Nicole Lovald on Yoga, Meditation, Therapy, and Mental Health

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Matthew Tift talks with Nicole Lovald about the differences between therapy and contemplative practices, such as yoga and meditation. We also discuss topics such as:

The practice of integrative therapy
Approaches for dealing with anxiety
Gaining control by being a witness to our own thoughts
What science tells us about the various approaches
The "window of tolerance"
The importance of belly breathing
Why someone might choose yoga, meditation, or therapy

Episode Guests

Nicole Lovald

Nicole Lovald is the owner of Healing with Heart Psychotherapy. She is also one of the co-owners of Spirit of the Lake Yoga and Wellness Center in Shorewood, Minnesota. Nicole is a mental health therapist, certified life coach, reiki practitioner, and registered yoga teacher. As a natural healer all of her life, she has worked with a variety of populations (at-risk kids, veterans, domestic violence and sexual assault victims and more) in various settings throughout her career.

Transcript

Matthew Tift:: It's July 2022, Episode 22, Nicole Lovald on yoga, meditation, therapy, and mental health.
Matthew Tift:: Welcome to Hacking Culture, exploring practices and technologies that contribute to well-being. Hacking Culture is sponsored by Lullabot. And I'm your host, Matthew Tift.
Matthew Tift:: There are a lot of yoga teachers in the world, and there are a lot of therapists. Today's guest is both a yoga teacher and a therapist as well as a published author. So find a comfortable seat on your cushion and pour yourself a cup of chai tea or settle your easy chair and light the fire because it's time for Hacking Culture. Today's guest is Nicole Lovald. She's a psychotherapist and yoga teacher. She's author of the book Om Sweet Om: A Corporate Junkie's Search For Enlightenment. And Nicole is also one of the owners of the yoga studio where I teach yoga and meditation. So I'm very much looking forward to our talk today. How are you doing today, Nicole?
Nicole Lovald:: I'm wonderful, Matthew. Thank you so much for inviting me to be here.
Matthew Tift:: Could you start off by just telling us a little bit about your journey from corporate junkie, to use your phrase, to where you are now?
Nicole Lovald:: Sure, absolutely. So I used the phrase corporate junkie because about 12 or so years ago I was working for corporation downtown Minneapolis. And at the time I was incredibly stressed out and I didn't actually realize it. My husband was in the military, he was deployed to Iraq. We had a two year old son. So a lot of external stressors, a lot of things going on. And around that time, I started to have kind of a health crisis where my hair started to fall out. I was going into kind of that chronic fatigue syndrome place, and I found yoga. And so I found myself on a yoga mat. And for the first time ever, I learned that I could quiet my mind down, that I could calm my body, and I was totally hooked. And so my book is about that transition from being kind of addicted to the stress of an intense work environment, intense life. There's still intensity in my life, certainly, but I've learned how to better manage it now through yoga and through meditation, some of the practices that we'll likely be talking about today.
Matthew Tift:: Thank you. I thought we'd start off by talking a little bit about why you are here, because I know you had some questions when I invited you onto a show called Hacking Culture. So I wanted to offer a little bit of background to set the stage for both you and the listeners. Like me, many of the people listening to this show use open source and free software because it provides us a level of freedom and control. And we learn how to use and choose software that makes it difficult for companies that track us. As a result, we rarely see targeted ads and we have the ability to look at source code. Some of us can even understand what that code is doing. So I like to think that in some sense, we're a little bit like traditional yogis where we want to figure out how things work, continually make tweaks, and really constantly make adjustments to optimize our own happiness.
Matthew Tift:: So kind of like yogis, we can be willing to invest a lot of time and go to great lengths to do what we feel is right. And for some of us, there can be a strong desire to figure things out on our own and not ask for help. So I think that same attitude extends far beyond the realm of technology. So people listening might not just view themselves as computer hackers, but also as life hackers. We want to optimize our homes and our workstations and our habits and our memories and our minds and all of that.
Matthew Tift:: Where I work at Lullabot, I'm currently a co-facilitator of our mental health working group. Our group works to provide support for mental health issues. In our company, we have a three prong mission, which is to raise awareness of mental health issues, to provide resources, and to increase support. You and I are talking on this podcast and in a way it supports all three of these areas. And I thought with your breadth of knowledge and experience, you could help us understand more about some of the scientific benefits of yoga and meditation and other wellness practices, as well as to dig into some of the reasons why someone might seek out therapy rather than one of these other practices. And I thought maybe for our discussion today, we could start talking a little bit about therapy and then move towards yoga and meditation and some of the related practices and then maybe explore some of the messiness in between. So how does that sound as a plan?
Nicole Lovald:: That sounds great. And I'm really glad you're not going to be asking me questions about technology because I warned you ahead of time that that is not my world or understanding. So I'll apologize to any listeners if I say something wrong as it relates to the technical world.
Matthew Tift:: That's all right. You are not here to provide us with technical support. Let's just start by defining some of these modalities. And maybe you could tell us a little bit about the kind of therapy that you practice and who you serve in your practice.
Nicole Lovald:: Absolutely. So as a psychotherapist, I focus on integrative therapy. What I mean by that or what the term integrative therapy can be defined as is kind of weaving the Western medical model of therapy with other modalities, and I think of those as a lot of Eastern practices. And so sometimes when people think about therapy, we all have those visions maybe of someone lying on a couch and telling all the ROEs, right? And that is kind of the traditional form of talk therapy that's still used today in a lot of different ways. But as we've just started to dig into the research of how our brains work and also how our bodies work somatically, we're starting to learn a lot more about how somatic practices and how some of these Eastern-based practices can really help with our overall mental health, our wellness, help with us processing emotions.
Nicole Lovald:: So that's the idea of integrative therapy is really to bring in a lot of different practices and to meet each individual as the unique person that they are and to figure out what is going to best serve them, what is going to help them best heal or meet the needs that they're looking for. And so for some people, that might be some very some traditional talk therapy. For others, we might use breath work or meditation or energy healing or yoga or shamanic practices. So there's a lot of different things that I can pull from as an integrative therapist to work with my clients.
Nicole Lovald:: I work with a lot of different people and I love working with individuals, any ages essentially, as long as they're adolescent and above. So I don't necessarily work with the little kids because I have my own little kids at home. So I want to focus that energy there. But in addition to my yoga training and my training as a counselor, I have a background in marriage and family therapy. So with that systematic or that system lens, I also like to work with whole family units, with systems of the family. So that might be couples or partners in relationship. It could be families or different units within a family. So I kind of work with all of it as long as they're not the little kids. I refer those out to people that are better at play therapy than I am.
Matthew Tift:: I see. So it sounds like you work with both individuals and groups.
Nicole Lovald:: Mm-hmm.
Matthew Tift:: One thing that I have thought about therapy or others might think of is that the focus is typically on what's wrong with this situation or a person and the work is to fix what is wrong. Do you think that's an accurate description?
Nicole Lovald:: I think some therapists might focus a lot on what's wrong and how to fix it. So for example in the therapeutic medical model, therapists are trained to look at what is the disorder or the diagnosis, what is that thing that's causing a challenge in their life? And then we create a treatment plan, right? We create goals around how do we get them to a more optimal level? How do we get them to a place of wellness. Before I was doing therapy, I did life coaching. And so I have training in life coaching, which is focused more so on, where am I now and where do I want to be in the future? Or what are the things that I want to build or create or grow into in my life? And I think that some therapists do use that life coaching model in addition to therapy so that we can look holistically. Not just at what's wrong and what brings you into therapy, but who are you when you're at your best? Or what does that look like for you and how do we get there?
Nicole Lovald:: So I think of traditional therapy might focus more so on the past and previous experiences. I like to think about integrative therapy as being working on that past. So bringing that in, but then also using the mindfulness practices of how do we look at the present and how do we find satisfaction and contentment and happiness in the present moment. And how do we integrate some of those life coaching principles and goals kind of forward focused, it's called solution focused therapy, how do we bring that in to look at where we want to go? And so holistically, we're looking at all those pieces and parts together. So I guess to answer your question, it really depends on the therapist and their philosophy. I think some therapists do look at that from that holistic perspective.
Matthew Tift:: Do you have general advice about when people should turn to a therapist?
Nicole Lovald:: Yeah, I think I have a little bit of both. So there are some people that might be going through a life transition. So maybe a loss, a divorce, either they've moved and are creating a new community or a new life in some way. So sometimes are trying to fix something, or maybe they have a mental health challenge or emotional challenge where they have a lot of anxiety that's keeping them from living the life they want or depression. So there is that. And at the same time, there are some people that are functioning really well, but realize that they are missing something ,or even though they're functioning well, they're not completely satisfied. So they may be interested in wanting to connect or reconnect with a spiritual part of themselves or just build their awareness and their insight of who they are, what their beliefs are and where they want to go. So I think it's a little bit of both and it just depends on where the person is at and what they're looking for.
Matthew Tift:: It seems like some people want to think of a practice of meditation as hacking the mind. Actually, I talked about that with a previous guest and there's this idea that people can learn new habits and that kind of thing and this idea of hacking sort of implies control. To me, it seems like one of the differentiators perhaps with therapy, is that there's a real sense of probing the mind, finding out what's going on, uncovering some of the assumptions that are going on, sort of questioning the stories in the mind. Do either of those speak to you in terms of how a therapist might work?
Nicole Lovald:: Absolutely. Yeah. I tell clients that we're not really taught as young children that we can control our minds. And so what happens with a lot of people is we start to live in this world and live in our lives and we have worries, right? So we have a lot of stress or worry that can come up for us. And it's that inability to control the worry that sometimes can cause anxiety and can cause some of these bigger mental health concerns that people have. And what we've learned through the research in meditation and the brain science that's out there now is that we do have the ability to grow certain areas of our brain. We have neuroplasticity. And we have the ability to be able to take a step back and become the witness to our thoughts.
Nicole Lovald:: And so in yoga, we talk about how we are not our thoughts, right? We are the witness, the observer to our thoughts. And when you do that, you regain a sense of control. And in that control and understanding, then you can start doing different practices that help you to, like you said, shift beliefs or shift mindset, or stop different patterns that have just been ingrained in us over time, and maybe even from our original family of origin. So I do think that there's just exciting new information out there that's empowering people to recognize that we can take that control again and learn how to shift the way that our brain is processing information.
Matthew Tift:: I was reading the World Happiness Report recently, the 2022 version came out. Been coming out every year since 2012. This report found that on average, there's been a moderate upward trend in stress, worry and sadness in most countries and a slightly long term decline in enjoyment of life. So we have more sad, stressed out people.
Matthew Tift:: Another report that I saw recently was the Global Yoga Survey. It was a survey of over 10,000 practitioners from 124 countries. The participants said that stress relief and relaxation were perceived to be the most important benefits of yoga. So I saw that and I kind of put these things together in my head, at least, thinking, "Well, people are sad and more and more of them are viewing yoga as a way to deal with stress to help increase relaxation." So could you talk a little bit about how and when someone might turn to a practice like yoga or meditation to deal with their increasing stress?
Nicole Lovald:: Yeah. Let me start by kind of talking about the science behind it, because I think that'll help us understand why we would want to reach towards yoga or some of these other practices, some of these other wellness practices to help us with stress. So if you think about the science behind stress, we experience an event as stressful when we're in a place of fear, right? When we're fearful for our life or we're just fearful of the environment that we're living in. So it's not surprising when you look at this pandemic that we've been living in and through where there's this huge amount of fear that came up for people. And then in addition to feeling the fear, all of a sudden we took away community. So we took away the support systems, a lot of the support systems and the structures that people were used to living in and under, right?
Nicole Lovald:: So it's not surprising that people started to feel stressed. The way that we experienced stress in our bodies I think is really important to note, because what happens is automatically we go into a state of fight, flight, or freeze. You and the people that are listening have maybe heard about those fight, flight or free states. And when we get into this place, what happens is our amygdala, which is a part of our brain, so if we go back to the brain science that we were talking about, that kind of gets triggered if you will. And when that happens, our bodies get inundated with cortisol and different stress hormones. And when that happens, our bodies go into what's called the sympathetic nervous system. So our sympathetic nervous system kicks in. For some people, that might trigger them or cause them to go into a hyper anxious or hyper arousal state, which is where you feel really jittery, it's where your heartbeats really fast. It's where your body gets tense. It's essentially where you're like prepping yourself to fight or prepping yourself to run away.
Nicole Lovald:: If you translate that to mental health language, that's anxiety. That's a lot of how people experience anxiety. Now, the opposite or... There's always polarities, right? So the second half of that might be that people become hypo aroused. Instead of hyper aroused, it's hypo aroused, which is where they might go into that freeze state, where you isolate, where you shut down, where you're kind of in shock and you can't move. You can't react. So you think of during the pandemic, some people isolated even more than we were forced to isolate or started to just really shut down. That's a state of depression when you translate that to the mental health translation, if you will.
Nicole Lovald:: So the reason yoga becomes really important or meditation becomes really important or seeing a therapist might become really important is because those practices help you tell your body that, "No, I am safe. It is okay" and my parasympathetic nervous system can then kick in. And that parasympathetic nervous system, sometimes it's called the rest and digest state, that's where we feel calm. We feel peaceful. We feel relaxed. It's where our brain calms down essentially, too, and goes into the theta wave state where our body can heal.
Nicole Lovald:: And so when we roll out our mats and we get onto our mat and start practicing yoga, you might notice that those anxious thoughts start to slow down, because a lot of the meditation and yoga practices are focused on calming your thoughts. So your thoughts start to calm. Tension starts to relax from your body and you start to get into this place where you can heal, place where you're not prepped to fight or to flee or to shut down, where you can process emotions, where you can get back into your body. Because a lot of these other places, these hypo or hyper arouse states kind of get us out of our bodies and the yoga practices get us back in so we can feel what's really happening and we can process and we can integrate and we can heal.
Matthew Tift:: Sure. So it's not just that we're trying to avoid all of those stressful situations. It's that we want to go through that whole process, going through that stress, that system of processing the stress.
Nicole Lovald:: Yeah.
Matthew Tift:: It's not like we're just trying to use that practice to avoid it. We're trying to use it to process everything that's happened. Is that kind of how you're describing it?
Nicole Lovald:: Absolutely. Well, to integrate it. And what happens too is there's this concept, this theory by Dr. Siegel called the window of tolerance. That window of tolerance is where we're in homeostasis, where our bodies are calm and relaxed. And the theory says that the more time we are in that parasympathetic nervous system place, the more resiliency we have, the more our window of tolerance grows. Meaning that we have more of an ability to handle the stress without going into that automatic stress response. Stress isn't going to go away. But instead of you going into that automatic stress place, you might be able to take a deep breath and be okay with it, right? Or you might be able to handle different levels of stress in a better way, if that makes sense.
Matthew Tift:: Sure. You're learning tools to deal with what's going on.
Nicole Lovald:: Absolutely.
Matthew Tift:: Something you just said reminded me of a quote from your book. Do you mind if I quote from your book?
Nicole Lovald:: Yeah, right. Go ahead.
Matthew Tift:: You said, "I felt as if my body was ready to break. It hurt too much physically or emotionally to connect to my heart so I found myself staying busy and working harder to achieve my perfect picture of success. I was suffering physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually." And hearing those words now, do you think that if somebody described themselves that way, you might suggest the course of action that you found, which would be to go try yoga?
Nicole Lovald:: Yeah. Well, first of all, I don't remember saying that so thanks for repeating that back to me. I'm like, "Well, that person needs some therapy. That's what they need." But yes, yes. To answer your question, I would say when you're in that disconnected place, it is really helpful to find a practice. And I know we're talking about yoga right now, but it might be something else. So when I'm talking to clients, we might talk about going for a walk in the woods where you feel connected to nature, where you feel mindful and you feel present. There's a lot of different tools or different practices that people can do that can help them kind of get back into their bodies.
Nicole Lovald:: But yoga certainly is an amazing practice for that because all of a sudden you're moving your body in a way where let's say you're holding a pose that takes a lot of strength and a lot of balance and a lot of control, you have to be present in your body to be able to hold that pose. If you think of the tree pose that we're all used to seeing on magazines and such, it takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of focus on what's happening in my feet, to what's happening with my arms, what's happening with my legs.
Nicole Lovald:: And so it really does focus you or force you, excuse me, to come back into your body and to feel what's going on. And so it's an introspective kind of a practice that forces you to be insightful and pay attention and be curious. That's one thing we talk a lot about in yoga, is really being curious about what are the sensations, what are the things that I'm feeling, what is happening in my body? And it's not to change it or to fix it or to make it be any different than it is. It's really just to be right to feel it and to embody it and to... We talked about the kind of processing of emotions a little bit, that's what's happening when we're doing that.
Matthew Tift:: I think I had that same reaction to your own quote, what you wrote felt like somebody who needed therapy. And I understand though what you're saying as well, how the practices can be complimentary and how somebody might pick up a practice like that because they're just feeling really emotionally and mentally drained. And I guess, honestly, the thing that I kind of wonder about is how many people are turning towards a practice like yoga or meditation because they see all these scientific benefits, when in actuality it probably is more appropriate for them to be seeing a therapist instead.
Nicole Lovald:: Yeah. Well, I think they can be used together for most people because what happens in meditation, from my perspective anyway, what happens in meditation and yoga is, again, we become aware. We all of a sudden have this insight into, "Oh wow, I'm feeling really sad." Tears might start to come up while you're on your mat that you didn't even know that emotion or feeling was there. So it starts with that awareness. But then I think where therapy comes in is that awareness is great, but sometimes it's overwhelming, right? Sometimes we get flooded with emotion or flooded with different sensations and things that are going on. So we might need some support in figuring out what do we do with that, how do we continue to process it on a maybe deeper level or different level.
Nicole Lovald:: So we might feel it, like I might get some of my yoga mat and start crying and then I become curious about, "Where is that coming from? That's deep within me." We all store and hold emotions within us. And so these practices help those emotions kind of move up and out sometimes, but then we want to learn from them. And maybe they don't come out. Maybe they're still there and we want to process them so that they can be released and let go. So that's where I think therapy can come in, is for people who want to take it kind of the next step and really figure out, "Okay, what is this? Is this coming from a deep seated pattern that I want to change in my life? Is it the same storyline coming up over and over and over again? Am my thinking the same thoughts? Am I worrying about the same things?" And that I think is where therapy can help.
Nicole Lovald:: And then I will say there's one piece that does scare me in terms of people doing yoga where they need therapy, is when people have experienced traumatic events. And for some people chronic trauma, right? There might be a lot of traumas in their life. When we are in our bodies... Well, first let me say, when we've experienced trauma, trauma takes us out of our body because we get into survival mode when we have a traumatic experience. And so to be safe, sometimes we kind of come out of our bodies and disassociate. So when we come back into our bodies, for some people, it feels unsafe, it can feel really scary. Like that flooding that I talked about, it can bring a lot of emotion up all at one time.
Nicole Lovald:: And so as a yoga teacher, I know I've talked to my teacher trainings I've talked about knowing your role that you're a yoga teacher, you're not a therapist, right? So if somebody starts really getting dysregulated in your yoga class, yoga teachers aren't necessarily trained to help support you in that emotional process. A therapist is traditionally trained to really support and help in that process. So that's where I think as yoga teachers it's important to recognize when is it helpful to refer a client and to say, "I think it might help you, or if you're interested, let me provide you some information with the therapist," right? Because it can get scary if people... Again, if they're getting dysregulated and feeling fearful in their body, you really want a therapist to help provide that safe container for them to process what's happened.
Matthew Tift:: I think with a lot of people nowadays that are experiencing just some of the general trauma of all of the world events, that they're turning to some of these practices and trying to take control, trying to develop these habits. And then I've seen over and over that people are a little bit discouraged when they realize that something like yoga meditation or therapy, all, they encourage a willingness to interrogate the difficulties of life. And if you don't want to go there, it's not just like, "Oh, we're going to do these things to bliss out." That it's not just an escape from life. That seems to be one area where there is a lot of crossover. And I think it is important for anyone listening to realize that yoga teachers like myself have a scope of practice. If we're certified by the Yoga Alliance, we are not allowed to teach yoga therapy.
Matthew Tift:: And to me, as I understand it, and what you're saying, it sounds like a place like a yoga class, a meditation class, those might be places to explore and interrogate some of the difficulties in your own life, but the therapy is about trying to explore further and maybe work towards the healing. How does that land on you?
Nicole Lovald:: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's again, the awareness piece that comes up in yoga. So it is like feeling the difficulty or feeling the suffering of what you're going through or what might be in your body or in your mind. It's not I think of some of the images that we see of somebody sitting cross-legged in meditation just all blessed out. That's not the experience for most people when they first begin. It might over time, but for a lot of us, when you get quiet, all of a sudden you realize all those anxious thoughts, or you realize all those emotions that come up for you. And so I think, again, the therapy piece is where we then recognize what's happening for us and we learn different ways or other ways, or we really process and figure out like, "Where is this coming from?"
Nicole Lovald:: And so it's a deeper dive if you will. And it's also where we can learn additional coping skills. Because if we're having a panic attack at work someday, it's not going to help us to unroll our yoga mat and start doing downward facing dog.
Matthew Tift:: Hmm.
Nicole Lovald:: Right? But a therapist can maybe give you some breathing strategies that we might learn in yoga. And so you might have some strategies. But a therapist is going to help really walk through, okay, why are we having those panic attacks in the first place? Where are they coming from? In that moment of crisis, what are the coping skills? What are the things that you can do? So that's kind of my discernment between a yoga class per se and therapy. I do think a lot of the yoga practices, a lot of the things that we learn like pranayama and breath work and meditation, I think a lot of those things can be brought into therapy and people can learn them and can use them for therapeutic benefit. But most of our traditional just 60-minute yoga classes aren't breaking those pieces apart and really teaching us as individuals how we can use them in a therapeutic manner when we're in crisis.
Matthew Tift:: Yeah, that makes sense. One of my other yoga teachers... You have been one of my yoga teachers, Nicole, but another one of my yoga teachers from Kripalu was talking about the difference between teaching a yoga class, where in a lot of ways that's the teacher sharing the practices that they have been working on for a group and trying to help the group in whatever way that we can generally help. Whereas if you're doing something like yoga therapy on an individual basis, then it's really focused on the person there. And then that therapist, maybe it's a yoga therapist or an integrative therapist or whatever type of therapist, is really there listening, trying to understand and not coming in with any sort of schedule.
Matthew Tift:: So that's important for a lot of people to keep in mind when they're trying to decide. Because I bet there's a lot of people who are listening right now thinking like, "Oh, I'm feeling really stressed. Maybe I should try yoga. Maybe I should try meditation." Remembering that there can be trauma informed yoga classes that are nice containers for people to explore that, but that is quite different than therapy. I don't know. I think I still feel like that can be tricky for an individual to be able to discern on their own without outside help.
Nicole Lovald:: Yeah. It makes me think about, for example, there's a certain breath work that we use in yoga sometimes called breath of fire. And that breath work is really stimulating, you're breathing really quickly. Well for someone who is coming to a class super anxious, that could put them over the edge and potentially give them a panic attack. Whereas what that person, what would best benefit them is a really soothing, calming breath work. And similarly with someone who is maybe feeling really depressed, if they go to a class that's really slow, maybe a restorative class, that's not what's going to best serve them. Having something more stimulating, more invigorating is going to shift their energy potentially and help them come to a more better place of balance.
Nicole Lovald:: So to your point, I do think it is really helpful to have that individual touch point, whether it's talking to your yoga studio and saying, "Here's what I'm looking for. I really need and want a stimulating yoga class. Or I really need and want something more calming." And at least just starting the conversation and asking questions about which class might fit me best. Or if you can do an individual yoga therapy session or meet with a psychotherapist who's got training in this kind of stuff, absolutely. They might even be able to give you an individual home practice, a yoga practice that you can do that is created just for your unique needs.
Nicole Lovald:: So to your point, I'm hearing kind of the worry, I think, "Is yoga right? Is meditation right for everybody?" I think everybody can try it, can practice it. But if you find that you are not feeling well in your yoga practice, if it's bringing up anxiety, if it's causing you to be flooded with emotions, things like that, I think that's where it's important for you to seek out individual support with from someone who can really figure out what are your unique needs and help create a plan around that.
Matthew Tift:: I like what you're saying. Another aspect of this to me is sort of the other end. It reminds me of a phrase we have in software development called the premature optimization, which happens when some well-intentioned person gets really focused on some minor detail, in a scenario that's maybe very unlikely to happen and then sort of strays away from some of the main goals. So it kind of makes me wonder if there might be similar kinds of things that happen where people, they worried well, where they're thinking something might be wrong because everybody else is sad, when really it might be just that some people are doing fine and they don't need a therapist and they can go to that yoga class and they can just kind of maybe bliss out.
Nicole Lovald:: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think also we don't want to discourage people that might be listening that are thinking, "Yeah, I've been wanting to do yoga. I've been curious about meditation." We certainly don't want to discourage people from doing the practices. We know from the research that these practices help with focus, help with concentration, can help with pain management, can help with mental health issues. There's just so many benefits. Whether you're feeling well or feeling unwell regardless, there's just amazing benefits to these practices. We don't want to give you a reason not to start to try some of these things. I think we're just, to your point, being cautious about, well, what if you do start to feel overwhelmed or start to feel some sensations that are scary for you? Then we want to get you other support.
Nicole Lovald:: But you're right. There might be some people who aren't feeling stressed out, that are just feeling great and these practices can help you feel even better. And I would argue that a lot of people that are balanced and feeling well in their lives likely have some lifestyle practices that they use that support them in being well, that support them in being in that calm, contented, centered place.
Matthew Tift:: Some of these practices that we're discussing yoga, meditation, Tai Chi, all of these sort of contemplative Eastern practices, they often have many more components than just postures, right? And so a lot of people think of yoga as postures. And yet other teachers like to talk about the eight limbs of yoga and the postures being just one of those eight. I think that might be another thing that some people who are exploring these practices might want to consider is, if they are wanting just to be more flexible or if they are wanting to reduce how often they're lying and stealing or any other things that might not contribute to a healthy mind. Could you talk a little bit about how some of these practices are incorporating other ethical components and even if that comes into therapy as well?
Nicole Lovald:: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So I think about when I first started yoga, it really was about having an hour every week to get exercise. I was totally stressed out, but what was important to me at that time was I need to be in shape. I need to look the part, all those things, right? So for me, it was the flexibility and the strength and the exercise. And what I found then when I finished a Savasana, which is where we just lay and rest at the end of the yoga class was, "Oh my gosh, I'm a different person," right? I feel more balanced. I feel more relaxed. I feel what those people say is bliss, like I have some idea of what that bliss might feel like. And that was the part that then got me curious and interested in learning more about yoga.
Nicole Lovald:: What's fascinating, and this is what you were just talking about, is there's so much more to yoga philosophy and yoga practices than just the physical movements. Physical asanas are really important, but I see that as being like the entryway. That's what gets most people started into yoga. But then you dive deeper and you start to learn that there's the importance of our breath work. There's a lot of research in the mental health community about how our overall health is really tied to how we breathe, right? And if we breathe deeply and calmly, that that's usually a sign. I mean, it's one of the things I look for immediately. When a client walks into my office, I check to see if they're breathing into their chest, because that tells me they're in the sympathetic nervous system and they're in their stress response. So our breath work, pranayama, is incredibly important.
Nicole Lovald:: We start to learn in yoga philosophy about focusing the mind, quieting the minds, or being curious about the mind and kind peeling away the different layers of ourselves to get to that inner self, that part of ourself that's connected with something bigger than what we are. And there's also a lot of lifestyle practices. So you talked about kind of the ethical guidelines, if you will. There's a lot of things that we learn in yoga philosophy about just how to move through your daily life. At Spirit of the Lake Yoga that I own and where I teach, we call it living yoga, right? So I'm living my yoga off of my mat. I'm trying to live a life and balance by maybe non harming, right? Not stealing, not lying.
Nicole Lovald:: It might be about brahmacharya, which is all about not doing things in excess. So I think of with the 4th of July coming up this holiday, coming up this weekend, how sometimes the heat and the busyness can bring us out of a state of balance. So brahmacharya teaches us to not do things in excess, but to really pay attention to what our bodies uniquely need to be in a state of balance. So I could talk, I could just keep going on all the yamas and the niyamas and the eight limbs of yoga, but I'll leave it with what you said. There's a lot more to yoga than what we often talk about just in a regular yoga class. And so once you dig into the philosophy, there's a lot of teaching and a lot of learning that we can do related to just regular lifestyle practices and how those can bring us into a greater state of balance and greater state of wellness overall.
Matthew Tift:: There's also research I've seen that simplifies it quite a bit more where essentially in happiness research, one common denominator for those who are deemed happy is that they have chosen to be happy. Is that an idea that you promote for the people you serve?
Nicole Lovald:: Yeah. There's this idea of positive psychology, right? There's a lot of research and positive psychology about mindset and how you look at things and how you see the world and whether you choose happy or you choose something different. And I like to relate it to gratitude practices. So if you start doing a gratitude practice, start thinking of three things that you're grateful every night before you go to bed, before you know it, you're just going to be looking around and being grateful for little things that you never would've noticed before. And so it goes back to kind of that neuroplasticity, plasticity that we talked about earlier is what we fire in our brain starts to build and strengthen over time. And so if you do think more positive, happy thoughts, then you might start to be happier in general.
Nicole Lovald:: Now I say that a little bit with a caveat because there's this idea too of toxic positivity, where sometimes life is hard, right? And if somebody just lost a child, we're not going to say to them, "We'll just choose to be happy," right? If somebody just went for a divorce, we're not going to say that. If somebody's really struggling with a pandemic, we're not going to tell them, "Well, you just have to choose to be happy."
Matthew Tift:: Yeah.
Nicole Lovald:: In therapy, we use cognitive behavioral therapy, which is a process of noticing our thoughts like we do a meditation, and then neutralizing those thoughts. So instead of going to like worst case scenarios, you try to look at, "Okay, what is a thought that still feels true and feels real to me that is more neutral?" Doesn't bring fear in, or doesn't bring in these harder emotions, sadness or different painful emotions and such. So I'll go back to the positive psychology. I do think it is helpful and a great practice for a lot of people. And I think for some people it can feel like, "You're not really seeing me or hearing me or understanding me when you're telling me just to be positive." So I think there are other practices that we can use in those scenarios as well.
Matthew Tift:: All of these statements seem to have some sort of asterisk after them.
Nicole Lovald:: If this, then that.
Matthew Tift:: That's an unfortunate thing in a way for people to find out too, is like it takes work to try and figure out what works for them.
Nicole Lovald:: Mm-hmm.
Matthew Tift:: We're getting near the end of our time. Do you have one practice, or technology if you'd like, that you could recommend to people who want to contribute to their well-being?
Nicole Lovald:: Yeah. Okay. Let me do both. I will say the first, for a practice, is I'm just going to say belly breathing. There's two things that came to mind, but I'll stick with that one. So for a lot of us, again I mentioned that the first thing I look for is how is someone breathing when they go and I meet with them. And that's because when we breathe really shallow and we breathe into our chest, we're usually in that sympathetic nervous system state. We're in a stress response. So the best thing that we can do to counter that, and it's so, so very simple, but it does take practice is to try to draw our breath down, lower into our body, into our lungs, lower into our ribcage, and that pushes on the diaphragm and makes our belly expand. So we call it belly breathing.
Nicole Lovald:: So when you breathe really slowly and fully and deeply, you start to tone our vagus nerve. Some of you have maybe heard of the vagal tone theory. That vagus nerve is responsible for telling our bodies that we should be in fight or flight or freeze, or that we're safe, we're okay, and we can calm down. So if someone's feeling panicky, the first thing I'm going to do with them as a therapist is I'm going to get right in front of them and I'm going to have them breathe with me and we're going to breathe down into our bellies and we're going to try to calm our nervous system. So that's the best practice that I've found throughout the days. Just to check in and notice, "Okay, how am I breathing? Where is my breath? Can I take some deep calming breaths down towards my belly?"
Nicole Lovald:: And that's just going to be that reset button. It's just going to get you to tell your body, "Nope, I'm good. We're good. We don't need to be stressed out right now. Even if my thoughts are stressful, my body doesn't have to be in that stressed out state." So that to me is the easiest, most accessible. We're always breathing. It's something that a tool we have with us all the time. So that is something I would say everybody can use and should use and can have a great impact over time. And then for technology, there's a lot of meditation apps out there. I have some meditations on my website, which is just nicolelovald.com, that are free, but there's one app that I personally love to use just because there's so many meditations out there and it's called Insight Timer. It's free. You can pay for some additional supports and things if you'd like, but there are great meditation and yoga teachers out there. I often have clients use that app as well for support.
Matthew Tift:: Thank you. And I will also say that your book contains a lot of other suggestions and practices for self-care and finding contentment and dealing with the ups and downs of life. So anyone listening, go out and get Om Sweet Om. Is there anything else you would like to promote or mention today?
Nicole Lovald:: Well, for any parents who might be listening, I just recorded a mindful parenting curriculum. So that's available on my website as well under the services. I'm very passionate about helping fellow parents integrate some of these practices, and particularly mindfulness, so that we can be a little more patient, a little more calm and ultimately get to that place of having some joyful moments with our kiddos. So they can certainly look for that if you're a parent looking for some supports as well.
Matthew Tift:: Is your website the best way for people to get in touch with you? Or is there another method that you would prefer if somebody listening would like to reach out?
Nicole Lovald:: Yeah. And I should mention, I guess, that I do have some availability for therapy clients as well. As always, things are fluid and shifting all the time, so I usually can squeeze some people in. Yeah, and going to my website, again, just nicolelovald.com. My email and phone number are all available there and the contact information. I'd love to hear from you if anybody has any questions or if you'd like to work with me in any way.
Matthew Tift:: Well, I really appreciate you taking the time today, Nicole. It was wonderful to catch up and hear some of your ideas about these topics. I think this provided a great overview for some of the different types of practices and topics that people are thinking about a lot nowadays. Hopefully this will be beneficial. So thank you so much for coming on today.
Nicole Lovald:: Thank you, Matthew. It was my pleasure. I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Matthew Tift:: Thank you so much for listening and for spreading the word about Hacking Culture to your friends, family, and coworkers. If you are interested in topics such as yoga, meditation, and well-being, please subscribe to my newsletter at matthewtift.com/newsletter. Hacking Culture is produced at Lullabot. The theme music is from the Open Goldberg Variations. Thank you for listening.