Diana May [00:00:00]:
It's kind of an amazing way to walk through this world, knowing that whatever is going on inside of me, outside of me, I can be at peace with it. And I have these tools to be with it. It's not that I don't feel sad or anger or pain, but I have a container in which I am bigger than that, if that makes sense. If I'm that big, then all the emotions, they just fit a little bit nicer in there. It's a feeling of release, of relief and freedom.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:00:32]:
So the big question is, we know spontaneous remissions and so called miracle cures exist. We also know they aren't so spontaneous after all. I'm living proof of this. Having cured my quote unquote incurable illness, there's something to how this happens. So how do we as humans with chronic symptoms, tap into this so called miraculous healing capacity? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Doctor Erin Hayford, and welcome to the Sacred Illness podcast. Before we begin today's episode, just my standard medical disclaimer. This podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:01:14]:
The content should not be considered a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:01:22]:
Regarding any medical concerns. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Sacred Illness podcast. I'm super excited today to have Diana May with us from the Detroit area, and she is a yoga teacher and yogi somatic practitioner. And I'm very excited to have a conversation around movement and yoga and all things mind, body that pertains to yoga, because we haven't had anyone on here yet that is actually a practitioner in the movement arts. I'm just excited to talk to someone else who does this kind of work, but from a different perspective. So anyway, welcome, Diana, and thank you for being here today.
Diana May [00:01:58]:
Thank you so much, Erin. I'm so excited to be here. I've been following your work for a while, and I also work with people who have chronic pain and pain and injuries in general. So I'm a huge fan, and I think we overlap on a lot. And yeah, it's just great to connect with other people doing this work because it's complex and it's nuanced. And as much as I love the Internet, this kind of work requires such nuanced conversations.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:02:22]:
So, yes, you're welcome. And you're right. I mean, we were just talking a little bit before we hit record about the Internet being both like a love hate, a lovely place to be, and the place we love to be because of how it helps to promote work and share ideas and how it's challenging because it's sometimes like you don't know how people are getting it or how they're hearing it or how it's landing. And this is such a nuanced conversation and it does require a little more fine tuning and back and forth sometimes. So it's hard to just like make a post and hope it's landing and people are receiving it in the right way. So I'm excited to fluff out our work a little bit, so to speak, through this conversation. So why don't we start by just hearing a little bit about you so that people can get to know you and understand you, your orientation, how you got into yoga, whatever you want to share about your journey into this world that we live in.
Diana May [00:03:07]:
Yeah. So yoga is my main modality, and I'll always preface by saying when I grew up, I was not connected to my body at all by any stretch of the imagination. So I come from a home of a single mom and two older sisters, and no one in my family was into sports. I always wanted to get out of my hometown, so I knew I needed scholarships. So I became a brainiac, an academic and artist, and I just didn't even consider my body to be part of the package. So when I did get to go on to college, that's where I had my first sort of mental break. I had some struggles, like so many people do when they leave home or leave a familiar environment. I didn't have any tools to manage my stress and I didn't have the awareness to catch the signs of dis ease in my body because I was so disconnected from my body.
Diana May [00:04:04]:
So my sister heard that yoga helps with stress and it was very obvious that I was highly stressed. And I took a semester off school to focus on my health and I got dragged to a yoga class. And that's where I first learned that I had a body, that it could do things and it could feel both good and poorly. And it just got me really interested in this thing that I carry around with me all day, every day since the day I was born. So I really fell in love with the practice and practiced for many years. And I say that yoga quite literally saved my life. That might be a hyperbole, but to me it feels very true. And I became a yoga teacher in 2009 and have been teaching full time since.
Diana May [00:04:49]:
And I became a teacher in my early twenties and I naively thought that yoga could help heal everybody. But what I also learned is that I was not equipped to deal with everybody. I knew how yoga helped me, and I found very quickly that people could get injured in my class or had strong reactions in my class. And this led me to try to figure out how, like, why is it that I love this, but not everybody does? So I became. I studied a lot of anatomy and biomechanics, and this ultimately led me to studying somatic experiencing and becoming a somatic practitioner. I'm in my advanced year, so.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:05:32]:
Oh, I didn't know that. That's awesome.
Diana May [00:05:34]:
I'm not technically an SEP, but they do encourage you to use the modality as you train and study. And I also started learning about applied neurology and just overall how the nervous system works. Yeah. So I really, over the last 15 years, have developed an understanding of how people move, what motivates them to move, things that I can see when they're having a good time or a bad time, and ways to improve their agency in their own movements to help them based on where they're at. There's a lot of fluff in the wellness world and in the fitness world. And I do think yoga can be a powerful tool to build strength in the body and to build up this healthy aggression that is so important for so many people. And I also know that relaxation and restorative yoga can be more helpful. And it's not just if you're stressed, do restorative, and if you're tired, you need to do more activity.
Diana May [00:06:41]:
Like, it's not that cut or dry. So I've just spent the last 15 years trying to figure it out and come up with the most individualistic and holistic approach I can have.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:06:53]:
Yes, I love that. And I was just kind of laughing to myself as you were saying that, because I was remembering a yoga experience I had. Maybe encapsulates what you're saying of how there's different ways to practice yoga, and a lot of, I think a lot of them more mainstream is not really the intention of yoga. It's more of a workout, just like a straight workout situation for a lot of people, which is whatever, fine. But I was. I went to school my freshman year in college, I went to New York City and went to a hot yoga class, and it was just awful. I almost passed out. It was just so intense, like big screens everywhere in the room calling out people's names.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:07:26]:
Like, this is not what I think of when I think of yoga, but. So I guess I'm curious ABout that. When you think about yoga, what is the intention of yoga. Is there a WAY to encapsulate it? Or is it like, there's too many variations to say in a succinct way?
Diana May [00:07:40]:
Yeah. Well, I'll just go a litTle. I'll zoom out here to answer this question, because, of course, it can be. Yoga is a very personal practice, so look a thousand different ways. But ultimately, when you look at the philosophy and the roots of yoga, one of the first ways it was actually defined is in the ancient text, the yoga sutras, and it was written down that says yoga chitta vritti nirodhaha, which is Sanskrit for basically yoga. Yoga means connection or coming together. Oftentimes, it's talked about connecting the mind with the body and the body with the soul. It's a bringing together, coming together, which is really amazing if you work with anyone with trauma, because there's so much fragmentation that happens when you have a traumatic experience.
Diana May [00:08:26]:
So it's a bringing back together. And the Chitavriti nirodha essentially translates to quieting the mind. Chitta Vritti is a word for our turning consciousness. All the mind, mind thoughts and the spinning thoughts that we get in all the stories we tell ourselves, the negative thought loops we get into that prevent us from having this connection with our mind and our body. And nirodaha is the word that means it stops. So, yoga, this connection between the mind and the body, happens when we stop the stories. The practices of yoga, essentially, are a thousand ways to do that. Not every way works for everybody.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:09:09]:
That class I was in certainly was not doing that for me, but maybe for some people in there. But that's incredible. I didn't know that about the literal translation of the word. And so I think that's kind of my interest in our conversation and the somatic piece of it, because that is ultimately the goal of the work, I think, of any mind body work is to connect the two, to bring it back together, to understand how the mind is influencing the body and how the body is influencing the mind and how they are not these two disparate pieces. It's like two different machines operating, right? Obviously, there's overlap and there's interactions, and it's important to be in both of them and have a relationship with both of them. And so I guess maybe from your experience, when you and I love what you had said when you first started telling your story of. I didn't know that I had a body, right. Not connected growing up.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:09:57]:
I certainly can relate to that, and I think that's not really a concept many of us grew up with ever, and maybe is becoming more known. But this is such a heady culture, right, of just learning and cognitive, like, disconnect. You have to disconnect from your body to make it through this life and to get a job and to fit the algorithm. And it's just such a cognitive way of approaching the world. So I think that's probably a common experience for a lot of us. And then you add trauma on top for some of us, and that's just a further way to get out of your body or just creates less of a connection to the self. Um, and so as you started your yoga practice and started coming into your body, was that hard for you at first, or, you know, and I'm sure you've seen it with clients, too. Like you had said, you started seeing things come out in your classes and things starting to happen, and you were realizing, this is more than just.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:10:50]:
This is more than just a yoga practice that is relaxing and soothing. There's things coming up. So I'm curious, maybe what that was like for you or I, what people start to experience when they start to come back into their body through yoga.
Diana May [00:11:02]:
Yeah. So when I first started yoga, one of the things that I loved the most about yoga was that it was not a competitive place. When I grew up, I thought that caring about your body or paying attention to your body was sports or something, and I'm just not a competitive person. And at that time, I did not think I was very athletic, and I did nothing feel very coordinated. And I didn't like the idea of sports because I didn't want to compete against people. I didn't want to get hurt, I didn't want to look silly or like I couldn't do things, so I just avoided it altogether. And culture also teaches us to bypass our needs for all the reasons you said a moment ago. When we're in school, you have to sit through your class and you don't get to go to the bathroom.
Diana May [00:11:51]:
You have to sit at a desk for a long period of the time when actually our bodies are designed to move. So we grow up in a society that teaches us to bypass our needs. And this is not even going into attachment theory. And how your caregivers were and when you were a baby, were your needs met? So just culturally and societally, we're taught to disconnect from our body. And if you were like me, you thought that moving your body is competitive against other people. So yoga is really a place that's non competitive, where I could other people can explore their movement without feeling like you have to keep up with other people. And what was interesting for me, and I see this happen with a lot of people, is we then become aware of our internal conditioning. I might be subtly competing with somebody else, like, oh, I want to keep up with them.
Diana May [00:12:46]:
They're doing it, and I need to keep up. And I'm like, well, that's the class isn't being instructed that way. So there's something in me that is being triggered that makes me feel like I have to push past my own body's limitations and keep up with this person. So there's a concept in yoga. It's called Svad Yaya, which is self inquiry, and it's one of the many ways that we can see, oh, this is a thought I'm having. It's not actually based in reality, but it's still present, so it's real, but can I practice a different way? And so there's a lot. A lot of yoga practices and a lot of spiritual traditions have compassion and kindness as the forefront. And that is very true when you're practicing yoga, kindness and compassion are a huge part of the practice.
Diana May [00:13:35]:
So when you notice a competitive thought come up, you can hold that competitive thought with compassion, and maybe in time you can create a little space around the competitive thought. And notice, like, that thought is trying to protect me from something. I'm going to try a different way and see how I feel. And you just get more practice in moving how you like to move and uncoupling yourself from perhaps some stories you have around what movement needs to be.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:14:07]:
Yeah, I love that. I never thought of that until you said it, and I'm realizing how true that is for me. And maybe other people are having that kind of aha, too. I've never thought of how literally in our culture, if you're moving your body, it's usually because you're competing against someone, because you're engaging in a sport of some kind. That's really the only time, like gym class, right. That's where we first started moving our bodies. And it was always engaging in a competition. And all through life, and even now, if you're just exercising, it's about competing with yourself almost.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:14:37]:
I'm thinking of peloton or running apps or whatever. It's all like, beat your time or do this, or there's other people you can compete against. And I understand that that's motivating, and it's not to say that that's not a bad, you know, that it's a bad thing. It's not, but it's. It's still. That's taking you out of your body more. So it's not about really feeling into your own experience and your inner environment and your ecosystem and what's coming up for you with thoughts or whatever. It's about look at that number on the screen and can you beat it? Or look at that person in front of you? Can you get in front of them? It's not a.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:15:07]:
It's a. It's more of an external focus. Right. Competition is external, I think, as I'm talking through this out loud. Whereas what we're talking about is movement inherently being. I mean, it's what our body is meant to do. And when we're more in tune with, not just eating a time on a scorecard or whatever, when we're more in tune with our own bodies, there's so much more in there that we're missing if we have this external focus. Is that how you would characterize that?
Diana May [00:15:33]:
100%, yes, because I do think some people really enjoyed the. Seeing their progress. And, you know, healthy competition can be really wonderful for some people for some times. And I like to offer yoga as a way to create an alternative vision of movement, where you move for the joy of movement. And that doesn't mean restorative yoga all the time, and it doesn't mean vigorous yoga all the time. It's exploring movement and seeing what you are able to do in any given moment that feels right. And it's just a really beautiful way to be. And it's a completely different way of moving than I think most people are used to.
Diana May [00:16:16]:
Moving. Yeah. Like any, even I have the app, the Strava app, which is like an app that tracks your walks. And it's so interesting because I will sometimes use it just because I want to know the routes that I've taken. But then I get access to all this information. Like, you were walking at this speed and last week you walked at this speed. I have this. It elicits this little panic, like, oh, should I be walking faster? I'm walking because I enjoy walking.
Diana May [00:16:47]:
I want to know where I walked. So, anyway, it's interesting. It's just everywhere. We're constantly bombarded with this competitive type style, and you have to be getting better and you have to be improving, and that's just not true, actually.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:17:01]:
Totally, totally. And, yeah, and it's like the steps, you need to get this many steps a day, or you need to do this three times a week or whatever. It's also strict and algorithmic, and it's not at all meeting you where you're at on any given day. And I feel like that's a cornerstone of somatic work in general. Certainly it's a big piece of the work I do with people. I open every session with saying, whoever you are today, whatever comes up for you today, whatever you notice today, that's exactly how it is. And we work with that because I guess because of that, I never really put it into those, into that way of thinking about it, but I think because we have this constant feeling of there's a right way and a wrong way to be and a right way to feel and a right way to exercise and a right way to be in our body. And we just have this just such a black and white way, maybe, of thinking about things.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:17:46]:
But when we really give ourselves permission to just be who we are in any given moment, and that might change from morning to afternoon, we're always in flow and influx with who we are and how we're feeling, depending on a multitude of factors. And when I find that just that word permission, just allowing ourselves to be where we are and to meet ourselves where we're at with kindness and compassion, like you were saying, as much as we can. And that's a whole other thing of discovery, of can I be compassionate with myself? But as much as we can, just. And curiosity, that's a big part of it, too. Can we just be curious with what's present for us? And that opens up so much, just that permission to just be and let things be. And I guess I'm wondering if that. How does. So how does that show up in your classes? Because you were saying, yoga is such an individual practice.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:18:33]:
How do, how do people start to find their movements through your classes or just through yoga in general?
Diana May [00:18:39]:
Yeah, well, I try to have a different approaches. So I do offer an array of public classes, and I love group public classes. I do them all online now because I grew up taking them and having access to a community where I got to move in community with other people was really healing for me. And I think it makes it a bit more affordable for people. So I do have group classes. It is harder to tailor it to any given person if it's a group class. But what I try to do in group classes is create a lot of space and I give a lot of options. And often in a group fitness class, the overall arc of class tends to be, you warm up, you build heat, you peak, you cool down, and you end.
Diana May [00:19:23]:
So it's like a bell curve. And what I like to offer is more of. I call it the rolling meadow, where we go up, we build a little heat, and we take a break, and we build some heat, and we break. And so it's just a bit more of an up and down. And what I. My intention of that is to mimic a natural nervous system rhythm. Up regulation and down regulation. And so I like to have lots of moments of work and lots of moments of pause and breaks, because I found that's the best way to serve the most nervous systems in a room, because everyone's in a different place.
Diana May [00:19:58]:
So some people need to move a little bit more, and there's a lot of barriers and obstacles, internal and external, for people to want to push themselves. But I found that lots of people could use a little more nudge in just getting up and getting moving and just get that up regulation. And it's really important. And on the flip side, a lot of people need to slow down and need to take more breaks. And when they have a day off, they don't know what to do. They're frenetic. They're so used to being 100% all the time. So in a group class, I like to schedule or sequence it like a rolling meadow, where I can push the people who need to be pushed a little bit.
Diana May [00:20:41]:
And I can offer a lot of small breaks for the people who need to learn how to slow down. Within that, I give a lot of options and choices, and I don't get to decide to where you are at any given moment. So, can you.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:20:55]:
For people who maybe. I think a lot of listeners have an orientation to nervous system regulation, but can you speak to that a little bit? What does that mean, to go up and then come down? What does that mean from a nervous system perspective?
Diana May [00:21:07]:
Yeah. So our nervous system is our internal wiring for our survival and mimics a natural rhythm of both upregulation and down. So the sympathetic branch of the nervous system and the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system. And you can experience it with every breath you take. So the inhale is often a little more upregulating. Our heart tends to beat a little faster. We're oxygenating our muscles, preparing to take movement. And the exhale is the natural down regulation.
Diana May [00:21:40]:
Our heartbeat slows a little bit. We can relax just a little bit. So every breath mimics this natural up and down. And we want balance, and we need both. The joke is, if you only inhaled, you wouldn't be alive for that long. And if you only exhaled, you wouldn't be alive for that long. So we actually both the inhale and the exhale. So our nervous system is very similar to that.
Diana May [00:22:08]:
We to be able to get up and move and take care of our errands and do the grocery shopping and cook our meals and move around a little bit. And we need to be able to rest and relax and slow down and take a breath. And obviously, if we're under stress, we need to be able to run and catch our flight. If we have three days off, it would be nice to actually enjoy it and not just try to figure out how to fill our time and what to do. So I guess when I say nervous system regulation, I just mean embracing your own systems that allow you to live your life.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:22:50]:
Hey, sacred illness listeners, Doctor Aaron here. I'm quickly interrupting today's episode to put out the invitation to you or anyone you know who has a chronic illness or chronic symptoms that would like to come onto the podcast and share your story. Our goal is to invite folks onto the show who have worked with Mindbody's medicine modalities and noticed an improved or even a complete resolution of symptoms using this potent medicine. If this describes you, check the link in the show notes below that will take you to a quick application to fill out. That will give us some information about who you are, what your story is, and we'll take it from there. And again, if you know anyone who might also fit this description or like to come onto our show, please feel free to share the link with them as well. All right, let's get back to the episode.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:23:35]:
That's a beautiful definition. It goes back to that, like meeting yourself where you're at. And that takes internal connection, bringing us back to the mind body connection. I feel like most people are more on that category of a go, go, go. And it's so extreme in our culture. We go until we collapse, until our body finally is like, no, we Gabra Monte thing. Body will say no for you if you can't say no for yourself. I love that your classes are helping people.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:23:59]:
It sounds like it's giving them those options of, okay, try this out. See how this feels in your body. Maybe you need this, maybe you don't. But you're figuring out what that feels like for you. And I'm curious what you've seen happen in people as you work with them and as they're starting to come more into their bodies, what are you seeing in them personally? And maybe even in their pain symptoms as well.
Diana May [00:24:17]:
Okay, so I'm just going to sort of reframe this so I can talk about it, which is people have pain, period. There have been functional mris where they scan the brain when the brain receives a pain signal. And there's three areas of the brain that light up, which is the sensory cortex. So the actual sensation of pain, the limbic system or the emotional cortex, and some of the cerebrum. I forget the third part. It's part of the frontal cortex. It's part of our thinking cortex. But essentially what they found is that every time pain goes off in the brain, it's felt physically, emotionally.
Diana May [00:24:59]:
And then we have our thoughts and stories around it when we're moving our body and we're experiencing sensations. Of course, that can elicit or bring up emotions. It can bring up thoughts and stories. People who have pain, chronic pain, injury, what I see happen frequently is that there's two paths. They try to push through it and pretend it doesn't exist, causing more pain, or they completely, they're like, I don't want to go here. I'm going to really protect this painful part. I'm not going to do this movement, which also actually creates more harm in the body because pain oftentimes pain needs a little bit of movement to get better. A muscle that is injured, if we never use that muscle again because it's injured, is not going to get better.
Diana May [00:25:52]:
But if we overuse that muscle that's injured, it's going to get hurt more. So we have to find this middle way. And so often I find that people who have injury go one of those two ways. They push themselves too much or they baby themselves too much. And what's cool is that in the process, and often I'll work with people one on one, like, what is the injury? What is the pain? What movement helps because it gets confusing to work on your own, because there's so much emotions and so much story behind it. So it's hard for people to figure it out on their own. So it's helpful to have a trained guide to work with you and work through some of the fear that you might have around moving to see, like, all right, what is a good movement here? How can we progress the movement in a way that is your nervous system will respond to? Because if something's in pain and you go too much, your whole system is going to brace because it's going to protect, try to protect you more, and that is what causes more pain. So you don't want to push yourself too hard.
Diana May [00:26:56]:
Working one on one is an amazing way to sort of get through both the physical but also the emotional stuff that comes up. I work with a lot of people who go through life transitions, perimenopause, menopause surgeries, all sorts of stuff like that. And there's so much emotional component to it that they might not even know at first. So it's. It's really a beautiful process to witness people figuring out their own container, and slowly they can expand that container with time, space, and support.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:27:28]:
That's so beautiful. I wrote down goldilocks. It's like finding the not too hot, not too cold, just right middle path. And I just love your brain. Thank you for lending it to us for this hour or so. I could talk to you forever and pick your brain about this stuff because I love this sort of conversation, and I see this in my folks as well. So I feel it maybe applies across just the human spectrum of how we deal with things. You know, either I put myself in the category of the person who just keeps pushing and ignoring, like, everything's fine, everything's fine, everything's fine, which was my own chronic illness story.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:27:58]:
And definitely, you know, my body eventually said no for me because I wasn't stopping and pausing. And then that. Yeah, I've seen the other side, too, where we get stuck in a state of just overprotection. I think that's a very kind and true way of referring to that. It's becoming so armored that you're immobilized, essentially from life or numb to life because you're so protecting yourself. So there's a lot of fear, I think, on either side of that spectrum. It's fear of further injury, so you just stop. Or fear of looking vulnerable, so you push harder than ever or something like that.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:28:31]:
There's these dynamics at play, and, of course, we can trace those back to, you know, mind body stuff, attachment stuff that you had mentioned earlier. There's lots of reasons why we respond to pain in the way that we respond to pain. But what you're describing, again, is this really beautiful third wave. What's that middle ground? What's that gray area? It's not so black and white. It's what's in the middle. How do we find that middle path? And I think that's uncomfortable for people because it's either too much movement for those who are wanting to stop, or it's too little movement for people who want to do so much, which is, again, taking us back to what you were saying about having this rolling hill way of doing yoga or this way of yoga, helping us to build up and see how that feels and then come out on the other side, which is also a beautiful mimic of the nervous system. So there's just so many crossovers here. I can just see how yoga is such an incredible practice to facilitate the mind body connection and getting back into the body.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:29:23]:
This is why we need people like you, because we need people to help us see that outside perspective of if we're stopping in a certain place, what's coming up for you, what's going on there. Our stories can convince us to, on our own, just stop or to not go past a certain point or to go too far past a certain point. But if we have that compassionate, kind person who is able to reflect and help us find that nuance, I mean, essentially, when we step off of either path, of the extreme ends of the spectrum, and we're trying to find that middle path, it's a path we haven't walked before. So quite literally, we need a guide to help us find our way down that path. And to say, this is normal. It's normal to feel this way. It's normal for this to come up. It's normal for you to have these additional thoughts or feelings or emotions, or this is anger, or this is fear.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:30:11]:
And, you know, in my work, fear is the thing. It's trying to get past that fear. And probably you see that all the time, too. Fear is so convincing. It's all those thoughts and stories and emotions, and it can tell us in such convincing ways to turn back and get back onto the familiar path. And that is where I think a lot of us do end up self sabotaging in a way that's not obvious. Or we go back to what's familiar because it's comfortable, we understand it. And I wonder, do you? I mean, I'm assuming you see that in your work, but I'm curious if that is relatable.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:30:41]:
Like, you see people come up against this edge where fear is really intense.
Diana May [00:30:45]:
Yes, I see it all the time. And actually, this is why I love to say that I work with people with pain, and I help them restore movement because most people are more likely, they're like, oh, I'm in pain. I want to get rid of the pain. It's like an easy in. Don't often say is, I work with trauma, and I help do trauma resolution because less people are like, oh, I want to resolve my trauma, but most people can say, like, oh, I'm in pain, and I don't want to be in pain anymore. But pain is so intertwined with trauma that often what happens in sessions is you face fears. And I don't often say get over fear, but I do like to create a container where fear can exist and you can build the capacity to be with that fear. Because oftentimes it's real, oftentimes it's communicating something really important.
Diana May [00:31:42]:
And we can befriended. We can maybe see where it came in. Maybe it came in from a childhood thing or messages you've heard, or maybe it's more of a recent thing or maybe you don't know where it comes from. And that can be okay, too. But befriending fear so that you can have that little bit of space and that space is what creates a possibility for choice. And I love what you said is walking on this path, because the longer you walk on the path, the narrower the path gets and the more you it ultimately becomes. In yoga world, we call it walking the razor's edge, where on one side it's too much, on the other side it's too little. At the beginning it's easy.
Diana May [00:32:23]:
You're just walking down the sidewalk like I want to, you know, feel better and have less pain. So I'm not gonna do, I'm using an example, easy example. So I'm not going to drink because I know drinking is bad for me and I am going to do this yoga class because that's good for me. So it's like a pretty, for some people, obvious choice. It's walking on a sidewalk and then keep doing it and you get a little further down the path and it becomes narrower. It's like, well, is, you know, what else is too much or too little or like, it's like finding these choices, these choice points. And there's points where it's very wobbly. It's like, I don't know what the next step is.
Diana May [00:33:06]:
And I might step off the line a little bit, but at that point, hopefully you've built some tools to get back on track. So it is walking the razor's edge. And oftentimes the razor's edge or that path starts with, I don't want to be in such pain. That's an easy, it's like, get on the sidewalk, we can deal with your pain. What comes next, the path gets narrower, but we can at least improve your experience of pain. We can at least improve your experience of movement. And if that's all you get, you've just taken an amazing step and you've just gotten so much in your life. But when I'm the work, it gets a little trickier and more and more rewarding, I would say.
Diana May [00:33:49]:
But at the very least, at least you're in less pain and at least you're moving more.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:33:53]:
I've been on that razor's edge many times in my own world and personal journey. And it's that. It's so fascinating, too, because I feel like we get to that razor's edge, the most narrowest point, and it's so close to there being like, that's if you can just stay there, that's when the breakthrough happens. If you stay there, then suddenly it expands again, and suddenly that becomes the sidewalk, because that becomes your familiar, known. You get to this place of, okay, now this is who I am. Now this is my life. I don't have to walk this narrow path anymore. And then, of course, maybe there's another sidewalk and another razor edge.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:34:25]:
We walk as we peel back the next layer. But that's where you need that guide. That's where it's so crucial to have that person who's like, you're right there. You're right there. Like, hang on. I know this is terrifying, but you are, this is, this is how you peel back the onion layer and get rid of these ways of being in the world that are not serving you, that are keeping you in the known space, but in the space where you have pain. And you're not showing up in the world as the way, as the person you want to be. So stay on that razor's edge and just finish.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:34:52]:
Finish the walk. I'm here with you to get you to that other side. And I love what you said, too, about this is about restoring movement to your body, not about necessarily getting rid of pain and resolving trauma. I mean, those things happen maybe as a byproduct, but it's like, how do we just get you to restore movement? How do we just get you to move your body again and facing fear versus getting over it? Because fear, it's an expected part of this work. But I think, like you're saying, if we can befriend it, get to know it, learn how to walk with it. I think of fear as a protector. It's our nervous system trying to get us to move back to safety. So it thinks it has our best interest in mind.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:35:30]:
But ultimately, you know, this is where we have to kind of work with our body and push past that comfort zone a little bit to get to that next space of healing. Because otherwise, fear will just keep us where we are.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:35:44]:
Hi, everyone. Doctor Aaron here. So by now, you're starting to get an idea of some of what the sacred illness paradigm is all about. The sacred illness paradigm is all about this question of what is your illness inviting you to become? What is it that lies within each of us that allows some of us to acquire so called spontaneous healing or remissions? And what is the key to unlocking that innate self healing capacity in each and every one of us? The sacred illness blueprint is something that I developed as a guide to help you walk through this process step by step to learn how to move deeper and deeper within yourself, to find these layers of dysregulation, of trauma, of limiting beliefs of things that you're holding within your system that are keeping you small, stuck and sick. Ultimately, if we ignore the mind body connection and are not exploring the ways in which our nervous system continues to be dysregulated or in a chronic state of activation and stress, any healing modality that we put into our body from the outside in is going to be less effective, if not effective at all. So if you are currently feeling stuck, lost, confused or disillusioned in your healing journey, feeling like you have tried so many things, you have tried so many modalities, you have worked with so many providers, and you're just not seeing the results you want, know that this is normal. And of course you're not, because this foundational mind body connection is often, if not always, missed in all of these modalities. And just like we can't build a house on top of sand, our healing cannot grow and blossom and be strong and successful if the foundation is not laid first.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:37:20]:
So rather than doing something different, but similar to everything you have tried before and expecting different results, I encourage you to consider doing something different altogether. This is where I invite you to explore the sacred illness group coaching program. This is a low cost monthly membership option that I have created. It's constantly open, constantly enrolling where you can begin to explore this completely different way of engaging in your health, in your body, in your illness and in your healing process. What is provided inside this group coaching program is the blueprint that lays the foundation and lays the path out for you to follow, to begin to explore these deeper aspects of health, to truly get at the root of what is causing your illness and from there, allowing all other modalities to blossom so that you can actually start to see the changes and the healing take place in your body that you have been expecting and wanting all along. If you're ready and want to learn more, head on over to aurorasomatic.com and at the top of the screen, click on group coaching where you can read all about it and become a member today. I can't wait to see you on the inside. And for now, let's get back to the podcast.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:38:26]:
You had said something earlier, too, that I wanted to respond to, which is that people have pain, period. I feel like that wouldn't be a very popular tagline if that was a tagline for your business. But I think that's another cultural thing. It's like, you're not supposed to have pain. You're not supposed to hurt, you're not supposed to have, if you're doing it right, you're not supposed to feel things. And so can you talk, maybe talk to that a little bit more about pain in general? Like, how do you characterize pain?
Diana May [00:38:51]:
Well, it's helpful for me to just remember that pain is simply a signal that the brain is receiving. Pain does not mean injury. Pain is a signal that the brain is receiving, that something needs to shift something. It's like a little bit on alert, and it's communicating to you that it wants to do something different. That's all pain is. And our brain, our nervous system essentially has three parts to it. It's the input. So all the things that we're receiving externally and internally from our body, our brain receives that input and it figures out what to do.
Diana May [00:39:27]:
It's a giant predicting machine. It's like, I have all this data, what am I going to do with it? And then it executes something or there's some kind of output. So our brain is constantly scanning for things, especially threats or dangers to our environment. So based on your past, a signal might come to you that's like, oh, this hurts. Like, if you stub your toe, it's going to hurt. But if in the past you've broken your toe before, your brain has a different memory bank. And it's like, this is really bad, like up the signals, because I know what this means. It means my toes broken, and we're not going to be able to walk, and we're not going to be able to live our lives, and that's really bad.
Diana May [00:40:13]:
So a little, little stub toe to somebody might be extreme pain, and a little stub toe to somebody else might be a fleeting sensation, no danger, and we move on with life. So pain, when I say everybody has pain, period, what I mean is people are receiving signals, and we're always trying to make sure we're safe and we're going to make it to see the next day, we want to make sure we can put our kids to sleep at night and see our friends for dinner tomorrow. So we're constantly receiving messages to make us. To make sure that we can do the things that we need to do. So that's what I mean when I say everybody has pain. What I don't mean is everybody has injury, because that's not true. Although arguably, I think that is true as well. Like, there's all sorts of interesting studies and scans done.
Diana May [00:41:04]:
I forget the name of this big study, but they looked at mris of people's spines, and they were all of a certain age, you know, older than 40, and they looked at people's spines, and pretty much every spine had bulging discs and this and that, and it was not at all correlated to people's experience of back pain or pain or injuries. We had. People are, if you look at their MRI, it's like, whoa, you should be in a lot of pain. But actually they're walking around just fine, pain free. Do you think everybody has injury? We just might not have the memory banks or it might not be impacting our life or our brain's perception of our life for us to feel the experience of pain.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:41:49]:
Yeah, that makes sense. I actually have. I know that study you're talking about, and it was when I was in school, they would talk about this fine line we walk, as you know, that physicians walk who do imaging and x rays. When you do something like that, so many times you're finding people will find something else when you're doing a scan. Oh, did you know you have a bulging disc or whatever? And how that can lead to excessive, inappropriate treatment? Because we see a problem, we fix it. That's kind of how medicine works, right? And so then it's like, then that can cause more problems if the person wasn't previously experiencing pain. But then they're like, oh, you have a bulging disc, though. Let's do surgery.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:42:25]:
And then they have pain. And I actually had an experience of this when I saw a chiropractor a long time ago. He does x rays on all of his patients so that he can see the health of the spine. And he saw part of a point on my spine and was like, oh, it looks like there's some arthritis there. And I was like, oh, nope, didn't know that. And now I actually have pain there because got in my head that I have arthritis in my spine. So I appreciate that clarification on pain. And pain is just this overarching thing of, like, discomfort, essentially, right? And that being a signal that something needs to shift, because as I like to say about my work and illness being a doorway into these deeper layers of relationship with yourself, we don't pay attention if it doesn't hurt.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:43:06]:
And so that's the most skillful way that our body can say, hello, please tune in. Something is off, whether that's physically not operating the way it should or trauma. Emotional patterns suppressed. No. Whatever that might be, whatever we're holding in our body. When you say pain does not mean injury, can you clarify that a little bit more? Because that piqued my interest.
Diana May [00:43:27]:
Yeah. Well, I think this goes to another great question, which is, what is an injury? And injury is a word that often gets tossed around. And I don't think people have a clear understanding of what it is. And I haven't found a clear definition of what injury is. It's very subjective. So, for example, if go get a scan, and I have, from the scan, it says that I have a rotator cuff tear on my shoulder. I'm able, but I don't feel it. I'm not in pain.
Diana May [00:43:57]:
I'm able to, like, move around and pick things up and live my life. Do I have an injury? I would say no, even though my rotator cup is tornado, because I can do what I want to be doing pretty comfortably. On the flip side, if I, for whatever reason, my shoulder is really hurting. And I'm going to the doctor and they take the scans and there's absolutely nothing wrong with my shoulder, they're like, well, you don't have an injury, but I can't pick up stuff from the ground. I can't clean my house, I can't wash my hair. My shoulder's injured. I think injury is something that we need to get a little more clear on what we mean by that. I think pain injury are not necessarily related, although they can be.
Diana May [00:44:40]:
So I guess that's what I'll say about that. I don't know. I think I might have unanswered your question or, like, called myself out on how I talked about it earlier, potentially.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:44:51]:
No, I don't think so. Because I think it's basically saying pain is not a. Pain does not equate to injury 100% of the time. It can be two separate experiences. So sometimes pain can mean injury, sometimes it doesn't mean injury. But I think it's what you said. It's more so. I think thinking of it more so as a signifier, a signal, a communication that leads to something, meaning that something has to shift, whether that's an injury or not, is sort of beyond pain.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:45:19]:
So maybe that's a way of thinking about it. But I think that's such an important thing to bring up, too. Is that that experience of like. Yeah, I mean, because that goes for so many people with chronic illness. Besides, pain of something is nothing, right? I don't feel good, but all my tests come back normal. And so what does that mean? Obviously, that test can't be the end all, be all deciding factor. And like, in my case and in those other examples, when you find misalignment or bulge disc or arthritis or whatever, and they're saying you have this injury, you have this thing wrong with you, but there's no experience of pain. So I think it's, yeah, uncoupling pain and injury and saying that the two can exist at the same time.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:45:57]:
But is that helping to maybe suss that out a little bit?
Diana May [00:46:00]:
Yeah, I think that that's a beautiful way to put it. Pain does not necessarily equal injury. Injury does not necessarily equal pain. But they often, they can over couple. Like, they can't. Like, your pain and your injury might be the same, but they might not be. And to me, injury implies I'm unable to do something I want to be doing. It increases its weight when that thing I want to be doing is important for my daily living activity.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:46:30]:
Yeah. And I think it's also in my world that pain is pointing can point to sometimes a quantifiable misalignment or disease in the body, sometimes not. But either way, the point is to get your attention. Right? So whether that is through a physical issue or not, the pain is there as the signifier. I think what can happen is we get a caught up in the physical. So it's such. It's almost like a relief when we find the physical, because then it's like, okay, that's the reason I'll focus on that. And sometimes that's an, you know, sometimes that's all people do need.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:47:02]:
I'm not saying it's always emotional, although I, you know, I kind of think it is. I think it is always emotional, in my opinion. But there's no. There's always an emotional nervous system component, at least in my world. And so I guess that's the way, like, sometimes the body manifests it physically as a quantifiable, measurable issue and sometimes not. But regardless, pain is your body's way of saying you need to tune in. And Yoga provides a way to physically get back into your body and start to listen to yourself. Again.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:47:31]:
And so I guess I'm just wondering, when you're living in your body and you have this relationship with your body and you're able to listen to it more and understand it more, what is that like? What might someone experience or what would that feel like? And again, it's obviously individual, but is there a way to, to speak to that, to someone who is maybe very disconnected from their body and doesn't even understand what that means as a concept? Yeah.
Diana May [00:47:56]:
To me it feels like freedom. But I'm going to go zoom out and look back at the yogic texts and philosophy and in YoGa traditions, and I think this shows up in some way, shape or form in a lot of spiritual traditions. But in Yoga it said that there's two wings of the practice. So yoga ChittA Vritti Nirodha the practice of coming together includes or requires the mind chatter to stop. But how we do that is this two fold or two winged practice. And the first practice. The first wing is you practice. The mind is designed to think and predict and do all these things.
Diana May [00:48:33]:
So if you want to quiet the mind, you have to practice quieting your mind. It's not going to do it on its own. You're not going to wake up one day and your mind is going to be quiet. You do the practices that work for you and you do them every day. The other wing of the practice is you let go of the results or you detach from the results of your practice. Because if you only practice with the goal of quieting the mind and feeling better, that actually is a hook that creates more mind chatter. So you have, the other wing of the practice is surrender, detachment from the results of your work. So it's kind of like letting you off the hook.
Diana May [00:49:11]:
But if you only detach from the results of your practice, nothing matters. It doesn't matter. Then again, you don't do the practices that are supportive to you. And so this two wings of practice and surrender are really powerful, because in that way, you learn to find this. I call it equality of peace, of pleasure. I call it freedom. Like, it's a kind of an amazing way to walk through this world knowing that whatever is going on inside of me, outside of me, I can be at peace with it. And I have these tools to be with it.
Diana May [00:49:49]:
It's not that I don't feel sad or anger or pain, but I have a container in which I am bigger than that, if that makes sense, if I'm that big, then all the emotions, they just fit a little bit nicer. In there. It's a feeling of release, of relief and freedom to me. So that's what it feels like to me. That's what I hope for others. I'd be curious what other people think it feels like.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:50:13]:
That word surrender, I think, is, to me, almost the goal, right? It's ultimately moving away from attachment to a way of being in the world and how things have to feel, and going back to what we said of allowing, giving yourself permission to just show up as you are and to be in this constantly fluid state of change, but also groundedness at the same time. You are. You're grounded in your body and you're allowing it to flow and fluctuate as it needs to. And allowing, as you're saying, like, yeah, it's this flu. I don't know. Fluidity is the word I'm envisioning, where no matter what's arising, you can listen to your body and be in relationship with that thing in a more fluid way versus meeting it with this hard edge that can create distress or discomfort in the body. And not to say that we don't experience those things, but it's a different feeling when you're meeting discomfort and distress in a fluid way and you're working with it and letting it flow through your system again, going through that up and down of activation and deactivation versus getting activated around it and having this rigid approach and then it getting stuck and causing all this tension in the body that may or may not release on the other side. And so, yeah, I love that visualization and that idea of when you are in your body, you are learning how to move through the world with more ease and more freedom.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:51:30]:
Because I think ultimately that is the word, freedom from. Not freedom from pain, because pain is. People are going to have pain, period. Right? Like, that's. That's the thing, but it's freedom in terms of how that pain is going to move through your body and what we do with that pain, having options, having choice, all that sort of thing. And so two things I want to ask before we wrap up. First is if someone just wants to get into yoga based on this conversation, or they're excited and they're like, okay, let's do this. How do I get started? Do you have any suggestions for people?
Diana May [00:51:57]:
Yeah, there's two ways. One is to just go look at your local yoga studios, and if you're nervous about the style, like, you can read the teacher bios, you can call the studio and ask questions. Oftentimes people are happy to answer and just go in knowing that your practice is there for you. So even if you go into a place and there's all sorts of, like, pressure to keep up or sit still or whatever it is, like you are in control of your practice. So just go into your first experience knowing that. Get that in your body, get that in your knowledge, and that will make your first experience absolutely wonderful. When you know that you're showing up for you, the other way is online. I'm a huge fan of online yoga.
Diana May [00:52:41]:
I have found that teaching online and practicing from home with support is amazing because I get less caught up in other people's energy and that drive to keep up or to slow down. Like if you're. When you practice at home, you can get up and take, go to the bathroom and no one's gonna be bothered. I find that it's a lot easier to tap into my body. I know that some people, their home life is too hectic. They can't concentrate in their home. So for you, a studio might be better.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:53:13]:
That would be me, because I can. Like, even as we're talking here, my three year old screaming over the other room. So would probably be helpful to get out of the house. Yeah. But I do love that because I can. I know that to be true for online space, you can just be yourself. And maybe that's a way to ease into, if you know you're someone who's going to get caught up in that comparison, start online and then once you build your confidence, go into a class, because I can imagine too, having that community and just in person. I mean, it's different.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:53:38]:
We're all familiar with how it feels now that we're all virtual than so Many virtual classes at this point in LiFe. And then. Yes, so talk to us about, because you have some upcoming classes that are being offered virtually, and I think also in perSon. And then tell us also how we could work with you if we wanted to. Just work with you as a teacher.
Diana May [00:53:55]:
Yeah. So I have two amazing courses. One is, it's just yoga in the nervous system. It starts October 3. It's an eight day or 16 hours course, 2 hours per day. And essentially this course intersects yoga in the nervous system. Because if you're not part of the yoga world, you might not know this. But oftentimes when people come to yoga, they bypass their own needs, and the yoga class can be harmful or can recreate cycles of harm that they're already doing in their body.
Diana May [00:54:29]:
So I love this workshop because it really dives in deep to what is yoga? What is the nervous system. And how can we use our knowledge of both modalities so that your practice can be your practice and can be super healing for you? And, of course, we learn in community. I'm a huge fan of community learning. Very few times have I learned anything by myself. And when I've learned something by myself, it's only because it's on the backs of hundreds or thousands of other people who have guided the practices to get me to where I am today. So I'm a huge fan of community learning. It's. It's the best.
Diana May [00:55:06]:
It's all online, and that's going to be at my website. And then if you are a teacher, a yoga teacher, or a movement professional, I'm actually teaching a. An eight week mentorship, teaching yoga to people with pain and injury. So my first course is more for the general public. How can you use this information to help your practice? And then I have an eight week mentorship with my friend Monica, who is like, how can you begin to learn specific techniques to help people with pain and injury? Because sadly, in the yoga world, it's not taught. Working with injuries is not part of the standard training protocol. In the same way that medical doctors don't have training on nutrition or gyns don't have training on menopause, it's this completely overlooked thing. Yoga teachers don't have training on how to work with people with injuries unless they've studied it separately.
Diana May [00:56:04]:
So, yep, if you're a yoga teacher and you want these skills, hop on that training.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:56:09]:
Awesome. And is that one? You said that's an eight week mentorship. When does that one start?
Diana May [00:56:13]:
October 15.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:56:14]:
You're gonna have a busy month.
Diana May [00:56:16]:
Big month. But I am ready for it.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:56:19]:
So for those listening, those links will be down below for those two classes. And then what do you offer? Just as a solo practitioner?
Diana May [00:56:28]:
Yeah. So I have online public group classes. It's $15 to drop in. You can take an online course from your own home and go through these rolling meadows and just build that amazing movement practice for yourself. And if you do have a nagging pain or a nagging injury or want support, I do offer one on one support to work through specific injury or specific pain, or just if you want that extra accountability.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:56:54]:
Love that. And this is virtual and in person or just virtual? It's virtual.
Diana May [00:56:58]:
I teach entirely online. The only time you get to see me in real life now is if you go on a yoga retreat with me. The yoga and nervous system retreat. So that's coming up in February in Tucson, Arizona.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:57:09]:
Ooh, nice. And all of this is on your website?
Diana May [00:57:12]:
Yes.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:57:13]:
Okay, excellent. And I'll put links to all the separate things, too, so people don't have to click around. But I'll put your general website down below as well. Dana, it's been such a pleasure talking to you. I'm like, I just. Yeah, like, I feel like we could just keep going. And like I said, I just want to keep picking your brain about stuff because I recognize so many. There's so much overlap between our work, but also so much nuance because of the way that you talk about things and embody things, literally, figuratively.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:57:37]:
And just this, you know, my work is a little, maybe more heady and conceptual, conceptual understanding, talking about nervous system stuff. And you're bringing it into the body and I kind of bringing it home. Right. Like, you're really grounding this work for people and showing people what it's like to actually walk the talk. So I think it's just such a beautiful offering that you have, and your medicine is so potent and you are amazing. I'm just so excited to have this connection with you and I'm so grateful for this conversation. And, you know, the people that are going to hear this for however long into the future and benefit from this work. So thank you so, so much for being here, and I look forward to all the ways that we're going to collaborate and continue this work in the future.
Diana May [00:58:15]:
Same. Thank you so much and thanks for doing all the work you do too. It's amazing.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:58:20]:
Thank you. Until next time, thanks.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:58:26]:
Thanks so much for tuning in to another episode of the Sacred Illness podcast. If you find this information shared here inspirational and educational, please share it with those you think would benefit from this work. To take this work deeper yourself, check out our website, www.aurorasomatic.com, where you can explore our coaching community and course options. And don't forget to subscribe to this channel where new content is coming out all the time, intended to inspire, awaken, and help you deepen your relationship with yourself, your life, and your world.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:58:56]:
We'll see you next time.
