Adventures In Good Health

Ep 23: What is Yoga and how does it help you live pain-free? Yogi Aaron

• A Gypsy Life... Productions

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In this episode, host David Maloof interviews Yoga author and teacher, Yogi Aaron, a yoga expert with decades of experience. They discuss the true meaning of yoga, the importance of breath, and the problem with stretching in yoga. Yogi Aaron emphasizes the role of yoga in healing the body and relieving pain. He also offers guidance on how to work with him and access his resources. The main takeaways from the conversation are the significance of listening to your body, the power of breath in yoga, and the need to shift the focus from stretching to muscle activation in order to heal the body.

Takeaways
Listen to your body and respect its needs.
Breathing is a gateway to accessing the potential of the mind and connecting with the sacred.
Shift the focus from stretching to muscle activation for healing and pain relief.
Yoga can be a natural approach to pain management and improving overall health.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Yoga and Yogi Aaron
05:09 Understanding Yoga
12:53 The Importance of Breath in Yoga
16:15 The Purpose of Yoga Postures
21:43 The Problem with Stretching in Yoga
30:43 Yoga as a Natural Approach to Pain Relief
35:00 Working with Yogi Aaron
37:00 Conclusion and Takeaways

Yogi Aaron's contact information:
Main website: https://www.theyogi.club/how-to-live-pain-free
YouTube Channel: https://youtu.be/2gOBBNhLbf4
Stop Stretching!: A new yogic approach to master your body and live pain-free.  https://amzn.to/3xHJmMk


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Hello everyone, this is Adventures in Good Health. I'm your host, David Maloof. Welcome to the show. What do you know about yoga? What it is, what it does, and how it can be a pathway for the natural approaches of good health? I could provide you with a great deal of information regarding yoga. Of course, it would then be wildly inaccurate and based on childhood misconceptions. So not gonna do that. Instead, we're gonna discuss yoga with a yoga expert. Someone who has decades of experience, a teacher of applied yoga anatomy and muscle activation, and someone who has some rather strong opinions regarding the practice of stretching. Today, we're gonna talk with Yogi Aaron. Let's jump right in. 

Yogi, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me on David. So just to get started, tell us a little about your journey to becoming a master yoga instructor. 

It started when I was very young, if I'm honest, but it really started kicking off. Well, there was about three different points when it kicked off. The first point was when I was 18. And I was told that I should stretch. And to be honest, my body was tightening up. Uh, I was starting to get really tight. I was very supportive as, as a younger person. And by the time I was 18, I was noticing that I was starting to develop old man body syndrome, you know, like hunched over at 18 and just tight hamstrings and I just, you know, I could see the writing was on the wall. And then that kind of.

Journey took me into just learning more about yoga. It was very much a physical practice in the beginning. And then it became more of a spiritual practice as time went on. But I would say that the moment that things really started to click was in my late 20s when I met my teacher, Rod Stryker, who in his very uncanny way, tore the veil back between the seen and the unseen and taught me how to access that, um, unseen world, the world of the sacred as I like to sometimes refer to it. 

So, so what do you mean unseen? And you said the sacred. 

The sacred refers to that part of ourself, which is undying, which is continuous. And if you want to call it spirit. or the soul or consciousness or the best version of ourself. I think all of those definitions work. And that's what the yogis strive to do in the teachings was if we can get to that place where we can see ourselves for who we really are, and sometimes some people call it our authentic self and that's a whole big discussion. But the yogis, said that when we are able to completely, or when we're able to see that part of ourselves, that we become fully at rest within ourselves. And then we move beyond pain, suffering, we move beyond ego, we move into that universe of limitless possibilities. And that's what Rod taught me how to do was how to access that, that world. 

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So I can say that I personally don't know very much about yoga. I think what I know I've learned through popular culture. And I just envisioned someone sitting in a mat or sitting on a mat, on a beach, in Hawaii, just concentrating. 

Do they have sunglasses on? 

And they're almost, they're almost levitating off that mat. So let's go ahead and get a little bit, shed some light for the audience. 

Um, and me too. What is, what is yoga? Uh, well, yoga. You can ask a thousand people and get a thousand different answers. Whenever I give an answer, I really try to give it a scriptural reference. And it's the reference that you see in the yoga sutras, potentially in the first sutra defined yoga is now. And he then said in the second sutra, what pulls us away from now are our thoughts, our wandering thoughts. But he also said that within the human mind is the potential to see ourselves for who we really are. And the way to do that is to slow down the thoughts of the mind to, or, or direct them inwards to direct those thoughts peacefully inward. 

And for me, what yoga is appears in the third Sutra, which is what I was just talking about earlier, that when we're able to become quiet in the mind, if you will. and turn our thoughts inwards, we're able to see ourselves for who we really are. We're able to, the direct translation is we're able to become completely at rest within ourselves. And sometimes I refer to it as like being, you know, being at home within yourself. And I think that a lot of people don't feel at home within themselves. 

And so the gift of yoga is to... be at home and when we're at home, we're at complete rest from that place. And this is for me, the other side or the promise of yoga is that we then can see our purpose. And when we're at rest within ourselves, we then have the, we cultivate or we have that innate indomitable will to go out to manifest it. 

It's worthwhile mentioning, and this is, this is the other part of yoga. which is also important to understand is that in the fourth sutra, Patanjali basically says that we're kind of, we kind of messed it up. So, and, and that's a big discussion, but, so the rest of the book, the rest of the book is about how to un-mess it up and get back to our, our natural state, if you will. 

So is Is you, is, is yoga intended more for mental health? Is it physical? Is it both? 

I would say that the physical part of yoga, we look at the tradition, there's a couple of ways to look at it. There's a couple of different perspectives. I think first and foremost, we have to, to look at the physical part of what we think of is physical yoga. We have to kind of look back at history and, and look at like who we're who are the people that were doing experiments in the body, on the body, with the body to understand their purpose. And what they found was that there's a couple of ways to access the potential of the mind. One of them is through voice, using voice to access the potential of the mind. One is through doing acts of service. 

One is just through meditation, accessing the mind through the mind. And what they found was that was really hard for, you know, the average people like you and me to access the power of our mind through our mind. The mind is chaotic, you know, at best and confused at worst. And so most humans are plagued by this. So what they found was that if we can access the body, the body is kind of like the mirror image of the mind, the body, and then the breath.

And so if we can start to work with the body and the breath and change the momentum of the body and the breath, then we can start to affect the momentum of our mind. When I'm one of an Aaron ism, if you will, if you change your breath, you can change your life. 

And there's so much to glean from that statement. And it's, it's something I really believe is true because most of us breathe in such an erratic way. And that erratic-ness. is mirrored in our minds. You know, our breath is chaotic. Just in the way that we breathe. If you just pause for a moment and just listen to people breathe and it's very shallow. It's very, you know, they'll breathe like You know, and that, that kind of chaotic-ness and I'm calling it chaotic-ness. 

You can use other words, but that chaotic-ness is then mirrored in the mind. So, if we change the breath, we change our thoughts, we change our thoughts. We change our life. You know, it's funny you mentioned that. 

So when I was a small kid, maybe five years old, you know, I was at the daycare center and we would have our little nap period. I'm sleeping, supposedly sleeping on the mat, but I was hyperactive. That's what they called us back in those days. 

You're a hyper child. And my instructor, I'm just laying there on the mat, hearing the other kids sleeping, I couldn't sleep. And she said, I need you to take deep breaths. Take breath, long breaths, calm, relaxing breaths. I was like, okay, I was five years old, six years old. And you know what? It calmed me down, put me to sleep. And I'm sure my teacher was as happy as could be. 

It's like even back, I mean, so, was that my first little yoga lesson? I don't know. 

But there's a truth to what you were saying, at least from my experience. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. The breath is the gateway to spirit. It's the gateway to, you know, our, the parts of ourselves that we don't understand. We don't place enough emphasis on the breath. If we look to scripture, you know, in most of the great religions, you know, there's some depiction of the divine breathing life into man and awakening, you know, awakening man through that. And so the reversal of that, of course, is our link to the sacred, is through the breath. 

And so if we want to understand ourselves, the link is the breath. And so a lot of yoga teachers will start class often by saying a statement such as the breath is everything in yoga. And there's a lot of truth to that. If we're not breathing, uh, we're not really doing yoga in other words. And so what makes something yoga in many ways, there's, there's a few things that can make something yoga. 

If you want to use that terminology, but one of them is, you know, breathing. And so we see across the board. There's. degrees, I'm going to use that word degrees of transformation that happens in almost any kind of yoga class. It doesn't really matter how much spirituality has been taken out, but as soon as we add breath, then all of a sudden there's the potential for awakening and to me that's a really cool idea because it then denotes this idea that awakening can happen at any time any moment. that we're starting to bring in conscious breath. 

As soon as we start to bring in conscious breath, that awakening, that transformation that can happen. Is, is yoga, can it be utilized to help heal the physical body? Absolutely. One of the sister science to yoga, the umbrella of yoga is a sister science is called Ayurveda and Ayurveda really takes a look at the body more so. Um, and, and the goal of Ayurveda is to transform the individual through health, for lack of better words.

Uh, so we can, and a lot of yoga people use our data in conjunction with their quote unquote yoga practice to exponentiate, to accelerate, you know, that, that potential for transformation. So absolutely where I think so earlier, I said that the, you know, the Hatha yogis were interested in how do we use this vehicle or the body, sorry, as a vehicle of. as a vehicle for spiritual awakening, how do we use this body? I'm stuck in this body. 

This is what I have, you know, for X amount of years. How do I use this for spiritual awakening? And they looked at the body as this energetic field. So, you know, a lot of people look at these postures like, oh, you know, that yoga teacher can put their foot behind their head and they're doing all of these amazing things. That's really is the smoke and mirrors, I call it, of. of these postures at a much more profound level, the postures are starting to change the energy, energetic flow of the body. 

For example, there's in the Hatha Yoga Pratyahara says if you do a twist and there's a specific twist that it's referring to, but in general, it actually refers to all twists. So as soon as we start to twist, we're starting to awaken the pranic forces, it says at the literally called the Samana yayu. When the samana vayu is waken, prana enters into the sheesham  nanati, aka the spine, and then prana starts flowing upward. And there's a little bit more to it than that. But basically, it says the prana flows upward and the yogi becomes enlightened. And when we start to get people doing these twisting postures, there's a quality of mind that starts to change. So as we do these postures, it affects the prana affects the energy of the body. 

And if you want to equate that, if that's a little bit too woo for you, cause it's some people it is, uh, we can start to actually trace it back to the nervous system. There's a, there's an effect at the level of the nervous system. So while you refer to yourself as a jumpy, you know, six year old, seven year old, uh, young boy, The fact of the matter is, is that most people, you know, have a very agitated mind. I mean, we don't need to go too far on social media to see how many people have agitated minds and what yoga starts to do is if you like, again, if you don't like the woo stuff, you know, what the hot, the yogis found is that a simple twisting posture starts to have this effect on the nervous system. And the mind becomes quiet and steady and still. 

And what the yogis found is that because it was still, and there was a certain alertness in the, in the quality of mind that it was able to tune in words, turn in words and, uh, you know, people became quiet and became calm and became a better version of themselves. 

You mentioned, you know, posture.es. And so for some people that may be, especially if they're starting out, that may be a little uncomfortable. Yeah. Um, is there kind of like a beginning posture? Does it get into more advanced as someone progresses? 

I, you know, this word advanced yoga is thrown around a lot and it's a word that I don't like because a lot of people that think that they're advanced are not advanced. And You know, the idea that I am an advanced Yogi is kind of an ego in and of itself, which is a trap. So the, if you were going to ask me, Yogi Aaron, what is advanced yoga? I would say advanced yoga is your ability to sit still for a minimum of 20 minutes without moving. Uh, that would be, you know, the definition of advanced yoga for me.

And when I say sit, I don't necessarily mean on a floor. I could be on a chair, it could be on the floor, whatever, whatever that sitting posture is. So when we look at postures in the tradition, the real only posture that at least the great sage Patanjali was referring to was sitting. And it was very clear in the prescription, you know, sit still with a stall, a tall. and elongated spine, erect spine, and be as comfortable as possible. And so those are really the two only instructions is to sit still. Sit within a wrecked spine and be comfortable. 

And so a lot of people then ask the question, which you may or may not ask, but I'll give you the answer is can I, can I meditate then lying down and, you know, just for your listeners in the Himalayan tradition, if we're lying down, we're practicing relaxation. Uh, which is great. It's a great practice. You know, we need to practice relaxation much like your teacher taught you to do when you were six years old. Great teacher. 

Uh, but, but in our tradition, the only way to meditate is to sit still with an erect spine and be comfortable. So that's, that's the journey in now. The Hatha yogis came along and went, you know, People like David can't sit still. So what can we do? Yeah. They had me in mind. I was like, yeah. And just, it's worthwhile mentioning the body can be still. It's the mind that needs to be addressed. It's our own kind of perception. It's our own Mishigas. It's our own, you know, series of beliefs and attitudes. 

So what we need to do is do a few postures and Some people say, well, the postures prepare the body. They don't really prepare the body. They really prepare the mind, uh, to be able to sit still for longer periods of time. So really these postures are there to prepare the mind. Now your question was, can anybody do yoga? Yeah. Anybody can sit on a chair and learn to sit with a straight spine. Anybody can stand. Um, and so. What we do is yoga addresses the person and where they are. And a good teacher will always address the person where they are. Unfortunately, a lot in our yoga world, that's, we don't see that happening too much or enough. We do see it happening, but just not enough. 

And so what I do in my lane, especially as I, I really focus on people. of all levels and show them that not only the practice of yoga can help you to become happier because you are happier once you start tuning inward and allowing your consciousness to rest within that inner kingdom, but these postures also have an ability to begin healing the body. So that's the other side of Hatha yoga, I think. And I think that this other side is... wasn't just applicable then, but it's even more applicable now as we're living longer, longer lives. You see a lot of people living longer lives, but they're not happier. 

And a lot of people aren't happier. And there's obviously, there's a lot of reasons for that. But I think that one of the biggest reasons or contributors is just a lot of people are living with a lot of physical pain, you know, arthritis, bad hips, you know, bad backs, herniated discs, neck pain, you know, whatever they're dealing with. And so these postures, if done properly, have the ability to begin turning back the clock and giving people a second lease on life, which we see happen quite a bit. 

So does, is there an element of yoga that involves stretching for pain relief?

So if you asked a thousand yoga teachers, taking me out of the equation, all thousands of them would say yes. And I would say no. The postures have, so here's the problem. First of all, in the yoga tradition, there is never been a mention or use of the word stretching or that you need to be flexible. There's just no mention of it. So this idea of stretching is kind of a modern idea. When I say modern, probably in the last 50, 60, 70, 80 years, somewhere in that timeframe, and especially in the last 30 years, we've really seen this emphasis on stretching. I wanna come back to something I said before I go more into your question. that in the Hatha yoga tradition, there's two thoughts. 

The first thought is purification. So we're purifying our body, we're purifying our nervous system. But the most other important part is the relaxation. And we do not see that emphasized enough in the yoga world. What we have done is we've taken these postures and then turned it into something that it's not, made it about stretching. And the problem with that is stretching. actually is making a lot of people worse. We see a lot of people that get into yoga and they're, you know, late twenties, thirties, maybe even early forties. But then quickly we start to see a lot of people getting injured. 

And the idea out there is that we can solve the injuries, we can reduce the injuries through stretching, but stretching is actually making the problems worse. reduces muscle function. So a muscle, a muscle's function is to shorten and it shortens to move bones. It needs to contract and move bones and stabilize joints. What are we doing when we're stretching? We're actually pulling a muscle beyond its capacity. We're lengthening a muscle beyond what it's supposed to do. And when we do that.

We inhibit the, the neuro muscular connection between the brain and the muscle. Those two are no longer talking to each other. So when we're stretching, we're actually making ourselves weaker, which explains the reason why, like a lot of people end up with shoulder pain and you see this chronically, like a lot of yoga people have shoulder pain, uh, neck pain and hip pain and even lower back pain. And I constantly have people in my classes that come on my yoga immersions that are coming to me going, 

I've been doing yoga for years and I just can't get rid of this hip pain. And it's actually getting worse. Well, hello, of course it's getting worse because you're doing things to make yourself weaker, not stronger. So my, my big shtick these days is stop stretching, start activating. 

You know, it's funny because my background is. Corporate America, I spent decades in manufacturing and distribution. And I don't know, at some point in the 90s, I think, that's my perception, it's like corporate America saw out of Japan, you would see a courtyard, some big corporation and 500 employees would be out there doing their stretching and all that before. And corporate America said, oh my gosh, we gotta do that. And we developed these little five minute stretching routines, everybody at the start of their day, And we would do, you know, this for, you know, count to eight, do this, count to eight, this and this. 

And, and I started doing a little research and the research I found was it wasn't really a good idea. Yeah. And finally, I don't know about 11 or 12 years ago, one of my employees, we were doing this stretch. You had to lift your hamstring up or something. And the poor thing, she, she fell over. She lost her balance. She fell over. We ended up. with the OSHA recordable. And I just told my manager, I said, we're wasting our time doing this. And now I just got an OSHA recordable. And after that, they just said, well, all right, well, you don't have to do it. You have to do it. But I don't know where did that come from? Doing five minutes of sorta stretching was actually going to help people. 

I, I mean, I have, I could go and talk a lot about this. I think that. You know, you mentioned in the nineties, that was when we started to see this kind of surgence of, of yoga. And, and, you know, when we look at people that were the picture of yoga, quote unquote, you know, it was usually beautiful women, um, of sort of a, of a younger-ish age. Uh, in a leotards or like in leg warmers and, you know, looking beautiful, looking young and fabulous. And so the, that image has just been reinforced and reinforced. So you don't have to go far in Instagram to see that image really reinforced. Right. 

And so if you did a poll of a thousand people, probably a thousand of them will tell you I need to stretch and I need to stretch because stretching makes me healthy. And it makes me younger and who doesn't want to be healthy and younger. Right. So I think it's, I think it's just this kind of thing. And I want to go back and say that you, you know, hit the nail right on the head there to date, there has been no studies that have shown that stretching actually helps and they actually will show either a there's no effect, meaning like it doesn't help you at all. Or B, that stretching is actually making you weaker. 

And there's a lot of studies that have been coming out in sort of the last decade to show what I was just talking about that when you stretch that people's, um, force output of their muscles is inhibited. Now, when they do these studies, it's usually done on, you know, athletes, 18-year-olds, 20-year-olds, probably like 16 year olds. So. It, you know, they say that the force output of those muscles return after 30 minutes to 90 minutes. Um, I've kind of seen studies that show in that timeframe. And I think it's important that people hear that because it's not done with people like you and me. I can't speak for you, but I'm 51 turning 52 soon.

And so I think if you did the study with me, you would find like it might take a few hours, maybe even some cases days for those muscles to know really. And if we keep stretching, they leave that, they leave that little detail out. Yes. Yeah. Well, and here's another interesting fact I found. There was one, one podcast I did where I was talking about gymnasts and. You look at professional gymnasts and most of them are needing knee replacement, hip replacement, shoulder surgery, some surgery of some kind. Some person wrote to me very angry that I was, you know, dissing on gymnast. 

So I actually went back and did some more research and I found that about 93% of all professional gymnasts end up needing surgical intervention of some kind. And in the yoga world, I find it really fascinating. we look to gymnasts as sort of our gods sometimes, which we try to emulate them, not me, but you know, the yoga world is general. And why would we emulate a group of people that are needing surgical intervention, usually by 25 to 30, 35? 

So, we need to rethink what yoga is. We need to rethink that. Yes. You know, I had a grandmother who lived to be 88, she was born in 1899. And, She did not do any stretching. I assure you. Yeah, that's a concern. 

And going back to that corporate America, I did present my findings to our E, H and S manager. And his answer was, we already know. We know. But his idea was, we want the first thing that people do at the start of their day to be safety related. I was like that. I like that. That's a good idea. So let's have everyone walk briskly around the outside ability. Oh no, we can't do that because you know, not everyone can do that. I was like, okay. 

So from a pain management, you know, so it is considered a natural yoga is considered a natural approach to pain. Absolutely. It needs to be, it needs to be done the right way. Yes. Someone like me. Uh, watching just a YouTube, a single YouTube video. I'm probably not going to glean very much from that. Maybe a little bit. Um, how do you help people get on the right path? Well, I, before we dive into that, I think it's important because some people might be going, well, you know, what is the connection between what I'm doing and becoming, you know, helping people. So very quickly, readers digest pain is a symptom of, of. of inflammation. 

So if we have pain in our back, it's usually because there's inflammation there. And then inflammation is a byproduct of stress. So if the joints of the body are not being supported properly by the muscles that are holding those joints together, then the joint becomes stress. There's stress as a result and the stress creates the inflammation. What I have found, It is that if we get the muscles of the body working properly, meaning that the muscles can contract and contract on demand, then the joints are supported. And I'm not being hyperbolic when I say this. I know it sounds crazy, but I've seen that the pain in a lot of people goes away almost instantaneously. For everybody, not necessarily. There's certain variations that can apply. 

But. If not right away, very quickly. And the reason for that is because as soon as we get the joints working, I'm sorry, the muscles of those joints working properly, the joints are stabilized. The inflammatory process gets reduced very quickly. And so what we're trying to do is then bring a sense of muscle activation to this. So if you have back problems, for example, there's, you know, we look at the muscles that are supporting the back. Well, one of my favorite poses. is like, you know, muscle activation poses is a post called locus pose or Superman pose. 

When you're lying on your stomach and you lift your legs and your chest off the ground, very simple pose, right? Really great to start getting the muscles of the back working properly. So the way that we start, we've got to remember that we're not necessarily trying to strengthen the muscle. That's a whole other conversation. We're trying to. reconnect the communication system between the brain and the muscle. So the brain's going, Oh, there's a muscle there. I should be telling it to contract to stabilize my body. Right. Um, right. And so what we're trying to do in this again, is coming back to a natural, healthy way to heal our bodies is we start to lift the chest and the legs off the ground.

And we do that in the magic number for muscle activation practices. So basically we're trying to do an isometric, we're isometrically contracting the muscles of the back. The magic number is six seconds, six times. 

So we do that six seconds, six seconds, six times. 

Yes. Yeah. That's the magic number. And we, you go, you, the thing is you're also working within your own capacity. So some people will not be able to lift up very much. That's completely fine. We're not going for broke. We're not going, you know, to see how high you can lift up. We're just asking you go work within your own capacity and lift up as much as you can start doing that every day. And you will notice a dramatic difference in your back pain within 30 days. Just take six seconds. Do it six times. It's like a minute, you know, a minute, one minute every day. 

Now, are there other things that you could do? Absolutely. Of course there is. And that's, you know, you mentioned earlier videos. I have a lot of content available to people. They can access it, but you have a huge YouTube channel. Huge. Yes. I mean, it's, it is a very in-depth library. Yes. And there's going to be more. But that's the, that's it. And what. You know, where does this intersect with the yoga practice? It intersects in many different ways. 

But again, at a very fundamental level, the moment we start to shift the energy in our body, we start to shift the energy in our minds. We start to shift the momentum of our body. We shift the momentum of our mind. And that has a profound, of course, impact on our life. And more importantly. as we become pain free in the body, then we have more energy to live our best life. Fantastic. 

Uh, can, can people work with you one-on-one? I mean, you have a huge YouTube channel and social media presence, but are you available for people to actually work with you if they would like to? Absolutely. 

I mean, you know, I am located in Costa Rica. Uh, there's times when I do travel around, um, and I do work with people. So usually how people work with me is through zoom. And I can direct people that way. Usually people ask me for consultations. I will do some, um, uh, range of motion assessment sometimes with them and then direct them into what areas they need to be working on, and then we can do a follow-up and see how they're doing. Um, and yeah, this stuff works. I mean, I've had people that I work with who have had, you know, disc herniations. chronic pain in their hips, in their knees, in their shoulders, and it can help people that way. 

Where I usually will direct people to start though is, you know, just I will send people information, and I've created just different pathways. So people are dealing with back pain, they get something about back pain. If they're having shoulder pain, they get something right away about shoulder pain to begin at. the very least solving, giving them a solution to their pain.

So what is the best way that someone could reach you? 

Well, there's a couple of different ways, but I'm gonna give you a link that's going to be the yogi club, the yogi, sorry, dot club, forward slash adventures in good health. So your listeners can go to that link, which I hope you'll put in the show notes and- It absolutely will be in the transcript and the show notes. So people can go there and if they're in pain, they can choose their pain journey. As I mentioned, you know, back pain, hip pain, shoulder pain, and knee pain, whatever they're dealing with. 

And I can give them a solution right away to their pain. Um, and then they can start applying these practices to their life. And then of course they can go further with it. I like, as you mentioned earlier, I have a lot of content out there that people can access. You know, Pain management obviously plays a major role in quality of life. Absolutely. 

We do live in a society that wants to gravitate towards, uh, taking pain medicines, which may or may not provide some relief, but there are major concerns. Even if they do provide some relief, what else are they doing to the body? Yeah. And one of the major emphasis of this show is looking at natural approaches. to, to health and pain management. And so I very much appreciate what you're doing and the word that you're spreading. 

And, uh, I want to say thank you very much for being on our show today. Thank you, David. I, if I may just say that, um, I believe very strongly that we don't have to be in pain, you know, and I see so many people that are taking those pain medications. And it breaks my heart because we know the ramifications of that, um, that's out there and it breaks my heart because I think like, I see so many opportunities for people just to get stronger. And it's also free. I mean, doing these exercises costs nothing for people to do in the living room of their home or wherever. 

So thank you for doing the work that you're doing as well. 

Thank you, Yogi Aaron. Okay. Wow. All right. So. My mind is racing right now. I think that was a fantastic conversation. I'm gonna tell you, my mind is racing. Because as Yogi Aron was speaking and he was making his points, I kept thinking, okay, we need to do a podcast on that. Oh, we need to do a podcast on that. Oh, and we need to do one about that. So I've got a list of like 20 topics that I would like to see us do. more of an exploration. And so, a very exciting conversation with Yogi Aaron. 

Safe to say, we barely even scratched the surface. But with that said, thinking through the conversation, there were about three major takeaways that I'd like to just review very quickly with you. First of all, through the first 26 episodes of this podcast, There's been kind of a theme, or at least one of the themes, which is we keep hearing you need to listen to your body. Listening to your body is one of the basic principles of natural approaches to healthy living. 

You listen to your body, you respect what your body is telling you, and as you get to know your body and what it is saying, then it's easier to tell when something is going right or when something is going wrong. And hearing Yogi Arun say, I think he called it one of the tenets of Ayurveda s that you need to know yourself. I was like, wow. It's not a new concept. Apparently Ayurveda has been around for something like 3,000 years. It's kind of tough for me to just blow off a 3,000 years of knowledge and wisdom. And so I think there's more to discuss. And so, spoiler alert, we're going to be doing some more discussions about Ayurveda yoga, and we're just going to see where those conversations take us. 

Second point, breathing. We all need to breathe. Now the smart-out like me would say, well, if we're not breathing, you're dead. No, no, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about proper breathing technique and using breathing to help you with your health. I think we need to discuss that topic in far greater detail, but my initial impression is that if proper calming breathing technique can put a hyperactive six-year-old to sleep, then what else can it do? So, more conversations coming there. 

And then finally, stretching before work, right? So I think I kind of made my thought process there. It was fairly well known. I've known for 20 years, or I've suspected for 20 years that it was a big waste of time. What Yogi Aron said pretty much confirmed what I had already suspected, but that said. I am aware of a concept known as confirmation bias. 

So I'm gonna make a commitment to you. If someone is out there who's very knowledgeable and they disagree, then I'm gonna try to get them on the show. Or if you disagree or you know someone who disagrees. who believes that stretching before work, particularly if it is properly done, has benefits, then I wanna get that person on the show so that we can then discuss that and we can have a conversation. One of the great things about the internet and podcasts is that we're here to have open conversations, and I think having an open mind is critical toward our path to healthy living. So with that said, I think we had a great episode. Thank you once more for Yogi Aron. Thank you for Dr. Tate's Herbal Tinctures and Tonics for sponsoring the show. We're just gonna keep this thing going. So until next week, this is David Maloof exploring natural approaches to good health. 

That does it for this episode of Adventures in Good Health. We would like to hear from you regarding this podcast and any suggestions you have for future podcasts. Please subscribe and leave a rating or a review.