga?
[00:11:25] Speaker B: That's a great question. So many people ask me like, well, how do you bring it into yoga? Well, there's a few ideas, but one of them is that we just stop stretching. So we don't approach the poses anymore. None of the poses we approach with this idea of, quote, unquote, how do I lengthen my hamstrings? So you said earlier that your hamstrings are tight and it's kind of like they extend from your feet up to your neck. And so what we would say is, well, why are the hamstrings tight? What is causing that to be tight? Well, one of the number one rules of muscle function that everybody, including me and you to some degree, have forgotten that we learned in grade school is the role of agonist and antagonistic relationship between muscles. So if the hamstrings are tight, it's actually saying to us the hip flexors are weak and the hip flexors are not working properly. And so why muscles are tight? Inherently, it's because the body's gone into a protective state. The body is feeling unstable at a course, at a neurological level. And so what does the body do? It tightens up. So if you're walking on ice, for example, you step out on ice, you step on concrete to ice, what does your body do? It tightens up as a protective mechanism. Or if somebody jumps out around the corner and says boo, what do you do? You tighten up and your heart starts beating faster, of course. So the tightness is a protective mechanism, and I can't stress this enough, that when we stretch, we're violating our body's own protective mechanism. And I really want to enunciate that word violate, especially for any yoga people out there, because violating our body is the absolute opposite of what we want to be doing in yoga. And yoga is about creating a safe space. Well, how can we create a safe space if we're violating ourselves intrinsically? And there's no way around it, we're just doing it. And no matter how much of a nice language you use and cute words, you're still violating your body's protective mechanism. And when you violate your body's protective mechanism by stretching, let's use you as an example, your hamstrings. And by the way, that's exactly why I got into yoga. Tight hamstrings. But we're not really addressing the problem. The problem is weak hip flexors, weak trunk flexors. There is actually a direct correlation I have found by working on people privately and in my classes between tight hamstrings and obliques that are not working, transverse abdominus not working. I have found time and time again, when I work on somebody's transverse abdominus and get it working properly, the adductors loosen up and hamstrings loosen up. It's quite fascinating. And it goes back to what I said. When the body is unstable, when muscles are not working properly, other muscles start to tighten up, aka the hamstrings. So we have that antagonist agonist relationship and we need to address that. So when I'm teaching in a yoga class, part of what I'm doing is always like if we're doing like a forward fold, for example, then I'm thinking how do I get the hip flexors activated? How do I get the trunk flexors activated? And then part of the other rule is that we're not trying to go forward to see how far we can go. So I might actually queue it, let's just say like a standing forward fold, for example. The way I might cue it is okay, everybody, bring your hands to your hips. Now inhale, exhale, come forward only 30 degrees. That's less than halfway. And so right away, if I tell you to come forward only a third of the way, you're now not only more conscious, but you're now thinking more about what muscles you're using rather than just dropping to the floor as far as you can. So it creates inherently more stability. That's part of it. And then the other part of it is thinking about, okay, well, if we are coming into a pose, then how do I activate the muscles that should be contracting? So one of my favorite examples is trikonasana triangle pose. So triangle pose is a side bender pose. So if we're side bending to the left, what I'm interested in is seeing how much I can engage the sidebender muscles on the left side, the lateral obliques, the QL, to name a couple. How do I get those more engaged? And again, just backing off from making the flexibility the goal. It's more about activation and strength building.
[00:16:05] Speaker A: That's super interesting. I mean, the analogy of bending only 30 degrees, I'm sitting here thinking about how that would feel. And yeah, you're engaging way more muscles than you would be because you're having to hold yourself in a position that's not just hanging forward in rag doll and try to stretch your back and your hamstrings out as much as you can. You know what I mean?
[00:16:24] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:16:25] Speaker A: Interesting. So do you find that improving breath work in combination with that helps to improve your results? Most of us don't know how to breathe right. So our neural pathways are so connected to our breath. And even in yoga, I feel even me, I don't know, I feel like I breathe backwards. Right. It's counterintuitive. I breathe in, and instead of my stomach goes the wrong direction, instead of getting air in, I have air coming out. Right. So it took me a lot of Pelvic floor PT sessions to realize that I don't breathe correctly. All the years in yoga, I don't think I ever really realized that. So do you find that you have to work on breath work to get these muscles, and we're going to talk about what it does for people, but do you feel like that's part of what you work on as well?
[00:17:06] Speaker B: Yeah. So Greg always says that muscle shut down because of stress, trauma, and overuse. And of course, there's a couple of other little things in there, too, but those are the top three. So stress, what is the result of stress? The result of stress is inflammation. And so it's the inflammation that is disrupting the communication system in what you just said, neuropathways.
And so if those neuropathways become compromised absolutely.
And as we work on the breath, we reduce our stress, and that's going to have a positive impact as well. So getting people to breathe properly is a huge part of it. I focus a lot on a breath called it has a few different names, pure breath, which also denotes in the yoga world, this idea of breathing diaphragmatically, so teaching people how to breathe and breathing. Just as a side note, during the early days of the pandemic, one of the things I find really fascinating is the position that saved a lot of people's lives is this position called proning where they put people onto their stomach. Well, this is an ancient yogic technique. It's actually a yoga pose called crocodile pose makrasana. And this is one of the most fabulous ways to start breathing diaphragmatically. And you also super oxygenate your blood in this way because the position of the body and the way that the blood drops into the lungs. So it's a great position. And that's one of my favorite not only resting poses, but also sometimes I'll start a class and get people to hang out there for three minutes just in the very beginning because of that diaphragmatic breath. The other key element of pure breath is also one to one breathing. So a lot of us breathe erratically. A lot of us breathe like, for example, we might inhale for two counts and then exhale for four counts. A lot of us might inhale for two and then kind of pause the breath and then inhale for another two and then kind of like unconsciously hold the breath for God knows how long and then sort of exhale for one.
And so a lot of us have really weird breathing patterns. And the interesting thing in yoga, and I think this is really why at the end of the day, yoga is going to affect people's lives mostly positively because of the breath work. Anytime we start breathing consciously, we're going to change our momentum, our breath dictates our momentum in life. If you feel like you're going in a bad direction in life, change your breath. It's that simple.
[00:19:52] Speaker A: Right as we all take a deep breath.
[00:19:55] Speaker B: Right as we all take a deep breath right now. I mean, people ask me, like, if you had just one practice to do every single day, I say sit for five minutes a day, completely still, and focus on breathing diaphragmatically and breathe one to one. And when I say one to one for your listeners, that's like getting into a routine of inhaling. For example, for four counts, exhaling for four counts, inhaling for five, exhaling for five, whatever it is. But starting to watch the inflow and outflow with no pauses, no jerks and no noise, just pure diaphragmatic breathing. And it will change your life in ways that are immeasurable.
[00:20:38] Speaker A: I'm sitting here breathing and seeing if I'm one to one. No, I already know I'm not usually one to one that I learned the hard way. Like I said, yes, you'd be surprised how many of us can't breathe or don't know how to breathe. So never been taught to breathe because we think it's inherent. But really and we see that a lot with my Adrenal patients, my Cortisol patients, the ones that are super high inflammation, adrenally overdriven, and their breathing patterns. So for me to learn that was super interesting, actually, in the last year. And I always say, all right, we'll just meditate. Meditate, quote, unquote. Most of us can't meditate because we don't know how to shut our brains off, and it takes time. But if you can breathe and sit there diaphragmatically, which is exactly what I was taught to do as well, even if your brain can't shut off, it will learn to eventually. But that breathing is wonderful for resetting cortisol levels. We know this.
It's amazing.
[00:21:33] Speaker B: Can I just quickly respond to that?
[00:21:35] Speaker A: You can.
[00:21:35] Speaker B: A lot of people say that they can't meditate, and a lot of that is just tied into the breath. If you're sitting there breathing erratically, the brain mimics what the breath is doing. Or in Yogic terminology, the mind mimics what the breath is doing. And so if we want to change our minds, like the amount of thoughts that we're having, we need to learn how to breathe properly. But the second point I just want to make is that sometimes for people, especially when they're new to meditation, don't worry about your thoughts. Just let your thoughts be your thoughts. Just focus on the breath. And if you can, for five minutes, just watch the inhale and exhale, and inhale and exhale inhale, two, three, four, exhale, two, three, four, inhale, et cetera, et cetera. Your whole pattern of mind will begin to shift exponentially. You may not notice it the first day, second day, but by the third, 4th, 5th day, you will start seeing enormous results. And the byproduct of what I was just talking about is that your mind will start to become quiet.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I 100% agree with that. I always thought that I could, and I don't necessarily have trouble shutting my brain off, but I never felt like meditation was mindful, if that makes sense. And doing the breathing has really helped me. And I do find that if I tell my patients, listen, don't worry about what's going on, the brain will follow. It's amazing what will happen when it's distracted by your just constant breathing. It's literally occupied. You're thinking about your breathing, and then it becomes habit, it becomes second nature. So let's talk a little bit about how it helped you and your pain. So you started doing this and it helped your pain. Right. It helped you to feel better.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: Absolutely. After I ended up in the emergency room and got into muscle activation technique, it just motivated me to start taking care of my body even more so. And to date, I have not had spinal fusion and been underneath a knife. And more to the point, I really haven't had to go back to the hospital again. So this stuff really works, and I am a testament to it. But the other interesting thing is that this is why I started getting motivated to share this with other people. Initially, I was only wanting to share this with my own students, like an in house program.
And as I started to share it, I started to see people getting dramatic results, people coming in with chronic pain. When I say chronic pain, I mean, like, really severe chronic pain. And day five, day six, day seven, people would become pain free. And that just made me kind of go, I need to take this out into the world. And the other thing that drives me, too, is this whole stretching business, like this yoga body guy saying the solution to back pain. And the thing with the yoga body guy is he's a very handsome guy. He speaks well. I think he's trademarked this term, like, the science of stretching. And it's kind of like when you watch him, you're like, you don't know anything about the science.
And so what I endeavor to do is try to create some conversation out there. The very least, let's start getting people talking about why they should stop stretching, and let's see if we can flip the script on it and get people talking about it more.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: Is that where yogi club was born? Basically trying to bring this to mainstream?
[00:25:21] Speaker B: Kind of, yes, yogi Club, I created it for a lot of reasons, but at the top of the list is, like, giving people it was kind of two ideas. One, giving people really healthy yoga practices that they could depend on and know are not going to mess them up. If you do any of my classes, you're going to leave feeling stronger and more connected. And then the second purpose is to give people a glimpse into the authentic Himalayan tradition. And I feel like that whole conversation in yoga is getting really lost. We don't understand why we're doing these Asanas. More and more people are, like, doing these Facebook ads where I've been doing yoga for ten years, and I still don't feel like my hips are open enough. Well, I found the revolutionary way to open my hips. Blah, blah, blah. Your yoga practice was never there in the first place to open your hips.
Your yoga practice was there to help you open up to a universe of limitless possibilities. Your hips have nothing to do with the universe of limitless possibilities.
[00:26:31] Speaker A: Well, the whole thing is not to be competitive in your practice, right. To be okay living where you are. That's the whole point. It's not necessarily to, but I just did a podcast on the divergence of basically Eastern and Western medicine, right?
[00:26:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: And we talked a little bit about how it's a shame that there hasn't been a reconvergence, because Eastern and Western medicine, they both work, right? They both have their efficacies. But what we do see with these mind body connections and these asanas, which, again, I'm not the expert. You are, but I know when I do a lot of Eastern medicine traditions, like talking about meditation and cortisol levels, talking about breathing and resetting the vagus nerve, things like that, they work. That's why they were there in the religious aspects. And then we had this huge divergence, and they kind of became voodoo, right? They kind of became, well, this doesn't really work. We can only use Western medicine. That's all that works because we can explain it.
We have this science and this data. Well, there's a lot of data to suggest this works, too. It's just no one's paying to do the studies, right? No one's putting out millions and gazillions of dollars to do the research. We have all the anecdotal research that we need. We see people getting better, and that's the crux of it, right?
[00:27:48] Speaker B: Just like that example I gave of Makrasana crocodile pose. And then all of a sudden, the doctors are like, oh, we found this revolutionary way to save people's lives. And it was like, oh, my God.
[00:28:00] Speaker A: We'Ve been putting people prone since forever.
That's how you blood dope it's. Real easy, right?
Yeah.
We're both a little bit of visionaries in our industry and shake the boat a little bit, right? But sometimes it's nice to understand that when you see people getting better I mean, seven times. I mean, that's not a lot of times, right? That's like saying you do it once every other day, maybe once a day for seven days, and you're feeling relief. That's crazy. Do you remember one patient example or I call patient one client example that blew you away? Like someone that might have come to Costa Rica or someone that we all have those. Like one or two where you're just like, man.
[00:28:40] Speaker B: Well, there's clearly quite a few. I had just in my last training that I did on October 7, I had two girls in there, specifically. And the shocking thing about these two women I call them girls, sorry, women was they're both young women. I think one of them was around 28, and the other one was maybe 29, 30. And the one that was around 29, 30, she was dealing with what I'm dealing with a herniated disc. And it was so debilitating for her. And I put her on my table. I used her as a demo the very first day, and I was showing people what happens when we activate muscles. And the whole purpose of the demonstration was to show how stretching shuts muscles down and when she felt the strength leave her body, it was just such an epiphany for her. But she emailed me shortly after the training, and she said, I have never felt so. Strong. I went out walking. We did 10 Saturday. We did ten kilometer walk on Sunday. And today I have no pain in my body, and I could never have done that before. The training started. And the other woman was exactly the same. Like, she was just dealing with chronic pain in her back all the time and in her hips. And at the end of it, she's like, I don't have chronic pain. But the other one was a 57 year old man from New York, moved to Costa Rica, contacted me because he had severe pain in his lower back. Again, herniated disc, and he said that he had been excruciating pain for the last two months. I spent an hour and 45 minutes with him on my table, and I did a whole bunch of stuff. He got up and he said, this is the first time I've been pain free for as long as I can remember. Like he said, there's just no pain. I don't feel anything in my back anymore. It can happen that quickly, doctor when we get muscles working properly, the joints are supported, there's no stress. And again, the byproduct of stress is inflammation. So if we reduce the stress, aka. Get the muscles working properly, then there's no stress and there's no inflammation. The pain receptor nerves aren't getting overstimulated by inflammation, so it just works very quickly. Now, sometimes with some people, it takes a little longer because they'll do the muscle activation stuff, and then they go and mess it up. Afterwards, they go and do something to cause stress in their body.
[00:31:14] Speaker A: Probably me guys, they go and do an Iron Man or they go into some kind of crazy race that they're doing that darn ego.
[00:31:28] Speaker B: On this healing journey, and this is something I talk about in my Gamma training course, but in the healing journey, we have to hold a couple of thoughts in our head at the same time. One of those thoughts is that, yes, I need to get muscles activated. The other thought is, how do I start to reduce stress? What is actually causing the stress? So one of the worst stressors that people do in any yoga class is a pose, which I'm so against now, called child's pose. And child's pose is like the number one pose. You should just stop. If you're a yoga teacher teaching yoga, please stop teaching this pose. You have no idea how much damage you're doing to your people. And this is such a pose that causes so much stress. So you can do muscle activation. Then you go into child's pose. It's going to completely undo everything that we just did. So what we want to do is keep working on getting that neuromuscular response stronger so that when we do have an external stress, aka ironman, that our muscles will not shut down. You can get to a point where ironman will not destroy you. It is possible. And I actually want to just emphasize, like, even as you're getting older, I'm getting older too, that we can get stronger. This whole idea of age equals getting weaker is just a myth from a neuromuscular standpoint, it's all horsepucky. So if we get stronger neuromuscularly, we actually will become more vital, more youthful and stronger.
[00:33:00] Speaker A: I again agree with you. I see a lot of aging women, and one of my new slogans, if you will, is we keep talking about antiaging, right?
[00:33:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:11] Speaker A: It's a horrible term, to be honest. It's not really antiaging. It's aging successfully. Right.
What does that mean for you? And for me? It's getting stronger as I age, and for a lot of my patients, it's building muscle mass. It's wanting to still be competitive at something, wanting to still race or whatever. You can build muscle when you're older. Yes, your hormones are depleted. You have less of that. But it is still possible neuromuscularly, to strengthen yourself. And most of us, and I would say the majority of us, did not strengthen ourselves to our capacity in our youth. So we don't really have a basis for comparison either, not to that degree. So, yeah, we can be stronger. We can have our core support. Our bodies have our head aligned where it's supposed to be. It's not too late. And you do have a podcast, right? You talk all about this stop Stretching, right? So I encourage you guys, I did listen a little bit, but a little bit of a stalker, stalking him slightly. Like I said, I'm going to be in Costa Rica. Really? But so if you guys want more information and to listen more, I encourage you. His podcast is great. Great personality, great speaker. And you have a new book coming out. Yeah. Am I right?
[00:34:22] Speaker B: I've had a book come out already. It's called stop.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: Oh, it's out. Okay.
[00:34:26] Speaker B: It is out. Yeah, it's called Stop stretching. A New Yogic Approach to Master your Body and live pain Free.
[00:34:33] Speaker A: Okay, yeah, I like the tagline. So what can people expect from the book? So are they going to get tips? Are they going to get regimens to try? Or is it a lot of theory?
[00:34:47] Speaker B: There's a little bit of theory in it. I would say it's probably 20 30% theory and 70% practice.
[00:34:54] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:34:55] Speaker B: And so there's a lot of beginning about why we want to start getting our muscles activated, et cetera, et cetera. Then we get into breaking down what I call in the Yama methodology, the seven muscle systems of the body. I've just kind of called it seven muscle systems just for simplicity's sake, because part of my goal and aim is to get people into their bodies to understand, oh yeah, this is trunk flexion, this is trunk extension. So many people, and I would even say especially yoga teachers, don't even understand these basic terminologies. But if you understand trunk flexion and why the trunk flexors are important that will clue you in into why you might be having back pain. But I also give you, like, we talk about the key trunk flexors and how to get those activated. So it's not a workout book. Even though sometimes a yama looks like some workouts, it really isn't. It's just more of a manual on how to activate the specific muscles in your body. And then at the end of the book, there's actually in the appendix, there's four beautiful sequences people can do. So people can do a sequence to strengthen all of their trunk and hip flexors. There's a sequence where people can strengthen all of their back and hip extensors. So back bends, side benders. It's a great book. And this book, I've been getting emails from people that just bought it, like, a year ago and have been messaging me just now saying, you have no idea how much this book has changed my life, and just completely opened me up to the world of the possibilities of what yoga can be for me and my life. So that's really exciting.
[00:36:41] Speaker A: I'm going to go grab it now. So I'm ready to I told him he's four weeks to keep me out of surgery, guys. Four weeks. I was supposed to get my labrum repaired. So we're going to try everything.
We're going to throw it all, see what sticks. But I'm in.
[00:36:56] Speaker B: We're going to throw everything in the kitchen sink at you. Dr. Lori.
[00:37:01] Speaker A: That's totally fine. I need it.
My successful aging right now is not doing what it's supposed to.
So the book stop stretching. Guys, if you want to pick it up, I'm sure it's available everywhere, right? You can grab it on yes.
[00:37:18] Speaker B: You can find it on Amazon on my website. Yogiarin.com. Yeah.
[00:37:23] Speaker A: And then your retreat. So someone wants to go and sign up for one. Do they just join a group that's already, like, is you just fill into it, or do they need a group?
[00:37:32] Speaker B: The three quick ways that people can come well, actually, four, since you're here. Number one, you can bring a group.
[00:37:38] Speaker A: Don't worry, we will be.
[00:37:40] Speaker B: You can bring a group of people, and then number two, people can join someone like you to come. So we have a list of all the people coming, and we market all of our group leaders. Yoga retreats. Or people could come as a personal guest and have a private yoga retreat experience. And then the third way is they can come and study with me when I do my yoga teacher training immersion.
[00:38:01] Speaker A: Oh, nice.
[00:38:03] Speaker B: So I do two kinds. I do a 14 day, and then I do a 28 day.
[00:38:08] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:38:08] Speaker B: So just imagine 14 days having no worries except to come and do yoga with Yogi.
[00:38:14] Speaker A: Aaron I can't think of a better way to spend a month.
I mean Costa Rica.
[00:38:23] Speaker B: Your food cooked for live on the beach.
Scarlett McCaws.
[00:38:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Look up the facility it's beautiful and it's in the perfect spot. It's actually one of my dream, so and having know the country very it's it's a pretty cool location, so I'm pretty excited to do that. So we're just about up on time. So I'm going to ask you what I call, like, my little personal pop questions. So we're just going to learn a little bit about you. They're really easy, very simple. So what is your favorite book that is not yoga related or muscle related?
[00:38:53] Speaker B: It kind of is a little yoga related, perhaps, but it's called the way of the peaceful warrior.
[00:39:00] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:39:01] Speaker B: It's written by Dan Millman, and I read that book when I was around 13, 1415 years old, and that book is responsible for changing the course of my life.
[00:39:12] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:39:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:13] Speaker A: So everybody write that one down for your kids.
Yes.
[00:39:17] Speaker B: There is a kids version of it, by the way, speaking.
[00:39:19] Speaker A: Oh, like a little kid version?
[00:39:21] Speaker B: There is a little kid version of it. They turned it into a kids book because the message is so powerful. It's basically you have the potential to do anything you want to in your life. It's a beautiful story.
[00:39:33] Speaker A: Oh, lovely. Okay.
[00:39:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:35] Speaker A: And then favorite TV show or movie?
[00:39:38] Speaker B: Oh, my goddess. I would say that one of my favorite TV shows. Well, I just turned on I think it's season six of the crown.
[00:39:47] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:39:48] Speaker B: I also am a Sci-Fi nut, so I love battlestar Galactica.
That's kind of like how I roll.
[00:39:57] Speaker A: That does not surprise me, actually. Having only talked to you for 30 minutes. That does not surprise me.
[00:40:03] Speaker B: All right.
[00:40:04] Speaker A: I remember. Battleship Galactica. Okay. And then favorite musical artist.
[00:40:08] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. Lorena McKinnon. Lorena McKinnon, know who that is? Is a Canadian songwriter. You probably have heard her music, you just didn't know who sang it. There's one that's very popular called the mummers dance that actually got a lot of philly airways. Yeah, but she's amazing, and she sings a lot about the Celtic stories. She sings about different stories in different cultures. She has a very powerful voice, and one of the things that she's very known for is playing her harp. So she plays the harp in a lot of her songs and sings with it, and her music is just otherworldly it'll transport you into a whole different world. It's beautiful. And she's a Canadian songwriter singer.
[00:40:58] Speaker A: That's why we ask the questions. Just so I can get educated and learn I need to.
Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you having the time to talk to us today. And if anybody is interested, please go to his website. It's yogi, Aaron. Just to remind you guys who he is. And I will be doing a retreat, I promise I will put some dates together and is on my top priority list for the new year. It'll probably be in 2025 is my guess. But we're going to put some dates together for you guys. Maybe a couple of them can't promise that I'll be at every one of them, but I'll be at one of them for sure.
But I thank you guys for joining us and enjoy your weekend and enjoy your holiday season. And yogi, Aaron. Thank you. We'll sign off. Doctor.
