The Transformative Power of Yoga with Sophie Davidson
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[00:00:00] Hi there. And welcome back to episode five of the gentle revolution podcast, where we seek to explore human beings and their relationship to meditation, to yoga practice and the ripple effect that. Awareness can have in the modern world. Uh, in this episode, I am joined by. I would like to think a friend and certainly somebody that I admire greatly and her name is Sophie Davidson and she has. Formerly been a student of mine.
She has completed our. Meditation and breath work, teacher training. And we have a dear friend in common. Our practice of yoga nidra is she says in. The interview she has committed. Too many, many years of yoga nidra practice, uh, in fact, using a singular track that. Is the first, very first track [00:01:00] that I recorded on insight timer. And it's still there.
It's recorded in the bamboo yoga studio on a very dodgy old sort of iPhone headphone headset. And she has recorded and sort of listened to that track. I think she suggested up to thousands of times and it has had an effect on her. Psyche on her wellbeing and supported her through a journey of time where she will reveal in the podcast.
She's had some challenges along the way and what I'm really looking to get toward in this. Podcast in this conversation with Sophie is. Understanding how a real practice of yoga and meditation shows up in people's lives. What it looks like from she's a. Busy yoga teachers should teach us a lot in her home city of Melbourne. And she actually collaborated with me. And teaching on our meditation teacher training in Bali last year, but she's very busy teaching, regular classes and mentoring. [00:02:00] Uh, new yoga teachers in Melbourne. And she supported through this, through her practice, which doesn't always look like a Vinyasa class as she reveals.
There's a lot. Of nuance into a practice as it evolves, and it can be yoga nidra. It can be self-awareness. For most of us, it looks like Priam in some way, shape or form using the breath to regulate our nervous system. And. We touch upon some sensitive stuff. We talk about addiction and she shares upon her journey with grief, which is.
Something that we're all going to encounter.
No doubt at some point in our life. And Sophie has been, undertaking a journey of grief over the last couple of years. And as have I, in fact, And we discuss how our practice has supported us through this time. Please do reach out and be sure to connect with Sophie.
She's a really inspiring human being and I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.
This podcast is [00:03:00] sponsored by the yogic meditation Institute where we. Deliver. Meditation breath work, yoga teacher training to. Aspiring humans who wish to know more about themselves, wish to understand better. The nuance of their own minds and how we show up in the world. We run various trainings throughout the year. And ultimately, I would love to think that our trainings. Offer. Greatness, ultimately to the people who undertake them, we put a lot of love into and care into our students, into the journey that we support them through.
Uh, we have multiple trainings running, as I said throughout the year. So please do check us out if you're interested. Uh, trainings or retreats in Australia online or Bali, yogic, meditation.net, or bamboo yoga. byron.com would have all the details of any upcoming [00:04:00] trainings.
Hello, Sophie Davidson, and very big welcome to the Gentle Revolution podcast. I am absolutely delighted to be sharing this space with you and to have this conversation, which when I was going through my list of potential podcast guests over the year to come, I was. You are very high up on it because I have seen in you an amazing journey as a yogi, as a human being, as a practitioner of meditation and yoga nidra, somebody who is teaching actively out there in the world, but also practicing intensely in your own inner world.
So welcome to the gentle revolution podcast.
Thank you, Mark. I'm very happy and excited to be here as well. And now you've got me all blushing after that lovely introduction. I'm really good
at, I'm really good at compliments. It's [00:05:00] good. Yeah. And you're a Virgo, aren't you?
No, Aries. I
thought I've had you pegged as a Virgo. I often do that. I have people pegged as something and I'm just totally wrong.
It was like, I'm sure you're a Virgo. No, I'm not. I'm an Aries. Okay. Are you sure? I bet you if, I bet you if we did your chart, we'd find some Virgo in there some way.
It's funny because I actually don't, I've never followed horoscopes to the point that I even know like what an Aries is, like what the characteristics of an Aries is.
But I'll meet someone and they'll ask me and so I'll tell them I'm an Aries and then immediately I can see them calculating for, yeah, like they understand me fully now because of that one thing.
It's that, oh, there's a particular response which someone's, and you go, oh yeah, okay, that makes sense. I'm That makes sense.
I've lived in Byron Bay for a very long time. So I'm it becomes a currency. It's interesting stuff. And yeah, there's so many interesting places that we can put our minds, [00:06:00] explore ways of understanding, ways of being. But what I'd. What I do want to do with you, first up, is I would love you to introduce yourself.
I know you well fairly well, I'm here to learn more, but I have seen you through the lens of being your teacher and fellow teacher but I would love you to introduce yourself to the good folks at home. Who are you? Where are you from? Keep it simple to start your, perhaps what are you doing now? Your exposure as a yoga teacher?
Sure. So hello everybody. My name is Sophie Davidson. I'm currently living on the peninsula in Melbourne and have been for a while, actually now practicing yoga for a long time. Like over a decade easily, I reckon maybe 15, 16 years, but only teaching for a handful teaching for about four or five , I feel like it's been so much longer than that, but it hasn't, it's only been a short journey so far.
Who am I? It's [00:07:00] such a
hard
question to ask. I'm a lot of things. Yeah. I'm a lot of things. I'm a lover. Yeah. I, yeah I teach yoga. I teach yoga. I love practicing yoga. I love yoga. And a lot of my life is taken up with practice and study, right? Of, and teaching of this one thing. But I also love nature.
I love travel. I love my husband. Thankfully, I love animals. I love. Netflix, Hands Apart, I'm sorry, but I do. And yeah, I love also exploring and talking about humans and psychology. I haven't done any study, but I think as a yogi and a yoga teacher, and you go deep into the philosophy and really start to think about our conditioning and our brains and how they work and how we essentially experience life, it's hard not to Yeah, in a way, fall in love with that science to some extent.
Yeah.
It very much, it's a [00:08:00] companion study to what we study in yoga. So which is look, psychology, neuroscience has been around for a long time, but
we're
just learning so much more, aren't we? And the current. state of the art is people are really eloquently presenting the possibilities of what we can do to biohack, control our minds, control our wellbeing, evolve our wellbeing through the use of technique and practice rather than just popping pills.
And that you have a journey of understanding wellness and a deep desire to connect with wellbeing. And. Yeah. How could you not be interested? And it, what a lot of it does is just help us to refine our practice, right?
Teaches us how we can use the techniques that we're already using, but perhaps use them with a little bit more insight and a little bit more capacity.
I think that's one of the [00:09:00] reasons too, that I love yoga so much and the tools that we've provided with, cause it's a cowboy world out there in well, in wellness and with biohacking and, just in general social media too. And that space, it's very overwhelming. It's so noisy and it's hard to tell like what is real and what is not.
It's a gimmick or a fad and even what is just simply not true, like not useful. But within the practice of yoga, we have these tried and tested tools and methods to promote wellbeing from within. And it's something that I trust deeply and I've also experienced, of course.
Know deeply that it works. Yeah. And it's comforting to know that this one thing is where I can place most, if not all of my attention and energy and feel like I'm getting a benefit. In so many ways,
correct me if I'm wrong, but you had a marketing background. You worked in marketing advertising for some time.
I did. I, it [00:10:00] was six years at university in communication design, which is a hybrid of graphic and digital design, but very much like somebody I was trained to be somebody doing the design. Not, higher up on the chain as a director or something like that. So I went into advertising when I graduated and I say I lasted two years because I felt like within the first six to eight months, I was ready to get, I was ready to get out.
But I started my teacher training, my yoga teacher training whilst I was still working.
And where did you do your yoga teacher training?
With the Australian Yoga Academy in Prahran, yeah, in Melbourne.
Great, that's an excellent school, right?
It was, and they offer the 350 hour training that went over the year.
So it was a, I think the word immersive kind of gets used weirdly these days, but it felt like immersive, right? Cause it was a whole, it was a whole year of my life that I dedicated to learning and embodying all of these skills and all the [00:11:00] knowledge. So I felt truly ready at the end. Yes.
And I think you were still doing that course when you came and studied with us, is that correct?
I think I just finished.
Okay.
I think I just finished because I was Yeah, I was teaching and I think just really organically I had started to place a lot of my attention and focus for my own practice at my own personal practice in the more subtle, the less asana and more meditation, more pranayama.
I had a calling to go and do a bit more of a deep dive into those elements of the practice.
Okay. Look, that's, for me, been a very similar experience, I think for a lot of people too, taking a, immediately a dive into asana and functional asana and all the possibilities are available through the practice of vinyasa, hatha yoga, yin, [00:12:00] being subtle.
such a comprehensive and powerful modality, but there's that calling for more that many of us experience. Not everybody. I've seen a lot of people and just really happy just to keep it there for forever basically, but for some, and you definitely have that question and we want to go deeper. We want to know the more subtle experience of prana and understanding the mind.
We begin to connect with that and go, Oh, there's. There's possibility here through these practices, so we dive a little bit deeper still. I remember when I first met you, you just had that, I think it was really one of our first trainings. It was post COVID in maybe it was the first training we ever put on, just, it was just after COVID had finished, right?
Now I'm confused. I'm like, was it just before or was it just after? It's just
after because I didn't start running that meditation teacher training until actually until I wrote it during COVID. I remember I was [00:13:00] going to run it in the first year of COVID and yeah, it was like, Oh geez, I don't know if we're going to be on or off.
And so I just stepped back from it all. But then we had that year. Again, it was on and off, but it looked like we were getting through it and we scheduled it. And that was the first one. And it was, yeah, it was a lot of people came out. We had a lot of people traveling. It was because we did it all in person that first intensive we did all in person in Byron Bay.
Bamboo yoga.
Yeah. I loved it. I still remember it. Yeah. It was a lovely time. Just a lot of beautiful people all gathering together to talk about, something that we all love. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's a really nice, it was a really special week. I definitely, I always recommend that training to anyone that comes through asking me for advice on it.
And we had the wonderful opportunity to co facilitate to this, no, it was last year, wasn't it? 2024 in Bali, which was a really wonderful experience up in the mountains of Bali. Yeah. And no doubt we will be doing something else [00:14:00] in the not too distant future.
I hope so.
We're both looking in that similar direction, which is.
Again, it's that pointy end of yoga. It feels like there's so much opportunity for exploration, for conversation and practice. The practice is endless. It just, there's so much there available to us, but I want to circle back to something we were talking about before, relating back to your sort of communication marketing days and how you came to yoga was this idea of truth.
What's the truth? And it's something that's. It popped up for me and it's been there for a long period of time and I'm a fairly prolific user of social media in general. I have a background, like you do, in communications. I did a communications degree and worked in the media for many years in various capacities as a journalist was a big part of that, but also in advertising.
And. One of the reasons I came to yoga and really went for what I thought to be the best form that I could [00:15:00] find through a lineage, looking as deep down into that lineage as I possibly could, looking back towards the Yoga Sutras towards the sages and the ancient teachings, the ones that have lasted, the ones that have stuck around over the ages, because I see them to be true.
And in today's world. This came up in conversation and certainly my reflection recently. There is so much bullshit. I do not know which way is up. I really don't. I'm so lost and confused with, I was talking to a friend, I was surfing this morning who we were talking about the advent of the carnivore diet.
And he's a bit of a social commentator and a journalist and it's gone from being like, hippies used to be vegan. for supporting the Greens, and it was a fairly consistent theme of wanting to look after the planet, look after animals, and now that has flipped. A lot of the alternative thinkers are actually eating [00:16:00] pure meat, eating diets, they're supporting Donald Trump, and it's just the most bizarre and against think climate change is a hoax.
And there's this kind of bizarre flip the flip of the switch and people don't know which way to think. And I'm just standing here going, I still, yeah, I know what I believe in. I'm not here to talk to you about that. I'm actually said to my friend today after he wanted to keep talking about, I've had enough.
I actually, let's just talk about other things. Like actually it's cooking my brain. And thankfully for you and I, we have this space that we can be apolitical and we can Do a practice together, return to our breath, return to the quietude beyond thought, and we can share the truth.
So what is your version of the truth? What does it look like?
I don't even know, Mark, if I can answer that question. That is such a loaded question. I know, I'm not
asking you what the, what your version of the [00:17:00] truth is around politics or social. No. I know that. Let's stick away from that.
Yeah, but then can you give me a little more context for the question because my brain needs more, I need more
direction.
Okay. Let's, let me frame it a little bit better for you. What do you do to connect with your truth?
I practice one and I think also trying to spend time off of any connection to the media that I have. Is, I know we're not going down that path, but that has made such a huge difference to my wellbeing and to, to how I experience the world around me or to what, my, my truth essentially is in that respect, because then it's the noise that pulls you away.
And the doubting and the questioning and it's like a whirlwind always and it's frustrating and I start to think, I start to have thoughts that I know are not even my own. And it's so potent because I'll be worried about things that I've [00:18:00] never been worried about before. Things that are totally irrelevant to me, or, the thing that always gets me feeling really down is I'll start to worry about things like what I look like, or what my clothes look like, and, things that are just lowering my energy to, into the earth.
So space from the media is one of my number one tools, honestly, for staying close to what my truth is. I think as well, just spending, like spending time with yourself. It's so easy to pop on a mask and to walk around trying to be this variation of whatever we think the world wants to see from us.
Or, even as a yoga teacher, I think you can get caught up in that. Like what is a yoga teacher? What is the aesthetic of a yoga teacher? What kinds of things is a yoga teacher doing? And feeling almost like a pull or a need to conform even in that. Way. And all that does I really believe that all [00:19:00] that does is just pull you further and further away from your ability to be authentic and your ability to be like sincere is anyone sincere anymore?
Is there intake is any, does anyone have integrity? I don't know. Sometimes it feels yeah, I could question everything. I think that.
A lot of people have integrity. I was going to say everybody. I think everybody has some. And there's a lot of people with a lot of integrity. I don't think that social media brings us out of our integrity, brings us into our integrity. If you look at I was, look at dating apps as being an area, particularly Tinder and the lower end of the pond that, that just brings out the worst in people.
The whole thing of ghosting, like that didn't exist. The idea of making it a, having a conversation or making a date to meet somebody and then just disappearing. It didn't exist. Now it's a it's a big thing. Social [00:20:00] media is. bringing out the worst in us and gives us this opportunity, this forum that we can say things and behave in ways that are not us.
It's not the best form of us. The best form of us is what you bring into your yoga class. I haven't been teaching in a class format for about six months now and I really miss it. I really miss it. I'm really sorry. The first few months was totally okay. I was in Indonesia for a lot of it running.
I was being running courses, but I haven't. been doing any teaching for the last sort of month. I'm about to start running a course again, but not having that space in my life. And I had the most beautiful space, Bamboo Yoga in Byron was a space that I had built myself with my own hands and my beautiful friends had assisted, and we'd created this incredible space where humans could come together and connect with their truth.
And I often reflected again and again, every time I practiced there, that there's this sacred space that [00:21:00] we return to, and we have this journey as yogis, we work through whatever practice it is, and we come to this space, and we're all, for a moment, beyond our thoughts, beyond our opinions, and we're quiet, and we're still, and we're truthful.
The mobile phones have all been off. You step out of that class, that practice, whatever it is, and you step back into the world, and everything is back on, basically, but If you do it regularly enough and you come back there on a daily or daily basis or perhaps a few times a week, it does have a profound effect.
It adds up over time and that becomes the truth. The truth is human beings breathing quietly together, supporting each other in our darkest, most troublesome times, being there for each other. The truth is kindness. The truth is love.
The ultimate truth. And I feel I sound, I was sounding a little bit pessimistic a moment ago, questioning whether anyone is sincere anymore or has integrity anymore.
But of course [00:22:00] I know I love human beings and we are capable of so much love and we're capable of creating the most amazing communities. And I think community is everything. Like connection is everything. And we've moved so far away from that. I think though that I'd like to think, that there is a bit of a movement back to that.
It does feel like there is some shifting tides out there within all the chaos. Definitely. I feel like the connections that I'm making really strong at the moment that might just be the mental space that I'm in. But anything that I guess allows you to feel comfortable accepting all parts of yourself and creating enough space for all parts of yourself to exist within you whilst moving forward in the world.
I think that's a lovely way to always stay close to the truth, experiencing your reality for reality and not for. Something that you wish it was, or you wish it wasn't, it just is, it [00:23:00] is what it is.
Yeah. Look, the evidence that I have for people with integrity is you have integrity in every single, maybe you have moments and I'm sure you do that you're not proud of.
But
in my exposure with you, when you show up for me and you have many times as a student and as a co facilitator and as a friend to be there and actually just, you When I see you, I see a person with deep resonant integrity and it makes me, one of the reasons I really wanted to talk to you on this podcast, because I can see how that resonates out into the world.
And I can see how the power that has. And I'm stoked with the fact that you're a yoga teacher, that you're actually out there teaching in the world. I think the world needs its yogis more than ever. In that maelstrom of uncertainty that we've described. The truth, as I understand it, it's the truth isn't yoga.
The truth can be [00:24:00] accessed through your practice. And again, we return to that space again and again, and, in you, I see somebody who has done a lot of practice and is continually inspired by the practice. Again, that's why. I wanted to talk to you because I want you to share that inspiration and I want other people to be inspired through your journey.
So let's talk about practice, if that's okay. What does your yoga practice look like?
So currently my yoga practice doesn't I can't even remember the last, and I'm just being honest, I can't remember the last, yeah, I remember the last time that I, but mind you, just I have been away and I have also been a little bit unwell.
So usually I would be practicing asana in studio a couple of times, maybe twice a week if I'm lucky, because I love having that connection with My community and I love going and receiving from another teacher. I think it's beautiful. [00:25:00] But what I consider my practice to be is what I'm doing when I'm in private.
And when I'm at home, that would be my practice. And it's usually the same thing. And it's about 20 minutes. If I'm lucky, it'll be longer, but some of Ritty one. So I'd say four or five counts in, four or five counts out, and I will just sit with that for up to 15 or 20 minutes. Maybe Nadi
Shadana.
So just inhale,
exhale,
simply
inhale, exhale. Beautiful. Yeah. And often I'll do it laying down as well. I know that. There might be some yoga police out there and tell me I need to sit up, but I guess my reality is I'm often I think I tend towards, my personality tends towards anxiety. Like my mind tends towards being too loud and quick.
So I know that to get real potent benefit I need to sit up. From my practice and quickly to using techniques that allow me to be restful are [00:26:00] really amazing. And then I'm just in that, I'm in a quiet space for, a considerable amount of time and I find it to be really helpful.
And then. And of course, Yoga Nidra, which is something I was doing every day for the past, since I did your training, Mark, which was like maybe four years ago now. But it's probably now maybe four times a week, so not quite every day, but it's a solid 40 minute. If I do it, it'll be the full 40 minute practice.
I still use your recording on insight timer. I have never used a different. Nidra recording. It has been your recording. I could recite the whole thing from start to finish.
That is amazing. That's I'm honored, but I do understand because I had the same journey with Yoga Nidra, listening to, back in my day, there was no inside timer.
It was just, we were passing around CDs originally, and then MP3s that of someone who'd recorded, usually a CD had been ripped off. And I had, I think two or three that I had actually a lot at one point, but there was only two or three that I [00:27:00] really liked and one in particular. And I just stuck with it.
And it gets to a point where you're not listening to me, you're just doing the practice. It's just, there's just a, it's like a familiar track that you go through. And the point is not the voice or in fact, the point is not even the instruction. The point is the experience that we get to through that practice.
Yeah. Look again, Yoga Nidra, our dear friend, Yoga Nidra, that has supported us through so many times in life. It's the one I go back to again and again. I still love us and like you, you're teaching Vinyasa and
A lot of vinyasa. So you
need to be really tuned in for that to actually create and, I know firsthand that you're an amazing vinyasa teacher, really creative and dynamic and bringing that together with your awareness of pranayama and meditation makes it an incredibly potent tool.
experience and practice, but yoga [00:28:00] as a practice, it evolves beyond that, right? For most of us, the lucky ones, perhaps, that it evolves into this experience with the breath that we can access. And I love that you're just sticking with the samavritti of, it's the simple stuff. If you do enough of it, you've inevitably circling back to the stuff that is so simple.
And that's why
I
come back to just abdominal breath, just breathing, getting to know my diaphragm, which for me is a continually exciting practice. I'm learning this incredibly sophisticated muscle that I was well and truly into my yoga journey before I really understood what was possible there.
But experiencing the capacity of just targeting the breath into the diaphragm, exploring the capacity of the diaphragm. It's fascinating stuff.
It's amazing. And this is the thing I have done countless different trainings around pranayama and breath work and Kriya and the techniques there's a [00:29:00] millions of them and they range, from something as simple as just focusing on your natural breath to using a different movements of your arms and even yeah, mantra and I movement.
And, it's beautiful, it's a beautiful science and there's so much history there. But I still choose to come back to just a counted breath because that's what works for me. And I think people, and I would hope that. Practitioners of yoga really understand that the practice has to work for you because it's, it is for you.
It's not for anybody else. And we are all different. We've got different needs. We've got different lifestyles and then different physiology and psychology. And so yeah, you, It's as simple as doing what works for you. And that can change, of course life has different seasons and different chapters, but yeah, it's no one else's there's no one else to tell you what's going to work for you, except for you.
Yeah. And isn't it lovely that there is a smorgasbord of different practices and techniques that are available for us that we can go and taste them all and we can. Do the [00:30:00] combinations and then circle back to the stuff is going to work for us. And in looking at my exposure, my experience, my own personal practice, but also seeing a lot of other people take a full yoga journey.
The ones that stick around, the practices of just simple pranayama generally simple asana. I think most yogis like to at least do some practices they move through their life just to keep the body fluid. Simple pranayama and mantra is one that people really stick to. Most advanced yogis I know are working with a mantra in a really simple way.
And it becomes a friend. Your mantra becomes a friend over time that you just can return back to it. And that mantra is used. Usually it's a personal mantra using Gayatri or something that's more common. it just becomes a friend that you can return back to simply again and again. And of course, Yoga Nidra, people use Yoga Nidra as a tool.
I've just never gotten bored with it. I've been working with that practice for over [00:31:00] 15 years as my core practice. And I say it's my core practice because it's the one that I come back to every day. more often than anything else, because it's just what I need. Like you, I've got busy brain syndrome, busy body syndrome, because I'm doing a lot of stuff as well.
And I find I need that rest. When you say you're not doing asana that regularly you are exercising a lot, right? You're doing a lot of other cross training. Oh, yeah.
I move, I'm moving every day, a lot of walking and yeah I like to supplement yoga practice with some kind of strength training.
Cause I think it's important for the health of your body. Yeah I'm moving a lot. I think, I'm teaching 11, 10, 10, 11 classes of asana per week. I'm probably not balanced left to but I am. I'm constantly moving for my work as well as by choice in my personal life.
Think asana is beautiful and it's usually a lot of people's entry point to, to yoga and the practice. So yeah, I think sometimes as yogis progress, it can be easy to like, stick your nose up at [00:32:00] different aspects of yoga and, be like, Oh it's just asana, cause yeah, you're ma maybe you're meditating a lot or practicing a lot of pranayama.
No, exactly. It's like an integral part of the practice of the system of yoga. And for many people, like being the entry point, like how wonderful is that? Like being able to introduce the practice of yoga to people that love to move their body and maybe perhaps never would have thought of. Engaging in a subtle practice like meditation or pranayama.
Yeah. It's interesting. Breathwork has popped up as being a practice that seems to be really popular for a lot of people who wouldn't have otherwise done yoga. I think yoga asana alienated a lot of people. It became too cool, too dynamic, too extreme. And breathwork. That's true. really accessible for most people.
Look, certainly the breathwork that we're just talking about, Summer Vritty and just single belly breathing, that's accessible for everybody. Everyone can do that. Probably the more edgy part of breathwork you look at [00:33:00] Wim Hof breathing, et cetera, et cetera. Jumping into the ice bath, that's accessible.
a little bit more edgy, but most people can do it and feel and have that incredible experience of pranayama, really looking to connect with energy and transcend the nervous system. That's available really quickly through, dynamic breath work and, perhaps jumping into an ice bath or not just, but a simple practice of Kapalbhati or Bhastrika.
Our Tummo breath, our Wim Hof breath is Really profound. It cuts through so many layers and people go, wow there's something in that. And
I think
That's the truth. And people go, wow, I'm connecting with something that's beyond my mind, which when we peel back the curtain, it's such a powerful revelation, right?
Yeah. And I think, yeah, I agree. It's amazing that's come into play. Everybody's fear, over the past year or so, but I think it's such an interesting topic. And I don't know if, yeah, if I start talking about it, if I'll take us off track, but you can just divert the conversation.
If you think I'm going to go, [00:34:00]
go too far down. We love a deliance go.
But it's such it's such an. Interesting one, when I think about all these sort of more holotropic and, repackaged tumour as well in terms of what Wim Hof is and these hyperventilation style breaths.
And sometimes I wonder whether people are drawn to it because it still feels like, it still feels like this big experience. And I wonder whether there's still the barrier still exists there towards those practices that are slower and that actually require us to sit in stillness, which is, argue arguably the most challenging of all the techniques, right?
Whether it's, most accessible or not, but I believe that modern brains, likely struggle with that quiet stillness more than they would with that big experience of hyperventilating and having, people crying and I don't know what's going on, in terms of trauma.
And it's just a wild, it's a wild world.
It's a wild [00:35:00] world. The breathwork world is wild. And look, there's a reason for that is exactly as you say, is because to sit. with a simple natural breath in the sequence of pranayama that I teach, the sequence of breath work that, that we use, natural breath awareness is the starting point, right?
You sit there and you just notice your breath. And as I heard it explained, that's the first practice and it's the last practice. So we get introduced to that if we say, okay, let's just sit here and just watch your breath. It's a meditation and a pranayama. You just sit there and notice your breath for a period of time, maybe a minute or a few minutes or longer, if you could.
But most of us are just, we're out the door. Five seconds, it's woohoo, I'm off because I can't do it. I don't have that capacity for Dharana. So what we get is this increasingly sophisticated and dynamic system of breathwork, which grabs a hold of our attention and will settle our nervous system to a point where we can actually return back to that practice.
And now, after you've done all of this stuff, Now you could actually do the simple practice of breath [00:36:00] awareness or as you described, Samavriti, just that even inhale, exhale, sitting with just a very slightly controlled breath. That's really hard. What you're talking about doing Samavriti for 20 minutes, that's really difficult.
Not easy to do. It's, yeah.
I think that way, the way you just explained it's really nice though. It's yeah, perhaps just reframing that the practices that might seem like they're the most advanced or the ones that have been romanticized the most yeah, not necessarily, to, to what we understand the word advanced to mean.
It's it's a whole, it's a whole journey and yeah, I guess different people will come in and experience it in different ways, but I guess, yeah, there's a time and a place for it all.
Absolutely. It's a journey, it's a journey and we're on it and we're inspiring other people to get on, other people to get on it.
So meeting them in a yoga practice and. No doubt you've taught many thousands, as I have, of students who are coming into asana classes. And for a lot of people, that's it. That's all it will ever be. And that's [00:37:00] totally okay if you just want to stick with the weekly or the semi regular yoga class. And I know that there's many busy people in the world who, that's their medicine.
It might just be the weekly class that they get to. It's their sacred space. And they never really want to go beyond that. They're not interested in exploring it. And that's totally okay. Some people are, and they just can't get enough. You came into yoga. I came into yoga. I was like, I just can't stop.
I need to know what's there. And I did the full journey of complex asana, really sophisticated pranayama, kriya yoga. And I still love that stuff. I'm fascinated with it from a student perspective and as a teacher, but my personal practice, I still do that stuff because I feel like I'm still exploring and I want to be able to teach it more.
So it's important, but if it was just me and I was never going to teach again. I would probably just return to really simple practice and just focus on being physically well, working with a simple breath practice and a really simple meditation practice just to keep myself balanced and calibrated and [00:38:00] energized so I can go out and live the best version of my world.
But as a teacher, there's a different expectation that you, I need to keep exploring practices that I can then package up and share with other people who at various points along the journey.
It is interesting being a teacher and having it change your relationship to the practice a little bit. But I try and, I feel like I'm probably a direct.
And so I like to try and keep it that way when I'm teaching as well, like just, even though it is repetition, but just to give the tools as I have received them and allow everyone to have their experience of it. And I'm not too fussed about making things really different and creative or unique because.
That does, it doesn't necessarily resonate with me so much because I'm not reinventing anything. I'm just offering what I too have been offered and I find great success with that. I think people really do resonate with that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's the core of my teaching too. I haven't made anything up.
KK [00:39:00] Everything that I teach you, I've been taught, it's come from and as much as possible is connected to a lineage in that it has its roots in traditional yoga, so it's been verified over a long period of time because the stuff that sticks around is generally the stuff that works, Wuha comes and goes and the different seasons of different things that become popular.
But I look at Nadi Chodron, for example, I've got a fantastic book, which is the roots of yoga. And it looks at actually all the historical studies of yoga and all the texts. And it referenced different practices and shows which ones have appeared in like the Garunda Samhita, Hatha Yoga Pranapika, the Shiva Samhita and all the different Upanishads and Nadi Chodron has just kept showing up in so many different texts.
Why is that? Why is that? Whereas some other practices have come and gone. The reason is pretty simple because it works. It's an amazing tool that works really simply. It's alternate nostril breathing for anyone who doesn't know the [00:40:00] practice and it's so easy to access and. can take you on a really profound journey as well.
So it's stuck around. So that piqued my interest oh, there's something in Nadi Chodan. I need to learn more about that.
So look,
you and I could talk about this stuff, I think, ad infinitum, forever. But I do want to shift the conversation a little bit and if it's okay for you, I would like to maybe get a little bit more personal about your journey with experience, particularly I'm interested in how practice has supported you in difficult times.
And the first area I would like to talk about is vritti, vasana, addiction, how Your personality at perhaps times in your life has been addicted to things, and whether that's ideas, substances, whatever it is, and how yoga practice in various forms has helped you to transcend that. Have you been, ever been addicted to anything?
Not [00:41:00] substance, but I did suffer greatly for a long period of time with anorexia when I was 14, began when I was 14. And in a way it is like an addiction or it's not so far from it. When you think about what, yeah, what's happening. It's a pretty. And what's
driving it. It's a pretty. It's a loop of the mind, a really big one.
Yeah,
a big one. And it's interesting because I think look, I think yoga finds a lot of people in times of need. But however, my introduction to yoga was actually just because I was friends with someone whose mom did yoga. And one day I went to yoga class with her and then that just became a regular thing.
And then after a bit of consistency, I did yoga. Develop a love for it, but that love was more so around us and, uh, and I was about 14, right? So younger than that, even maybe 13 years old. So I was just there to have a good time, but I wasn't going much deeper than that, but I've yeah, fell a very ill at about 14.
And I didn't touch yoga [00:42:00] for and so I was in yoga for a long time, and I went through recovery and rehabilitation and what not. And after a couple of years, I did return to yoga and at this time I can look back now, and I guess admit and accept that I may be presented as well, but Inside I was still very sick human being in my relationship to myself and my relationship to of course, nourishment and what that looked like was just a shit show, really.
And I was still very sad, very, like a very sad human. But I returned to yoga and it didn't happen overnight. It was a slow, it was a slow almost like a second rehabilitation. But. Over probably maybe one or two years of consistently practicing and not only just practicing, but actually beginning to form relationships within the yoga community.
That's when I started to see things shifting and changing on like a psychological level and an energetic [00:43:00] level. So I was befriending yoga teachers and having You know, beautiful relationships and discussions with them and they were, off outside the classroom environment, almost educating me just through the friendship and yeah, of course, things like reading books and And yeah, things like that.
It was slow. It wasn't a light bulb moment where I went to yoga and everything was better. It was just like a slow, yeah, it was a mature, it was a maturing in some ways. I guess you could use the word awakening, but again, I just want to emphasize that it was very slow. It was very slow. And as my relationship to yoga and to the practice and to the community built all the other walls came down and yeah.
It's like a rebirth, almost.
Yeah look, the best, the most sustainable journeys of healing should be slow. And that's the best thing about yoga. It is slow. It's not a quick breakthrough. It's hard work. It's tenacity. It's showing up again [00:44:00] and again, which is, it's coming from you. People can show you practices to do and techniques to use, but ultimately it's that grit that it's the evolution of your personality, which will be the thing that drives you forward.
And when we have, sorry, you keep going. I
I had a very potent experience when and I will give a shout out to Dominique here, because I'm going to talk about her in a moment. Dominique Salerno, who's a wonderful Pranayama teacher. She, was teaching just a Pranayama class at the Australian Yoga Academy.
And look, this is when I was quite far into my yoga journey, but I had just begun my teaching journey. So I'd just begun my teacher training. And whilst again, I would say that I had come leaps and bounds from my illness I still had a lot of I almost want to say like the normal amount of turmoil, because it's such a common thing, right?
That people have all this stuff that they're always dealing [00:45:00] with and in their body and in their mind. And I am, I was well and I was living my life and but I still just had such a deep sadness and it would come and go, come and go. And I started attending the Pranayama class and it was just like 45 minutes.
I think it was like 6am, 6am in the morning. Every week, just once a week. And I started doing that and I had this, just the most potent experience. And I remember leaving one of the sessions and just feeling like a different person. And mind you, again, that I felt that way for, maybe it was a few hours and then, I would go back to work and have a coffee or, just throw myself back out of that lovely state of mind.
But it was when something really clicked in my mind that, wow, I actually have the ability to make a change here and what's happening in my mental space at just through using this practice. And yeah, that was definitely a light bulb moment. Yeah. And if I
am, it's like quick. Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah,
it is. And then, [00:46:00] that just reiterates the fact that you get consistency is key with with this practice.
But for the first, I almost feel like for the first time ever I realized that I had a choice in how I felt and how I experienced the world. And yeah. Wow. I just, that moment is like forever burnt into my brain. It's such a gift. What a gift,
what a gift to be empowered with that choice. You still have to make the choice and you still have to back the choice up, but to have the choice, which for a long time, the choice has always been there.
We just didn't know it was a choice. And most of us have grown up in environments and ways that we're just not exposed to it. And there are a lot of kids these days who are exposed to these practices from the get go. And. knowing that's a choice from such a young age. It's a profound way to live because it's always been a choice.
If you're breathing, you have, and you have a mind, you have the capacity to control your breath. And through that control of the breath, you can regulate your [00:47:00] nervous system and yoga, asana, you mentioned before. as part of your practice gives us this capacity for proprioception, being able to experience our body as it is and feel good in our body, which was like, wow, when I first came into yoga, I said I'd done a lot of sport, but I'd always felt a little bit dysfunctional in my body for various reasons, but yoga asana made me just love my body.
I love the way it looked. I love the way it felt. I love the way it set me up to do other sports. All of a sudden I was surfing better. I was playing football at the time. I could play football better. Everything was better. Like I was able to use my body in such amazing ways. It was fun. Being able to do handstands and flips and all the stuff was really fun.
I just gave me this love affair with my physicality, which it just. took things leaps and bounds. And again, as you mentioned Pranayama, it cuts through the fog of the maelstrom of mind that very quickly potentially can take us to a point of Oh [00:48:00] wow there's something there. I can actually transcend that Wuha for even just a short period of time.
But once you've had it it's hard to ignore it.
What a
wonderful journey it is. Indeed. Look, I do want to touch upon another subject again close to home, I think for you at the moment, and it's probably still very raw, but talking about grief and talking about how yoga practice has supported you through periods of grief.
So yes, recently, what was a year ago over a year ago now, but I did lose my younger brother to substance abuse and addiction and mental health. And yeah, Marcus, an interesting time. Cause it was just not so soon before we met up to co facilitate on the meditation training in Bali. That was definitely an interesting journey.
And it was nice to connect with you during that [00:49:00] time. But it's look, to be completely honest with you. Around the time that was happening, cause he'd been very sick for very sick for maybe four years. And during that time, that's when I was practicing a lot and I was practicing yoga nidra every single day.
And I really do believe that allowed me to keep it together. I was experiencing a huge amounts of anxiety during that time because I was just always constantly worried, of course, about his wellbeing and there was a lot of stuff going on. If anyone else, maybe that's listening has experienced addiction themselves or somebody in their family or a friend, it, it can be quite tumultuous and quite chaotic and a lot, quite a lot.
Nidra was hands down the best tool that I had to access calm. I had been practicing for long enough at that point where I didn't have to try so much for Nidra. I would just lay down and I would put the microphone, the headphones in and your little voice would come on. And I [00:50:00] would just immediately, I would just immediately be able to drop into that space.
So I'm super grateful for that. Around the time of his passing and after when, the rollercoaster ride of grief was beginning, my practice went out the window. I didn't do anything. I didn't, nothing. And. Sometimes in hindsight, I could look back and think, Oh, maybe, yeah, I would have, I don't know, maybe I would have experienced grief differently if I was practicing, but that doesn't matter because yeah, my experience was my experience and that particular period of my life was not going to be made better by anything, it, it was awful and will always be awful.
And yeah, maybe I didn't support myself in the best way that I could have during that. The height of that grief in those first couple of months. But I came back to the practice when I was ready and it supported me in a different [00:51:00] way. I'm not sure Mark, if you've experienced grief and if you were able to continue with your practice I didn't do anything to help myself during that time, I just slept.
And cried a lot and tried to, eat food and drink water and have a shower and, I don't think that there was any way that you'd be able to get me onto my mat sitting and breathing. Cause I didn't have the mental capacity or space to, to be with my own thoughts during that time.
Yeah. Yeah. Look, again, the practice will meet you wherever you are in, in, in the way that you are and the practice that you've done preceding whatever experience is coming up for us, and there's, we've all got it coming in some way, shape or form, or, where maybe some people are experiencing it now it's often hard in those moments of real grief to take on anything new.
They're the times when we're supported by the practice we've already [00:52:00] done. And yeah, I had a really good friend, which I think I shared when we were in Bali together, who passed away again, addiction related in April of last year, April, May of last year. And it really broke my heart. It really broke me.
And I've lost a few friends, quite a few friends tragically along the way. But this one, my friend, Nick he didn't make it, but he was my brother. We were. Co conspirators, we were sharing the journey together, I thought and then he was gone. It's I've looked to my right where he used to be, and he's no longer there.
And there was a big hole that left in my dreams and in my current reality. It was someone I used to talk, call and talk to regularly, and he just wasn't there anymore. And it really broke me. It was just so devastated. And I just had to let go. let that wash over me and sit with the sadness. That's been the big thing that still is still there.
For that period of time I was actually teaching a workshop the next day after his funeral and that was just like, [00:53:00] it just rolled me. Like actually being in that workshop was just like, I came in and I was in tears. I had, it was packed. I had 30 something people in there and it was a live workshop and I was also trying to present online.
It was just tech, like I had to be on and I was just
so much, I didn't
expect the funeral to be so profound. And it really was. And yeah, look, I was loved again. I just returned to the practice. So like I came in, I was like, guys, this is what's happened to me in the last 24 hours. I'm a little bit rattly.
I'm sorry. Let's practice. And we journeyed together with our breath and it was a Pranayama workshop actually. And. it was just the best place for me to be. It was a really safe and loving and true place for me to be. And just riding with that grief over the last year has been sitting with the sadness.
That's where meditation gets, allows me this capacity to really feel it. How do you sit with that sadness now?
I wanted [00:54:00] to say before I go into your question that I love just, yeah, sitting with the sadness. I love that. And I think people need to hear that because with these practices like yoga and other wellness trend trends and whatnot, I think the message gets a bit unclear.
It's like the message is that we want to be happy and content and at peace all the time. And that's just crazy. It's not possible. Like life is. Is forever changing and we have so little control over so many things and grief is an inevitable experience. Some people may walk through this life without experiencing it.
I'm not sure, but a lot of us will go through at least something that rattles us, right? That challenges us. So that pulls us into a place of deep sadness. And that's okay. And if it's sad, let it be sad. That's what I would remind myself when I was. So when the big waves of grief started to slow, [00:55:00] now they come and go irregularly but it's not a constant anymore.
It's on and off and on and off. And I just remind myself this is sad. This is a tragic thing that's happened. The loss will always be felt and that sadness will always be there to some extent, but it's sad. So it's it's okay to be sad. And there's no reason why I should try and force it to be different than what it is.
Don't need to be happy all the time and I don't have to write that in any way. That can just exist within me for what it is, which is heartbreak. Yeah. And that's okay. And it doesn't mean that my life is going to be less than because I'm carrying that. It's just a part of me that is, that will always be there, but I can move forward and enjoy my life with just as much joy as I could have, if it didn't end up that way.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, absolutely. Maybe more joy. I have a saying that I go back to again and again, that life is for the living. [00:56:00] And that means that if you're alive, then you've got to live. If someone's passed, that's, life is not theirs anymore. But for you and me, we're here, we're breathing. We have choices.
We still have that choice. And as one of my beautiful dear yoga teachers, Swami Satyadharma, who has passed she would love to say that the practice of yoga is the practice of optimism. And how am I going to make this situation better? How can I take my grief, my pain, my suffering, and how can I use that wisdom that I have experienced, the wisdom that I've developed through the pain that I have felt, how can I use that to benefit others?
How can I make this world a better place through my practice? And this is Karma Yoga, you know this is what we get to, trying to create positive karma through our actions and through our thoughts and our deeds as we move forward into the world. Feel the feelings, sit with the grief, sit with the sadness, experience the joy, and one of the great [00:57:00] revelations is that actually you can have the most intense sadness and anger, whatever the feeling, and that can actually then move into joy.
Really quickly, you can have one feeling and you can have an experience of incredible joy. And then there's a moment of Oh, wow, I'm really sad right now. And it doesn't, we don't have to get locked into those feelings and those emotions they pass. And that there is perhaps something that exists even beyond the depths of those feelings.
And again, connecting back to the quiet place, connecting back to the truth
again
and again, which is our practice or we get there through our practice, which it's a good friend in the scheme of time, right?
Yeah, gosh, it's nice to have something that, you can turn to though, I will say that about.
The tools within yoga. Yeah. If I'm going through a really anxious time or I'm super, super stressed, I, my, my go to won't be to immediately sit down and work with my breath, but I know that it's there and I will go there when I feel like I have some [00:58:00] space for it. And it's, yeah, it's a real comfort because if you don't, if you don't have any tools in place or any systems in place, if you don't, If you don't know how to support yourself, then that's really isolating.
And I do believe that we're not really educated in that way, I wasn't when I was a young lady, I wasn't offered any self regulating tools. I don't even know if I ever learned about the nervous system.
Most of us don't. Yeah. But I do think that I'd see that changing. I see a lot of schools now, and as the science evolves, we spoke about that in the beginning of the podcast, that it's harder to ignore for teachers, of students.
I get a lot of teachers doing courses with me and psychologists now. I Anyone who's a psychologist who is not engaging with breath work and meditation as functional tools within their practice. I'm like what are you doing? I've had a lot of psychologists more and more doing trainings with us.
And it's so inspiring to say that this is the way now that people are [00:59:00] learning to heal. And the younger that we get that message, I'd love to see. Yeah. Pranayama taught, simple breathwork taught in kindergarten, primary school, where we're at that point of just learning Samma vritti or learning to simple Pranayama, the alternate nostril breathing as ways that, tools that we can access when we're feeling the feelings, whatever they might be helping us to bring balance.
Look, I am going to want to bring things to a close fairly soon. You and I could keep talking for forever, and I'm sure we will talk again. But I do want to have one final question from you, and that's, Where are you looking forward to at this point? We spoke about optimism and you said, before after dealing with what's been a very challenging year in the past year, although it sounds like you've had a lot of wonderful times too.
What are you looking forward to in the year ahead?
So the year ahead. I'm actually just, I'm [01:00:00] actually really looking forward to feeling grounded. I've been moving around a lot over the past couple of years. Just renting in different parts of Melbourne. And then we spent some time overseas and then we were living with my dad for a little bit, and we're finally in a place and we've got a long term lease on our place and.
To be settled and to have my feet on the ground and to be working with a routine. That is what I'm most excited for. I'm really craving that. I'm really craving that. And then, in terms of a yoga, from a yoga perspective working with more and more teachers and Helping them to find their feet as a yoga teacher.
That's where my focus has been the last year or so. As a teacher and yeah, I find it deeply rewarding to be of service in that way and definitely seeking now that I'm settled and grounded to have the space to be able to put a little bit more into [01:01:00] that. Yeah, and keep moving forward with that.
So good. And you, cause you're mentoring yoga teachers to give them. inspiration and tools to evolve their practice and teaching. Yeah.
Essentially. Yeah. I think there's probably not quite enough support out there for newer yoga teachers unless they're, going and doing trainings and training, which tends to be like a little bit of a a theme, but having that one to one support is really invaluable.
I think in terms of creating a sustainable yoga career. So cool. If you call it that. So
cool. Yeah. And a sustainable yoga career, but also a sustainable yoga practice, which should underpin any sustainable yoga career needs to be underpinned by a sustainable yoga practice. Of course. So how do we find you? How do people find you?
I'm just in the early stages of making my mentorship program more of a program right now I'm just [01:02:00] connecting with people that I know, people that have been practicing with me and through social media and Instagram, just my.
Instagram account, but yeah, I'm starting to create a little biz called the down dog academy. And it's just basically a mentorship program, but there's a lot more content online for them to access and resources and yeah, so that will be building and I'm excited to see where that goes.
It's going to go somewhere wonderful. I watched this space with avid interest. So thank you so much for sharing your time, opening your heart, sharing your wisdom. It has been such a pleasure, Sophie, and,
Thank you for having me.
Oh, my absolute pleasure. And look, I look forward to connecting with you again, if you do want to know more from Sophie.
She has so much to give an amazing yoga teacher. If you ever get a chance, check out her classes in Melbourne, or if you're a teacher, maybe reach out and connect with her for mentorship opportunities. And I [01:03:00] hope that the two of us can connect. connect again for conversation and perhaps collaboration.
Yes. Hurry on.
I'll see you soon, Sophie. Thank you so much. See
you soon, Mark.
Have a beautiful day.
You too.
