 and welcome to Holistic Wellness Revealed. I'm Lutisha Sharpe and I'm your host today as we talk about soul nourishment with Michelle Santos. Michelle? Aloha. Hi, Lutisha. Welcome. I am so elated to have you with us today. And I just wanted to let the viewers know a little bit about your background. You have been trained in psychology. So you have a bachelor's in psychology. And that led you to be able to found your amazing yoga studio, Sun Yoga, Hawaii and Aina Haina, which I've been to. It feels amazing in there. I love it. And you also trained the yoga instructors there. Is that correct? Yes, that is correct. I founded Sun Yoga about 11 years ago, 11 and a half years ago. That was back in 2012. I worked in psychology from 2002 when I graduated HPU until 2010 maybe, 11. And then in 2012, I founded Sun Yoga and started just on the yoga path. Oh, that's wonderful. So I wanted to know, I mean, there's a few things that we've discussed because we've done a lot of work together. And I love that. What about how does soul nourishment and nourishing the soul and finding the sacred, the sacred in everything that we do, just even walking down the street or waking up or brushing our teeth, how does that relate to yoga or yoga practices and lifestyle? So yoga in the West nowadays is very much seen as a physical exercise and the physical exercise of yoga, the physical aspect of yoga is only like 10%. 90% of yoga is soulful living, really. It's for the soul, yoga is a way of life. Yoga means union, yoga is not asana. So people, there's a misconception that yoga is asana, asana means poses, yoga poses. In the eight limbs of yoga, Patanjali's eight limbs of yoga, only one limb is out of the eight is asana. So we have the yamas, the niyamas, which is like how we act towards others, that's the yamas. The niyamas is how we act towards ourselves, how we take care of ourselves. That's the niyamas. So there's five yamas, five niyamas. And then the third limb is asana. But people mostly look for yoga just for asana. The byproduct of yoga is it changes everything. And that's what people tell me, oh my God, it's changing everything for the better. I said, I know, isn't that amazing? Yeah, that's really great. First of all, I want to touch base with what you said the real meaning of yoga is union. And if that's a definite, I mean, isn't that part of what this is all about? Is us all being a part of that community, that collective whole? And also union within ourselves too. So I mean, how does that fit in? What's your perspective or your ideas and thoughts about that with how we live in this daily life? I think it's knowing that we are interconnected beings. That what we do to ourselves affects the web of life. And what we do to others affects the web of life, of all of life, of the entire universe. We are not alone. We're supported by a bigger web really that is interconnected. Even though we might not feel that way, we might feel separate. We forgot who we really, truly are. We think we are this physical body and we're not this physical body. I'm not my titles, I'm not my roles, my occupation. I'm not, who am I? So that's what yoga dives into through the practices. The different practices that we have. One of them is meditation, right? So there's different paths that people take in this yoga journey. There's four main paths and the four paths of yoga. They call it karma yoga. So karma yoga means the yoga of action. So for example, you know a lot of karma yogis in your life. I know a lot of karma yogis in my life, they might not even know that they're karma yogis, but they are. Those are the people that like to help. They do, they are doers, they take action. Like they're, you need anything, they're there. Like what can I help you with? How can I help? And by helping, they feel complete. Their soul is full. Their soul is whole and they feel union and they feel yoga. So those are the- I'd like to connect with that. Yeah, yeah. So that's the karma yoga path. So that's one of the paths of yoga. We have bhakti yoga, which is another path in the yoga living, you know, terms. Bhakti means devotion. So through devotion. So, you know, bhakti yogis, they through song, through music, through prayer. You know, when a friend of mine says, yeah, I meditate, I pray. Yes, prayer is a meditation. It's a way of union, union with the divine, union with others, union with something higher than us, you know, like, and then feeling full again, is devotion, bhakti. Then we have raja yoga, which is the royal path. And in raja yoga, the raja yogis, they were more of like the royals in India and they had in raja yoga, they had like the asanas. And this was way back when like yoga was not, yoga asanas could not be taught to anyone, but the royals, like only the royals could have access to yoga, the techniques, pranayama, asana, because it was secret. It wasn't for everybody. So raja in Hawaii, yeah. So the yoga asanas that you see practiced nowadays are part of the raja yoga path, you know, pranayama breathing, even the meditations and all of that is all ancient knowledge, wisdom, techniques that were part of this royal path that only the royals could have access to. And of nyan nyan yoga, it's hard to pronounce, J-N-A-N-A, which is the intellect for those, for the more of the intellectual, the scriptures you go deep into the mental understanding how the universe works. And feeling complete from accessing it from the intellect. So that's almost, I mean, it's almost like our body, mind, I'm just looking at my nose, I was taking while you were talking, that's just so similar to like body, mind, spirit, emotion. Right? So it's blending all of those to be able to make the oneness or the whole. So there's personality types, right? Personality types and we all have our personality types and just like a yoga class, you might take a yoga class and say, nah, I didn't like that yoga is not for me. Maybe the style of yoga you took was not for you, but there's many other styles of yoga. So don't give up, try all the different styles and find one that pleases your personality type. Oh, I like that too. That makes it more friendly for people to be able to keep, and then it's not personal either. It's not like, oh, I don't like that yoga instructor. It's just, I just maybe don't jive with that style of yoga. Yes, exactly. Yeah, cause I spent some time teaching yoga as well and my yoga was very gentle, very flowy, very, and I had a lot of elderly people who would take my classes and it was right up their alley, but I would say if it was someone who was in their mid 20s and they really wanted to do inversions, they probably wouldn't have really liked it so much or they were more active, right? Yes. So, oh, that's great. So would you say that these four... Paths. Paths. Those are the paths, yeah. There are five feelers, which is really interesting to talk about too, but those are the main four paths of yoga. Okay. Do you wanna ask? Yeah. Okay, so four paths of yoga, which I love because those really remind me a lot of what we talk about on this show specifically, which is holistic health and basically healing and revelations, which is body, mind, spirit and emotions because those are all the things that have to heal in order to be able to get to that holistic place of really being able to get in that home, right? With your existence and your essence. So talk about the pillars. What are the pillars all about? Let's go there. So the five pillars of yoga. In 2017 or maybe 2016, I went to Rishikesh, closer Rishikesh Rudra Prayag for my teacher training through the Sivananda yoga teacher training. So that was a very profound experience and Sivananda yoga, which by the way, I think is the oldest yoga school, first founded yoga school and that Swami Sivananda left many teachings. It's heavy on the philosophy of yoga, which I loved and I touch on very lightly. In Sun Yoga, we do use the body as a medium but we also bring in the soul nourishment. So I think that's what makes Sun Yoga different than many other yoga schools is they feel the nourishment from the soul level because we aren't just teaching physical yoga or physical fitness classes mixed with yoga. It's really like the profound, deep meaning and aim of yoga. So the five pillars, I like to talk about the aim, the goal, like the why, right? Why do we practice yoga? Why do we want to feel nourished? Like why soul nourishment and why finding the sacred and the ordinary? If we look at our mind, which is what yoga, really the aim of yoga is to calm the mental turmoil, the psychological turmoil. Our mind, we call it monkey mind, right? Our mind is always jumping from thought to thought to thought to thought to thought. And then all of a sudden, we did a whole bunch of things but all prisoner of our thoughts and we weren't really fully present in what we did. So we end up feeling empty at the end of the day, like or lonely or scared or sad or unfulfilled but it's because we are not in a state of presence, of being present. So that's the aim, the goal of yoga is to bring us to presence, to bring us to consciousness, to bring us wholly, fully here now and finding the sacred and the ordinary. Like you were saying when you were washing the dishes, you were washing the dishes and you can have a meditation of I'm washing the dishes, meditation. Titnachan talks about brushing teeth, meditation. I'm brushing my teeth, meditation. I am playing with my kid, meditation. I am talking to my friend, meditation might be fully there. And for that to happen, we need to have a physical body, and a mental body and an emotional body and an energetic body that is nourished because if our mental, if our physical body is not nourished, we're hungry and we're foggy brain. If we didn't sleep well, we're foggy brain and we can't function well. If we're dehydrated, if we're hungry, if we are just scared and anxious and just unwell, we need to take care of our emotional body. So yoga, we call it koshas, the five layers of our being. There's five layers of our being. The physical layer is the first one that we see. And then we have the energy body. Our energy are prana. So we call it anamayakosh. Pranamayakosh is our energy. We can feel each other's energy, right? When we come together. Then we have the emotional body, our emotions, and that's the manamayakosh. Then we have the intellect, the mental body, the vayana mayakosh. And then finally we have our bliss body, which is our spiritual bliss connection with the supreme connection with our higher self, with the highest version of ourselves, with our bliss body. How do we align those? And how do we nourish those? And how do we nourish our soul, right? So that's the, through the five pillars of yoga, which are really simple and anybody can do, we nourish our soul. So our soul needs all of these. So we need to move our bodies through exercise, walk, run, you know, yoga is, yogis believe is the best way to move the body is through the yoga asanas, right? So we go into these poses, shapes, or forms that are named after animals. And, you know, we get, we move the spine in all directions, side to side, backwards, forwards, twists, you know, we strengthen the legs, we strengthen the arms, we, so cardiovascular system. So we move the body, that's one pillar, move your body. Another pillar is breathe, learn how to breathe, conscious breaths, yogic breathing is using a hundred percent of the lungs from the body. We usually only use 20% of our lungs. We don't use a hundred percent of our lungs. We're very shallow breathing, erratic breathing. How you breathe affects your mental state. So by slowing down your breath, in nature, the animals that breathe the slowest live the longest. So we wanna breathe slow, deep, conscious breaths as often as we can throughout the day. That's a great way of meditation, fresh teeth meditation, wash dish meditation, like, how's my breathing? Oh, let me take some nice, deep, conscious, hundred percent of the lungs breath and he'll slowly all the way to the clavicle region and then exhale slowly emptying out the lungs completely, you know, taking just three conscious breaths, checking in with yourself, you know, when you're feeling, when you're feeling whatever emotions, we talked, I think we talked a little bit earlier about the different states of being, a positive state and a negative state, we call it the beautiful state and the suffering state. So when you find yourself anywhere in a suffering state can be from just feeling a little bit, you know, like overwhelmed or frustrated or just bored, even from boredom all the way to despair or panic. That's all of that spectrum, we call it the suffering state. And then the beautiful state is just feeling okay, everything's fine, it's all good, you know, to bliss and ecstasy. That's the beautiful state of being. So there is these two states of being, a beautiful state and a suffering state. I learned that in my meditation training with One World Academy. So in the soul sync meditation that I'd like to invite you to, we're talking about soul nourishment and the soul sync meditation is a very easy technique, 12 minute meditation technique that takes you to this beautiful state and it takes you through pranayama, which is the second pillar of a yogic lifestyle to nourish your soul, is to breathe slow deep conscious breaths as often as you can. And if you can, you know, do it, I'll invite you, there's a free soul sync meditation I do every Friday at 6 30 AM and it's free, it's on Zoom. Whoever wants to join, we can send the link here. So pranayama breath is the second pillar. And then the third pillar is proper relaxation. So proper relaxation, meaning we need to have a good quality sleep, right? And it's important for us to take, you know, have as many hours as you can, ideally eight, maybe seven of good quality sleep. Also another in yoga, we call it yoga nidra. Yoga nidra takes about 30 minutes, 20 to 30 minutes you lie down in Shavasana and you go deep into a third estate. You drop from the alpha, you know, to the beta to the theta state and then you, it's a very restorative guided deep relaxation or at the end of your yoga class, take those five minutes at the end of yoga class in Shavasana and receive, give yourself permission to rest for five minutes or maybe for 20 minutes. Listen to a yoga nidra audio on YouTube, you know, or go to a yoga class or more of a restorative class or yoga nidra is deeper relaxation is really important. Proper sleep is really important. And then proper eating, eating is really important. We want to eat foods that have prana, life force, colorful foods, foods from nature, eat the rainbow, eat all the colors of the rainbow, eat things that grew with sunlight and water also comes in that, you know, proper nutrition. So proper nutrition is not just the foods you eat, but also the food that, you know, what you're drinking. So water intake, the quality of the foods you're eating, if you can eat, you know, a lot of yogis eat vegetarian, but doesn't necessarily have to be vegetarian. If you're not there yet, it's not what your body's asking for, but try to eat, you know, colorful foods, foods from nature that grew with the sunlight. And then finally, my favorite is positive thinking and meditation. So what you tell your mind where attention, goals, energy flows, where you place your attention, what you tell yourself, what your mind tells you is gonna, you're gonna bring it into your life. So make sure, choose your thoughts. If they're not serving you, change them. You can, neuroplasticity has taught us, and those are the five pillars of yoga lifestyle. Asana, pranayama, or exercise, physical exercise, proper breathing, proper relaxation, proper eating, and positive thinking and meditation goes together. Okay, so I mean, what I'm hearing is that it's really not that hard. It's very simple, right? But it may be a challenge for people to get consistent with these simple pillars and these simple paths of yoga. And you don't necessarily have to go and practice yoga every day. This is something that you incorporate into your daily life, your daily living, and a beautiful thing that I heard you say is basically, and this is what was taught to me and is still being taught to me by my master teacher, is walking that meditation, right? Even if you're not walking literally, like as you live, find your meditation, whether it's physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual, all of those areas of your life, find that in every moment of every day. And that right there is the key to feeling and seeing and knowing the sacred in what some people may deem ordinary or mundane. It doesn't have to be, right? Yeah, and when you say you don't have to practice yoga every day, the physical practice of yoga, right? You were mentioning, because yoga is not just the physical asanas. Right. You don't have to go through an entire hour class every day, but we are practicing yoga when we are mindfully speaking, when we are meditating, when we are praying, when we are finding time for ourselves to be fully present, that is yoga. Right, thank you. Thank you for that distinction, because what I meant to say was, you don't have to go to seven classes a week, every day, Monday through Sunday, right? And so, thank you for that, because that's exactly what I meant is that... Somebody asked that, yoga practice. BKSI anger. I anger, somebody asked I anger, how often should one practice yoga? And you said, how often do you take a shower and brush your teeth? It depends on how often do you like to be clean, because yoga cleans you from the inside. And that's what I believe yoga showers me from the inside, but yes, we do have to practice yoga every day, not necessarily the physical one-whole-hour class of yoga, but yoga practiced every day in your own path of yoga as we started our conversation. In your own path of yoga, be it through service, be it through devotion, be it through the royal path of the asanas, panayama, or the intellectual path of the studying of the books and the things that nourish your soul. Yes, nourish your soul every single day, because you're gonna feel whole and you're gonna have more to give. Right. So I would love if we could, what is the link? That can we put that up? Or maybe I'll put it in the chat if we can. So we have a Sun Yoga Hawaii website and on the Sun Yoga Hawaii website, there's a schedule page. You can go to the schedule and you can book a class. If you wanna have just a free class intro to meditation, SoulSync meditation with me, it's on Fridays at 6.30 a.m. It's free, it's through Zoom, anywhere in the world you can do that. And I invite you, if you're here in Hawaii, there's a link for starting, trying out the classes in the studio once a month. Leticia and I are hosting now Sun Healing at the studio which is a deep relaxation practice. One of the pillars of yoga and you can find it all on our schedule page, on our Sun Yoga schedule page. I love that. Thank you so much. And I mean, I feel like the big message today to the viewers is to really just take these five pillars and allow them to just infiltrate your daily living. And as those five pillars begin sprinkling through your daily life, that's where you begin to find this soul nourishment. That's when you begin to really feel it from the inside out and you feel that sense of purpose. You feel that sense of nourishment that everybody really is looking. Yeah, that oneness, exactly. Yeah, feeling our interconnectedness. Yes, absolutely. Michelle, it has been a deep pleasure for me to have you today on the show and to be able to share all of this. And if anybody would like to go to Sun Yoga and check out the instructors there and find out if this is your physical path to be able to practice yoga, I highly recommend Sun Yoga Hawaii in Aina Hina, Hawaii. The best part of Sun Yoga, I have to say, the yoga asanas and how you feel after class and all of that is amazing. The best part of Sun Yoga is our community. Yep. I agree. You won't be able to find that kind of community. I mean, everyone that comes to Sun Yoga talks about it, is being nourished by the connections that we create within ourselves and the connections that we create with our friends and neighbors that we might not know very well, but we just hold each other in love and in care. As we care for ourselves, we're caring for each other and we're just in this beautiful web of connection. Yeah. Thank you so much for inviting me. It's been a pleasure. You're welcome, Michelle. Thank you for coming on. And as always, I would like to thank Think Tech Hawaii, all of our sponsors, our donors for making these kinds of conversations possible for everybody to be able to see on this platform. Until the next time, mahalo. Mahalo. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please click the like and subscribe button on YouTube. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Check out our website, ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.