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Casey's blog

Yoga as Community Cohesive during THE DAWN OF COronavirus

17/4/2020

 
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A recent trip to Bali where I completed a training amidst an amazing community who embraced my little ones without hesitation.
One of the reasons people attended yoga classes (pre-Corona) was the feeling of togetherness one experiences when practising in a group, with familiar faces, in a familiar environment.

The capacity for physical togetherness has clearly been capped by the dawn of COVID-19, a day of which we do not know the length.

But these are interesting times. Since offering my first online class last week, I’ve received an unprecedented number of emails and messages from students expressing their gratitude, excitement, and hope. Despite my less than perfect video production skills, folks are just happy that I’m offering an opportunity for us to come together in this new and oddly comforting way.

In some ways, I feel closer to my yoga community than ever before. Last Saturday I saw students and friends I haven’t seen for years, as well as people who would like to attend my classes but live too far away to do so.

COVID has acted as a dam in the river of normality, and the resulting alternate route the relentless flow of life has taken has collected a larger, wider, more global involvement. In my weekly class, I’m witnessing a kind of togetherness I could not have imagined teaching my small but wonderful community classes in my little permaculture village in rural Australia.

Although I miss the capacity for physical connection an in-person yoga class offers, I feel as if I’m now riding the currents of this new branch of the river, along with everyone else. Strangely, yet reassuringly, we are in this together. We are being called to trust the flow. And in stepping into this new river, we find ourselves practising a yoga of acceptance, a yoga of letting go of the need “to know”, a yoga of embracing the unknown with open arms.

Apart, yet very, very much together.

Next LIVE online yoga class is Saturday 8:30am AEST. Classes are offered by donation and are intentionally inclusive and accessible to all. To join a class, click here.

Ep 6. HAES® Naturopathy with Chandrika Gibson

27/2/2020

 
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A Health at Every Size (HAES®)-informed, weight neutral practice is old school naturopathy in its best sense. In this interview with Chandrika Gibson, ND we take a deep dive into HAES naturopathy and yoga therapy.
​
In this episode:
  • The co-opting of wellness to sell stuff and the accessibility issues this creates
  • Differences between health, wellness and wellbeing
  • The problematic belief that living a “clean” lifestyle guarantees you won’t get sick
  • Healthism
  • “Wellness is about the direction you’re facing” - you can live with chronic illness and still have high level wellness
  • The trouble with naturopaths (!)
  • How qualified naturopaths can set themselves apart from under-qualified people with questionable training (hint: client-centred practice!)
  • Homeopathy, reiki, and “meeting the client where they are at”
  • Navigating a client’s desire to follow extreme diets for cancer
  • Why a HAES-informed, weight neutral practice is "old school naturopathy in its best sense"
  • Yoga therapy and the koshas
  • Finding truly body inclusive and accessible yoga 
  • Chandrika’s research in head and neck cancer and her lived experience with skin cancer

​Links:
Support the show at the Non-Diet Yogi Patreon

Chandrika's personal Facebook page, Surya Health and Wisdom Yoga Institute
​

Chandrika's articles on Medium:
The Trouble With Naturopaths
Body Positive Yoga
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Ep 4. Yoga Guru ≠ Nutrition Guru: The Cult of the Unqualified Wellness Expert

26/1/2020

 
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Yoga teachers, please stop giving terrible dietary advice to your students. This episode is based on an article I wrote in 2017. You will also hear my two year-old mumbling in the background. Whatcha gonna do.

In this episode:
  • That time I gave terrible nutritional advice
  • Why people ask yoga teachers for nutritional advice
  • Some of the crappy nutritional advice yoga teachers pass on to their students
  • The perils of getting nutrition advice from a yoga teacher, personal trainer, or health coach
  • The likely prevalence of disordered eating in yoga circles
  • MLM health products in yoga studios
  • Even when yoga teachers are also nutritionists, be careful!
  • Where to go for safe, individualised dietary guidance

​LINKS:
Original blog post:
https://www.funkyforest.com.au/blog/yoga-teachers-please-stop-giving-terrible-dietary-advice-to-your-students

Funky Forest Health & Wellbeing - online non-diet nutrition consulting services and in-person yoga classes

Grab your copy of my e-book The Modern Yogi's BS-Free Guide to Wellbeing

Funky Forest Health & Wellbeing Facebook page

Casey's Instagram

Support the show at Non-Diet Yogi Patreon
​
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Ep 2. Cleanse, Detox, Hurt: The Allure of Unhealthily Strict Diets to the Ascetic Yogi Psyche

26/12/2019

 
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Why is juice cleansing so popular in yoga culture? In this solo episode I take a deep dive and try to answer this question.

I also give a crash course in how detoxification actually works, and what you can do to support your body's detoxification processes without starving yourself.

In this episode:
  • What is juice cleansing? How it’s marketed vs. what’s actually going on
  • Why it’s so popular in yoga culture
  • How tapas and saucha may underlie and amplify the tendency towards spiritually-endorsed disordered eating and body dysmorphia
  • Ayurveda and juice cleansing
  • Disordered eating and eating disorders in Yogaland
  • My personal experiences with harsh yoga practices, fasting and orthorexia
  • The physiology of detoxification and how juice cleanses impede this
  • Why those initial “detox symptoms” and later, that feeling of “energised bliss” occur on a juice cleanse (it’s not what you think)
  • What you can do to safely support detoxification (if you wish to do so)
  • The next level of cray: water fasting in yoga circles

LINKS: 
My articles on Ayurveda, TCM and Intuitive Eating:
https://www.funkyforest.com.au/blog/ayurveda-tcm-intuitive-eating-or-dietary-dogma
https://www.funkyforest.com.au/blog/beyond-pitta-kapha-vata-ayurveda-tcm-intuitive-eating

A biomedical look at the physiology of detoxification, how juice cleanses impede this, and what you can do to support detoxification:
https://www.funkyforest.com.au/blog/detoxification-so-not-about-juice-fasts-colonics
https://www.funkyforest.com.au/blog/your-bodys-lifelong-detoxification-kit

My article on the stress response of restrictive eating:
https://www.funkyforest.com.au/blog/the-honeymoon-period

Funky Forest Health & Wellbeing - online non-diet nutrition consulting services and in-person yoga classes

Grab your copy of my e-book The Modern Yogi's BS-Free Guide to Wellbeing

Funky Forest Health & Wellbeing Facebook page

Casey's Instagram

Support the show at Non-Diet Yogi Patreon

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Introducing the Non-Diet Yogi Podcast!

13/12/2019

 
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Errrrmaghaaad so it's finally happening.. I've released the first episode of my new podcast!

I warmly invite you to gather your earholes and tune in to the Non-Diet Yogi Podcast, where we explore yoga, earth-based living and gentle nutrition through a non-diet lens. 
 
We will explore the wonderful, wacky and sometimes worrying places where the yoga world and diet culture overlap, as well as exploring how social justice, feminism, motherhood and bunch of other things all jive together within the Yogaland/diet culture Venn diagram.

In this episode:
  • Why this podcast needs to exist
  • Creating a podcast as a mum
  • A bit about me, including my personal and professional experiences with disordered eating and yoga culture
  • Why living and working on the Gold Coast (the L.A. of Australia!) was the perfect petri dish for developing Non-Diet Yogi
  • The need for the non-diet approach in the natural medicine sphere, and vice versa

Having been a guest on a couple of fantastic anti-diet podcasts myself, I am excited (and shitting myself just a tad) to join some of the great minds floating around in the Podosphere. My wish is to bring the non-diet approach, Health at Every Size and social justice savvy to the yoga and "wellness" space where I believe it is sorely needed.

​I hope you enjoy!!

Don’t call me yogi.

27/1/2019

 
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Recently I changed my Instagram handle from @forestyogini to my actual name. It may seem insignificant - just petty semantics - to some. But to me it's no small decision. It’s a personal (de)identity shift I’ve been thinking about making for some time.

Why? 

For those who give a shit and are still reading:

I no longer feel comfortable calling myself a yogi or yogini.


A few months back when I listened to Dana Falsetti’s excellent podcast “Deep Dive” on this very topic, it validated my feelings of unease and finally exhumed the heart of the matter for me.

Perhaps it's the spirit of Australia Day (being celebrated this whole long weekend) and the historical colonialism, racism and cultural misappropriation that surrounds this controversial holiday that have finally pushed me over the "dare to change your Insta handle and confuse everyone!" line. 

I practise yoga and I make money from teaching yoga. But I just don’t feel like I have the authority to claim the title yogi. In the same way I have been feeling increasingly uncomfortable saying namaste at the end of class. For the same reason I don’t wear mala beads or paint a bindi on my head. For the same reason most yoga teachers probably wouldn't recognise the goddess in the picture above (hint: it's not Kali).

Don’t worry, I’ve tried all of these things and more. But for me, they’ve never felt quite right as I explained at length in my post Why I quit yoga (and what brought me back). For me, letting go of the self-appointed yogi title is yet another layer of self-discovery, and my gradual disentanglement from the clusterfuck of fake spiritual empowerment and "holier than thou"-ness that I call the Sexy, Successful, Spiritual Woman Ideal.

There are three main reasons I'm letting go of the yogi title.

Read More

Calling out BS in the Mama, Yoga & Wellness Spaces

15/10/2018

 
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I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Fiona Sutherland, host of the Mindful Dietitian Podcast and founder of the The Mindful Dietitian, which provides non-diet and body inclusive training for professionals and groups in Melbourne, worldwide, and online.

She’s not only a highly skilled dietitian trained in eating disorders, body image, mindfulness-based practices and HAES, but she’s dedicated to sharing her expertise and light-hearted but deep wisdom with other health professionals and groups. Her questions made it clear that she’s well-versed in podcasting and, being a dietitian, yoga teacher and mother of two herself, she's also very familiar with the overlap between the motherhood, yoga and "wellness" spheres!

I was especially humbled to hear that she’s read several of my articles and totally rates them! Wow. I can’t think of a better compliment.

If you want to hear us wax lyrical about motherhood, yoga culture and the BS inherent in the "wellness" spaces (including hear me share about my recent experiences as a new mum of two), tune into Episode 36 of the Mindful Dietitian Podcast.
​
Listen here or search iTunes for the Mindful Dietitian Podcast (Episode 36).
​

Here’s an overview of our interview:

  • The pressures on women to be the "perfect" mother, and how we get sucked in through patriarchal systems
  • On being a working mum, mum guilt, and inadequacy in motherhood
  • Earth Mothers VS Creative Rainbow Mothers
  • Nurturing our children, ourselves AND our projects
  • Breaking away from diet culture messages in the yoga and wellness spheres
  • The Sexy Successful Spiritual Woman - what is it, and why it hurts us
  • How diet culture infiltrates the way health professionals and yoga teachers market their services
  • Ayurveda and Chinese medicine - separating the wisdom from diet culture dross by first getting into your body and learning to eat intuitively
  • And so much more!​

Did you enjoy this interview?

Tell me about it in the comments below! Also, feel free to share any questions you have about yoga, motherhood and wellness in the comments, so I can address them in future blog posts/interviews.

Until next week,
Casey

"You're a yogi. WHY THE EFF ARE YOU POWERLIFTING?"

8/5/2018

 
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Strength training is awesome for women. Especially if you're a mother. And especially if you're a breastfeeding mother, as I discussed at length in this post.

Of all the forms of strength training I could have chosen, I chose powerlifting, which is just lifting weights on a barbell. I also do a bit of free weights and kettle bell stuff, but right now powerlifting is my jam.

​I've practised and taught yoga for over a decade, and for nearly that long I was about as open to weight training as I was to having someone pull my wisdom teeth out with a pair of rusty pliers (I still have all of my wisdom teeth BTW
.)

But life has a way of changing the way you see things. Having babies lead me to develop unexpected tendon weaknesses which were compounded when I practised the yang form of yoga I was used to. Unable to handstand, I started training with a friend who was a PT. He introduced me to lifting weights. And the rest is history.

​And the main reason I like weight lifting as my main form of strength training?

Three words: efficiency, convenience, and badass-ery 
(not really a word, but it's just so much fun to say!)

​Powerlifting is time efficient.  The big compound movements you perform in a typical powerlifting program are predominantly the squat, benchpress, and deadlift, which use the major muscle groups meaning maximal effect for minimal time. Plus, you get all of the hormonal benefits I've already mentioned here.

It's convenient because I can do it at home. Anyone with small children knows that convenience is crucial! It has to be consistent to provide the positive benefits I mentioned, and to be consistent it has to be doable on a regular basis. I train three times a week: twice at home and once with a coach at a strength training gym.

And it makes me feel like a badass. I mean, I can do pull ups again. I haven't been able to do those since 1999.


For the record, I also do near-daily yoga and (occasional) pilates. Mobility becomes even more important when you're lifting heavy things. No one wants to end up walking like a robot!
​

​IS BEING STRONG REALLY THAT IMPORTANT?

As a mum I find being strong just makes life easier. But I get that even though I prefer to feel strong, there are plenty of people who don’t give a shit about being strong, and that is totally fine.

Rather than telling you what you "should do” with your body, I'd much prefer to share my own experiences to help you discover all the options, and explore as you please. You can then choose what’s right for you, and that may well be ballet instead of bench pressing; pilates (which I also love) instead of pull ups.

Then again, badass-ery.

How I failed at Postpartum yoga

20/9/2017

 
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I've waxed lyrical about my disdain for the commodification of yoga and how until very recently, it drove me away from yoga for nearly two years. You can read me being all anti-mainstream yoga Ranty McRantus, here.

But the other big reason I quit yoga was this: ​after I gave birth to my first child, my personal yoga practice was feeling spiritually unfulfilling. And physically depleting as hell. 

Following Archie's birth, the yoga I knew and loved - the dynamic, acrobatic, energetic practice full of dance and strong postures, inversions and fast flow - it just no longer... worked. It was not giving me the vitality, peace and stillness it once did.
​
It has taken many painful mistakes, a near-complete abstinence from yoga for a time, and a rediscovery of yoga at a deeper level for me to come out the other side. Here's what happened after I had my first baby, and how you can avoid making the same mistakes I did.
​

Read More

Why I QUIT yoga (and what brought me back)

19/9/2017

 
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I've taken the last year and a half off teaching yoga. Some people assume I've just continued to teach and are mildly surprised when I tell them I'm not actually teaching. Others have noticed my absence and have been asking me when I'll start teaching again.

I know I've been especially missed by the (wonderful) AcroYoga community on the Gold Coast. ​The last yoga event I lead was a couples restorative AcroYoga workshop over 18 months ago. It was a gorgeous workshop and fully booked out. The people who attended were super sweet and provided such encouraging feedback. The staff at the host studio were incredibly helpful, down to earth and lovely. And I had a fantastic time teaching it.

​I receive near-weekly emails from curious newbies asking when I'll be teaching my next Acro workshop or class. I politely turn them away and direct them instead to other teachers.

The best reason I can come up with for my absence from the yoga world?

I just haven't felt like teaching yoga.

And more to the point, up until recently I have pretty much taken the last year and a half off from practising yoga.

Yep. No personal practice, besides the odd yoga class every few months, and some meditation in between looking after a newborn who is now a toddler (i.e. extremely sporadic meditation). My preferred form of movement switched from pre-baby trail running, daily vinyasa riddled with handstands and AcroYoga... to walking, reformer pilates and strength training to prepare for and recover from childbirth, and to build the strength I need to haul a toddler around without putting my back out.

I QUIT YOGA. Turned my back on it almost completely. After over a decade of reasonably dedicated practice and nearly as long teaching.

Why?

Basically, two reasons:

1. Once I gave birth to my first child (and probably a bit before that), the personal yoga practice I knew and loved - the dynamic, dance-like, acrobatic, yang-centred practice that is so celebrated in modern yoga culture - suddenly felt like total shit.

2. I had a gutful of how wanky it had all become.
​

Read More
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All content copyright Casey Conroy - Funky Forest Health & Wellbeing. For more information please click here to see my disclaimer.
Natural health for EVERY body. Copyright © 2024
​
0432 618 279 | [email protected]