 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Welcome to Shrink Wrap Hawaii. My name is Steven Philip Katz. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist here in Hawaii. And I'm stoked because today we have a special guest, Julie Kato, who is a yoga instructor and a psychological counselor. Yes? Welcome, Julie. Thank you. Happy to be here. So I don't know, I guess there are other people who have both certificates, but you actually use them both in your practice, yeah? Absolutely. Yes. Tell us about that. Mm-hmm. Well, that was definitely a conscious decision, was to bring them both together. I started my whole idea of doing counseling a long time ago, but in that process, I was always into meditation, but I got really into yoga. And I happened to be in a yoga class one day a few years ago, and in it, something happened in me where I thought, I have to have this in my counseling practice. This has to be part of my entire life, my personal life, my business life. It's just going to be the way I'm going to do life. And that's where it just started developing, and I started trying to see ways to weave them together, and it's actually been a very fluid, beautiful weaving that I've had. So you started doing the counseling first? No. Actually, I was in school, getting my free counseling degree. Yep. It was in school. It took a while. And so during that whole phase of being in school, I did a lot of yoga to help me get through it, and I also became a yoga teacher during that time. I did my yoga teacher training while I was in school. So I became a teacher, a yoga teacher before I finished school. So one thing that's very telling is you said you started doing the yoga to help yourself get through school, your master's program. Part of it. Definitely. How did that help? And how did that help other people? It helped in so many ways. First I'll go back a little bit of how it really came to be. I'd been going to counseling for a long time, and my first counselor went to, how did me meditate? It was one of the first times, and it was so long ago, she would record it with a tape. You know how you'd hit the recorder, and she'd record the meditation for me, and I listened to it on my little cassette tape. And so that was when I first got introduced to meditation, which was about 20 years ago. And then that led to where I wanted to have my own practice. So I had my own practice of meditating every morning, and then I realized it's kind of hard for me to sit, so I started doing yoga poses for about 20 minutes, and then I would meditate for about 20 minutes. But then about eight years ago or so, I decided I really want to go to a studio, because I've been doing it at home for so long, and that's when everything changed for me where I thought I have to infuse this in other areas. So I have my own little practice. I don't know if you call it yoga or meditation, or I jog on the beach and then I do some stretching, and I do some, I don't know what you call it, thinking about things. That's it, yeah. Exactly. So, but I've always found it difficult going to a class, because I get real competitive. I see somebody like you who can put your head up around your leg, around your neck or something. I actually can't. You know there's people that do that stuff, right, and I go, oh, I can do that, and then I'm crippled for a year. But what is it, you said everything changed for you when you started going to a studio? It was more, I was in a resting pose. I was in a child's pose, which is a very resting pose, and we were resting, and the teacher said something about, I don't know word for word, but it was something about you're in the right place at the right time in your life, and I thought, wow, and something just shifted in me. Something opened up where I am and my hips were open, and so these emotions were kind of more open than normal. My mind was more open because I've been moving my body, and it just sunk in a little bit deeper, and I was like, I am on the right path. And I just started transferring into my life, and when I really got into meditation and yoga, things changed where I didn't react as quickly. I wasn't as stressed out, I was more peaceful, as calmer, and I probably even started walking with more pride, and I just, something for me definitely clicked for yoga in my life with meditation, because meditation is a part of yoga, like you're talking about when you're jogging, and you're mindfully thinking, it's just one point of focus is meditation, and so that's when all of that started shifting, and I knew there was something there that I wanted to infuse with counseling. I noticed that you said, you stopped reacting, talk more about that. Yeah, so, like most people, when they're young in 1920, when something happened, triggered me, or upset me, or a family member, I would just react right away. Yeah, tell them how I felt really quickly. It never ended up well for either one of us. It was never good for either one of us, and I didn't want to do that anymore, but I didn't know how. So when I meditate, it teaches me how to just slow down, how to be present, how to be aware of my thoughts, and so that started shifting. And then in yoga poses, the way I like to do my yoga, I use my breath with it. So each movement, I'm breathing in, I'm breathing out. So I'm learning how to move with my breath as my body is calming down. And so this helps me get a little bit more control over my reaction. So is there a way that when you're not practicing meditation or yoga in a formal way, that you can remember to be that way for the rest of your day? Absolutely. This is what I think is beautiful about merging and counseling and yoga is that yoga, we're learning how to do it on the mat. We're learning when we're in a pose, what's unaligned, what's tight, what's blocked. We feel it physically, physically. And then in counseling, we're learning that in our mental and our emotional body. But we learn it physically first. I think people react to things physically first. So we're learning on the mat, and so when we take it off of the mat, and we're learning these other tools that we're trying counseling, we're learning how to cope with them and deal with them in that aspect also. So yeah, definitely counseling fuses with it where you start to realize that you're reacting, you're being shown your triggers, you're understanding your behavior patterns, and you're getting to know your defense mechanisms, and you're learning in that way. But then the yoga part, the meditation part is helping you realize how to bring it all together. And for me, they go together when I can put it all in my mind of how it affects me. It's so hard to remember it in the moment when you're not doing a practice like you're with your husband or your wife and they say to you, yeah, well, it's all your mother's fault. And how do you remember to take a breath? It comes with practice. Just like any physical work you do, we talk about building muscles. If you're lifting weights, it takes time to build a muscle. Meditation and yoga is the same thing. It takes time to build that muscle of learning how to and not react. I mean, it doesn't happen right away, but it slowly does. And when I first started meditating, I was young, I was 19, and I hated it. I thought it was horrible. But something was happening inside. I was not freaking out as much. And so really, something good was there. There was a little nectar that I needed to pull out more of. And that's what I tapped into. And then the more I did it, the more I love it now and the more I understand how it helps keep me calm and present. So when you meditate now, do you use a guided meditation or do you just sit quietly? It depends. I'll try everything. There's hundreds of ways to meditate. And I'll pull them all out, depending on what's going on in my life. If I'm stressed and I need something to calm me down more, I might put my mallet beads in need to move my hands. Or I might have to go for a walking meditation, or I may be able to sit calmly, or maybe I have a guided meditation. There's lots of apps now that people can put on their phone. It's great. There's so many ways to meditate. And when we get stuck in the one idea and we think that we have to sit somewhere for two hours and bugs can bite us and we can't move, who's going to want to do that? You don't have to do that. You don't have to do that. And that's what I love is how I was taught meditation was in a very relaxed environment and I was not taught that way. I was taught, you need to be comfortable first. So that's the first thing I tell everybody. You don't have to sit in a lotus. No. No. Get your back up against the wall, sit against something. So it's good to have a straight back. Yes. Well, just because it opens up your airway and helps you. It helps you breathe. Helps you breathe. Yeah, I keep wanting to do that. I don't know if people can notice. Yeah, definitely. So when somebody comes to see you for counseling, do you automatically introduce the yoga part of it too? We always do yoga and we always meditate. So it depends on the client and I work with them. We work together on developing their type of what works for them. So I have one client in particular that when they come, they like to do 15 minutes of yoga right away. Yoga meaning poses is stretching. Yeah, we go through a flow. And then we talk and then we end with the meditation. Then I have another one who likes to do it at the end. Come in, like to do our talk therapy and then they end with it. And then I have another one who likes to do just yoga for one session and then the next session we just talk. So I keep checking in with them. What's working for you? What's not? Let's try this out until they find what really works for them. That's, how do they find you? Well, I have a website and you can find me for sure on my website. Yeah, it just sounds so great. Thank you. Because I love doing all of those things, meditating, stretching and talking. I love that. Yeah, it's like what's not to like, right? Although some people find just sitting quietly almost impossible. Absolutely. I can totally relate to that. So what do you do with somebody like that? They say, well, I just can't sit still. That's OK. Then we don't have to. We'll do something different. We can do breath work where we move our bodies. We can go for a walk and do it that way. You don't have to do it that way. It'd be nice to slowly ease us into that. But right away, we don't need to push something that isn't working. I get people sometimes that tell me I can't meditate. And those people, I always think it's because they have a misunderstanding of what meditation is. Absolutely. So I'll ask them, well, which part of it can't you do? Well, I can't stop my mind. I have a million thoughts. That's fine. And I always found there's one guided meditation I use, which it says at one point, OK, now let your mind go free. Let it think about whatever you want to think about. And whenever they say that, I can't think about anything. Oh, that's amazing. It's reverse psychology. I have this, maybe it's oppositional defiant disorder. I love that. You tell me, what are you thinking about? I don't know. Nothing. Absolutely. The other thing I have a hard time identifying, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this, is my emotions. Like if you say, what are you feeling? And then some people even add to that, where are you feeling like, where in your body are you feeling it? It's like, I'm clueless. That's brilliant. That's a lot of the work I do, is when we're moving our bodies, I'll have them check in. And I'll have them see where they're filling things in their body. What do you mean, check in? So I'll stop them and say, OK, I want you to hold this pose. It's always a resting pose. And I'll say, I want you to fill your body. And I'll guide them through the crown of the head all the way down. Do you feel any blocks, tension, or tightness in this area? So what would you do if you got to do it? So I would say, we'll start at the crown of your head. The best way to identify being at the crown of your head is imagine getting a head. You're getting a scalp massage. Oh, nice. Yeah. So it sounds nice, right? Relaxing. And then you say, now soften your eyelids, soften your cheeks, your jaw. And you can open your jaw and move it around. And then you say, notice if there's any tension, blocks, anything tight in this area. So sometimes people, you know, they check in. If it is, say, OK, just be aware of it. This is where we want the witnessing mind. This is where we want to be the outside observer. So not trying to change it, just noticing it? No judgment, just being aware. And then we move down. Now see about your shoulders, your chest, your belly. Usually the chest and the belly is where people feel it the most tight. And then you see it in their arms and their hands. And just like when we're in a counseling session, we're watching body language in particular, right? We want to see how our clients move. When we bring up stuff, how are they? Same thing with yoga. So if you have a client who's sitting like this and you think, oh, are they protecting their heart? So you start to notice these things when people have a hard time having a straight spine. Can they open up their chest? Do they feel comfortable in their heart space? And so then I move down through the whole body, the hips. And then when we're done, I say, now we'll scan the whole body again, see where you can feel it. And then when we get there, then we can talk about where they're feeling it. When you say done, you mean? After I finish, we'll go through the hips, the legs, the knees, the feet. And now that we've scanned the whole body or any area in your body, you're still feeling any tension or tightness or maybe there's more than one area. You just go to that space. And then we can talk about where they're feeling it. And then we start to try and identify where that is and what's going on there. I have a voice in my ear telling me we need to take a break right now. Right. We'll be right back. Don't touch your mouse. Nice. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. I just walked by and I said, what's happening, guys? And they told me they were making music. Day of the big game. Home just doesn't feel the same. On the list is who's going to drive. It's nice to know you're going to get home alive. Plan for fun and responsibility. For every game day, a sign had designated driver. Welcome back to Shrink Rap Hawaii. My guest today is Julie Capeto. And Julie, you were telling me in between that you also run some groups. Yes, I do. Tell me about that. I have a girls group called Empowered Girls. And I did a camp this summer with them. It's 8 to 12-year-olds. And because we loved it so much, we've decided to meet every week. So I meet these girls. They meet with me every week. And I broke them down into two groups because it's getting so big. So we have 8 to 10-year-olds. And then I have 11 to 12-year-olds. And we do yoga. We do meditation. We talk. We do all this great stuff. And at first, I had all this material where I would bring in all these ideas. But just because it's become so organic and fluid now with these girls, I am just able to go off of what they want to do. Like, for instance, tomorrow, they want to do inversions. So we're doing headstands and handstands. And so we'll probably talk about having a different perspective of things. And maybe when they've been knocked off their feet. And so I always kind of enter that way. It's really great. And I have this crystal. We call it the talking crystal. And they pass it around. And I give them the options you can talk about. The best thing, or the worst thing, or the funniest thing, or your grateful thing of the day. And we end up having really great conversations. And so they pass it around. And they all share it. The only issue I have is they share so much that I have to say, OK, we want to get to the other stuff. We have to get to it. Right now, they're working on writing their own meditations so they can start to share them with each other. That is so cool. It's really cool. I love it. So when you did a camp, was it a residential thing? Did they sleep all night? No. That was the other thing. It was just from 9 to 2 every day. And every day, I had a new guest. One day, we went rock climbing. One day, we had an aesthetician that talked to us about skincare. Maybe we had different yoga teachers. It was really fabulous. You designed all this? Yeah. It was great. It was a lot of fun. It was fun. I was like, this is what work should be like, just playing with these girls all days. How many kids were in each group? So now I've broken them down into two because I was getting too big. I could only handle 12 at a time. That's a lot. That's a lot. That's a lot. And they're wonderful girls, but it's a lot. And so I asked them and their parents if it's OK if we break it. Because after the week, and we started meeting once a week, more girls wanted to join. OK. So you do it once a week now? Once a week. And there's still space for more girls to join. It's by a school close by. And so it kind of happens right when they come out of school. They walk, a lot of them walk home from school to the studio when we do it there. It's really sweet. Where is the studio? It's in Kailua. Oh, wow. It's perfect. It's wonderful. And then I have another group called Body Talk. And it's where we talk about body image issues. Is that also a kid thing? No. I've opened it up to teenagers to come, but they haven't. Some more adults have signed up for it. And we do yoga. We meditate. And then we do our talk stuff. Do you get, is that also just women? It could be men and women. It's just right now women have just really gravitated more towards it. But if a man can't, he'd be welcome. Absolutely. Absolutely. So do you find that some of the women in there have eating disorders? Sometimes it leads to that. So all of them usually have body image issues, not necessarily an eating disorder, too. But usually when you have an eating disorder, you have a body image issue. But just because you have a body image issue does not mean you have an eating disorder. So it's usually always related to body image issues. So is every story different? I mean, people that have body image issues, people is a common theme that they're dissatisfied with the way their body looks? Yes. Well, it's pretty, you don't have to be a brain surgeon to figure out that what our culture does, especially to women, around their body, makes you crazy to use a DSM term. Absolutely, absolutely. And so is it like a psychodynamic thing where each person talks about their own stuff? We do some sharing. We definitely do it as a support group. So everyone will share and talk. I always guide us through yoga, meditating. And then usually I have somewhat of content that we're going to go over for that particular group that day. But sometimes we don't even get to it because something's going to happen. Give me an example of what content might be. For instance, tomorrow we're going to talk about the root chakra. So we're going into the chakra systems. And the root chakra is related to eating disorders and body image issues because it's all about nourishment. It's all about that first foundation of when you have shelter being cared for. So when a lot of those aren't met, it can lead into. So it comes into where either you're over nourishing yourself, over compensating, overeating, or you're under nourishing and you're depriving yourself. And so they tend to relate. I mean, there's other addictions that are related to the root chakra. There's hoarding is one, shopping. Yeah, different ones like that. But we used to keep it with what's going on with the body. So in my practice, it's not uncommon for me to get people who are either hoarding themselves or their partner or somebody in their family is. And so when you identify that as being a root chakra issue, how do you work with that? Oh, absolutely. Great question. So the first thing we want to do, because it is all about nourishment, is we start to learn how to nourish ourselves, how to take care of ourselves. So for instance, in this group, I would suggest that we garden. People get their hands dirty. And then they start making their own food. They learn how to nourish themselves. And then there's also some really great meditations. One, for instance, really short to share with you right here is you can breathe in, I am. And the exhale is here. So you're getting grounded. Exhale here. Yeah, so it's like I am here. And so you're really grounding yourself in that you belong here. You are safe. You have shelter. You're nourished. And so you start reminding yourself of how important you are. And you're meant to be here right now. I used to have a bumper sticker that said, be here now. I love that. There you go. Right. There were two, actually. I had three. I had one said, this is it. The other one said, be here now. And the other one was for my own ADD issue. It says, embrace the distraction. I love it. You look like you absolutely love what you do. I do. I love what I do. Thank you. I'm glad that comes out. Yeah, I mean, the whole thing of, I'm sure a lot of people don't even think that girls as young as 8, 10 years old can meditate. But you do that. We do. And I introduce them to many different types. There's two they love. There's one where we find our animal spirit. Love that one. And the other one is I have these rocks a friend made me that have words on them. And I make a little path with flowers and leaves. And we'll walk that. And then they find the rock that's speaking to them. That day, they'll grab that rock. And then we'll talk about why did you pick that word. And so that's when they love. It sounds like so much fun. It is. And there's so many ways to introduce it. It doesn't have to be so strict. And I like having the opportunity, especially, I love it when someone's never done yoga before and they come to my class. Or they've never meditated before and they come to my meditation class. Because I feel like I get lucky that I can show them there's so many ways to do it. There's not just one way. And now we'll find the way that works for you. Just like there's hundreds of ways to do yoga. And just like counseling, there's so many different types of counseling and counselors. So just to let people know, it's just really great. I get really excited when I can share and have somebody new, especially these young girls. And what's cool is they're writing their own meditations right now. They're fabulous. I just help them, how are you going to get people in the meditation? And how are you going to get them out? They've come up with some of the most amazing journeys or visualizations. It's really great. Some of them decide to use quotes or a song. It doesn't matter. However they express it, I really encourage them to do about how it comes up for them. But then they lead it. And at the end of my camp, the last day they did yoga and meditation for their parents. It's really great. So they picked what they were going to do. And I worked with them all week on their sequence of yoga or their meditation. And they did it for everybody. It was fabulous. How did you get drawn into the whole counseling thing? So I love this whole aspect of the inner part, right? The yoga and the meditation. But then I'm a very curious person. And I want to know why. I want to understand how is this actually working? So the counseling really tapped in for me of understanding that when I start to move my body and when I connect to my breath, that means I'm getting into my parasympathetic nervous system. And that means I'm relaxing. And I'm digesting and not just digesting food, but I'm digesting emotionally and all those other things. And so I love learning this stuff and how my brain's expanding while I'm moving. And just all the things I learned in my counseling program, I think they cared. Why did you go to the counseling program? I mean, did you have a difficult childhood? Well, it's in that way. Everyone becomes a counselor. Shh. I'm just kidding. Where did you grow up? I grew up in Utah. How many kids in the family? There's four. Four. And you are with? The youngest. The youngest. Are you the rebel? Or are you the straight one? I would say I am the fierce little true speaker. I came in, had a lot to say, and I was true speaker, and I was really fearsome, fiery. And so in my family, that wasn't always accepted. If I was too loud, it would expose things that we didn't want everyone in the neighborhood to know. So I was definitely taught quickly to be quiet, to not speak my truth. And so it took me years to connect to that. And this is where even shadow work, like Carl Jung's shadow work comes into play, is understanding that shadow side of me where I can have a difficulty speaking my truth and where to come from. And it trickles down. I figure it comes from there. And sometimes your shadow is your gift. And the more I speak my truth, the realize people really enjoy that. It helps them speak their truth. And so something that maybe at one time was shamed and became my shadow is now a gift for me. You are a gift to your clients. Thank you for coming. We have to close now. Thank you so much, Julie. Thank you, Steve. I love doing it. Thank you. Come back next time for shrink wrap Hawaii Aloha.