Yoga Is More Than Poses – How These Simple Movements Set Us Up For So Much More

What Is This Episode About…

In this episode, John continues the five day immersion course. He pulls us away from the belief that we must accomplish advanced poses to achieve healing. Ultimately, it’s that thought process and motion that causes more harm than healing.

John focuses on movement in this week’s lesson as one of the three pillars to address body, mind and heart. He explains that the more fluid you are, the more alive you are and your youth is restored. He shares an example of an eight-hour surfing trip he credits to healthy movement.

The second half of the lesson is broken down into understanding your anatomy. John teaches us that we are all the same in our basic anatomy, but our structures are unique. Once you understand your structure you can understand your limits in movement and the optimal motion for increased mobility.

Key Takeaways

• Overview of day one of the 5 day immersion (2:00)
• Yoga is more than poses (2:49)
• Importance of movement (3:34)
• The biggest miss on the power of the practice (7:31)
• Doing the practice to support you (9:19)
• We are all the same and we are all different (11:10)
• Tension vs compression (14:32)
• Relationship between mind and movement (16:20)
• 2nd pillar is mediation (22:40)

Learn More About The Content Discussed…

Join The Facebook Group –> http://bit.ly/yogaentrepreneur 

Participate in the Five Day Immersion Course at https://www.facebook.com/groups/yaxyogalab

When Was It Released…

This episode was released June 3, 2020

Episode Transcript…

The Transcript Is Auto Generated And May Contain Spelling And Grammar Errors

John Yax  0:00  

Welcome to the second episode of The awaken Live podcast. We are so excited that you’re here and we are going to share what we offered on day two of the five-day immersion that we offered inside of our yaks yoga lab Facebook group. So what we’re going to dive into is how Yoga is so much more than poses, and how these simple movements set us up for so much more. Now, if you take yoga back far enough, what the movements actually did was way beyond what most people think they do now and the purpose of it was way deeper. And so that’s what we’re going to share with you today. We’re excited to welcome to The Awakened Life podcast where we’re going to give you the exact blueprint of how to live an awakened life, a life filled with purpose, passion, and power. We are the yaks brothers, john and Chris and we’re here to share the truth that Yoga is so much more than stretching. It’s the oldest personal development system ever created. The problem is that most modern day yoga focuses solely getting better at poses and promotes this idea that if you get good enough, one day your life will magically fall into place and your struggles with the world will end. Listen in each week because we reveal the truth about what yoga actually is and how it’s designed to bring the life of your dreams into reality. If you’re ready to take immediate action to live an awakened life, join our private Facebook group yaks yoga lab and get two of our most popular yoga courses for free.

So, five day yoga immersion. Yesterday was day one, Chris rocked it out. Talk about some good stuff. So the yoga version we’re revealing is the untold secrets of yoga and why these truths are the key to reclaiming lost youth eliminating stress and overwhelm and finding self-love both on and off mat. Chris talked yesterday about being and becoming that was really one of the major pieces of that and then through this idea of being becoming, there are tools that we use in order to get That’s clear on our beingness and get us clear on our becoming this. And that he talked about how they seem at odds with each other in an actuality when we approach them using these, these tools that they actually complement each other. And then they’re actually important that we understand the Beingness. In order to create the becoming this, the three tools we talked about were how to access points. Another way of saying that is through the body, the mind, the heart, the body, the mind, and the heart. And what we are teaching you guys is what we call the Awakened Life formula, which we address these parts. We address these parts through specifics, and this is what we’re unfolding. So, day two, what we’re gonna be talking about today, yoga is more than poses, how these simple movements set us up for so much more. Movement is the first pillar. So there are three pillars that address the body, mind, heart, the first pillar is movement. The more fluid you are, the more you are alive. This is a just start discharging that’s I probably destroyed that name. So I apologize, Mr. A or Mrs. A just started needs.

The more fluid you are, the more you are alive. Right? fluidity in the body is vital in order for us to basically understand why we do what we do on our mats, right? So this encompasses really what we’re going to talk about the more fluid you are, the more you are alive. So do yoga is more than poses movement. What we do on our mats has two true purposes to true purposes. The first one is about the body. This first purpose is all about our physicalness their body, how do we approach and dress the body? The approach that we take on our match what we do on our mats is to reclaim lost youth. The reason we do what we do on our mass is to reclaim lost youth so a few weeks ago, feels like a few weeks ago this is they got money A couple of months ago now. So in the beginning of March, Chris and I were in Costa Rica, we did a retreat some of you who were there on the retreat, awesome. A week before the retreat we went to to take a little surfing time to have a little prep time. Now, one day we realized that we had to do this trip because the waves were going to be really good. This trip was intense, meaning we got up at about 430 in the morning. We drove about two hours to the entrance of Santa Rosa National Park. And once you get into the park, it is you basically have to four-wheel drive. It’s like literally driving through a mountain. They call it a road but they that term is used loosely. You are literally driving down a mountain four-wheel-drive going through Belize, huge rocks, and you are going so slow because you’re climbing the whole time. So it takes about an hour just to get to the beach. And once we got to the beach, once we got to where we parked right in front of Beach, we get all our gear on. So we’re both wearing two backpacks. We have our surfboards, we have everything start walking to the beach. And this guy who I guess he was camping there is like, Guys, there are no waves. It’s there’s a little wave out there, but the winds gonna be turning on it and it’s gonna get really bad soon. It’s done that every single day and, and then the waves are just closing out. Like it’s not good. They’re like, okay, we knew the report, we knew that he didn’t know what he was talking about. Fingers crossed. So we walked down to the beach. Now once we got to the beach, it was a 45 minute walk all the way down to the break. So we were at the beach, and then we start walking on the beach, 45 minutes, all the way down to get to this, what’s called Witch’s rock, right? This is beautiful. It’s beautiful scenery amazing. We get all the way down there. And the waves are firing. The waves are good, it’s going off. It’s so good. And only a couple people in the water. So we set our camp out on the beach, put our stuff down, and we go surfing. And the waves are so good guys that were like we can The waters too good. We literally surf for like two hours get out like 20 minutes, eat some food and Apple, a granola bar, jump back out and surf again. You another two hours and come back in, eat a granola bar a couple apples and then go back out. We did this over and over again for eight hours straight for eight hours straight. Couple the 20 minute break, he go back out and serve Ico because it was so good. It was one of those moments, right? We finished the day of surfing the sun’s going down. We pack up all our gear, backpacks, all our stuff, walk 45 minutes all the way back down to the entrance. We walk into the interesting guests who we see. We see the same guy. The guy was like watch what you what, you guys were there the whole time. What you who’s your dad for? And Chris are like, No, we do yoga.

That and that was that encompasses this, right? It encompasses this idea of staying young. Our ability To walk all the way down there serve all day long walk all the way back to like, it was because we practice. Now I’m 43. Well, this would be filmed on 43 Chris’s 40, their 20-year-olds, I can’t do that. This is the value of the practice, guys. No. So here’s the thing. Yoga today focuses on performance and doing advanced poses. This is the biggest misnomer, right? The biggest Miss of the power of this practice is that it’s so focused around doing harder and harder poses more advanced poses, as if doing these advanced poses is going to get you into this state of bliss. As if doing advanced poses is going to all of a sudden create the clarity in your life. It’s going to all of a sudden create better relationships as if as if you do want to press up into a handstand is all this all of a sudden going to have. I’m gonna have a better relationship with my wife because of it. Right But guys, this is what we thought when we first started practicing everything we saw everything we were taught was like No, just do more advanced poses, get really good at your practice and get better and better and better. And what we realized is that we were getting injured all the time. Right? We were trying to do this advanced stuff in our Risinger’s shoulders you get into like, Ah, no, and then we practice more and more and more. And what we also saw is, we saw the old Yogi’s, the old gangster Yogi’s, I think the people that have been pract, like legitimately doing these physical practices for 30 4050 years, 60 years, and their bodies were falling apart. Their bodies were falling like they, they were getting knee surgery and ankle surgeries. They were they’re walking around with canes like that, like the whole goal of what we’re doing on our mats. is not is not to do advanced poses is not to get to older age and have to get surgery because of your practice. Because of your practice. You’re getting surgery. You’re ruining your body because your practice is not met. To do advanced pose Now, don’t get me wrong, enhanced poses are fun. You can do them as long as you understand the approach. This was like this was a highlight. So Chris and I understood this and we started like, like shifting how we practice and realizing that, and especially as we got a little older, we’re like, No, I want to do this practice to support me to support what I’m all the other things that I love in my life. There was a student of ours who went up, she moved to New York, and she ended up doing teacher training in New York. She came back down two weeks before her graduation for teacher training. And she pulled Chris aside and she was like, Chris, I need you to help me. It was like, all right. She was like, I’m doing my teacher training in New York at and in order to graduate, I have to do Lotus. If you guys don’t understand, you don’t know what Lotus is no worse. Lotus is you’re sitting on your seat and you take this ankle and place it here. And then you take your other ankle and you place it here. She had to do that in order to graduate. That’s an advanced pose guys. What we’re going to get into in a moment is There are a good portion of the population that cannot do Lotus. And it’s not because they’re tight. It’s because their skeletal structure is such that they just won’t without blowing out any. So yeah, she could do it and maybe her body was that that and so she would do it but she’d be rolling up to get her certificate

or on crutches. crutches like thank you got into Lotus one time in my life. So the whole idea here guys is what we do on our mats, we practice to stay young. We practice to keep doing the things that we love in our lives. Not to be a gymnast, right not to do gymnastics. You don’t see any 5040-year-old gymnast doing gymnastics, right? We’re not forcing ourselves into these positions to somehow think that we’re gonna have a better life when I’m able to do an advanced Pope’s practice in order to stay young practice to keep your body feeling good. And if you want to play with advanced poses, do so following what I’m about. to talk about now, so we’re all the same, and we’re all different. We’re all the same. And we’re all different. We’re the same, because we’re all made of the same stuff. And what I mean by that is we all have myofascial lines, these myofascial lines or lines of connective tissue that the majority of them run from the bottom of the feet all the way to the top of the head. Every single person has them. All of us happen, how we approach our practice in order to stay young to keep using our lives to keep us fluid, right? Because the more fluid you are, the more live yard, the way we practice in order to stay fluid is to address the body according to anatomy. According to these myofascial lines, we sequence every single practice that we do in a systematic way to sequentially open up these myofascial lines or these lines of connective tissue in the body, moving from most superficial to the deepest lines. If you do this every single time Practice, you’ll address the totality of the body, you’ll do it in a systematic way that allows you to keep fluidity and strengthen the body. Because what does youth mean? Right? What is what does it mean to stay young it means to maintain core strength and to maintain mobility. So that we are our bodies are fluid, right is fluid equals alive. Now, one of the biggest principles behind my fashion methodology we find the methodology that we find my official methodology is this idea that weakness precedes Titans. In yoga, you see it all the time that the practice is about going as deep as you can and go and stretch as you can. If you watch Instagram for me, you’re gonna see somebody doing a crazy back then where they’re all the way back in the back of their head is touching their butt or their hands or to the floor or something like, Oh, that’s yoga. No, it’s not all about flexibility. In fact, it’s about strength first, because if we if we’re weak in one of these lines of connective tissue in the body, the other lines is the beauty of the body. This beauty of nature, the other lines complex They for the weakness of that line, meaning they start to take over some of the movement function, the postural function of that long, right? And what do they do? It means they get tight. So we get on the mats, we stretch, we move to the lines, we stretch, don’t stretch like that. But we stretch and we start to feel more open. But guess what happens? It only lasts for a little bit. And then those lines are like what, hey, this line is weak. So let’s do its job so they get tight again. So in order to get out of that tightness, we have to strengthen that line. And this is why we approach the practice this way. Not only do we open these lines, strengthen open these lines, but we strengthen these lines as well. So that the other lines can relax, they don’t have to do the work of that other line. And then we can dress them and then we can address the lines as we move to the practice, right. So weakness precedes tightens. We have to get strong first, and then we can open up the body right and then we can we can open up these lines to the body. It’s how we’re all the same. We all have these myofascial lines, all of us how we’re different Is that that stuff is put together in a unique way for us individually. So we all So what I’m saying is that you are unique, there is not another person in this world that’s made the same way you are, the structure of your skeletal system is different for every one of us. And this brings into the next principle that we want to talk about today is tension versus compression. tension force compression is this idea that when you’re opening up the body, you’re moving through a joint basically. And so the elbow I think, is one of the easiest, easiest ways to see this. So tension is when I’m moving my arm this way, right? So I’m stretching this part of my arm in the beginning, right? You just started your yoga practice. This is this could be tight for me, right? And so as I do this motion, this opens up and opens up and opens up in the yoga practice. You met this joins all our joints. This feels amazing, right? Like, oh my god, it feels so good. It feels so good. And then off the mat. Oh, feels so good. And then I get back onto my mat and practice. It feels incredible. It feels incredible. And then it keeps feeling incredible. Incredible. Incredible, isn’t it? get to a point of like, Ah, it still feels really good. But I don’t feel like I’m getting any farther. Because we feel we actually see and feel the the progression here, right, I noticed my arm getting straighter and straighter and straighter and it feels amazing. At some point, if I still follow that same idea, I should be able to stretch this more and more and still feel amazing and amazing. And all of a sudden, my arm will be going down here or down here and I’ll be able to like swing it around. Right. So at some point not understanding what compression is, can create this high level this risk of injury. This is making sense. As I move my arm in this direction at some point not understanding compression will make me think that I need to force this straighter and straighter and straighter. At some point, this connective tissue will be open, though I won’t there will be no more tension here. And at that point, I hit compression. bone on bone on the elbow a lot of times is bone on soft tissue on bone but compression here and what Compression like so what that compression is, is the inability for the bones to go, like, I’m there, I’m at my limit, not understanding compression makes me think that I can go, go deeper. And so I push myself to go deeper. But I’m not actually opening up this anymore. I’m doing damage to this. A little compression is okay if we understand what compression is. But the fact of the matter is that then when people come into yoga and yoga is so big, if we don’t understand it, most, so many people don’t understand compression, they think, well, I just need to go deeper. And so they forced themselves going deeper and deeper and deeper. They end up injuring the joints, guys, this comes without using the elbows as an example because it’s simple. It’s easier to see, but this plays out in my wrists. Obviously my elbows, my shoulders, the whole spinal column, my neck, my low back, my hips, my knees, my ankles. Every joint in the body does this right every joint in the body has this relationship. At some point. You’re gonna if you practice long enough, you won’t There won’t be any more tension or they’ll be less a lot less tension and you’ll start to hit compressive points. If we understand where that compressive point is, we’ll be able to practice safely and for as long as we want to, right. We won’t be like some of the old Yogi’s now that are that are that are in their 70s 80s and getting surgery and walking around with canes, we will stay young, fluid and alive, right? We won’t injure ourselves with this practice. If we’re doing yoga, trying to do more advanced poses, we’ll end up chasing something that will won’t give us what we’re looking for. And this is this idea if we follow my old fashioned methodology, we understand tension force compression, we allow ourselves to create a sustainable practice that allows us to do the things we love to do for the rest of our lives. Continue to dance, continue to do martial arts, continue to walk in nature, continue to swim, continue to to ride horses do whatever it is that your passion is, the yoga practice is made to support that to

keep that Youth in our lives until the day we die, right for our entire lives. This is making sense. Okay? So this is what how we’re the same. This is how we’re different. The next purpose of the practice so that was purpose one is to maintain youth in our bodies.

purpose to is for the mind,

specifically heightened awareness. Movement is the unifying bond between the mind and the body. And sensations are the substance of that bond. Movement is a unifying bond between the mind the body and the sensations are the substance of that bond. You all know this experience. You’ve had it. This is what keeps you stuck. stuck in a good way, right? It’s what keeps you stuck in the yoga practice release loop.

When we get on our mats and feel amazing. We get

off Matt, you’ve had the experience of having something gripping your mind such something so intense in life Like I said, I’m gonna go to my yoga practice this is you’re thinking about things about you get on your mat, and you start moving, and you start breathing, you start moving, you start breathing, you start moving, you start breathing, and all sudden it gets lighter and lighter and lighter and all sudden, it’s, it’s gone. You’re just focused and you’re here in the moment and you’re moving and you’re breathing, you’re moving, you’re breathing for that 60 minutes to 75 to 90 minutes, however long The practice is, and then you get off your mat, and you walk out.

And if it’s there,

it’s so much lighter, right? If that problem is still in your mind, it’s so much lighter, or this has happened. I’m sure this happened to you. You had an insight. When that was no longer gripping and heavy on your mind, you’ll sit you had an insight of a solution or like, Oh, I could just do

that.

This is the power of the practice. As far as the mind goes to get an automatic moving, moving the body creates heightened awareness. It creates this this this experience of being present with life in the moment and not gripped by the craziness of the mind. It helps release them But what we’re saying here is that we get stuck in that yoga practice release. And we’re like, well, I got to get back

to get that same feeling,

guys. In the beginning yoga was not Asana. And so what can I say? Awesome. I mean postures like move the poses, right? Awesome. Sounds great. Very scholarly. It’s it’s the

it’s the poses the postures that we do often, right?

But in the beginning, Asana

was what it wasn’t as we know it today. Right? The oldest text was from 15th century. It’s called it was called the Hatha Yoga Pratap pika. She was

written in the 50s,

the oldest texts known about the asana practice. And in that book, it only talked about 14 poses and this is the kicker, right? This is here’s the crazy part. 11 of the 14 poses were seated meditation posters. 11 of them were seated poses, right so even that far back, even the first text that was ever written about any physical practices was mostly new. Attention practices, what I’m saying to you guys, in the beginning, the physical practices were a preparation for something bigger. So the practices that we know were really developed in the late 1800s. In the late 1800s, was when modern day yoga started to take shape. And the crazy part is it had a heavy heavy influence from from England, right? India was a colony of England at one point and they brought gymnastics into the into into the country and some of these early Yogi soul gymnastics incorporated that into the physical practice. Right? So 1800s was when that started to take shape. And the so what I’m saying here, guys, is the physical practice that we know it. What’s expounded by so many Yogi’s out in the world, is that when you’re doing these up dogs and down dogs and all this, all this physical practice, it was what these ancient Yogi’s thousands of years ago were doing, and it’s not true. What they were doing the potentials Yoga Sutras talked about awesome. insofar as just taking a seat, right, so the original text when they talk about us, it was all about taking a seat. Because the original originally poses were the prep for meditation. The original poses were simply a seat for meditation. And even Fast Forward up to the 15th century

Have you have a proto Pika, it was developed.

The other few poses were developed in order to take a seat later on in late 1800s. When this practice that we know that when we come into a yoga studio that we feel right, that was developed in order to take a seat. The second pillar is meditation. This is how we take that experience we feel on the mat and the high we get four hours after we practice. This is how we take that high, bring it off the mat into our lives. Master the mind or the mind will master you master the mind

or the mind will master you

Chris tomorrow is going to deep dive into this. He’s going to deep dive into meditation. He’s going to talk about how and why we need to establish meditation. But he’s gonna talk about why it’s so vital to be able to pull this pull this experience that we feel so amazing on the mat and how we feel afterwards to be able to pull that have a vehicle to illustrate that same experience. Anytime we want to off the mat to get into that same space. So that’s all I got. Homework. Oh, don’t forget, we have homework, homework tonight, homework journal writing, the journal writing is going to be and we’ll send this out to you guys. So the journal is going to be what does your best life look like? What does your best life look like? What we always tell people we’re working with people doing group coaching or private, private coaching, was it dream big and dream specific, especially for this part? I don’t be vague with it. dream big. What is your best what is the vision of your best life look like? And then dream specific very, very, very detailed guys, because we don’t get detailed, universal fill in the gaps. We’ll get into that later. So homework what is the what is your best life look like and dream big dream specific. post it in the group, right drop it in, drop it into the group if you feel

fulfilled growing up with it.

I also want to say thank you all so much for dropping the last one. We’re getting your groups if you like brave souls as So, just seen the courage was like, bring tears My eyes. It’s awesome. So keep that up, if you So what I’m saying is you feel comfortable enough drop this with this one actually may be easier to drop into than the last one but dropping into the group. Yeah,

that’s it drop row into the group. And guys,

thank you so much for joining us for taking this journey with us. So, so incredible. We were honored that you’re here. Yes, that’s it. Thank you all these thanks so much for listening to the Awakened Life podcast. Do you want to connect with us and a community of like-minded Yogi’s who are on a mission to live an awakened life Join us in our private Facebook group yaks yoga lab now just head over to Facebook and type in yaks yoga lab. When you join, you’ll get access to two free yoga courses our stability series and flow series, which will help you take the first step on your path toward an awakened life. Go join yaks yoga lab now.