 Good morning. Happy Tuesday. I'm Crystal. Welcome to Quark Talk here on Think Tech. So this morning, we have a very healthy and very balanced topic for you because sometimes, you know, everyone gets off balance. But what happens when you're like a preteen, adolescent, and some things aren't going the way you want it to go? Just basically by the way you were built, you know, what happens when you're physically affected by certain situations? I'm talking about scoliosis. I have a wonderful guest today who's going to talk about balance and alignment because of her experience with it. She's an amazing yoga teacher, and she's also the assistant manager at Core Power. Welcome, Bonnie. Bonnie Dogada. Thank you. It's so nice of you to come. Thank you. I know, and I have to confess that I do take Bonnie's class. And what I like about your class is that you always have some kind of a theme you start off with. You have some kind of a thought that you bring us into. And it carries you through the class and throughout the day, which is really important, I think. And I don't know where you get it from. And I know you mentioned you had scoliosis growing up, and that's kind of what brought you to yoga. Yeah. So let's hear about your whole life and how it changed because of your situation. Yeah, well, I used to be a dancer, so I was really serious into dance ballet specifically. And yeah, it was it was actually in an audition that I was diagnosed or that they brought it up, that it was kind of brought to our attention. How old were you? Probably 14 or 15. OK. So and it was a very typical ballet. It was for a conservatory. Right. And it was like a cattle call. It was just you go through all these different layers of the audition. And then you make it to a certain point and they bring you in a room and they test your body fat. They like poke you and pinch you and do all these things. And, you know, they I mean, they sit there talk about you like you're not even there. OK, nice legs and then this and then, OK, bend over. Let's see, like, oh, you have scoliosis. And that was kind of how it was really first brought out. And it wasn't your mom had no idea. No, no. So and then, yeah, after that, one of my other dance teachers mentioned it that they thought that I might have it. And I should go see a chiropractor or some sort of doctor. So, yeah, that was kind of how it came about. Did that just shatter your dreams of being a dancer when you heard that? Not at the time, because I don't think it was. It didn't feel like an obstacle at the time. OK. I think my biggest my biggest challenge at that point was with my weight at the time, because I was having eating disorder. Wait, you had the eating disorder before or after you're diagnosed with scoliosis? Before it was already full on. This is a dancer problem. That's why they were able to see it so easily. Because you could see all the bones. You could see everything. Oh boy, yeah, right. Yeah. Wow, OK. So you had a double whammy as a teenage, preteen, well, yeah, adolescent. You had eating disorders and scoliosis. Yes, sort of, yeah. All right. And the scoliosis really, it wasn't anything that I felt. I didn't, you know, it didn't affect me physically at the time because it was still pretty minor. And I was young and had plenty of energy. Right. It didn't really, yeah, it didn't really affect me. It did, what I didn't know or didn't realize at the time is what it did make it hard for me to kind of build core strength of a really short torso and very long legs. Right. But that's like a dancer's body's idea. It is. Yeah, it's kind of a dancer's body, but I don't have a lot of space in between like my rib cage and my hips. And so kind of building muscles there in that area is a little challenging. It's just, it's very, there's not a lot of space. And then my spine isn't straight, it's curved. So, you know, to get those muscles to work correctly, you kind of need to have alignment. And yeah, it's just a little, it's a little challenging. So at that time, you were maybe, you know, you were off balance in many different levels. Yeah. Right. I mean, I think eating this order is like a big psychological problem for a lot of young girls. Definitely. It was a big lack of balance in a lot of ways and a lack of understanding, you know, of what, how, how the body works and what was good, what was good at the time. Do you think a lot of it came from social pressure, from your, you know, friends? I think a lot of it was, for me, it was more self-driven. You know, the people that I idolized at the time, Prima ballerinas, all of those people. They were sticks. They were sticks and they all had eating disorders and that was common knowledge. Everybody knew that and it was kind of like, those are the people that you look up to. Right. And that was just how it was done at the time. And your parents were in concern where the way you ate? Oh, they were. Did you lie to them? It was, yeah, it was a big, it was a big mess and I did. I lied to them a lot. I threw away food and would, you know, pretend to eat. But yeah, it was, it was definitely a lot of internal, you know, I was, I was a little bit chubby as a kid, not overweight. I should have been probably more overweight than I was, but I had a lot of energy and I was really active, but I, I ate a lot of fast food growing up. My parents were divorced and working mom and I ate Burger King and McDonald's every day. Right. And it was- So it went from extreme. It sounded like fast food to- Yeah, it was like fast food and microwave dinners to just completely avoiding food at all. Right. So, and there wasn't a lot of, you know, at the time there was no whole foods. There was no, there wasn't a lot of- Right, the organic food was not really there. Not a lot of healthy food available, not a lot of, you know, organic or just homegrown food. I mean, it was the time of, you know- Well, blame it on the generation. It was very much the time and place and all of that. So was there a tipping point in those early years that made you kind of reassess that, hey, I am off balance or I need help or, you know, I need to go and educate myself a little bit better? I did, I saw a nutritionist for a while and I saw several different therapists. Nothing really stuck, nothing really, I mean, that was food pyramid days and all of the, you know, things that are kind of obsolete now. Yeah, yeah. But I didn't, nothing really spoke to me. It was also, I was a teenager. We were just kind of having conversations about teenagers and very, you know, those were the adults and they didn't, you know, they didn't understand me yet they didn't understand anything. But it really wasn't until I left home and moved to New York and was kind of on my own that I just discovered food again and how to find balance in my own life and just with, without any pressure, without anybody kind of watching, like what are you eating, what are you doing? It, I just kind of found it again. Do you think people have to go off balance in order to really find what balance is? Not necessarily, maybe, you know, kind of in like, like in your yoga practice, you know, sometimes we, we practice going, you know, finding extremes, you know, we'll do like cat, cat, finding, finding extremes and then find the center. Yeah, yeah. So it's a good, it's good practice. You need your range, right? Exactly, your range and then you find that middle ground where you can, you know, you can balance and you can be successful and, you know, I think for some people it works like that. Definitely, I mean, I think that worked for me because I know I've seen the two extremes and I, you know, I know where the middle ground is and I feel good about, you know, the things that I eat and the things that I put into my body. Did you have to do anything, operation for your scoliosis or you were actually lucky enough to do it? No, yeah, never, never had to do anything. From what I've heard and what I've read, there's not a lot, there's not a lot of success with operations and with even like the braces and things like that. Your spine, a lot of times it tends to move back into place or you lose your range of motion. The most successful thing that I've been told and that I've heard is exercise and building your muscles. So building your core strength, building the muscles in your back to support your spine and to kind of hold it up. So every time I've gone back to get x-rays done and get my spine checked, my spine has progressively gotten worse, but you can't tell. So every doctor that I've seen has been shocked at the amount of curve that's in my spine and how little you actually notice it physically. Wow, because you're balancing or compensating with strength on me. Yeah, because my muscles are holding it up. Wow. So yeah, I guess. Because my daughter just had a friend who went to this mainland for an operation for scoliosis and you know, it's detrimental for a young girl. It's a huge, I mean it's six months, you're like, you're out. They're driven, right. And the social pressures are just, you know, it's just so many layers of pressure. It's a lot and to do it at that time in your life is really, is really hard. I mean that was kind of a big, I had an operation when I was 18 and I moved to New York to dance and I had to get surgery and I was out for two months and that was really hard. Right. That was, and I think that was maybe part of where things shifted a little bit for me because I was out of that world and I actually became more social and because I had been so focused on the dance for a while. Right, okay. That I didn't, I wasn't very social in high school. I wasn't very, yeah, I didn't have a lot of friends or I didn't go to parties, I didn't do anything. So because, partly because I was so afraid that I would gain weight, like I didn't drink, I didn't pot, I didn't do anything that you weren't supposed to do because I was afraid I would gain weight. That was a plus. So yeah, it kind of kept me, it kept me focused and it kept me, but it was also a very extreme. It kept, closed you off from socializing. Exactly, so yeah. What about the social pressures of, you know, how your body image, how did that affect how your self-esteem and was that part of your kind of closing off to not socializing or? I think so, definitely a little bit of that kind of insecurity. Like when you're self-conscious about your body to the point where it was going to affect, like, you know, you liked this boy and you didn't want to get too close because you didn't want to have him. Oh, definitely, definitely. Really, okay. And I always, even when I was really skinny, I thought I was fat. Okay. So yeah. How do you tell people, how do parents, first of all, detect that as a problem? And then how do you, how would you coach a girl that age? It's hard because, you know, again, you're also battling this kind of teenager mentality, this like rebellious, like, you don't understand me kind of thing. But then you also need to, you know, kind of be understanding and aware. So, honestly, I don't, you know, I think the best thing for me was the physical part because that's what kept, like, I know now that I'm not going to, you know, I eat whatever I want now. How do you talk about? Anything? Really? I eat french fries. I eat everything because I know that I'm very active and I'm very physical and I'm going to burn it off. Like my fluctuation in weight is very minimal now. So I know that my lifestyle and the types of food that I normally eat, you know, I don't eat, talk about all the time. Yeah. I don't do, you know, I spend all my money at Whole Foods. And, you know, I like salads. I think I've seen you there before. Yeah, you're there all the time. It's dangerous. A couple of times a day. But, you know, when your body is, when you feel healthy, when you feel good, you know, like you do when you come out of a yoga class, your first instinct isn't to put something like a burger into your body. Right, right. It's, you know, it's something healthy. It's fruit or salad or something that's going to keep you feeling as good as you feel when you walk out. Well, that's because you're so aligned and you're so balanced now. But when you were all balanced, when you were all scattered, your concept was a little distorted. Yeah. What were you doing to your body that you knew made more damage? Other than not eating. Right. Well, I would, I would also, I, other than, you know, I was dancing several hours a day. That was my, that was the norm. And then sometimes I'd be home and I'd put on like the rubber outfit, the sweat, the plastic suit, the sweat suit, and just like run, like jog at home or like try to burn off calories. And, you know, a lot of calorie counting and things like that. And I don't, I don't do that anymore. I don't pay attention to that. I think it's more, you know, and again, it's the knowledge that we have now versus back then. Right. So, you know, back then there was a lot of talk about, you know, zero fat and low calories and things like that. And we know now that that doesn't have so much of a bone effect on your weight as things like sugar and processed foods. Yes. And that's actually something. I read a book by, I think his name was Kevin Lau. He's a doctor based out of China, I believe. And his specialty is scoliosis. Oh. And he actually studied the main thing in his theory of why, you know, how to kind of prevent and what is causing it to be such a common thing in our society today and in modern society is diet and is processed foods and sugar. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah. Well, you know, let's hold that thought because, you know, with our balanced concept of life and exercise, we'll come back after a quick break. And Bonnie, hopefully we can go through some, I don't know, yoga exercises or somehow, so we can align ourselves even in this small studio to share with our audience. Okay, so we'll be back. Aloha, everyone. I hope you've been watching Think That Hawaii, but I'm here to invite you to watch me on Viva Hawaii every Monday at 3 p.m. I'm waiting for you. Mahalo. Aloha. My name is Josh Green. I serve as Senator from the Big Island on the Kona side, and I'm also an emergency room physician. My program here on Think Tech is called Health Care in Hawaii. I'll have guests that should be interesting to you twice a month. We'll talk about issues that range from mental health care to drug addiction to our health care system and any challenges that we face here in Hawaii. We hope you'll join us. Again, thanks for supporting Think Tech. Aloha. I'm Chantel Seville, host of The Savvy Chick Show on Think Tech Hawaii, and I'm going on tour. I'm taking you around the world. We're going to Canada, and then we're going to, well, we're in America, then we're going to San Francisco. So keep staying tuned. 11 a.m. every Wednesday on The Savvy Chick Show. We'll see you next time. Welcome back to Clock Talk. So Bonnie and I are talking about balance and alignment and the whole concept. Before the break, we're talking about how processed food is a big culprit to even our body and how it forms. It's just shocking how much it's taken over kind of our American lifestyle. It is. And not even just our lifestyle here, but other cultures. So this guy Kevin Lau and other scientists before him had studied indigenous cultures in other areas. So in Africa, in South America, Indonesia, that were exposed to processed foods, like canned foods or American foods, whatever, and compared them to cultures that kept their own diet, kept their indigenous diet. And they noticed that their teeth formed differently. So the cultures that kept their indigenous diet, they don't need braces. Their teeth form naturally and perfectly, or not necessarily perfectly, but their teeth form well. And that's a sign that your bones are growing correctly is how your teeth form. I needed braces. I had braces for a long time. And so yeah, that was kind of, that's one of the studies that they used to kind of see the effects of this processed food, even though we think we're getting all of these nutrients, our bodies aren't absorbing them. So even like your scoliosis might have been affected by what you ate. What I grew up eating, the fast food. What your mother ate when she was carrying you? Possibly, yeah. So all of the foods that, you know, and I remember growing up, my parents would always be like, why are you still hungry? Why are you still hungry? Yeah. And we would be, we'd go eat and I would still be hungry. And it was because, probably because I was not retaining the nutrients that I needed. You know, and again, at the time, you know, nobody knew that. Right, right. So now we're here. We're here to like wake people up on the importance of eating non-processed food and aligning our bodies with balanced concepts of everything. So when it comes to yoga, because you are a yoga instructor, what are things that you can do? Like even people who have spinal problems or any other kind of bone issues, are there certain exercises that we can? Yeah. So, again, giving me back to balance. Yes. See, so yoga, what kind of keeps me at yoga, what made me love it, is the balance of strength and flexibility. Yes. So, you know, and that's, that is kind of the key to everything because you want to, you know, you do want to stretch and you want to be flexible and be able to kind of open up those areas in your spine and whatever areas that you need that, but then to be able to also build the muscle around, you know, around your spine and support it is really important as well. And I think that's what kind of drew me to core power yoga and made me want to teach yoga and teach sculpt, particularly. I teach a lot of sculpt. Right. So because weight-bearing exercise actually creates bone density, doesn't it? Yes. Yeah, it creates your bone density and then also the muscles around your bone to support it. So. Girls, girls don't have much upper body strength. Yeah. So what are some ways to do that? Obviously with the weight. So a lot of the things that we do in sculpt with, you know, with weights, but another way, just sitting up, there's a lot of core exercises that you can do just sitting. Right. So we do, you know, we can do a little, kind of start a little breathing. You want to do a little yoga with me? Yeah, sure. Why not? And you guys just join in if you need to. Okay. So sometimes, you know, usually we'll start in child's pose and kind of stretch out. Right. But a lot of times you can start seated. So we can just start with a seat and just sit nice and straight. See if you can stack your shoulders. We talk about stacking your joints. So again, that's the way to find alignment. So your shoulders over your hips. And then take a nice deep inhale and open mouth exhale. And then see if you can just kind of create space and length from your ribs to your hips. And then again, that same length from your neck in your neck and at the top of your head. And then try to inhale and reach your arms up. Exhale, bring your hands to heart center. People in the offices, there's no excuse not to stretch. Yeah, you can do yoga and you're done. Yeah. So we can do a couple of rounds of this as a sun salutation. We're doing it seated, but you can also do it standing. Yeah, it's good. Exhale your hands to your heart center. And then we repeat three times usually. Inhale, exhale, bring it down. And then from here, maybe you just put your hands on your thighs for now. And a lot of times we'll do cat cows in a tabletop on the ground. But you can also do it seated and it kind of helps to again, develop your muscles. And stretch everything out at the same time. So you can impress your chest forward. Inhale. And then exhale, bring it back. And press your spine back. Is it harder for guys to do this one? Possibly because they're bendy here. Exactly. So forward and back, it stretches up the muscles and it also kind of finds the extremes in your spine too and stretches out your spine. Yeah, it feels good. And then you can come back to center. But we'll try one more and then back to center. Yeah. Or back and then to center. I hope you guys are doing this with us because it's really good. Even Zurri, you in there. No excuse. I don't see you moving. Come on. But yeah, you can. And once, you know, after doing that a couple of times, you should feel it in your core. You should feel your lower belly working to kind of move back and forth. Rib isolations. You can even do that. I do it sometimes in sculpt, side to side rib isolations. It's something that was really big in jazz. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that. You can't do anything else. You just kind of do this. Bang. And it was, you know, kind of like 80s, 90s. But it's actually a core exercise because it works your obliques going side to side. And then forward and back. You kind of get the abs in the center. Okay. But that's like, it's a great core workout. And it's actually, it did a Kundalini class one time. What does that mean for people who don't know yoga? Kundalini, it's hard to explain 100%, but it focuses on the chakras. And depending on what you're doing, it's generally a lot of breath work. Okay. So the entire class was seated. So for an hour. Isn't that frustrating? It's hard. It's really hard to sit for an hour. Right. And that's actually a really great core exercise is just sit up straight. Not like to slouch or sit in a chair. Okay. That's true. Sit straight just like we are right now for an hour. And then, you know, again, we did some of those cal variations, different types of breathing, like faster breathing, slow, then that kind of comes from different areas in your body. And that was really cool just because it's very challenging. It's different. You know, your whole body's not moving. You're really just seated. What is the concept between all, behind all those breathing techniques? It's different ways to flow the air through your body and to channel energy. Okay. And that's kind of the idea of Kundalini is channeling energy through the chakras. And that's, you know, it's that's a whole another thing. Yeah, that's a whole other thing. But I kind of link the whole concept of breathing with balance. Right. Again, just getting energy moving within your body. Yeah. So the breath, the breath work, kind of to again, moving fast, slowly in vinyasa, what we do at core power yoga, we use, sorry, we use Ujjayi breath. Right. So Ujjayi breath is ocean breath. Yeah, the ocean breath, the breath of fire, where you inhale and exhale through your nose, but you also use the muscles in your throat to slow down the exhale. So and the idea behind that is that you are controlling your breath and you actually benefit more from your slow, deep inhale and then slow, deep exhale. Yeah. And you kind of slow everything down your heart rate, slows down. Right. Everything comes back to the breath, doesn't it? You do. And just say if somebody is really off balance in life, in general, let's say something really just screwed up in your life, it goes back to the breath. It does. You don't have the breath. You're going to be palpitating through life and stressing and your whole body just kind of manifests with all these problems. Yeah. Even if you were just having a bad day or you're about to have a conversation with somebody and you're frustrated. Yes. And you just take that second and just Right. Okay. Yeah. Now and it just, you can just restart everything. Can a young person learn to do this though? Definitely. Okay. A lot of people are using it now in schools. Good. A lot of teachers from like kindergarten, from really young kids, they're starting to teach some yoga, you know, and it looks a little different. Right. When kids are doing it, they change the names of the poses to animal games. Yes. Yes. It becomes a little more fun and interactive and then they find, they've been finding that they're able to focus more in class and that's actually the whole idea behind physical yoga. So, you know, yoga is really the meditation, the exercise of meditation and, you know, finding your inner peace and all of those things. Yeah. The physical practice of yoga was started to prepare the body to meditate. So basically a way to get the wiggles out, all of the, you know, the So kids need that. Kissing that. Exactly. How do you train them? Quick, tell me how to think. They need to move. And so to be able to do that and then, okay, we can sit and focus. And I find that, you know, when I go to work, if I take a class first thing and then go sit down at the computer and start doing things. Yeah, it's still. Yeah. And I'm so much more, I can just, everything happens more organically and, you know, whereas if I go and start working and then I'm like, okay, maybe I'll take a class later or maybe you don't take a class, everything is more frazzled. I don't, you know, I'm just not as efficient. Yeah. As I would be when I go sit down and I'm centered. Sure. And I can, you know, get work done. So, What about people who don't have time? They will. They clearly don't have time. You know, is it an excuse or how do we? I mean, there are all kinds of things you can do, say at your desk or, you know, Back to that. At 10 minute, you know, you can do a sun A and a sun B flow, which is just basically what we did the sun salutation. Yeah. Arms up and then down, breathing exercises. So you can just do that. When you pull the one when you stretch your arms back, I really like that really pull that feels really good. Especially right now. I'm kind of sorry to them. I did a sculpt yesterday and I'm kind of sore. But that's, we just call that cactus arms. And it's usually with a little back bend. So you're in mountain pose right here. Yeah. Yeah. And then you cactus your arms and press your chest forward. Yeah. And lift up. You can feel it all opening up and air. And then you feel it in your upper spine too. Right. Right. So, and that's again, that's even a core exercise because you work on pulling your belly. And as you do that. Right. So everything you do comes back to your core. Yes. So, yeah. Okay. So if you had, you know, so somebody to take away something with this whole concept and, you know, the balance and alignment through yoga. I mean, you know, there are some basic poses we've went through. But what about, you know, taking it a little bit step further in life and how do we approach life when we're off balance or when we feel really unaligned. The first thing you can do and we talk about it all the time is, self-care. Yeah. So that's, you know, that's one of the main principles of yoga is self-care. So the way that you treat yourself is kind of reflective of how you're going to treat other people. So, and you might notice that, you know, with being a part of the yoga culture. Right. You know, people who take the time to take care of themselves, to take care of their bodies, physically, mentally, emotionally, all of it, you know, tend to be more balanced and tend to treat other people better. Right. Tend to be more effective in, you know, whatever they're doing, their work, their life, all of it. You naturally kind of find that balance. Yeah. Because you're saying, okay, I'm going to do this for myself. You know, a lot of moms come in or wives and they're like, oh my gosh, my family is so happy when I come to yoga because I am a better mom. I'm a nicer person, you know, I'm more patient. So it's released a lot of stress and it's just being balanced. And it just allows people to be a little, maybe a little more compassionate, a little more patient and, you know, to function a little better with everybody else. So self-care, take care of yourself first. Okay. And then it just, everything else happens. Everything else happens. It does. Okay, Bonnie, speak to our audience. Like, what do you have to say to them today to give them a nice thought for them to care through the day? Love yourself, take care of yourself. Do, you know, do things that make you happy and you will in turn kind of, it'll, it does turn itself around. It does reflect in everything that you do. I think that's That's a nice one. Let's hold on to that thought. Bonnie, thank you for coming on. Bonnie, go take a yoga class with her at core. It's amazing. Take that with you. Find your balance and breathe and enjoy, like you said. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. All right, that's for us. See you next time. Bye.