Penney for Your Thoughts: Longevity, Mindset & Women's Health
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Penney for Your Thoughts explores the science of longevity, mindset, women’s health and healthy aging — and the practical things we can do to feel, think and live better at every stage of life.
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Penney for Your Thoughts: Longevity, Mindset & Women's Health
Trauma release with Tapashi Devchoudhury
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Tapashi Devchoudhury is a guru in trauma release and we discuss the link that stressful events and trauma can have on health conditions and chronic pain, even being the cause in many cases. Tapashi was born in a Hindu Brahmin family in Northeast India where she was brought up with the wisdom of ancient Hindu philosophies. In this episode, we discuss the subtleties of oriental philosophy and the connections between mind, body and spirit. We talk about trauma and micro-trauma, the small negative events that over time have a negative affect on how we react to stress and our environment often leading to disease and chronic symptoms.
Hello, it's Penny Meginson from the Meginson Method, and welcome to the Penny for Your Thoughts show. So I'm very honored today to be joined by Tapashi Dave Chudry, and she's here joining us to talk about her work working with trauma release. And we're going to discuss today how we can use this trauma release to help with pain relief, among many other different um avenues. And so welcome to Pashi.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Thank you, Penny, for having me on the show.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, it's great. Great having you. So why don't you start by explaining uh where you got your inspiration from? When did all of this work begin for you?
SPEAKER_00So my uh original background is traditional Hattva yoga. So everything started from yoga, and um I used to have a lot of classes where uh people would cry towards the end of the session, and then they would say, uh, you know, I had um I had this image of this memory that I had, or I've been feeling like this until now, and suddenly I feel like a weight has dropped. Yeah, and I I started realizing that uh with with this, and I always stuck to very traditional um philosophy of yoga, even in my classes, and uh it's it makes something um shift and change in the body, and uh not just uh making um physical changes but also emotional changes, and uh which can be quite powerful. And uh so it really started from the yoga classes that I did myself, I experimented on myself and felt myself, and then I started when I started teaching, uh I noticed that with each class, depending on what kind of a class it was, what I was um uh emphasizing on, there were different kinds of experiences coming up, which which gave me the first direction towards the work that I do today.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Um how would you say, because it's not just a typical um yoga class that you're teaching um when you're doing your work, how would you say that traditional yoga is different to the most um most of the modern yoga classes that we see today?
SPEAKER_00You've been to a class, so you know you've been to a class, so you know what uh I propose. So it's uh it's based on um uh when I talk about traditional yoga, I really mean um a yoga class where you are active but relaxed at the same time. Whereas in most modern yoga classes you have a phase of active but at the same time a little bit stressful uh part of the yoga class, and then you have the shavasana where you have uh the relaxation. Whereas um in traditional Hatha yoga, if you go to the the oldest uh texts that describe this phenomenon, which is yoga, uh it is a state of being in complete relaxation, even in postures. The word uh the Sanskrit word yoga is not a verb, it's a noun. It means uh a state of being, it's a state of being in union, body, mind, and spirit in one place at the same time. So um, this is a state that can be achieved um with physical activities, it doesn't have to be one of those postures that you see in a in a book. It can happen while you are running, while you are walking, while you are skiing, surfing, doesn't matter what, walking your dog, gardening, baking. But this um the the postures that we do in a yoga class per se are just the tools to bring us to this state. And um this state is uh if I were to explain it um in a way that could be easier to understand for a Western mind, because when we hear the word yoga, we don't understand something that you necessarily do with the body. It's when we hear the word yoga, we really understand it as something that arrives, that's something that occurs. And all we do is build the platform for this experience to present itself, to happen.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so what you're saying is these asanas, the exercises that we're doing, what we're actually doing is trying to achieve a state of being.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's I wouldn't say you we would try to achieve this uh state, it happens on its own. What we do is really, if you if you remember my classes, it's really about an inward focus. Every posture, in every movement, it is done consciously. So you don't fall into a posture passively. Every single movement is done consciously. When you are holding yourself in a posture, you are consciously scanning your body, checking with minor corrections or changes, uh, if it changes anything, which is different from most modern yoga classes, where it's a lot about um there is this uh part where people exercise to the point of failure. And what it essentially does is uh tell the practitioner that I am no good beyond this point. It has already registered. The moment they say I've done my best, I can't go any further. Which is uh there's there's a signal in the brain that says I'm not good enough for the next part. So this message of I'm not good enough essentially cannot be a part of what we decide of yoga. Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_02Yes, yeah, absolutely. Um, yeah, I love the way that you talk about how it's really about body awareness. Um, and you know, it's not about trying to get your knee as straight as you can or to have it the straightest in the class and that sort of thing. It's about just feeling in your body in that moment. So one class you might get further than um in another class, and it's really about where you are on the mount that particular day and just feeling um feeling that.
SPEAKER_00So, yeah, that's that's uh that's what I mean. In fact, uh in this state, naturally, uh, for example, the the vagus nerve, the one of it's one of the cervical nerves, it goes uh down all the way through the body. Uh in the in the kind of uh yoga that uh that I would call traditional uh yoga, uh the vagus nerve is calmed spontaneously, it it it calms down spontaneously. The person goes into a parasympathetic nervous system where they're not uh in the situation of should I fight for my life or should I run away? They're not in the fight or flight state. See, they are really in the rest and digest state. When we are able to be active in that relaxed rest and digest state, then we start experiencing yoga in the form in its purest form, in the form where it starts starts releasing toxins from the body, it starts cleansing itself, it even starts uh cleansing itself of the memories, the information that are stored in the body, in the in the body mind, I would call it, because our body doesn't really function separately from the mind, nor does the mind function separately from the body, they are in fact monolith.
SPEAKER_02Okay, yeah. Okay, um, what about the trauma release side of it? How does that work? How does that come into play with the yoga sanas and and the work?
SPEAKER_00Um, so in the in the trauma release sessions, um, for example, I do sessions um specific to the sacral region or specific to the uh the shoulder and uh neck, or you know, the cervical region, thoracic region. Uh it can be done in um you know two parts together, but what is the the essence of it is that we create conscious fatigue in the muscles, and when this conscious fatigue uh kicks in, the muscle starts shaking by itself involuntarily. So you've you've been to uh a few of my sessions, so you you know that this this uh shaking or trembling is not really voluntary shaking, you don't really shake it out saying I'm going to shake. Yeah, these are very deep muscles in the body which we don't have voluntary uh control over, and when they shake out, this is a very um a primitive way of releasing information that we no longer need to store in the body. Animals do it. If you if you see a cat or a dog even posting something they don't like or you know, experiencing any slight trauma that you know they don't want to give, they shake it out, and we do that too, but we have created such a strong armor of control of how we should and present present ourselves in front of uh the world outside that it takes the pain, physical or emotional, to be a very, very high level of pain. In fact, when you when we experience very high level of physical or emotional pain, the body shakes itself out involuntarily. So, what we do uh in these trauma release sessions is we go into specific uh parts of the body where in Eastern tradition we say that we store different kinds of emotions, and um it's quite literally shaking it out.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_00Um, and how long do these episodes of the shaking typically last when you work in that it could it could last a few minutes normally, and sometimes uh even on the way back, I I've had people telling me I was on the bus or the train, and I could still feel like a slight bit of trembling uh inside my leg or inside of my hips, and that is completely fine. It does not last forever, it's uh it's uh in the end, if we talk very, very physically, it's uh it's the muscle fatigue, so the muscle rejuvenates, recovers itself. And the concept, if I go into uh, for example, concepts like mudrag and dand in yoga, you know, uh we create conscious tension. And when when we create conscious tension, the body knows how to relax. But if the tension happens, which it does when we experience a stressful situation, the body tenses us unconsciously, and when that happens, it does not know how to relax, and then it stores the information in the body, and then it brings up similar situations because our our souls are are very, very evolved, we are very, very evolved beings, you know. So we we encounter similar situations again and again. It's like our soul telling us, Have you seen it? Do you see this yet? And until we see it, we cannot heal what we cannot feel.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, and so I guess that's sort of why we keep making the same bad decisions and that sort of thing until we finally realize or learn exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_00People have um even uh got relief from physical pain from uh a good massage, for example, it can go go away from a good massage, or um yeah, so but the thing is because we make these decisions, even the way we stand, the way we hold ourselves, though uh when if we have to stand long hours, the way we position ourselves on either of the feet or both feet, sometimes we put more uh weight on the outside of the feet, sometimes more inside of the feet, the way we store hold ourselves gives a lot of information to our body-mind about um the feeling that we are carrying, the feeling that we have. And in fact, uh when we do these trauma release sessions, we go into the same, we create consciously the same kind of tension, and then the body releases itself. So, when we talk about mudras, for example, if I talk about the the root chakra, the mulabantha, the root chakra engages itself or uh yeah, activates itself as soon as we experience something that uh compromises our sense of security. Every time we see something violent on television or on or in real life, something that is stressful, the the root lock happens spontaneously. It's the first thing that happens. If the next time you watch something violent on television or experience something stressful, observe what happens in the body. It's the root chakra that pulls up. In animals, it's very clear if there's a birthing deer who sees an elephant coming, she can stop labor straight away and she pulls the root up. Yeah, the pelvic floor that uh pulls itself up. So this happens in any stressful situation naturally. But and this is our defense mechanism. This is the something that the body does to protect itself. But when this happens unconsciously, the body doesn't know how to relax. And this makes uh yeah, this makes the tension stay in the body. The tension stays, the stress reaction stays, and the next moment you have another experience, a similar experience, the body goes on the blueprint that it has from the past experience and creates the same tension without knowing to relax it, and then we create this continuous chronic uh system of uh you know it's it's like a muscle tension and that sort of thing. Exactly. So it's a proper pathway, you reach that point from a few points, and when you reach that point, the body has its memory of what it has to do, what it should do, and we do the same thing all the time. That's why from a massage it can go away, but because we do it from our subconscious, it comes back because we do the same things again. So, unless it is erased or recoded or reprogrammed at the subconscious level, it continues coming back.
SPEAKER_02Okay, can you describe some of the patients that you've worked with um and some of the benefits they've had, and how has this worked in the past for you?
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah, to give you some concrete examples of uh let's say chronic pain. I've had one client who had um uh lower back pain, which is very, very common actually. But uh each of this uh these memories that we store in the body are very personalized. They are that they come from the meaning that we give to the situations. For example, this lady, she'd had lower back pain for as long as she could remember, and um and we when we did some of the sessions, some trauma release sessions, um even some um hypnotherapy sessions, we went back to to the place where she said I felt this pain for the first time when um I was supposed to look after my two-year-old sister, and she was lost and I couldn't find her. And uh, and the pain that she felt was uh its way of protecting her from uh the anger of her parents or from yeah, the blame she would get from her parents. But because she had it very, very deeply in the subconscious, that every time she feels responsible for something, she creates that pain without no without having any particular base to it, because her subconscious has uh her has created a program around it that if I'm responsible for something, I have to feel the pain because then the pain will protect me. So the the the in her subconscious system the pain was a protection mechanism, but and in fact, even now there's she doesn't need any protection mechanism when she feels responsible. She can either say, Okay, I can take only that much of responsibility beyond that, this is not mine, or uh you know, I relieve myself of responsibility um beyond this point, but there is no need to take uh this pain in the body, like she that she in her head she has to create that pain to be protected, so that is one example. And when after the after we did the session, she said, I I I went walking the other day with my dog, and I I've never felt like that in my body again. Uh, that is one example. There are so many others. There are yeah, so when we talk about storing different um kinds of pain in the body, this I come from really from Eastern um philosophy from from Indian and Chinese um medicine and um philosophy. So they say that um we store very, very old information starting from the the first seven years of one's life is stored at the sacrum at the the lower back, and then you have different, for example, if you have a weight of responsibility of uh coming from a higher authority that is usually stored on the shoulders and the neck, and they have a very strong connection, and then you have uh grief or um joy. If in Eastern medicine, even joy is taken as uh an ailment when you have extreme joy is also an ailment, so those are the things that we store in the heart center in the in the heart chakra. So um love, joy, grief, all of this is stored around this area. So there are different um kinds of uh emotions that we store in different parts of the body, but uh each situation can be different for each person, every person kind of gives a meaning to the situation, like the woman gave a meaning of protection to that black thing, and it was there. So that there are different kind different uh ways we make sense of situations and then we store it in the situation.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, okay. Um, yeah, it's very interesting because with the work I do with emotional freedom technique, uh, where we work on Chinese meridians, it's based on the same belief that you hold on to most of these um negative memories and that information, um, most of it that leads to our negative habits and that thing happened um by the age of six. And so you were saying about six or seven, exactly. And and so um it's very interesting, this whole mind-body connection. Um I find as a physio that I've had lots of patients that have um SI joint pain that keeps reoccurring, and often it's not related to sports, or you know, they can't figure out what's causing it. And that's sort of that was why I was initially interested in the work that you were doing. And do you have any of these sort of um cases that you've seen?
SPEAKER_00Yes, I've I've in fact had some people who came with severe uh sacroiliac um pain in the sacroil iliac joints or even um a herniated disc or something. And uh I I've I I met this woman who asked me before she came for the session, can I come for it? Uh, because I've I've had a herniated disc, and I said, Yes, you should come for it, you definitely should come for it. And uh it's been um when was this the the the session in Fuy that was in the month of June, and now we're in November, it's been yeah a few months. I met that lady again during the festival in Berbier, and she said, My my back hasn't has never felt like this before. Uh and um so the thing is here in this uh in this part of the body, it's the the sacrum is one of the most um is it's the place where we store the most amount of emotional information. Uh, firstly, because it comes from the first seven years of our lives where the brain of a child is working on the theta wave brain state. They are absorbing information, it's not a logical, linear, analytical way of uh making sense of information, it's more non-linear information, it's intuitive, they absorb and make sense of what it could be, they give sense to what that situation means. Um so this this uh kind of memory is uh based on an emotion, it has an emotional basis, which is a very, very strong base. Because uh if we look at our programs of uh action, how we Act and behave and respond to different situations, uh, our emotions will be a much stronger basis of action than logical reasoning. This is why you know, when some people ask, how does a person like uh Trump become president of America? Because people act from emotion, people don't act from logic or reasoning, it's it's very basic, it's as basic as uh a child going to their mother because they connect emotionally. When there is an emotional connection, it will always take a step uh higher than a logical reasoning. So here we are talking about those kind of emotions, and this is the place of the first two chakras, the the root chakra and the swadeshana chakra, the sacral chakra. So these two chakras are the the bases that give your sense of security, sense of safety, sense of having a firm ground where you build your life, and then you have the uh freedom of expression, freedom of uh yeah, freedom of really living your emotions without having to suppress them. So these can come uh from uh from a child experiences experiencing just something as simple as uh singing a song but very loud, and the child and the parents say, Can you please shut up? you know, or something like uh they they draw a painting on the wall because they want to show how much they love the mother. So they draw a painting of the mom and the dad and the child itself, and you know, and the parents come home and the first thing they do is shout at them for drawing in the wall. Whereas for them, it was it was them expressing their uh their deepest emotions, their deepest love.
SPEAKER_02And it's amazing how um often people think, oh well, trauma, I don't have any trauma in my life. And it's usually a lot of these small situations where when it comes up for someone, they're like, I I never realized that it even happened. And you know, and it's very hurtful for a child, it really makes you think about being a parent and the things that we say your words because as a child, you really feel those emotions and the sadness or the hurt, you know, when a mother is just or a father is just making a comment because they're stressed or they're busy or they just need to get something done, and and you really hold on to that information, and it's like really um stupid, or you know, these sorts of things you really hold on to that information, and it's amazing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and this this information is emotional, it's strong emotion, you know. You story, and every time you feel this emotion, your body releases an exact set of hormones, so there's a biochemical reaction in your body happening at the same time. Your neural transitors are sending out uh an information, set of information, and you have a blueprint of this. How is the the neural pathway of this situation? How is the the biochemical blueprint that you have of the hormones? And every time a situation falls into one of these little uh nooks and crannies of what meaning you gave, we go directly to that. We go directly to that, create the exact set of hormones, exact set of uh neurotransmitters, and we make sense of the world just like that. We are just grown-up children in the end, you know?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And I think a lot of the things that trigger stress for us is based on this. And so these little things, these seeds that were created when we were younger. Um, you know, the boss that's just telling you to, you know, get on with your work, you're feeling that sense of, oh, I'm not good enough, or oh, I'm not smart enough because that seed had been planted years before. And if that if you can erase that information, then you would just get on with your job and you'd believe in yourself. And you know, we would all be just moving forward and not holding on to such negative information. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00And in yoga, we we talk about how we we really learn about how this the body has small tools of finding uh these very subtle informations. You can explore it through postures, you can explore it through breathing techniques, which I use uh during my classes as well, through movements. And these are very subtle, and it's it's just information that you store in the body, which the good news about that is that you have access to it. You have access to using to finding this information in your body, and this is the the work that I do. It's very simply put, this is the work that I do.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, I'm a strong believer that getting rid of this negative information really helps you to move forward and um and deal better with stress, but also manage pain, and often a lot of the chronic symptoms that we see either go away or we just learn to manage them in a better, more productive way. And uh, and I've seen that a lot in my patients as well. So I love the work that you're doing, and um, yeah, thank you so much for joining us today. If anyone is interested in getting a hold of you, how can we how can they find you?
SPEAKER_00Um there is my website which is tapashiyoga.com, or you can write to me at d.tapashi at gmail.com.
SPEAKER_02They can and we can talk. Of course, you can always get in touch with me as well if that's easier, and um I will uh give Tapashi's uh details to you. And um, thanks so much for joining us. If you've got any questions or comments, please feel free to leave those as well. And I look forward to seeing you next week. And Tapashi again, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. It was such a pleasure, it's always such a pleasure to talk to you. So um pleasure myself.
SPEAKER_01Bye bye.
SPEAKER_02Thanks for watching. Bye bye.