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Join Stacy McCarthy, a master yoga teacher, as she shares profound insights on achieving health and longevity through ancient yogic practices.

Discover the true intent of yoga and its transformative power for the mind, body, and soul. Dive deep into the philosophy and physicality of yoga with Stacy’s wealth of wisdom.

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Audio Transcript

 

(This transcript was auto-generated so there may be some errors)

00:00:00:01 – 00:00:08:12
Stacy McCarty
Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. Today I am joined by my good friend Stacy McCarthy. Stacy, thanks for jumping on.

00:00:09:12 – 00:00:13:08
Stacy McCarty
Oh, good to be here. You know, I love just spending any time with you, Nathan.

00:00:14:07 – 00:00:41:06
Nathan Crane
Yeah. Thank you. So Stacy is a world renowned yoga teacher, health and wellness expert. How is a really accredited speaker, international renowned speaker? She she speaks and inspires audiences all over the world. Actually, she spoke at our Holistic Leadership Council retreat, which she is a Holistic Leadership Council member recently. And your talk was actually super inspiring like it was.

00:00:41:17 – 00:01:03:12
Nathan Crane
And it was called Safari to the Soul. Right. And it was really, you know, the concepts you shared, the practices you gave, and just the, you know, the wealth of of knowledge and experience and wisdom that you bring to the health and wellness space from a mental, emotional, physical, spiritual dimension is profound. And that’s why I want to bring you on the podcast.

00:01:03:12 – 00:01:23:16
Nathan Crane
One, just because I love talking with you, I think we’ve become good friends these last couple of years. And and I appreciate the work you do. And too, I think you just have a wealth of wisdom to share with people, especially from an ancient Eastern, you know, yogic traditional background in training, which I think is incredibly valuable for people to to know more about.

00:01:23:16 – 00:01:27:02
Nathan Crane
So excited to get into that with you today.

00:01:28:08 – 00:01:29:09
Stacy McCarty
Yeah, me too.

00:01:29:24 – 00:01:30:06
Nathan Crane
What.

00:01:30:19 – 00:01:31:22
Stacy McCarty
If anything?

00:01:32:05 – 00:02:00:15
Nathan Crane
Yeah. What? What? I mean, what really got you into two things? One. Love to hear a little bit more about your back story getting into yoga, but then to, like, share with people some of the things about yoga that most people don’t realize. Some of the ancient teachings of yoga, some of the philosophy side, some of what we think of yoga today is kind of this physical exercise practice here in the West.

00:02:00:16 – 00:02:14:17
Nathan Crane
That’s kind of the experience most people get is like 80 or 90%, you know, exercise ten, 15, 20%, sometimes kind of spiritual, mental, emotional, which traditional yoga actually was the opposite. Right?

00:02:16:02 – 00:02:22:09
Stacy McCarty
Yes. Yeah, completely. So at a young age, I was a plant powered athlete.

00:02:22:17 – 00:02:26:07
Nathan Crane
Nice. Good, good choice of words. I love it.

00:02:27:09 – 00:02:56:24
Stacy McCarty
So I literally I was a swimmer. I began swimming at the age of five and swam through high school, had state records and nationals and all-American, all that stuff, full ride swimming, scholarship to college. And and while I was at college and one day I came out for practice. I went to school in Colorado, grew up in Florida, and I came out of the locker room, indoor pool.

00:02:56:24 – 00:03:32:13
Stacy McCarty
I had my Speedo on my cap, my goggles, ready to get in the pool. And the coach says pool pumps broke. We can’t get in the pool today, so we’re going to do aerobics. And this was I’m going to age myself a little bit. This was in the 1980s, the early 1980s. And so the assistant coach at the time walked in with this giant boombox, a cassette tape put in this music, and literally she starts calling out this stuff like jumping jacks.

00:03:32:17 – 00:03:56:01
Stacy McCarty
And then she started getting fancy knees up and they start to get really fancy grapevine and then add a spin. I had no freaking idea what we’re doing. I’m barefoot in my Speedo, like, What the heck is going on here? And at the end of it, I absolutely loved it. I just loved the whole thing. Not being wet, not having green hair, just the whole thing.

00:03:56:01 – 00:04:19:17
Stacy McCarty
So I afterwards I changed my major to exercise physiology. I was a forestry major, believe it or not. I thought I was going to sit up in nature at the parks and look out at the birds and the trees. And I switched to exercise physiology. And when I graduated, oh, and the swim team used to come to California to a place called La Hoya beautiful, one of the most beautiful places in the world to train.

00:04:19:19 – 00:04:42:24
Stacy McCarty
And so we would we stayed right in La Hoya in the morning. We swim up at the university of San Diego, and then the afternoons we would swim La Hoya Cove, Ocean swim from one side to the other, freezing water. I’m a Florida girl. I was freezing a whole time, but when I showed up in La Hoya, I’m like, This place is spectacular.

00:04:42:24 – 00:05:06:13
Stacy McCarty
I’m going to move here regardless of what I do. So when I graduated, I heard about a friend, had a friend opening a health club, hiring aerobics teachers, and I thought, I’m going packed up my stuff, moved it to La Hoya and and and applied for this job. And when I applied, I had all the credentials I looked like an athlete.

00:05:07:14 – 00:05:28:01
Stacy McCarty
I had, you know, my newly minted exercise physiology degree. And I looked like a good fit the part. So they gave me these classes. But the reality is, is I had never done another class since that one day on the pool deck and I sucked. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t even know like anything about aerobics.

00:05:28:01 – 00:05:51:06
Stacy McCarty
And I had never done a dance class. I didn’t know what was going on. I took my favorite music, which at the time was scam music, which is kind of like reggae type of music. I made up my own cassette tape, didn’t know how to keep a beat, and about two weeks into it, the manager called me into his office and said, Look, we really like you, but we’re going to have to let you go.

00:05:51:11 – 00:06:17:20
Stacy McCarty
And I was totally crushed, realized that I sucked and I was not smart enough to ask, you know, what do I need to do? And he said, you know, you need to get a mentor and you need to figure out if you really enjoy this but what you need to do. So I did that. Long story short, I got better at teaching and I ended up helping to open a health club in in the San Diego area.

00:06:18:02 – 00:06:49:18
Stacy McCarty
Worked my way up from literally a group exercise instructor up to running the program, into a general manager, into a mentally chief operating officer of several health clubs. So my, my background began very much in fitness. And at the time our health clubs were called athletic clubs. They were called frog’s athletic clubs. They were started by a Navy SEAL in our logo was a big strong frog, bulked up frog, and we were really kind of cutting edge at the time.

00:06:49:18 – 00:07:18:13
Stacy McCarty
We this was in 1991 through the nineties, so I was really very immersed in the fitness world. One day I was walking down the street and I saw some people coming out of a yoga studio and back then there wasn’t a lot of yoga studios and this was a very traditional one. It was actually started by the very first American certified in Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga, which is a Vinyasa yoga now is very popular.

00:07:18:13 – 00:07:39:18
Stacy McCarty
It’s kind of the the yoga that we see out there a lot moving of moving with breath, very active. But this was a very traditional one and the people walking out were physically very fit. But there was something else. There was an essence and energy to them that I was I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time, but it was something that I wanted.

00:07:39:18 – 00:08:07:23
Stacy McCarty
So I stayed and I watched the next class and mean I was and they were moving like nothing I’d ever seen, like floating through the air, but basically, like levitating. These were advanced students who’d really dedicated their life to the practice again before all the hype, all the media of yoga, yoga, yoga. And so afterwards I talked to the owner and we ended up I ended up bringing some of the teachers over to the clubs I was running and and I fell in love with it.

00:08:07:23 – 00:08:27:22
Stacy McCarty
I could hardly get anyone in the classes, quite honestly, because no one really knew what yoga was in the early nineties. This is like literally 1992 or so, and the teachers were traditional. They’d started off with a Sanskrit chant, you know, and very traditional. One day Gurnam had another man day. And people are like, What’s going on here?

00:08:27:22 – 00:08:52:08
Stacy McCarty
What is this? This is crazy. And no one would come to class. And then I had one of the teachers do a demonstration and he was well into his forties and he was doing an advanced practice. And I, you know, had these were very big clubs. A lot of people came to it and their walk, watching him in amazement like he is he’s like floating through the air, doing these very advanced postures.

00:08:52:15 – 00:09:29:12
Stacy McCarty
And so people were drawn in by the physicality of the practice, like really wanting to have that kind of balanced body. And so while the intent to bring people in via exercise and this is how I started, this is how many people start really the intent is to help people want to discover something deeper that along the way their body healing from old injuries along the way, the body becoming more balanced, healing from injuries that they’re noticing.

00:09:29:12 – 00:09:56:18
Stacy McCarty
Maybe something’s happening in their mind and they’re becoming maybe a more peaceful person. So this is you know, there’s a good side to it. And there is always you know, there’s never black or white. There’s a good side and maybe a con side. While the intent to make yoga more accessible to more people via exercise, it really marginalizes it to the point where it barely taps yoga’s true intent.

00:09:57:03 – 00:10:28:18
Stacy McCarty
And so now, you know, we fast forward into, you know, the early 2020s and yoga is barely recognizable in most places where they go. It has really been marginalized to the point where we we barely even know it’s yoga anymore. It’s a glorified Eastern calisthenics class. And so for my teaching, a lot of my teaching is to welcome everybody to the practice, but also to plant the seeds of intention, to want to go deeper.

00:10:29:04 – 00:10:54:09
Stacy McCarty
And and that’s to help everybody wants to feel whole. I think if you ask most people what they really are looking for is to feel like a whole person, to feel balanced in the body, to have a an awakened, calm is of the mind, not all the anxiety and all the fluctuating thoughts and emotions that we have. And to feel a deeper connection to their inner self, their inner well-being.

00:10:54:09 – 00:10:59:20
Stacy McCarty
And I think most of us are really looking to cultivate that whole person. And that’s what yoga can really do.

00:11:01:01 – 00:11:30:04
Nathan Crane
Yeah. I mean, you are a I mean, a true master yoga trainer and teacher. I mean, you were part of helping create the first college accredited yoga teacher training programs. Right. I mean, you’ve been at the helm of this for many, many, many years. And so you’ve kind of seen it all and you’ve experienced and, you know, probably spent many, many, many thousands and thousands of hours teaching people as well as teaching other teachers.

00:11:30:04 – 00:11:31:15
Nathan Crane
Am I right?

00:11:31:15 – 00:11:35:00
Stacy McCarty
Yes. You have trained thousands and thousands of teachers. Yeah.

00:11:35:06 – 00:11:55:18
Nathan Crane
Yeah. And so you’re coming from it from that perspective of having, you know, a significant amount of experience and so two things. One is, like you said, yoga is true in ten. If you had to boil it down into one sentence or even one word, you know, what is yoga’s original or yoga’s true intent?

00:11:57:07 – 00:12:19:20
Stacy McCarty
Well, the original intent is and I use this kind of to help people feel a little more welcome. But and I’ve said this before, that a lot of people think yoga is about touching their toes because that’s the way they come to the practice. But yoga’s about touching your soul. It’s learning to be still. Find that stillness within through all the chaos of our lives.

00:12:19:20 – 00:12:40:11
Stacy McCarty
And when we connect to, again, that deepest part of our inner self, this is where we find lasting peace. So, I mean, there’s again, if we go through ancient texts, I can go many layers deep of through the eight limbs of yoga, which tell us different ways. You know, we start with the first two limbs. How are we good people out in the world?

00:12:40:11 – 00:13:02:17
Stacy McCarty
You know, are we kind are we, you know, not stealing? Are we not hoarding and greedy? There’s a whole there’s five of those there’s five jammers that need jammers that are how are we treating ourselves? Are we clean body of mine? Are we content? Are we doing our best in the world to make the world a better place?

00:13:02:17 – 00:13:41:22
Stacy McCarty
So there’s five of those, and then there’s the physical body of the practice, then there’s the breath of the, you know, our we breathing to extend our life and bring clarity and vitality to the mind. And then the next limb is something we call out, Daria, how are we withdrawing our senses from the bombardment of external stimuli? All the media, the pings, the rings, the notifications that are telling us how to be, what to do, all of that noise outside of ourselves, can we let that go and come into a deeper sense, which is the next limb, the sixth limb, which is something called diorama, a deep focus and concentration.

00:13:42:09 – 00:14:07:13
Stacy McCarty
Our minds are very distracted. In fact, research shows that our minds wander about every 8 to 11 seconds, constantly wandering the mind. And so can we come in to a deeper sense of focus and concentration, where we are training the mind and the practice of yoga helps us do that, focus and concentrate our mind to the point that the focus and concentration becomes unbroken.

00:14:07:20 – 00:14:40:24
Stacy McCarty
And at the point, the focus and concentration becomes unbroken, then it turns into the state of meditation. And meditation is called Diana on the eight limbed path. And when the meditation then becomes unbroken, and typically the meditation is on God, it’s on a universal source, you know, you can personify the focus however you want. You know, you can call it higher consciousness, you can call it universal source, you can call it God, you can call it whatever you want to personify it.

00:14:40:24 – 00:15:06:01
Stacy McCarty
But your focus is on that, the meditation is on that, and when it becomes unbroken, it folds into the eighth limb, which is something called samadhi. And samadhi is the eighth limb. And this is it’s something it’s the indescribable. It’s it’s like swimming in a sea of grace, you know, where you feel connected to all things everywhere. And this is that sense of one oneness of unity.

00:15:06:07 – 00:15:34:05
Stacy McCarty
And that is truly the the path of the yogi. And most yogis are really focused on those three in the three last lines, six, seven and eight. The focus and concentration, the meditation, and then this oneness, this samadhi. And so the other ones before that, though, give us the beautiful blueprint on how to get there. And Patanjali’s Yoga Studios, which is an ancient text.

00:15:34:17 – 00:15:59:15
Stacy McCarty
Much of what I teach is yoga philosophy, as well as the physical body. But the very first yoga sutra is very simple until a new source. And now we begin the exploration of yoga. It’s that simple. And then the second one, which is very profound, yogis 2 to 1 point to yoga. It’s a pretty narrow to hot yoga ceases the flexion patience of the mind.

00:16:00:00 – 00:16:28:16
Stacy McCarty
So what is yoga? It’s the liberation of your mind. And we get so stuck on the body. And look, the body is a beautiful thing and it’s such a beautiful vehicle to train us because we go into these these yoga poses, which are called asanas. They’re there to bring to the surface all our discomforts, like all of our like, oh, the first time you come to class, you’re like, Oh, the back of my legs, the so or the hamstrings.

00:16:28:16 – 00:16:46:15
Stacy McCarty
Oh, my hips are totally locked up. Oh, my God. You know, I’ve got so much stress in my neck and shoulders. And so these poses bring it all to the surface and you start noticing. And then as you practice more and more, you start noticing, oh my gosh, I notice that when I eat really crappy, I’m eating all this processed food.

00:16:46:15 – 00:17:14:10
Stacy McCarty
I’m eating about the sugar, I’m eating really crappy when I get on my mat. Oh, my God, I feel stiff and gross. And now you’re changing your diet. And then all of a sudden yoga starts to penetrate all the areas of your life through this practice of moving your body. Because, quite honestly, you know, the body is such it is such a beautiful vehicle to teach us all of these other lessons of working with the mind.

00:17:16:00 – 00:17:34:11
Nathan Crane
So would you say I think the simplest answer I just heard you say, which was beautiful, was yoga is liberation of your mind. I mean, the meaning of yoga is you is union, right? Yoga means union now union between union between mind, body, spirit.

00:17:36:00 – 00:18:02:05
Stacy McCarty
You could say that using mind, body spirit, you can even peel away what does mind body spirit mean and a little deeper level but actually it’s union with again with the divine, with source, with oneness. So one of the beautiful things that yoga does is it doesn’t it’s not religion, it’s not telling you that you have to follow some religion.

00:18:02:05 – 00:18:37:04
Stacy McCarty
If yoga were a religion to be a religion of one, it’s you. And the exploration of yourself. So this is the exploration of you connecting to yourself. So what it does do? Is it yoga really encompasses what maybe a lot of religions have without the dogma. So what I mean by that, and this might be going a little deep for a lot of people, but if we look at all the different religions out in the world, they usually have four similar components.

00:18:37:04 – 00:19:04:10
Stacy McCarty
One is a sense of oneness that we are in a benevolent universe, that the that we are connected in some way. Most religions have that, and this is more spirituality. So yoga is not a religion, but it is a spiritual practice. So there’s a sense of oneness. This connection, this this feeling that we are in a beautiful, benevolent universe, that we are.

00:19:04:10 – 00:19:24:03
Stacy McCarty
And again, the personification of what you call it is you personally. I’m not here to say anyone should connect to anything. Call it nature, call it whatever you want. But it is that if I use the word God, it’s like if we are a child of God, we’re a child of this benevolent universe. It’s here it is. Take care of us.

00:19:24:03 – 00:19:46:20
Stacy McCarty
The support is to help us grow, to help us become better. And so there is this sense of oneness. So that’s one thing. The next thing is that in the spiritual practice, self-actualized zation is an important part of that. In most religions, self-actualization becoming a better person is part of it. So self-actualization is really that you are here.

00:19:46:20 – 00:20:07:05
Stacy McCarty
You were born to figure out what your unique talents are and and and use those unique talents to the highest degree that you can to make the world a better place. And probably most people on this podcast have heard that saying that the two most important days of your life are the day you were born and the day you figure out why.

00:20:07:10 – 00:20:35:00
Stacy McCarty
Well, this is self-actualization, using whatever your unique talents are for however you’re on this earth, at the at your highest vision, and to make the world a better place, that’s self-actualization. So you have oneness, you have self-actualization. You also most religions and spirituality have a sense of service. Are you contributing during your time here on Earth? Are you in yoga?

00:20:35:00 – 00:21:00:23
Stacy McCarty
We call it savior or selfless service. Are you doing something to contribute to the world, into others, to make it better? And this is service in the world. So that would be three. And then the fourth one would really be inner peace. You know, that a spiritual path and most religions have this sense of discovering something deep within yourself and finding lasting peace.

00:21:01:13 – 00:21:30:08
Stacy McCarty
And so yoga’s not saying you need to follow a dogmatic religion in any way. It supports all religions if you are following a religious path, is supports all of it, and if you’re not, it also supports it. And it’s saying that, you know, a spiritual path is one. It’s you and your connection, you finding oneness with with the whole universe, you actualizing your self, becoming the best version of you that you can become.

00:21:30:14 – 00:21:44:10
Stacy McCarty
You being service in the world, make the world a better place, and you finding lasting peace. And if yoga brings you those things and it has a beautiful blueprint to do that, then maybe that’s a path for you.

00:21:45:14 – 00:22:14:02
Nathan Crane
Yeah, that’s beautiful. Now, I do want to go a little deeper into the history of yoga and the religious aspect, because correct me if I’m wrong, but yoga was originally written about in the Vedas, right? Which is the ancient texts of Hinduism, which go back somewhere between they’ve been dated somewhere between 515 hundred BCE, so somewhere around 3000 plus years ago.

00:22:14:13 – 00:22:24:02
Nathan Crane
Right now, I know that there are scholars of people who believe they’re much older than that, you know, 7000 plus years. But but that’s kind of roughly, I think, what the consensus.

00:22:24:02 – 00:22:51:17
Stacy McCarty
Is for the Vedas. So the Vedas. So yoga was originally, you know, before things were written down and stuff, they were just passed down through song, through poem, through chanting from teacher to student. I mean, they are very, very ancient before they were written down. And when you do go into history, yeah, there was a lot of things happening at once throughout the world.

00:22:51:17 – 00:23:19:05
Stacy McCarty
And so yeah, there is there is definitely different paths of yoga. So when we go back through history, you know, the main parts of yoga were either intellectual that you were studying the scriptures or you’re studying all these ancient texts you were following that path of intellect. There was also bhakti yoga where you just felt a sense of something bigger than yourself.

00:23:19:05 – 00:23:53:17
Stacy McCarty
And it was a devotional practice. There was so yojana bhakti. And then you had another, another path of of just being of service, you know. And if you looked at that from modern time, it would be someone like a Mother Teresa. But there were yogis who were just on the path of being of service. So those were kind of more the traditional paths of yoga without all of the extraneous things of of when we look at the history and like everything, things evolved.

00:23:53:17 – 00:24:15:02
Stacy McCarty
They’re supposed to evolve. I mean, there could if you look back at it, I mean, yoga has again, like anything there. You know, I always say there is no right, no wrong, no black or white. There is always two sides of everything. Right. And so yoga, if you look back at it. Yeah. Was there sexism in it or you know, a long time women couldn’t practice yoga.

00:24:15:11 – 00:24:22:22
Stacy McCarty
So there are there are things probably all the past that when we look at it.

00:24:23:03 – 00:24:27:12
Nathan Crane
When was that time frame? You know, when was that time frame? You know, I never heard that.

00:24:27:13 – 00:24:52:09
Stacy McCarty
Well, the Vedic period is really where yoga kind of started. That was kind of the beginning of it. And so starting at that point. So the Vedas is really the beginning of yoga, you know, and then you have the Vedas and, you know, the is charged, the Patanjali’s Yoga sutures, yet the Bhagavad Gita. So you’re looking at, you know, through these all these different lessons of yoga and then you come up to where we are today and they go.

00:24:52:09 – 00:24:57:24
Nathan Crane
Back so backwards. Yeah, they just clarify. Back in the beginning it was only for men or that came later.

00:24:59:24 – 00:25:41:09
Stacy McCarty
Beginning it was things were, you know, things throughout it. From my understanding, it was pretty much only for men. And up until, you know, even in modern times, we even come up to modern time. And by modern time, I mean, we’re talking about the, you know, the the 1900s and on some of the more pronounced modern day yogis, because Krishna Macharia, who was Christian Macharia, was really one of the yogis who started bringing yoga out, taught to the to the west, from the east.

00:25:41:15 – 00:26:05:18
Stacy McCarty
And even with him, the first woman to ever practice him was a woman named Indra Debbie. And this was in the early 1900s. And she really had to beg to be able to practice yoga with him and learn all of this. So, you know, it’s it’s ironic and this is why I say good or bad, who knows what anything is in until the end.

00:26:06:18 – 00:26:27:22
Stacy McCarty
But look at yoga now. Here’s Indoor Debbie just being able to practice yoga the early 1900s with, you know, some of the great yoga yoga masters of that time that were studying under Christian imagery and look at yoga today. And yoga, when you go into a yoga studio, it’s predominantly women.

00:26:28:20 – 00:26:31:16
Nathan Crane
Right? Well, it’s like it’s like the opposite. Yeah.

00:26:32:13 – 00:26:36:16
Stacy McCarty
Exactly. So is it irony or not? You know, and so so.

00:26:36:20 – 00:26:49:20
Nathan Crane
It just goes to show you it just goes to show you that, you know, how enlightened we think some of our ancestors were. You know, they still might have been missing some deeper components of enlightenment, you know?

00:26:50:00 – 00:26:50:24
Stacy McCarty
Yes.

00:26:50:24 – 00:27:32:15
Nathan Crane
Because this practice does help you connect to compassion, to love, to inner peace, to awareness, to deeper spirituality. But yet there’s still the ego there. There’s still, you know, men who want power and control. And, you know, women can do in that kind of stuff. Like, we still find that even I think it’s just I think it’s an important point not to judge or blame anybody on that, but to say, look, that’s part of the human condition that we’re all those who are focused on a spiritual path are all trying to transcend above, transcend above that egoic self that makes us think that any one of us is better than anybody else.

00:27:33:00 – 00:27:58:13
Stacy McCarty
Right? That’s right. And and I think we’ve done that. I think yoga is meant to evolve. It’s supposed to go through this phase. I mean, that’s this is all the evolution of everything, right? Because if you can you can look back at anything and pick it apart. We weren’t there. But this is all the evolution and and and yoga is supposed to be this personal practice with you.

00:27:58:13 – 00:28:02:11
Stacy McCarty
And whatever your your true belief is, wherever you want to go with it.

00:28:02:14 – 00:28:23:03
Nathan Crane
Well, look at the time the time frames. Interesting, too. So like this kind of interesting thought experiment. Right. So let’s go back to you know, around that time and you said and this is true for for Buddhism as well, that most of those teachings were passed down verbally for many, many years until they were ever written down by somebody.

00:28:23:03 – 00:28:50:06
Nathan Crane
It was true even of the Bible. Like people don’t realize that people thought Jesus was teaching. And then all of a sudden, you know, he’s he’s he’s killed and his disciples, you know, write everything down, know that they didn’t write anything down until decades later. Number one, we know that through the historical texts and historical work that’s been done, but same kind of thing where these teachings were passed down.

00:28:50:06 – 00:29:29:07
Nathan Crane
And look at the time frame like you also had a similar kind of monarchy in you know, the Roman Catholic Times. You had the, you know, the burning of all the witches, which was really just any women who didn’t agree with what the church was telling you at that time. They just burned them as witches. Millions of innocent women got burned as witches under the religious pretext right of life, you know, for the betterment of humanity through that through our spiritual beliefs, you know, under the guise of God and and the Bible, if you will.

00:29:29:24 – 00:29:50:00
Nathan Crane
And so, you know, that kind of group that together that hundreds of years at that time there was definitely, you know, people, men who were wanting to be in power and control. So who’s to say that the original teachings weren’t open to women, you know, way before they were written down? Maybe people who were writing them down were men and girls.

00:29:50:00 – 00:29:59:13
Nathan Crane
You know what? I kind of think this is just for us as have a men’s group, you know, and I’m not bashing on men. I’m a man. I it’s I’m just like.

00:29:59:13 – 00:30:27:12
Stacy McCarty
You know, beautiful point, Nathan, because how much is lost in translation and self-serving in some way? And, you know, when it when it comes to it, you know, and I and I do think spiritual practice and religion are two different things. Religion practiced by bad people does bad things. Religion practiced by good people does good things. It’s like it’s like so many things.

00:30:27:12 – 00:30:48:13
Stacy McCarty
It’s like the same thing with wealth, wealth, practice. We are spending we’re bad people does bad things in wealth with, you know, giving from good people does good things. So I think we really have to take a look at that. And I think your point is really, really interesting of how much really was by ego and lost in translation.

00:30:48:13 – 00:31:13:18
Stacy McCarty
And still to this day still to this day, it’s it’s happening where, you know, anyone who becomes in a position of power, whether it’s in yoga or a lot of other things, if the character isn’t there, then lines get crossed. And then that’s why it’s really your spiritual practice should be a practice of one with it.

00:31:14:12 – 00:31:41:00
Nathan Crane
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree. And I think, you know, and I have this conversation with devout Christians quite often because, you know, if you read the Bible, it’s clear to somebody like myself who does not believe every single word in the Bible is the direct translation from God. You know, like there are so many texts in the Bible that when you read it, you’re like, Oh yeah, some arrogant man wrote that for sure.

00:31:41:00 – 00:31:58:09
Nathan Crane
And, you know, so that’s not what I would imagine God would be saying in the Bible. You know, it talks about, you know, it’s okay to have slaves treated slaves nice. But like like that wouldn’t you know, God’s going to say, yeah, it’s okay that slaves and yet we’re also supposed to be equal human beings like. I don’t think so.

00:31:58:09 – 00:32:19:13
Nathan Crane
You know, this is my perspective. And but when you start to separate yourself from these ancient texts and go, okay, there absolutely is deep spirituality here. There’s wisdom here. There’s there’s love and compassion and guidance and here that we can extract from and utilize in our own lives to have a deeper connection with God, with the universe, with spirit.

00:32:19:23 – 00:32:42:08
Nathan Crane
And there is probably ego here, you know, texts written by man that have been changed and updated to to serve their own selfish needs and their own egoic levels of control and desire and power and greed. And you see that and pick it on the Bible for a little bit, because, you know, I’ve I’ve researched the history of it quite a bit.

00:32:42:08 – 00:33:09:18
Nathan Crane
You see that when many of the texts, ancient texts were left out of the Bible intentionally and there was, you know, texts found, obviously that we know about in the caves of Qumran, that, you know, many of these texts were left out of the Bible. And if they were in it, they would give a totally different meaning to how we perceive that particular religion and bring in so much more depth of love and compassion and wisdom.

00:33:10:19 – 00:33:38:06
Nathan Crane
You know, the ancient gospel of the ancient gospel of Thomas, I believe, was a fantastic one. There was left out. Many of these texts were left out intentionally. And so you know, you know, that’s that’s by men in power and control trying to control people. Now, if you tell a devout Christian that they’re not going to be open to it or they’re going to deny it or or not be interested in that information in most cases.

00:33:38:06 – 00:34:06:21
Nathan Crane
But I think that’s true in most religions that we see Hinduism, Islam, you know, at the essence, as you just said, the essence generally is love, compassion, kindness, oneness. And and then it’s people who often take that and manipulate it for the gain of themselves over true love and compassion for others. And so I think it does come up to each one of us to go, okay, what’s good from this?

00:34:06:21 – 00:34:12:17
Nathan Crane
And let’s utilize the good and what seems maybe not so good and maybe we don’t do that thing.

00:34:12:17 – 00:34:38:09
Stacy McCarty
You know, I think is, you know, I’m a I’m a I, I think everybody has their own self responsibility. I’m big on, you know, you need to choose whatever whichever path you’re taking, if you’re going on a spiritual path that you take self-responsibility for which way you want to go with it. I mean, I’m not here to say that any I can only say what’s worked for me.

00:34:38:09 – 00:35:03:24
Stacy McCarty
And I think, you know, we have to just decide this is the exploration of the self through the self, which is the practice of yoga, the journey to the self through the self. And and it’s got some beautiful practices that help us get there, but ultimately it is up to us. We have to take self responsibility for being the creators of what we want and what we believe, and we can not just hand it off.

00:35:03:24 – 00:35:29:01
Stacy McCarty
Spirituality is something that cannot be passed down, like religion is sometimes passed down from parent to child to parent to child. Spirituality can’t be passed down. It’s not something you can check off your list that you’ve done. Spirituality has to be discovered by yourself, through your self, through your exploration. So this is where I differentiate quite a bit from religion.

00:35:29:01 – 00:35:58:12
Stacy McCarty
Look, I grew up my, you know, in the Presbyterian Church. I went to an Episcopal school from seventh to 12th grade. You know, I really didn’t it didn’t connect to me at all. I tried and I was this was trying to be handed down to me, but it didn’t connect. And it truly wasn’t until I went on this journey of that, I started to connect with my inner self and find this sense of something bigger.

00:35:58:13 – 00:36:19:09
Stacy McCarty
You know, this practice, awareness of consciousness and unconditional love that was developing through the study of yoga that I wasn’t finding by something being passed down to me. So that to me is, is the biggest, biggest difference. And, you know, we need to take self responsibility to be the creator of our own spiritual path.

00:36:19:16 – 00:36:29:12
Nathan Crane
Mm hmm. I love that. Earlier, you talked quite a bit about the eight limbs of yoga. Can you just list all eight of those briefly?

00:36:29:12 – 00:36:59:16
Stacy McCarty
Okay. Here we go. All right. So not kind of try to keep this simple an explanation for everyone, because this gives us a it’s from Patanjali yoga sutras. And the yoga sutures are these beautiful little gems of wisdom, again, that have been passed down in the eight lin so often means eight in Sanskrit, anga means limbs. So this is an eight limbed path that and all it is is it’s it’s a nice little blueprint, a beautiful blueprint that makes total sense.

00:36:59:16 – 00:37:20:17
Stacy McCarty
That’s lasted for thousands of years to help us on the spiritual path, because on our own we may get lost. So the first thing is something called the Mamas and the Mamas are there’s five of them. Since this is really how do we conduct ourselves out in the world? The first one is something called ahimsa, which means kindness.

00:37:20:17 – 00:37:42:04
Stacy McCarty
This is this this is the science of kindness, of compassion for all living things. So this is the first and foremost. And even if you think of physicians, you know, they’re number one. Their number one tenet is really do no harm. And it’s similar to this be kind in the world to all living things, to all sentient beings.

00:37:42:04 – 00:38:03:23
Stacy McCarty
So kindness, compassion, this is the very first one out in the world. The second one, something called Satya, which means truthfulness. Be honest, you know, keep your word. This next one is a stay and this is non stealing. So don’t take things that don’t belong to you. The next one is something called a party. GA Aha. And a party.

00:38:03:23 – 00:38:31:22
Stacy McCarty
Abraham means not hoarding, not living a life of greed, of accumulating more than you need. And then the fifth one is something called barometer. Yeah. And barometer. Yeah, it, it’s, it’s been kind of diluted to mean moderation and everything. But in we go back to breaking it down a little bit more, it means sexual restraint. How can I put this simply not harvesting your seed where you don’t really need.

00:38:32:04 – 00:38:54:24
Stacy McCarty
So basically what it’s saying is don’t spread your seed all over with something may not be able to take care of in that garden. So moderation and be be modest. And so these five things, if you think about them, you’re going to sleep pretty good at night. If you’re not doing that, you’re not going to be having a bunch of baggage because you’re not you’re not cruel, you’re not lying, you’re not stealing.

00:38:54:24 – 00:39:02:22
Stacy McCarty
You know, you’re not doing things that are going to weigh heavy on you. So that’s the very first one, being good person out in the world.

00:39:03:05 – 00:39:07:06
Nathan Crane
So that’s just the first. That’s just the first. The limb of yoga that.

00:39:08:08 – 00:39:22:07
Stacy McCarty
Has five principles of it. And the first thing it’s asking you has nothing to do with can you put you know, can you, you know get your heels on the ground in a downward dog has nothing to do with that. It’s just are you a good person out in the world?

00:39:22:13 – 00:39:30:18
Nathan Crane
I’m not you’re not a good person if you can’t balance, you know, on your head in yoga, seriously, you’re just compelled, number one, already.

00:39:31:17 – 00:39:52:16
Stacy McCarty
And you know, what’s so funny is people will come to a yoga class. You know, the Austin is the postures and they will start judging people. Like if someone can do a headstand or a handstand or some yoga pose a dance, hot yoga pose, that somehow they’re a better person, which is the craziest thing. Like, Oh, they must be a really good person in the world.

00:39:52:16 – 00:39:56:13
Stacy McCarty
Look at know they had 20 years gymnastics training.

00:39:57:22 – 00:40:05:07
Nathan Crane
Right. And somehow, somehow it’s going to make you more connected to God. You know, if you have your head, right.

00:40:05:10 – 00:40:11:10
Stacy McCarty
So it’s not it’s the journey to get there of learning about yourself. That’s where the poses come in.

00:40:11:19 – 00:40:37:02
Nathan Crane
I love I love that. I want to actually. I want I’m glad you brought it back up. I wanted to I wanted to touch back on that, because it is very often through the struggle in our physical life, through the challenges that we experi, it’s daily, monthly, yearly, small and big challenges that we do discover the most about ourselves, that we do discover deeper reservoirs of wisdom and potential within ourselves.

00:40:37:08 – 00:40:59:13
Nathan Crane
Going through an injury as an athlete can teach you a lot about yourself, about patience, about determination, about willpower, about focus, about self-love, right? Or the loss of a loved one or the loss of a business or business failure. All of these challenges in life or physical challenge, disease. You know, I’ve been working with cancer patients for over a decade.

00:40:59:22 – 00:41:20:19
Nathan Crane
And the ones who generally survive many, many years and thrive, the people who I call cancer conquerors, you know, they looked at cancer. It wasn’t always right away. It happened over months and years. But they began to look at cancer as a wake up call, as an opportunity, rather than something that’s happening to me, as something that happened for me.

00:41:21:01 – 00:41:44:13
Nathan Crane
And I learned from this diagnosis to take better care of myself, to get the toxins out of my life, to heal mentally, emotionally, to heal trauma, right, to love others, to spend more time with my family, to quit that terrible job that was sucking my soul out of my body and start doing something I love doing all those things that people know in their hearts that they want and are often too afraid to do.

00:41:45:07 – 00:42:04:23
Nathan Crane
The people who look at cancer as a wake up call and an opportunity often do significantly better than those who don’t, who take it on. As this has God punishing me or has happened to me, my life, everything’s over. You know, it’s a it’s a massive change of mindset that shifts everything, right?

00:42:06:12 – 00:42:28:11
Stacy McCarty
Yeah. Yeah. And if and if you have that perspective, that whatever’s happening in your life is there to help you grow, to get to the other place, to help you again self-actualize that so so you know karma a lot of people talk about karma and they have, you know, something bad goes wrong. They blame it on karma. Oh, that person had bad karma.

00:42:28:11 – 00:42:53:03
Stacy McCarty
When I look at karma is this way, it’s a speedbump. So when something happens, it’s a little bump telling you, Hey, you’re going in the wrong direction, slow down, you need to go in this direction. It’s to help you move into that, correct direction that you were meant to go. And so when when the the the big health challenge comes when, you know, the relationship break up comes when there’s a financial hardship.

00:42:53:03 – 00:43:13:17
Stacy McCarty
All of these things, if you can look at it, hey, it’s here to wake me up. I’ve been sleeping through this and it’s here to wake me up. I’ll give you a sample. In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, a few days before Christmas, I was driving. I was riding my electric bike downhill. The front wheel fell off.

00:43:13:23 – 00:43:33:03
Stacy McCarty
I went over the handlebars. I don’t remember anything. I woke up in trauma care and my face was super jacked up. I mean, I had tar and asphalt embedded down to the bone and sunglasses on. Fortunately, I had a helmet, so that was good. But then it cut like right up to my eye. Things were really jacked up.

00:43:33:03 – 00:43:54:24
Stacy McCarty
I woke up in trauma care, the height of the pandemic. Everything’s chaos and the all I remember is the lady stitching me up. I heard her say to the doctor, ask her, Have you ever done this before? And she said, no, because they were pulling in people from all over. And I woke up at that time, I said, Hey, is that my face?

00:43:55:05 – 00:44:12:10
Stacy McCarty
Don’t you think maybe we should ask, what if we stuff it? That’s the first thing I remember. But long story short, you know, I had a lot of just I looked a little bit like Mike Tyson, if you know the boxer. Mike the yeah, the boxer. Mike Tyson had all the the tattoos all over his face. My face kind of looked like that.

00:44:13:01 – 00:44:46:23
Stacy McCarty
And I developed this big thing on my I called it you lazy. I looked like a giant wart and really ugly. Plus all this at that time, I got a notification that I was being awarded the Ideal World Health and Fitness Instructor of the Year. Very big award in our industry for health and fitness professionals. And I going to have to give a big talk acceptance to like thousands of people and my face is all jacked up.

00:44:46:23 – 00:45:11:19
Stacy McCarty
I got this giant thing on my eye and I was just I was a mess. But the reason I realized I had this thing on my eye that was coming up is because I was looking through the world since my accident through angry eyes. And what do I mean by that? I live I live in San Diego, and I had this beautiful garden and I used to walk through the garden and look at the flowers and see how beautiful they are.

00:45:11:19 – 00:45:31:14
Stacy McCarty
And just like all the beauty around. And after my accident, I’d walk through and I’d see, Oh, that plant is dead. Oh, that’s dying. Remove. And all I was seeing is what was wrong. I could not see what was right. And so I realized the body becomes the mind. The mind becomes the body. This is the mind body connection.

00:45:31:21 – 00:45:52:15
Stacy McCarty
And I realized because of my crap thoughts of all this negativity since my accident, I saw the world through angry eyes. And so I developed this big, ugly thing on my eye. And so I saw Stacy. You teach the stuff, you know what to do. So I created a mantra and the mantra is a mind vehicle. It’s helping your mind retrain.

00:45:52:21 – 00:46:23:09
Stacy McCarty
And the mantra was, I see everyone in everything with abundant joy and unconditional love, including myself, my health, and my healing. And I now, every time I caught myself with that negative thought, I would say that mantra. I see everyone in everything with abundant joy and unconditional love, including myself, my health, and my healing. Sometimes I’d have to do that 40 to 50 times a day, catching those constant and negative thoughts as a result of my trauma.

00:46:23:23 – 00:46:55:20
Stacy McCarty
And guess what happened? My too lazy and people never came back. They’re notorious for coming back. And so the reality is, is whatever is happening, your mind is. And when we talk about the liberation, the mind, the mind’s the most powerful thing. And so if we have all this crap going on in our mind, those same redundant, recycled, unnecessary thoughts and emotions that are contribute all this stress, it’s going to need somewhere to go and it’s going to manifest somewhere in the physical and show up.

00:46:56:12 – 00:47:23:13
Stacy McCarty
And so we really to stand guard to the doorway of our mind and decide what are we letting in, what are we thinking if we want to change things in the body and this is the body mind connection and yoga does such a beautiful job of helping us do that, of helping us notice when we’re beating ourselves up, we’re in a really challenging us in our yoga pose and noticing, oh, my God, you know, my shoulders are way up here.

00:47:23:13 – 00:47:41:21
Stacy McCarty
I’m all stressed up. Oh, can you relax your shoulders down? Can you broaden the collarbones? Can instead of slumping and slouching, can you? It starts to bring all this to awareness. So you start to shift. And now when the body shifts, it feels better. Guess what? So does the mind. Body, body, mind.

00:47:42:01 – 00:48:19:06
Nathan Crane
Well, and really that really that the recognition that we can direct and kind of control how we feel in those moments through our thinking, through our breathing. Right. Literally. I mean, that’s why I do I space is because I can control I can calm down my nervous system when it’s, you know, extremely aggravated, right. Intensity that, you know, an intense yoga position is really pushing sometimes going to be pushing you a little bit to the limit, jump in ice bath or definitely push your nervous system to the limit.

00:48:19:07 – 00:48:46:19
Nathan Crane
Yes. But can you take really deep, relaxing breaths and calm down your nervous system and accept the uncomfortable, you know, and really be with it instead of judging it and trying to change it? And I think that’s obviously one of the beautiful benefits of yoga, you know, mentally and emotionally, not to mention physically or ice baths or anything challenging that you put yourself through a CrossFit workout if you can keep yourself, you know, calm and not not so about it.

00:48:46:19 – 00:48:53:10
Nathan Crane
I think it all has that that benefit. And did you say you crashed your wreck was on your bike was 2020? Was that in 2020?

00:48:53:15 – 00:48:56:03
Stacy McCarty
Yeah, 2020. Right. I know.

00:48:56:04 – 00:49:02:17
Nathan Crane
That’s crazy. I don’t know if you remember, but remember we did an interview like two weeks or something after that happened.

00:49:03:16 – 00:49:04:10
Stacy McCarty
Yeah.

00:49:04:11 – 00:49:06:18
Nathan Crane
Tell me all about it. And you’re like. You’re like, yeah, I got.

00:49:06:18 – 00:49:08:13
Stacy McCarty
This all jacked up.

00:49:09:18 – 00:49:16:03
Nathan Crane
I’m like, You’re fine. You’re beautiful. Don’t worry about it. You’re like, Okay.

00:49:16:03 – 00:49:16:23
Stacy McCarty
Feel be great.

00:49:17:04 – 00:49:21:16
Nathan Crane
Well, I didn’t I didn’t realize I was already four years ago. That’s kinda.

00:49:21:20 – 00:49:50:23
Stacy McCarty
Crazy. Crazy how time flies but you know you said something there when we when you take yourself to the edge and and you just said that with the ice baths. That’s what yoga does. It’s like to the postures. It’s training people in a simple, simple way how to come to their edge. And what is the edge? The edge is really that place where if you go even a little bit further, you’re going to hurt yourself.

00:49:50:23 – 00:50:19:00
Stacy McCarty
If you back off even a little, you’re slacking off. And that’s the edge. And it’s it’s training the mind to know where your edge is, to have that intellect, to know where the edge is. And then when you’re at that edge, can you pause? Can you breathe into it and know and now can you train your mind knowing that just on the other side of all this discomfort, like your breakthrough on the other side of all the uncomfortable lies, your freedom.

00:50:19:11 – 00:50:41:05
Stacy McCarty
And so what you’re doing is now, again, you’re working and you’re training your mind always, oh, I’m here in the sympathetic. I’m all like, Oh, can you calm down? Can you find the stillness in that chaos? Come back into the parasympathetic. Stay in play. Relax, stay here. I’m still working at that edge and know that at the other side of it.

00:50:41:12 – 00:50:48:22
Stacy McCarty
Now you’re going to break through. Now you’re going to find it. So it’s this is this beautiful, very fertile training ground for that.

00:50:49:12 – 00:51:22:15
Nathan Crane
Speaking of forms of yoga, types of yoga, are there specific forms of yoga that you would recommend people experiment with and try and other ones that you recommend or wouldn’t necessarily recommend that people do in terms of like if I were, let’s say, like I’ve tried a bunch of different types of yoga over the years and I and I haven’t done yoga for quite a while, but let’s say I want to get back into yoga, but I’m, I’m, I’m interested the physical benefits side, but I’m just as much, if not more interested in the mental, emotional, spiritual side.

00:51:22:23 – 00:51:29:16
Nathan Crane
Like are there specific forms of yoga that that I would want to look for?

00:51:29:16 – 00:52:08:12
Stacy McCarty
Well, again, it’s a personal journey, but I can give just maybe a little bit of feedback on that based on the Iyer Veda, which is the sister science to yoga. I know vitamins, the science of life and Iovate is it’s really it is a it has everything from surgeons to medical practices. But basically in Iron Veda, there is a beautiful axiom that says opposites cure, which means that if you are too far in one, let’s say you’re you’re too hard, that you need some softness, you’re too soft, you need some hardness, you’re too yin, you need some you need two yang, you need some yin.

00:52:08:12 – 00:52:13:22
Stacy McCarty
So so basically what it’s saying is you have there’s different constitutions for different people.

00:52:14:08 – 00:52:19:01
Nathan Crane
So like you’re saying, I need it. So you’re saying I need to do a lot more yen yoga is what you’re saying?

00:52:19:22 – 00:52:50:04
Stacy McCarty
I kind of. And so if you are like Nathan and you are like CrossFit and go, go, go and kind of type A and like, you know, really going you have all of this kind of spiciness to you. If you’re in balance, you have to. And not only like if you’re imbalanced, you’re okay, but if you’re in balance, you don’t want to go do a, you know, a hot power yoga in a heated room with, you know, hot you’re stimulating all that spiciness, throwing you more out of balance.

00:52:50:17 – 00:53:14:12
Stacy McCarty
So what you might want to do is do a softer type of yoga where you’re softening into it and so that you come back into balance and vice versa. If you tend to be someone who is maybe prefers to not exercise at all, or maybe you just don’t, you you know, your your idea of exercise is drawing a warm bath, popping a Gatorade and calling it a workout.

00:53:14:12 – 00:53:38:16
Stacy McCarty
Well, that may be what you need to do is more of a stronger type of practice to bring you into balance. So so if we look at just even you’re on different days, if you are to run down, maybe you do something soft or if you’re too dull, do something more challenging and more vigorous just to bring yourself back into balance.

00:53:38:22 – 00:53:59:14
Stacy McCarty
So that’s one way to look at it. But then on the flip side, if you take an athlete, a lot of times when you say Yin Nathan, it’s interesting. So then Yin Yoga is a style of yoga where you are really holding a pose for a very long time and you’re letting the fascia, which is like a wet suit on the outside of your muscle, you’re trying to get that to release as well.

00:53:59:21 – 00:54:26:18
Stacy McCarty
For a lot of athletes who are very they’re super strong, but maybe really locked up and wound up to lay there still like that is excruciating. It’s very difficult because the muscles are so wound up, so for them they may need more of what we call a Vinyasa movement to breath, where it’s more a mobility movement. Come on, let’s get the body move into the breath so the body unfolds a little differently.

00:54:26:18 – 00:54:36:12
Stacy McCarty
So again, it’s going to depend on the person. I try not to say that any one thing is right for one person, because it can depend on the day, it can depend on so many factors.

00:54:37:03 – 00:54:53:10
Nathan Crane
Now, is there is there types of yoga? People are more interested in the spiritual side, specifically Kundalini yoga, like are there other forms of yoga that you’d recommend that are much more, much less about the body and more about mental, emotional, spiritual.

00:54:54:12 – 00:55:18:24
Stacy McCarty
Yes. Again, what I would take that back to is the teacher of the yoga, is the teacher are they versed in the more spiritual aspects of yoga? Have they studied the Vedas, the upon the shots patanjali’s yoga, or have they studied the ancient texts? Have they really delve into some of the deeper layers that could they teach a class without any?

00:55:18:24 – 00:55:40:22
Stacy McCarty
Arsenault Without any movement? Could they teach a yoga class on that then? They’re probably going to be a pretty wonderful teacher along if you you want to work through the body first. So, you know, a good yoga class will have an element of all of it. If you’re talking about the physical practice, it will have, it will keep the body safe.

00:55:40:22 – 00:56:01:00
Stacy McCarty
That’s first and foremost because again, most people come to yoga via the body. The body is fertile garden to work with your mind and connect to your spirit. It is just it is such fertile ground for it. So but a good yoga teacher will help you be safe in the body. Open the body. You feel better, better work with the mind.

00:56:01:00 – 00:56:38:22
Stacy McCarty
Help bring in these things that help steady your mind and make you more mindful where you’re paying attention on purpose in the present moment without any judgment, comparison, competitiveness there training the mind so that then you connect to that deeper part of your inner self. And so really it’s it’s not so much the style of yoga, but it’s more the teacher of yoga that can bring in those gems of wisdom for you and in and also understanding meeting people where they’re at, like, who are you talking to and, and can you make it welcoming for them?

00:56:38:22 – 00:56:55:16
Stacy McCarty
So if someone’s coming in there, an athlete, they’ve never done any of this. Let’s feel good in the body and drop those nuggets with them. Oh, man. You know, there’s something that’s happening here. When I leave this yoga class, I have a harmony physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Ah, there’s more to the to this than I thought.

00:56:56:19 – 00:57:08:10
Nathan Crane
Yeah, that makes, that makes perfect sense. So going back to the eight limbs we covered the one which was the five kind of pillars. Yeah. What’s number two?

00:57:09:07 – 00:57:29:17
Stacy McCarty
So number two is something called the knee armors and there’s five pillars with that too as well. So many of these are really. But they’re fascinating. I hope you find this fascinating. So the puzzle is that the neons really start to turn it inwards towards you. And so the first one is something called Satya and this is cleanliness of both your body and your mind.

00:57:30:01 – 00:57:50:19
Stacy McCarty
And so what it’s saying, and I’m going to bring it back to the body because there’s a lot of athletes on here and you know, there’s a lot of people who do love to move the body. So if you even think of coming as you come to a yoga, yoga, asana practice and also in the body movement, we come with a clean body and a clean mind.

00:57:51:03 – 00:58:16:17
Stacy McCarty
So in the traditional practice, you’ve actually showered, you’re clean, you’re not coming in all dirty. And you know, after, you know, of run or something like that with dirty feet and dirty hands and, you know stuffing a bunch of food in your mouth, you come in clean of body ready to present yourself to something bigger than yourself. You come in clean of mind with good thoughts and you stand at the top of your mat ready to practice.

00:58:17:04 – 00:58:19:10
Stacy McCarty
Clean body, clean mind.

00:58:19:11 – 00:58:22:08
Nathan Crane
Why didn’t anybody ever tell me that?

00:58:22:08 – 00:58:23:10
Stacy McCarty
Yeah. You know, I.

00:58:23:10 – 00:58:28:13
Nathan Crane
Don’t let anybody ever tell me that. I mean, I always go in that, you know, Cheetos and Doritos and dirty food.

00:58:28:15 – 00:58:40:11
Stacy McCarty
And I literally have people, like, run in with an In-N-Out Burger. I’d like jump, you know, they came off the beach with tar on their beach ready to go. And I’m like.

00:58:40:11 – 00:58:46:14
Nathan Crane
You’re like, okay, today’s class is about cleanliness. Cleanliness.

00:58:46:14 – 00:59:06:00
Stacy McCarty
I’ve had teachers do that where I’ve had to kind of explain to them, look, you know, this is not how you present yourself if you’re going, you know, so it’s it’s this devotional practice would be a really great step. And this is inner like be clean of body and mind your thoughts and your body go hand in hand.

00:59:06:00 – 00:59:28:12
Stacy McCarty
And then the next one is something called Sentosa, and Sentosa means contentment. Learn to appreciate all that you have and see the perfection and where you’re at. Most people run through life, stressed out, trying to get to the next thing. But can you find a place of contentment? And this really works on your mat again? I bring it back to the body because that’s where people start.

00:59:28:18 – 00:59:49:17
Stacy McCarty
You’re in a yoga pose. Can you appreciate where you’re at? You’re coming in and maybe you’ve got an injury and your your hip or your hamstring or your shoulder or your neck. Can you just appreciate it? Use everything that you have that can work and and treat some love and kindness towards that injury. Don’t quit. Don’t say you can’t do it.

00:59:50:07 – 01:00:13:00
Stacy McCarty
Just use what you have and treat the other part that’s healing with love and kindness. So that you don’t quit. Part of my mission as a yoga teacher and a yoga and wellness professional is to help people practice yoga for a lifetime. Because I know if you practice yoga properly for a lifetime, you’ll have more health and happiness than if you didn’t practice yoga.

01:00:13:05 – 01:00:30:04
Stacy McCarty
And that’s all, I promise. I’m not going to promise is going to heal every injury is going to fix your migraine, your sciatica, none of that. But I will tell you, if you do it properly for a lifetime, you’ll have more health and happiness than if you don’t practice. But so contentment. Santosh And then the next one balance is that contentment.

01:00:30:04 – 01:00:57:24
Stacy McCarty
It’s called two paths or topics and this one is really the zest, the zeal, the disciplined effort of the practice, which means you’re going to have to be pretty devoted and discipline to stay with it. And so we balance that contentment with also working hard on this path of yoga. And so it’s the balance of the two because you’re not going to stay with it if you’re not disciplined and devoted on it.

01:00:58:05 – 01:01:23:07
Stacy McCarty
And if you don’t feel that you’re you’re on this journey towards lasting peace, you won’t stay with it. So discipline and devotion to pause. And then the next one is something we call swathi and Iyanya. And this is really this is the exploration of the self. This is the practice of yoga, the self study. And I can’t think of anything greater to study than yourself to learn the most.

01:01:23:07 – 01:01:49:13
Stacy McCarty
This is the deepest self-development personal growth program that you could ever be on because it’s the study of your self. And so through yoga, sometimes it’s done through chanting, through psalms, to reading spiritual texts, through, you know, journaling through is all about. Can you learn more about yourself through this practice? And then the last, the fifth one of the New York Times is something called Ishwar, a proto dayanand.

01:01:49:14 – 01:02:34:20
Stacy McCarty
This is really the surrender to something bigger than yourself. And again, you can personify that however you want. Your personification of it is what you want. Call it what you want. But you’re you’re you’re believing that during the chaos, during all of the trauma, the tragedy, the tough times of your life when you’re standing there in the divorce, in the health challenge, in the cancer diagnosis, in the financial hardship, in the the lost of a loved one, whatever it is that through all of that noise and crazy going on, can you find an anchor of stillness within yourself?

01:02:35:10 – 01:03:02:13
Stacy McCarty
Can you surrender to something bigger than yourself? Call it what you want, that this is the Ishwar to harness. So these five knee jamas or separate limbs are designed to help you through the journey of the self. Learn more about yourself and you notice these first to say nothing about a yoga pose. There’s nothing there that has talked about a yoga pose which gives us to the third limb with this asana, which are the yoga pose.

01:03:03:00 – 01:03:33:22
Stacy McCarty
And the word asana literally means to sit. Can you take a comfortable seat so the body’s not a distraction. So the Austin is really that this is a practice to generate health so you have better health. It’s not a sport where we’re trying to compete, but it’s literally training the body so that the discomfort that comes in the body, we’re healing it so that you can sit still.

01:03:34:14 – 01:03:58:02
Stacy McCarty
Because once because if you’re trying to sit still and meditate, meditation so challenging for so many people, most people can’t sit still because they’re like, Oh, my shoulder, oh, my back. Oh, this is like there’s all these distractions. So all these Austin shows are designed to help you have more comfort in your body, to regulate your health, to bring greater health to the physical body.

01:03:58:06 – 01:04:30:20
Stacy McCarty
Which leads us into the fourth limb, which is pranayama. Prana is your lifeforce energy. Your Dharma means to extend your life force energy. Typically it’s done through the breath. So we use the breath and the breath is a vehicle that runs through, believe it or not, 72,000 pathways, energy pathways in the body called bodies. So when we’re using the breath, the vehicle is the breath running through all of these energetic pathways through our body.

01:04:30:20 – 01:04:52:02
Stacy McCarty
And when the the pathways are open and free, because we’ve freed this up with the body, is it’s not a distraction. Now we’re bringing more clarity and vitality to the mind. So we’re bringing it up from our kind of our lower consciousness. There’s a Chopra system some of you may have heard of that runs from the deep pelvic floor right up to the crown of the head.

01:04:52:02 – 01:05:05:08
Stacy McCarty
Now we’re pumping up the prana your lifeforce energy. We’re capturing it or regulating it. We’re directing it into higher consciousness. So we’re bringing it up through the vehicle of the breath. A lot of a lot of people.

01:05:05:08 – 01:05:29:22
Nathan Crane
Have become familiar with Breathwork, you know, more recently, obviously, because of Wim Hof and kind of how he’s helped bring Breathwork, he originally learned his breathing practices from his yoga practice, from yoga traditions, and then kind of modified his methods slightly. So it’s, you know, it’s very similar to Breath of Fire, which anyone who’s ever, you know, experienced yoga for many years.

01:05:29:22 – 01:05:52:18
Nathan Crane
I remember 15 years ago doing yoga in Encinitas, California, and doing breath of fire and feeling what that feels like. And and, you know, so that’s is a very, very ancient practice. A lot of people now, their breath works kind of taken off in his breathwork classes and all of that. People probably many people probably don’t realize that breath work originates from yoga.

01:05:52:22 – 01:06:04:23
Nathan Crane
Right. It’s multi-thousand year old practice. And there are many forms of pranayama breathing practices that come from these ancient multi thousand year old yogic traditions.

01:06:05:22 – 01:06:34:23
Stacy McCarty
Well, I’m glad you brought that up, Nathan, because quite honestly, a lot of the things that are happening now in actually with science and science backing up, we’re coming. It’s full circle back to ancient wisdom. So if you look at some of the thought leaders today or people who have maybe taken and taken whatever they’re doing and magnetized it out in the world, someone like Wim Hof with, you know, a specialized breath, he learned it from yoga.

01:06:34:24 – 01:06:58:14
Stacy McCarty
Take someone like Dr. Joe Dispenser who does a lot of work with the mind body connection. He had a yoga studio in San Diego. He came from a yoga background. If you look at a lot of the people, a lot of the meditation folks who are out there, they all came from yoga backgrounds. So yoga has been the ancient science, the foundation of all of this.

01:06:58:20 – 01:07:25:22
Stacy McCarty
But like we talked about at the beginning of this conversation, it’s meant to evolve. It’s meant to evolve without losing. It’s real intense. So this is just all part of the evolution. And now science is catching up. And what’s science is catching up now people are like, Oh, I can it now I can verify it. Right. But it’s what yogis have known for centuries because they’ve known it through the inside.

01:07:26:01 – 01:07:41:14
Stacy McCarty
They didn’t need validation on the outside because they already knew it inside. They’re already living it. But in a modern day world, we need science to validate everything. But science is circling back around. Trust me, to the ancient wisdom, which is really fascinating.

01:07:42:00 – 01:08:10:11
Nathan Crane
Yeah, exactly. I’ve been noticing and talking about that for years, the kind of science I see science today is kind of the language of our modern time. But really, our ancient ancestors already discovered that most of these things thousands of years ago, without the modern tools of science today, science is helpful, it’s useful, it has its place, but it also can be used for bad, also can be used to lead people astray from the truth, also can be lied about.

01:08:10:11 – 01:08:34:24
Nathan Crane
And, you know, I mean, there are top editors of the top scientific journals on record saying over 50% of the published science in this top respected journal. I think it was actually the the top editor of Nature Journal. If I’m not mistaken, said 50% of it is false. Right? So it’s like, yes, modern science is great, it’s useful.

01:08:34:24 – 01:08:54:08
Nathan Crane
I like it. I use it to talk about it all the time. It helps the left, analytical mind, left and right part of the brain. But at the end of the day, you know, if something works, you can feel it. You can sense it. If you practice if you practice yoga, you know, for two, three, four months, you notice a change in your self.

01:08:54:18 – 01:09:12:10
Nathan Crane
You know, if you practice breathwork every day, you know, you notice a change in yourself. If you exercise every day for a few months, you notice a change in yourself. Yeah. You know, science is great for kind of validating these things, but you can validate it for yourself just by doing the thing and seeing the benefit that you experience from it.

01:09:13:09 – 01:09:41:15
Stacy McCarty
Well, it’s, you know, my practice with under the Christian imagery a lineage we talked about that under a teacher called the Tommy Joy is who was the Ashtanga Vinyasa. He was my teacher, but he used to have he spoke very little English, but he used to have a saying that was got very popular called Do Your Practice All is coming because he spoke very little English and basically what he was saying is that it’s through the experience, the practice.

01:09:41:15 – 01:10:02:09
Stacy McCarty
This is experiential, it’s a spiritual practice and it goes back to I was saying about spirituality, it is not something that someone can hand it to you. Someone can hand you. The science behind the pose is the science behind the breath work. The science behind meditation. And all of a sudden you’re like, Yeah, got it. I’m living, you know, that balance, body, awaken, calmness and connect.

01:10:02:09 – 01:10:20:11
Stacy McCarty
It just doesn’t work that way. You have to do it, you have to experience it yourself. And this is where I go back to self-responsibility. It’s, you know, you don’t learn to swim by watching YouTube videos, you have to get in the water. You have to do it. Yeah.

01:10:20:12 – 01:10:24:18
Nathan Crane
Yeah, exactly. All right. Number five, I think we were on.

01:10:25:08 – 01:10:54:19
Stacy McCarty
So five is, is, but we went through these a little bit. I’ll go through and quickly. Garcia Ha. This is again withdrawing the senses away from all the noise outside of yourself so and it’s so interesting because you may find on this journey through a consistent practice that the connection that you find with your inner self is so much more beautiful and fascinating than anything your senses can perceive from the external stimuli.

01:10:54:19 – 01:11:17:22
Stacy McCarty
And this is really the journey, this journey within it’s so beautiful. It’s so fascinating. What’s happening inside of you is truly so much more fascinating, any of that external stimuli that’s bombarding you. So this is the proxy a ha withdraw from all that noise and you know, it is, you know, because the quieter you become, the more you start to hear and the more you start to hear.

01:11:18:03 – 01:11:44:23
Stacy McCarty
Now you start to focus and concentrate, which comes to the sixth limb, which is that now and again your focus and concentration. So you’ll get has a beautiful job. And again, I’m going to bring it back to the body because that’s where people are starting in the yoga Austin is the poses. It is designed for your focus and concentration, not just to balance your body, but every single one of those yoga poses has a specific we call them drifting.

01:11:44:24 – 01:12:14:04
Stacy McCarty
There are nine different ones and every single yoga pose is designed to have a specific gaze or specific Christy vocal. A focal point is done for a couple of reasons. Physiologically, it keeps your body in alignment. Psychologically, mentally, it’s to keep you from your wandering eyes. Most of our energy is given away by looking around, darting around, looking at everything we’re giving, all our energy away.

01:12:14:16 – 01:12:42:24
Stacy McCarty
And during the Austin practice, during the yoga practice, it’s designed to increase your prana, your life force energy. Look, I don’t really believe in age. Like age is not something that’s important to me. Energy is. So I don’t care what someone’s ages. I care what is their energy. It’s way more important. So the asana practice is designed to cultivate and regulate more lifeforce energy, more prana, which she.

01:12:42:24 – 01:13:10:17
Stacy McCarty
So we have a specific gaze so that we’re not looking around. We don’t traditionally in a yoga practice, have a bunch of mirrors right in front of us. Oh, am I doing it just right? Do look good. Oh, look at that person. They’re really good. Wow. Now I’m all in judging, comparison, comparing, competing with someone rather than tuning into myself my eyes are darting all over, giving away my energy rather than focusing my energy, training my mind to concentrate in one spot.

01:13:10:17 – 01:13:32:02
Stacy McCarty
So then so so through the US in a practice, it’s, it’s just that fertile garden again for all of these eight limbs. It will teach all of them within us in a practice that’s why I say the, the, the body of this is very important on the spiritual path because it’s giving us tools to train the mind. So now my mind’s in one place.

01:13:32:06 – 01:13:58:05
Stacy McCarty
While my mind’s in one place I’m totally focused and concentrated. I notice when I’m looking away I notice when, oh, I’m judging, I’m comparing Oh, stop, cancel that come back, mind wanders Notice the mind wandering mind come back to my focus and concentration without judgment. Now, when I’m doing that, now I’m increasing the tensile strength of my mind to be able to focus and concentrate.

01:13:58:05 – 01:14:30:03
Stacy McCarty
And then when I can do that without it being unbroken, it leads me into the seventh limb, which is Diana, that meditative state. Now, in the state of meditation where I’m into the unknown now, and when the meditation now becomes unbroken, then it turns into somebody as somebody is the eighth limb and this is where the real inner journey begins to be one with everything as it is to experience such a demand.

01:14:30:03 – 01:15:11:19
Stacy McCarty
The truth, consciousness is bliss. Soft is truth. Gita is a consciousness. An Ananda is bliss to experience truth, consciousness and bliss. This is the unending love that unifies all things. So now we’ve stepped into that place of samadhi, and this is the eighth limb. And so this journey, all of these yoga poses, not only are we bringing balance in the body so we can sit still, not only are we increasing our prana, our life force, energy, and there’s all kinds of subtle, energetic anatomy that goes along with it of learning how to move our energy from the inside out.

01:15:11:19 – 01:15:44:08
Stacy McCarty
Not only are we waking up, the energy center is running up through the spine, the chakras. But now we’re learning how to really work with the mind and this is a system that is so vast and so deep and has so many parts to it that we can never stop learning. But the place we start is the simplest place is with our body because, you know, everyone’s jumping on the meditation bandwagon, which is beautiful, but so many people are jumping off just as quickly because they cannot sit still with themselves in their thoughts.

01:15:44:19 – 01:16:02:03
Stacy McCarty
They need some sort, something that’s going to guide them along. They just can’t be still with them themselves in their thoughts. And the asana helps train. That helps us to breakdown the ego. The ego is not your ego. Okay, so we’ve got to learn to bring it down a little bit.

01:16:03:10 – 01:16:26:01
Nathan Crane
You just reminded me of a a peyote ceremony. I did this probably five, six, seven years ago. I was in Taos, New Mexico. And the first time I ever at first and only time so far that I’ve done a peyote ceremony, and it was with these elders who had been leading peyote ceremony. It’s like their church is Native American elders.

01:16:26:01 – 01:16:49:16
Nathan Crane
They kind of called it their church. And every weekend for like decades, I mean, these guys were doing this like every weekend for decades. And so they bill, it’s a whole ceremony a build to build a teepee, put it up and you know, there’s prayers and in ceremony and tension and all this stuff. And then you go and you go in, sit in a circle inside the teepee and you go in it’s sunset.

01:16:50:08 – 01:17:12:16
Nathan Crane
And then you do the ceremony, you drink peyote and eat eat the peyote. Yeah. No, we drank it. I don’t know if we ate any and and sat there cross-legged. So sitting through from sunset to sunrise. Right. So it was like however many hours. It was probably at least 12 hours. It might have been more I can’t remember a time of year it was.

01:17:13:03 – 01:17:32:01
Nathan Crane
But I definitely not say cross-legged for more than like 30 minutes. So here I am, you know, trying to experience this deep, psychedelic, spiritual peyote experience and all I can think about the whole time is like how uncomfortable I am, right? Yeah. And here they are, these 60, 70 year old, there’s three of them. They were in their sixties.

01:17:32:01 – 01:17:57:12
Nathan Crane
And I think the elder elders was like in his seventies, sitting down, cross-legged, you know, singing and drumming and talking and and all of a sudden would jump up like a like a five year old kid, jump straight the ground, run around the teepee. Yeah. Go, go sit with the other other guy. I think I spot and send him there and then, you know, and you know, jump right into the cross legged and drumming and singing and stuff and then jump up and move around.

01:17:57:12 – 01:18:18:15
Nathan Crane
And all I’m thinking about is like, how are these old guys so limber? And I’m over here just like, suffering the whole friggin time. And Like, I just I left that. That was probably my biggest, you know, realization for the whole thing was like how messed up my body is compared to them, you know, who are so limber at such an old age.

01:18:18:15 – 01:18:42:02
Nathan Crane
And here I am, stiff and tired and, you know, young, young, I don’t even know. I mean, late twenties, early thirties. However old I was pretty early thirties. Like, how are these guys so limber? Well, they do it every week. They’re sitting cross-legged for hours. They’re getting up, sitting down, getting up, sitting down. Always cross-legged. Rarely, probably rarely ever sitting in chairs and couches, things like that.

01:18:42:02 – 01:18:59:20
Nathan Crane
And so they’re basically doing their own form of yoga, if you will, you know, week after week after week after week, for decades. And they were just so limp, physically talking about trying to be comfortable sitting. I mean, you talk about a sauna is like literally, you know, being able to sit comfortably so you can get in these deeper stages.

01:18:59:20 – 01:19:03:23
Nathan Crane
Yeah, we can do it on a La-Z-Boy recliner, put on meditation, but.

01:19:03:23 – 01:19:05:03
Stacy McCarty
Then you’ll probably fall asleep.

01:19:05:11 – 01:19:24:11
Nathan Crane
Yeah, yeah, I don’t. I don’t. But I know my wife does, right. You know, lose, like, you know, 2 minutes and she’s out, like, doesn’t matter, you know? I mean, I’ve been practicing meditation for probably 18 years now that sometimes it’s actually hard for me to go to sleep because I’m in meditation. Like, it’s it’s the opposite for me.

01:19:24:17 – 01:19:38:09
Nathan Crane
It doesn’t matter what situation I am, but still going back to the physical part like I think we all need that as we age, right? Is to have that limber flexibility, I mean, so that we can.

01:19:38:09 – 01:19:38:22
Stacy McCarty
String.

01:19:39:03 – 01:19:41:12
Nathan Crane
Feel better. Yeah. The strength 100%.

01:19:41:14 – 01:20:11:24
Stacy McCarty
So I think when you when you say that, I think there is a misconception that yoga is just about flexibility, but yoga is truly about bringing it, healing the whole person. So there there is a difference between fitness and health and yoga is definitely on the health side. So so fitness typically the physical ability to perform an activity or exercise, you know, and as I was an athlete, my kids were athletes.

01:20:11:24 – 01:20:38:14
Stacy McCarty
You’re an athlete, so you are training for something specific. And with that, look, I love sports, but typically that brings the body out of balance because you’re training for something specific. And and so it’s, it’s throwing the body off and yoga’s there. It can it’s not it’s not a system to train for athletics. However, it does support athletics.

01:20:38:19 – 01:21:01:11
Stacy McCarty
So what it does, it brings you in and you go, oh my gosh, my hips are so sitting here. Are the yoga practice now will help you? You’ve got too much strength, too much stability. You need to have more flexible. So I so when people come to class, I can it’s both one not better than the other. I have people who come to class, they’re like a wet noodle.

01:21:01:16 – 01:21:20:11
Stacy McCarty
They literally have no stability. I’m like, Whoa, they have no stability. They’re a wet noodle. And then on the other side, you know, big muscle bound folks that come in and, you know, only lift weights and they’re overdeveloped in certain areas and they can’t reach their arm over their head with arm without straight. They can’t straighten their arm.

01:21:20:11 – 01:21:47:22
Stacy McCarty
It’s got to be bent. So yoga is designed to take where you’re too hard can’t straighten my arm to be a little softer and a little extended. You’re like a wet noodle to soft. Let’s bring stability and strength. It is designed to bring you back into balance literally to bring you back into balance. And it’s also a system that addresses all of you, your endocrine system, your respiratory system, your hormonal system.

01:21:48:02 – 01:22:16:17
Stacy McCarty
It it is designed to heal the whole person. So there’s a big difference fitness, exercise and health. And that was my big aha. We circle back to where we started, where I started as a swimmer, an athlete. Then I went to, you know, teaching every fitness craze you can imagine. I taught every single fitness craze out there and and I would wake in the morning stiff, tired and sore.

01:22:16:20 – 01:22:41:18
Stacy McCarty
Now, granted, I was teaching a lot, but I was I would wake up, drag myself out, just not feeling great, like I was super fit, but not feeling great. And then I discovered yoga and it completely changed everything for me. I started to heal those areas that were overdeveloped. And I got more space, more freedom. Those places where I was weak, I didn’t even know I was weak.

01:22:42:05 – 01:23:09:21
Stacy McCarty
I got more strength. So, for example, I never knew I was super weak in my inner thighs. The abductors, my external rotators of my outer hips were so overdeveloped that my inner thighs just got weaker and less used and my big glutes would take over. And so now I was learning. I was like, Holy smokes, I’m going to get some freedom in my glutes and these external rotators, and I need to get some strength, some strength in my inner thighs.

01:23:09:21 – 01:23:30:08
Stacy McCarty
I need to wake that up. So I brought myself back into balance and vice versa. You know, when we’re talking chest or shoulders, where are we until overdeveloped and where we underdeveloped and a proper practice of yoga designed to bring you back into physical balance. So when you sit for long periods of time, you’re not like my back hurts, my hip hurts.

01:23:30:08 – 01:23:45:18
Stacy McCarty
I cannot wait to get out of this. You are actually comfortable. Your body feels balanced and you feel comfortable. And now your mind’s not just concentrated on your discomfort, it’s open to deeper levels of consciousness.

01:23:46:15 – 01:23:49:09
Nathan Crane
Yeah, exactly. And that takes time. That takes time.

01:23:49:23 – 01:23:52:08
Stacy McCarty
And to get back to that discipline.

01:23:52:08 – 01:24:16:19
Nathan Crane
Yeah, yeah. It takes a daily practice for sure. And one final point I know we have to wrap up. You know, some of the most famous bodybuilders on the planet actually are incredibly flexible. So people think there’s this old misconception. They think that building muscle actually, you have to stay tight all the time and flexibility hurts you and hurt your gains and that kind of stuff.

01:24:16:19 – 01:24:48:12
Nathan Crane
But actually people can go research on their own. There are some of the most famous bodybuilders out there who could do the splits who have like unbelievable flexibility. And in that flexibility, actually, you know, probably help them long term avoiding injury and facial tension building up and causing too much tightness and pain. So there is definitely absolute truth to the fact that, you know, we need we need balls, we need flexibility, we need mobility and strength, especially as we’re aging.

01:24:48:18 – 01:24:55:17
Nathan Crane
These things are just so important for helping our long term health. But Stacy, this is awesome.

01:24:55:17 – 01:25:23:19
Stacy McCarty
On the flip side, the one thing I’d say on that, on the flip side, Nathan and I totally agree. Sometimes, you know, I get gymnast in and, you know, if you look at a male gymnast, they have some of the most defined and female gymnast, some of the most defined physiques you can see, plus extraordinary flexibility. But on the other side of that, sometimes it’s gone too far where, you know, actually, as they they have back pain.

01:25:23:19 – 01:25:58:16
Stacy McCarty
And one of the greatest Olympians, I think it’s Mary Lou Retton, who was a wonderful female gymnast. She used to do commercials for like arthritic pain because it was too much. So, again, when we yoga is not being excessive, it’s about being very balanced. So for athletes, it’s such a wonderful thing to help you recognize where those muscular imbalances are, where your structural irregularities are, bring awareness to it, help you work through it so that you have more comfort and ease in your body.

01:25:58:22 – 01:26:28:11
Stacy McCarty
And that’s really where it kind of differs. It’s not trying to be extreme at all. At all. It’s trying to support its supports. Whenever you come to the practice with if you’ll let it. And so, as I said, one’s not better than the other. It is really designed to treat every in fact, the body’s designed be equal, but also the poses are people can there’s a metaphor and I could show metaphor after metaphor of the arts in a practice.

01:26:28:11 – 01:26:52:08
Stacy McCarty
This is why it’s important people think one poses better than another pose. It’s not a handstand is not better than standing in a mountain pose. It’s not better. All poses are to be treated equally in the mind. And it’s a metaphor to take off your mat that we are designed to treat everybody equally. No above or below anyone else.

01:26:53:07 – 01:27:12:11
Stacy McCarty
And so when we’re on our mat, we know that we’re not above or below anyone else the pose that we do, whether or not you can do the pose and make it look good, or whether you’re screaming in your body doesn’t matter. You’re not beneath or above anyone else, right? It’s just you exploring, going, Hey, you know, I do CrossFit, right?

01:27:12:12 – 01:27:31:13
Stacy McCarty
I’m super strong here, but I’m locked up. Okay, not a problem. And I open up my hips more. I’m going to come back into balance. It’s Not I’m not above or beneath anyone. It’s all equal. So this is again that path to oneness as there’s just so many lessons in yoga, if we will let them come to us.

01:27:32:01 – 01:27:45:08
Nathan Crane
Yeah, beautiful. Now you teach online, right? Do you still do classes in private consulting? You have an online group of people. And so if people want to work with you. Yeah, how do they get in touch with you?

01:27:46:08 – 01:28:08:22
Stacy McCarty
Yeah. So, you know, I’m on socials, of course is yoga. Namaste. Stacy is my website yoga not mistake. So it’s a play of words and my socials are all yoga namma, Stacy, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, all of that and my website. But it’s a play on words. So the word yoga, of course, and then the word non must stay.

01:28:08:22 – 01:28:31:22
Stacy McCarty
So that word namaste stays always had a really from the first time I heard it, for some reason it really just touched my heart. So now I’m a state and Amy a s t and instead of the E at the end, some very funny students, front row students of my way before websites even happened at the end of class, when I would say Namaste Day, they would say Namaste Stacy.

01:28:31:22 – 01:28:53:06
Stacy McCarty
I think they were very clever. And then when websites came along, they said, You should call your website that. So yoga, no mistake. But that word notwithstanding, I’m just going to wrap up with this has always had this deep meaning for me and one time I was teaching a class, I had this class it was on at 12:00, a lunch time class.

01:28:54:00 – 01:29:10:10
Stacy McCarty
It would get very crowded and very full. And I had one lady who was always in the far back right corner with a wall on one side and at the wall behind her. A lot of people in yoga loved to gravitate near the wall for balance or whatever, and that was her spot, in fact, of the class. Someone got there before her and took her space.

01:29:10:10 – 01:29:29:11
Stacy McCarty
She’d ask them to move their mat over because it was her space. And so she was like that about party bra, not attachment super attached to that spot, you know, you’re to attach is going to cause suffering. You got to, you know, back off a little bit. She was super to it. One day she came. It’s right before class started.

01:29:29:11 – 01:29:44:06
Stacy McCarty
It’s jampacked, it’s mats and that you couldn’t fit another mat in it. She couldn’t ask someone to move. She’s staring at the doorway, looking at me. And I used to teach on a a stage up at the front of the room, and the class was there. And she’s looking at me with these eyes like I’ve made it all the way here.

01:29:44:06 – 01:29:59:02
Stacy McCarty
I really need my yoga. And so I looked at, I said, We can come up on stage with me in practice if you want to come on out. And so she said, okay. She came up on stage, she sat next to me. We go through this beautiful practice together. At the end. We’re facing the class and I bring my palms together.

01:29:59:02 – 01:30:18:19
Stacy McCarty
The class brings their palms together and I say, No, my stay and the classes now must stay back. And then the class rolls up their mats and they’re getting ready to leave. And she looks at me, she’s sitting next to me and she goes to Stacy. What, what was that that you said? And I said, What? When when she said at the end you said, Namaste State.

01:30:18:20 – 01:30:37:18
Stacy McCarty
What is that? And I said, well, number state, she’s been practicing with me for years in the back corner. And I said, Well, ma’am, I say, you know, Namazi has said that mistake. DAVIES Divine, like me, vows, honors and sees the divine light in you. And when you are that place and when I am in that place, then we are one.

01:30:38:16 – 01:31:04:01
Stacy McCarty
And she looks at me and she goes, Oh, all this time I thought you were saying, Have a nice day. And so really, really, I want to end this with everyone. It doesn’t matter where you start on this journey that and the the practice of yoga is for everybody, no matter where you start, start where you’re at and and and just try it.

01:31:04:01 – 01:31:26:04
Stacy McCarty
Don’t try it once. Commit to it at least ten times consistently with the same teacher and see if you don’t feel a difference. And and and let it take you on this journey. So whether or not, you know, any of these words mean anything to you, it doesn’t matter. It is an experiential practice and just let it start there without.

01:31:26:04 – 01:31:27:02
Stacy McCarty
Anything else?

01:31:28:07 – 01:31:36:11
Nathan Crane
Yeah. Beautiful. That’s funny. Have a nice day. You’re like, Yeah, that’s why you don’t stay in the back corner, ladies, or you got to come.

01:31:36:11 – 01:31:39:11
Stacy McCarty
You’re going to get close sometimes.

01:31:39:12 – 01:31:43:17
Nathan Crane
Yeah. All right. Economist Stacy Dot.com and.

01:31:44:07 – 01:32:04:05
Stacy McCarty
Nobody else did. No mistakes in these cases. No. You know, since I started, I had the first one with it. But now with yoga’s explosion over the last 25 years or so, there’s different ones. So, yeah, you can find me. You can Google Stacy McCarthy in one way or the other. It will find me.

01:32:04:23 – 01:32:19:16
Nathan Crane
That’s awesome. Well, thanks, Stacy. Thanks for taking the time. This was actually super awesome. I learned a lot here about some of these deeper aspects of yoga that I didn’t know. And grateful to have you on the podcast. So thank you.

01:32:21:00 – 01:32:24:10
Stacy McCarty
Thank you, Nathan, so much. Finally, so great to see you.

01:32:24:10 – 01:32:26:08
Nathan Crane
Yeah. All right. Take care, everybody.