More Than Anxiety

Ep 141 - Manage Anxiety With Breathwork and Yoga with Cathy Eades

• Megan Devito • Episode 141

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Manage Anxiety with Breathwork & Yoga with Cathy Eades

Feeling overwhelmed by anxiety? Do you struggle with breathwork or feeling your emotions? This episode features Cathy Eades, a seasoned yoga practitioner, guide, and therapist. Cathy shares her personal journey of finding an "unshakable calm" through yoga and breathwork, especially during stressful life transitions, including a marriage dissolving and her children growing up.

You'll learn how Cathy's Ayurvedic approach offers individualized practices for managing anxiety, focusing on gentle, slow-paced movements and mindful breathing. 

Practice  her "60-second stress slayer" technique, using extended exhales to cue safety to your nervous system. Cathy also introduces the deeply relaxing practice of Yoga Nidra, equivalent to hours of sleep for mind and body restoration.

This episode discusses the power of connecting mind, body, and breath to release emotional and physical "gunk". If you're looking for simple, actionable tools to calm your nervous system and thrive instead of just survive, this conversation is for you. 

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Megan Devito: Hey everybody, thank you for joining me for another episode of the More Than Anxiety podcast. This week, we're going to talk with Cathy Eades. She is a yoga practitioner, a yoga guide, a therapist, who's going to help you understand the importance of breath work and managing anxiety. Now hang with me, because I know a lot of you have said, "But, Megan, I'm so sensitive to how I breathe. I'm afraid I'm not breathing. I don't like to feel all of the feelings". Abby's going to guide you through this today. We're going to talk about how important it is, how you can do it in a gentle way that you can put to work wherever you are, and I think you're really going to get a lot out of this episode. It is so important as you learn how to manage your nervous system and manage your mind. So, Cathy, thank you so much for joining me today.

Cathy Eades: Thank you, Megan. I am very excited to be here and have this discussion with you, so it's going to be a fun conversation.

Megan Devito: And I think it is, and we had a brief conversation a week or so ago about what this might look like, and I think we're both on the same page. So we had a lot of "oh me too" moments. This is what I'm experiencing as well. So let's just start with a little bit of your story. Can you just tell us what got you to where you are? 

Cathy Eades: Yeah, so in past lives, I was a teacher. I did sales for 22 years in an educational company, and then a few years ago, my third child was about to leave for college, had about a year and a half left in her high school. And during all of this time, my home life was really tense. My marriage was falling apart, kind of that slow crumble, but it had reached an inflection point, and so I was leaning very hard into what I was already doing with yoga. But I went a little deeper, added in more breath work, more meditation to help me deal with all of this. It was a very long-term relationship. We had dated several years before marrying and then had been married for, at the end, 29 years. So you know, a very big shift in my life. And so I had a lot of anxiety around ending the marriage, around what my life would look like after, around my children, my young adult child. I mean, just like the finances, there are a lot of fun things about ending a long-term relationship that can cause a lot of anxiety. So during that time, I also suddenly—I'd been practicing yoga for 20 some years—suddenly I decided I want to go to teacher training. I don't know why, I've never been interested in it before, and when I got there I was like, oh, this is why I'm here, because it helped me make this connection between my emotions, my body, my breath, my spirit, what was going on in my mind, my thoughts, and how I could manage. I am in control of those things. I just was so reactive for so much of my life and then I was like, holy cow, like this stuff works, this really works. And these are all practices I still do today. It's helped me become a more grounded person and to really know that inside me is this really unshakable calm. Like, whatever happens, I have what it takes to handle it. I might not know how, but I have this calm inside me. It is always there, and even if I feel out of control, I can come back to it. That's kind of how I ended up working with other people to do this too, because I thought, well, this helped me so much, and it's not a... these are all tools that are within me to use, and why did I not learn how to do any of these things as a kid? Like, it would have been so much more helpful to me as I was growing up if I understood that like I can do some little things to feel more settled and in control, instead of always feeling like life was happening to me instead of like I'm living it. It's happening for me. So that's a long way of how did I come to do this work.

Megan Devito: I think that already, you've said so many things that are so important. One is that I love that you didn't know, like it never occurred to you, "Oh, I think I might be a yoga guide". And then all of a sudden you find yourself in yoga training, because sometimes you know that idea of if we could just get the next step glowing in the woods, we know exactly where to stop. It doesn't happen, but it does, right? It's like I don't know how I ended up here, but the timing was right, it got you where you needed to go. And, additionally, this idea that why didn't anybody teach us this stuff? You and I both came from a classroom before we were doing what we're doing now. Nobody knows. I mean, we were never taught. I think we're maybe getting to the point where we're starting to understand that somebody needs to teach these kids that it's okay to feel their feelings and to feel their body, because there are adult women running around and adult men, friends, who don't know. Nobody taught us these things. And I recently, I recently read, well, I read, um, The Let Them Theory, which everybody's reading and loving or hating right now. Um, but, and she really talked about, Mel Robbins talked about a lot of adults are running around as overgrown seven and eight-year-old kids. We stopped our emotional development because they were like, "good enough".

Cathy Eades: Yeah, yeah, and I think some of that, you mentioned being from the classroom, you know, and this is kind of getting into educational philosophy, but, you know, schools were started to help train workers to do industrial jobs, right? And we haven't... the educational model has not really evolved as life has evolved, not to the extent that it is more. I mean, if we think about the industrial age, like we didn't pay attention to human being, like our needs. It was like what can you produce? What can you do? Push through whatever you have to push through, because we need you to produce, right? And so we're having to kind of come back to being a human being and what, you know, honoring that we actually do need rest. We do need... some of us are more sensitive than others, and that is perfectly fine. How do we provide ourselves the support that we need so we can be as healthy and productive and as alive, like as to thrive, you know, not just to survive, 'cause so many of us spend chunks of time, chunks of our lives just trying to just make it through instead of being able to enjoy being alive.

Megan Devito: Yeah, and there's so... So for people who are listening, who are already thinking, "Oh, you want me to feel my body, you want me to feel my emotions". I've done this before and it makes it worse. I think that Cathy and I would both say that we understand where you're coming from. It sounds like you were in a situation where you had some very intense anxiety, whether it was around, I mean, your marriage dissolving or your kids growing up, or everything altogether. And for me, it was just... I was a highly sensitive kid. I am the oldest daughter. I, you know, I, right, we... There's so many things that we have going on, and there's nothing wrong with that. I like where I am, I like who I am, but growing up as a kid with a very sensitive nervous system who loves people so much that I can feel it in every cell of my body, that was a lot to handle and not having those skills. I know what you mean when you say it's intolerable that you, like, I can't handle the feeling, or I can't handle the thoughts, or I can't handle the back and forth between what I think and how I feel, and then how I feel and what I think. So how do you... I know how I stop that process, but when you're working with people, what is your process? Like, tell us, tell us what you do in, like, when you are working with someone.

Cathy Eades: Yeah, so I... Everything I do is it is comes from an Ayurvedic lens, because I am also trained. Yoga is actually a part of Ayurveda, which some people are not aware of, but it is one of the therapeutic ways in which we manage our health. And so from an Ayurvedic lens, and so Ayurvedic medicine is like super, super specific to the individual person. So it looks at our... when I do an intake with someone, I talk about, we do a whole, you know, an Ayurvedic assessment of just like, what's your life been like? You know, what were you like as a child? What kinds of things, you know, have you been prone to or not prone to? And so we look at the history of your life, any medical concerns that are current or in the past, and then we also talk about the mental, emotional things that are part of your life story. And so I gather all that information so that then I can build a practice that is specifically going to help you with what is going on with you, because the same things, you know, what's going on with you as an individual, even if I'm dealing with two different clients who are trying to manage anxiety, it manifests itself differently in different people and the causes or the triggers or, you know, what resonates as far as a tool with each individual person is different. But I'll gather all that information. Then I build a practice or a series of practices and I guide people through them right at the same time. So I'm practicing right along with you. But I like to start, we start with some centering, and at the beginning of each session, like we'll just sit, we'll close our eyes, we'll, we'll, but I guide. Everything that I do is through guidance. I'm guiding you through, like, what does your big right toe feel like right now? You know, these are things where we get very... A lot of us can spend a lot of time up in our head and we don't even think about our right big toe, maybe till we stub it on something, you know, till we stub it on something, you know. So we're just trying to reconnect. Those neurons are already there but we're just trying to bring a little more awareness around them. So kind of make that mind-body connection a little more. Um, that allow them to communicate a little more effectively, put it that way. Um, and then we'll talk about like maybe place your hands on if there's a spot where you feel anxiety. Like, where do you feel it? You feel it in your chest, you feel it around your neck? Like, just touch that place, and even just putting that added little bit of weight, we're not really pressing hard, but just that contact can have a settling effect. So we do a little centering and then we'll move into our sequence of movement. And because anxiety is what we would call a Vata disturbance from an Ayurvedic perspective, we're going to have a grounding practice. It's going to be more slow-paced because the whole idea is Vata energy is up here, very mobile, like air and ether and wind, and so we want to bring all that back down. So we're not going to move fast, we're going to move methodically. And the breath, I'll be cuing people through the breath. As we move, we expand the body, we expand the breath, and we exhale as we bring the limbs back closer to the body. So all of that is really reconnecting mind, body, breath, so that it becomes this almost in a way it can become somewhat meditative because we're breathing as we move. All of these things are reconnecting and it pulls you out of that ruminating that, because the mind is a busy little booger, it's something, isn't it, yeah? Yeah, and then we will end. Often I'll end the practice with either a guided meditation, it's very specific for that person's goals, or we might do a yoga nidra. Which, if folks aren't familiar with that, it's you're just, you're basically lying in shavasana, but it is a guided body scan, so I'm guiding you through each thing. We always start, actually most of the time, with that right big toe, but then we just work our way all the way through the body and it's a deeply relaxing, meditative state. So, again, very grounding, very centering, and it allows, you know, all of these movements to kind of integrate into the tissues, for lack of a better description. So you will feel, it's very good for people also who are having trouble with sleep, because you'll feel very relaxed there. And I forget the study, but there have been a lot of studies done, a lot of studies done, like, the depth of relaxation and rest for the body is equivalent to a couple hours of sleep for about a 20-minute yoga nidra. So you're getting a lot of benefits on all different levels, and we do all of this in about an hour. So you're really getting mind, body, spirit work all at one time, and as we're strengthening the body with the muscles, you're also strengthening that resolve, that unshakable calm I was talking about. So the more you have a grounded body, the more you will feel that in your spirit. So that's how the process I work through goes.

Megan Devito: That's fantastic, and I always laugh. I've more than once said nobody pays attention to their big toe until they realize that, oh, I really could feel it, because so often, you're right, our brains just go bananas. They start ruminating and overthinking. I've often explained it as your body feels however it's going to feel, and it's so uncomfortable that our brain just starts making up stories about every catastrophe in the world that could possibly happen. Whatever it is, that's, I mean, whatever your stick is, right? Like, if you're afraid of your health, if you're afraid about your kids, if you're afraid of, you know, financial worries, or if it's just the world in general, your brain will just make up the wildest stories, and until you learn to come back into that very uncomfortable place, it'll keep doing it.

Cathy Eades: Yeah, I mean our brain is trying to make sense of it, right? The physiological part of us is all, you know, um... what's the word I'm looking for? It's overstimulated. That hyper, right, the brain is going to try to be like, well, why do I feel like I'm being chased by a tiger? There must be something I need to.

Megan Devito: You know, it's surely something is very wrong. It's trying to align.

Cathy Eades: So anytime we can use the physical body and also like reframe or rephrase what might be going on on up here, because some, for some of us, the trigger is in a physiological, like the heartbeat starts going really fast or our breath gets really short and shallow and then the thoughts start worrying and then also others. It's like the thoughts start going and then they cause that physiological response. So if we can redirect the thoughts or reframe. I love this. I think you and I may have talked about this. I think it was Bill Hader that was on Saturday Night Live, super, super anxious. The whole time he was performing on that show, he said like, "Oh, every week was terrifying". Um, it didn't matter how long I'd been doing it, but he got to the point where he would welcome his anxiety. He would say, "Oh, hey, there you are. I knew you would show up, but listen, I've got this. It's okay. Like you, you can, you can go sit over there and just watch, 'cause I'm going to do this and I've got it". It was just that it seems kind of silly, I think sometimes, but if you personify it and be like, and almost you might imagine it like it's a little kid, a really worried little kid, like, okay, little Bill, I've got it, I'm... Big Bill's going to take care of this and then I'll come back and check on you, you know, just that reframing, um, can really help. And then also using our breath or that physical touch, or, you know, I know some people use weighted blankets or a jacket, you know, something to provide a physical grounding. Breath is the one thing that so, so much research has been done on. Using your breath, I mean even the Navy SEALs, like they, they use certain breathing patterns and talk about stressful situations I can't even imagine, but there's a lot of science around using the breath to calm all kinds of different emotional situations down.

Megan Devito: And I know for a lot of people who are listening, we can get, especially if you're one of those people that starts with more of the somatic symptoms before. If it starts with that, "feel like I can't get a deep breath" and suddenly your brain's telling you, "Well, you probably," whatever that you think is happening to you, you know, if that feeling of breathlessness, because so many people who are anxious are breath holders or shallow breathers. That can be a really difficult practice for some people to just stop and say, especially if we go to a place of like, "let's meditate, let's focus on our breathing". That's intolerable for them, but you have a way to move them through that where the breath becomes tolerable and even welcomed. I would say like that feeling of like, "Oh, I really can breathe," as opposed to, "No, when I focus on my breath I think I can't breathe". But again, it's just a thought, because you're obviously breathing, yeah, lot because you're obviously breathing.

Cathy Eades: Yeah, I actually had one client recently who, um, she was, she has a high-stress job, but she's always performed very well. They're super successful in her career. Um, she's right around 50 years old, and but it was, it was one of the more stressful seasons, and then she also was having some difficulty in her marriage, more so than she'd ever had, and there was, there was this uncertainty around it and the combination of the two just kind of... she also was getting ready to have a knee replacement, like she, she had a lot going on. She was going to the doctor. She's like, "I just can't, and she likes to bike and hike and so a lot of breathing going on there. And she went to the doctor and she's like, "I don't know what's wrong with me, I can't take a deep breath". So they did tests on her lungs and tests on her heart and, you know, various things, and the doctor came back, you know, to his think he goes, "Your lungs and your heart are great". I think this is anxiety manifesting for you as a breathing issue. And he goes, "This is not uncommon at all," but he said, "that's... he said I would work on your anxiety level and then your breathing is going to get better, naturally, because it's your body's response to it". And so she came to me and we worked together and, you know, she said within a couple of weeks she was breathing fine again. But a big part of what we did together was guiding her through the breathing exercises, which are not complicated, but when you are, there's something about having somebody just tell you what to do so you don't have to think about it, you can just follow the directions. You know, just as little kids, we didn't want anybody telling us what to do, but sometimes, as a grownup, you're just like, "Just tell me what to do, just tell me yes".

Megan Devito: Tell me the right way. Yeah, right.

Cathy Eades: So I would... We would go through and there are several different types of, of breathing depending upon what's going on. Um, but we would go through like a three-part breathing, and then we also would do Bromery breath, which is like this bee humming breath. Where you can, if it feels good to you, press on that little flap on the inside of your ear and the reverberations of that sound can be very soothing. Plus, it's good for stimulating the vagus nerve, which, for those who are not familiar with vagus, anything you do to stimulate the vagus nerve helps to calm the nervous system and improve your vagal tone so that when stuff does get rough again, that's part of that inner calm, that really unshakable core calm that we have. So, yeah, I always like to start people with the very simplest, and I gave it a name which kind of seems silly, but I call it the 60-second stress slayer, which is also a big mouthful, but it's not easy. You're just... You're taking a deep breath and trying to not just have it up here but bring it to the middle of your lungs and down to the belly, so you're feeling the full lung. And then, as you control the exhale, you make it last a couple seconds longer than the inhale, which is a cue to the nervous system that, like, you are safe, it is going to be okay. So do you want to try it? We can just do it, let's do it.

Megan Devito: I think this is so good, and anybody who's listened to this knows that we've talked about exhaling. This is just such a good explanation of why and how to make it simple. I'm so excited that you're going to... It's like breathing snacks. Yes, let's do it.

Cathy Eades: Yes, okay, I like to close my eyes. Um, I tell people like if you are in a busy business meeting or something, you can still do this. You don't have to close your eyes. People will just notice you take a pause and they can think whatever they want about it. But often people who are very thoughtful, considerate people take a pause before they answer, so it can look like that and nobody else has to know that you're doing this. But if you're able to step away, close the eyes, put one hand on the chest, one hand on the belly, that just allows you to feel that breath. So you just go ahead and as you inhale, lift the chest as it starts to come in and then feel that breath move into the middle of the lungs and then feel the belly expand a bit. And then on the exhale, we just want to slow that exhale out through the nose. So we want to keep the inhale and the exhale moving through the nostrils and both of them are slow and methodical. So let's count to six on this next inhale, just mentally count to six, and exhale to eight, and exhale to eight. Let's just do it twice more. Inhale to a count of six, feeling the breath coming in, filling up the torso, ribs expand, chest rises, belly expands, exhaling and one more round and then just settle there for a moment. Before you open the eyes, before you move the hands, just notice if there's been any shift at all, whether in the body, the mind, emotionally. Just notice if there's been a shift and then, when you feel ready, you can drop the hands back to the lap, gently, open the eyes, and if we're really agitated, we might need to do that a few more times, but it can. It's one of the quickest, easiest ways to take control yourself. When you're feeling out of sorts or starting to feel out of control, that is one of the quickest ways that I know to bring everything back. Bring that Vata energy, bring it back down, bring it back inside.

Megan Devito: It is always amazing to me how quickly we can turn this off, because people will say, "Oh no, when it starts I don't know what to do". It's just, it has to wear itself out or something has to happen. And as many times, it's so good for people to hear, it's so good for people to hear this, because, you know, they say you have to hear it 10 different ways or 10 different times and all these different ways to understand that if you just did that breath practice, if you really did that, and if you paid attention to how your jaw felt, are your teeth still touching? Little things like that? If your teeth made a gap between them, where you're not clenching your jaw, if you notice that your shoulders are lower, or where, all of a sudden, you feel sleepy, it worked, it did exactly what it's supposed to do and it didn't take you two hours of rolling around. I have to, I have to figure it out. You don't have to figure it. There's nothing to figure out. Yeah, and I think that's so important for people who, I just, I, you don't have to figure it out. Let's, let's not try to, let's not try to figure it out.

Cathy Eades: Yeah, that's. The best thing is to have some tools in your toolbox that you don't have to think, you just do, because taking action also helps you to, like, release the stuff that's building up. And I've told many clients, like, do these things for a minute once a day when you aren't feeling anxious or anxious because it's just like any other thing that you want to be able to just pull out and do. You wouldn't go run a 5K without practicing for a while, training. So you are retraining your mind-body system to be able to just pull this up and not have to give much thought to it, and it's. It's just easier if you've practiced when you're not in an agitated state to do it, just to bring it on board and be like, okay, I know what I do, I know what I need to do, I need to go do that breath.

Megan Devito: So yeah, because in that moment when you're feeling anxious, we've talked so often about how the thinking part of your brain, forget it, like unless it's already a habit or something that you already understand that you do have in your back pocket, you don't want to say, "Oh gosh, what was that breath pattern? What was I supposed to do? Was it exhale or inhale longer? I can't remember". Because once you've done it a few times, because it, and especially because it feels so good, your brain will catch on quickly, like, "Oh, that worked, that was good". But you don't want to have to say, "What was it that Kathy said about that exhale? How long was that? Was it six? Was it eight? Was it five?" No, it practice it. Why would you not want to feel that way throughout the day? 

Cathy Eades: Right, right, yeah, and you know, I describe it almost too as like you have this little... Most of us have some kind of savings account, retirement account, investment account, something like that. Every time you do one of these, whether you are in an acute situation and really need it really fast, or you're doing it just as your practice, daily or a few times a week, and I don't want people to get hung up on daily, don't feel like it's an obligation. This is part of your routine of taking care of yourself. But I call it your self-care investment account. Like you are putting those deposits in there and they pay off over time, just like all your other investments. You're like, "I just, I just keep putting that away". I know it's going to pay off and it does, and you may not realize it right away, but you get to a point and you're like, "Oh wow, I had a moment today and I knew what to do and it wasn't hard, it was just me doing the thing". And then it worked, wasn't hard, it was just me doing the thing.

Megan Devito: And then it worked. And that's how you know you've grown and made and started to recover, isn't it? One of the questions that comes up so often is, "Well, what did you do?" And I'm like, "You guys, I could tell you a thousand things that I did, but I don't know". I know the thought, I know the moment where I was like, "Oh well, that was different". But the things aren't the thing, right, it is, it is, it's a practice, but it's not that one moment. It's like, all of a sudden, you've completely changed your body and how you relate to yourself, and that's really it. Unfortunately, you're not going to know that until you've experienced it. Yeah, but as you make those little tiny investments, I mean breathing. Breathing is a pretty simple one, because we do it all day long. You just have to be intentional about it.

Cathy Eades: Right, right, yeah, and I think you pointed out something good too, because we kind of live in a culture where we want fast results and we want to just feel it happen fast and know that we can forever, like that's done, check. "I'm always going to be able to do this thing". Well, every day is different, our circumstances are different, our health is different, so it's you do reach a point where you, like, there's you turn this curve and you don't even really see that you, that the curve is coming until you're on the other side and you're like, "Oh well, I dealt with that in a different way than I normally would have," and it's an incredibly good feeling to be like, "I handled that situation so much better than I would have a year ago or six months ago or 10 years ago". But just to be like, and it's that, that idea of like, once you've seen something you can't unsee it, like once you have learned it and you've reached that place, you know you've sort of arrived in a new, a new way of showing up in life. I think. And it's, it's all part of the, you know, the step-by-step path that we're on and it's just a matter of finding, you know, what. What can I do? That's very small, that makes a difference, and then, when I that works, I can add something else. But I think, find your one thing that really works and just keep on doing it. And if you want to add some other things in, you can do that. So I, I love having a toolbox, but if you have a one go-to that's like this is my crack, the emergency glass thing that I know I can always use, stick with it.

Megan Devito: Yeah, and I really think that for, for people who think that you need to have this assortment of ways to do it, it's because you haven't found your way yet. Like, "Well, I need this one, and if that doesn't work, then I try this and I try this". But I think that Kathy and I can both kind of attest to, once you find your thing and it works for you, you forget you don't need to know all the things. And I've noticed this a lot with whether it's people I talk to online or people that I run into on the street. They'll say, "Well, I was looking, I was researching for some other options" or "I was reading this other thing". And my thought is always, "Stop". Because one, you're feeding that fear inside of yourself that you won't be able to handle it, and the fact is that you've handled it every single time. And once you've found the thing that you're like, "Oh, that worked". Stick with that, because the more you do it, the more you're proving to yourself, "Wait a second, my imagination is so much scarier than what I'm actually able to handle". Every time, even things that we don't want to consider, that, you know, really, really scary situations. You can do it and you just have to know how to, how to have that control inside of yourself. Like, "Wait, I can control how I breathe, what I think about".

Cathy Eades: A lot of times people think that's outside of their control, yeah, yeah, that idea that I am not my thoughts and I can control my thoughts. Yes, can they run off on their own? And if I let them just keep going, oh yeah, they can go every day forever. But I think sometimes it's just the fact of acknowledging, like, what is going on up there right now, like, why on earth am I worried about X, Y, Z? And maybe it's a very legitimate, like, in your face worry, but also that awareness of, is it, or, or is it my mind just trying to protect me and kind of playing risk manager? And I actually need to come, I need to get back in the driver's seat and say, "Okay, I appreciate your concern and I've got this and I'm going to figure this out". So, yeah, just knowing that I can choose the difference between reaction and response, that was a big aha moment for me too, to know that that little pause, reaction is just, it just happens. We don't think about it, it just the thought comes in, the heart starts racing, that type of thing, and it's so fast and it's really like from, from an evolutionary perspective, it's just our mind and body trying to protect us from a big danger, but we don't, the body doesn't know the difference between the tiger and the car that's driving too fast beside us, or the fact that we're just worried that this, you know, interview is going to really go terribly and what could happen when I lose my job, and then it goes off to the races. Um, but the idea of like having the awareness to be like, okay, I can stop and say, "Hmm, how do I want to respond to this?" First, just let the reaction happen is a big, a big thing that allows you that little moment for awareness and reason to step in, and then you can decide, like, really mindfully, how do I want to respond to this? That was a, that was a game changer for me, instead of just spending so much of my life like reacting to this, that and the next thing, and all it did was sort of pile up the different things that I was worried about, and then there were a few more. So, yeah, and, and I think it's such a good, sorry, go ahead, you go ahead, I'll, I'll add this later.

Megan Devito: I think that just being able to have the ability to rationally, we know that we think a lot of crazy things, right? I will make... We know that our thoughts are silly until we feel them inside of our bodies and suddenly we believe them, and it's really being able to intercede, I think, on the, "Oh wait, even though this feels really scary, even though I feel this way, it's still a thought". Right, and being able to say, "Well, that's one thought," even in your craziest moments, you know, and I think this is true for anxiety or even OCD or anything else where it'd be like, "still just a thought". Just a thought, yeah, and to be aware enough that that thought made me feel really anxious, but that doesn't mean it's true.

Cathy Eades: Right, right, and you know, the idea too of like, okay, that makes me anxious. What is something that always makes me feel really secure? Is it my blanket? Is it a cup of tea? Is it talking with my best friend? Like, if you can just call that thing to mind sometimes, when the anxious thought comes in, "Yeah, that worries me, but I just love talking to my best friend Mary," and think about the last time you saw one. And I mean just, you just sort of try to like balance. The scale might not quite be the right thing, but you're adding in some of this secure feeling by just bringing it to mind. So I'm a big fan of reframing and like taking the negative thing that might be happening and saying, "Yeah, but I can hold these two things at the same time". I can be worried about X, Y, Z and also so comforted by this other thing that's in my life. Yeah, and I think I'm going to say too is like taking this does require us to slow the pace of our lives a little bit, because we are, again, this is a societal issue. I think we have accepted that life has to move fast. We have to move fast, we have to be able to react quickly, and I've never seen a job description I don't think that says multitasking is important or must be able to handle blah blah, and I'm like we've just gotten very used to the idea that we have to be able to do all the things whenever we're asked to do them, and that's a little. You know the idea that like, "Oh no, actually this is my life and I get to decide how fast do I want to live it". And it requires, I mean that requires some decisions about what, what am I going to stick with for my work hours or my type of job, or what activities I'm going to be willing to cart my kids back and forth to. I mean, there are so many decisions involved in that. But also, like what? Ultimately, you are the person that has to take care of you. I am the person that has to take care of me. That is my most important job in my life ever, because if I'm not, especially when my kids were young, if I wasn't taking care of myself, which, honestly, I wasn't doing the best job then, um, I wasn't showing up as well as I could have. You know, I wasn't as patient with them at many times because I was burning the candle at both ends, and that's not sustainable, nor is it healthy.

Megan Devito: And that's a really good awareness too, that if you notice that you feel like you can't go fast enough, it doesn't mean that we can... we're so good at self-diagnosing things right now, but just if you can remember that anxiety feels urgent and that it will make you feel like you have to move faster, that you have to do more, that, you know, you have to keep, I mean, you have to keep thinking that thought, it feels very urgent, that if you can do, if you can notice that and say, "Oh wait, that also is a cue that I need to slow down". Which brought to mind when you said that you were breathing and you were like breathing and expand and move your arms up. I love that you reminded me of a tree, actually, when you did that. We expand outward, your limbs outward, and come back in. But if we can talk just briefly the importance of bringing your body into it, not just your breath, but how does movement incorporate? Like, what do you do with movement? Because I think that's so important for people who want to sit frozen or not, or even for people who feel like they need to go faster, slow movement or no, or people who want no movement, adding movement. There's just that idea of moving, but moving slowly.

Cathy Eades: Yeah, so, and again, I kind of bring this from an Ayurvedic perspective, but when we are moving the body and we are, if we're, if we're doing specific yoga poses, we will be. Moving slowly actually sometimes takes more control than moving fast and it also prevents us from getting like out of alignment. Usually if people do yoga and they get injured, it's because they've been moving too quickly, so their alignment is off and their, but, their muscles and bones are not, they're not working in the ways that they're really supposed to. So all that to say, when we are mindfully moving and we're using the breath in conjunction with the movement, there is a lot of actual toxic release happening. So that's on both the physical level, because more respiration, more circulation, you're clearing crap out of your body. And I was talking with a guy the other day and he goes, "The issues are in the tissues," and I was like, "I'm going to use that," because, we do, if we are anxious, if we're agitated, if we're building up resentment, anger, all these things, if we don't find a physical release valve for them, they build up inside our physical body, not just our mind. And so doing this mindful movement with the mindful breathing helps to usher that process along. It helps the lymph flow, which is also another way that our body clears toxins and the idea that we've got. You know, we have physical waste that moves through the body. But when we're using the breath we're allowing some release of an emotional state. We're letting some of that emotional, what we call waste, release. So we're releasing from the bodily tissues. We're releasing through the breath. We're releasing through the little bit of the added circulation, the lymph flow, the little bit of perspiration that just comes from movement and heating up the body. So, and I don't want people to think we're doing hot yoga here because nobody's going to get sweaty, sweaty doing yoga with me, but just our natural bit of perspiration that happens when we do at movement. So all of those things are clearing, just clearing in general. So you should feel at the end of a session you should feel calm, but also like this... I had one woman describe it as, "I feel so energized, but I also feel calm at the same time". And I said focused energy, and she goes, "Yeah, it's kind of weird". And I was like, "That's just what we're going for". You know, that's the sweet spot you've done it in your body. You've just allowed it to move. So people talk about energy work. It's some kind of the same thing. We're using the muscles, using the breath, using that movement to clear. It's just a general release of physical gunk as well as emotional gunk. I guess you could say gunk is such a scientific word.

Megan Devito: It's perfect, it is gunk, right? It's not a thing, you can't touch it. But just so much research has gone into how we store emotions and store memories and how it all is, and we all say, "Oh, it's all in our head". Well, your thoughts are all in your head, but your memories are all through your body. So, you know, moving those muscles and noticing the release, that's what's supposed to happen and whatever happens to make it, it's like the guy that comes back from the war and starts rubbing his shoulder. Well, there's memories, right? Like, we remember things. And so to be able to move those muscles and to be able to strengthen those muscles and to be able to release things from the muscle and from the body, it's a big deal. That's part of recovery and unfortunately you have to be willing to feel that stuff, that whole "feel it to heal it" thing. That's real.

Cathy Eades: Yeah, yeah, because then you can let it go. You can. I mean, our emotions, while some of them don't feel comfortable, they're there for us to experience life. Um, one of the things that like hit me like a brick between the eyes was when I was reading Brene Brown's book and she talked about the fact that like, you can numb, but you can't just numb the things you don't want to feel. If you numb, you also numb out the joy and the happiness and the peace. Like, you just become numb, and I was like, "Oh, she's right," you know, that's not what I wanted at all, but I don't want to feel that I'm going to feel happy and good all the time, yeah. Right, yes, but I think that's allowing ourselves to experience it and be like, "Yes, this actually really sucks right now and I hate it and I would, I would like to let this go," but just, you got to feel it first and then it can move through you. And I don't remember the statistic now, but again, this is another study that was, like, you know, most emotions last like 30 seconds, 60 seconds. We if we feel them and then let them go. But if we try to stuff them down, they're still there and they keep coming back and be like, "I want to be heard, I want to be felt," so yeah, it is crazy, that chemical reaction.

Megan Devito: I read the same study or a similar study and I think the one that hangs on the longest is anger, and it was like two minutes. Two minutes. And how often do we stay angry for months because we think about it and we just let ourselves roll back into it. If you just let that process out, the chemical reaction, move those chemicals out of your body, which are just hormones, if you just move them out, you can. You can do anything for 90 seconds, 30 seconds, however long, and then it's just a process of being mindful.

Cathy Eades: Yes, and not retelling the story to ourselves. Right, because that was something that was a pretty big off-home for me too, of like, if you want to relive the bad thing, your mind is like running that groove again into the record. So I mean, of course we're going to. Something may trigger a memory. And we just sort of be like, "Yeah, that, that was no good, but I'm not going to spend time on it anymore". That prevents us from rubbing that groove even deeper and re-experiencing, like our whole body re-experiences the terrifying thing if we just keep reliving it mentally and it doesn't really know the difference between the memory and the experience, the original experience.

Megan Devito: Yeah, and if you are someone who had something very traumatic and very awful happen to you, please, please, please, yes, talk to Kathy, talk to me, but please talk to a therapist, because processing out those things that feel like they're still happening, that's a big trauma. If it doesn't feel like it's in the past and a memory that comes up and it feels more like it's happening over and over again. Please, please, please, go talk to somebody that can help you through that. They really can. There's so many amazing advances in how you can work through that, sometimes in a relatively short amount of time. It does not have to take years. It doesn't have to consume the rest of your life. Please don't wait 30 years like I did for crying out loud. You have much better things to do.

Cathy Eades: Yeah, and, and make sure you find somebody who's a good fit for you. I think sometimes people feel like, "I just need to find a therapist". Yeah, no, I have to talk to a few to find the right one for you. Yes, yes, yeah, no, I have to talk to a few to find the right one for you. Yes, yes.

Megan Devito: If it doesn't, if your therapist isn't clicking you with you right now, there's another one that will. I think that people are so, are hesitant anyway, they'll go out with therapy. Once it was awful, that probably wasn't therapist for you. Find one who is. Don't give up for crying out loud, yeah.

Cathy Eades: Yeah, for sure.

Megan Devito: So good. When, how can people connect with you? How can they work with you? 

Cathy Eades: Well, I wanted to make sure and let people know that, if they want to, I am always the person who likes to sample things before I, before I try, um, or, or do a trial thing. I have a free sample of of very calming, grounding yoga practice, a the 60-second, like, extended exhale, stress slayer breath, and then a couple of um, calming meditations. The Yoga Nidra, I believe, is there, um, and one other, and that is at https://www.google.com/search?q=findblissyogacom slash free sample, and people can go there and access those. The um, yoga practice also, at the beginning I have a little Vagus nerve reset exercise that you could do anytime. That's like, I think it takes maybe under two minutes, so it's a standalone, but I just incorporated it into that practice. And then, otherwise, you can find me at https://www.google.com/search?q=findblissyogacom, and if you're interested in learning more about some of the, the methods that I use, and just want to join the newsletter, you can do that there too. And I also, again, I believe that, like I was saying with the therapist, like you need to be able to meet with someone at least once and give it a trial run and see if you click so I always I'm open to offering a 30-minute session with someone to actually do these practices together and see if it resonates with you and it's something you want to continue more of. We can obviously talk about that. But you can sign up for a 30-minute session on my website also. I think it says "feel better now" session at the top of the page. That is so generous, thank you. Yeah, I like that approach because I want people to feel like really excited, moving forward, working together, and I want us to both feel that way. So the best way to do that is give it a try.

Megan Devito: Yeah, absolutely, and I will be sure to include that link at the bottom so that they can get the free sample and to get on and really have a practice session with you and see if that's right. This is so good. You guys, we're all just going to keep saying it. We're not making this up. It's not like we get together and plan conspiracies to like trick you. Kathy comes on, we talk and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, come tell your story," because we keep saying the same things. Guys, everybody's saying the same things. There's so much hope there, guys, everybody's saying the same things. There's so much hope. There's so many simple things that you can do that are going to help. It does not take forever and you have so many people willing to help you. Please reach out to Kathy, talk to her about how yoga can help you. You guys are going to love the Yoga Nidra. It's like a little super nap. It's so incredible, so good. So thank you so much for sharing today. Oh, thank you for having me, Megan.

Cathy Eades: It has been my pleasure and I, I am really hopeful that these are helpful tools for your listeners too, and I, I think we, um, you know, we all can learn from one another here, so I appreciate the opportunity to, to chat with you