Jenn Turner
Jenn, welcome to on trauma and power. I'm your host. Jenn Turner, co founder of the Center for trauma and embodiment. I'm so glad you're here with us. You each episode, I sit down with different experts, educators, authors, survivors and practitioners sharing different trauma informed experiences across various fields, join us as we explore the complex intersections of trauma and power through embodied healing and diverse perspectives in both our Personal and collective healing journeys. Let's dive on in.
Hey, Rodrigo, thank you for being here. Welcome Hello,
Speaker 1
Jenn, thanks for inviting me to be here. Yeah, it's a real pleasure and honor.
Jenn Turner
So I will do a short introduction for our listeners and then hand it over to you so you can lead us through kind of a grounding, centering, and we'll take it from there. Beautiful, excellent. So Rodrigo Souza is an adaptive and accessible yoga teacher and specializes in yoga for individuals who have experienced trauma and disability. He is the founder of alihopa, accessible and adaptive virtual yoga studio, where he teaches students of diverse abilities worldwide. Rodrigo also works with nonprofits, community centers and an active rehabilitation center in Sweden, supporting newly injured individuals committed to building a supportive community. He leads a monthly Ambassador mentorship program for accessible yoga teachers, helping them bring yoga to marginalized groups with purpose and compassion. Welcome, and I'll hand it over to you.
Speaker 1
Thank you so much, Jenn, I would love to invite all the listeners to try to find a comfortable place in your seat. Maybe we can start by rocking our body from side to side just a little bit, shifting your weight between the left and the right sitting bone, and noticing how it feels, and try to find a comfortable place around that. You know, once you found the middle ground, you can come back to Santa, and if it's comfortable for you, I would love to invite you to either to close your eyes, or you can have a soft gaze as well, and very gentle. I would like us to start noticing how how we feel at this present moment, without any judgment, without labels, bringing yourself back to your body very gently, and noticing, if is there any sensations right now which could be a physical, emotional sensation,
Unknown Speaker
we can observe it without taking any action, just being with it. Noticing, how is it to be you at this present moment,
Speaker 1
you can soften your jaw, inside of your mouth, Soften the shoulders, and compassionately expand this awareness a little bit further. And let's invite the mind now. What is what's going on in your mind at this present moment? Again, no, judgmentally, we just couldn't stay beside it. What is the thoughts? Maybe the worries. Spend some time here, we can soften the the muscle between your eyebrows and soften your temples, and lastly, expand this awareness a little bit further. And I invite you to kindly notice, how does your body choose to breathe at this present moment, invite the breath in non judgmentally. Observe the breath. You don't need to change anything. Just observe how your body is chosen to breathe at this moment and be with it. Notice how your body surrounded itself to gravity as you exhale, and try to soften your eyes behind the eyes, and with each exhalation, try to soften yourself a little bit further and. Like you surrender yourself to gravity with each exhalation, blending compassionately filled with love and kindness at this beautiful body of yours, you can raise the corners of your mouth a little bit if it feels comfortable, and I invite you to gently start bringing yourself back. Maybe open your eyes, if we're closed, and take a time here now to re rent yourself in space. Look around if you have a window close to you, look through the window. Feel the temperature of the room you're in, and try to notice the space your body occupy in space as well being aware of things as they are. I invite you to invite some movement to your body now. Can be anything you choose. Can be a cat call, can be a sun breath, whatever your body is asking you to do now. What is it that you want at this present moment? What would bring you more comfort to your body. Beautiful. You can reposition yourself in the chair now, back to center, and let's take a collective breath here, deep inhale through the nose and a long and soft exhale through the mouth, a little sigh, ah. Beautiful. Thank you, Jenn,
Jenn Turner
thank you so much. That was wonderful. I love the language of notice how it is to be you or something like that's just, it's so spacious.
Speaker 1
Yeah, I love that. I love to break the narrative of my day doing that. You know, sometimes we get so caught up on things and we forget, how is it to be us?
Jenn Turner
We just are us,
Speaker 1
yeah, but like we are us in the doing modes. We're doing things all the time, not in the being mode. How is it to be? You know when I mean, be is is to be there, right? It's not to be somewhere else. It's actually being here. Now, you know, with the now, right?
Jenn Turner
Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for leading us through that. And again, thanks for being here. I wonder if we could start you're often so generous of sharing about your story and kind of how you came to adaptive yoga. Is that something we could start with today? Sure,
Speaker 1
it's a great start. Question. I got into yoga around I am 43 years old. I got into yoga around my middle 20s. I was about 25 or 26 and I used to live in London, and I used to practice big crime Yoga, you know, hot yoga, the 23 pose done twice in a heated room. I love that. Yoga was very physical for me, you know, back in my 20s, and I practiced that for a few years, you know, fasting forward time I moved to Sweden. I fell in love with this beautiful Swedish woman, and I was hiking in Brazil. I am from Brazil, and I felt and I had a spinal cord injury, and I became paralyzed from the chest down. I was 33 years old, exactly 10 years ago, and in the habilitation center, I could incorporate adaptive yoga into my habilitation process. I was in bed one day, and my my physiotherapist, she showed me a stretch where you pulled your knee towards your chest, and it remind me of the pose number 14 or 13. And big crime Yoga, you know? And I was like, Wow, just this looks like the hug. Maybe I can incorporate yoga into my habilitation process. And I did. I Googled it, and I found a disabled teacher, Matthew Sanford, who also has a spinal cord injury. And I remember that I start studying through a DVD that they send me, and I started incorporating adaptive yoga to my habitations process. I was doing yoga every day and physiotherapy like twice or three times a week. And you know, I had the privilege to. To to deal with I was going through in the more in a more holistic way. Let's say,
Jenn Turner
is that something that you came to, that you sort of led with to be more holistic, or it was also where the facility you were at kind of approached it from that lens? No,
Speaker 1
no, no, no. The facility that I was at was not at all holistic. And unfortunately, the medical model, they treat the diagnosis, they treat the symptom, you know, and they treat you with, with, like pharmaceuticals most of the time. So this was something that I went, I went looking for, you know, because I, I was, I was a yoga practitioner before my accident, and I knew that it could be beneficial. But what I realized was that, you know, as I was incorporating yoga to my habilitation, process wasn't physical has become was one day, you know, I used to say that, before my accident, I used to practice yoga for my body. And then after my accident, I started practice for my soul. You know, because I was a completely different kind of approach that I took. You know, it was more like a subtle practice of being in your body to help me decrease all the grief and the suffering I was going through. You know,
Jenn Turner
what was that process like, to go from such a physical practice and then shifting? I mean, I can't imagine. It was a smooth transition. No,
Speaker 1
no, it wasn't. And it's challenging for us to switch down the volume of distractions and come back to yourself. It's very challenging, especially if you experience trauma like spinal cord injury, because your body becomes a place where it's not very welcoming anymore. You know, there is so much grief and limitations as well. Has all memories of things that you did before and you can no longer do. So your body is definitely not, not a place that you want to be with. The practice of yoga, you bring yourself back daily, or, you know, very, very often, and the process is, there is a lot of a lot of things that you don't get healed from, or there is no, no other way that you accept your situation then to to embrace it. Whatever is that to be embraced. We don't heal from trauma by bypassing it, by distracting ourselves from it. So the fact that I was in my body every day, you know, coming back to it, even though there was a lot of suffering there, with time, I could realize that there were joy as well. You know, even though I was going through the dark night of the soul, as I like to call it, that I found, I found beauty on this as well. You know, I found joy, joy and grief can coexist. You know, grief and joy, they can be in the same body and and that was a beautiful realization, because I I didn't suppress my trauma or my, let's say, uncomfortable feelings anymore. You know, I was like, letting them be, even though was was challenging every day, I was like, okay, yeah, you are still here. I'm not going to stop living, you know, I'm going to take you with me. You're going to be my friend now. I'm going to befriend you. Grief, I'm going to befriend you, shame. I'm going to befriend you. I'm going to live with this body forever. So I'm going to befriend everything that is in here. I'm going to fell in love with myself again, even though, like society tell us with through this terminology, disabled, incapable, invalid. During yoga, I saw myself as as myself. You know, I never saw myself as broken. Even though my body was broken, I always see myself as a whole being, and that is because, you know, I was having this embodied experience through the practice of yoga every day. So the practice has changed tremendously. You know, was an outward edoistic, you know, body based practice to a more profound spiritual one. You know, there is no even like it's just it is another practice which I believe, you know that it's closer to what yoga really is?
Jenn Turner
Yeah, no, I and, I mean, that's such an interesting conversation too, like what yoga is and the performative nature of a lot of yoga in the West, and how it's shown up. There's so much in what you just said that I would love to stay with or. Floor, and one of the things that stands out to me is this piece around, you know, living with grief and coexisting with, you know, grief, shame and joy. I think sometimes something I've been curious about lately is like always, want to honor the ways that we seek to get distance from our pain and hurt and also acknowledging the reality of we don't get to pick and choose our feelings. And so if we numb ourselves or withdraw from grief, that also means we withdraw from joy. We're not able to decide which feelings we experience and which we don't. And so we rob ourselves of the fullness of life when we do that. And it also makes sense that, of course, who wants to sit with their shame? You know that can be a terrifying thing if it's new, or if there's a whole new layer of grief that you must have been going through in that time.
Speaker 1
Yeah. And one thing that I realize as well, Jenn, is like, when you open yourself to feel whatever is that to be felt like? Let's talk about grief, which I experienced so much, I realized that has this spectrum of grief grows, you know, this spectrum of joy grows simultaneously, like, you know, your ability to go profound into the grief is in the other hand, is the same amount that it goes profound like to experience joy, like they say this, sweet is never sweeter without the sour. You know, you need to go through a certain amount of grief for you to realize how miracles everything is like, you know, I sometimes I was in so much grief, like an uncertainty, not knowing what I'm going to do with my life, the fact that I was alive and I was experienced, that also brought me so much gratitude. Because, like, you see things from another perspective, things that before my accident doesn't bring me joy, didn't bring me joy. And I was seeking all the time. I was traveling a lot. I was very doistic, drinking alcohol and, you know, searching for those, you know, hits of dopamine all the time after my accident that I became paralyzed, as I experienced a lot of grief. You know, the joy it came like easily for me. I remember like being able to roll my wheelchair to the supermarket after my rehabilitation center and buy myself an avocado. Like brings me as much joy as you know, I had a four month holiday as I used to have, so I was like, wow, this is like, you have that plenitude state that you you found yourself into, that there is this spectrum of emotions, and they all there, right? They all there to be lived.
Jenn Turner
It's amazing, yeah, it's, it is? It's incredible to hear you describe that. And I know that a part of, a big part of your work is also kind of challenging the perception around who gets to do yoga and who doesn't, who yoga is for, who it's not. And you talk a little bit about how you have done that in all sorts of realms, in particular, maybe in folks with physical disabilities or other kinds of things. Yeah,
Speaker 1
I'm going to tell you a quick story how I became a teacher. I started working as a rehab instructor and for newly entry folks at this habilitation sense inside of Sweden, and I started teaching them adaptive yoga and mindfulness because it helped me so much. So I thought I maybe I can give them the tools and we'll help them as well. And in one particular class where I taught for quadriplegics and paraplegics, you know, some folks come back to me and they say that there was the first time that they returned to their bodies and felt safe again since the accident. And that was very meaningful. That was, that was one of the most beautiful things I have heard in my life, and once I heard that, I felt this tremendous amount of responsibility, because there I was with the tools, you know, and my peers, they didn't know that no one knows. Like folks with disabilities do not know that yoga is for them. You know, we don't feel represented if you Google yoga and you know you're going to see white, skinny, middle class bodies. You're not going to see someone in a wheelchair. You know you're not going to see disabled person like, there is, there is, there is no yoga for disabled folks. And I'm like, wow, how can this happen? You know, I got in touch with my teacher again, and I asked him to educate me, and then I started studying with Matthew Sanford and jivana Aman. And I did, you know, some yoga teacher trainings. And, you know, in my process of educating myself. I realized that there was so much work to be done because disabled folks didn't know that yoga is for them. So I needed to use my representative and shout, yes, yoga is for you. And I felt the you know, the need to break the narrative as well that what the externalized Western allies version of yoga look like, deeper flexibility, skinny bodies. Listen, no, that is like yoga. It is that as well. But it's like, you know, any movement to do conscious is yoga. Bring yourself back to your body. Is your like, subtle practice, pranayama is meditation. Is yoga too. So it's like, you know. So from that point of view, yoga is accessible to everyone, you know, everyone, but they do not know that. So like, you know, there's a lot of education and concentration to be done. And that part, and my other front line of work, is to educate yoga teachers to do the same thing. Because if you go through a ytt today, you know a yoga teacher training either 200 hour or 300 hour, you've got no idea how to serve this population. You don't have the tools. You don't have the language. You know you cannot make someone responsibility welcome in your class, feel included, that where my work lies. I've got this. I like to call it a gift. You know, in Brazil, in Brazil, some people call it a pineapple because, you know, it's something that is difficult to to pill, right, because it's done too much work to be done. But, you know, this is what I'm very passionate about, and I'm very lucky, because it gives my life purpose somehow. And as I'm helping others, I am automatically helping myself. You know, it's a two way street. Adaptive Yoga is a two way street. Like the teacher is always the student. I'm always learning. And, you know, I always get out of my classes, much, much richer than I got in. You know, my students, they generally teach me so much more than I teach them.
Jenn Turner
I resonate with that. I resonate with that a great deal. And I like the pineapple metaphor too. I'm going to hold on to that, if that's okay. That's a great one. You talked about safety in the body or body maybe people that you've worked with, it's such an elusive thing, and something I think a lot about in relationship to trauma, for sure, but even just being a person in this world and all the then layers of experiences that we have, is there more you can say about your thoughts around finding safety in your body, challenges that you have found in that for yourself? Yeah,
Speaker 1
I like to use a metaphor you know, of like finding safety or return to your body, body after trauma, like hugging a cactus. How do you hug a cactus? Jenn, how do you do that? You do it gently, right, very slowly and gently. You do it slowly. You do at their own pace. You know sometimes it's going to hurt. You stop. Sometimes you cry. You stop. When you feel that you have more energy, that you'd like to come back, you go, you know, you know, hug a little bit further, and right, somehow being in your body, as long as it's uncomfortable, you know, you start developing self compassion. And that is a magic word, because once you develop self compassion, you know, you develop acceptance, you develop love and kindness, like you develop joy, there are so many things that comes with it, you know. And it's not about feeling sorry for yourself, but it's about accepting that suffering is part of everything. And you know, maybe these things happen to you, not to to have something like, let's say, pejorative or even tragic in your life, but to deepen your human experience while you hear, you know, and has difficult it is, I think it's, it's a, it's a process that you you got to go through, you know, to to, to inhabitate again, you know, the body of living and and try to, to make the best out of it. And whatever situation you're in, you know, you need to, you need to come back to it.
Jenn Turner
Yeah, that's, that's beautiful. And I love what the way you describe the you know, when you when harm happens or pain happens, okay, we slow down. We get to back up. I think there's this quality that I see a lot in, you know, the sort of no pain, no gain, or push through it, and, oh yeah, nothing good comes from that. And we're just doing. More harm to ourselves, and I know that it is a cultural norm, certainly in the US and and around but like so much hurt happens with that, yeah,
Speaker 1
and you got to make it sustainable. You know, we go through so much. You go through so much. You cannot just go for it. I I used to cry crying in, you know, in shavasana all the time, because I was every time I invited silence into my life. I used to cry when the silence came, everything that was inside me becomes so loud and noise, and sometimes I cry, and then I'm like, Okay, enough crying. Let's go for a walk. Enough crying. Let's watch something silly on YouTube. Let's call a friend. You come back to it afterwards. There is no rush. And sometimes you come back and it's like, it is still there, right? But it's not so scary anymore. Jenn, it's not, you know, and you get to a point that is there and you know, you don't stop living for it because of it. It's like your family arise with it. You become friends with it, right? And I don't think trauma heals, but I think that is where you know you you befriend trauma. That's where you learn to live with it, and it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't stop you to do anything anymore. It's actually the opposite, because you acquire this emotional maturity, you know, strength and resilience when you when you experience that, and you've got the courage to to be with it without, you know, distracting yourself from it.
Jenn Turner
It's a lot of really deep work.
Speaker 1
I tell you something, it's, uh, it's, it's a lifelong work. I would say, you know, you're never ready. You're never healed. You know, I cry. I've got bad days. I told the other day on Instagram, I started that I was in a beach ball walk in my home and I saw someone roll a blade and passed by me. And then I started crying, because it reminds me that I used to love to roll a blade. I was like the other day talking to my therapist like, but hang on a minute. 10 years has passed, and come on, I should be healed by now. That's No, no, no, no, no, no. It's like there's too much work to do as I cannot just keep on being gentle. You know, if it comes, it comes open the door, drink tea with it. Don't bypass it. Don't surprise it.
Jenn Turner
Whenever you're you talk with me about this, I think the last time we spoke, this kind of came up as well, and it reminds me so much of my experience in relating to and befriending the parts and part of me, you know, I sort of do the IFS parts work, but the part of me that can get suicidal at times, that just feels so hopeless And so lost and for so long, I spent time running from that part because I was afraid, if I spent time with it, that it would then take over, or that I would feel that way, and I would feel that despair. But in fact, slowly, very gently, beginning to turn toward that part and have tea with it and get to know it and befriend that has completely changed my relationship to when I feel that darkness come around. Okay, all right, here it is. It's terrifying, but I know this and and I can actually help this part of myself feel at home and welcome to and I mean, it's, it's radical, because it's, you know, the the world and treatment approaches tell us to box that up and, like, quarantine it far away, instead of welcoming it in and making a big cozy nest with your suicidal thoughts. You know, yeah, that's
Speaker 1
so true. That's so true, and our trauma responses as well, try to walk ourselves away from it as well. You know the way, the way, even not society, but as well your body. You know the mechanism that your body choose to deal with it is to bypass it or to distract yourself from it. So you are going you're going through a big currency, or you were swimming against the current, like, against the side current, against, like, your your instincts sometimes as well, you know, because it's not comfortable. Jenn, it's not comfortable. You know, some, some folks, they, they hit the booze, the alcohol, pornography, social media, work, you know, I used to, I used to, you know, I am still working on this, because most of my trauma response is related to work. You know, I overdo it sometimes. And you know, it's always, you know, being aware of it and say, Hang on a minute. Let's bring yourself back. Let's invite the silence back in. You know,
Jenn Turner
yeah, I agree. And I find too. That when I observe my patterns, it's, it is also befriending those two. I'm like, okay, there you go again. Jenn, you're doing the thing. It's okay, like, you know, it's also, it's also not piling on the shame around that. Yep, I do also share in the the work thing as well. And it's like, I'll just watch myself, and then sometimes I'll stop it, and sometimes I won't. But it is that compassion, right? You just, yeah,
Speaker 1
yeah, yeah. It's, uh, it's one step forward and two backwards. And sometimes you get yourself, you you actually going backward consciously, and you see doing that, and then you're like, Okay, let's do that. You know, that's no rush. We come back tomorrow. We do again. That's why I say it's a lifelong process, you know, it's a, you know, it's a marathon. It's not a spring. It's like, there is, there is no place to arrive. Jenn,
Jenn Turner
that's right, that's right. And I think, you know, one of the ways that I've noticed that come up in doing drama sensitive yoga is that if someone gets activated by a specific shape or movement, right? There can be this sense that, like, Oh, if only a sexual assault survivor could do happy baby, then they're going to be healed. And it's like, unfortunately, no, and you never have to do happy baby. You can do yoga and experience your body and be in your body. And to your point, it's like, the actual shape isn't something we necessarily have to be attached to. It's the way of doing things. So we also get to say no and say, you know, I'm gonna let that one go. I'm never gonna do that one, and that's okay.
Speaker 1
Yeah, I facilitate. I have the grace to facilitate yoga to folks who experience like cervical spinal cord injuries, which means that they are COVID, they are paralyzed from the chest down, and there is very little movement. There is very little muscular activation. And you know, we have the most profound practices, and they get the benefits out of it. So, like you do not need to add any movement to the practice, to to experience it.
Jenn Turner
One of the things that I think you also speak to is the importance of community, and I can see what a beautiful community you have built and are building. Yeah, can you talk more about either your experience in building community and kind of your hopes for the communities you're building and working with. I believe
Unknown Speaker
I am an optimist person. Jenn,
Jenn Turner
my notice I
Speaker 1
am like I am a short term in the size, like in the size, but a long term optimist. I like to say that, and I believe that change is possible. I believe that there is more good than bad. I believe that there is more love than hate. And you know, any change that you'd like to do, it will come in community, like teaching. Aham used to say that the next Buddha is a sangha, right? And I believe in that so much, because that's where I come to say that adaptive Yoga is a two way street, because so many times I was in my bed like feeling sorry for myself that I was going through, you know, whatever I was going through. And I go back to to the class that I was teaching, and I could see that not only me, but there was a lot of people that were going through grief that you know, has their life changed through injury or through trauma. So even through grief, like you feel the sense of bounding. You know when you are with other people, and you know you, you, you spread the sense of compassion collectively. So change happens from there, from from that place that you know acceptance, but not just for me, just for like everyone, because you will start being like empathic, like you will start seeing other people has, you know, part of you, because it's not that you feel that there is something missing on them, neither you know, you start seeing them as a whole. And has, you know someone that is is experienced the same thing that you are. And you know, you know how challenging it can be. So there is this collectively, sense of like compassion at the same time, resilience to do something.
Jenn Turner
Yeah, I absolutely. And I think the what stands out to me, too, is that the ways that when we are together, that we can collectively hold each other's pain, we can also feed each other's joy. All of that you know that you speak to, was it challenging for you to find community in the beginning, after your injury? Was that something you felt like you had
Speaker 1
to build in the yoga world, I needed to build. I needed to build. You know? And I'm still building it like, I like to build communities when there is need to build one, and has has that is something new, right? It's not, it's not very popular yet, like I mentioned, Martha Sanford, and he has been doing this work for quite a while, but I can, I can count in two hands, you know, how many disabled yoga teachers, which I use as other in the planet today. You know, so like we need community. We need to be seen. We need to we need to let folks know that yoga can be for for us as well. So I built a community in many different spaces. You know, in the habilitation center that I started teaching, the community was built because I had this sense of resonance with what my students were going through. But outside it like we built community of teachers that, you know, to support each other to make the change, you know, today we have adoptive yoga teachers teaching disabled folks inside the church in office, Brazil, you know, in Australia, in a community, in Seattle, it's like there are folks doing this work like everywhere. So we build community. And folks are building community inside the community, you know, and change happens. It's like, it's like a little work here, a little work there, you know, very community based. You know, it's something that I'm very passionate about as well. And we talked a lot about that. And the accessible yoga Ambassador mentorship program, how to take the yoga out of the studio and bring to your community center, and bring to your to the to your neighborhood. Because in your neighborhood, Jenn, there'll be a place where disabled folks meet, there'll be a elderly care home. There'll be a hospital. You know, as ends like we need to be proactive. We need to go where they are because they don't know that yoga is for them. So we need to go. We need to knock the door. We need to get them breathing, you know? We need to invite them back, right? So it's like this community work. It's where change really happens.
Jenn Turner
I couldn't agree more. I think oftentimes we will have a yoga studio and hope that people feel welcome, or that they would know that they could come and it's not, it's not enough, and, and, and it's often that they're not actually maybe welcomed in ways we haven't even thought of, based on location, based on accessibility, based on who's facilitating or teaching.
Speaker 1
Yeah, it is challenging, especially because of the structural accessibility for someone to get out of the house, they need to have a public transport that is accessible. They need to arrive to a venue that they have a ramp or lift or elevator, a disabled parking place, accessible, friendly toilet. There's so many things right. And a teacher who has the, you know, the ability assumption of not using, you know, the wrong terminology, or not being able to use themselves, you know, use the right language, or being trauma informed. That's like so many things that right the it needs to go right for someone with flexibility to experience the practice of yoga. But if you, if you, if you educate yoga teachers to serve whatever they are, I think you know you, you turn it somewhere accessible and inclusive, and that is where most of my work lies. We do. We do. We do a lot of work around this. I just came to to Sao Paulo last month, and then I educated 20 other teachers. I did for Talas as well, 16 more. And I'm doing real degener In about 10 days. And then we're going to educate 20 more. You know, these 20 teachers, they're going to serve 20 different communities. That's right, like, just like, you know, and people will feel seen, people will feel acknowledged, people will feel included. You know, it's like there's so much meaningfulness in this work. Jenn, so much.
Jenn Turner
And as you're talking to I'm reminded of how, you know, good intentions are a wonderful start, but there's so much knowledge and training that does need to happen in order to to create those conditions for someone to come in and for you know, as someone with a currently abled body, right, there's a lot for me to unlearn too that I would so I'm will definitely link to You know your trainings and offerings and things like that. So folks who feel moved by this just really incredible sharing you've offered can can participate and educate themselves so that they can host those spaces. Yes,
Speaker 1
yeah, and I usually say you. That, you know, it is fun to to to lead like a Bikram yoga session or a Vinyasa session, even with 2025, students. You know, there is so much purpose when you serve this population. Jenn like, because you I like to say that you were teaching yoga to those, for those who needs yoga the most, and for those who has access to the practice the least. You know? I don't know because I experienced it firsthand with my body experience, and now I've been teaching, and the other day, one of my student after training with me practice, practicing with me for, like, almost two years. He has, like, a c7 quadriplegia. He's paralyzed. He has a little bit of arm function and no hand function and no trunk control. And he's now able to, you know, pet his dog, like to the lateral flexion and pet his dog. This was like, and then you might, you might hear that, but like, come on, pets, his dogs. Like, for someone that experienced the spinal cord injury, broke the neck for like, over 13 years, and are able to do that again.
Jenn Turner
And this is huge. Absolutely, this is fundamental, absolutely
Speaker 1
huge, huge. What you doing, you were giving, like your yoga career, this tremendous amount of purpose that you know. I don't know if you would get that anywhere else, you know. And I would go further to say that this is where happiness lies, you know, if you want to be happy, serve help now, Be of service, but be of service of those who are in need of service. Just don't be of service for those who you know wants to have a summer bikini body, which is okay too, but it's like, you know, and I'm just like, really, like, you know, there's so much work to be done. And if you're a yoga teacher, that is like, an opportunity to give this, this sense of purpose to your career.
Jenn Turner
Fully, fully, agree, I could talk to you for hours. Thank you so much, Rodrigo, for spending time with me and with us, for sharing so openly everything that you shared with us today. And we'll link to all of sort of your things in the in the you know, the notes to the podcast. But is there anything else that we didn't get to today that you would want to share with folks.
Speaker 1
No, I would like to just to thank you for the opportunity to pass the mic, you know, and and hear my story. And you know, let me make other folks conscious about, you know, what do we what do we need? Right? We need to diversify this practice of yoga, you know, like, we need to have a place at the table. Zebra folks need to be singing. We have the right to be in our bodies. And, you know, yoga teachers has the tools. Like, you know, let's, let's, let's, let's. Spread the Love, right? That is the right word. Spread the love around, diversify the love you want to give
Jenn Turner
amazing. Thank you so much, Rodrigo,
Speaker 1
and such a pleasure to be here. Jenn, thank you for inviting me, of course.
Jenn Turner
Thank you so much for being with us today to find out more about today's guest, head to heal with cfte.org/podcast follow us on Instagram at on trauma and power, to stay up to date on future episodes and be sure to like and subscribe to on trauma and Power. Wherever you listen to your podcast, we'll see you next time. Take care you.
