Native Yoga Toddcast

Nona Mileva - Tapping into the Yoga Well

October 10, 2022 Todd Mclaughlin Season 1 Episode 85
Native Yoga Toddcast
Nona Mileva - Tapping into the Yoga Well
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Show Notes Transcript

Check out this discussion I had with Nona Mileva. Visit Nona at her website well yoga.net. Nona is a Certified Life, Wellness and Health Coach, Yoga Teacher and Educator, based in Jupiter, FL, United States. She works with a wide range of clients, from variuos backgrounds and age, via in person,  phone or Zoom sessions. Her coaching is holistic. It entails all aspects of the client's life - emotional, psychological, physical, spiritual , as it authentically reflects the most important human needs. She focuses on the therapeutic modalities and applications of Yoga as a practice and discipline that enhances health and wellbeing. 

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Todd McLaughlin:

Welcome to Native yoga Todd qcast. So happy you are here. My goal with this channel is to bring inspirational speakers to the mic in the field of yoga, massage bodywork and beyond. Follow us native yoga, and check us out at Native yoga center.com. All right, let's begin. Well, thanks for tuning in. Real quick native Yoga Center is located in beautiful Juno Beach, Florida. And online, wherever you are. Join me for practice, click the free live stream link in the show notes and get your practice growing. I'm so happy to have no nama Leyva here visiting in native yoga center. So we get to do an in person podcast Nona. How are you doing today?

Nona Mileva:

I am good. Thank you so much for having me. Good to see you.

Todd McLaughlin:

Same as well, I got to meet you, Nona. Because you came in very enthusiastically inquiring about yoga teacher training a few years ago, and you completed our 300 hour yoga teacher trainings which brought you into like the ry t 500. realm. And you also are involved in teaching in Stewart at a place called district 108, in Stuart, Florida, and at the powerhouse, Jim Stewart. And you also teach therapeutic yoga in some of the local retirement communities. You have recently completed getting your PhD in health psychology. And you're currently working toward yoga therapy certification, which you said will be completed in December. So you've been very busy, that's something that I really admire about you is you love to study, you put a lot of time and energy into reading, studying. And you're you've expressed a lot of interest and enthusiasm for the history and the philosophy of yoga. And so that's why I'm really excited to have you here today. Because I can just pick your brain a bit and see what kind of like Top hits have made it onto your playlist for like yoga philosophy, yoga history. And so on that note, what is something that you have read about and or practiced or studied recently that's caught your attention that you're excited about?

Nona Mileva:

How i Lo, how you you're beginning this conversation? Thank you for the intro. First. Yes, I have been busy. And this is just what can I say my mode of functioning, learning, being always curious about things and topics. So my latest educational conquests, so to speak, or interests have been since COVID. Which, as you know, was a pretty to some extent, the traumatic experience, but then in other from a different perspective. It opened new doors. It made us more creative, looking for opportunities to keep doing what we love doing, which for us is yoga, obviously if we are talking about it. I have been I began studying. Doing yoga philosophy course, of course is online with Professor Edwin Bryant. He's one of the most renowned names Hindu researchers and philosophers and translators in the field, he's at Rutgers University in I think it's New Jersey or New York. So he what he started doing is record all his lectures, and then putting them out there online for free. Nice, everyone. Absolutely amazing, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. It always amazes me when people share their knowledge with such immense generosity. So that got me into the groove of daily or twice a week. Sit down through those lectures or just doing my thing and listening to them. And I pretty much it's all they're all the six directionals the schools of various philosophical discourse and then and the man is a very knowledgeable break. and scholar he, he knows a lot about everything, his focuses his bhakti. He is initiated in this tradition. So can you explain back to so in the discourse of yoga bhakti yoga is the yoga of devotion. It's the it's a kind of yoga that is being practiced as a devotional yoga practitioners address their attention, their their energy towards a benevolent worship of a deity in their in this case, usually Krishna is the the subject of the affection. There is lots of mantra, chanting there, there's lots of cute dance and dancing and singing, praising, praising the Bhagavan. So think Bhagavata Purana, those ancient texts, all the Krishna stories, by the way, they're amazing, amazingly entertaining and interesting stories. If anyone really wants to learn more about them, just go read them. They're with tremendous sense of humor also created so many years ago. Yeah, so we would sit through those, he would just open the texts, and to 300 people there, either life or from the recorded lectures will be listening and then following the stories, he would stop you with comments. And this, this goes for every subject. Whether you want to learn about like Angeles yoga sutras, whether you want to learn about Vedanta sutras, or Nya, more the stories of Krishna. So that's what I kept doing for about a year, then he started doing live svadhyaya sessions every Friday,

Todd McLaughlin:

can you do this live, and I'm imagining that there might be someone listening that doesn't know any of the Sanskrit terms. So that's why it might just stop you every now and again and let you define some of the words. So if someone's listening, that's like a brand new listener slash just coming into the yoga fold. There's a lot of Sanskrit terms that once you start to learn them, it gets easier and easier. Once you learn one, you learn another and before you know it, you can listen to these really in depth conversations about the yoga history and philosophy and know exactly what's going on. But in the beginning, it's really common to feel fish out of water, I have no idea what they're talking about. So on that note, can you define what Jaya flowers do that is your career.

Nona Mileva:

But again, and once you get to actually work with those terms, it becomes kind of a second nature. And you don't think that yes, there are people who still haven't gotten there. So apologies again. So the idea is the concept of studying. So it could be defined as a studying about the self. That's the obtaining self knowledge through a variety of practices. But it is it does become by itself a practice. It could be even a spiritual practice. So you get to define it as for example, spending time with the sacred texts. So you sit down and you study, you read the text from the Upanishads, or from the later Puranas, or you open Patanjali yoga sutras and this is your weekend. Yeah, this is your weekend. What are you doing? I'm doing yoga psychology, how I'm just staring at Patanjali, sutra number, whatever. Trying to figure it out to study is that concept of in backticks, for the eyes done, another, I'm drawing attention. I'm throwing another Sanskrit word in Sangha, which means pretty much your social group. Yeah. What is your what is your community? Yeah, let's hang together with like minded people. Yep. And do our thing. What is our thing? We're reading the scripts. Yeah. Or in my case, I'm listening to someone much more knowledgeable. And they read it. And he's reading the scripts. He's commenting on them, we get to ask questions.

Todd McLaughlin:

Was that the difference? So actually, let me back up a little bit. Is that something that anyone listening can go to Edwin Bryant

Nona Mileva:

or at org And by the way, at the end of the podcast, I will be happy to provide you with all the resources and links and the names that I'm throwing in here. So you can post it through your audience and I'll be so happy for people actually go there and look up at this stuff because there's so much available away source of information out there that we just are not aware of. Yeah. So Edwin brand.org, cool excuse website. It's connected to the Rutgers University. And as a matter of fact, the last study I did with him was on the opening shots. I think it was the I forgot which ones to my memories also doesn't serve me always. But starting four weeks from now, we are he's doing a six week or an eight week course on Bhagavata Purana. He likes he loves his back the story. So that kind of yoga, devotional yoga, the yoga of love there. There's a lot of kindness and, and love and compassion about this concept. I I just even listening to someone who's so who has devoted pretty much his life and passion to that. Yeah, I think it's amazing.

Todd McLaughlin:

It is amazing. It obviously takes cultivating it over a long period of time. Little by little before you know it, you have these you understand these stories a little better. It makes sense. And that's cool. So it sounds like the interaction process with that particular training method was that the first way you started listening to his philosophy teachings was not interactive. And then that the Suad yaiaa ones was where you could maybe type in questions into the chat box. Is that how that was going down?

Nona Mileva:

dab off? Yeah. So you can do either you can sell the pre recorded lectures or pre recorded lectures, their lectures for students, so we as some kind of external, just observers or audience, neutral audience, we have no access to the direct communication, we watch the recordings. But because the content is all out there, you can watch it at any time you watch it. This Friday is sessions are live sessions, but he also records them and then post them online. So if you miss a Friday, yeah, you really want to go for that happy hour Friday. And but yeah, it's not your thing that day, then, then you'll watch it or listen to it the next day.

Todd McLaughlin:

Nice. So on that note, you mentioned that his love and passion is toward the like, the bhakti texts, what is what do you gravitate toward? I know there's so many different texts to study and I know you can probably gain benefit in Inside Out of reading and in all of them. But what do you connect with the most if you had like, ish today avatar, so like initiative, David Taza personal deity that you might connect with at some point when you start reading these stories? What would be like your issue to David Todd text?

Nona Mileva:

Well, it would be older stories might have Krishna of the blue skin Krishna and his mischievous young years and Krishna is an avatar, an avatar just explained it's in, in the broad context of Hindu philosophy, we are going to encounter many deities or many divine creatures that are some kind of an extension or, or just another exemplification of a larger deity for example. So we have heard of Vishnu as a god of sustenance and in maintaining the balance in cosmic order. Krishna is one of visionis avatar expressions. So Krishna, for those of us who have studied yoga who are familiar with some of the scriptures, Krishna is a main character in what has already become a canonical text in the West, the Bhagavad Gita Part of the largest Indianapolis somehow Bharata and Krishna pretty much in I'm sure that most people have heard about the Hari Krishna, him and chanting and if you see, you know, these people with the flowers and the shaved head, and just always in a good mood and chanting and picking up on that vibe of, of let's all be good to each other. Yeah, yeah. So be kind to each other. Don't we need that thought, even in the current context of the way the world is and how it is

Todd McLaughlin:

definitely and something that someone yesterday had mentioned to me? How come I don't see that type of thing anymore? And so, the person that asked that is, you know, they stay home a lot. So that obviously could be one of the answer is that you know, if you go out to different areas where you might encounter say, Krishna devotees, the last time I was down in South Beach there in Miami, there was a group of Krishna Consciousness devotees that were chanting Hari Krishna and they all had orange robes on and they had their hair set up and they were going for it and you know, down in South Beach, which is not your most likely area to see that. But my answer to her when she asked that was, well, there's still that's still going on out there. But you're right. I mean, where I live? Well, we live in the States, we're in here in Florida. I mean, you know, we don't see a lot of that sort of like FlowerPower. You know, Krishna devotees, chanting. You know, obviously, if we go to India, there's going to be devotees chanting all day long walking the streets. There's a parade at every hour, there's a different religious tradition, celebrating a culture or a holiday every single day. And you know, it's full of that I do. I don't think we have that so much here on that same level as an India but I guess in relation to someone saying, How come? I don't see that anymore? It does kind of feel like there's not a lot of people willing to kind of fly their freak flag for peace and equality in a peaceful way. I don't know. What do you think

Nona Mileva:

I that made me think about what is it? Is it a political and cultural climate of the last few years? Yeah, maybe people that that option of self expression of their values and their choices is something that they're and reluctant to do. It's a sad idea. Why not? Yeah, you know, that I would be one of those advocating, hey, we need that.

Todd McLaughlin:

Yeah. To be honest, when I hung out with the Krishna devotees, when I lived in Gainesville, when we would go and chant Hari Krishna in public. I had a very nerve wracking time with that. So like, if we were hanging out the temple, and we were chanting Hari Krishna amongst everyone who's into it, it was like, no problem. But soon as we would take that out into the public, I was like, I don't know about this, like, I'm not so comfortable all of a sudden. So maybe that personal thing.

Nona Mileva:

It's not surprising we still this in our society here this is to a large extent. There is still the stigma even of yoga. Even though yoga is such a popular subject in practice, you can still hear a strong religious fundamentalist stick, you know sentiments about how Yoga is the work of the devil when this and the other. So on that note, may tell you something else, please go for it. So we we I will transition you and your listeners from this was all about the history of yoga and studying with someone who, by the way, Edwin Bryan has some of I think my personal opinions, one of the most wonderful and really profound translations of the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali. And he has also combined with all the commentaries there, it's a it's a great addition, if anyone wants to look into it. In the past five years, I have been following. I mean, there was not much to follow during the process. But at the beginning at the end, something that now you will be hearing more and more about, have you heard of the Hata project?

Todd McLaughlin:

I did. So yes, I have actually, I just had a conversation with a podcast. I'll release right before this one with you was with Eric iminium. Eric, who is a yoga philosopher. And he had just mentioned that, all right, so we have so elaborate so two days in a row now getting hit with that same thing. There's gotta be a reason here passionate

Nona Mileva:

about it. Also, in my personal opinion, something very important is happening out there. A brand new generation of new enthusiasts, stick knowledgeable. Scholars, choose yoga. Choose, choose to find new things about the history about how things came to be and choose to enlighten us and to share facts and scripts that no one knew about. So in other words, that whole trend is is underlying something I find extremely significant that yoga is a living organism. Yoga is not some kind of a fossilized structure or made up a platform that you know it just dig out as a dinosaur bone and stare it and never change it. Yoga changes adapts awkward. We're going to be assignment to the cultural milieu to the to the influences, right? Yeah. And that makes it awesome. Yeah. And on that note, here is what these guys have been working on. So about five years ago. I'm not sure what your previous participant has shared, but about five years ago. Scholars of yoga and Sanskrit and religious histories get together in a group through source University in London, James Mallinson, your listeners might might have heard the name from the Hatha Yoga Book and the history of Hatha Yoga I'm sorry. Also together with the next name. I'm going to mention Mark Singleton, who became more famous with the yogabody book that kind of raised eyebrows and stirred some interesting conversations about 1012 years ago. I think it came out in 2010. So Mark Singleton, Jim Mallinson, another scholar, who's best known for his work and research on Raja Yoga. So while Jim Mallinson and Mark Singleton, they're more into the Hatha a history of Raja Yoga is the speciality of Jason Birch is the name of the researcher and his wife, Jacqueline, for the life of me cannot remember the last name, I hope she forgives me, fantastic people, people with with true love and passion of finding more and more, so they got a nice grant and started working with that five year project. There was another lady that B voc bevilaqua. She, her kind of branch of that research was studying the modern aesthetics in India. So they get to do fieldwork. Can you imagine how awesome that is? Yeah, get the money they get to go to India, they get to do the fieldwork visit anywhere between 20 and 40 libraries, which is immense. Yes. Go through all the the challenges and the loopholes have tried to deal with the Indian librarian system, which is most people would close their doors to and these are things I did not know until I actually got involved with these people. I did their courses, listen to their lectures, read their books. Do you know that it could be practically impossible to obtain an ancient manuscript, no matter what version and how many times it has been copied before that? If the librarian, for example, looks at John decides that, ah, those Europeans, they're going to put me out of business if I just gave them a copy of the manuscript, right? Yeah. And they digitalize it and God forbid, take it away? Yeah. Sorry, away from me. Yeah. So I can only imagine how much or how much persistence and yeah, good. This one needs to be. Boy, those kind of they also adjacent birch was sending a story once of how they get to a library. They pull the manuscript they want to investigate, research and translate. And because the librarian is just some young kid who couldn't care less about the importance and the value of this piece of paper has for us, pulls it out of the binder, that thing disintegrates. Pieces of it fall on the floor, and adjacent birches wife says, and here I am on my knees down there trying to gather the pieces almost in tears, because to us this house, this has a tremendous value. Right? So not to launch too much into it. I don't want to take too much time, but what they did was they pretty much they just wanted to figure out okay, where is this thing coming from? Is Hatha Yoga really 5000 years old, like some claim out there? Is there something what's going on? In conclusion, and to anyone interested? We'll post if you'd like, resources, because I think it's a fascinating opportunity to learn more about yoga. This is contemporary yoga research. On my book in my book, nothing beats that. Happy Hour on Friday. I'll be sitting there reading Jim Mollison. I think he already published a text it's called Amrita CD pretty much kind of turning the concept of the hat that came from the not tradition Probably not because somebody does it it turns out to be from a Buddhist Millia and even though the word haha is not mentioned over the practice of their

Todd McLaughlin:

arm and you're saying from the not sex the unaccepting in a th or

Nona Mileva:

not from them like my chin, my Chandra not or correction and so it's a tantric

Todd McLaughlin:

and what time period are The

Nona Mileva:

12th century

Todd McLaughlin:

Gotcha. So, ya

Nona Mileva:

know, for those of us who have studied yoga, I will still reiterate for the listeners, we have one major takes that we consider to be the most valuable contribution to informing us about the practices of the Hatha Yoga, that's Hatha Yoga Pradipika. This does not come about around until 1450, maybe even later. So we're talking 15 century AD, right. Now we pick after that project, over certain few other manuscripts come out of the the obscure libraries of India and it turns out that three four centuries prior to that, we already are talking about those practices. Here are those and pretty much the discussion is being repeated in the next text now Jason birch researches that Raja Yoga txg Mallinson and Mark Sango Tango for the Hatha for the What now, in modern yoga research is being called a history of postural yoga. Because now, they are defining, so to speak a new category. So there is yoga and there is a posture yoke. Yep. I noticed

Todd McLaughlin:

from Hatha Yoga, so this making a distinction between hatha yoga and quote, postural

Nona Mileva:

Well, Hatha Yoga would be right to Hatha Yoga would be the beginning of that posture yoga tradition, while actually the posture of the modern posture yoga tradition. Now, not until probably not even probably a century ago. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And that is another part of their research that they they are very invested academically into of researching how, what kind of interconnectedness exists out there between some of those Hatha practices, and some of the influences of modernity, of colonialism of European gymnastics, if you wish to like Swedish gymnastic or even of bodybuilding practices in India at that time, yeah. How about the nationalistic aspects of this of this whole presentation because India was occupied by the Brits, right? And, and at some point, it turns out through that very thorough historical research that, that posture yoga, that look at me strong spirit in the strong body became kind of a metaphorical, almost an emotional expression of we are strong, we want to be united around something that's ours that's inherently anciently belonging to us. So these are the kinds of things that those scholars have been researching for years, that half the project has not published few of those texts for the so they're translated. And this is really view, if you really want to read about, okay, this pause the dam, say that right now, where did it come from? So then go back there, you're not stronger practitioner, your teacher stronger? Well, you might actually be curious to see that some of the things we're doing are stronger, like what would go general you're just gonna be exist as something called Maha Mudra. In those texts, or what we call Dandasana, exist as a Maha Bandha. And this is an 11th century text or like 12th century texts. So yeah. I find this extremely exciting. Yeah, some people may think, why would that be exciting? This is weird. Because Because we love the practice. We because we have had experience with the practice, we teach. The practice we have also observed the profound changes the practice creating us and others. To me, it's it's important to know I really want to study the roots. Yeah, I really want to study the road. It's my you know, different people have different should they say that epistemological frameworks epistemological means in philosophy refers to a term of how we know the things that we know. I mean, my epistemological framework is language. I come from a linguistic background.

Todd McLaughlin:

What other languages do you speak?

Nona Mileva:

So I, I have five years. My younger years I actually spent studying ancient Greek and Latin, I know doesn't sound very exciting, but yeah. Then French Russian, I'll get in my native language obviously. I tried the Italian ones, but not much of that. On that I'd note I don't want to forget to mention something very important in regards to that new modern research, they came up this whole research that kind of goes under the umbrella of theoretical framework of something called embodied philology. I'm going to explain philology being the term of keynoting, the work with text and working with linguistic structures, and you look at the text and you translate, or you, you analyze the grammatical structures and the syntax, based on that, you get to really better elaborate on the authenticity of when was it created and things like that, but embodied philology. This is what they did for five years. They went manuscript hunting, they found those ancient texts, and while translating the ordering the practices. And I think that this is probably the part that gets me the most that this is a pretty clear and cut case of a fantastic Phenomenological Research from a first person experience, you get to experience the practice. And then how can not? How could that not inform your knowledge? How could that not feel your your consciousness and your attention in a way that, wow, I really get to understand that text better? So this is what these people have been doing? And if you'd like we'll post links to that as well. Absolutely. I'm not surprised that other people are excited about it.

Todd McLaughlin:

All right, I do you came into yoga first and then started to get interested in philosophy? Or did you start reading philosophy first, and then get on your yoga mat and start practicing.

Nona Mileva:

Um, so I have to say that I have done many different things in my life. But where I am at that point in my life now, serious middle age, I see, in hindsight how everything comes together. I started that, as I already mentioned, that a very young age. You don't have exactly an equivalent to that kind of education here in the States. But imagine an IB program that lasts for five years. And that was ancient, ancient cultures and languages that I studied. This is at what age like high school high school yeah, between ages. I be like, enter like an International Baccalaureate program, but it lasts five years, as opposed to well, actually, yeah, it's five years here in the high schools as well. Right. I'm not sure if they have ancient like if they have programs like that about classical Philology, because this is what I studied. So five years you pretty much what these guys with the Hata project. Did you sit down? You study Latin and Greek? You read Homer? Yeah. Are they saying you read the older Greek great Roman writers and political debaters there and and this is this is you use Okay. At the time it sounded very boring to me. But the emphasis was on those sculptures on mythology on a cultural studies. Joseph Campbell was someone I spent five years of my life with practically with his books, and his merch Eliade, as you know, another, another prominent scholar, older scholar of yoga, because obviously, you can already send some kind of a creative tension between the old school and the new school of researchers and scholars. Things are coming to surface that put into question. Even the dating, of all those materials we currently read and talk about, there is actually a few modern scores out there put it out for debate. If Marcela they were, for instance, first names the dating is correct. They say no, it's 1000 years off or something like that. That's exciting. Yeah. Yogi's evolving. So are we let's see what happens. Yeah. So that was my year. Then I went into philology. I studied my first master degrees in Slavic philology is pretty much your study Slavic languages. I started the creation in Bulgarian, Russian and Russian, Slavic languages. Then, later on, I went into psychology. I studied transpersonal psychology and theories of consciousness. You see how everything's coming together to get the words from tears of consciousness. So similar in my college years, I got interested in yoga. I wrote extra AP on a comparison between the psycho energetic qualities of the chakras and Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of human needs. And so yeah, I don't know if it was really that well written. But at the time, it sounded exciting now that many, many, many, many years later, I'm thinking, Well, I'm I don't want to read that paper, or knows what I said then. Because again, everything is a matter of perspective. You're informed from different sources now. Life has happened, you experience has changed and you see things in a different way. But yes, then so that was that was I was in my early 20s. Though, I have to say how many years ago Yeah, so it's been on and off that interest. Then that program of transpersonal psychology and theories of consciousness and spirituality kind of reignited that passion. When you study consciousness, it, inevitably, you're going to touch upon all those concepts. You're going to read about those perennial philosophies, you're going to encounter modern philosophers like Ken Wilber, like Corker that really describe that kind of a fairer, or give her a prominent transpersonal psychology speaks about our participatory contribution, how we all in a creative way, contribute to in a way some kind of a common database, spiritual database information on database, Carl Jung make may use his psychological in terms of collective unconscious in transpersonal, psychology carry on, and depth psychology is a big part of, of that, of that paradigm. And Carl Jung was also another modern psychologist who went to India to study yoga. Because it's so fascinating, fascinating to all of us, it does

Todd McLaughlin:

seem like if you, if you go down the philosophy pathway, that you got a very traditional from a European sense, like, you know, Greek and you know, Socrates and you said Roman philosophy that at some point, you're going to stumble or clearly just head straight toward Indian philosophy. Would you agree? I mean, inevitable? A Yeah, absolutely. Do you now in your because you've put a lot of emphasis and focus on the yoga philosophy path? Do you go back to Greek philosophy? Do you go back to these? You know, do you go back and read Ken Wilber? Do you still have interest in these different transpersonal psychology philosophies? Or do you? So you're now kind of going across all these different fields? And when you know, if somebody's listening, that's like, well, I've only really been going to yoga class, and I haven't read or studied any philosophy. And you're making me curious. And I think maybe I do want to take a step in that direction. Where do you think and I know each person would gravitate toward like, you'll be pulled. So if you are pulled to reading Socrates, then go for it. And there's going to be a lot of similarities in terms of Socratic dialogue. And you know, that, constantly asking ourselves the question of, you know, who am I and then we look at, well, then, in the Indian tradition, it's very similar, in terms of the Yana yoga traditions of just, you know, going deeper and deeper, who am I? Who am I? So, what would you recommend? If someone was just starting off? Where would you point them?

Nona Mileva:

If someone was just starting off, I would say, I would say, you have to honor the tradition you're beginning, within, from which you're beginning, so And that'd be yoga. And in that case, something as classical, and again, emblematic as Bhagavad Gita. And I'm not saying Patanjali please know that, even though it's my favorite text, because pretty much that summarizes to me the definition of what yoga is. But the Gita, the Bhagavad Gita, and this is, this is a very short text. Part of I think I began the conversation with that of a much larger apples. Oh, that's another thing. I studied the entire grade eighth and ninth grade. We studied Mahabharata.

Todd McLaughlin:

Wow. No. In eighth grade,

Nona Mileva:

then imagine Yeah, exactly. I don't know. Right Gray, the nine crackling

Todd McLaughlin:

Mahabharata.

Nona Mileva:

Yes, but I would go, probably, I would say, read that script, read that story. I am pretty sure that there are many things in this text that would resonate with everyone. Yeah, it could be a personal way of absorbing that the material that wisdom, also be invited. Every time you read this, you read this particular text, it would look like it's on your text to you. Yes, it's something you almost have never had before. Yeah, because in a very peculiar, yeah, tie thing, to my understanding, very logical way it will resonate with whatever your current psychological or emotional experiences, you will derive a different meaning from it. You might also attribute some meaning to it that also correlate with you where you are in life, or right now. So that would be something I would advise open Bhagavad Gita get a copy of it. Yeah, they're pretty good translations out there. Read it once read like a story, a bedtime story. Yeah. And ask the questions, ask the hard questions, you You said it well, these are, these are the goods I spoke about epistemology. These are good ontological questions, these are the high you know, the big questions,

Todd McLaughlin:

can you define ontology?

Nona Mileva:

Ontology would be, so if epistemology is the definition of epistemology is how we what kind of knowledge we employ, how we know the things that we know ontology would be. What are the big questions? Who am I is an ontological question, existential question of existential importance. Yes. What is God? How I find out about God will be an epistemological approach epistemological approach in in Indian philosophy, the School of Naya would be a school that deals with those concepts. What is knowledge? What is the essence of knowledge? And now we get into where Western and start, we are going to place our framework, our Socratic or Aristotelian framework we're going to impose and then later, modern, more modern philosophers on those Eastern thinkers and scholars, and may I say, religion scholars, it doesn't always fit. Yeah, there are lots of you're correct. There are lots of relevant connections we can make. And in some ways, there is something that you have to embody that mindset. In order to be able to fully understand and comprehend how do we do that? I only have one answer for you yoga. It's about the experience, no matter how many different schools you will encounter in Hindu philosophy. They disagree on fundamental things. I mean, they pretty much argue about everything. There. polemics are vigorous, sometimes aggressive. It's just fascinating to read them. Pretty much everyone agrees on one thing, yoga is the way Yoga is the practice, yoga is the method. Do yoga, and it'll all come clear,

Todd McLaughlin:

nice. If fun, what other practice do you do apart from Hatha Yoga that you integrate into your daily routine that helps to support your your SWAT Jaya, your study of sacred texts.

Nona Mileva:

So mice via the eyes are my favorite practice. My asana practice is also something I cannot go without. It's my daily thing. I always joke that this is my therapy. This is it. My breathing practices, I have to have it, even if it's just five minutes. Yeah, depending on what the situation requires. I'll do it another shot and this is a nostril breathing practice. You alternate between left and right sometimes you close one, open the other. And there are a couple of variations. Sometimes I'll just sit there and just make the exhales longer. Like I did apparently I'm three three part breaths, just barely breathing, quieting. There is this sweetness of shutting shutting off the external noise that I I cherish I have been experimenting since like, I started falling those guys I just spoke so passionately about I have been experiencing with some of their practices, I mean, not there but the practices from those manuscripts. Like the third eye or meditation, you bring your attention to the point between the eyebrows and but you do not close your eyes. Many Is that, like, try to just sit there and just imagine that space, but do not close your eyes and just keep focusing your attention while breathing. The other interesting another interesting practices in it's a practice of internal resonance. So you can begin with, say, just applying pressure on your ears to kind of shut off the sensory, the auditory input, inevitably, you start hearing a bit of an internal noise, and then you focus on that. It just nating Yeah, then you let go, you can allow the DJ to remove your thumbs for your ears. Yeah, but that sounds somehow stays with you. And if you keep practicing, it comes through in the most weird moments of the day, when it's almost like your nervous system dealing you are, you're nearing that point, you need a break. And that kind of very gentle in our businesses appears, which is kind of a good signifier or indicator or just a reminder to all right, I might want to just sit in my car for five minutes and take that break. Yes, yeah, it has become, I'm liking it more and more. I cannot claim that I can sit for meditation more than 30 minutes. Anything over 2530 minutes? I don't feel it doesn't feel good in my knees. Sometimes my blood pressure drops, if I get deep into it. Yeah. So but it's a work in progress. And some time my mind just wouldn't do it. Sometimes it just be do your headstand do your pranayama and then that's it.

Todd McLaughlin:

Yeah. How has your relationship to pain evolved in relation to your practice and study of yoga and or yoga philosophy?

Nona Mileva:

Let me let me choose how to carefully verbalize that, because I have a pretty strong opinion about it. And not everyone might be willing to agree with me. And my opinion on also be influenced and obviously informed by my very in depth studies of the therapeutic modalities of yoga, which I did research on, and I'm doing with my yoga therapy program. In many regards, the practice of yoga, or supportive approaches and interventions might not completely eradicate your pain. But it did definitely, and dramatically change your relationship to the pain, which I think is the biggest victory one can, can really dream of, it changes your perception of pain, which is pretty much your experience of pain. It minimizes the sharpness of the sensory experience of the pain. Once you become you truly become an embodied being a new you, you understand the signals of your body, you know how to neutralize any triggers, or at least to do your best to neutralize them. It makes a day and night difference thoughts? Yeah, it does. Yeah. And I see it I cannot emphasize enough how often I see that in my practice, in my teachings, in my personal private practice with yoga therapy approaches. i People are come with that they face they're lit up, they come and they have tears in their eyes. And I'm sure you're way more experienced teacher and practitioner of yoga than me you have seen this. I have people that will have the emotional episodes during a session or class then the outcome they want to talk to me and they would elaborate in details of how exactly this has happened.

Todd McLaughlin:

Yeah, it's a good point because what can you say that you because so I had pain. So I'm gonna go to yoga, because I want to get rid of pain. And that's something that we all do. And not necessarily with yoga, but we might go I want to go to doctor and then we might choose the path of give me some type of painkiller or another approach is to go to some type of physical therapy which is geared toward helping us to learn new patterns of movement so that we can come out of pain and or we approach to yoga and so then my own personal experience of like okay, let me loud do a fairly vigorous style of yoga and am I feeling more pain because of Have the intensity that I'm putting into the physical practice and or is it alleviating pain and or this concept that we've come across that K, there's like a psychological barrier and the pain is coming up because of unprocessed emotion and, and or feeling, which is a very slippery slope, you know to tread on because maybe pain is just pain, you know, pain is just straight up pain. And then you come across this idea of okay, a Buddha being enlightened and, you know, this idea that there would never be suffering again. So of course, I want to achieve that. Wouldn't that be wonderful to reach enlightenment and feel not feel pain, or suffering ever again, but then the more I look into it, I don't think that that's really what these teachings are saying is that you're never going to feel pain again. It's like what you said, it's, it's the relationship to pain, the experience the like, almost like, it's like, because life has pain, that while I'm alive, so at least if I have pain, I'm still alive. Because we know for, I'm pretty sure for a fact that when we die, we won't feel the bodily pain anymore. Pretty sure. Right? I'm not sure. I don't know. 100% what happens, but so I guess for me, pain has been a pain is a big part of what I'm navigating every day, you know, when I wake up? And I'm like, wow, my knee, whoa, there's my back. Wow, what is this thing going on? Holy cow. And you know, but then I get on my mat every single day, and I start moving. And you know, some days, it's really easy. Some days, it's really challenging, but somehow you work through it, you move through it. And then obviously, that's just one aspect of yoga where, you know, I'm going to try to utilize these movement practices to somehow cope with manage, I may still hold this high ideal that I'll figure out how to not have pain at all. But I'm starting to come to terms maybe because I'm also approaching my 50s that youngster, there's no escape. I mean, come on, like I do. You know, I look at my, my, the people, I look up to my elders, and they share with me, whoa, Todd, Getting old is not for the faint of heart. Get ready, you know, and I go, Whoa, okay. Because if I'm feeling what I'm feeling now, tack on another 20 3040? And how is this going to be? So I mean, it's a really, you know, to think about age and to think about, you know, our life and our aging process. And, like you said, I agree 100% that when I recently when I was in my 20s, I lived in Australia, and I created a shoebox full of pictures and diaries, and all that stuff. And a friend of mine held on to them for me, and just recently sent them to me. So there's, like, 20 years ago, I have not opened it yet. That do not make because because like how you said it's like, things have changed it like do I really need to base my worldview off of you know, in that moment, my worldview is so wild and tumultuous. And I've aged, and I'm so thankful that I've aged right. Yeah. So that's, that's the beauty of it. Right? So it's got this really paradox of like, I want to get older, because of all the good things that come and at the same time, I'm realizing that it that there is sensation, and that, you know, it's just an everyday process to navigate. So I don't know if I have a point or if I have a question

Nona Mileva:

here. Now address it very scholarly way if you don't mind. Set up. I'm docum. That's it that life is suffering. To say it can wait yeah, how to transcend that. Yeah. For your listeners, what I just said is probably the most important line in this pattern, Julian texts, that yoga is the quieting of the fluctuations of the mind how I'll say it in Sanskrit again, tada de Richelieu, Sua, ropa, vasana and then the seer or bytes, and his own nature. In other words, we quiet the mind. We allow pure consciousness to just settle and become conscious of its own nature. And we shut everything else out. Easier said than done. But what all those elaborate Sanskrit attacks Emsworth just to to to solidify that point we're making. We are not trying to divide things in pleasure and pain. It's just too simplistic. I think, Benny Spain, it's part of life. We're not exactly being masochistic and embracing the painful experience, because, oh yes, if I'm in Panama, I am alive, I'm alive, that is true, you are alive. You're more more or less embracing the natural rhythm of things. Just think about it, you and I would not be able to have that conversation 20 or 30 years ago, I'm pretty sure pretty certain, because in order to mature, mature to certain perspectives and points of view, in order to even be able to ask a question, what is pain? Not on a simple physical level, but how do we deal with emotional psychological pain. That's, that's a mother of like, later, more mature stage of life, which is, this is when philosophy. And I'm not saying there are not young people out there, who just they came to this world with that kind of a predisposition towards philosophy and the deeper questions in life, to me, they came later in life. So now I get to indulge, but all that point to a very important quality of yoga, because to me, the strength of yoga is that yoga is, to my knowledge, and in my opinion, probably the best to and method and concept for self regulation. And if we acquired the mental activities, if we can modulate that if we can find a way to really navigate the cognitive processes, the brain will reduce those pain signals, the nervous system will react accordingly. In simple terms, if you start lengthening your exhales, through the activation of the vagus nerve, you will activate certain neuro platforms that would send appropriate messages from the to the parasympathetic nervous system, telling the body relax, Wyatt, soothe the pain, feel less, minimize the acuteness science has a lot to say about this stuff. How Patanjali knew about it and know and everyone before him, I'm not exactly clear. But that is the mystery of yoga. And I'm not giving that up, no matter how many contemporary researchers you know, appear. I am, I am an absolute believer in the in the power, mystery and deep wisdom of the philosophy that that underlies that entire method of of yogic practice in teaching. Yes. So it's all here, it's all in the mind, for your listeners, I'm pointing my index finger to my head. Yeah. And yoga helps with that. You come to the mat, you, if you're in pain, it doesn't work like that. It's not a such a mechanical approach, you cannot apply, you can just walk into the room and do one Ashtanga class and be like, Okay, I'm here or there? Oh, my God, what was that? You know, it's either or, no, no, no, no, you have to walk the walk. No, it's this, the practice is a process. You have to use patients, you have to endure certain moments of I am going to crawl out of my skin, what am I doing here, not because of the pain, because the Chitta Vritti, than quieting of the mind is active, and God knows what's going on in your head. And when you think about it use you actually be able to discern the experience of thinking about the pain and actually experiencing the pain. You can work with those two approaches as well. You have to anchor your attention, you have to do your breathing. You have to allow the experience to settle in before you actually state an opinion on whether this is helping or not. Yes. 99% out of 100 You'll be back. Yeah, you have to keep coming back. And then at some point, it becomes part of your day. You become to notice things about yourself. You become to notice things about your behavior. Because let's not forget Yoga is not just a physical practice, it's not only a breathing part, it's a behavior practice as well. Right? There are moral values that we need to address cannot be the best yoga practitioner on the mat and be the biggest jerk out there of the mat. Then you're not doing yoga, excuse me, I don't care how good your your whichever pose you choose. When all this in gets integrated to get then some certain spiritual perspectives start sneaking in. Then with that awareness, you start relating to yourself and to others differently. It changes things Have you noticed repatterning? Notice behavior changes, you notice emotional stabilization? That's what yoga does. And let me tell you, it sneaks up on you. That's of course, I mean it in a positive way, the positive energy and connotation. Yes, it becomes you what is yoga, it becomes a way of thinking, a way of living, an authentic way of being being you. These are my values, this is what I believe in. And I would like to express them through yoga. And because again, back to the beginning of the conversation, yoga is this organic moving organism. You, you give yourself permission to make your own contribution to that practice. Right? I honestly thought thing that we love our practice in groups and everything. I also think that yoga is very solitary practice. And I love that about you. Yeah. It's a very unique individual experience. Thank you. You're welcome. Pleasure, have you honor to be here, thank you for having me.

Todd McLaughlin:

I really appreciate you coming out. I was looking forward to this. I know we talked about this, like months ago, and then summer came around, and you were traveling, you're in Europe and and I also liked the fact that you were willing to not have me give you notes ahead of time to prepare. Because I think that off the cuff and speaking from our hearts and minds is, is just a good way to keep it nice and down to earth. And so I really appreciate you coming in. Thank you again. And is there anything that you would like to close with for us? Is there any other thought that's come to your attention that

Nona Mileva:

you want to share? Big Namaha and I thank you, to my great teachers, present company, especially included, because that had it not been for that experience that I have with you with the with the community of native yoga, I might have not experienced the reigniting of that spark of interest into those subjects and that could made my my life my practice my personal and professional life. In reinvigorated, I find everyday to be especially meaningful, I wake up with with the dispositive intent of Hmm, what is the new discovery today? And, again, thank you for that. Right, because that's another thing yoga teaches you honor the people who have led you to that path and who has held your hand and you're still doing it by inviting me here.

Todd McLaughlin:

Thank you. Native yoga Todd cast is produced by myself. The theme music is dreamed up by Bryce Allen. If you liked this show, let me know if there's room for improvement. I want to hear that too. We are curious to know what you think and what you want more of what I can improve. And if you have ideas for future guests or topics, please send us your thoughts to info at Native yoga center. You can find us at Native yoga center.com. And hey, if you did like this episode, share it with your friends, rate it and review and join us next time