 Hello, wow, different background today. We're outdoors, yes, because we don't want to be stuck doing like voting shit, right? Yes, we do. But before we do that, happy election day to all, we're going to talk about something very healthy and something that we can kind of dive a little bit deeper into. The concept of standing up for yourself. You know, a lot of girls, specifically, yeah, we're going to talk about girls today. And you know, facing challenges where we don't really know how to confront them or to stand up to people when you really feel like you wanted to say something but you didn't know how. Well, we're going to talk about that, but we're going to talk about that through something very physical, very spiritual too. The concept of stand-up paddling and what that does to you and body and mind and soul and how it brings it deeper into life. So I've got two stand-up paddling chicks here, gorgeous, healthy, athletic, confident girls who will share their experiences talking about standing up for yourself. So welcome, welcome. Alright, so we've got two. We've got Ashley and Leah. Why don't you guys both introduce yourselves a little bit and tell us a little bit about yourselves and why you do stand-up paddling and what you do with it. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Yeah. My name is Ashley. I am the owner and instructor of One Balance Yoga and Wellness, and I also teach here on Anahu at Core Power Yoga, Hot Yoga Nimitz, and do some sub-yoga teaching as well. Okay, great. I'm Leah Vernon and I'm the owner of Yoga Chi, Stand-up Paddleboard Yoga here, and I also coach at a place called Kaifit, Oahu, and yeah. So you're both sub-gals, but before we get to that, can we just talk about the voting thing quickly? Are you going to vote today? I mean, this is a huge, huge historical deal, so we just have to lay it out. It's a big deal. I actually already did mine. I early voted on Saturday. Oh, you did. Okay. Yeah. Alright. I didn't want to have to carry it with me until then. Yeah. Are you glad you're done with it? No. Oh, yeah. Are you going to say anything about it? Are you going to just hope for the best, or are you just assuming it's going to go the way it goes? Oh, I hope for the best. Yeah. I sincerely do. Yeah. I feel very anxious about this election. Yeah. It's a scary time to be in our country, and I'm not looking forward to finding out the result. I think either way, I'm not going to be too pleased. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm not excited about who could be the next president, which is an unfortunate feeling. Yeah. How does that relate to us standing up for ourselves? What do you think in this particular election? It seems a little bit debilitating to me, because our thing is like standing up for ourselves is the right to vote, and we work so hard as women to have that, and it's just really disheartening to have that power. Yeah. I feel like you cannot do what you would wish. Right. It's like choosing the lesser of two evils, I think, is it right? Yeah. Something people keep saying throughout the election. Well, I think in life, a lot of times we're going to be facing obstacles where we don't really know what to do with it, but we have to choose. You know, there's like, this is a Chinese metaphor about one foot on two boats, and you got to choose otherwise you're going to fall into the water. Right. And sometimes you just have to do that. So, on that note, so stand up paddling, it's an increasingly popular sport. It's been, you were talking about that when I went to your class in California, and it's taken on by speed here. Why stand up paddling, first of all? What does it do to you? Why do you guys like it so much? I think for me, especially being somebody that doesn't surf or have that experience of growing up just being in the water, it gives you a chance to really break away from the shore and get that same feeling of escaping everything and just kind of connecting with nature in a way that's, you know, obtainable for people. So, you don't surf? You haven't even surf? No, I haven't. I know, I know. Well, I got pregnant pretty, like, right after I moved here. So, you have like two kids. Yeah, yeah. Three-year-old and a ten-month-old. So, yeah. It's like, I'll just stay right here. Happy on a stable board. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Ashley? About this up yoga? Yeah. Why did you pick that up? Well, for me, it was about expanding upon my current yoga practice on the board and taking it out into the water. So, I had spent several years practicing and teaching yoga within the studio environment. Right. And it's very nice and it's a controlled environment and it's safe and, you know, has a lot of great things to offer, stability as, you know, in regards to the foundation and all of that. But for me, I really wanted to incorporate the parts of myself that are nature-lover and outdoors person and an adventurist. And I wanted to mingle that with, you know, the stability and security of the yoga that I had come to love so much as part of my life. Yeah. I think you mentioned the key word stability because the whole point of SUP yoga is you're on unstable ground doing something that's supposed to be stabilizing. Yeah, not even ground. Right. Take away the ground. Take away the walls. You take away that safety net. Yeah. Why do you think that became a popular movement? Do you think it's something that people are just trending or is there something really in the fact that you're trying to do something so balancing on something so imbalanced? I mean, is that kind of like, who started this? I feel like, I just have to say, I think social media has really created this spark and this interest. People have a yoga practice and they're like, wow, wow, like, I want to be able to do that. I want to experience that. So being able to see, I really think, don't you think Rachel Brayden, for sure, a yoga girl, yeah, she was like the first one anyone ever saw like on a bogey yoga board and that blue board just became a staple for all of us to start our practice. And then it just became super saturated in California, but definitely Aruba, California. And then everything cool starts in California. No, no, no, Hawaii is a very cool place. But do you think it attracts more people who are water lovers who want to kind of add that yoga practice into the water or the other way around? People who are yoga people. I think the ladder is more my experience anyway. I don't know. I think just with the few years that I've been teaching regularly here, I get people that have never even done yoga. And I think really people are just, they see something, they're in Hawaii, they're like, why not? Let's just go for it. Right, right. Like the classy. I'm gonna share a little experience. So Leah took a show, I joined one of her classes last week. And so it's interesting group because one lady was older than me. I thought I was going to be the way oldest there. And she, because she's an empty nester, she decided visiting in Hawaii, she decided to go and do something on her, check off a bucket list of doing stand up yoga. And she's never been on a paddle. Yeah, she doesn't swim. I don't think she was a swimmer. No. Yeah. And then we had someone who was pregnant. Right. And then we had an older gentleman and somebody who's never done yoga or sub anything. So really, I mean, every class you get is just this crazy blend of people, which goes to show. It really brings in all walks of life. Exactly. So it's not just like the athletic type who want to do something. Right. Do you think that's the yoga practice on the board? How difference, how different is that from yoga in the studio? What are the main differences and challenges? I feel like it's a world apart. Yeah, it really is. It's completely different. Why would you distinguish? Well, all the elements, of course, are there in a studio. It's a controlled environment, typically the heat, the humidity, the lighting, the ambience, the sound, everything in there is controlled. Right. And especially being in Hawaii, it's not like California where I've taught where you're in cold water and you go ten yards from shore and no one's out there. In Hawaii, you've got people swimming, you've got fishermen, you've got other companies, other groups on the water. I tell you, even a pose like that, I was just this like a normal stretch pose, right, in a hot studio. But on water, like, I think you're guiding me is if you bend back a little more, you're gonna fall in. If you open the hips up, yeah, you got to keep them square to the board. So that's another thing about SUP is that the board demands your attention and your alignment. Like on a mat, you could be in a huge class and the instructor may not notice that you, they're like, oh, you're in the pose, but they don't see that your alignment's off. But if you're teaching a SUP yoga class, you hear a splash and you're like, oh, yeah. It's kind of funny. From time to time, and somebody fell in. But do you think there's a danger of people not allowing them to fully extend their positions because of that fear of the water and the imbalance of falling in? I feel like that same fear runs risk on a mat if somebody is nervous or rolling back. And it's just a matter of time and practice until they allow themselves to become comfortable in the environment, whatever the environment is. Right. And that's part of the practice is facing that inner dialogue and pushing yourself past those boundaries and those roadblocks that you've set for yourself. Well, that sounds like the natural metaphor to go the step into what we're talking about standing up for yourself is how do you face these roadblocks in life? I mean, yeah. Do you see that? I mean, do you see those kind of different levels of challenging yourself using Santa Paddle as a metaphor? What do you think? Absolutely. Yeah. So how, I mean, do you think Santa Paddling has actually helped you to kind of look at life a little differently? Really? Okay. So you have such a conviction in your face. I mean, I feel like this is one of those things that began as something that I saw somebody do in a land far away that I had never even conceived of. And I was like, whoa, this is a thing. Yeah, I said that. Really, folks can do? Yeah. And then it takes a lot of guts and courage and fear working through and all the things to get yourself to a point. I mean, yeah, where you're running your own business, teaching people how to do something that once upon a time you your mind was blown that it was even being done ever. Right. I mean, did you ever even fathom that you'd be teaching or having a business doing this when you were, I don't know, years ago? I laugh, my husband and I say this every day. I was like, my job is to teach yoga on a paddle board in Hawaii. Like, how cool is that? It's pretty unbelievable. Pretty unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah. And you having kids, what do you, how do you think you're gonna, you know, teach them to embrace the water and balance their lives with both water and land and everything? That is just a loaded guess. That's my parenting style. No, I just think I want them to have confidence in themselves and faith in themselves and start at a young age with their breath work and just giving them opportunities to feel confident that they can make a decision. And if they see something, I just want to be able to be there to create like an outline for them to be able to obtain that. Like, okay, if you're interested in this, let's start slow. Let me help you take it step by step. And you think it's ever not too young to start them in the water on the paddle? I think the younger, the better. Like my son, I think as soon as you could wear a life jacket, I put him on a board. So he was probably 13 months old. So my daughter, she's 10 months. I'm like, almost there. We'll be able to do like a little paddle out probably for her first birthday, but again, that comes with me having confidence in myself. And I'm not going to put them in obviously a dangerous situation, but yeah, get them out there young so they don't have that mental block. Right. And confidence is something that is kind of developed as you go grow up. And there are things that kind of give you or take away that confidence growing up. What do you think are some things that setup paneling can help to create or to help develop that confidence? I would say largely getting over making mistakes. Yes. So like it's okay to fall in kind of thing? Yeah, exactly. That expectation you had to be perfect. Yes. That's like really hinders people. Yes. Let that go. And sub-yoga keeps you very honest. I mean when you're in a class surrounded by 30 other people and you're on a mat, if you're, as you mentioned, if your alignment's off or if you miss a beat or whatever it is, probably nobody's going to notice. But in the water, your ego takes a much bigger hit when you make mistakes. You are wet and you go off your board and it's just like that that was me. There's no hiding it when you make a mistake and what's nice about it and especially in Hawaii when we have such wonderful conditions but it's really a bad thing to end up in the water right in California. It was a little bit different in the Bay. It was not fun. But here it's just kind of like it's really just your ego that you have to get over. You're just wetter. And that's really all it is and if you can learn to get over that and be like oops first prize for me like blue ribbon, first mistake made, I win. Then like it turns every you know every mishap. I don't even want to call it a failure because it's just part of learning and growing and you know you if you can learn that on the subboard then it makes the the challenges off your board in your life a little bit more. So learn again with a little bit. Learn to fall. Absolutely. It's part of the process you have to. I almost wish I allowed myself to fall in class. You didn't. I did. I know it's a good idea to make anyone fall in class. I was going to say some instructors will have everybody just jump off and like falling and get it over with. Because when I did my headstand I I can do it in the studio but because of that fear element I wasn't allowing myself to put my feet all the way up and I knew with that fear I would fall in and the fear of falling prevented me from achieving my ultimate. And like I said in class I was like you have to actually visualize it so especially since you are new to sub-yoga people can't visualize themselves doing it. So immediately their mind isn't committed to the actual to executing that pose. Isn't that crazy how the mind kind of controls everything? Everything. Absolutely. So there's no excuse you know. So let's take a quick break. Think about what you want to do in life and you know you can do it. We're going to come back and we'll talk about standing up for yourself so don't go away. Hey how you doing? Welcome to Abachi Talk. My name is Andrew Lening. I'm your co-host and we have a nice program here every Friday at one o'clock Think Tech Studios where we talk about technology and we have a little bit of fun with it. So join us if you can. Thanks Aloha. Thank you for watching Think Tech. I'm Grace Cheng the new host for Global Connections. You can find me here live every Thursday at 1 p.m. where we'll be talking to people around the islands or visiting the islands who are connected in various aspects of global affairs. So please tune in and Aloha and thanks for watching. Hi I'm Chris Letham with Think Tech Hawaii and I'd like to ask you to come watch my show The Economy in You each Wednesday at 3 p.m. Back on talking about something and how you can stand up for yourselves as a person as a female or as a male just standing up for yourself. I mean a lot of people really take for granted that there is a lot to do with how you feel about yourself in overcoming obstacles. So I've got Ashley and me here. Tremendous yoga subbing people. So how does that relate to you and your personal lives in being challenged with literally being on shaky water or being on ground but feeling you're in a shaky grounds anyway? Is it like your work? Yeah. So what comes to mind first is my last real job if you would and I had worked for a long time to get this job. Sorry I can't take that. What's a real job? What? So sitting in an office is a real job and teaching yoga is not? Right? That is not acceptable. A grown-up job? A grown-up job? A corporate job? A corporate job? A boring job? It was pretty boring. Yeah, my last in a box cookie cutter what I used to define as a real job. I had been living in Costa Rica for a few years straight out of college. I majored in Spanish and I perfected it down there and then I came back to the United States and I worked for a little while with California closets but was really trying to get a job that would allow me to use my skills because I felt like oh I'm super good at this and I worked so hard and I want to be this you know image of a young professional woman and support myself and feel like I am, I don't know, valuable. Right? And so I got this job at the venture capital arm of the second largest bank in Spain and we had our little office not that we had our big huge office in San Francisco and I was there for about six months and I was so elated when I got this position because I really felt like it was the culmination of all my hard work and my dreams were coming true and and then within that six months time I just became to feel so very unseen and unappreciated and undervalued to a degree that was really affecting my self-esteem. Why because it was a man's world there? Well very much so yes I mean banking and finance and all of these things typically yes very much male-centered but in my particular office I was the only woman in this office it was me and five middle-aged men and it got to the point where you know I would come into work some days and one of them would have thrown his jacket over my chair and I'll be like oh is this your jacket and be like yeah just go hang it up and it was just like that's pretty pathetic that today it was it was and it hurt you know because I felt like why did I spend all those years and all this money educating myself to give myself here and to have you tell me to hang up your jacket first thing in the morning and that I just started looking for another job. I was like and I'm done with that because you know I felt I felt like I didn't have room to say he was still higher up than me and he was my boss you know like I felt like everybody there was my boss basically. So anyway and this is the time in my life where I felt like I need to make a massive change. I need to completely change the way that I'm looking at things and doing things in life and get myself out of this situation where I feel so powerless regardless of how much I feel like I have to offer and that's when I decided to become a yoga instructor and I really and largely it's what got me here to Hawaii as well and becoming a yoga instructor has taken me from that environment and placed me in a community of people who see me as a leader and who encourage me to grow and to challenge myself and it's just a completely different environment to be in and it's changed my life to a huge degree like I feel like that move to be like this is this is not okay with me yeah I deserve more than this I'm better than this and to decide to you know turn away from that and turn to my passions and what gets me excited and what you know what I feel like but if you didn't have that situation of that kind of a challenge you may not have found your I don't think I would have honestly because I was prepared to settle there forever I was like I'm good I'm making more money than I ever have you know I'm you think a lot of people settle most people settle I think yes most largely yes and what's the equivalent of settling if you're like in yoga like just kind of half-hazardly doing a pose without with full intention and integrity do you think people kind of deliver that to that I mean I think that do you have I feel like I've been I mean you see a lot of different types of students and how they you know yeah I translate right I feel like that just students you can just see what they're going through in their personal life and their health by how they come into a pose so not even holding them to a standard of where they should go into the pose but just analyzing how they are in that pose and then just trying to coach them and guide them to open up or let go in certain areas I guess yeah but sometimes I think people aren't aware yeah I heard from a psychologist one time that you know if you're not balanced emotionally you do any balancing poses you can't do it yeah it's amazing how it kind of translates right yeah and like we talked about in our class a lot of emotional blockages are stored in the hips so people are super tight hips or if you work a desk job just like like the posture and tightness and stiffness in the back and the breath you can tell a lot about somebody by the breath it's like are they breathing soft shallow do they even know how to find their breath or you know that's like I think the key is finding the breath right so Leo what about your personal life and how you found your way did you have any kind of experiences where you really needed to stand up for yourself yeah yoga kai that's just the perfect example of standing up for myself um I married my husband military spouse so I went from making decisions about my life to committing to his life and found that we were moving here and just was starting my yoga teaching journey I had been a coach for many years and just was kind of switching lanes and I got here and I reached out to many studios in kai loa where I was living and just like I just I'll clean your floors I'll teach for free guys have moms that need help with facing I just wanted to be a part of the community and not even I don't want to say my name not even the YNCA would give me a shot to teach and I'm like okay but I just knew that I had something it was like my dharma like this was my this is what I needed to do and my husband was like I you love the water and I showed him pictures on pictures the people doing headstand on paddle boards and he's like this is a thing you should go you should get certified and I came back and there was only a few companies and it was really just individuals teaching and he was like let's let's do this let's build it and so just I went through so much the design process and just trying to create an opportunity for myself so that I could share what I wanted to do but then from day one the minute I got to the beach and lay down a yoga board someone approached me and started like getting just kind of muscle at the beach park and all the water and I had no idea the politics or what I just stepped into I was like I just want to do yoga like I don't understand I'm not trying to feel this competition I don't like the ego I'm trying to dial that down right so from day one every day I get there I'm constantly just standing up for myself and it's just the way it is but it is I mean going back to politics is there are so many challenges around you you want to do your thing but there's all this you know unstable kind of water drifting and you need to drift and you need to find a way to anchor yourself exactly in that environment that you've chosen right so um I was talking I was asking Zuri in our panel whether she's done something and she never has right Zuri which is time to do it and try I guess I'll try it someday someday your excuse is that you don't have enough core now core isn't interesting right because everything comes back to this as women particularly everything is centered here so is it our kind of concept of life where we need to kind of engage all there are energies here and how does that work with something too I mean if you don't have core you can't do anything right but I agree yes but I also feel like as a woman it's like that's kind of where like body shaming goes straight to like your core or where you carry the weight is like the belly and the hips and then but it's like that's where you carry your children it's like you you give them life from here you hold them here so I feel like what we need to do is to not be afraid of how weak it is but work on strengthening it because that is the foundation of our body of our breath like bravo yeah yeah well said actually can you answer that I agree absolutely um I feel like the core gets a lot of attention whether it be positive negative or others right I know but that being said I do feel like it it is the core of a strong practice and strengthening it has limitless benefits so it's not an excuse that you don't have core you can just strengthen it and I mean I liken this to if somebody says you know I don't have enough core for sup yoga I'm not flexible enough to do yoga and I'm like that is like saying you're too dirty to take a bath yeah it doesn't make any sense we're here for you this is why you do the thing yeah this is the point just modify modify build the foundation like you know just build upon that but again as I go back to the fear to even start to address the fear I think that's yeah just self doubt it's that inner dialogue that we talk about so you are putting up those mental blocks yeah for whatever reason usually it's just insecurity you're afraid of things it's the ego you're afraid of what you're gonna look like you're gonna you're again it's that expectation of being perfect yeah you know going back to the lady who's traveling here who said she wanted to put this on her bucket list her husband was there and I asked why he didn't want to do and he says oh I don't like yoga it doesn't do it for me you know you hear that a lot from people who are athletic you know claim to be and they don't want to do it maybe it is like a fear of embarrassing themselves because it's actually something more challenging than they realize but they always say oh yeah it's not it's not challenging enough I don't get it but is it the state of mind is it how people approach the concept of yoga and yeah I think people also it depends on like the relationship you have with yourself but also a lot of people that are more like athletic like what you're saying their dosha type is more pitta more fire so they're not really understanding how to balance their dosha so they're I mean for me it's like that was me too so I'm going to do the opposite of that to keep myself in balance does that make sense yeah absolutely so if you're just so used to feeding the fire feeding the fire you need both yeah you need both otherwise you're gonna get hit that burnout point in your life right well at this point can you know our little short time left can you maybe address our listeners and audience little tips for embracing and tackling challenges in life and you know with your experience with the stuffing go ahead Ashley yeah thank you I would just say don't take yourself so seriously don't take yoga so seriously and to a certain degree don't take life so seriously you know very very rarely are things life and death and you know as big a deal as we tend to make them in our minds both on the boards and in our lives and I do feel like our ego and our self-doubts and that fear of not meeting the image standards that we want to be can hold us back on a lot of different levels and it's it's sad you know and it's not necessary and I feel like the more willing we can become to make mistakes and to be silly or you know whatever it is to get outside of your comfort zone and whatever in whatever way the more happy you know and free we can all be to explore different facets of life and you know maybe we should have a silly yoga day it's just to be really on top of those poses absolutely all the way yeah well I'll just say for me I think the most important thing would be not to live in the past the future and to really focus on building a relationship with yourself because a lot of times what you think you want your life to be like or what you think you should be is really it's just the ego talking so learning how to listen to your body connect with your breath and having that foundation so that you're not as rattled from the constant change of life right right wow there's a lot to take in today so first I want to thank you both for bringing such big thoughts on on on a paddle and more so Leah if you if you want to check out a stand-up paddling yoga Leah has a company and the website is it's yogakaipaddleyoga.com okay and and Ashley you're starting your own thing too with one balance yes yes I teach private yoga lessons here and then I'm also leading a retreat on Big Island in April that I'm really excited about and you can check out all about that at onebalance.com okay great well thank you again and enjoy your water and sear surroundings