Somatics and trauma informed yoga with Shaye Molendyke
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“ Your body's telling you the truth about situations or people and you know your body is. That's why we consider it the soma of the wisdom body and you know, when we learn to listen to it, we reclaim that we gain riches. We gain the ability to know in any given situation, what the right thing to do is, what’s the right thing to say, what right action to take. Wow, that's so empowering for people who have had that taken from them.”
- Shaye Molendyke
Transcript
Somatics and trauma informed yoga
My guest today is Shaye Molendyke is a Certified Yoga Therapist (C-IAYT 900-hour), Trauma-informed E-RYT-500, and Continuing Education Provider (YACEP. Shaye has more than 5,000 teaching hours.
Shaye is a 28-year Air Force veteran, retiring with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
In 2012, she combined her military and counseling experience with her love of yoga in creating the trauma-sensitive yoga programs she is in charge of today at YogaFit Worldwide®.
In addition to her client work and group teaching, Shaye is both the Corporate Education Director and Creator/Director of the Warriors and Warriors Kids Certificate of Enhanced Qualification 140-hour and 100-hour Programs at YogaFit Worldwide®. These curricula are trauma-informed yoga protocols designed to help and empower anyone struggling with PTSD or with unresolved physical and emotional trauma to include yoga teachers, mental health workers, educators, veterans, their families, first responders and those who help and support them. In addition, within YogaFit Worldwide®, Shaye serves as a Senior Master Trainer and as a mentor and faculty member of its Healthcare Yoga Therapy Program.
Speaking from first hand experience, She has done an amazing job of taking some pretty high level neuroscience and distilling it down to practical understanding and application for us lowly fitness and wellness providers.
Today on the Work IN we’re going to explore the connections between trauma informed yoga and this mysterious thing we call somatic movement. It’s the ultimate work IN. It’s important for both instructors and providers of trauma informed movement AND the general population because we are all communicating some kind of message through our bodies every time we move and it would be nice to know we were saying what we mean. SO we’re going to talk about not just what these things are and how they relate to each other but also why they’re important and how we can use them to get results beyond what the eyes can see.
So let’s get started on our work IN with Shaye Molendyke.
Welcome Shaye! Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, maybe something that we’d be surprised about or that wasn’t in that amazing bio?
Shaye Molendyke 3:03
wow, let me think about that one. Um, I you know what I think about but right off the top of my head is that I moved around a lot as a kid being a military brat so not only was I in the military, but I was a military brat and got to travel all over the world. And I really feel like that served me very well in my career and certainly in my you know, becoming a military member myself than having kids with another military or my husband, and then realizing those impacts that my children were gonna go through were the same that I went through so it I think it helped me be at least a better you know, military mom parent to understand what they went through. So it's probably not so exciting, but that's what I kind of think of as unique and I have the travel bug still, I think once you're used to uprooting yourself and moving around every two or three years, it feels weird to be in one place for a very long time. So right now I've lived in Williamsburg, Virginia, for seven years since my husband and I retired and that feels like an eternity. I am shocked. I'm like I can't believe I'm still here and I get the bug it's springtime right now. So I get the bug to like just start throwing stuff out like we have gotta clean up we're gonna you know I still like it's in my DNA like it's springtime will be moving soon. So yeah, that's it.
Ericka Thomas 4:31
I know exactly what you're talking about. My husband was in the army. We lived in Germany. I was raised in the Air Force as a military brat as well. And so it even after leaving those spaces, we were still moving every three year so anything beyond three years I count as bonus time. What is your favorite? What was your favorite place to live? Oh,it was it was Germany.
Ericka Thomas 4:59
Oh, yeah.
Shaye Molendyke 5:01
Yeah, we miss it. We said we would be expatriates, if we could and just you know, go there. But we've gone back to visit and brought the kids my son was born there. So it has a special place. But oh my gosh, it's such it's just such a beautiful country and so centrally located to get so many places, so many amazing places in Europe. So yeah, really fond memories, very fond memories of Germany
Ericka Thomas 5:21
All right. Well, let's, let's set the stage for our conversation today because some of this applies, of course to military members. And I know that when I started my training in the warrior program when it was just the 100 hour warriors. My intention with that training was to be able to turn around and share it with all of my military family members. And lo and behold, it's way beyond that. It goes far, far beyond that. When we're talking about trauma informed yoga and trauma informed really anything. And now we we get the opportunity to kind of bring in this thing called Somatics. which some of us are maybe have been have heard of through Peter Levine that somatic experiencing and things like that, but can we be can we talk a little bit about what somatics is what we mean when we're talking about that. And then maybe we can tie it into yoga? Because they are very similar. I mean, once we understand what that what it is we're talking about with Somatics. Yeah, well, you
Shaye Molendyke 6:45
know, Somatics is a term that is in the popular for sure right now. I can't I can't open up a like a newsletter or, you know, go to, you know, on my social media without seeing the word Somatics thrown around a lot. I throw it around a lot too, but into it takes on different term or different meanings based on how people are using it. So it's not one thing which is a little problematic from for me, cuz I have to then try to explain my approach from Somatics nobody's wrong and how they're using it because their terms Soma means wisdom, right? Though Soma is like our bodies but like it really is referring to like the wisdom body. We honor and Somatics honors that there's a innate intelligence resident in our bodies at birth, which is what really facilitate our own unique human growth patterns at birth right. You know, cells know where to go to organize to become a liver. You know, your fingernails like there is a living intelligent in the body. How can there not be and so someone just means wisdom biases. Somatics is like basically coming at it from the standpoint of when people use that term. And so we're gonna we're gonna come at health and well being by talking to the body or by moving the body in a certain way. And also through the and also here, the senses used a lot which is, which is great if I have a whole workshop on it that puts sensors in there. I like the term somatosensory, and I can explain that guys get into the neuroscience about where how the body is mapped in the brain and also how the senses are mapped and how really closely tied they are. So pause that we'll come back to maybe the brain in just a moment. Really, a simple view of it, but I use it from really the traditional lineage. There's a lineage of somatic practitioners like Hanna somatics and Ida Roth. And oh, gosh, another big name. My brain just dumped of course, because I'm trying to remember I have menopause and menopause break. So think about it just a minute but come back to me. So people are probably screaming it right now as I listen to podcasts are like yeah, so that's what I think of is that these people who really what they did was, oh, Moshe Feldenkrais. That's okay, that was the name I knew was gonna come to me. I've been very upset to that. Remember that? But they basically all of them those individual people had severe limitations in their bodies, either through sickness, illness, pain, and they dove into healing themselves. I mean, it was really like a self study project. And they they all could have their own kind of unique way that they provided. The healing path and created their own lineage with what they taught. But the basis of it from my limited understanding, I wouldn't say that I'm like this expert practitioners of Somatics. In fact, I've only got into the last few years tools, but my understanding is that it's really from looking at it from like, Okay, how do we start out we start off in the woods, right? We start in as an embryo. We really start out as a like a neural tube, and we're all skin or sensory signals, and that neural to end up growing a brain. And I, I really put stop that and like, it's, it's not that the brain grows the body in the womb, actually, the body grows the brain and the brain grows out of the body. So they're intimately connected, we are in the womb. And then of course, we're in that you know, embryo fetal See, like posture for a very long time in the womb, I lose my kids were very long. And then you know, come out. And you know, from there, there's very predetermined patterns that are common
Shaye Molendyke 10:44
across all human mammals, cultures. Day, because when you start, you know, not be able to coordinate your movements with your limbs, but then that, that you start to be able to coordinate, you start to map your body, right, you start to know you have a body. You know, babies don't even know they have a body they have to learn that right if you're receiving videos of babies discovering their hands, like their hand goes in front of their face, and they're like, whoa, what was that, you know, like, you know, an animal with its tail, like, oh, what does that thing behind me? So it's really amazing. When you look at it, that's where the brain is important understand how the brain maps the body. And that happens a very young age. And becomes a very kind of predetermined rigid structure eventually, but at what time it was, at one time, it was raw sensory input. And we were really unless we had been through a lot of stress and trauma as a baby, which happens, of course, but for the most part, that baby is going to eventually start to get up on all fours because itself up right because you can get on his tummy to do that. It's going to start to rock to support commode you know being mobile and then and then crawl somehow here and then all the different crawling patterns eventually pull up to stand and then walk. And that's where a lot of a went to. It's a hey, you know, we got to go back through that lens of understanding and really relearn. We've lost control of our body that we used to have control of because of say, stress, trauma, disease, pain, and it's like reclaiming lost territory. So there's a concept in Somatics called somatic motor amnesia SMA and that's what we're trying to reclaim is those loss parts of our bodies. And that we all there's certain areas that we all tend to have them in especially around kind of the joints, which makes a lot of sense. And the fascial system right so it's a lot of fashion, fashion movement. So I mean, like Moshe Feldenkrais was like, Okay, you're gonna get on the floor and like, literally roll around, kind of like a baby get over and like relearn how to crawl, you know, like, just go through those patterns, you know, so you can kind of reestablish those connections that you've lost. I have integrated into yoga, I'm like, why haven't we been taking this approach in our yoga practice? And that's where I've shifted, and I love it. Absolutely love it. So I don't know if I've explained Somatics well, I'll be honest, but that's my understanding of it. And I think there's just so much there but I do see the term thrown around quite a bit and then I'll look at it and it's nothing like what I just talked about, like, like someone sent me this woman belly dancing. I was like, What is why is that Somatics like it's fine, it's fine. i Okay, great, but like, not everything. So medicine at some point, I think we need a definition. I don't want to be the one that does that. Right? Like I don't, I don't wanna be like, Oh, throw that out there and make everybody mad. But anyway, for me, there is a there is a lineage there that draws from those that's at least what I rest on firm foundation. Yeah.
Ericka Thomas 13:46
And that that doesn't make a lot of sense because with some of these very general definitions of Somatics. One might say that all yoga is somatic yoga. Exactly.
Shaye Molendyke 13:59
That's why you've got we've got that's why I have to define it. That's why it's a good question to ask like, what are what are we talking about what makes it different than, say, a normal yoga practice?
Ericka Thomas 14:10
Right? And so, you know, some of the really specific somatic pattern movements that we've done that I've done with you and workshop and some different things like that, they are very different from any kind of yoga practice or flow or you know, posture for sure. I mean, underneath them, there is this, this awareness that we're looking for, and hopefully people are getting in their yoga practice, but maybe not, you know, maybe maybe they're not getting that. That type of focus, but it's all
Shaye Molendyke 14:51
Yeah, that's what that's what my concern was. I'm sorry, I jumped in ERIC about Go ahead. And just to kind of draw those comparisons between yoga and Somatics. And what I see concerning and it's been out here since yoga has come to the west, you know, but is yoga as you know, in lots of places just performative art, like it's just become this like Cirque du Soleil, performative art kind of thing. And that's fine, right? In fact, that's how that's what I practice many years ago when I started, I was performance base, and again, there's a place for that. But you know, honestly, that can be done from a very amnesia ik standpoint, right as you're moving, you can become just another rote memorize autopilot movement pattern. And that's what I really was trying to get out of. I was trying to create something that was like okay, like you said, it's an awareness game. And over time, and I heard this I can't remember what teachers said it said, you know, even your your own practice could be a pattern and habit that you're going to have to come out of at some time. Right? And so Okay, well, then how do we undo that, that pattern and habit? How do we go back to that raw sensory input that material of the body, how do we get back into it in a very real way because that's where awareness resides. That's the foundation of awareness and you can you have to kind of peel back all and unlearn all the things we've learned as adults, you know, that we do automatically. And that's why the senses have to be the first thing that we kind of cue there to get to that place just like, just like babies just like babies. We have to go back to that kind of raw sensory input before we had a pre programmed movement pattern that we execute. And that very quick autopilot way and everything we do and it's not a bad thing, right? Like we need to have these autopilot movements because otherwise we would take we would spend all day doing something very mundane, like learning how to walk again, right? Like we like these pre pattern movements are important. Like I don't want to get in a car and be like, I don't know how to drive this car, you know. And at one point, it didn't, and I had to learn that and so there's an unlearning but then there's a really beautiful coming home to that Soma, right? So that wisdom body, that raw material of you somewhat Unblemished by those pre movement patterns that were carved out by either necessity and gotta learn how to walk or stress or all of the above and at some point, you know, stress gets us all you know, are just repetitive movement patterns that create that stress into the body. So why
Ericka Thomas 17:31
would why is it important to unlearn some of those patterns? What is it that we are going for, with a practice of Somatics whether it's in yoga or or some other, just, you know, those somatic types of movements to create that confusion? Those mistakes in the brain why is that important for our brain to do?
Shaye Molendyke 17:58
That's learning. I mean, that's how we learn otherwise, we just, you know, again, go on autopilot for most of our day, and that's the opposite of mindfulness. So for me, there's a double benefit here. Not only are we reclaiming this lost territory of the body with the somatic practices and makes the movement that we have to do everyday, much more effective, more pleasant, less painful, less stressful on the body because those patterns, it could be a pattern of like, you know, hunching your shoulders forward, or drawing your shoulders up by yours unconsciously all the time. Or not having your shoulder blades down the back because there's just not a lot of activity going on. Just these are very common ones that I see. Right? So it and the and I haven't time to go into kind of the fascial system, but fascial system is a really big piece of it. And so when you're doing that, you're also creating a novel system, sensory experience for somebody. And that's really cool, because that's learning in the brain that looks like a brain that's paying attention that's really focused in the present moment. So it's an awareness game and then you're, you know, you're really gaining all those mindfulness benefits that we talk about in yoga all the time. So it's an it's another way to move more mindfully, I mean, and to have a mindful practice that is also going to benefit you physically, which is you know, this is great. I need all that as I'm 53 I need the most bang for as I say all I want the most bang for my buck if I'm going to practice yoga, or whatever it is. I will I want the most benefits I can get great. I want to what we call a stacking benefits. I want to get all the most mindfulness I can I'm gonna get the most physical benefits and for me, in the yoga, somatic practices, it's reclaiming that lost territory, claiming a sense of ease and my body that relaxed international awareness, I have a greater sense of my core greater sense of my spine is really there's a lot of focus on relieving tension all around the axis of the spine. We work on the sides of the spine, the front, the back, of course, and then it's like oh, now my spine, I'm just gained and finished. My spine is taller naturally. So all those things and then of course ability to stay in the present moment because you're calm because I'm constantly cueing, sensory awareness or where do you feel this micro movements and small acts of awareness? So yeah, I just walked out feeling like alright, cool, I got the best you know, mindfulness I can get I got the best physical practice I can get from my body right now. I got the pharmacy turned on right to get all the serotonin dopamine. My heart rate variability got better. I know that so all the science terms here. I mean, you know, you've got lymphatic movement, all that. All the things. So
Ericka Thomas 20:50
can you speak a little bit more about this sensory motor amnesia that happens and what might that look like or feel like to someone? Like, how would I know if I've had sensory motor amnesia?
Shaye Molendyke 21:08
Yeah, by its definition, you wouldn't know about it. Yeah. That's part of the cueing in the end. The practices are designed to bring parts of your body back online, right background like reclaiming. So here's the here's an example. I know we're doing this audio. So I want people to think about like, like an animal like a dog, you know, strategy. Of course we call that down dog pose for that down dog right? Or, you know, any kind of animal movement. They don't, they don't stretch, right, like we stretch you don't stick one leg out and do like a forward fold. I mean, that'd be cute, but obviously the squirrel do that legally. I mean, would you? They don't, but they don't have somatic motor amnesia. I mean, that's the point is that we're animals but we're, we move in some odd ways, even in our yoga practice that is not natural. It's not in any way. Right. So part of one practice, one way that you can come out of somatic motor amnesia is when you yawn, take a big break. Everyone could do it right now. I mean, as you're driving your car, don't do it. Don't take your arms ever had. Wake up in the morning, flew over building. Yawn. Okay, that is a practice to come out of somatic motor amnesia. And that's something similar to what animals do to reclaim lost body parts or I should say to you know, wake up their SILMO wake up there fascial system. So something like that. It's an integrated, full body awareness kind of movement. Some of them there's some of them are isolated, unique exercises or activities that we do. But in general, what you're doing is you're moving into more synchronized organized fashion. So So what was your question? I forgot.
Ericka Thomas 22:56
Like how would one know how would you know that you were experiencing that in a certain area of the body or going
Shaye Molendyke 23:03
to have discomfort or pain? You're gonna have discomfort or you have limited range of motion and a joint probably, we're going to have back pain. You may have pain in your around your shoulders, around your hips. So it's the body sends messages. It's really not the body the brain is producing that message of pain because the body is mapped in the brain. And it says, hey, it's sitting. You said like there's a problem here. And the problem is, is it's it's, it's lost territory. It's almost like sending out an SOS beacon says, Hey, could you reclaim this territory? Could you come and clean your baggage? Are you just like, it's we've been waiting for you. We've been waiting like you're, you know, that's what the message is, is that there's something I mean, sometimes of course, that pain Messenger is His or the real physiological tear, muscle tear or bone break. I don't know, whatever, but a lot of it is somatic motor amnesia. That's what's causing that pain. It's interesting and people disassociated from the body all the time, right, like that's why it's so well with trauma. Workshops. Yeah, I should say when trauma work. Yeah, because that's the hallmark sign of trauma is to disassociate from your body because why that's where the emotional usually pain is coming from. And so we don't want to be present for it. The sad thing is that then that creates this kind of vicious cycle, we keep decision checking out of the body. And the body has to up the pain signal basically, or the discomfort or the DIS ease. And that can look like anxiety, panic attacks, all sorts of ways, not just pain, and tell. Pay attention.
Ericka Thomas 24:32
Yeah, so So my follow up question there was how then does this kind of tie into our trauma informed work with within yoga within you know, any There's any number of other movement types of work? That is trauma informed? Knowing this, that there's some sort of sensory motor amnesia what are some ways I guess, to include this type of a focus in in movement? Whether that's a group class or just by by oneself? You know?
Shaye Molendyke 25:16
Well, that's why Dr. Peter Levine, who you referenced his Somatic Experiencing Institute I mean, he's a clinical psychologist who are psychiatrists apologize. And they did. That's what he found was like talk therapy, which I'm trained in as well. I'm a trained counselor. And I love talk therapy and talk therapy can work a lot of the time, but a lot of the time it doesn't if you're not really present in your body. Talk therapy is really not that not as effective as it could be. And so that's why we call you know, yoga and somatic practices to bottom up, bottom up there, your bottom up processing, need to get the body involved. That's where the original sort of insult, discomfort, disconnection happened, and it wasn't a like a choice. It wasn't like I think I'm a disconnect from my body. Like that doesn't happen. Like that. It happens automatically. We really do it so quickly. And it can look a lot like you know, like daydreaming sometimes and people are gonna like ADD and again, people get really good at especially people who have been through a lot of childhood trauma or neglect or stress, you know, as a young person. That's a common sign of childhood trauma, because why fight or flight is the adaptive stress response. And I say adapted because everybody can do it. It's adults, especially but as a child, that's not adaptive. Usually child can't fight or flight so they have to check out in their body. You know, it's it's, you know, painful being in the body. Well, then they learn quickly go someplace else, just go go away because I don't want to be here anymore. So again, it works for that, you know, works is a good strategy, but as a child, unfortunately, as an adult, it looks like a lot of pain, and and physically and mentally and emotionally. That's why we want to that's what we want to incorporate these somatic practices. And it sounds so easy to do. In theory, it is in reality, it's, yeah, it's asking people to feel again. And that is can be quite difficult as because there's a lot of stuff people try not to feel and especially if they've been doing it for a very long time, it can create a lot of anxiety. It can create a lot of distress at that feeling again, but I always say you know, that's why the mindfulness practices have also got to have to be along or go along with it. And because staying present with those sensations, even though there may be some discomfort, they're feeling the pain that we are trying not to feel it's it's mandatory for healing. The good news is, it's not going to hurt the same it's not the same kind of pain. It's a it's a remembering, that's a great word, kind of think about what we're doing to the double meanings right? We're remembering, but we're remembering ourselves. And that's the that's what healing looks like to me overall. And then talk therapy is much more effective right? When you're present in your body was sensations. Then you can articulate better how you feel when you can articulate better how you feel. Then you know who you are better to a certain degree, and you know how to ask for help better yeah, you know how to ask for what you need, you know how to draw boundaries, you know, strongly what that looks like for you because you're present in your body and you're by and you know, your body's telling you the truth about situations or people and you know your body is that's why we consider it the some of the wisdom body and you know, when we learned to listen to it, we reclaim that we we we gain riches we gain the ability to know in any given situation, what the right thing to do is was the right thing to say what right action to take. Wow, that's so empowering for people who have had that taken from them.
Ericka Thomas 30:05
It's so common for people who have lived for a long time in some kind of chronic pain to really lose that. That internal trust that internal you know that internal navigation of what's right and wrong for themselves because for so long everything hurts and so anytime they feel any sensation whether it's pain or not it's all pain then it's all pain and then yeah that that break of trust within the body within the self like between the mind and the body can be so difficult to overcome. Long term for sure. So, so, so when we are talking about that overlap between Somatics and trauma informed movement, we can stay talking about yoga. If if just for the sake of the conversation here. So how does one integrate those two in in a specific way in a more specific way than just simply calling this particular vinyasa flow somatic yoga? Well,
Shaye Molendyke 31:28
that's where you got to go to training. Yeah, there's there's I don't have a short answer for that. But to say that you got to study Somatics I mean, that I mean, that's where it's at. You have to you have to study Somatics and then you once you get the overall understanding of what we're trying to do, like I said, somatic motor amnesia, and you get these little practices or these practices with a focus you understand it. It's, it's, it's, it's embodied in me now. I mean, I'm learning more every day I'm still studying it. But you couldn't you wouldn't even not do it. It's not even possible anymore. Because you're it's like skip, it'd be like skipping the main course. You're, you're skipping the main thing, what you're supposed to be doing if we don't integrate these somatic practices. So something as simple and people could do this at home, is you know, just taking your shoulder pick a shoulder doesn't matter, but that area right or under shoulder blade around the back, that is one of the most common areas where people have somatic motor amnesia. It's just it's not firing that muscle. Another thing is muscles don't fire right. You can't get that muscle to engage, again from this forward hunched kind of posture that we're all in and so just kind of slowly working around to take one shoulder and move it really slowly around the joint focusing on that area around the shoulder blade. And if you notice, if you do that, first of all, you may not be able to it may not move it but may or may not be able to do that at all. Which is not uncommon. You'd have to have someone come and like gently put their hand on your shoulder blade to remind you this is what we're trying to engage here. That's what I do with my clients or my students. And so then if you're moving it like a weight, is there an area even if you can get it to move? Is there an area all of a sudden it's like a snag in a sweater? Because it's really the fascia that we're moving there. And it'll skip it'll be like or like a like a skipping rock is like touch or just a whole area like a you know, like when your chain and comes off your bicycle. You know? That's what it feels like. It's like no, no, or go really fast. Just skip all of a sudden. So you go so so the one of the ways is just go slower, right and reclaiming the territory, especially around our joints. So shoulders and hips. So those are those are big areas of focus. We have lots of different practices, and then integrating once you integrate especially the limbs back into the body and really I would do more spinal work first, but I gave that example so I'm gonna go with that. Then it's like okay, now can we feel that coordinated movement from the spine to the limb? Because a lot of time people in yoga are moving their limbs say like Triangle Pose, their top arms just up in the air like discombobulated disassociated from their from the body. They had no I mean, they'd throw it out there, but it wasn't in an integrated fashion. And so Okay, can we really kind of like I said, Remember the limbs back into the body? Can you really feel them as an extension of your spine versus just this? You know, disconnected discombobulated you know, thing that is attached to her body. So again, that's that's the reintegration or the remembering coming out of somatic motor amnesia. So a lot of a lot of fascial movements. And like I said, a lot of focus on reclaiming spine because like if you're in a state of stress a lot with the spine, your spine is ramrod straight or rigid or, or there's just no, there's not a lot of awareness of what's going on in the spine. Really, our spine should be able to move in a very flexible fluid way. Think of like an echo. I hate to say like a snake, your spine should be able to move like that. When you have reclaimed that territory. But a lot of people just can't write their dis is little awareness of what's going on, especially in their thoracic spine, right and they're in their chest area in the back, the mid back in the low back. And whereas a lot of the pain starts happening in our body all in those places. Yeah,
Ericka Thomas 35:24
yeah. And, and so I can see with that description that you just said how Somatics could make all movement more efficient. So all of our other things that we do for exercise could be much more efficiently done. probably safer for for the body, and we could get so much more out of it. Out of the movement that we do for exercise for fitness or for whatever else that we're
Shaye Molendyke 35:58
doing, it's gonna make anything else you do much more effective, much more effective. So like, I mean, that's how I'm saying this, even if you just did five minutes in the beginning of class, some of these somatic practices, if you do a yoga, if you're doing yoga, the rest of the class is going to be, you know, much more effective. Go through the same things you already do. Just start with like five minutes of somatic work. And then I'll end with like some different kinds of, you know, somatic stuff. But, you know, that's another simple way. It doesn't have to be a whole class on it. Right? Just, you know, shifting that focus. It's almost pre movement stuff, right? Yeah. I always think of like, you think of the fascial system. You think of your spine, you know, we don't want to go into the same big movement, right into like a headstand when it comes to yoga five I had that happen before, by the way, which I was like, What are we doing? But I mean, fine, fine, but it'd be that's to me like the least effective way to bring people to a better place in their body. And in their mind. So in here's a good little simple equation to remember that I kind of go into more detail about in the workshop is sensory input, equals motor output. So that's why all roads lead back to the senses and so there's a lot of sensory cueing, kinesthetic cueing, and that's going to change the movement pattern if we just cube movement pattern, you're cueing old patterns every single time if you're not including, again, a we want to have a novel sensory input. And I mean novel because we want to relearn that's the only way we learn is to move in a novel or different way than we have. And you're not going to do that if you just can't, okay, come into warrior one. You're gonna come into warrior one. How you always come into warrior 120 years later, right? My job is so you don't come into where you went. How you always come into warrior when every time should be a new Warrior One should feel something different.
Ericka Thomas 37:52
Yes, so it sounds a little bit like a different approach to warming up the body and then it's you're just warming up in a different way, a deeper layer. In in the system instead of heart rate, you know, overall body heat. It's just a different layer deeper. Yeah,
Shaye Molendyke 38:17
right. So this is where fascial information comes in. Work with the fascial system. Yeah, and repatterning. Really, again, just, you know, focusing on think of those childlike movements, like knees to chest, Rocky and are coming over, you know, coming up to all fours rocking a little bit. One way to do it, you could, you know, just kind of move in a nonlinear way and like a normal thing like, say, cat cow, and can you move your spine, ripple your spine to the side, like a cat does cat does not move in a very rigid way when it moves, it's fine. It actually ripples, you know? And so can you find that those kinds of things who are what do you do with your hands here? Anytime we unground in a posture and then whatever is touching the ground needs to be really grounded. And so I find a lot of people you know, their hands are completely ungrounded and something like cat cow or something like down dog. So reestablish it reestablishes the base of support in a more powerful way and then it also gives us a lot of information of what, why what's going on there in your fascial system, your hands and your feet are good places to look for that information. You know, if you look at the integrity of the body of the fascial system, like there's integrity balls, like those breathing balls, when you see them they look like I don't like a bunch of LEGO sets with opens up and expands and closes right? That's your fascial system. So if you're tight and constricted, well guess what's gonna pull in the tight like through your feet, so you're handy extremities so you're going to pull in tight air in that it's going to have limited awareness. It's gonna have some limitations in the fascial system. So a lot of focus on for me hands and feet as well.
Ericka Thomas 39:54
Yeah, yeah. Very cool. So are these things that can be integrated outside of a yoga practice? Other formats, are they beneficial and other formats? There's something that people just need to go to a special yoga class or
Shaye Molendyke 40:19
I don't know the answer to that. I guess it depends on you know where you're at and what's available to you. You know, thank God we have online that's where I started finding some good videos and people I started to follow and then I really got into reading the you know, the lineage work of Hanna somatics especially and most she felt in cry. So yeah, I think right now it's still the it's been thrown out there. But to find those more traditional things, you may have to go far afield depends on where you're at, right to kind of figure out, you know, to find this to find this where it's spreading, though. I mean, it really is. I mean, again, this is not new. This has been around since the 50s. But I was talking about the somatic lineage. It's becoming much more popular now. It's much more popular now. As people are really embracing the understanding of what's most effective for movement patterns. So, you know, my goal is to not hurt anybody. Yoga has been known to hurt people. There. Lots of things have shown that especially our western aggressive approach to our bodies, and so it's, for some people probably a little bit unfamiliar, this kind of way to move move to feel good. There's no goal as I'm like, perform a pose a certain way or look a certain way. It's literally it's, it's to move in a way that feels good. We're not pushing to find some extreme range. of motion ever. That's never a goal. But did it allow us for a natural range of motion and reclaims a range of motion? That is there. So you know, as you know, I love the Magic Minute that shows you have a bigger range of motion and you're twisting than you think. And it's not stretching that's going to change that weirdly. Right? There's other things as involves the story being told by the brain. So that's the other big piece of it I haven't really talked about but it's so empowering when I teach a Magic Minute and people go whoa, what was that because we just, it part of it is you know, a piece of it is just imagining doing the movement that I teach and the change is dramatic and your ability to rotate and twist. Yeah, just by changing but just by imagining the movement in your mind. So it's a it's a way I hate this word remedy is a is a hack into the black box of your brain that is constantly predictably modeling the world and how they move you're the schema of your body which it has really firm after years of experience. And it just is like okay, making the donuts every day. It's a way to hack into that system. A big piece of that is our our eyes, quite frankly because our eyes if you're a sighted person, right, if you're blind from birth, that's a different story. But most of us, right, have our vision. And it's because the Vision Center is really strongly tied to our movement patterns as well, that we have two main visual centers of visual one and two, and we work with that we work a lot with like turning her head in different ways, turning her eyes in different ways away from our limbs, telling a unique story in the brain that it can't quite possibly predict what's about to happen. And what happens is it drops the old story and you get the new you get the real story like oh, that's what I'm able to do. So that it's really it's an easier way to change the body to feels better. It's like Oh, so you have to draft this kind of narrative of yoga that we got to work through the pain, we got to stretch till we can't take it anymore, right? Really deeper, deeper, deeper. That is a false narrative of how to change the body. In fact, the more you do that, the more likely the body's going to go back into the original shape but even tighter because that is an injury to the body. Yeah, yeah, that's gonna go more into protection if you do that.
Ericka Thomas 43:57
Yeah, yeah. So so true. And I am sure our listeners have experienced that in their own their their own experience as well. I know I have I know I have. Oh, yeah. So I want to pull a little thread there because we've been talking about the benefits how how, moving with somatic. So how using this somatic approach can benefit our movement patterns are there. So Are there benefits that go beyond the body, into into the brain in different ways into it? Anything like that, that we could maybe expect? I know we talked a little bit about, you know, the emotions that kind of live in in the in the body, and when we start to kind of unravel those and remember, that can be a little uncomfortable, but are there other layers of benefits besides is it
Shaye Molendyke 44:57
all possible? Sure. I mean, I think that's the beauty of doing it and in a trauma informed way. And working with narrative and the old narrative versus this new possibility that opens up so for me the lots of benefit, oh my gosh, so many benefits, but really, the big one is learning in a really I see the world in a different way literally has changed my sensory view of the world. I'm more appreciative of the subtle colors around me. My sense is literally the changes opened up. You know, if you think about someone's gonna listen to a state of stress all the time and they don't know it right. You just don't know you're you're swimming in cortisol. Rich a lot of people are it literally changes how you are able to proceed through the sentence changes what kind of you know tones hearing you have at vision, what colors you see you know people are depressed actually see the world and more gray tones literally changes your vision. You know, are you able to appreciate, you know, the nature and the beauty and nature around you and also appreciate your relationships of course in a different way from this different energetic state of being. When you're more at ease in your body. You find people are more at ease around you you know, I just said this in my class this past week. I said you know, if you cannot we have a concept in yoga, called Santosha, which means contentment. If you are not content in your own body, and the container of your own being, how can we expect anybody to be content around us? And that's again, another kind of side benefit is is contentment is contagious. And people want to be around you more because you're nice to be around because you feel safe to be around as well. You know, we're all kind of energetic tuning forks walking around and you pick up on that and we walk into a room with a lot of stress people obviously you want to be the strongest to nice work in the room. So a lot I get a lot of weird side benefits like that and and also kind of opening up the mind until more creative state of being I feel more in that you know, this may sound very woowoo yoga but more in the flow of life. And it does it opens up creative insights from getting out of those stuck patterns because a lot of it also then ends up being just stuck thought patterns to, you know, those ruminating patterns and negative thought patterns. Those are habit those are just bad habits as well.
Ericka Thomas 47:25
Yeah, yeah. That's it spent that's fantastic. And it just it just makes so much sense that you would start to look at the world a different way. When you start to feel the body differently. Everything comes in somewhere. So you get to have a different interpretation of those things. I love it. It's great. Okay, so che if someone wanted to pursue some somatic training, or trauma informed training, how might they work with you? What can you suggest? I'd love to hear a little bit about what is going on in Shaye's world.
Shaye Molendyke 48:06
Oh, great. Thanks for asking Erica. Well, first of all go I mean, I'm the director of yoga for Warriors. So I always encourage go to yoga at that site. We have 70 different workshops. That most of them not all, but most do not have prerequisites, and you don't have to be a yoga teacher to take them. One of them is of course, my new workshop on Somatics called somatosensory. I do offer that online. I have one coming up very soon. I think it's sold out but there's many more the rest of this year. I am offering that also in person. We have a big conference coming up in Phoenix and Scottsdale in July fun time to go to Scottsdale but it's a beautiful resort, lots of pools you stay and keep you cool. And then Orlando. I'm also teaching at Orlando in September at a conference in person and then we also offer free webinars every now and then you can find our monthly webinars. We have a new self care, Saturday kind of thing that you can find some cool experiences there as well. So there's lots of different options that way. I also do take a few clients of that will I have I have a pretty full load right now. But I do can work with people. Of course if you're in Williamsburg, Virginia, reach out to me but if not online, I do yoga therapy online with people. So my email is warrior@yoga.com. I'm sure it'll be like in the show notes, but it's w a r r i o r at yogafit.com. And I'm also the Director of Education for yoga fit. So I'm happy to talk with a student who is maybe thinking about taking a workshop. I'm happy to chat with you about your journey and I'm seeing if we have something that might work out for you.
Ericka Thomas 49:44
Yeah, that's awesome and that's a matter of sensory workshop is incredible. Really, really awesome. I really enjoyed it so and my students are enjoying it too. So I
Shaye Molendyke 49:57
love to hear that that makes me so happy really doesn't love to hear that you found it immediately like applicable and you can incorporate into your classes and then that your students are loving it. That's just the best thing I can ever hear that is that's worth everything. So thanks for sharing that makes me happy.
Ericka Thomas 50:11
You're welcome and thank you for being here. And before I let you go che i ask all of my guests to share what their personal work in is just to kind of give people an idea of all of the amazing things out there in the world that could bring us joy and peace and happiness. So if you would, could you tell us if you have some kind of work in that you do personally for yourself?
Shaye Molendyke 50:39
I do. Try to get to a yoga class or two every week, Jacob happens to be to show up and try different classes and we're fortunate studios, I do teach them that I'm interested in doing I try to make it a point to get to different instructors and try different things outside my comfort zone. So one of the things Somatics have been talking about, we need to have valuable experiences. We're comfortable with what we know, right? I mean, that's just the deal. So I've tried to challenge myself to do something way outside my comfort zone, right like tomorrow, I'm gonna go take a bar class and it's not in my comfort zone. It's not in my wheelhouse. But I'm gonna do it. Because I need I need that I need that challenge for the mental challenge of trying to learn something new where I'm not. And again, again, that's a dangerous in order for us to get really good at certain things and dangerous to stay in that lane. And so and then you become you know, very one big tree bands that you could have had all these other trees broaden my horizons by protecting myself to literally physically try something different, different and maybe difficult. We'll see I don't know. And you know, learn something every day I I've always done that on a learner by heart. I don't I try and really try to come humbly as most of us is we're getting older. It's very humbling getting older. And really realizing there's so much out there. It's not enough time to learn everything right? And so taking advantage of every day and an opportunity just even if it's just a webinar, or even about maybe a couple of pages in the book on that. I'm usually in several at one time. It's like okay, that is really important to my well being
Ericka Thomas 52:31
across America. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's great. And it's great to it's great. Stay a student. Yeah, yeah, stay a student. Yeah, that's how
Shaye Molendyke 52:41
I found Somatics. That's exciting. You know that that's I just tried something different. Like whoa, what is this? This is so cool.
Ericka Thomas 52:50
That's awesome. All right. Well, Shay, once again, thank you so much for being here on the work in I love having you. Maybe we can have you back again sometime. But it's it's fantastic. Thank you so much. Oh, you're
Shaye Molendyke 53:05
welcome America and thank you for asking me and for everybody out there listening. Just know you have people that you know or are in your corner that there really is never a better time to give a talk too much about trauma but if you've been through a lot, there really has never been a better time to have trauma, so to speak. And what I mean by that is we know so much about it. And there's so much hope and there's so many ways from trauma so please, please, please reach out and you don't have to suffer alone. Thanks Hey.
Ericka Thomas 53:41
Thanks for listening to heard and more and more head over to Sabbath over stretch of the word and for all the show notes on this and other episodes. You'll find lots of free resources to build resilience and all the latest in our studio on Main Street. Thanks, everyone. And remember, stop working out and start working
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I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a resilience coach and fit-preneur offering an authentic, actionable realistic approach to personal and professional balance for coaches in any format.
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