Making Peace with Stress: Conversation with Yoga Therapist Stephannie Weikert

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vanderkam. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode one hundred and forty four. We'll be interviewing Stephanie Wikert, who is a yoga therapist, and she's going to be giving us some great ideas for how to manage anxiety in these anxious times and in other times too, because lots of people are dealing with stress as they are combining work and family and trying to do their best at both. So really looking forward to that interview. Sarah. Let's talk about your meditation and streak. Well, I figure since you have a running streak, I should have some other don't anymore, by the way, but that's true, but you did I did. My meditation streak is much less impressive than your running streak. But I'm at like thirty one days now, so for me, that's pretty good. I am using an app. It's the Headspace app because they offered free access to all healthcare providers, and I also really like it. We have had Calm as a sponsor of this podcast before. That's also an excellent option. But yeah, I think it is helping me in some way, like just be a little I don't know, more aware of my own feelings. Like I may fly off the handle, but then there's like this inner voice It's like, well, fly off the handle, but then get over it or something. I don't know, but I enjoy it. It seems like it's doing something, So I'm going to keep going. Are you you're not a meditator? No? You ever into yoga? No? I mean I've tried it, as we'll talk about the interview. I have tried like the Cosmic Kids yoga with my kids. My friend Linda, who I don't know if she's listening to this, she and I went to yoga together twice. We would mostly run together and then she got injured. You know, I haven't really done it that much. I don't know. I'm a runner. For me, it's kind of the time when I process my thoughts and I know that that's not really what meditation is, but for me, it serves that similar purpose, so that tends to be the time that I devote to it. Yoga, I probably should be doing a little more of the physical practice of it because I know I have been very physically tense. There's also just parts of me that are getting tired with like carrying a baby around, or how I'm holding him to type and nurse at the same time, how I'm sleeping or something. I don't know, but there's definitely some tension that needs to be worked out. So I'm trying to do a little bit more of those stretches and things like that. You did a fair amount of yoga at different way. I had like a yoga faith where I was like very into it, like I would you know, I didn't have any kids at the time, and I would go to like four hour, hour and a half classes after work. Shout out to the Blue Point Yoga Studio and Durham. That place was amazing and I had like the unlimited membership and honestly, I was having a lot of fertility problems and thought it could be linked to my running. So I was like, well, I need a new outlet. So obviously I wasn't just going to do like a little yoga. I was going to do like a lot. You're doing as much yoga as you were running. Now you know what I do here. I think it might have been helpful in that regard. And it did feel really nice, like that much stretching like it does do something really nice and it's calming, especially live classes. I haven't gone to live classes in a long time, but if you do kind of integrate into a given studio, like having had that experience, like it was lovely, But it is a big time commitment and I'm currently not really willing to make that time commitment. But I could imagine going to like a once a week class someday. Yeah, I'm trying to do you know, one or two online sessions a week and trying to rope some child into doing it with me to kind of combine that as quality time. But yeah, it's not been my major thing. But I'm curious. I am yoga curious, so maybe I will have to get more into it. So we'll see what Stephanie has to say about it, and we're going to drive right into that. Sarah and I are delighted to welcome Stephanie Weikert to the program. So Stephanie, can you introduce yourself to our listeners. I'd love to thanks for having me. First off, I'm Stephanie Weikert. As you mentioned, I'm a certified yoga therapist and creator of Make Peace with Stress, which is a philosophy, a method, and an online yoga therapy program for smart, capable and stressed out men and women. Well, that sounds like a lot of us right now. And let's talk about stress here because we're recording this in the thick of the coronavirus pandemic. It's going to run in a few weeks, but I doubt it will be all over by then. That it was, but it probably will not be. So how is the stress of all this affecting us? I mean mentally and physically. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot because we've had all of our sort of normals upended. And you know, the stress response is really an automatic, very helpful in a lot of ways, physiological response in our bodies. When we feel threatened, and thankfully for most of us, we're not actually being threatened, but it's more about our perception. And right now we are all experiencing a real sense of you know, our incomes being threatened, our ability to do our normal daily routines being threatened, you know, our education system being threatened. And then on top of that, there's a global pandemic that you know, everyone is worried about getting or transmitting or all of that. So it's a lot. And what normally happens in the body is that when you have something you have to deal with, the stress response turns on and can be very helpful, but then it's discharged, it's used up. The energy that your stress response gives you is you know, turned off. And right now, because we're having so many parts of our lives that are just so feel so uncertain, many of us are feeling like the stress response is always on. And even when there's not a global pandemic, I find that a lot of us get into patterns of thinking and doing that are keeping our stress response at least somewhat ticked on right ready to respond, sort of right on that edge, and it can be a real issue. And I think specifically right now. One of the things that is really important to know about that is that it suppresses the immune system, and that would be a problem right now. And part of the issue here, Stephanie, is that, as you were saying, I mean, normally, you know, if you see a tiger, you deal with the tiger and then you move on. But the problem here is that the stressor is going on for a long time, and so when things are just with you, you have to learn to live with the threats. And obviously there's plenty of other threats that we've learned to live with. I mean, the world is uncertain in general, but most of us don't go around thinking about that all the time. So how can we kind of move this background noise, this new background noise into that category. What can we do for this sort of chronic stress to keep it from producing this chronic runaway from the tiger response. Yeah, that's a great question. And I as a yoga therapist, I like to look at things at several levels, the body, the breath, and the mind, because when we work with all three of those sort of aspects of our experience, we can have a profound effect with very little effort. And when you know, you're talking about stress and people who are typically overwhelmed managing a lot, have a lot on their plates. All of that, that's a really nice sort of part to think about, Right, That's a really important, I think way to make things practical is Okay, this is something that I can do really quickly that really helps. So in terms of the body, I think the biggest issue is just overall general tension in our muscles. It's part of the stress response. When you know, when all of the chemicals of the stress response flood the body, one of the effects is that our muscles tense up to prepare us to fight or flee. And so when we're you know, sitting on the couch watching the news a lot, or sitting in front of a laptop or on our devices, or just generally holding physical tension in our bodies, it has a negative effect on how we feel in our minds, and it's sort of a vicious cycle. So something really simple to do for physical tension is might feel a little counterintuitive at first, but it's to tense up your muscles and then relax them repeatedly. Sometimes I think about this as like massaging cold dough, Right, it's really cold and hard at first, and you need to like, you know, sort of squeeze and really squeeze and release to sort of get it warm up and more supple. And this can be very effective with your muscles too, so tensing and tightening and then releasing. And then if you combine that with your breathing and sort of tense and tighten as you inhale and release and relax your muscles as you exhale, you have this sort of exponential benefit with the breath. A real key factor in sort of downshifting your stress response in your nervous system is slowing and deepening the breath because think about it, when you're feeling threatened, when you need to run or fight, your breath gets shallow and rapid help get more oxygen to those muscles that are tensing up and ready for action. So slowing down and deepening your breath is sometimes like a remote control to your nervous system. Change the channel right. And my favorite and simple way to do this is to exhale as if you're blowing your breath out of a straw. So you push your lips and you blow that exhalation out, you know, in a small, steady stream as opposed to sort of, you know, even just a sigh, which can be nice, but the sigh and sort of rapid exhalation and inhalation is somewhat aggravating to the nervous system. So if you slow and lengthen your exhalation, then your inhalation will naturally be a little bit deeper and a little bit slower as well. So if you combine these two tens and tighten your muscles as you inhale through your nose, and relax and release muscles as you slowly blow your breath out as if through a straw, you get sort of this compound effect that's super beneficial and that you can do while you're washing dishes, while you're folding laundry, while you're in the shower, while you're you know, replying to email, while you're sitting on the couch watching the news exactly, or while you're listening to podcasts. Right, that's right. We turned off our video here just so people know we have a video component. We turned it off because we were having some issues with it. But I am sitting here breathing in and blowing out through my purse lips and We'll try to keep doing that while we take our quick ad break and then we will be right back. All right, we're here, Yeah, Sarah, go ahead. I was going to say we are back, and I have a comment, and then I have like a totally basic question. So my comment is that I'm sure Laura had the same flashback because as you're describing the breathing exercises, all I could think about was like various choral exercises that we did back in the day when I used to sing, because they're all about, you know, breath control and that kind of purse lip breathing and getting the most out of your exhalation. And it's true, there's all these autonomic things that just happen when you breathe differently. So that's so cool. Yeah, Am, My incredibly basic question is can you just tell everyone, including me, exactly what is a yoga therapist? Oh? Thank you for asking that. It is a question that I get all the time, and I find that it's one of my sort of biggest jobs is to help this become more mainstream. So yoga is a vast system of mind body insights and practices. Right, most of us know the roll out the yoga mat do the sun salutation sort of the physical component to it. And many of us have a sense of, oh, there's breathing stuff that happens, and some may even be aware that meditation is technically under the umbrella of yoga and those are three components out of a system of eight components. And so there's a lot more to yoga than what you know most of us know, And yoga therapy is using parts and pieces of this large umbrella of insights and practices as a specific sort of plan of treatment. One of the ways that I love to describe it is if you have a cold and you go to the drug store to get cold medicine. You get in that aisle and there's a whole, entire aisle of cold medicine, and you choose a medication based on the symptoms that you are experiencing. Right. You don't buy cough medicine. You don't buy a medication that includes a cough suppressant. If you're sneezing, you don't buy something with a fever reducer. If you don't to have a fever, you either have a running nose or you're congested. Right, so you you sort of choose a medication that has some specific pieces in it based on your specific symptoms, and yoga therapy is exactly like that. You don't want to do a sort of a heating, activating practice for someone who's experiencing anxiety and really needs more of a grounding, stabilizing practice. And that's just thinking about the physical practice. But even with breathing, there's breathing techniques that can be energizing. And if for someone who needs more slowing down, more stability, more grounding, that would be, you know, completely opposite of what they really need. The other thing is that I want to really highlight with this is that the first two sort of limbs or branches, if you will, of the eight of what is the whole of yoga are insights that can really help us prepare for the deeper practices. And on the sort of the spectrum of the way yoga is organized, these are the first two things that become that come before the physical practice, that come before the breath work, that come before meditation. And these are things like honesty and non stealing and non violence and self study and surrender. And while at first these may not really feel like they relate, the point is to these. They are ten of them, divided up into two sort of sections, and the point of these is to help us with our relationship to the outer world and to ourselves. And when that way, when we approach to physical practice, when we approach breathing, when we approach meditation, we're sort of managing our relationship to our outer environment and to how we deal with ourselves and our inner experience in a way that is of high integrity. So, Stephanie, we've had some you talked about some ways of breathing that would help reduce anxiety. Given that, again, you know, there's so much to yoga practice, but what people do know of it is sort of the physical or the meditation aspects. I wondered if you could recommend a few of the physical components that might help with anxiety reduction. So if people want, I mean, obviously we're on a podcast, you can't see us doing them, but people could google us certain poses or moves or things like that, if you might want to share a few of those, and then a few ideas for meditation practice as well. Yeah, great, So I don't think that these will need to be googled. I really want to emphasize that a big way that I approach this work of teaching yoga for stress, for anxiety, for stress related depression is that it's very integratable and simple and really important to just let it be, not have to look outward for so much. That said, one of my favorite things to do for anxiety and for just that sense of supporting yourself is what I call self hug So it's quite literally wrapping your arms around yourself, bringing your hands to the outside of the opposite shoulders, and walking the hands around as if you're hugging yourself. Maybe in middle school you did this with your back turn to someone to pretend that you were, you know, making out with someone, right, because I'm talking about up or my showing my age. But when you walk your hands around and give yourself a big squeeze and breathe here using that sort of straw exhalation technique would work great. Here You not only stretch your shoulders, which is a place where a lot of us hold a lot of tension, but you cultivate this sense of supporting yourself, of holding yourself, of you know, of really embracing your experience if you will, and I'd recommend that you do this with one arm on top and then the other arm on top, so that you have that sense of balance in terms of not only the stretch, but in terms of cultivating your non dominant way of doing things. This helps to just increase your awareness and increase balance in your body and in your life. Quite honestly, another great physical practice, especially for anxiety, because like I mentioned, you know, there's certain aspects or qualities to practices like opening or expanding or energizing or uplifting or conversely sort of grounding bringing you more into your center, being more introspective. So for anxiety, and this was actually the practice that I attribute to sort of rescuing me from stress related anxiety in my twenties is forward folding. And you can do that in a chair, on your couch, standing up, putting your butt against the wall, and leaning over or just in the middle of the room. But when you quite literally bend over on any level, you're really opening up your whole backside, which is be thought of is sort of your outer shell, can be the part of you that you know you want to put behind you, so to speak, and you're releasing a lot of the muscles that tend to be really tense the hamstrings, the low back muscles, you know, the upper back and the back of the neck. And you're also sort of giving yourself an opportunity to be with yourself on a deeper level, to look within if you will. And when you do that in conjunction, as I mentioned before, with really slowing your breathing down, it can be an incredibly potent and simple way to downshift from that sense of you know, inner chaos, let's just say, to being more introspective, being quieter, and more centered. Conversely, I want to just share one other sort of physical thing that I think many of us need is some sort of heart opening shape. Many of us hunch over and our forward folding, you know, or are sort of forward bending in a sense, but not in a necessarily a positive way, sort of hunch. You know, many of us hunch quite honestly. And some simple ways to not only reverse the effects of this, but also to help to be more open hearted, open minded, even feel more expansive, more hopeful is to do anything that stretches across the shoulders. A great way to do this that I love, that I do almost daily is to stand in a doorway and hold on and just lean out. Or you can do something that looks like you're you know, a cactus, holding your arms in like a cactus shape where the elbows are bent to ninety degrees and you're are pointed straight up to the ceiling, and then simply pressing your elbows your forearms in the tops of your hands back. A way to one last way I'll say to do this is you can hold onto your knees if you're sitting on the floor, on a couch, on a chair, and just pull your chest through and sometimes maybe a little actual back and forth movement is helpful, like a seated cat cow to just opening up a little in the heart, in the chest, in the even the upper back, which is you know, very much connected. So simple, simple movements that can really have a positive effect. Well, I have to say, I personally love the cat cow. Yeah, so good, But really I can do that anytime. The forward fold is more of a struggle. But I think your I probably need to embrace more of the self embraced aspects and think less about how bent my legs are because I'm very inflexible. Yeah yeah, But the good thing to know about that is you know, thinking about the sort of therapeutic aspects of that. Being inflexible physically absolutely relates to how you handle the world, right, And we all have these things. So when you bend over and you feel your hamstrings and your low back and all the things that you're feeling really come to that place where it feels super challenging, that's the moment too. And I'll just throw in here like a mental piece that I think can be really beneficial as we start to talk about meditation, but a mental piece in that forward bending while you're slowing and deepening your breath can be really quite literally talking to yourself and saying, I want to be more open. I want to feel relaxed in this shape. I want to be more flexible. I want to be able to relax in this tense situation. Right, I want to Yes, I would like to let my handstrings Lengthen, you know, just a little inner dialogue has a really profound effect on your experience. Ooh, that's so cool. I love that, and I will think of those things the next time I try it. I wanted to ask in particular for our listeners who may be thinking, ooh, like I want to try yoga therapy. What are sessions like? Are these one on one? I know you're probably doing them virtually. Now is there a talking portion and then a movement portion? Or like, how how are they structured? Excellent question, So it will be different the way that different yoga therapists work. I spent six and a half years working one on one with people in my studio, and my online work looks similar. But but yes, there is typically because we have, you know, a body, because we breathe, because we have a mind. Typically there is some talking, some sort of coming to a common understanding about you know, what you're there for, what you need, what the issues are, what you're struggling with, and then some physical movement and breathing and meditation. In an in person, one on one session, it will feel like a private yoga session, but with but from a more holistic perspective and more specific perspective. The way I work now is through my online program Make Peace with Stress. Like spent many years sort of working with people who are struggling with stress and really recognizing that there's a few simple things that all of us that are struggling with stress really need to understand and work with and so I created a very specific program to help us get that foundation in a way that's super concise, and so Make Peace with Stress is offered as a one on one sort of coaching type thing and also as a group coaching program where I work with small groups of women. The group program is only women, small groups of women at a time, and there because there are some very specific sort of lessons that and pieces of information that work for all of us struggling with stress. I've created some very basic video to get those basic lessons, and then there's some worksheets for doing some reflection on the lesson, and then practices that are delivered via audio, because I think listening really helps us tune in and pay deeper attention versus being more visually based. But I do provide also a what I call a practice guide, which is a piece of paper a PDF that you can look at to sort of see the instructions and examples of the physical movements before you listen or while you listen, if you need that at first, which most people don't tend to use long term. Cool. Well, Stephanie, this has been very helpful, and I know a lot of our listeners are probably exhaling through a straw as they've been listening to this podcast. So we always do a love of the week, which is something that is cool for us at the moment, something we're enjoying right now. It could be yoga related, meditation related, or it could not be. Sarah, what do you have for us this week? Well, I did decide to go on theme as I sometimes do, and I will just give a shout out to my yoga mat that I have had for at least ten years. The brand is a rare Au are O r Ae car Spell and I actually got it as a freebie in like maybe twenty two thousand and nine ish, because back then my blog was sort of health leaning and all these companies were jumping to give stuff out for the online exposure. And that that era has passed for the most part, but it was funny. It was like a time I was getting boxes all the time. And this matt is an excellent mat. I mean it is just it still looks great. It's like the thickest yoga mat. I just love it. I use it for my workouts. I don't do that much yoga, but I use it for lots of other things and it is still going strong, and I kind of think I might buy another one. I feel like I owe them to actually purchase. Okay, after ten years, I hope that thing's clean. There's that aspect cleanish. So I can do something on theme too. We tried, I know this is another pandemic cliche, but I tried doing cosmic kids yoga with my kids and it was funny. I like they were some of them, some of them were more into it than others. I think it was not oriented toward preteen boys in case anyone was wondering, But I kind of enjoyed making the kids do it and watching them and doing it with them, and you know, it was fun. It was you know. I tried then yoga with Adrian with my daughter and we did some stretching and the like, and it's it's been fun to have that kind of online workout experience with the kids during this this situation. All right, So Sephanie, how about you? What's what's good for you this week? So this week I am loving an app that I discovered called Libby, and it connects directly with your life Library card and you can find audio books on there, just like you were checking them out of the library. It's a virtual library, if you will. And I am just getting so much joy out of connecting with books that I've been wanting to read for a long time, but for whatever reason just haven't, you know, haven't been able to find or make the time I really should say to read. So I am listening to some amazing audio books. I just started this morning, Becoming by Michelle Obama, and I'm already deeply in love with it. So that's my love for the week, Libby. That's awesome. We love Libby too. We are big fans over here and especially now with people trying to save money but be can't even go to your local library in most cases with them being Libya is a great way to get that. Well, Stephanie, thank you so much for joys. Can you tell our listeners where they can find you online? Yeah? Absolutely, make Peace with stress dot Com and I love to just highlight that. If you go there, you can take my stress type quiz, which is a two minute sort of what would you do in this situation. There's a couple of options and you can find out sort of the type of the way that you tend to react to challenging situations. You might be an imploder or a freezer or a catastrophizer, And once you find out your stress type, you can download a super simple practice that, similar to some of the things that I've offered, are just ways that you tools that you can start to use as part of your daily routine that are specific and will be specifically beneficial to your stress type. Just like getting the right cold medicine. These are things that you know if you're if you're an imploder, you don't need practices that help you go further into yourself. You need practices that will help you be more outwardly expressive. So and they're very simple things that, like I said, you can really start to just incorporate into your routine and use as tools to help you through challenging moments, which we always have exactly now and at all other times too. All right, well, Stans, thank you so much for joining us. Stephanie, we really appreciate it, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Well, that was fascinating, and now we are back to our question and answer segment. So this one comes from a listener who asks for tips on dealing with the emotions around childcare transitions. This listener writes that she'll be making a childcare transition soon and her kids have become very attached to their caregivers. So what do you do? So, Sarah, what would you say? Well, my first thought was like, ooh, maybe someday if we have like a psych child psychologist on this episode, we could get a more official answer. I can only share, you know, the little things that have helped us in this regard. We haven't ever dealt with a big, huge transition. We've actually had the same nanny since it's our only nanny really that we've ever had since twenty thirteen, so that has been one nice stable thing for our kids. But there have certainly been transitions in school and then with other types of babysitters, so we have dealt with it to some extent. I mean, little things do help screen time treats, you know, especially like a two or three year old, you know, might be crying their head off, but if you kind of arm that caregiver with you know, once mommy leaves, like they're going to whip out some big surprise like a new thing of plato or bubbles or even like ice cream in rare circumstances, then that that can work wonders, at least in my experience, and you don't have to rely on the caregiver to supply those surprise toys. You could just have them kind of in your back pocket. I will admit that I've left a crying kid before, you know, as we're we've been back, not really recently as much because Genevieve has not been as difficult, and I think some it does help to have older siblings who kind of take the temperature and if they act comfortable, then the younger one kind of falls into line. But back when my big ones were younger, and there were times when we would like have a new babysitter calm, and the first couple of minutes were rough, and you have to just make a decision like will this scar my child for life if they cry for five minutes. I feel like the answers no. So I've left a child that is crying, and I've told the caregiver to please, you know, text me in like five ten minutes and send me an update. And pretty much for the most part, I've always gotten an update with a picture of a smiling kid in a pretty short amount of time. And I do think there's something to be said for the kid kind of knowing that there's not going to be a negotiation, like sometimes mommy and daddy are going to have to go to work or go out or whatever it is. Obviously, this is like not a COVID specific time period because there hasn't been any date nights for a while, but I've still had to go to the hospital to work and that you know, we would only put them in a safe place and that they can handle it, and they so far they have. Now I know there are every kid is different, and I've heard horror stories of you know, toddlers that literally screamed for three hours. So if that is you, my heart goes out to you, and that might be a time to maybe seek out a professional to talk with. Well, that's you know, interesting you approach that from the idea of adding somebody new. What about the saying goodbye to somebody that has been very special in the child's life, Like what would you Is there some way to formalize that or ritualize that in a way that makes it I mean, obviously transitions are tough in general, nobody likes to say goodbye. But I'm curious if you have any ideas there, I haven't. I mean, the only thing I can think about that I've personally lived through is like the end of school years and teachers that my kids really loved. But somehow with a school you know what's coming, and I think the teachers do a very nice job of having a build up and having closure, like it's you know, this year is weird because we didn't have that, you know, they were they were physically together on March the thirteenth, and on March the sixteenth, it was all over and like they're never going to physically see each other again. But at the same time they're they're seeing each other on a screen, so I think they still feel connected. I do think it does help to like sort of formalize the process and celebrate the moving on. But I haven't ever had a close caregiver leave yet, so I don't know. Do you have wisdom to share? No, not really. I mean it's hard on the kids, you know, It's it's helped that in the most cases people are able to still like say hello at some point, you know, if somebody's gone back to school, they can send a picture that we've gotten together with people who've been babysitters in the past and then gone together with them again, so that helps too. And you know, knowing that mommy and daddy are still a constant is good as well. They may need some extra special attention during that transition, but that's you know, that's part of life. And so yeah, just trying to keep in mind that the child might be going through a bit of a grieving process and you need to be aware of that and empathetic to it. And if there's a little bit of extra say acting out that that maybe that's what it's stemming from and trying to be understanding. Easier said than done, but but absolutely that's a great point. Yeah, yeah, all right, Well this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking about making our peace with stress and we will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together. The ou