sol matt huy
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[00:00:00] If you've ever been to a yoga class, you've probably heard the teacher say things like twists, detoxify the liver or yin yoga targets, the fascia, or maybe you're even a teacher. And you say those things because that's what your teacher taught you. And it's good, probably that you trust your teacher and you trust them to teach you things that are real and true, but have you ever considered or wondered if those things are true or base in evidence? So the yoga world is rampant with teachers saying things because their teachers said them, their teachers, teacher said them.
[00:00:36] And some of these things are true, but a lot of them are purely based on speculation and personal experience. And while personal experience can be very valid, there's something about. Personal experience is that it's marred with your own, Avidya. So maybe , this is your first time hearing that word. Or maybe when I say avidya that inspires something in you and you know what I mean?
[00:00:57] Avidya is the first of the five kleshas given to us by the yoga sutras of Patanjali. And the kleshas are. To put it simply. Blocks to yoga their blocks to our higher understanding our spiritual progress. So I have a whole other episode of the science of light, where I explain those. And I'll be happy to link in the show notes if you want to dive more into the kleshas but basically Avidya is the root of all the misunderstandings and it's ignorance. It is.
[00:01:26] Um, to put it simply Sanskrit words never have like a one-to-one translation to English, but avidya can loosely be translated to ignorance. And basically it shows up as. Behaving in a way where you don't even know what you don't know. And so this is also sometimes described by.
[00:01:43] The Dunning Kruger effect, where your confidence, it's a graph where your confidence goes way up when you learn a little bit, and then you learn a little bit more and then your confidence goes way down. And so. The early part of the Dunning Kruger effect graph, which you can just Google it. Is avidya that's being stuck in avidya. So if you, if you haven't heard of avidya, it's basically ignorance. It's basically being so marred by your own.
[00:02:09] Personal perception that you can't even see how other people might have another experience. That's a different tangent for another day. So how can we make sure as yoga teachers, or as the things that we hear, our yoga teachers say, are true are true for, you know, because something that might be true for one person might not be more true for a lot of people. And the way we get around that, or the way we find out what that ultimate truth is, is research. And that's so fun, but I also recognize that a lot of folks, and Matt and I talk about this in the episode, today's guest.
[00:02:43] Um, talk about this in the episode, about how once upon a time for us to individually looking at research was daunting. It sounds like jargon. It's like, I don't understand that. It seems like the people that put it out, there's like a disconnect between the research and what is meant to be understood by the public.
[00:03:01] And I can definitely say that's true as a person who. I briefly worked in public health during the pandemic when I graduated. For my undergraduate with a degree in health. So I briefly worked in public health and I recognize that. The public's understanding of research is often, there's a really big chasm, a really big disconnect there. So, um, it's okay. If you are a yoga teacher or a regular yoga practitioner that has felt daunted or confused by scientific research, have what we describe in this episode as low scientific literacy.
[00:03:37] We're not saying that to shame you we're, we're saying that to point out a problem so that in this. Episode, you will learn how to, what to do about it. You don't have to go get some fancy degree to start understanding research. You can learn how to. Understand it so that you can know if the claims you're making are ultimately harmful or not. If they are.
[00:03:59] False or if they're true. So you might also notice that folks that are really highly educated, the more this goes back to that Dunning Kruger effect, the more people know the less likely. They are to sound really sure about something. You'll notice that in this episode. And so today's guest Matthew Huy is.
[00:04:18] The author, one of the two authors of. The new book physiology of yoga. And so this book is fantastic. It's groundbreaking in the yoga world. It's one of the. You know, first we talked about this in the episode too one of the first yoga books that backs up the claims it has with actual research. So there's a lot of value in that. And you can tune into the episode to learn by example from Matt about how to think through these things and where to find the answers. If something doesn't sit right for you to find out if things are really true or not. And we go.
[00:04:52] Through that process by way of several examples, like. If you in yoga really targets the fascia. Um, How to not be scared of different ways of moving your body to, to not inspire fear in your students. If you are a yoga teacher. Um, and how to not be scared of moving your body in different ways. If you do enjoy practicing yoga, you don't have to believe anymore that there are certain things that your body just doesn't do or won't do. And we'll talk about this backed up by research in a very.
[00:05:23] Easy to understand way that Matt does so beautifully in this episode.
[00:05:28] So I'd like to extend you a very warm welcome to the science of light podcast. I am your host, Rosemary Holbrook. I am your friendly neighborhood yoga teacher. I'm training to become a yoga therapist. Um, And what we do around here is try to improve that scientific literacy. Although I've never used those words before, because they can sound kind of jargony, but you can learn in this episode what that means, um, so that you can kind of demystify the Vedic sciences, put a little more magic into your mundane and really know that what you're saying is ultimately true and not just based on one person's personal experience that got passed through a weird game of telephone.
[00:06:03] So without further ado, let's get into the episode and meet Matt. Thanks for being here.
[00:06:09] welcome to the Science of Light. I'm your host, Rosemary, and today I'm joined by Matthew Huy.
[00:06:15] Welcome. Thank you. I'm honored to be here, so thank you for having me. So for the
[00:06:21] folks that don't know, which I, you would've just heard this in the introduction, but this is the other author of physiology of yoga, so I'm sure we'll get there.
[00:06:31] But can you start off by telling me your yoga story? How'd you get into yoga? Who were you before you found yoga?
[00:06:39] Okay, yeah, sure. I went through high school and I was rather athletic doing, a lot of running activities or hurdles in track and field and cross country. And then I went off to university and I was studying ecology and systematic biology.
[00:06:56] Cal Poly University, which is in San Louis, bipo, California. And I wasn't doing that well, honestly, , I wasn't doing very well in school. I was quite distracted by lots of other things. And, but not naughty things, actually I was doing lots of volunteer service. I was just exploring life, just being a weird 18 year old.
[00:07:19] And I I think I really enjoyed the poetry of nature. I enjoyed camping, but I didn't perhaps enjoy as much spending hours in the lab, learning plant names and that sort of thing. So I think that's why I wasn't doing that well in ecology and systematic biology. And basically on a whim I was. Going to the food hall with a friend of mine and I did a little leap to the curb and my friend said, why don't you try a dance class whimsically?
[00:07:49] And I said, okay, sure. . Cause I was just interested in trying anything at that point. So I tried a dance class and it happened to be a jazz class cuz I was available with my time schedule. And as it turns out, I loved it. I totally loved this jazz class. So then I enrolled in a ballet class. I loved that too.
[00:08:08] And that same friend invited me to a yoga class, which I also went to. And I actually enjoyed that less than the dance classes. Okay. Because we were, I guess it was cold in the gym and we were holding poses for a long time. But nonetheless I was introduced to yoga and dance and I pretty much instantly fell in love with movement and.
[00:08:33] There's no other way of saying it than the beauty of movement. I really loved moving my body. I loved how it felt and so I decided to just take a break from university and the C grades that I was getting in ecology, . And basically I took some time off school and I traveled around the world, lived in Washington DC and I lived in Taiwan cuz my dad was living there for business.
[00:08:56] So I stayed there for a little bit too. I did tons of dance classes and yoga classes and then I fell in love even more with dance and also yoga. And I had a maybe spiritual renaissance, did lots of reading of spiritual books and stuff. And so then I, after my travels, I went back to California. I had to make up for my grades.
[00:09:20] So I started a community college. I went to Diablo Valley College, and I had to, get some like basic grades back up. And then I went finally to the California State University Long Beach, where I enrolled in a dance degree. So I got a Bachelor of Arts in Dance, finally . But actually it was obviously a lot of dancing, but then on top of that, I also had the chance to study some great anatomy and physiology.
[00:09:49] I did a lot of Pilates training. So it was a chance to really deepen my knowledge of movement and human body altogether. Wow. And I also did a minor in English literature, so writing has always been an interest of mine. So then I left school and.
[00:10:07] Life happened and everything. And I I danced for a little bit and making living as a dancer is really difficult. But also it's not very enjoyable. I found . Okay. Yeah, I think I really, yeah, I think I really enjoyed just the movement being in the class and the struggle of being a dancer was not that enjoyable and even performing other people's work that I didn't necessarily like, but it paid was not that enjoyable all either.
[00:10:39] And during my time at Long Beach, California State Selling Beach, also did a yoga teacher training, which I did in India actually with Sivananda Ashram. And so after graduating university, I I had jobs, a few jobs in dance. I taught yoga, I had office jobs. I've had all variety of jobs. But generally I've always had at least one job in movement, whether it be yoga or dance.
[00:11:07] And then fast forward, I've now been teaching 17, 18 years of yoga and at some point I made the transition from non-movement jobs to all movement jobs. So I was teaching dance in, in London and and then also lots of yoga. And I was, I always had an interest in anatomy, in physiology.
[00:11:31] And so just about three years ago I decided to go back to university for a proper degree, . Okay. For a science degree. So I got a master's from Brunello University, which is in London.
[00:11:44] Rewind a little bit when you Yeah. Went for ecology. So just a couple clarifying questions along the way when you went for ecology.
[00:11:54] What you, it sounded like you were doing that because you enjoyed nature and that sounded like a real degree related to your, you enjoyed nature and you were like, this'll be cool, and then you didn't enjoy that. Is that kind of how that played out?
[00:12:08] Yeah I think maybe I wasn't ready for university. At that time. And here in the UK where I live now some people take what's called a gap year between their high school and university. I think it's becoming less common now, but still some people take a gap year and I think that's a really great idea to have a little break before going to university to explore the world or gain some work experience.
[00:12:34] I think that would've been really useful for me. And I put my gap year after three years of university, which wasn't something similar. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. And I think I was just trying to figure out who I was and what really interested me. And I still totally love nature and learning about it, but I'm not very good at remembering plant names still.
[00:12:58] And , that is quite an important part of ecology, probably. That's not necessarily as you get systems levels, but
[00:13:04] with that and then with being a professional dancer, you were just okay, I'm gonna do the thing now. And it didn't, once you got into it, the daily life didn't seem like what you enjoyed.
[00:13:15] So then did you end up finding, yeah, I guess when , you started out after your dance degree, like dancing professionally, that's like performances, right? And then, so it sounded like then you still can dance, but instead teaching dance. Can you say a little bit more about how that played
[00:13:28] out?
[00:13:30] Yeah, after my, yeah, after I finished my degree I got a few project work, a few bits of project work. And unless you're with like a full-time dance company then you're, you do these projects where, I dunno, you rehearse for a couple of weeks and then you do a performance at the end of it usually.
[00:13:46] And Right. They're often really poorly paid, and you have to go to lots of auditions on Saturdays and Sundays and you might not get called back and that sort of thing. So yeah, it is quite it's quite hard work and looking back on it, I don't think maybe I had the commitment to it.
[00:14:06] And I think maybe I've always been holistically minded. . I always prioritize, my sleep and looking after myself and my body. And I think really maybe. Unless you start from a really young age to do dance really well, you have to really put your, I don't know, you need to put a lot of work and commitment into it.
[00:14:26] And maybe I just didn't put that commitment in. Cause I was more interested in, I don't know, just looking after myself and enjoying life, yeah. If the level
[00:14:34] of commitment gets in the way of taking care of yourself, then that's not sustainable. Yeah,
[00:14:41] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so I started teaching dance somewhere in there alongside teaching yoga.
[00:14:46] And yeah, that was, it was a natural progression. And I've always found, I've loved teaching. So teaching yoga, teaching Pilates teaching dance, and. Also, when I was at Long Beach, I was tutoring children in reading. So I was like at that point then teaching language to children, particularly dyslexic and autistic children.
[00:15:07] And I love that. And I think everything that I've learned about teaching has informed then my yoga teaching. So Very cool. Yeah. That's important. And I think, yeah. Yeah. I sometimes mentor newer teachers and a lot of them I think tend to forget the life they've had before teaching yoga. Whereas we can get a lot of value by combining what we've learned in, in, in our previous jobs before we were yoga teachers, , in including Andrew, my co-author, he was, he studied as a medical. and then left that behind and then became a yoga teacher. And he didn't think, as he mentioned on your podcast, guess he didn't think to combine them until someone else mentioned it yeah, I think there's a lot of value in, in considering the value of your previous experience, even if that was in a corporate job or being a lawyer.
[00:16:01] There have been people who have been lawyers and then they go on to help be lawyers for yoga teachers or whatever, so yeah, there's a lot of value in, in combining your skills and knowledge. It's not just yoga. This sounds
[00:16:14] like it leads into what you mentioned a minute ago about you went to get then a proper degree and I think I know what you're gonna, what that degree was.
[00:16:22] So can you say more about what led you, why'd you decide to get that degree? What was the degree and how did it combine with
[00:16:30] your yoga? Yeah, so I've always been interested in anatomy and physiology and I've always Had a propensity towards it. Like from the first time I learned , the name Sternocleidomastoid, it stuck with me.
[00:16:45] I heard it once and then it stuck with me, which is that neck muscle. When you turn your head to the side, you can see it, right? And it connects the sternum to the clav goal to the mastoid bone. So that's where it gets its name, Sterno Colitis, mastoid. So I've always had an interest in anatomy and physiology to the point that after teaching yoga for about 15 years, I decided upon the recommendation of a another friend, another teacher, to start teaching anatomy on teacher training programs.
[00:17:15] And so I did a lot of self reading about that. And I wrote a, an anatomy manual. I developed a 20 hour program so that I can go to a yoga teacher training and. Deliver the anatomy and physiology component. And that's actually where I met Andrew. So that was when we were both living in London and we were both doing the same thing, which is teaching anatomy on teacher training programs.
[00:17:41] And I remember one teacher who knows both of us said, oh, why don't you two connect cuz you guys do the same thing. And we did. We had lunch, we got on like a house on fire. And we've been friends ever since and collaborating and working together and yeah, he's, he is definitely a good friend and he's, yeah, we've, we created a great collaboration together.
[00:18:00] Yeah so I was teaching anatomy and physiology for about a year or so on teacher training programs, just one or two. And I decided I really wanted to deepen my knowledge. So I looked into different options. I thought, should I do, like a, an anatomy and physiology module? Which you can just do over a weekend or something, or should I do something more in depth?
[00:18:23] And I decided why not go for a master's? And so basically, if you want to learn about physiology related to movement or yoga, it's going to be an exercise science degree. , which is what I got my degree in. So I now have a master's in what's technically called sport health and exercise science.
[00:18:46] And so I did a course in biomechanics, which was really interesting, fascinating. I did a particular focus in sport physiology. I was really lucky to learn from. An exercise physiologist who worked for 20 years in the field with the Olympics. He worked with top athletes. Wow. Dr. Richard Godfrey is his name.
[00:19:08] He's been a mentor to me. He's been amazing. And I learned all about what's happening in the body when we move, when we exercise the adaptations to exercise that occur. And I also did an emphasis in pain science. So that's what my research was particularly on my dissertation. Which sounds like a kind of a made up thing, doesn't it?
[00:19:29] Pain science, . I didn't really know it existed until, not to me, but
[00:19:32] to
[00:19:32] other people.
[00:19:34] There you go. . Yeah.
[00:19:36] It's all about all of the factors that affect the sensation of pain. And it's an emergent field there's a lot of research being conducted on pain science, and it's very different. Our knowledge about pain is very different today to what it was, 30, 40 years ago.
[00:19:55] In that right. Pain does not equal tissue damage necessarily. Tissue damage Yeah. Is only one of the factors that creates a sensation of pain.
[00:20:05] Yeah. What are some of the other factors which like, so I know that's the paradigm of like doctors, right?
[00:20:10] They're like, oh, your blood works fine, your x-rays are fine, everything looks fine. So they tell you then if you're experiencing pain, then it's like psychosomatic meaning like it's all in your head basically. So could you say more about some of the other factors? Take that little
[00:20:25] detour. Yeah.
[00:20:26] So what you're describing is called the biomedical model, which is basically this idea that all pain has some tissue damage Associated with it.
[00:20:39] So for example, if you have back pain, it must be cuz you have a herniated disc or you have some other vertebral fracture or something like that, right? So that's the biomedical model and it's in contrast with the bio psychosocial model, which actually has been around since the seventies, that's when it was first introduced.
[00:21:01] And the bio psychosocial model suggests that biology, so the status of our tissues, including herniated discs and bone fractures are a factor in pain and overall health, as are psychological factors including depression anxiety. And it is known there's a very strong correlation between depression and increased levels of chronic pain.
[00:21:31] Similar with an anxiety. So those are psychological factors. And then social factors which include, for example, the stability of your home, the stability of your work environment. , how satisfied even you feel with your life and with your work. All of those we have found contribute to pain.
[00:21:51] And one of the, one of the strongest predictors of whether someone's pain goes from acute to chronic is their expectation, the patient's expectation of outcome. . So in other words, our expectation of how we're going to recover from this injury, from this bout of pain is a strong predictor for whether this pain becomes long term.
[00:22:21] Palo Ello. Had a quote where he said so he says, you are what you believe yourself to be in the witch of Portobello. And that seems to be, that seems to ring true actually with what we know about the body and about this biopsychosocial model of care. Yeah. And this, what this means is we can have pain without necessarily having some tissue damage in the body, and our pain can be increased or sensation can be increased based on those other factors in our life.
[00:22:56] Another one I did mention like sleep and nutrition. Those can also have really big factors in our experience of pain as we all know, like when I say this and you're hearing it, you might be thinking, oh yeah that definitely makes sense. I've, yeah I feel more pain when I'm stressed.
[00:23:13] When, I'm not getting enough sleep and these things can, these variables can build on each other, right? So if you are stressed, you might sleep less. And then if you sleep less, you might be more inclined to eat more junk food. . And then you might have a about of pain. And then this will make you less likely perhaps, to do meaningful activities in your life, such as, for example, picking up your children or doing your rowing class that you used to love or even picking up something off the floor because someone told you once, you need to be careful picking things up because of your back.
[00:23:51] So all those things then can contribute to our experience of pain.
[00:23:56] Yeah. Yeah. So is that's pretty much what your dissertation for that degree was on. It's like those
[00:24:01] factors. So that was the background to my dissertation and my. My project was specifically focused on language of yoga teachers.
[00:24:13] So I looked at the kind of the current state of pain science and the bio psychosocial model, and used that information to talk about language that yoga teachers use. And you've heard of the placebo effect. There's also something known as the nocebo effect, which we've seen with clinical trials where basically if you tell someone this pill is going to make you feel nauseous, it's gonna create vomiting, , or it's gonna give an upset tummy people, then people can experience those symptoms.
[00:24:47] Even if the pill that you're giving them is a placebo, in other words, a sugar pill. We've also seen other experi experiments or observational studies where people's expectations. Correlate with their levels of pain, similar to what I was saying before. And if you show someone, for example, a word associated with pain and then give them an electrical impulse to their finger, and then you show, give them the same electrical impulse and then show them a word that's not associated with pain, for example, cloud versus excruciating.
[00:25:24] They are more, they are going to feel more pain when you show that painful word, even if the electrical stimulus on the finger is the same. And that's been born out in research. So Wow. What we expect to feel strongly affects what we actually feel, which I think is fascinating and mind blowing and also very powerful. Exactly. It can be really empowering. Exactly. And so how does that relate to yoga teachers? And the language they use. And that is in the same way that if I tell you this pill is going to make you feel nauseous and make you vomit and you're more likely to do that.
[00:26:01] If I tell you, you need to be careful with your back because you need to be careful doing back bends cuz you can damage your back. , you need to be careful doing chats then. I am cognitively priming you to experience more pain to experience injury as a result of my words. I put together like a few things that yoga teachers say and and whether those are based in science and the effects that they could have for your dissertation.
[00:26:34] Yeah.
[00:26:34] Or that's just for my dissertation. Yeah, exactly..
[00:26:37] Can
[00:26:37] we pull out the chatarunga example? Okay. So yeah, let's talk about
[00:26:43] Chaturanga. Yeah, absolutely. It wasn't one of the three claims that I focused on in my dissertation. Oh, okay.
[00:26:50] But yeah, we can absolutely. Talk about that. Maybe you have heard perhaps some fear mongering language around chaturanga. For example, I have heard people saying things like, it's bad for your shoulders. , it can damage the rotator cuff, particularly if you do it in a certain way. And What I'm saying and what I looked at with my research was that just saying that can actually prime someone for more pain and for more injury. And actually that's ignoring the resilience of the body. And our body adapts always constantly to the demands placed on it. It's the first rule of exercise science is that our body is adapting and it will adapt to exercise.
[00:27:40] So we know of course muscles get stronger, but then also connect tissue, get stronger, tendons get stronger, ligaments get stronger, which means if you want stronger ligaments, you should put some stress through them. Like you should, if you want stronger knee ligaments, you should actually place your foot on your knee Andre poses and push into it.
[00:28:00] Cause that would make your ligaments stronger. And that's the whole basis of, yeah. , and that's the whole basis of y yoga is to put some stress on the connective tissue, right? And to let yourself linger in that stress, linger in that sensation, right? That's the basis of it. And we know that the body adapts favorably to exercise, to movement, to loading, including bones or bones, increase in bone mineral density when we use them.
[00:28:31] This is why when astronauts come from outer space, they have reduced bone mineral density because they haven't had that loading of gravity. Is chaga bad? No, it's not bad in itself. But however, if you are just doing a program which is characterized by pushing movements only and. Pushing muscles that could potentially set you up for an imbalance between pushing and pulling. So it would be a good idea to add some pulling movements, but that's not to say that chatarunga is bad in itself. And so I think we need to be careful as yoga teachers of the language that we use and saying that this is bad, and if you do it this way, that's bad. Okay. That feels there's always an example of somewhere in the world.
[00:29:23] Yeah. Because
[00:29:23] overuse injuries are still a thing and muscular imbalances are still a thing. But it sounds like what you're saying is we can address those things in a way that's not fear based.
[00:29:34] Exactly. That's exactly what I'm saying. And absolutely. Overuse injuries can occur. And you had Dr.
[00:29:42] Lauren Yeah. On your, I was hoping on your podcast recently. She mentioned about how people in yoga teacher trainings, and I've seen this also teaching anatomy on teacher trainings, how people can get injured on teacher trainings for the very reason that they've gone from doing yoga, perhaps once or twice a week to suddenly doing it two times a day and perhaps even being a model for someone else who's practicing yoga and so that maybe they're not fully warmed up and they're doing things.
[00:30:13] So absolutely overuse is completely possible. Or is my tutor at university. That man I mentioned Dr. Richard Godfrey, he said it's not an overuse injury, it is an under rest injury. . I think that's a beautiful way of saying it. So it's not so much that it's bad to use our body, but we need to allow the time in between for our body to get stronger.
[00:30:40] There's a principle in in exercise known science known as super compensation. So immediately after you have a bout of exercise and that includes yoga. As a physical for, yoga is right, a physical stress on the body, right? Yeah, absolutely. There will be a decrease immediately following your bout of exercise, your yoga practice.
[00:31:05] There will be a decrease in your overall fitness. There will be a decrease in your ability to generate force in the muscles. And we probably know this, like after a really strong class we, our legs might feel a little bit tired. I had led a really strong class just yesterday and someone walked out and said, my, her legs feel like jelly.
[00:31:24] And so that is that idea of how we have decreased performance shortly after exercise. And that can last for. A few days even. And that's also when we might have delayed onset muscle soreness, and soreness in the legs and that sort of thing. But then you give it a day or two and then we change and we actually get stronger.
[00:31:47] We become more flexible, we become more resilient as all of those adaptations to exercise occur, including changes to muscle connective tissue, cardiovascular adaptations. Even our lungs change. We increase the number of alveoli, which are the air sacs and the lungs. So we have all these adaptations to exercise.
[00:32:08] So it is really good. It is important. I was even essential and vital that we exercise, that we move our body, that we stress our body through physical exertion. It is really important. That we use our bodies, but then it's also important that we allow that rest afterwards for the body to get stronger.
[00:32:30] And how much rest? It depends for someone who's new to yoga or new to exercise in general, they'll need more rest. Whereas an Olympic athlete, cuz they're so well trained and they know their bodies so well, they train twice a day. They'll train early in the morning and then in the evening again and they can tolerate that.
[00:32:49] But for someone going to a teacher training where they suddenly train twice a day and they're not acclimatized to that, then yeah. That there can be a problem there. So does that answer that
[00:33:01] question ? It does.
[00:33:03] And so my next question is can you, of the examples from your dissertation, which one's your favorite?
[00:33:11] Can you like just choose one if you don't have a favorite maybe. And can you really explain the nitty gritty of the example.
[00:33:20] Okay. My favorite one from my dissertation is bending the spine forward and backwards is bad and the spine can split into a credit card.
[00:33:34] Have you heard that before?
[00:33:36] I haven't heard that before. Because the way I've been trained is that you actually, that's like good for you to go through the movements of the spine. Yeah, but let's run with it. Yeah let's hear about it. Because I do know that's a concern for some folks that may have bulging discs or whatever.
[00:33:50] They're like, oh, I don't want to aggravate it. That might be out of the scope of this argument, but.
[00:33:55] So if you haven't heard that specifically about a credit card, and for my dissertation, I had to find written references. So I found it in numerous blogs and even in published books, I believe you comparing the spine to a credit card.
[00:34:09] But even if you haven't heard that, perhaps you've heard that it's not good to bring your back into or to round the back. , perhaps you've heard that like during a forward fold or even perhaps bending down to pick something up, it's best to pick it up with a straight back, a neutral spine as much as possible.
[00:34:27] . Or perhaps even if you haven't heard the credit card, perhaps you've heard in a yoga room that you shouldn't do a back bend followed by a forward fold, followed by a back bend. So that can be a similar sort of idea, right? Yeah. The idea is that basically moving the spine too much forward and back can create some damage to the discs.
[00:34:51] And where did this fear of flexion come from?
[00:34:56] It probably came from some studies in the 1990s done by a great biomechanics researcher who's now retired, but his findings have been taken to an extreme. , and that is Dr. Stewart McGill. And he and his colleagues, for example, took a pig spine, so removed it obviously from a dead pig, and they put it in a jig in a machine, and moved it through flexion extension, over 70,000 cycles of this, and then found that a disc had herniated right.
[00:35:36] After 76,000 cycles of flexion extension. And so from that one study, which had its role and was important from that one study a lot of, blogs and books even have been written about the importance of not bending a spine when you bend down to pick something up or of not bending the spine when you do a forward fold or that sort of thing.
[00:36:02] And like I said, that study had, its had its importance and it was done to an extreme, because before that we didn't really know at all what caused herniated discs, we didn't have a mechanism for it. And now after this we had a, at least one clear mechanism. However, there have been a lot of studies that have added information to that or even refuted it.
[00:36:27] So even within that study there was still pig spines, cuz that wasn't the only one. There were still pig spines that didn't herniate even after 76,000. So it didn't happen to all of them. And then there were others that didn't herniate but had an endplate fracture, which means a fracture of the bony body.
[00:36:45] Of the vertebra. So it's not actually the disc that's creating the problem, it's not the herniation. And then since then there have been studies where you've seen herniation with a spine in neutral also removed from an animal. But the spine was a neutral and was compressed enough to create herniation.
[00:37:02] So that suggests that even a neutral spine doesn't protect against herniation. And then of course the most obvious thing is that we're talking about a dead pig spine through 76,000 cycles of flexion extension. Yeah. Whereas obviously we are living and our discs adapt. To the loads placed on them.
[00:37:23] So after you do that yoga class, after you do that flexion extension, of which you're probably not going to do 76,000 cycles in, in one day I feel like it, but you, after you do those, then , after you do those, actually the collagen of the intervertebral discs is going to grow stronger. . I think a lot of assumptions have been made out of these few studies on right cadaver spines, which have been extrapolated to now think that we cannot round our back at any time.
[00:37:55] And that's just not the case. And when you're picking something light up off the floor, it really doesn't matter whether your back is rounded or not. We've also had now studies where we look at the actual shape of the lumbar spine and someone's bending. And even if it looks like they're neutral, they're still bending to some degree.
[00:38:13] Quite a degree, like something between 20 and 44 degrees of flexion in the lumbar spine, even if it looks like they're completely neutral. So the idea that I can see neutral and I need to have my clients be in neutral does not agree with the research. Okay. So
[00:38:33] I have a few questions and one I wanna talk about the research I do, but before we get there, just while we're talking about this spine thing, I'm gonna pick your brain cuz that's what I do about something I actually say in my classes.
[00:38:47] And it's I try to, because I also wanna hear okay, if that's what we should not say then what do we say instead with, by way of the example of what I usually say, which is I tell my students, I'm like, there's nothing wrong with forward bending or so for example, let's say like a adha hanumanasana like the, where you start in a lunge and you go back and you flex your toes towards your face.
[00:39:10] You know what I'm talking about? And people round down and I say, yeah, half splits. That's cat back. Yeah. Half splits. Okay. And I say, can you try to do this pose with a long spine? And I say that when I cue it that way, and I do it in a few different shapes. And I say, because there's nothing wrong with rounding down.
[00:39:27] You'll get closer to the floor, you'll be able to rest your hands there. But most of us spend most of our time seated and rounded forward. So there might be benefit in your yoga practice of practicing that not rounding forward in different shapes and trying to rewire your patterns that way.
[00:39:44] So my question is does that sound like a good thing to say? Or what do you recommend folks say instead of having this cautionary language against surrounding your spine?
[00:39:52] Does that make sense? I think the way you said it sounds great. Yeah. So you didn't use any fear, you didn't say. You're gonna damage your disc if you round your back.
[00:40:04] Yeah. So that, that would give me a red flag of whoa, be careful with that language. And you're basically giving them an option. And you're absolutely right that a lot of us spend a lot of time in chairs, and when you sit in a chair, the muscles of the back, the paraspinal muscles, including the erector spine A, which is ba Latin, basically meaning to lift the spine, to erect the spine to make us up.
[00:40:32] Right. Right. So those muscles can just switch off when we're in a, when we're on a back rest. So you're right in saying that our back muscles don't need to work when we're in a chair. And you're right in saying that we sit a lot in our current culture. So it is a good idea to engage the back muscles when we get a chance to, and.
[00:40:55] Here's an opportunity to do so I think the way you said it is great, and you're not saying it in a fear based way. At the same time, I would encourage you perhaps on some days to allow people to round their back. So today we're gonna and I did this yesterday in a class too. We were in Skandasana (side lunge, lateral lunge) and I said, we're gonna, rather than really keeping an upright back, we're gonna let ourselves round forward, round the back, bring the hands forward, relax into it, bring a yin like element Yeah. Into this. And that can have its benefits too. And spice is the variety of life for movement also.
[00:41:39] So I think the best thing we can do for a body is to move it in a variety of ways. I agree with the way you said it. I think it's a good way of saying it. And perhaps also maybe one out of every five days when you have them have a flat back, how about allowing them to round their back and relax into it?
[00:41:57] And that's what essence of yin yoga is. And Yeah. And I feel like it was harder to make an argument for letting people relax. People believed it. Yes. Less before yin became popular. And now we can point to it and say, look, this is what happens in Yin. And no one is dying of split spines in the middle of yin classes, Okay. Yeah, let's keep people moving in variety ways. Avoid the fear based. You like in
[00:42:28] Yeah. I wanna ask you about this because I asked Andrew and he was like, oh, Matt actually wrote that part. So now I can ask you about the whole the myth versus fact that's in the physiology of yoga book. Can you say more about the connective tissue and what's really happening?
[00:42:44] You started to allude to it earlier, but can you say a little bit more about yin and the connective tissue? What's really happening and how does it benefit or how could it potentially not benefit if that's a thing?
[00:42:56] Yeah. Okay. I don't know if I can answer all those questions in terms of the benefits of yin, but Right.
[00:43:04] What are myth or fact sidebar says and we have lots of these dotted throughout the book. We'll, Put a claim in the heading saying, is this true myth or fact? And this one in this section is yin yoga targets the fascia. Okay? And fascia is basically a type of connective tissue. And I think some people don't even know what fascia is.
[00:43:33] So if we define that first, it's basically this weblike connective tissue that surrounds all organs of the body. And it's, it surrounds muscles, it penetrates muscles, it surrounds muscle muscle bundles and even muscle fibers. So if you take a cross section of a muscle, in other words, you have a belly of muscle, you cut it in half, you're going to see on the outer layer, a layer of fa.
[00:44:01] And then you'll see individual bundles, and those bundles will be covered by fascia. And within those bundles you have many what are called myofibrils. Those MyFi balls will be covered in fascia. . So our muscles are basically fascia upon fascia and within the belly of the muscle itself.
[00:44:19] It has these contractile proteins known as actin and myosin, which contract against each other. Sliding filament theory, it creates generates force in the body and that fascia of the muscle then connects to, becomes more correctly the tendon, which then connects the muscle to the bone. And then that fascia actually then goes on and becomes the perio, which covers the bone.
[00:44:43] The claim is yo yin yoga because you're holding poses for longer, specifically targets the fascia. And what we're saying in the book, what I wrote in that section is basically you cannot stretch a muscle without stretching its connective tissue. Its fascia without stretching, its tendons or applying tension to the tendons, and even then applying tension to the perio on which then covers the bones.
[00:45:14] So any stretch for any length of time is going to be a stretch of the fascia. Okay. So just to put that up there, , just say that again. Any time you're stretching any muscle for any length of time, you're also going to be stretching the connective tissue around it. So now our next question is, does holding a stretch for longer, specifically three to five minutes, particularly focus on the connective tissue or the fascia and.
[00:45:50] That is up for debate and that we just don't know for sure. Okay. It certainly makes sense. It's logical, right? It's logical that the longer you hold something, the more meaningful changes you will see in connect tissue and fascia, because those are slower to change. So it's logical.
[00:46:10] But the idea that you can stretch a muscle without stretching its fascia is a myth. And so if you, let's say in your class rows, let's say you are doing a really strong active in yasa, but then you change and then you slow down pose and you do this half splits pose and you have them hold it for three to five minutes, even though it's not a Vinyasa class, you're still gonna be , I'm sorry.
[00:46:34] Even though it's not a yin class, you're still gonna be stretching the muscle and the connective tissue. We can't separate it. And you'd have the same effects. . And then also the idea that we can contract opposing muscles or even the same muscle that's being stretched.
[00:46:51] Even if you do that, you're still gonna stretch the connective tissue, right? So in your half splits pose, if you engage your hip flexes on the front side which is not taught in yin, so they will not say, engage your hip flexes on the front of the hip. They'll say, just relax into the hamstrings or whatever, right?
[00:47:08] And relax hip flexors. But even if you did, that would still stretch the connect issue. But that's not a yin like way of doing it. Does that make sense? Yeah,
[00:47:16] that does make sense.
[00:47:17] And I think this is an important discussion because a lot of people do, and I do will hold usually only one pose at the end of a vinyasa class will only hold one pose like each side for a couple minutes, but it's becoming more common to combine the two.
[00:47:31] So that leads me into a next question. With all your background knowledge on exercise science, there's a, another debate, parallel debate about yin yoga in the yoga world of whether yin should be practiced on cold or warm muscles. Because from my understanding, the ancient texts say always cold muscles and from my limited, much limited compared to you understanding of exercise science is that you're gonna get a better stretch if your muscles are warm first.
[00:47:58] So could you say more about the cold versus warm muscles debate? Does it matter? Is there a right answer?
[00:48:05] You're going to be a lot more flexible. When you're warmer that's , that, that's super basic. Like we know that for sure. Yeah. And that's the point of warming up.
[00:48:15] In any good exercise program, you're going to have a warmup, and then you're going to have the body of the workout and then a cool down. And when we warm up, we basically, for lack of a better word, loosen up the connective tissue. , and muscles when they're warm, are able to generate more force.
[00:48:36] So if you try to do, say, 20 pushups while you're cold, it will be a lot harder to do than if you do them when you're warm, particularly if you've been doing an active warmup. Mm-hmm. .. So you will see, you will feel more flexible, certainly if you do yin when you're warm. I, are there benefits to practicing yin yoga while you're cold?
[00:49:02] Gosh, I don't know. That's a question, which is I think beyond the scope of any current research, and I think any guesses on that are really purely guesses and speculation.
[00:49:18] Okay. I mean, what,, first of all, what are we measuring? What is the outcome measure? Are we saying that you'll get more flexible if you practice yin in cold?
[00:49:27] Is that the idea that's
[00:49:28] the idea? Or, but my perspective is that it, you are more, it's more likely to be injurious. Like you might get hurt more easily. And if you're not warmed up, that's my opinion. But the debate is whether it's gonna be more beneficial. You're gonna get more improvements in flexibility
[00:49:48] if you're cold.
[00:49:50] So we're talking about improvements in flexibility. Okay. So its a, whenever you have a research question you always need to clarify what you're measuring, right? So we can't just say, is it better is it better for what ? Cause what's, it could be better for our psychological health.
[00:50:06] And that could be different to actually what's better necessarily for muscles. Like yoga might be more beneficial psychologically than someone doing a one rep. One rep max deadlift. I dunno. I'm just saying that and yet, yeah. Yeah. A one rep max deadlift might be more beneficial physically for your body.
[00:50:29] And I, I'm not saying that is the case, but anyway, what my point is, it does matter what we're talking about as the outcome measure. What are we actually measuring? Okay. So now the question, are you more likely to become more flexible? Is, will you see more flexibility gains if you do yoga, cold versus warm?
[00:50:48] But then also you threw in there injury , so that now we've got two outcome measures. Okay. Let's just focus on flexibility. From what I know about exercise science and physiology, it would make more sense. I could imagine you would become more flexible from yin yoga if you did it while you were warm.
[00:51:08] Okay. When we're warm, but that's when we see more adaptations. That's when connective tissue and muscle create more adaptations. So I think that's, I think that's more likely. Yeah. But, okay. I, I could be wrong because like I said, I think a lot of this is based on speculation.
[00:51:27] We don't have, a hard research data on this. Secondly, the question about injury, are you more likely to get injured? We do have good research showing that people get less injured doing physical exercise after they've had a good warmup. We can say that a good warmup will help prevent injury during exercise.
[00:51:53] I learned that is why you always see warmups.
[00:51:56] Yeah. So that's why I'm like, I haven't, I don't have a master's degree or anything, but I did learn that in my undergraduate just like kinesiology. It was an exercise science class.
[00:52:05] But anyway, that was a fun example to think through. Thanks for thinking through that on the spot, because I think that process highlighted something important that I also see you talking about a lot that I think is really important is that this notion that a lot of what yoga teachers are out here saying is purely based on speculation and like personal experience, and that's valid.
[00:52:25] Personal experience is fine, like whatever. But I find myself wishing, which is honestly like a huge impetus behind this podcast, that there was more scientific literacy, more folks that knew how to understand the research and critically think through it like you just did. So could you say more about that part?
[00:52:43] Art?
[00:52:45] Yeah. So you're referring to critical thinking, which is something Yeah. I'm definitely passionate about and something that I got to learn a lot about during my study at, for my master's, particularly through the research methodology. Research methodology module that I focused on, right?
[00:53:05] And when we're talking about critical thinking, what is it? First of all, it is analyzing the way you think with a view to improving it, right? And so it is looking at your beliefs, looking at your opinions, looking at really how you view the world, and what you consider fact and questioning how you came up with what you consider fact, right?
[00:53:31] On the first, the most basic thing is first examining what you yourself believe, right? And then secondly, how you came about that. And then is there evidence behind your beliefs? Does the evidence support your beliefs? And then also then that's the question is what is evidence, right?
[00:53:49] Because I think quite often we hear something from someone like, Twists detoxify the liver. And so we just take that as fact. Oh, I heard it. . I'm gonna share that with someone else, but really that's just hearsay. Hearsay. I heard it and I say it right. And that's not looking at the evidence behind those claims.
[00:54:11] So, uh, you know, Scientists have a hierarchy of evidence. And at the top of this hierarchy, the top of the pyramid are systematic reviews and meta-analyses. With systematic reviews, scientists will look through all of the studies on a particular topic. So let's say is yoga good for decreasing cardiovascular disease risk?
[00:54:39] Okay. And they'll look at all the studies. that have looked at this, the, all the individual studies. . Okay. And then they will perhaps run an analysis of that data and they'll summarize it and it should be done in a thorough, rigorous way. And there are protocols to do this properly. , right?
[00:54:56] You need to go through certain databases, you need to use certain keywords, and you need to be really transparent with your research methods. Okay. And then you come up with a conclusion, which might be, there's not enough data to say , or it could be, as is the case with smoking and lung cancer, we can say quite strongly, quite definitively smoking increases your risk of lung cancer by, and it might be a by a certain percentage by say 40% I dunno if that's the exact number, right? But that's how research studies will come up with a risk factor. So then below then that system micro view on the next level of the pyramid below that are randomized control trials. And that's the classic thing of giving someone an intervention, which could be like a pharmaceutical, or it could be even a yoga class, or it could be a psychological treatment like cognitive behavioral therapy versus a placebo or a control group, which could be people just living their life as normal
[00:55:59] Or it could be people taking a sugar pill, or it could be people watching tv, right? So that you could compare that like people doing yoga versus people watching tv. You compare the two groups who had better cardiovascular health at the end of it, right? Or something like that, right? And then you can go down the pyramid to like group studies, cohort studies, case control studies, individual case studies.
[00:56:23] And then finally at the bottom is expert opinion. That's at the bottom of the pyramid. So that's the opinion of people who have been working in the field for years and have a high degree of knowledge. Okay? And so that's the base of the pyramid. That's the bottom of the pyramid. But that's the lowest quality evidence and the highest risk of bias.
[00:56:45] And then you could say even below that, , which is not even considered evidence, is just what, you might hear on the street from someone who who I dunno, who just heard it from someone else. Oh, I heard twist detox by my liver. But I have no basis to that. The, so that is the idea of evidence.
[00:57:07] I like that you mentioned about science, literacy and . I feel like that's one of my missions is to help build more science literacy, particularly in the yoga community. And I think we're definitely in a movement towards that because the yoga texts before would just say claims like this pose is really good for curing diabetes, or something like that.
[00:57:28] And it, and with no references, no evidence behind it. And now yoga books, including our book, the Physiology Yoga, has lots of references to it. We cite scientific studies. You could go read them yourself Yeah. And confirm what we're saying. Yeah. That's the idea behind critical thinking and having evidence behind what you believe.
[00:57:50] Yeah.
[00:57:51] I love that. And I think that's important. Does that answer that? So thanks for explaining that, because I also think, like I, I took a research methods class. In college. And that's where I learned all that stuff that I have to realize. And not everybody, normally research is like super daunting to people.
[00:58:06] They're like, this is a bunch of jargon. And that's valid because it is, yeah. Yeah. So that's important. Thank you for being on that mission. So does that mean, did you write that first chapter, the critical thinking one in the physiology of
[00:58:18] yoga? Was that you? Yeah, I wrote the bit about critical thinking.
[00:58:22] Yeah. Yeah. Nice.
[00:58:23] I love that. When I first got the book and I like opened it up, I was like, yes. To that chapter.
[00:58:30] Yeah. Yeah. And within the introduction there, we even give a few guides for guidelines for reading an article. So for example you'll probably see an article at some point in the newspaper saying something like, we give the example Bananas Cure Cancer, right?
[00:58:48] . And then we give tips for. For reading this article and using critical thinking against it. So first of all, number one, ignore the headline because headlines are there to grab your attention. , for example around, climate change is like, is a current issue. And I remember hearing on a podcast, a science podcast once about how two reports came out at a similar time.
[00:59:12] One saying, sea levels are going to rise by one meter within 20 years, or something like that based on a model that they created. Whereas another re-study came out around the same time and they. So far our data is inconclusive, , or the rise is going to be smaller, but guess which one the media grabbed onto is the one that says, sea levels will rise by one meter. And I'm not commenting on climate change whether it's real or not real or anything like that. And I think we need a lot more research on it for sure. And this is not really the podcast for that but the point is certain articles or certain research papers are going to have attract stronger sensationalistic headlines more than others.
[00:59:59] So first of all, look past the headline. And then secondly, as much you can look at the research method that was used, was it a small sample size of just a few people or was it thousands of people? Was it conducted on animals or humans? Because animal studies have their place, but it's not the same as a human study.
[01:00:19] Even studies based on cadavers dead tissue, like the one that I gave example of the pig spine. That's useful, but it's not. It has its place, but it's not the same as a human study, especially a human study of a living human right. And how their discs remodel based on movement. And then also what's important is to another guideline, look at the, this current research, this current study in the larger, broader view of other studies.
[01:00:47] Because you'll, there's always a new study saying wine is good for you, wine is really bad for you, okay? But there's this one study saying wine is bad for you, but let's look at all the other studies and what is the overall picture about wine? And in general, if we just focus on wine, it tends.
[01:01:06] Not too bad . And it's all about moderation, but it seems like, a glass, one glass a night or something might not be so bad. And the same with coffee. There are lots of benefits to coffee as long as it's one or two, maybe three cups a day. And then as you increase that, then you start to see decreased benefits and actual increased harm.
[01:01:28] So with both the over consumption of coffee and wine. Rather than just looking at one study which says Coffee is amazing, and another study which says wine is bad, we need to consider the broader context and what all of the literature says. That's so important. But you were saying about how research can be daunting and I totally get that. And I remember when I used to type something into Google, And it would say Google Scholar results, do you wanna see these? And I was like, no, . But now that's the only thing I read. So I totally get how it's daunting.
[01:01:58] But actually, once you start jumping in and reading it, there are gonna be terms that you don't understand. But I still encourage people to try to read scientific literature as much as you can. And also there are lots of great resources which summarize the scientific literature. And that the thing is when you're reading something is to look for the references, look for the citations.
[01:02:18] Is it's just some guy saying it, right? Or does it have some basis to it? I think that's,
[01:02:25] you're the book Physiology of Yoga is a perfect place. I would love to point people for that kind of things. If you have questions in the yoga world, it's very rigorous. It's very you don't necessarily have to understand the research, you just have to trust that it is based on research.
[01:02:40] And thank you for that. So in the upcoming book club, y'all have already run it once. and that's past now, but it's coming again. So could you say more about what that experience is like with the book club? What kind is it like you just talk about the chapters or is it more about like lessons from y'all?
[01:02:59] Like how does that
[01:03:00] work? Yeah. Andrew and I came up with this idea for this physiology of yoga book club slash course. We couldn't decide what to call it. So we call it both book club course. Yeah. And it's an eight week course of about, almost two hours or just under two hours each Thursday over those eight weeks.
[01:03:21] And we look at the eight different chapters of the book, not including the final chapter on. Like with some awesome practices, but we look at each system of the body and we basically summarize the information from the book. We do it, we have a slideshow prepared, and we go through the images of the book and the major points of the book highlighting some interesting research.
[01:03:44] And there's lots of insights about it about yoga and about how our body adapts. And we look at questions like, does, do inversions, reverse blood flow? Do inversions create more blood flow to the brain? That sort of thing. Is it okay to do inversions during menstruation? So all the questions that we ask on the book, we, we look at in this course.
[01:04:08] And it's also a chance for people on the course which happens live online to ask us questions directly. So it's a great opportunity to really bring the book to life because yeah, I think this book. Perhaps can be a lot to take in one go. , yeah. It's a, it's after all a reference book.
[01:04:26] It's not like a fiction book that you read from cover to cover. Yeah. But I, it's a great way of breaking it down and understanding all the major points of the book. And we also include things that we've learned since the writing of the book. So there have been a few studies that have come out since, or other things fun related, which I, which will also tie in.
[01:04:46] So I think it's a great thing for particularly yoga teachers, but then also yoga, just participants, yoga practitioners who are keen to learn about how yoga affects the body and how to deepen their practice. And at the end of the day our main mission, I feel is to help people feel more empowered in their yoga practice and in their yoga teaching.
[01:05:12] And to feel more fearless in guiding others and moving their body.
[01:05:18] Yeah. I love that. Sounds like a wonderful way to learn. So the link will be in the show notes as always, for anybody that wants to join. Are there any final thoughts that you want to
[01:05:28] leave us with? Just that, that book club starts in January, 2023.
[01:05:36] That's the next time we're going to be running it. But then we'll probably run it again in the, in, later in the year and perhaps the following year, 2024. So you, if you miss this intake, you can wa you can catch the next one. Also, if people can't attend live, they can watch the recordings.
[01:05:52] And then, and your and I are also looking at doing a few in-person events both together and separate in 2023. So I would encourage people. Yeah. Yeah. So we're going to do like a, for example, a. Immersion of the book. So a physiology of yoga week immersion in April of next year looks like. So I would encourage people to check us out on Instagram.
[01:06:15] So I'm yoga with Matt two T's on Instagram and Andrew is Dr. Yogi. And then we have our own websites to doctoryogi.com and mine is matthewhuy.com. I'm sure you'll put those on the, on their links. Yeah, for sure. And people can subscribe to our newsletters and, stay up to date about in person things and that sort of thing.
[01:06:38] And our mission really is, like I was saying, to empower yoga teachers. So I'll do whatever I need to help yoga teachers actually. More confident in their teaching. That's the essence of it. It's not to make you feel bad that you've said some things that aren't physiologically correct, like twist, detoxifying the liver.
[01:06:59] I'm not trying to make people feel bad, but actually to appreciate the body and the wonder of the human body. Yeah. So I hope that's awesome. I hope that's, I hope we're doing that. Yeah, you
[01:07:09] are totally. So thanks for being here, . Thanks for your time and thanks for your work.
[01:07:15] Oh, thank you.
[01:07:15] Thank you. It was great to be here, so thank you.
[01:07:17] So that's it for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I hope you learned something either about one of the common yoga myths that we talk about. Or about the process of understanding research, and I hope you're able to apply it. And I hope now that research excites you as much as it excites me. And it sounds like it excites Matt as well. So.
[01:07:37] I highly recommend the book club that's coming up. And if you can't make it this time around, know that they will be running it again sometime next year, I will probably catch it myself on one of the next times. Around that they run it. So, um, yeah, make sure you're doing that. If you don't have the book, get the book, you'll learn a lot, especially if you're a yoga teacher, this is going to power up your teaching so much. So thanks for being here. I'm your host, Rosemary Holbrook. And I. Like to extend you my gratitude and warmth and remind you to always keep your feet on the ground your head in the stars and stay in the light until next time friends take care
