Liz Albanis | The Inner Fire of Healing: Yoga, Pilates & Resilience

Liz Albanis is an experienced wellness professional based in Canberra, Australia. With a background blending yoga, Pilates, and fitness, she has dedicated her career to harnessing the therapeutic potential of these disciplines, especially for mental health challenges such as PTSD. Liz is known for her trauma-informed approach to yoga, having studied extensively with esteemed mentors like Sarah Powers and John Olgavy. She offers personalized wellness programs through her own platform, Liz Albanis Wellness, and hosts the podcast "Yoga for Trauma - The Inner Fire of Yoga."

Visit Liz here: https://www.lizalbaniswellness.com.au/

Key Takeaways:

• Trauma-Informed Approach: Liz emphasizes the importance of trauma-informed practices in yoga to cater to individuals with mental health challenges.
• Diverse Yoga Practices: Transitioning from Bikram to Iyengar and LifeForce Yoga, Liz illustrates how different styles can support mental well-being.
• Personalized Care: The episode highlights the significance of personalized programs in addressing individual needs and injuries in yoga.
• Creating Safe Spaces: Liz shares practical tips on making yoga environments inclusive and non-triggering for trauma survivors.
• Resilience Through Yoga: Personal anecdotes reveal how yoga empowered Liz to quit smoking and cope with PTSD.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Returning to Canberra: A Journey from Melbourne
• 3:08 Yoga's Transformative Power: From Smoking to Self-Discovery
• 16:14 Evolving Yoga Practices for Trauma Recovery and Mental Health
• 23:18 Overcoming Trauma, Workplace Stigma, and Career Transformation
• 30:16 Empowering Yoga Students Through Personalized Practices and Choices
• 36:13 Understanding Triggers in Yoga and Meditation Practices
• 43:33 Balancing Trauma Sensitivity and Healing in Yoga Practice
• 52:33 Healing Through Yoga and Embracing Change

Transcript

Unknown: 0:33

Welcome to Native Yoga Toddcast. So happy you are here. My goal with this channel is to bring inspirational speakers to the mic in the field of yoga, massage, body work and beyond. Follow us at @nativeyoga and check us out at nativeyogacenter.com. All right, let's begin. Welcome to Native Yoga Todd cast today, my special guest for you, Liz Albanis. Liz is a trauma informed yoga teacher who resides in Australia. Thank you so much for joining in to listen to this conversation. I picked up so many interesting tips and cues from Liz that I had not contemplated yet in relation to the realm of trauma informed yoga. So I hope you learned something as well. That's the purpose of this show. Is to trade ideas around the globe for yoga practitioners, yoga teachers, body workers, those of us that are interested in meditation, mindfulness, breath work, and I am just so honored to have Liz as a guest. Please follow her or check her out on our website. lizalbaniswellness.com.au, you can find her on Instagram with the handle matching her website at @LizAlbaneswellness.Au she has her own podcast called Yoga for Trauma, The Inner Fire of Yoga, which you can find on all these channels where podcasts happen. And just like to send out my appreciation to Liz for taking time to share some of the personal aspects of her yoga journey, and for you, the listener, to be here and to support just through listening, that's all it takes. Thank you so much. If you enjoy the show, share it with your friends. Any love you send via comments and emails and all that good stuff is always extremely welcomed and appreciated. I hope that this episode leaves you feeling inspired. All right, let's start. I'm really happy to have this opportunity to have Liz Albanis here with me today. Liz, thanks so much for joining me. I I'm really I really appreciate it.

Liz Albanis: 2:59

Oh, hi, Todd. I really appreciate you having me as a guest. It's great to be here on your podcast. Thank you. Well, you're welcome. We're on the other sides of the planet. It's early in the wee hours here in the morn, and it's a little later in the afternoon for you, you've already had a chance to go through your whole day. How has your day been? What have you encountered?

Unknown: 3:21

Oh, it's been a good day. It's about 840 here at night, spring is in the air, which is wonderful because I'm not a fan of winter. And had a lovely, long yoga practice today, nice with prayer, meditation and some postures as well. And yeah, it's been a nice day, nice weather. Yeah, beautiful. So if it's going into spring there, that will give us a clue as to where you live, but to help us out Where, where are you? Where do you live? Where are you from? I live in Australia. I love America as well. I've been there several times. I'm looking going, looking forward to going back there, hopefully next year. And I live in the capital. It's a small little city called Canberra. It's only half a million people, and we're few hours south of Sydney, and then about seven and a half hours north of Melbourne, where I was living. Oh, up until April, and it's a much bigger city of about 5 million and eventually it'll become Australia's most heavily populated city and take over Sydney. Oh, wow, interesting. Melbourne and Sydney are competing for bigger population density. Oh, they're always been rivals, and that's why Canberra was created, because, from my understanding, and they couldn't decide, yeah, interesting. Somewhere in the middle. Let's find some middle ground, you guys. Let's find somewhere in the middle where we can make our decisions. Well, that's cool. Are you adjusting well to Canberra? Is it some. That's been an easy adjustment, or you feel like you're still settling in. I'm adjusted now. I'm from Canberra originally, all right, and my my husband's from Melbourne, and we met here in Canberra because he came here because there's a lot of work here with the federal government, gotcha. And then a month before we got married, we moved to Melbourne, and I was there for about seven and a half years. And I'm happy to be back. I'm more of a small, well, a small city person, 5 million people, a lot of traffic, yeah. So, yeah, it's nice to be back. I do miss Melbourne because there's family there and friends and but, yeah, I'm glad to be here and help my father out. He's fine for now. Yeah, that's amazing. That's feels good to be able to do that. Are you? Where did you take your first yoga class? Well, in 2011 Canberra is a bit behind Melbourne and Sydney. Would say that Bikram yoga came to Canberra. It actually came in late 2010 and it was the new thing. It was just the new fad. We did have other yoga here. We had our younger before that, and we at the same time, we had our first power yoga studio with the Baron Baptiste. What's it? Legacy? Lineage. Lineage. That's the word I'm looking for. Yes, people discovered hot yoga, and my friend was like, Liz, you gotta come to this class. It's hot, it's sweaty. You're going to get more flexible. You'll bend like a pretzel. You'll lose weight. Being a typical female of 29 I was like, Oh, great, great. Because a lot of us females are like that. And you know, it's the new vet. And she took me around up to the class. And she's a bit sadistic. She was running up mountain when she was pregnant the first time. And right before the class started, she I said to her, Why are we sitting in this part of the room? And she said, Well, I've experimented, and this is the hottest part of the room. Oh, yeah. Oh, great. And it was one of the hardest things I've ever done. You know the heat. I don't know what it is in Fahrenheit, but in in Celsius, because that's what we work in. In Australia, it's 40 degrees roughly, yeah, yeah, hottest humid in Canberra, because Canberra is a dry city with the heat, but it was summer, yeah, for in Australia, because summer is in January, when you've got winter. And the whole class, I'm like, oh, when's this going to be over? When's this going to be over? Because I didn't know the sequence, yeah, yeah, when's it going to be over? And I was told you can't leave the room, you know? You can sit down, you can lie down. But after the class, I felt amazing, but I still didn't really understand what yoga was like a lot of people in the West world, but I just had this buzz I couldn't sleep. So wild. Yeah, you know, and because people think yoga always helps you sleep. No, it doesn't sometimes. And I got hooked, you know, I had a horse at the time. I ended up selling her, but the most amazing thing that happened for me was that within three months, I quit smoking. Now, being a messed up child who was diagnosed with PTSD at the age of 11, I had smoked since I was about 14 or 15, I can't remember exactly, and by this time I was 29 I had tried to quit multiple times, and then I just gone back to it that the day of my best friend's 30th birthday, the 26th of March, I said, this is the last cigarette you're going to have, Liz, and you're never going to have another one. Because I thought to myself, if I can get through one of those 90 minute classes, it just seemed to build resilience, and I had another coping mechanism for stress, because at the time I was working in the federal government, hated my job dragged. Dragged myself to work, and I got stressed, cigarette, alcohol, and I didn't know at the time, I had ADHD, like a lot of females, my vintage, and I had, I think it's because I built resilience, but I had another coping mechanism for my stress, and I've never had a cigarette since, congratulations. That's amazing. It's an incredibly addictive habit. Yes, it really is, yeah, but I'm not the first person to say that about yoga. I'm sure, yeah, that's so cool. Though. I like that you had such a challenging time. I can attest to what you're speaking of, in relation to Bikram yoga, that also I got really involved in it as well and found a similar sort of experience of like, wow, what was that? That was so amazing. But I love how you were able to transition the challenge of the experience, to give you fortitude to be like, Look, if I can do that, why couldn't I give up smoking? So that's so cool. And then, like you said, if you're able to go back into the studio every time you're having a hard time, sweat, move, get some endorphins feel better, that would only make quitting a little easier. Do you still have a hard time with it, or do you feel like you fully kicked it? Yeah, no. Look, initially I did, especially if I got drunk. Yeah, my I don't really drink much these days anyway, but that's a recent thing, I still would get the niggle, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wanting to have a seat at all. It's interesting, though, because the child forces were my refuge, and they kept going through many bouts of May depression from PTSD, but I still smoked and I went to the gym. God knows how my lungs would have been like, Oh, really, you're doing this to me. But that didn't help me quit smoking. The gym didn't, but it was the mental health benefits of the yoga, the mindfulness, the self respect to yourself you develop through Ahimsa, yeah, it was just different to just going to the gym. Yeah? Good point, incredible. So then I'm sorry, tell me Yeah. No, no, no, keep going. You're right. Did you continue to stick with Bikram for a few years, or did you did you grow to a different style, or what was your evolution in relation to from there to here now? Yeah, so, um, the next This was 2011 and I kept in that Bikram bubble because I was like, Nah, I don't need to try anything else. I was a bit narrow minded. And I do the teacher training with training, because it's a long training, and the studio needed to nominate you at the time to do the training, and they already had two people going on the training, and it was meant to be. It wasn't meant. I wasn't meant to do that training. And I honestly, I don't think I was the right sort of person to do that training. And I was in a nine and I ended up going going to Bali and training with Byron yoga center based here in Australia. In Byron Bay, many say it's the yoga capital of Australia. Very hippie, yeah, area now that in mullamb bimbi, yes, New South Wales near the border, yes. And I, they're wonderful because that they had a big focus on Ahimsa, and they were nurturing. And the man who founded Byron yoga center, John Olga V he himself, is very inspiring, because he discovered yoga in rehab. He was a heroin addict for years, and yoga was the only thing that stopped him, and he's been sober since, and, oh, that's, I don't know how long that is. It's a good 30 years, if not longer, yeah, and he just changed his life around. So I really admire and respect him for that. Yeah, you know it's and it was raining because at the I was still getting nightmares from PTSD that I don't get any more, thank goodness. And actually, my roommate actually moved to a different hotel because of the nightmares. I didn't know it at the time, but I was more Todd. She did this, and I thought, Wow. I didn't know it was still that bad. There was violent nightmares, wow. So I did that training. Now it was Iyengar base, it wasn't. So it's very different to Bikram, yes, and it opened my mind to the prince great only style of yoga for me, which was good. I needed to discover that there's more to yoga, and I ended up teaching that sort of alignment static style of hatha yoga, and I discovered yin yoga. I trained in that and taught that at the power yoga studio. So I was lucky enough to train with Sarah powers. It was meant to be I got the last spot. Someone dropped out, and she's beautiful person, yeah, and then I'd be lucky, because I I took a redundancy package from the public service after 10 years, I was scared, financially, this is going to be tricky, but I thought, I don't want to stay in a job where I'm miserable and have to drag myself to work or throw fake a sickie or something, and that. And I also studied fitness, so I got my diploma of fitness, which is about a year full time, and I study Pilates as well. I love Pilates because I rehabbed my ACL after I fell off my horse and tore it and damaged my back, and that was meant to happen, too. I believe in things being meant to happen, and so I incorporated that, and I started working full time in the industry. And, yeah, the money wasn't as good, but it was so much more fulfilling, and my mental health improved. You know, I never thought I'd be capable of being a mother, and I'm a mother, and I never thought I'd find my soulmate, my life partner, but I got I did. I never thought it'd be possible, and I don't think it would have been without yoga. Oh my gosh. I love hearing this. A couple of things I when you were telling me about the Bikram yoga potential to go to training. I did, go and do his teacher training in 2001 and you're amazing. And thank you. And you know in relation to what you're speaking about in terms of trauma recovery and the the journey that you did take in relation to going to study up in Indonesia and learning from the man that you spoke of, who had obviously gone through some trauma in terms of addiction and been able to turn that around. You know, Bikram was a very hard person to practice and study with, if we you I have experienced trauma. It was not a trauma informed or trauma friendly environment in the sense of there was no coddling or understanding or appreciation for taking time to nurture the broken pieces, so to speak. So some people maybe disagree with me on that, and say, No, a good way to overcome trauma is to have your butt kicked, you know, to have to have a drill sergeant person just force you to focus on something and, you know, get out of your head a little bit. So I would say, okay, there are a few benefits to that method. However, having a few years later and going through my own personal journey, I'm finding that being a little more nurturing is kind of nice. Can you talk a little bit about your feelings in relation to your own journey of trauma recovery, and how the approach you take in yoga and or your mental health and fitness, like what, what style or what approach do you think seems to really help folks that are recovering from trauma? Yeah, definitely. I completely agree with you about it. Right? I have heard of drug addicts going to the training to get off drugs and being successful. So that's nice. And, you know, that's very old school yoga, isn't it? Because, you know, I've heard of a certain teacher in India, people who have studied with him, who used to hit students with a cane and intimidate them. So, yeah, it's becoming less of the norm, which is good, I think, because I think right, because I mean generational trauma, you know, if, if I'm B, I'm more likely to be somebody, you know what I mean, like, and there's a good chance if we're studying with a teacher that was beat, and they're beating us, because that's how they learned. You know, when do we break that cycle? I think we've been come better informed about mental health and trauma. There's been less stigma around it, but we've also done studies on it. Here in Australia, there was a study done, a survey done on yoga, I think it was 2005 pen, pen, them and et al, I can give you a link later, they did a study, and they found that the majority of people actually come to yoga for mental health purposes. Keep practicing yoga for mental health. But I guess the turning point for me was in 2013 I did my first yoga therapy course, and I was introduced to yoga, specifically for mental health, by Doctor Lauren Toba, who here in Australia, who's a yo is, who's a psychologist. She's got a PhD. I think she did it on mindfulness, because they they thought, you know, yoga is too hippy, but especially back in those days. And she told me about Amy Weintraub in the US, who wrote the first article, or if one of the first articles on yoga for depression called something like yoga the new Prozac. And she also wrote a book called Yoga for depression. And I got the book, and I started to think there's more to yoga than this. And at the time, in defense of my original training, there was so much less information about being trauma informed with yoga. There was nothing about hands on adjustments may not be a good idea, even if they're not sexual in nature, may not be a good idea. And so I did some. Ended up doing some training with Amy, because, luckily enough, she came to Australia, I think it was 2016 and I learnt more about yoga, specifically for mental health, and how there are so many practices that don't involve a yoga mat. That don't involve being flexible, you know, that are portable, and often, a lot of these aren't taught in a in a yoga class. They can't all be taught there. And I felt amazing after this practice. It was it made so much sense. So I ended up getting my level one certification with life force yoga, wonderful. And then I also learned, and in this training, I learned about the fact that a lot of yoga classes aren't trauma informed. And I learned about David Emma's I think his first name's David Emerson, who copyrighted the term trauma sensitive yoga, which is fine, so I don't call myself a trauma sensitive yoga because I haven't done his certification. I respect that. That training introduced me to some potential triggers. And there's not just, you know, hands on adjustments. Unfortunately, it's more complicated than that. And I'm not saying it's foolproof. A yoga teacher could do everything and still trigger and cause a flashback or something with a student, but I think in the realm of Ahimsa, a lot of us yoga teachers could, you know, have that beginner's mind and think, oh, maybe I could improve. I love that was the start of it. But then last year, it multiplied because my I already had PTSD. Someone's called Complex PTSD from the age of 11. I'm now 44 so it's been a while, and in the days when I got diagnosed in the 90s, they didn't really know. Know about the mind body connection, the therapy was anti depressants or whatever, and talk therapy, or if it's a child, like I was play therapy, and maybe hypnosis for the nightmares, and then a bit of EFT. So the yoga helped, and I was doing well. And then on January 11, I experienced my second of fire. It was a different sort of fire to the first one. The first fire, I was on fire. The house was okay. I suffered second, third degree burns. This fire happens was either 11 hours before the anniversary, 20th anniversary of the first or 11 hours after. I can't remember off the tab, but you know, it, it, it affected me a lot more than I thought it would. Wow, and luckily, I had my yoga practice. Liz, let me or myself. Yeah, yeah, can I back up a little bit? I just so I understand. So did you say? Did you say, at age, around about age 11 or 10 or 11, you were involved in a fire. Oh, no, no. So age 11 was the first was the diagnosis of PTSD. Because, yeah, I mean, I'm, you can always put a trigger warning here or something. It's more, it's, yeah, I understand. Thank you, because I went to an international school, a French school, and the teachers there were abusive, like hitting us with rulers pulling us by the ears. Unfortunately, it didn't stop there. Few of them were pedophiles, which I found out the hard way. So I came back from an overseas trip a completely shut down, disassociated child, and my parents greeted me at the airport, and they were like, there is something really wrong with our daughter. She's a different person. Whoa, yeah. And so that started it all off. And then, you know, there was, there was a fire, 2004 and that was a common a combination of being stressed at work, smoking and being drunk. Yeah, those together, you can see where that could go, yes, and it involves second 3/3, degree burns, being in hospital for 17 days, multiple surgeries, wow. Liz, now I understand, oh, wow, I get it. Okay, okay, yeah, so that set me back a bit. And then, you know, because there's such a stigma with mental health, and I had ADHD, and I didn't know it. And when you say, when you say, stigma, helped me understand meaning like you felt like because you had that diagnosis, that when people heard you had mental health challenges, you you were treated differently. Is that? Yeah, what I'm getting from that? Yeah, I'll give you an I'll give you an example. Yeah, I found out I had insulin resistance. This was before ozempic, obviously. And I was put on a drug called Metformin, and it unfortunately, can make you nauseous and make you vomit or give you gastro. And I started this new job the first when I started on it, my boss was like, Oh, God, Liz, couldn't you have vomited at my desk? Because it was just really fun. I was like a pregnant woman with morning sickness, and I'm just laughing because the way you said, your boss responded, I'm sorry. He's just like, it damaged the carpet, and he was the accountant yes organization. He's like, Do you know what that's gonna cost? But he didn't bully me so much. It was just like, Oh, dear, yeah, but I went to a new job in another organization. I got a promotion, and by then, the vomiting wasn't as severe, and I would go to the bathroom to vomit, and they were told, Look, Liz has got a mental health diagnosis. And they made the assumption I was bulimic, ah, and because they heard me vomiting, yeah, yeah, they never thought to ask, you know, are you okay? Yeah. What can we help you? Yeah. Instead of that, they start keeping a journal, much to my heart. Horror of when I went to the bathroom, when I ate, what I ate, and if I talked about dieting and made assumptions, what they don't realize is most medication, even non prescription medication, have side effects and vomiting can happen, not with just Metformin. It might happen with a Zen pic. I don't know. I've never been on it, but, you know, and I was just treated poorly, and that was one of the reasons I thought I need a career change. And it still happens. I had a boss who was blind, and he was treated like a pariah, you know, he was. They didn't invite him to meetings and stuff and left him out because he was blind, you know, and I wanted to be in an industry I was passionate about, and that was more welcoming, and there was less stigma. And instead of going to work with an alcoholic who couldn't be fired because he'd been in the organization so long, he'd go to the pub and and crash in the afternoons, he, you know, going to work with people who hated their job, but that were there for the retirement policy and the salary they had, and it was risky leaving this because I would have had a really good pension. If I'd stayed there until I was retirement age, which is roughly 65 here in Australia, I would have had a really good pension, but is there a point to staying in a job you hate? I mean, to me, I know Liz, that's a great that's a huge question. That's a really important question. I mean, I think probably all of us are facing that question on some level or another. You know what I mean, until we are willing to take a jump like what you took, and willing to take the risk, and to, you know, be willing to take a pay cut and to be willing to let go of the security of the find the financial security that that might potentially offer. You're absolutely right. I mean, it's a really powerful question. I mean, obviously I'm thinking your answer is no, it wasn't worth it, yeah, but I'm not saying it's always the case. Some people literally do not have a choice. Unfortunately, it can affect their physical and mental health, like one of my clients had high blood pressure from her job, and luckily, yoga helped reduce the blood pressure because medication wasn't enough, and she worked privately with me, and I gave her specific practices to help reduce Her blood pressure that didn't always involve a mat. And she stayed in that job for a while, and then she stopped because she moved overseas. But luckily, yoga helped her enough. And then another client of mine was being bullied at work. She was not in the position to leave, but I gave her a program with my yoga designed for you, program, personalized yoga program, and that helped her cope with the bullying, helped her have automatic nervous system hacks. She also had a history of trauma too, and she'd had some bad experience in group classes because of her size and her back injury, the yoga teachers would sort of, they didn't mean to, but they kind of humiliated by saying to the class, if you can't do this post, just put your hand up. And she felt singled out and something we got. So, yeah, that's an interesting that's another interesting concept right there to Yeah, so let me, let me, let me try to break that down a little bit. So you're saying that. So the approach of having asking the class, okay, let's say we're going to do cobra pose. I'm just picking one and then saying, raise your hand if you don't feel like you can do cobra pose. Maybe she had back pain. And I don't know which specific position, whether it was forward bending or back bending or twisting, or what was bothering her, but to actually speak up and say, Yeah, that does hurt my body, then being told just don't do anything that that is a very interesting way of trying to manage, manage a room I could see where that's maybe not in the most productive way. Can you share a little bit more about your insights around this? Yeah, look part of the. This is on the student. And anyone who's listening to this who is a yoga practitioner and not a teacher, it's really important to disclose injuries, and not even just injuries, like things like osteoporosis, where there's quite a few contraindications, pregnancy, which is hard, a difficult one, because when they're in the first trimester, they're like, one they don't want to tell anyone, yeah, but one of them, part of the onus is on the student to disclose injuries. And you could say to them, I mean, it's not. I mean, as us, as yoga teachers, where it's out of our scope to diagnose, obviously, but we can say to them, Well, what makes it worse? What makes it better? What poses can't you do? Unfortunately, as you would know, students don't always do this. All they say to you after life, oh yeah, I forgot to tell you I had a bulge discus, and it's like, well, would have been handy to know that before, okay? Or I forgot to tell you I was pregnant, and they're in the first trimester, and it's not obvious, like, okay, but I was told I should start yoga because it'd be good for me. Anyway, I think it's good to use Invitational options. And you know, give your students agency. But yeah, with CO propose, say, hypothetically you didn't know a student couldn't do that, because you can give options, like, if you can't, like, first of all, I'm not strict on alignment. Like, unlike in a big room class where it's your legs have to be together, you know, your hands have to I a lot of students don't like, find get back pain when they squeeze the legs together. I like to say to them, Look, if it doesn't feel good with your legs together, separate them experiment. So I give the students agency. But yeah, if you see someone struggling, or even before that, you can say, Oh, this pose doesn't work for you. Maybe there's another backbend that does, or maybe you want to do some cat cows. Yes, give them choice. I think it's really important to give them choices, because they're not children. Yeah, and I think my, one of my teachers, jophy, who's a Senior Assistant to Paul Grilli, yeah, Paul's amazing, yeah. She likes to say, the greater the ignorance, the greater the dogmatism. It's not her quote. I can't remember whose quote it is, but you know, we can be we shouldn't. A lot of teacher trainings. They just learn to memorize alignment cues, and they don't learn about variations, options, contraindications. And it's good to give our students options or a completely different pose, or hypothetically say, we know they've got an anterior disc bulge and they can't do any back bends. We could give them a forward bend and maybe talk to them before class, but and say, Well, when we do any back bends, you could do this forward bend, or you could be neutral with your spine, but it is much harder when they don't tell you. It really is. That's a great point. That's my way of thinking it. But yeah, it's very common for for yoga teachers to say, Oh, does anyone have a problem with this? Raise your hand. So especially with someone who's got trauma. And one of the things I didn't realize was it could be a trigger. Is candles interesting? And I'm not saying don't use candles. I know there's a powerful practices like tradak, the candle gazing, yes, meditation to work on, drishti, focus, yeah. So nothing. Don't use them. I would check your insurance policy because, even if, because insurance companies are tight, and especially after Los Angeles fires, which was devastating for everyone, I can't imagine what it would have been like being there, horrible and Insurance is it? Because? Do you feel like the candle element, in relation because you had trauma due to fire that specifically, just being around, when you see a candle, it almost like can pull you back, because the thought of what that candle can do, the Pat, what that the i. Power of fire, right? It can be a wonderful tool, or it can be a highly destructive tool, and so even a candle can really well. That makes perfect sense. I see one thing is the insurance side of this check the fine print, but the main thing is, I'm not saying never use candles, but my advice is, don't ask them before the class, because a person is traumatized, where they might run out of the studio, or they might put their hand up and feel completely humiliated, or they might go, oh, I can't do anything, and they met, they will not enjoy the class. They could have a panic attack, like there was a student here in Australia, and she survived a bushfire. We call them bushfires here, you guys call them wildfires. And this teacher lit incense, and it reminded her of the smell of the eucalyptus trees burning, she had a panic attack, major panic attack. I wasn't there, yeah, I just told about this. So my advice is, if you use candles, advertise them, and then they can say he's like, for this class, we're using candles, or make it obvious, like I've worked with studio owners who've said, you have to light a candle to set the scene, or you have to light incense to set the scene. The sense in the candles and the incense can also just not be triggering, but they rotate people, but advertise it so that they can go, Yeah, this class isn't for me, you know, that's a good point, yeah? So I never thought of it, you know, as a trigger. Now, for me, if I went to a yoga class nowadays, it's the trauma's not nearly as acute as it was. It won't bother me during the class, but I wouldn't close my eyes in shavasana, and I wouldn't really relax. And that's another thing I would never say to a student, they have to close their eyes, you know, yes, let if they want to have open eyes shavasana, like a Bikram during the mini ones, let them if they don't want an eye pillow, they don't have to. The other thing is, there's so many potentials, but darkness can be a trigger in itself. Like for me, I turned into a different person because the fire happened at 11 o'clock at night, so I would become very rajasic in yogic terms, hypo vigilant, and I would just become, turn into a different person. And that slowly got better. But if the trauma occurred at night time, it's more likely to, you know, disturb someone. Obviously having bright fluorescent lights like they do at a gym is not great either, but it can be nice to have a lamp. And for students who want complete darkness and they want to stimulate the vagus nerve more because of the optical reflex that could have an eye pillow. Eye pillows can be beautiful. I use them now, but I didn't after the fire or air pods, because I was like, what if I don't hear the smoke alarms go off? What if I don't hear the Yeah? Liz, aha, yeah. So you know that's some triggers that, even if you've done trauma informed Yoga, you may not have been thought of because I've been told, Oh, I never thought of that, yeah. Well, that's why I'm really appreciative and grateful for you to share this, because I never that. This is the first time it came across to me, I have candles in my room. You know, they're oil lamps so they don't make, they don't make scent. And I've, oh, that's and I've never, I've never contemplated this, yeah, the one that came across to me that that I had not thought of before, and I was really grateful someone brought to my attention, is, I'm I'm a water person. I love water and but somebody had said, when you're guiding a meditation and or speaking about whatever is we're talking about, if we use water analogies, if someone has had trauma in the water, like a drowning or almost drowning, or lost a friend in a drowning, or all the multiple things that could potentially happen due to the fear around water. And it just caused me to take a step back. And even though, you know, sometimes I'll be very honest, maybe a thought that will pop up in relation to all the. Is like, How can I possibly know all the potential triggers that there can't be, and how can I make sure that I don't ever do that to someone? And I think the reality is is like, No, we can't be perfect with this. I mean, we'll never be able to, like, you know, read every possible, potential trigger. But I think a solution, and I like what you brought up, is posting it, or let it, letting it be known. And or when I have had people because of the incense thing, I found I just stopped lighting incense in the room a long time ago because of the amount of just like allergy, slash, you know, negative effect of breathing in smoke and their eyes and their lungs or whatever else. And you know. And when someone would say, Can you please put that instance out, it really bothers me. I feel like I say, Oh, absolutely, I'd happy to do that. Or if someone comes in, if you were to come into my studio, and I didn't know that about the fire part, if you'd said, Todd, I have a hard time with fire. Would it be okay if we blew him out for the class, I'd be like, Oh, definitely. Liz, that's no problem at all. I figure accommodate the request as long as it seems like it's coming from a genuine place. Can you talk a little bit about finding that balance, and how you navigate that balance when you are aiming to help people heal? Yeah, I agree with you. There is I there are no guarantees that you're not going to trigger someone. You could do everything, follow the book, you know, do the trauma sensitive training, many would say, is the gold standard, and still trigger someone and the problem is, people aren't going to come to you, especially if they don't know you, yeah, at the place and say, by the way, I've got PTSD, blah, blah, blah. I have had teachers say to me, though, none of my students have PTSD or mental health issues. I'm like, How do you know they're not going to blurt it out, especially in front of other people, or especially if they don't know you? But I think you know taking some extra steps, like giving your students agency to leave or not avoiding physical adjustments. I think consent tokens are great because physical one of my yoga teachers used to joke. Some people come for the physical adjustments. I'm like because we had a massage therapist do the physical adjustments, and I actually quite enjoyed them. But I think we just we do what we can, which is not, it's a I haven't mentioned everything. Obviously, there's a lot more, and I'm still learning. We learn from our mistakes. And I think setting the scene by creating a sacred container. I try not to use the word safe because, say, the using the word safe in itself can be a trigger, because if you've got PTSD and it's acute, or even if it's not acute, there's no such thing as safe. That's a good point, because then, like, your perpetrator is saying, Here, it's safe. Come in. You're like, Ah, don't even say that word. I get that. I see that. So I try not to say safe. But one of the big things is creating a container with the student as they enter. Be welcoming, like most of us are, and making sure they know where their exits are, being approachable and not all yoga teachers are. I've had some scary ones. That's one of the things you could do, and say them, is there anything I need to know? Being discreet about it? But yeah, it's not foolproof. But giving creating that container with warmth, yes, and starting to build rapport, and the other things I've mentioned. But yeah, I also, I mean, you might have a student come to you, or my daughter did this after the fire. She went to childcare, and she said, Where are the where are the emergency exits? What if we need to get out quickly? Because when we got out of our house, the front door was deadlocked, and my husband was like, oh, sorry, I just want, Where are the keys? And the neighbors were knocking going the door deadlock, so she picked up on that. And you might even have a student come and say, Where are your emergency exits? And you don't want to laugh at them, you know, yeah, that's another thing. But if they say some. Thing like that. You're like, that's a clue. Yeah, I guess read another thing is important is reading body language. Like, for instance, I had a mentoring session with the yogi who I'm studying yoga therapy with, and she read my bodily language from the start. My my blink rate is kind of above average still now, but I was blinking so much so fast that my eyes were more closed, were more likely to be closed and open it was and I saw the video later. I'm like, Oh my God. I think there's certain body languages we can see like they might always sit near the exit if they haven't asked. They might flinch if you go to adjust them. They may not want to close their eyes. They may keep a close on your eye on you as you're walking around the room. They might always show up super early, you know, they there's some of the, you know, reading the body language, you know, talking really fast. These are great. Liz, I'm so great. I really appreciate you mentioning all these, everyone that your list, as you're listing all of these different ideas I'm having in my mind a little like a Oh, ah, that person does show that person. You know, I really that's so interesting. That's why I think it's important to hear this and to to just be open to understanding this world, the world of actually attempting to pay attention and see how we can be of service. Yeah, it's true. And you know, I've made so many mistakes, but as my late mother would say, because she was a teacher, school teacher, you're part of learning, dear. And I think how human of me, as Judith Lasseter would say, but yes, that's another thing. Sorry to go on a bit more, but crying happens. You might have had a student cry. I've had yoga teachers panic when this has happened, it could be a hard situation. If they're crying really loudly and they start to be really distract the room. It's a difficult situation to happen. But sometimes they're crying because they've somatically released it. I've cried in a yoga class quietly, and you don't want to humiliate them and say, Oh, why are you crying? You okay and really loudly. I mean, a friend of mine, she went to a power vinyasa class, so like Ashtanga, but heated and not a set sequence, and she's got a really strong practice, like, you know, like an ashtangi, and she just lost her father, and she spent the majority of the class in child's pose in shavasana, and the teacher left her she wasn't crying loudly, she wasn't disturbing Anyone. That's what she needed from her practice. And it's a somatic it's often a somatic thing yoga, and it can release emotions like that. And I'm obviously shaking, tremoring might happen too, not just in hip releasing poses. I mean, after the fire, I was shaking in cobra pose. My head was bobbing up and down. My Solar Plexus was doing crazy things too, because of the connection with the psoas, yes, and yeah, Vegas, but yeah, that's just to say, you know, the expectations. Got to learn to expect these things as well. Yeah, yes. Well, do you i know i from looking at your information prior, it looks like you offer and work mostly privately with individuals, or one on one with individuals online. Is that true and or are you also working at a studio, teaching in studio, what is your current teaching practice look like? Yeah, so I I did slow down after the fire. I was told, you know, you need to prioritize your self care and your family. And I also went the yoga shoot I was working at was in the dark, and the crime was up. And then I moved into state, and I haven't bothered to look for work. So yeah, I'm working online at the moment. I'm starting to become a yoga therapist. This time towards the end, and it's, it's a lot of studies, 650, hours, two years of study. But mainly, I'm working with clients one on one to design a practice specifically for them, a personalized practice, because there's so many contrary indications. And also just for people who can't get to a yoga studio, like in Melbourne, we had some of the we had over 240 days of lockdown, not in one go, but over the two year period. And a lot of yoga studios closed down. And that's how I one of the reasons I started doing online work, but I develop private work one on one to develop a personalized practice with Zoom calls and uploading resources for them and doing questionnaires. AV, big ones including and I also have a 3r program, which is there's a 14 day free trial. The 3r stands for release, relax and restore, and they can get a taste of the program. And it's a combination of lectures on the why behind the how. And it's, it's not just yoga classes, it's yoga practices. Some of them are life force yoga practices that aren't always done in a studio setting, that can be more accessible for people who get intimidated by yoga. A lot of people do. If you're one of them, you're in the majority, I reckon. And I also offer mentoring for yoga teachers, because I'm a senior yoga teacher now with yoga Australia, teaching for a while, done a lot of training, and I was asked a while ago to mentor some people. I thought, Oh, yeah. And then eventually there'll be some teacher trainings in the future. Wonderful Liz what and everyone listening can find, I will have links in the description. Your website is Liz albanis wellness.com.au, and also, yeah, Instagram at Liz albanis wellness au, and you have your own podcast called Yoga for trauma, the inner fire of yoga, and I have you as a guest. Well, thank you. I thank you. And it was, you know, I learned a lot Liz, and I really, I really appreciate this opportunity to meet and speak with you. And I love hearing about your journey, because, I think, you know, personally, I had a chance to live in Australia for five years, and I became very aware of fire living there because of the how dry, how dry it is in Australia. I mean, on the green areas are just that little thin strip around parts of the island of Australia, but in the middle it's, it's very dry. And so there's this incredible consciousness around fire in general. And then to hear your story and and then when you, when I saw that your web, your podcast is called the inner fire of yoga. So as I'm hearing more, I'm like, Oh, I like the way you wove the theme of fire into your name, even though the name of your show, because even though obviously it's something that you're processing and dealing with, I feel like you're you're looking to to heal from this experience. So I really appreciate, I'm sorry. No, keep going. Tell me. Tell me. Oh yeah, I feel fire is a bit of a theme of my life, because I've been two of them. Yeah, and like a metaphor to burn away what's no longer serving me a paragraph, letting go. But yeah, so, yeah, well, cool. Liz, thank you so much. Is there anything you would like to leave us with today in closing remark, oh, I just say to yoga studio yoga teachers try to have a beginner's mind be open to change, because we can get to a place where we feel like we Know It All when we've been teaching for a while, and I've seen that, and when we do that, we stop growing None. No one knows it all. There's no perfect yoga teacher, and I don't know of any yoga teacher who's liked by everyone, so I would try to drop that attachment of people pleasing you will find your people, and just let that go. And for people who think yogas has to involve a mat or flexibility, it doesn't, I can easily prove that it doesn't even have to. And. Older yoga studio, but if it does, and there's a wonderful yoga studio near you, try it, but just know it doesn't have to involve that, and just never underestimate what it can do for you off the mat. Yeah, thank you. Liz, I really appreciate it. Thank you. Oh, thank you, Todd, it's been a pleasure. I've really enjoyed this conversation. So I'm really grateful that you had me as a guest. Well, thank you. I'm grateful that you were willing to be a guest on my show. I really appreciate it. Have a great show. Thank you. Liz, thank you. Native yoga. Todd cast is produced by myself. The theme music is dreamed up by Bryce Allen. If you like 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 you.