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You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today my guest is Kristin Leal. Kristin is a yoga teacher and a Sadaka in the ISHTA lineage, as well as a licensed massage therapist, Reiki practitioner, and an author. Her popular MetaAnatomy workshops, classes, and online trainings blend serious scientific knowledge with a sense of humor, and a deep connection to the divine within us all. With Sounds True, Kristin has written a new book. It’s called MetaAnatomy: A Modern Yogi’s Practical Guide to the Physical and Energetic Anatomy of Your Amazing Body. In the book, she helps readers develop a new level of body literacy, a deep and vital relationship with the physical, emotional and energetic aspects of your being. In our podcast, I have Kristin guide us into some pretty interesting exercises, where we enter the true world of wonder. The wonder that is you and me. The wonder that is us. Take a listen.
To begin with, Kristin, I know you grew up as a dancer, what brought you to yoga from dance?
Kristin Leal: I think it was the injuries. I think dance is beautiful art form, one that I really enjoy and love and think has a lot of potential to it. But it also, for me, my experience of it, it focused on almost my lack. I wasn’t flexible enough or strong enough or as good as I needed to be. There was always a striving to it. And it broke down my body, not surprisingly.
TS: What kind of dance were you doing?
KL: I started with ballet when I was a child, a kid, and then worked in a second company, junior company doing ballet. Then when I moved to New York, modern dance became what I most enjoyed, but […] it was a different relationship with my body, one of not being enough. I think my friend Tanya dragged me to a yoga class—she was a fellow dancer, and she obviously resonated with something in that. Being able to move my body in that way (that was more of a curiosity and more of a not needing to know what it was supposed to look like, just feeling) was a whole different world for me. I really quickly fell in love with that relationship more so than the more unhealthy one I had with dance.
TS: What about this interest in anatomy? A lot of people who love yoga maybe develop a little fluency and a little bit of anatomy, but you’ve gone deep.
KL: Crazy. Is that what you mean?
TS: Well, you could say that. You’re a meta-anatomy crazy person. Talk a little bit about what drew you in and how this became such a passion for you.
KL: I think I’ve just always loved the body. Understanding the body from a young age in school, I had really great teachers, science teachers, biology teachers that really gave me extra material, extra books, they stayed after school with me […]. They really went beyond, because I think they saw the interest. Also, my mom. My mom is a nurse—or was a nurse; she’s no longer practicing. But I just realized that family members, my mom’s family is quite large, and family members would always be calling her for advice or to explain things to them. Overhearing all of those conversations, I just thought, “She’s just so knowledgeable and she’s able to calm people and give them information that’s empowering and soothing.”
I think that really had a big impact on me wanting to know more and to study and to be like that. Kind of concurrent with finding yoga, I went to school for massage therapy—a deeper study of the body from a muscle and bone perspective, along with the yoga study of the body from a more felt experiential level. It’s just always been something that’s been really fascinating to me.
TS: And your new book is called MetaAnatomy. For people who are hearing that word for the first time, “meta-anatomy,” what’s that?
KL: Yes. I savagely stole that from a wonderful teacher, Tom Meyers. I think it was in a book. It was almost seemed like a thrown away kind of term. It wasn’t really focused on in the book, but he mentioned something of “the meta-anatomy of this region.” And it just hit me, that it was just one of those moments that I was like, “That’s it, that’s what I want to study.” There’s kind of two different ways to think about it. The word “meta,” the prefix “meta-” means “to go beyond.” Like “metaphysics” —“to go beyond physics”; or “metacarpal”—“to go beyond the carpals.” Right? So, it was my attempt to go beyond this. How I first studied anatomy, which was cutting things apart, separating them, labeling them—this is the origin, and this is the insertion, this is the nerve, this is what it does. This very kind of cut-and-dry and binary view of separation of anatomy.
[I wanted] to go beyond that, to look at the body as already whole and holy, and to utilize a meta-analysis to taking all of these different studies of how yogis view the body, how traditional Chinese medicine views the body, how anatomists would view the body, and combining them to a larger experience, a larger understanding and unraveling and unfolding of the body and our experience of being in these bodies. I think I needed a bigger word than just “anatomy” or “yoga anatomy”; I needed the “meta.”
TS: [Yes.] And for a moment, if you were addressing yourself to yoga teachers, what do you think they often miss about the human anatomy that you’re trying to bring into their awareness through MetaAnatomy?
KL: I think it’s that misunderstanding. I think a lot of times when I meet students the first day of teacher training program, there’s often a resistance or they’re hesitant, or they just think it’s going to be dry and boring, and they don’t have the mind for it. Do we really need to label all these things and learn this new language? I aim to teach in a way that’s not about memorizing, but getting curious and experiencing the body, not just kind of writing it down and getting it right on a test. But really experiencing the body in its fullness with all of these different layers to excavate. I want people to know that it’s exciting, that it’s the furthest thing from dry and boring and pedantic. It is the study of you and how amazing and cool you are. I want people to know that.
TS: Well, it’s clearly a very exciting topic to you, very, very clearly. And it’s infectious. You created a video series, Kristin Leal Crushes on Anatomy. I watched one of the video clips. You were talking about the nervous system and describing the nervous system as one of the sexiest parts of the body. I don’t know, most people, maybe if they thought, “What are the sexiest parts of the body?” might not nominate the nervous system, but you did. So, tell me why you think the nervous system is sexy. But also, even more importantly, you teach a workshop called “Hacking Our Nervous System.” How can we start understanding our nervous system in a useful way?
KL: It is sexy. It is the sexiest of systems because any other part of the body that you’re already thinking maybe is sexier, is innervated by the nervous system and it’s not working unless the nervous system is working.
TS: Good point.
KL: So, I think it’s the king and the queen of our body systems. The path of all these wonderful things that we see in meditation and yoga, and all these benefits, and how science is really kind of looking at these things and trying to devise studies and illuminate these different benefits that it might have, it all stems from being a more powerful owner of your nervous system. So you can become more powerful in your nervous system, meaning you can realize by becoming yoked to the present moment, by becoming aware of where you are, and what you’re feeling, and what’s going on, you can then start to make choices and use tools, breathing techniques, or yoga techniques or meditation techniques. You can use techniques to bring about different states in your physiology, which really means different moods. It’s really becoming a more powerful creator rather than being just kind of dictated by life how you’re going to respond. You actually get to choose.
TS: Well, let’s talk more about that. Because I think a lot of people don’t feel like they are a powerful owner of their nervous system. They feel like their nervous system is running the show. So particularly in times of great uncertainty, chaos, rapid, accelerated change, people are just there freaked out. So, my question to you would be in terms of helping people learn some really simple techniques that can make them feel more in charge of their nervous system, what do you suggest?
KL: Yes, I don’t want to make it sound like it’s easy. It’s simple, but not easy, right? So really, the most powerful way to interact with your own nervous system, with your own physiology is your breath right under your nose. It’s as close as the nose on your face. So, the ability, once you start to learn these techniques—and I think once you start learning and loving your own anatomy, you start to recognize that different nostril dominance will bring about different states in your autonomic nervous system. So whether you are needing to engage in a moment, or you’re needing to soften to a moment. You can stimulate a different state by stimulating a certain nostril dominance. Your right nostril is really tied to your sympathetic nervous system, which is your engagement system—some people call it the “fight or flight,” which is cool, it’s correct and many anatomy books will say that—but when it’s revved up to 10, it’s the fight or flight system.
But you and I right now have to be on a three of our sympathetic to be having a conversation, to be engaged in the moment, to be present, to be thinking and knowing your next question, and we have to be masterful of our engagement system. It might behoove us to make our right nostril more predominant by doing different techniques from many different traditions but the yoga tradition I come from, Surya Bhedana, inhaling through the right, out through the left for a couple minutes. That’s going to activate a little bit more sympathetic nervous system.
But if you’re really looking to chill out and you need to relax or you need to go to sleep, we want to elicit a relaxation response or parasympathetic activation, and your left nostril is connected to that parasympathetic. If you make your left nostril predominant, more chill out, more relaxation response. In my tradition, we call it Chandra Bhedana. We bring about that kind of moon, lunar energy in the left nostril, into the left out through the right for a couple of minutes.
TS: This is highly practical, and I love it. I wonder Kristin, if you’d be willing, we can move into the experiential segment of our podcast. It might be great to actually further activate our engagement system to start and then maybe we’ll relax a little bit. Can we do both of these? And can you teach us how to do it? The reason I’m wanting that is I think it would be great for people to know that they have this tool readily available to them. And it sounds like it’s something pretty easy for us to learn how to do.
KL: Yes, there’re several ways into it. There’s the way I mentioned or playing with the length of your inhale or exhale. There’s lots of different ways to meet your nervous system. I’m happy to guide us through that.
TS: Yes, let’s do it.
KL: Yes. OK. So, wherever you find yourself, just find a comfortable seat. Whether that’s on a chair, on the floor, feet on the floor—something where your spine can be tall, but fairly easy. If it’s possible to do so you can close your eyes. Before the need to quickly change yourself, your situation, your physiology, just simply take a moment to feel where you are. Whether that’s a sensation in your body, whether that’s the presence of your breath somewhere in the nostrils, in the chest, in the belly. Or maybe it’s a particular mood, or a state of mind. Whether it’s super easy to concentrate right now, or it’s a bit fleeting. Without really having to label anything like, “This is the good way, the right way, the bad way,” just simply acknowledging that it is what it is in this moment. And with the eyes closed, you can lift your right hand and just gently block the left nostril.
Taking a slower, deeper breath in through the right, sip in even more breath than you think you can, letting the collarbones lift—maybe even lets you sit up a little bit taller. Close, block both, and then as you need to, no rush, but as you need, your exhale through the left side. Just continue on like that at whatever pace is reasonable for you. Inhaling through the right. There’s no need to struggle there or gasp. There’s no gold star for holding your breath the longest. Just inhale through the right.
When you are at the top of your inhale, just calmly close both sides of your nose and then as you’re ready, exhale through the left nostril. And just do this another few rounds at your own pace. We call this technique Surya Bhedana, [which brings] about the solar masculine, heated, active, sympathetic, activation in through the right out through the left.
If you need a little recovery breath, if you’re a little stuffed up or you’re getting a little bit heated, take a breath in and out through both nostrils, a little break and then come back to it if you desire. In through the right, out through the left. Taking just one more like that. Take your time. At the end of that exhale, just lower your hand back down into your lap or on your thigh. Take just a few moments to feel whatever there is there to feel. A sensation in your body, presence of your breath, state of the mind or emotional body. And just become aware of the part of you that’s been watching this whole shenanigan, this whole thing. The part of you that’s remained distinct or undisturbed, curious, watchful, part of you as witness, or what we call in my tradition, the Jiva. Her throne is said to be in the heart than. Just if you’d like, just float one hand up to your own heart.
You can feel maybe the beat of your heart and the movement of your breath, the pulse in the vessels, just quite literally the visceral participation with where you are. Which leads us back to the recognition of who we are. Bow your head towards that remembrance or recognition. As you feel ready, you can let your eyes flutter open.
TS: Wonderful. So that was a solar practice.
KL: Yes.
TS: We would just do the opposite if we were looking for the lunar practice.
KL: We could do that too close if you’d like.
TS: OK, we’ll come back to that and do that—
KL: I don’t want people to fall asleep.
TS: —and do that at the end. Very good. First of all, you’re a beautiful teacher. So, thank you, and thanks for sharing that. And secondly, I noticed when you use the terms “solar” and “lunar,” it just feels so much easier for me to remember which part of the nervous system. I love referencing it like that in the natural world.
KL: Yes. All of these things are just maps. […] When I was a kid, I had one of those posters on my wall of a muscle man—front and back of a muscle man, and everything was labeled. That’s a map. And there’s this great teacher, Gil Hedley. I don’t know if you know who he is, but he’s an amazing anatomist. He says maps are meant to be useful, not real, which really rocked my world. Because when you see an actual body that’s not really what it looks like. Everything is not subdivided and neat and pretty. And it’s all this mess of interconnected tissue, right. So that’s just one map. Then we have the map and models of the yogis, of the energetic body, the felt, experiential body. Those are maps and models. The nadis and the chakras and the vayus and the emotional body, right? If I said, “I love you,” we are more likely to point to our heart than our nose. Like, “I love you”—we’re likely to point to our heart.
These are all just different maps and models of you. So, whether we’re using the natural world, the macrocosm, the microcosm of our own bodies, they’re just different maps, and they’re meant to be useful. So whatever map is useful. But if it gets you in there.
TS: There’s something else I’ve heard in our conversation so far that I just want to highlight. In the very beginning, when you were talking about your move from dance to yoga, you talked about how in the dance world, there was this emphasis on getting it right and feeling like you were getting it wrong, or that your body wasn’t quite in the right shape to do X, Y, Z. And what I felt as you lead us in that solar breathing was this deep, unconditional love and reverence for the body, just in the way that you lead us through it. I’m wondering if you can talk some about that, how you came to that, in your own experience, I think a lot of people have a complicated relationship with their body.
KL: I have a complicated relationship with my body. I think, as a woman, maybe it’s only my experience, but the “not enough” ish, it comes up quite a lot. And it’s really hard for my brain to hold. “My thighs are too big, my thighs are too big for these pairs of pants, my thighs are too big for this pose. My thighs are too big for society,” whatever. To hold that thought and to hold the thought of, “I’m creating two million red blood cells every second. What!” To hold those thoughts of how fricking amazing my body is and what a miracle it is, and to hold the “not enough” isms that come up—I have a hard time holding them both at the same time. So, the more that I can celebrate, the more that I can do my practice that allows me to remember that truth, the quieter the voice of “My thighs are too big” becomes. It’s been an evolving relationship.
Like every relationship, it has its ups and downs, but it helps me to remember who I am and who I am beyond the meatsuit. The meatsuit gets criticized quite a lot in my brain. But when you have a daily practice of remembering who you are beneath, beyond the meatsuit, it becomes a little easier to love yourself, because you remember that you are love. The whole ground substance of everything is this love. When you dip your feet into it every day or take a full on dive into it every day, the other voices quiet down.
TS: I noticed too, just that very simple act at the end of the meditation of bowing our head to our heart. That’s really powerful.
KL: Bowing to that remembrance—
TS: Exactly.
KL: —to that reunion, the remembrance, the recognition. It’s reverence.
TS: [Yes.] Now, Kristin, in MetaAnatomy, you reference your two main yoga teachers. Alan Finger, and Rod Stryker. What I’d love to know is, if you had to boil it down for us, the biggest, most important one or two things you learned from each of them, the things that really drew you to them as teachers where you said, “OK, I’m in, I’m going to study deeply with this person.” What were they?
KL: I met Alan first—I think I met Rod, actually, first, Yogarupa Rod Stryker first, but I wasn’t ready. I think I was 18. He came to the studio that I was studying at, and I didn’t understand a word he was saying. But then after a decade or something of study, I met Alan finger. Yogiraj Alan Finger and he’s the parasympathetic nervous system. He is joy. He is “You are already enough. There’s nowhere to go, there’s nothing to do, you are already enough. And my goodness, laugh at this whole situation. Find the funny in the situation. Make bad jokes.” He taught me to not take myself too seriously. Right? Even though this is very serious work, but that taking yourself too seriously is actually an impediment to the work, an impediment to your understanding and your ultimate connection. He really taught me, by his example, he taught me that.
Then, after maybe 10 or so years with Alan, I found again, Yogarupa Rod Stryker, and he’s a serious guy. I know he has a book coming out with Sounds True. He is so knowledgeable. He holds the teachings with such reverence and sacredness. And he’s so smart. I think he’s the other side of the coin that I needed: “Everything is fine, you are fine, you are perfect, you are whole. And there is work to be done. And there are some patterns that are perhaps causing you to constantly forget your wholeness. And there are some patterns that might be affecting your relationships with yourself or with other people. But there’s still work to be done. And it’s difficult, and it’s gnarly, and it’s not comfortable, and it’s not full of joy. And it’s all of those things.”
I think that having both of those sides, being able to meet both of those men, has been a real gift to know myself as whole, to find joy, but also be brave enough to go into the darkness to also be brave enough to work there. I don’t think I could have had one without the other; it wouldn’t have been a complete practice for me.
TS: It was your solar–lunar combination.
KL: It really is. I never thought about it like that until this moment. But it really is. And you need both whether we’re talking about the nervous system, or these types of understanding. This understanding. You need both. One is not more valuable than the other. You just need different things at different times.
TS: MetaAnatomy is a really, really rich, interesting and full book, there’s a lot in it. The first section, as you use that phrase, is about the “meatsuit” that we have, our physical world. The second section is what you call the “poetic,” about our subtle body. And then the third section has lots of practical applications and exercises that you can do to embody this in your own life. And first of all, calling the second section poetic. I had a question about that. I think most people probably would have said, “Oh, let’s just call it energetic. It’s energetic.” Why is the word “poetic”?
KL: We need poetry. If I’m going to try to explain to you what goes on in this meatsuit, the experience of being alive in this meatsuit, I need metaphor, I need poetry, I need a whole different language. I can talk to you about the meatsuit and be like, “This is the biceps brachii,” and have very literal talk. But when I dive inside and talk about my emotions, or a feeling of movement of energy in my body, I need a different set of language. I need the poetry to describe all the stuff going on inside.
TS: In this poetic section, there was a chapter on breath and the four diaphragms that really got my attention. There are so many different places we could choose to dive in but I’m going to choose this diving-in place. I think, first of all, it’s because I never knew I had four diaphragms. So I was a little bit like, “I have four diaphragms! What’s going on?” Can you explain that?
KL: Depending on who you talk to, you might have many more. If you’ve ever looked into the work of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, and different really remarkable teachers, depending on what you’d like to call a diaphragm, you could have a couple dozen in your body. […] As yogis, I think sometimes we could start to experience our breath as not just trapped in our rib cage or not just in one part of our rib cage, but we start to have this feeling that we could breathe into our fingertips or down into our toes, or we can kind of guide and move the breath in all these different, fantastic ways. Understanding the four diaphragms (I call them the inner jellyfish) you can start to reconnect to their movements like—I don’t know a lot about jellyfish anatomy, but you’ve got that jellyfish head and you’ve got the little legs that dangle down.
When you see them gliding in the water, and the whole school of jellyfish gliding together, you can see that undulation and how it affects their little feet, how it affects the water around them. You start to cue in when you learn these diaphragms in your body, these muscles and cartilage and fascia kind of making up these different diaphragms, you can start to see them swimming when you’re taking these more thoughtful, longer explorations of breath. You can start to feel their movement, reconnect—you’re not even really creating it; you’re just reconnecting to it. That gives you such a more full experience of your body breathing. Because breath is really—if you talk to an anatomist—it’s the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. But it’s the cell in your pinky finger that desires that exchange and on your big toe. And then your hungry, hungry brain; it’s got to move. And when we get subtle enough and clever enough, we can start to sense the movement of that breath globally.
TS: OK. Can you introduce me to these four inner jellyfish that I have that I’m not familiar?
KL: Yes. My favorite four—one is the most familiar. It’s actually called the thoracic diaphragm, it kind of separates you into top and bottom pieces. And it kind of circumnavigates the last six ribs on either side. This is the one that people are more familiar with. When it contracts, it draws down, and that pulls on the lungs and the tissue around the lungs to bring breath into the body. And then as it relaxes and it domes upward, it helps to expel the air. So that’s the one that most people are familiar with or could visualize when you first start studying anatomy or yoga. The other a-little-bit-more-subtle ones are at the pelvic floor, a combination of a bunch of different muscles at the base, from pubic bone to tailbone to two sitting bones, forming the bottom of your torso. It also has movement with the breath. It also does that same thing where it draws down on the inhale and domes back in and up towards the crown, towards the head on the exhale.
You have the vocal diaphragm, which is made up of mostly cartilage and some other types of tissue, a little bit of muscle. This is kind of right around where your vocal cords are, kind of upper neck. I like to think of this one as—at a big opera house they have those red velvet curtains that kind of dramatically open at the start of the show and then billow close at the end of the show. And this is kind of your vocal diaphragm, or jellyfish, where it opens and draws slightly down to allow the passage of air in, and then it domes and billows closed to move the air out. I’m doing big movements and saying big words, but this is a very subtle movement of the throat. Then, most refined, most beautiful, most subtle, there’s a layer of tissue around the brain called meninges—the layer of fascia, kind of a gift wrap around the brain—and it too has movement with the breath, albeit extremely subtle. It too draws slightly down on the inhale and slightly up on the exhale. So, all four of these jellyfish, when you get quiet and you’re breathing deeper, it is possible to tune in like a school of jellyfish moving together participating, allowing, opening, expanding, softening to each breath.
TS: Wow! I’m especially interested in the vocal diaphragm and the brain diaphragm. I’ve never been introduced to those before. I wonder, could you just take us through a minute or two of breathing into both of those diaphragms? Would that be all right? Just so people could experience actually touch it.
KL: Yes, absolutely. You’re welcome to do this seated or lying down, whatever is useful for you. And it is helpful, if you feel comfortable to do so, to close the eyes. We get a little bit more subtle into the body. Sometimes the visual distractions around us will pull us out. If you can close your eyes and feel safe to do so, go ahead and do it. If you’re driving, don’t do that. But if not, close your eyes. And just to make it a little easier, perhaps to feel, just start to deepen your breath. Nothing crazy, nothing wild. Just a slower longer inhale, a slower longer exhale. Maybe just like 30 percent of your breath capacity, just slower. If you know ujjayi pranayama, kind of that oceanic sound of breath by hugging the vocal folds almost like you’re whispering. That kind of hug you would have in the vocal folds.
Just apply the very gentlest version of that. I almost feel like it’s drinking. It’s almost like drinking a really thick milkshake but through a small straw. It’s going to take more of your effort, but you can savor the milkshake for longer. So, we’re savoring the breath by making a smaller straw. As you feel the breath moving in through the nose, it takes a little bit of a turn downwards into the tubes of the throat and right above the upper palate. On its journey down into the lungs, it picks up that vibration at the throat. This is almost like those curtains kind of being drawn together. To allow that fullness of the inhale, you can feel the curtains billowing out to the side, drawing down towards the earth, and opening to allow the breath in, to allow the inspiration. Just the fancy-pants way of saying “inhale.” As you exhale and air is moving now from the lungs up through the tubes of the throat back out through the nose, like curtains being blown by the breeze, the curtains are closing and drawing up towards the crown.
The inhale, curtains are drawing down and open to allow breath to move in. On the exhale, they’re doming back in and up towards the crown. Keeping the breath moving gentle and slow and just start to lift your awareness to the point that is often described as the third eye. The soft space between your two eyebrows. There’s some kind of fascial giftwrap around the brain that is also billowing in the breeze of your breath. You can think of the borders of that third eye and your two temples in the back point of the head that you might put a ponytail on with delicate lace like tissues responsive to the breath. Almost think of it sometimes like my grandmother’s doilies, fine lace. Billowing in your breath and on your inhale, the center point is drawing down towards your feet, towards the earth. The exhale is doming back in and up towards the crown. It is the most subtle of movements, but can you feel on the inhale the center point of that diaphragm drawing down towards the Earth to allow inspiration to pour in from crown down the body? The exhale, it’s doming in and up towards the crown, allowing that inspiration to now move through you.
Relax your breath and notice maybe even in your relaxed breath where you’re no longer fussing with it or stretching it or trying to manipulate it. There might be even in this most subtle of diaphragms, a remembrance of that movement and an acknowledgement of that movement. The body breathing—it loves you so much it is breathing even without your dictatorship. As you’re ready, again bowing your head towards your heart. Just a moment of gratitude for whatever you experience. If you feel ready, you can allow the eyes to open. Coming back into your space.
TS: Kristin, I had no idea that there was a jellyfish inside my head and inside my throat. No idea. Absolutely no idea. Thank you—
KL: You’re welcome.
TS: —for that. For me, just the wonder of it is enough of a turn on. But for that listener who’s saying, “OK, why do I care?” With the alternate nostril breathing there was a clear purpose—“Oh, I’m going to shift my nervous system for a reason.” Why would discovering these other diaphragms in the body be particularly useful for someone?
KL: Well, I can come up with about 50 reasons. I think just physically these are areas of held attention for many people. So, a physical tension in your thoracic diaphragm or in your pelvic diaphragm can affect your genital, your sexual health, it can cause pain or disruption of function or movement. Problems in your thoracic pain, disruption of movement, the ability to not get in the breath that your body deserves. Vocal brain, these can all in a physical way hold tension, and therefore not be optimal, an optimal functioning. Also, energetically, in one map or model, these are the placements of what the yogiss called the granthis, which are these more kind of energetic knots that will prevent—if they’re tied to tight, let’s say—it will prevent ascension of energy upwards. Transformation or reconnection to source or reconnection to self, or whatever word you’d like to call it—that energy won’t be as available to you if these knots are tied too tight.
So working with the breath, physically and energetically, physiologically, can change you. And I just think the more we understand about ourselves, whatever map we’re using, is useful because this world is tough. It is rough out there. And I need a map. I need some help, I need some guidance, and I need to be able to navigate these waters. I think the more we can understand ourselves, on whatever level, is of benefit to ourselves. And then we have to interact with a lot of people. So, it’s going to be of benefit to others, and our society and our social groups in our world. But it starts in, and it might start with your breath.
TS: Now, just to ask you a question from someone who doesn’t know that much about these yogic maps. You mentioned these knots that are connected to these different diaphragms that we can discover through this breathing. Is the goal to totally untie these knots, or just to loosen them so we have more fluidity and flexibility?
KL: I would say thinking of it more as loosening or having the ability to open or close. These knots are said to hold our consciousness in our body. So as a tantrica (someone that studies tantra)—we want both ascension, communion, to go beyond, but we also want to live in this world. And we want to take that experience of our wholeness and our connection and our union, and not just be a jerk in our life to bring that back into our relationships into our body. We want to be embodied. We want our consciousness to be held in our form. Otherwise, we’re just out of here. We want to have the ability to do both. We want it to be a two-way highway. A two-lane highway.
TS: Very good. Now, as I said, we’re just picking one small section of MetaAnatomy. There are so many different aspects of our poetic and physical anatomy that we could be digging into here. I just picked this one thing about the four diaphragms because I found it particularly interesting. When I asked you about it, you said, “Oh, some people say we have even more than that.” Quite honestly, when you said that, I felt confused. I was like, “OK, I’m just going to—I just want to first get the floor down before I go into more.” But after we did the practice together, I actually started feeling into what you meant potentially by that, that this expansion and contraction force is happening in our total meta-anatomy in a lot of different ways at a lot of different levels. I wonder if you could help me understand that more.
KL: That’s so beautiful. I think we can experience that expansiveness and tethering back in, like a jellyfish swimming, right? We can experience that globally in our body. There’re some maps. The most common maps say seven chakras, the ones that are most talked about, and you see pictures on yoga studios everywhere of these seven chakras. But there are some books that say every joint is a chakra, or […] any place where three nadis meet is a chakra—another learning from Yogarupa. And you have 72,000-or-so nadis in the body, according to some maps. There’s a lot of crossover. I think it’s available to you to start to tap into these qualities of opening and expansiveness and inspiration, and softening and tethering back and expiring, letting go many places in the body. It’s just these are kind of the gatekeepers in the torso, in the middle of your form.
TS: And then for someone who’s feeling confused at this moment, because they thought, “OK, I thought I had seven chakras, I was kind of getting the hang of it. I’d read about it. OK, color, sound, mantra for each chakra. But now Kristin’s telling me that at all of the intersections, potentially of three or more of these 72,000 nadis, there are more chakras. Whoa, I’m in some kind of hologram of either possibility, or confused.”
KL: That’s where you want to be. Isn’t it? [Laughing]
TS: OK, good. Well, then that’s where I am. That’s where we are.
KL: Well you don’t want to be like, “I got this, I know everything.” You want to open yourself to the mystery of it. There’re so many different texts, and there’re so many different lineages and maps. And this is just yoga, which I’m more familiar with, and only know probably 10 percent of, of the grand teachings of. So, there’s TCM—traditional Chinese medicine—there’s indigenous peoples medicine, there are so many different maps and models. Maps are meant to be useful, not real. I think if you start to lock down, “There are seven chakras, and this is their location, and this is how they move and we have to wear only orange,” or whatever, then we get limited. By its nature, it’s no longer real. But if we keep opening our hearts and our minds to the mystery and to not have to take anyone’s word for it to try these maps and models for yourself and have your own embodied experience, then that’s autonomy, then that’s yours, right? That’s your lived experience that has value. That is valid.
TS: Now, as I mentioned, we could take any one toe, finger, elbow, whatever, within the MetaAnatomy whole series of teachings and go really deep. And there’s a lot there. But I want to make sure in this conversation, if there are any, what we could call “MetaAnatomy Essential Principles,” that you’ve had the opportunity to share them. Have we missed anything really important that when you think of MetaAnatomy—“This is what I want to make sure you are taking away”? We’ve talked about wonder. So I think […] we’re there on that.
KL: I think maybe takeaways. You have a body and it’s amazing. And you are more than your body. You have the power of your own breath to change your physiology, your mood, your energy. I think the more we look in and understand ourselves, the more we have a chance of understanding others, and our world around us and our path becomes clear—it starts off in with the microcosm of your big toe, or your diaphragm, or your nervous system—but really, ultimately, to understand our place in the world and our interconnectedness. When you look at anatomy as just separate parts like a robot, then it becomes easy to think of things breaking on that robot and then fixing them and making them perfect, upgrading the system. We don’t really work that way. We are these flawed, perfect, interconnected, interdependent, interwoven systems that can’t be separated.
I think that understanding, if we’re looking at anatomy, if coming to that recognition or realization in our anatomy, helps us to remember that you and I are not these robots that need to be fixed or broken, or that we are whole and we are interconnected and interwoven and interdependent, I think that’s what I’d like the takeaway of the book to be, or my work to be.
TS: All right, we promised our listeners that we would end with some lunar breathing. So, this is the kind of breathing I could do when I want to relax. Yes?
KL: Absolutely.
TS: “I’m too uptight, I’m too wound up, this is what I’m going to do.” All right, let’s do it together.
KL: All right. So, finding your seat, whatever is working for you. Close your eyes if it’s available to you. Before we begin, just notice any shifts, notice where your body is now, in this new moment of now. The sensations, the breath, the state of the mind, state of your energy or emotion. In the ever-shifting moment of now, just notice where you are first. Then, if possible, lifting your right hand and blocking your right nostril with your thumb. As you’re ready, taking a longer breath in, slower breath in through your left nostril. Just doing the best you can. As you get to the very top of your breath, just close both sides of the nose gently. And then as you’re ready, no rush. As you’re ready, exhale slowly through your right nostril. You’re going to do that a few times, you’re going to inhale through the left nostril. Close. And when you need to exhale slowly, completely, fully through the right nostril.
Continuing on at a pace that feels reasonable to you. In through the left, out through the right. Call it Chandra (meaning “moon”) Bhedana, a piercing, bringing about the lunar, cooling, feminine, passive, meditative, parasympathetic activation. Chilling out. In through the left out through the right. If possible, seeing if you can really linger in that exhale. Luxuriating in it a bit. In through the left, out through the right. Taking another two rounds or so. At the end, the very bottom, the emptiest place of your exhale, just lower your hand. Let the breath regulate on its own, just natural breath in and out. Bowing your head towards your heart and just reflecting on any new sensation, new awareness, shifting and of course the place in you that is unbound infinite potential. If you’re ready, you can allow yourself to gently come back into your space.
TS: And that’s Kristin Leal. What a beautiful, humble, and fun teacher you are. It’s been so great to be with you.
KL: It’s been an honor.
TS: Your book MetaAnatomy: A Modern Yogi’s Practical Guide to the Physical and Energetic Anatomy of Your Amazing Body, it’s the kind of book you want to keep on your shelf, learn from and refer to. It’s packed. MetaAnatomy by Kristin Leal. Thank you so much.
KL: Thank you.
TS: Thank you for listening to Insights at the Edge. You can read a full transcript of today’s interview at SoundsTrue.com/podcast. If you’re interested, hit the Subscribe button in your podcast app. Also, if you feel inspired, head to iTunes and leave Insights at the Edge of review. I love getting your feedback, being in connection with you and learning how we can continue to evolve and improve our program. Working together, I believe we can create a kinder and wiser world. SoundsTrue.com: waking up the world.
