Bonus Episode | Trauma-Informed Yoga with Lanita Ugstad

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Intro

One of the best things I ever did for myself was to register for the DNA Surprise Retreat last year.

It was shortly after I found out about my DNA surprise and my ethnicity shift.

The retreat was a place of community and friendship and understanding and learning that I was not alone.

I learned skills to manage the shock and I was learning to begin to heal.

I was so surprised that many people were going through the very same thing or similar circumstances.

I was surprised by the empathy and the care that I received.

I was surprised in a lot of other good ways.

Is there any way you can go to the retreat this year?

I can highly recommend it in every way.

Let your story begin.

Let your healing begin.

Speaker 2

Whether you just uncovered your DNA surprise or you've been on this journey for a while, the DNA Surprise Retreat is for you.

Registration is open now.

Join us from September 19th through the 22nd, 2024 just outside of Phoenix, AZ.

You can reserve your space at dnasurpriseretreat.com.

I'll see you there.

Hi everyone.

Thank you for joining me today for a very special episode of DNA Surprises.

Today I am joined by Lanita Uggstad and she is an advanced yoga teacher who will be joining us at the DNA Surprise Retreat in September.

She is a certified advanced yoga teacher, a certified trauma informed mindfulness coach, birth educator and labor doula.

Prenatal yoga teacher, Reiki master and certified equine assisted coach is quite the resume.

She has background working with trauma, substance abuse, youth education, crisis and therapy, and empowering women.

Lanita currently facilitates trauma therapy groups with Vivify, Wellness counseling events with yoga and horses, women's circles and riding lessons with her own business, Sacred Equine Journeys, yoga classes, workshops and certification, Upward Light Healing Yoga Studio, sisterhood and birthing circles at Root Rise Collective, and life coaching under her own LLC.

She is passionate about assisting her clients in healing what is blocking them from embodying their fullest potential so they can live in their birthright to feel safe, joyous and abundant.

Lanita will lead us through a gentle movement session at the retreat using her yoga expertise.

Thank you so much for joining me today, Lanita.

Thank you SO.

Speaker 3

Much for having me.

I'm so excited.

So we're just gonna jump right in.

I'm so curious.

How did you get into yoga?

I mean, you have such a breadth of experience in the Wellness space.

How did you get here?

That's a really.

Great question.

My journey I would say with trauma really kicked in full force in 2015 when I myself experienced a significant loss.

Before that I had been practicing yoga since my daughter was around too.

So now for about 25 years and have been teaching for 15.

So becoming trauma informed and, and starting down that path really was a path of Wellness for myself and recognizing the benefits of these different modalities, whether it was yoga or mindfulness or equine assisted therapy, how they benefited me.

And then with that passion and realization of this is so profound.

Really wanting to make that an offering that I gave to the public.

So that was kind of the beginning of my journey and where it has led me to now.

That's so interesting.

And you know, when we reached out to you about the retreat, we were really looking for an opportunity to help people physically move some of these emotions that they're experiencing after Adna surprise.

How yoga can help you move your emotions

Can you talk a little bit about how yoga does this?

Absolutely.

So yoga is so amazing because it really puts you in your body.

And what we have discovered over time is that a lot of the time when we experience significant loss or trauma or something that is jarring or upsetting, we tend to disassociate from the body.

So getting to a point where we can connect then with the physical body and start listening to what it's needing is one of the greatest ways to start that path for health and healing.

And yoga is just the perfect Segway.

It can be really gentle.

It can be very slow.

It can also be faster paced and more intense.

But getting into the body isn't.

It doesn't have to look a certain way.

It doesn't have to be that rigorous physical activity or practice.

It can be very gentle, a way to get to the body, experience what that sensation is and start to feel safe to have that exploration again.

I love that.

And so like I mentioned at the top, your session is focused on this gentle movement or yoga.

And I think a lot of people know what yoga is kind of culturally it's become more and more popular.

But I think there's often this idea of yoga that you need to be super flexible and you need to be able to bend into like all these different poses.

And that's not really what we we talked about doing together at the retreat.

So can you talk a little bit more about what yoga can look like outside of the really intense head stands and all the other kinds of things that people might think of?

What yoga can look like outside of the intense headstands

Yes, absolutely.

Yoga was meant to be a physical practice that cleared space for meditation for sitting still.

So having the ability to move slow can look like gentle restorative, where the practice is more of a nurturing practice, allowing for the body to heal.

It can also look like yen yoga, which is promoting deeper stretches, holding the poses for longer periods of time.

In the hatha practice.

It can also look like holding a pose for up to a minute, minute and a half, just so that the body really adjusts and we can fine tune what a posture may look like.

So when we practice together, we will be exploring a little bit of yen and some restorative postures, something that's very slow in nurturing and I always teach to all level.

So I will be offering many different ways to approach a shape or a pose, a posture, giving everybody the opportunity to really explore on their own what works best for them.

So listening to the body sensations, although I'm watching, I am not in anyone else's body.

So really just giving them that time and exploration to feel comfortable where they're at and being in positions, poses, shapes that really work well for them, that it's doable, it feels accessible.

Thank you for talking about that 'cause I know I haven't practiced yoga honestly in a while.

I've kind of fallen out of it.

And so for me, this is kind of be going to be dipping my toes back into it and I'm really excited to kind of have a more gentle approach this time.

You touched on some of this earlier, but I would love if you could just expand on some of the physical and emotional benefits of this type of movement.

The physical and emotional benefits of yoga

Thank you for asking that question.

One, one of the reasons that I work so closely with yoga and mindfulness and just paying attention in health and healing and trauma work is because often it feels safe to be in a body.

We're learning to then be in our bodies and accepting of the sensations that are there and working with the physical aspects.

One of the reasons we disassociate from the physical is because when we're paying attention to our body, then emotions rise.

So it isn't uncommon for yoga postures to bring up emotion.

A lot of the times we're moving into the hips.

The hips are connected to the shoulders and connected to the jaw, which are all places where we store tension and emotion.

And so when we're working in movement, it's not uncommon for emotion to come up.

And this is a Safeway to then explore, OK, that posture is giving me this sensation.

This sensation has been triggering this, this emotion.

Can I be with that sensation, that emotion and createspace around it by breathing so that I'm not trying to run from it or block it or stop it, but I can work with it in a different way.

And when we're working with yoga in that way, then it becomes a safer space to explore.

And knowing that that's also our personal practice, right?

So it, even though I'm guiding, this is something that you take home with you, your body is always going to be with you.

This is something that you can then do on your own and explore on your own as a Safeway to be in touch with the body and emotion.

You've you touched on this too, but a lot of your work is through a trauma lens.

Trauma-Informed Yoga Practices

How do you bring that perspective to something like a yoga practice?

So what I learned, again through my own experiences, was how often is the language that we're using not inclusive?

We really want to be aware of when we're asking somebody to close their eyes, when we're asking somebody to take up space, when it has felt unsafe to be in their body, when we're asking them to be vulnerable and opposed.

That may be more open than what they're feeling comfortable doing.

So being trauma informed really is inviting options that feel safe using words like being brave, having options, knowing that it's OK to decide that a child's pose is what you're going to be doing right now, or that if the pose that I'm leading you into doesn't feel safe in the body, know that you have another option and that it's a suggestion.

It's not mandatory.

And I think a lot of the time when we get into classes and in yoga studios and experiences, you know, that instructor's guiding and giving us instruction and we feel the obligation then to do exactly what that person is saying.

And it may not feel OK to do that, right?

My body looks different, feels different than someone else's.

So being trauma informed is really giving so many options and allowing the individual to choose.

There isn't a right or there isn't a wrong.

As long as the body is feeling safe and there's not pain, then we can explore these different things to our own ability and what we're ready to face.

That is such a good point.

And I'm I'm reflecting on some of my own experiences now where I felt that, OK, they said I need to do this, so I need to do this now, even if it maybe doesn't feel right and that we don't have to do that.

We can do what feels good for us.

So thank you for saying that.

On that note, what kind of like mindset should someone bring to maybe doing yoga for the first time?

Mindset for beginners

If if they've never done something like this before and they're thinking about coming to the retreat and they they want to help move all of this emotions that we're kind of going to go into at the retreat.

What's a good mindset to have maybe for a beginner?

Yeah.

That's that's a wonderful question.

Knowing that lots of opportunity, props, etcetera will be provided, I think is a huge thing.

Like I don't have to be on my mat.

If I can't touch my toes, then I'm overstretching.

I there's a block or a prop that is available to them.

So I would say that the mindset is really one of curiosity.

And I've learned that over time, curiosity is what leads to compassion.

And when we're compassionate, then we're gentler with our bodies and ourselves and other people.

So really, it's a mindset of curiosity.

I may not know what I'm going to be doing.

The poses may be foreign to me.

I'm not sure what to expect.

But if I can be curious about it, then some of that fear dissipates.

And then knowing again that I always am in charge.

So that individual's always going to be in charge of their experience, that they're going to be able to explore, not explore on their own accord.

So really, yeah, I would say curiosity would be the absolute #1 just inviting.

Can I be curious about it?

I may not know.

It may not be for me.

I may not like all of it.

I may love all of it, but can I be curious about it and then see what happens?

I feel like that's a good mindset to just carry in life, right?

Like just try it and if it's not for you, that's OK, but you might discover something that you love.

What do you need to practice gentle movement or yoga?

What do people need to practice?

Gentle movement or yoga?

I think so.

Speaking personally, I have a tendency that when I find out a hobby or or fitness activity that I want to do, I go out and I buy all of the equipment that I could possibly need to support it.

And sometimes that gets used and sometimes it doesn't.

So if someone's brand new to this, what do what do you really need to get started?

I would say mat, a yoga mat that feels comfortable.

I know a lot of the time, and this is just something that I see pretty often happen in beginner classes, there's like the thicker Pilates mats that people will bring in their foam and they're like they're more cushioning, but they slide.

So a stable mat, one that's not going to move on you if you start to get into a pose that feels stable when you stand on it and then comfortable clothing and water, that's really it.

Your body's going to do all that needs to do.

And you know, additional props to such as, you know, a bolster or a block or a strap or those things will be accessible.

So really it's just bringing you and something that you feel comfortable and stable on.

I know another thing that comes up a lot is socks.

So I taught middle school for a really long time and my middle schoolers never wanted to take their socks off for yoga.

They would fight me on it forever.

So socks are always optional.

Just know that sometimes they can be more slippery, so they do make those grippy yoga socks.

Some people prefer those if they really are, like, I really don't want to take off socks.

I really don't want to show my feet.

So that's just an awareness that I've gained over the years.

But ultimately, you know a good mat that's not going to slip on you when you stand up into a posture and comfortable clothing that you can move in.

OK, good to know.

And you know, I actually, I don't mind being barefoot 'cause I feel like it helps me feel more like literally grounded when my feet touch the ground.

But you're, everybody has different needs, like everybody has different sensory needs.

And that's a really good point.

So if you're thinking about attending the retreat and you don't want to be barefoot, maybe get some grippy socks and bring those with you.

Can you share a little bit about what people can expect during your session at the retreat?

What to expect during your session at the retreat

Absolutely so.

A typical.

Session may look like, I mean, it always looks like a lot of different things.

A lot of what I do is really working with who I am in front of, so reading that energy and exploring things that make sense for them.

So as we go, you know, exploring, and I'm always going to give a lot of different options.

Here's the pose and these are different ways that we can explore it.

We will be starting with some breath work as far as just centering and starting to get still learning what it feels like to actually breathe into our full body instead of the upper body.

Very gentle breathing techniques that are really accessible.

We'll be moving into some postures and some poses that will free up the body and start to create some space and feel good hopefully in the body, but will again give a lot of different options.

So there won't be any fast movement, there won't be any power yoga, so to speak, or vinyasa, but it will definitely give everyone an opportunity to explore what some seated poses look like.

Maybe some standing postures that are more gentle.

What postures look like with props?

And then how do we access access those on our own when we are not in front of an instructor?

So if I take away, you know, three different poses, then what are those poses going to look like when I'm at my house?

I love that kind of something to take away, and even if someone doesn't find themselves going to another class, there might be just some things that they can do at home.

That's going to be great.

Yeah, absolutely.

I'm so excited for your session at the retreat, but in the meantime, if anyone wants to find you online or learn from you, or if they're in Arizona and they want to take a class, how can people find you?

Thank you for asking that.

So as I said I am a yoga instructor that works with mindfulness and horses also to assist me in my work.

You can find me on Instagram at Sacred Equine Journeys and my website is www.sacredequinejourneys.com and I always post on my website all of the upcoming events, things that I'll be doing, classes, workshops, retreats.

There's also a way to reach out to me and make contact if you want to book a one-on-one session.

I also do a lot of Zoom sessions so accessing me if you're not in Arizona if you're out of state is always an option as well.

And yeah, I love to hear from people who are interested in continuing the work, for sure.

That's so great.

I'm just so looking forward to this.

This is something that people in the DNA Surprise community need, that feeling of just getting back in touch with our bodies and ourselves.

And as we process lots of good stuff, but lots of hard stuff at the retreat, it's going to be so wonderful to have this outlet at the end of day one.

So, Lanita, thank you so much for joining us at the retreat, and thank you for joining me here today.

For anyone who's listening, if you are interested in attending the retreat, you can register at dnasurpriseretreat.com.

And you can also learn more about Lanita and all of the other facilitators who will be at the retreat to help us navigate our DNA surprise journeys.

Thanks again.

Thank you so much.