Today I have the pleasure of talking to Uplifted alum Corinne Maples. Corinne has taken ALL of the Uplifted training programs, from 200-hour to Embodied Yoga Life Coaching, and uses the skills she learned not only with her clients but in her everyday life. Corinne and I explore how to live your yoga through “kriya yoga.” We debunk self-care myths and explain how frivolous fun can lead to a more balanced life. 

Tune in as we discuss:
🔹The key to maintaining a positive mindset

🔹Healing the nervous system and setting boundaries

🔹How to focus on personal joy rather than societal expectations

💗 Get Yoga for Self Mastery ON SALE NOW => https://www.brettlarkin.com/yoga-for-self-mastery/

GUEST EXPERT: Corinne Maples (RYT 500)  |  @maplesyoga

Corinne has been doing yoga since 2011 and has practiced every style of yoga under the sun, loving them all for different reasons; leading her to go through Uplifted 200 and 300 hr YTT as well as additional training in kundalini, chair, and prenatal yoga. In 2024, Corinne also became a certified Embodied Yoga Life Coach, working one on one with people to help move energy, release stuck patterns and become more embodied.

She loves to help people maximize their yoga practice by giving them access to potent practices that can be done in as little as 15-30 min.

Corinne teaches one on one Embodied Yoga Life Coaching privates, workshops, corporate classes, and retreats. 

Book an Intro Session with Corrine: https://bookme.name/Mapleswellness/eylc-session 

For more information on her offerings please reach out to maplesyoga@gmail.com

Beverages mentioned:
Kroma Wellness

Pique

The Fullest

FREE Practice: Somatic Yoga Full Body | Healing Somatic Exercises for Lowering Cortisol, Hip, Neck & Shoulder Pain

Relevant Blog: How To Fall In Love With Yourself: 7 Daily Practices

Relevant to Today’s Episode:
📖 Yoga Life Book 

🐍 Yoga for Self Mastery

🔮 Somatic Yoga Life Coaching 

🎧 Also Listen to:
#260 – Killing The Self Care Buzzword

#271 – What is Kriya Yoga? How Does it Work?

#314 – Stop Abandoning Yourself By Leveraging Yoga & Meditation

© 2025 Uplifted Yoga | BrettLarkin.com

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FREE Chakra Balancing Audio Track + Journaling Prompts

    Transcript:

    Hello everyone and hello Corinne. I’m so happy to have you on the show. Welcome. Thank you. I’m super excited to be here. I listen to your podcast all the time and I consider you my mentor. So it’s really cool to get to be here with you today and chat. Well, I consider you a friend, so it’s really fun to have you here. And just so everyone listening knows, if you ever are wondering what

    hot beverage to indulgent. Corinne is like my go-to person. So we have talked about all the products recently. I don’t know if you heard the gift guide for this year, but I was talking about Pike or Peak. We still don’t know how to say it, they’re- it’s Peak. Yeah. Peak is how, when it was introduced to me, that’s how it was said, but I’m not a hundred percent sure. Yeah. So I was talking a lot about their adaptogenic coffee and then-

    I have the tea that I like. So yeah, you’re my like go-to person to text when I’m like, should I spend money on this? am I was just gonna say the answer’s almost always yes. What else are you drinking these days before we dive in? Well, I am like a total glutton for a good beverage. Like I’ve just always been a beverage person and similar to you, I got off coffee. And so ever since I got off coffee, this was probably like seven years ago now.

    I’ve been on the quest to find something that fully satisfies that coffee feeling. I feel like nothing really beats the smell or the taste of like a warm cup of coffee in the morning. And so like a huge part of my level two self care, which I’m sure we’ll be talking more about is really indulging in a nice warm beverage. So I love the peak Nakanda that adaptogenic

    coffee substitute that you were talking about on the gift guide. I also love their Sun Goddess matcha. I know you’re a little like, I’m not sure that that one’s worth the money compared to other matchas, but I really, really like that one compared to others. And then the fullest, I don’t know if you’ve heard about them, they have a saffron latte that is really, really delicious too, that I love.

    So yeah, I’m always looking for a good, fun beverage. Well, I how you mentioned level two self care, which is one of the reasons we are here today. And if you’re not familiar with that term listeners, will get you up to speed very quickly. Corinne has taken most, a lot, all of the uplifted yoga teacher training program. She’s also a coach and the graduate of the embodied yoga life certification, embodied yoga life coaching certification. I don’t know why that’s hard to say right now.

    and she’s coaching folks and we’re going to learn about that and what she’s seeing out in the marketplace as a somatic yoga coach and how that’s all working for her. But the prerequisite to that course is yoga for self mastery. And it’s probably my favorite course out of everything I’ve ever created, but it is the most difficult to get people to understand what it’s about, which is why I invited you on because you exemplify the skills, you love the skills, you coach in the skills. The skills are the three, there’s three skills that are taught in this program.

    And I have a funny story to share with you and everyone listening, which is in the embodied yoga life coaching program, which a lot of people take after yoga for self mastery. get to listen to be a little fly on the wall as you guys often practice, coach each other. And I overheard and I think it was someone’s praticum to people coaching each other. were, they were like newly minted coaching grads, just like you. they, somehow I overheard them talking as part of their coaching session about yoga for self mastery and.

    the woman said, she said, yeah, I really didn’t want to ever buy Bratz yoga for self mastery course, because I know it’s about living your yoga. And I always thought I was living my yoga. And then when I was forced to take it as part of the coaching program, I realized that I actually wasn’t living my yoga at all. And I was like, this is such a great sound bite. I wish I could share this with other people. But I’m paraphrasing her here.

    But it kind of cracked me up because she was saying like, considered myself a yoga teacher, so I didn’t want to buy this. Like, I didn’t think I needed some course to tell me about like how to live my yoga because that just seemed totally beneath me and like I already knew how to do that. But then she said her mind was blown. like when you first heard about it, did you have any of those initial reservations or did you have a hard time understanding what this course is about? So I took the second cohort that you ever did for YSM and

    For the listeners out there, YSM is the easy way for us to say yoga for self mastery. So if you hear me saying YSM, that’s what I’m referring to. And also, if you join the course, there’s like 16 other insider acronyms that you’ll learn that are really fun. So this is just the beginning. But yes, keep going. So I had just finished my 300 hour. So I did 200 hour with you, went right into a fast follow with the next open session of 300 hour.

    And that was so much community building and so much growth that I experienced in both of those trainings. And I wasn’t ready for like a gap in having something where I didn’t have that community and that learning. And what I found in doing 200 and 300 hour is it just awakened this thirst for knowledge in me. And I was just so eager to want to continue to grow that knowledge base.

    so that I could share it with others and really develop it into something that became my livelihood, right? So when I learned about the course, I don’t feel like I had any reservations. I feel like I was like already doing a lot of the deep personal work. Like that comes through 200, 300 hour ready or not. Like you’re gonna start doing some deep personal work once you start like opening up that door.

    And so I felt like it was just a really great next step for me and something that I was really looking forward to. And I also thought it was an interesting dynamic because in YSM, it’s a blend of yoga teachers and people who are just yoga practitioners, right? So it’s not all teachers. And so it’s also a really unique group dynamic that you get in there with people with all different experience levels in their healing and yoga journey.

    Well, I’m glad you mentioned that because whoever you are, if you’re listening right now, you can join us. You can take this course. You do not have to be a yoga teacher. A lot of people are yoga teachers who are in there, but I’d say 30 % at least are not. They’re just people who love yoga or are kind of going through something right now and are wondering if, maybe they’ve already tried therapy or couples counseling or they’ve tried other stuff and it hasn’t worked and they’re thinking maybe yoga could help or yoga philosophy could help. But this course isn’t just philosophy. It’s very action oriented and

    How would you describe what the course is about? Yeah, so I think for me, it was definitely a really eye-opening course and experience. But it’s how to take these high-level yoga philosophies that we’ve all heard throughout our yoga career, and maybe we understand them, maybe we think we do, maybe we don’t even try to understand them.

    but it really takes them and how you can apply those into your daily life in order to see growth and healing and new neural pathways being made. And I think that’s the thing that was really exciting for me is a lot of people talk about, hey, you need to heal or this is something that you should do, but it doesn’t give a lot of practical real life ways to do that. And some of the yoga philosophy is a little bit difficult to

    distill down into today. Like how do I bring that into my life today? And I feel like this course really hits on applicable things that I can be doing in my life today to make me not feel like a kettle that’s about to just start blowing off steam, right? Like how can I release that before I’m getting to that point of feeling overextended and overburdened? I think

    We are familiar with so many of the concepts that we hear kind of floating around a yoga philosophy world, right? We hear about tapas, we hear about the yamas, we hear about the niyamas, we know the yoga sutras are important. If you’re really cool, you know the Bhagavad Gita is important, right? There’s all of these different concepts and a lot of it’s overwhelming. Like it’s a ton of information.

    And so I think one of the things that the course does, and I think it’s also controversial, is like, distill everything down into just like three to-do items, like three action items. And those three things are what we call the skills in the course. And so the course is just about how do you hone and live these three skills, especially in interpersonal moments? Because I think it’s important for us to keep in mind a lot of this yogic philosophy that we idolize or that we love, and I love it too, but it wasn’t designed for people who are living our type of lifestyle. It was really designed for people who were…

    leaving their community, going off to live a monastic or, you know, in the woods nomadic type of lifestyle where they weren’t interacting with other people. A lot of it was guidelines about how to actually prepare to exit the physical body through certain breath work, through denying oneself sex or food or all these different things. And there’s so many great books that have like really tried to modernize the Yamas and the Niyamas.

    But what I do is I really just focus on three core principles, which you’ll recognize from the yamas and nyayamas, but these three principles also encompass what many of you have heard called Kriya Yoga, and I’ll link up the other podcast I have on Kriya Yoga and these three skills. And those of you, of course, who’ve read my book, Yoga Life, will be familiar with these as well. The three things that I strip away everything else, and I’m just like, we’re just gonna focus on Svadyaya, Tapas, and Svaripranidhana. And for those of you who don’t know, that is…

    Self-care, which sounds really cliche, but we’re going to break it down. Tapas, which is basically the heat, the friction, that it means basically doing something, doing something differently than you’re doing now, changing those neurons that fire together and wire together, changing the patterns, the grooves that Karin just spoke about so beautifully. And then Ishvara Pranidhana, relinquishing control. That’s the biggie that’s often translated in other texts as like surrender to God or letting go.

    But here, for most of us, it’s really about relinquishing control. then kind of how does that play out and what do we actually say when we’re arguing with a spouse or a child or feeling frustrated? I think there is this disconnect because I think most people listening to this podcast, and let me know if you agree with this, like we put so much time into the mat and into our practice and into meditation. Or if you’re a Kundalini yogi, like lots of discipline and rigor.

    And yet we find ourselves still floundering at home and in our personal life. Like we’re still annoyed when our husband loads the dishwasher the wrong way or we snap at a child unintentionally. Did you kind of feel this kind of disconnect at all or like what’s feel like it’s so interesting. And I think one of the things that

    these skills helped me realize is that it’s not everyone else’s job to get to where I am in my journey. Like my journey is my journey. My husband’s journey is his journey. My kid’s journey is their journey. And this really, for me, plays into two of the skills, mainly relinquishing control, but also cultivating the opposite for me. Like I have a tendency to want to control things. That is my natural personality.

    And control is such an illusion. And I think I joked with you, like I’m the puppet master of like everyone’s journey. Like I know where everyone needs to go and what they need to be doing. And so like, I’m just trying to like get them down the path that like me as this like spiritually awakened person just knows this is the right way for them to go. And shockingly that causes a lot of friction with people because they have their own ideas about what their path looks like. And so for me,

    really understanding that control and intimacy cannot happen at the same time was huge because so much of what I tried to do from a very loving place was control situations and people and not in a malicious way, but in a really helpful kind way is where I was coming from. But yet that

    feels like control and not intimacy. And so if I’m trying to control, I am not in a place of intimacy with my husband or with my kids and fostering that in a relationship. And so that was a huge realization for me of where I really needed to, as you like to say, be on my own paper. Like, what are the things that are actually Corinne’s responsibility? And what are the things that are my kid’s responsibility and my husband’s responsibility?

    And I think also for me, I’m at this pivotal place where I have adult-ish kids. My son’s 18, my daughter’s 16. When they’re little, you can at least have the illusion of control. The older they get, the harder that is, right? Like now my son’s in the world making real decisions for himself and I can give him advice and guidance and support.

    but he is the one that needs to do the work. He’s the one that needs to make the decisions. And so I also think this came at a really great time for me in my life to really be able to use that to help this process of my kids moving into a place where I didn’t even have the illusion of control anymore, right? So it really met me where I was. One sec.

    my goodness, there are so many juicy, juicy nuggets that you touched on in here. And I think we want to follow it up with like some practical stories. Like I can tell some too about, the skills and how they, yeah, really changed my life. And it’s like a constant practice. I’m still trying to live, live them on a daily basis. It’s an ongoing, you know, uphill battle because we have this default to

    want to control. love how you talked about that. And I love how you talked about the puppet master. Like, I feel like I even like maybe stole that term from you when you talked about kind of how much you want to control everyone and everything in your family. And I relate to that too. And I think a lot of women, like we were told if we control and if we try to make everyone else happy and make sure nothing breaks and make sure nothing spills and make sure everything looks good and make sure no two people in the family are fighting and that we’re the peacekeeper and we’re the cleaner and we make everything perfect.

    Well, then we’ll be safe and then we’ll be happy and then everything will proceed well and I don’t know, we’ll get a gold star or something at the end. But that’s a myth. It’s a lie. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because in all that control, we end up tight and constricted. And the last thing people want is to be controlled. again, the intimacy and control are opposite slides.

    I think I was teaching or showing it again yesterday. Like it is such a profound concept. And I know some of you who are listening are like, what? But basically you have to choose. You can either completely relinquish control over someone and what they’re doing and have intimacy with them, or you can try to control them, but that strangles and kills the intimacy. So you can choose, but you can’t have both. You can’t have it both ways. And this idea that we think what people around us

    want from us is for us to make sure that whatever they’re holding never spills or that their laundry is done or that their meals are cooked. But the big paradigm shift in this program is that actually what all the people around from you really want is to feel you happy and lit up and in your frequency. What we call your goddess of fun and light energy. Goughel for short. And there’s different ways you can describe this. So I noticed so much that I was coming

    into my relationship with my partner with this hovering, controlling energy, when instead, if I’m just lit up and happy and really have my self-care tanks in excess, leading us to level two self-care next, he actually responds to me quite differently. And things proceed instead of the same old, same old dynamic of the way things usually go between him and I.

    Suddenly when I’m lit up and I’m happy and I’m with my Kundalini awaken, because we have a lot of listeners here who know Kundalini yoga and know yoga in general, like, but this idea that my energetic orbit is big and full and volume 10 out of 10 Brett, all of a sudden the things that I crave and I, well, first of all, I don’t feel the need to control so much because I feel so good in my own body. So a lot of that fear and constriction isn’t there anymore. But also people actually respond to me differently.

    Because instead of showing up controlling, I’m just showing up happy and full with my cup runneth over, flowing with like good Brett energy. And from there, people actually surprise me in unexpected ways. And I think this is where we can like start telling some stories about this. We’re like beneath every need to control is fear. So we have all this fear. We feel like we need to control things. But if we actually release the fear and relinquish control, things

    are now allowed to unfold in new and unexpected ways. And obviously, like a lot of the time, believe it or not, the results end up being better than what you ever could have imagined. But you never would have found them if you didn’t cultivate the opposite. That’s skill number two, top us. You never would have found them if you didn’t cultivate the opposite and try something new or respond to something in a different way. my gosh, I’m all over the place. Where do you want to pick up? No, so I think that you…

    you hit on a couple of things that I definitely want to talk about. But I think that one of the things in order to be able to relinquish control and cultivate the opposite, you have to have your level two self care, like it has to be locked and loaded. Like you have to have that really, really at a good place because you’re not going to be able to have the energy to cultivate the opposite or relinquish control if your tank is empty.

    And so that’s another piece that I think really plays well into this, which is level two self-care. I love the way that you explain this in YSM, which just is that we have the things that maybe society has shown us is like self-care. like, if you’re a woman,

    what you’re told self-care is like going to the nail salon, going to the spa, like there are all these things that require dollars to be spent and half the time they’re things that end up feeling more like a chore. I know like for me going to the nail salon is terrible. That’s not self-care for me. And so what level two self-care really is, is these things that can be micro moments in your day that just

    fill you up and make you happy. And I think for women, sometimes we’ve gotten so much in that what we don’t even realize it’s control, but we’re just so focused on what other people need from us. We forget what we really need ourselves and what we actually enjoy and what gives us pleasure, right? Like that’s kind of a taboo term sometimes that can have a negative connotation. And yet if we really focus on

    what fills us up, what lights us up. Like you were saying, Brett, what really gets us into our Gothel energy. Then we can really make sure we’re including those things in our day to really bring that about. And so when you first introduced this concept to me, it took me a lot of time to remember what I actually enjoy because so much of my life was around what other people needed from me instead of what I wanted in my life.

    And so one of the things you have us do is put a hundred things that are these level two self-care items. And that was really hard for me because I didn’t remember what I liked anymore. I didn’t remember what lit me up. And so it was this beautiful evolution where I found these things and some of them are so simple. They are so simple. Like when I have my warm beverage in the morning, just like putting my hands around the mug and just like taking a moment to close my eyes.

    and savor the fact that I’m about to have this delicious beverage that I just really enjoy doing, right? Like having this micro moment in my day that lights me up or going out after I’ve had back-to-back calls at work and just looking up at the sun and letting the sun hit my face and like, that doesn’t cost money. It doesn’t take a lot of time, but yet there are these things that just fill me up. And so when…

    the life comes at you, which it will. And that’s just the reality as yogis, we don’t get to a point where life isn’t life-ing with you, right? That’s gonna continue to happen. You’re doing it from a place where you’re a little bit more able to take those things and able to make different decisions and able to cultivate the opposite and potentially relinquish control. So to distill that all down, like you said, into a story or an example for me,

    Once I finally was able to re-remember all the things that really lit me up as a person, I started prioritizing those. And my goal was like, how do I get two or three of these things into my day each day? Like, how do I really prioritize the stuff that makes me feel like me and makes me the most Corinne, Corinne that ever Corinne, right? Like that’s like what I’m focused on. And what I would find is two things.

    One, the things that used to really get under my skin, they didn’t bother me as much anymore. Like my son leaving his shoes right as you walk in the front door, or the kids complaining about the meal that we cooked, or my husband and my son getting into an argument, where before I was depleted and that would just bottom me out. These things.

    started to feel not so monumental. Like was able to give myself a little space in these moments. Yeah, because you had high self-care reserves. your self-care reserves were like 120 out of 100. So when the little annoying things start happening, it’s like you’re still good. Yeah. I’m like, I’m good, right? And when I wasn’t good, I had the bandwidth to make the decision to do something differently instead of just, boom, I’m bottomed out and I have no patience, no nothing. I’m just going to react.

    it gives you the ability to have that pause to say, like, no, I’m gonna choose something different here. Like, this is a choice. I can choose, control and yell or like get annoyed or butt my way into something that really doesn’t have anything to do with me. Or I can make the conscious decision to say like, you know what? No, like I’m in a good place and…

    I’m gonna let my son and my husband’s argument be between them and like let that go where it may, right? Or I’m going to just pick up the socks myself and put them in the hamper, right? Like whatever those things are that would have normally, I wouldn’t have had the capacity to even think about making a different decision because I would have been so triggered.

    Now it gives you a little bit of space. And that’s where those new neural pathways are being ingrained, where you’re able to then be able to pause before reaction and actually be a decision maker in what you’re going to do next. And that’s where you take back the control. You let go of the control of all these things that aren’t on your paper and aren’t your responsibility. But that gives you more empowerment to control how you respond. And I think that

    That can be game changing for people. I’m going to try to pull this into a practical example from my own parenting and life, but I want to just double click into the level one and level two self care because I think you did a great job explaining it. But what I would add is that, and I think I have an email that goes out to this effect where it’s like yoga is not self care because I think if you’re in this community and most people listening to this podcast, for me, yoga is like something I have to do to even feel like remotely

    human as opposed to like something that crawled out of the earth like after a long night’s sleep. Without yoga, I’m just not even functional. Right? Yeah, it’s like table states, right? It’s like, yeah. That’s a requirement. Yeah. It’s just like a bare minimum. Like the yoga needs to happen for me to like even be able to sit here. So it’s not filling my cup over. Like it’s actually taking me from the depleted state, which I

    naturally exist in. I’m sure that there’s other people who are like naturally really happy and filled up and like God bless those people. But I think a lot of people in our community are who I see enrolling in our programs too. Like we’re highly sensitive or we had something maybe traumatic happen in childhood. You know I know we’re both child like children of divorce at the same age and like there’s something that happened where for us it’s just harder maybe like we have anxiety. It’s harder to just feel that like natural

    happiness and exuberance of life. So for me, it’s like the yoga and the meditation and all of this beautiful knowledge that we work with is kind of getting me from the quivering, highly sensitive child to able to dysfunction. So my hand is moving up slightly. And then a lot of the other things that we’re taught as our self-care, like maybe working out or eating something healthy. Again, these are actually just helping you get to baseline.

    So one of the key terms that we use is this idea of frivolous fun, things that are uniquely nourishing to you that are frivolous. A great way to think about level two self-care is that it’s great if you want to drink some adaptogenic beverage that’s really healthy, but is there frivolous fun you can do that’s frivolous? There’s no reason. You would think it’s a waste of time. For me, I’ve really been enjoying ice skating recently. It’s like,

    It makes me feel young. It makes me feel free. It makes me feel like I’m flying. There’s no good reason for me to ice skate. I don’t have any plans right now to like join the Olympic figure skating team or anything like that. Like I’m not taking lessons. I’m not trying to be good at it. Like there’s no end game. It’s just frivolous, but it lights me up and it makes me happy. And it makes me feel like I’m in my frequency. That’s what we call this kind of goddess of fun and light energy. Of course we distill it down much more into like energetics.

    and we see this throughout the yogic tradition. It’s a lot of this wisdom has been lost, but especially in the InBodyYoga Life Coaching program, we talk about these different textures of energy. And most of us are just so monotone, kind of just like we use one tone of voice all day. We’re not playing in our full range of who we are. And I also just want to talk about, and I really have been feeling this recently, and I bet you do too, like how so much of the process of growing up and the process of motherhood and the price of success,

    is literally like we, it’s an unwinding of us doing anything that was pleasurable and unique to us. Like the demands of young children or the demands of an intense job. Like everyone listening, Karina has, like is an insanely successful executive in the C-suite. Like all of these things unwind who you kind of.

    are in a sense, I think about this with my kids all the time, because I just don’t do, because I don’t have as much time to do things that are like uniquely just frivolous fun for Brett. And I almost feel like I’m in this process where my kids and work are stripping away, not in an evil way, it’s just a natural kind of process, like my identity, right? Like who I am. And luckily like

    God bless these skills because I’m so aware of it. So I’m like, nope, I need to inject little things back in. And that’s where, you know, the hundred care list and really brainstorming with me and the other people in the course on your level two self-cares is so pivotal because I do see so many women who are older come to the course and they’re, they’ve just like completely forgotten. They’re like, I have no idea what lights me up. Like, I mean, I like, I like doing blah, blah, blah. Cause my husband does it or, you know, I go for walks that I’ve heard it’s good for me or I

    You know, all of that is not level two self-care friends. This is stuff that is uniquely, uniquely fun to you, lights you up for me, you know, dancing or doing my dance workouts. And then, you know, trying to think of how to make level two self-care is even more fun, more frivolous. Like for me adding my disco ball to that, you know, there’s no reason to do that. It’s just frivolous. It’s just fun. It just, I don’t know. I just like it. Like it’s fun to dance with a disco ball, even though there’s no reason to, but that’s juicing and getting my self-care tanks.

    past the point of like equilibrium, but actually so they’re in excess. And then exactly like you said, then when life does its thing, where the kids are fighting, the laundry is on the floor, right? You’re operating from a place of like extreme reserves and it’ll, it enables you to.

    to stay in your frequency, but also kind of like what you talked about to then have more awareness around the choices that you’re making and not so quickly default into wanting to control. And I’m happy to share a personal example about this, but I just want to see if there’s anything you want to riff on here before I keep going. Yeah, no, I love what you said. I do think that women tend to lose their identity as mothers and…

    in the workforce, like I think that you end up just having, you’re surviving, right? Like you are in like pure survival mode. And so I really believe that bringing those things in and relearning about yourself, right? And, and not just

    that get busy. You also get a lot of messages from society throughout your life that tell you that maybe some of the things that made you uniquely you are not okay, or they’re not what society wants, right? So I love singing and I love drama. And I remember being little and being told like, you’re too dramatic, like you’re too over the top. And so I dial that back. But I love theater. I love being dramatic. I love singing. And so like, that’s an exploration that I’ve had.

    And like similar to your ice skating, I started painting. I’ve always said, I’m not very good at art. I’m probably still not very good at art, but I like it. I like getting a paintbrush and painting. And if I’m not planning to display my art in a studio or become a professional artist, it’s just for me. It’s just something that I really enjoy. And one of the things when we made our list, you’ll love this story that I put on there was,

    dancing in the rain. Like I just wanted like the next I was like the next time there’s a summer rainstorm, I’m going to get out there no matter how crazy anyone thinks I am. And I’m going to dance in the rain. And that’s what I did. And it brought back that childlike joy where you don’t care about anything other than just like being in the moment being you in your body and just experiencing something that

    As an adult, you’re like, I don’t want to get wet. I don’t want to get in the rain. Got to get an umbrella. And I just was able to let that inner child free to just be like, screw that. I’m going to stomp in the puddles. And I’m going to play in the rain. And I’m going to dance. And I’m just going to have an amazing time. And so it was really cool to put something like that on my list and then actually do that and just feel that sense of lighting up in freedom. Yeah. mean, there’s so many voices, right? Like you should feel guilty. That’s a waste of time. You’re going to get sick. You’re going to catch a cold.

    You should be doing something more productive. The list goes on and on of the why nots and the guilt. Yes, I absolutely love that story. I’ll share a story now. I had my reserves high. when my partner, my husband started, he and my older son were kind of got a skiff. They got at it. Usually, I would intervene and be like, don’t raise your voice at him.

    He, you know, did it like all the, all the things, right? Just injecting myself. I had the self-awareness because I was high on self-care, to, to say, you know what? I’m going to relinquish control. I’m just going to let this play out between the two of them and I’m not going to step in. And again, every bone in my body wanted to step in, but I didn’t. And guys, this is like where the rubber hits the road. This is the definition of tapas. And I really go into the Sanskrit and why these terms apply. Kriya yoga, if you don’t know, is the yoga in action. So.

    while all of the yoga sutras and so much of this philosophy is lovely, really only Kriya yoga was actually designed for people living in the world, like the yoga of action, as opposed to the yoga of people who are living alone in a cave. So these principles are really important. So it really makes sense to like drill down on just these three things. So I stayed out of it and I watched their dynamic unfold, which it escalated, it kind of got worse. And then,

    they had this beautiful moment where my husband wasn’t really able to make his point and do what his job is, which is being a dad, which is not something I know how to do. Actually, I don’t know how to be a dad and I don’t know how to raise a young man as a dad would. I mean, that’s something that it’s like, I might think I know how to do, but actually that’s uniquely like an experience and benefit that my husband can bring to the table. he was able to, you and it wasn’t the way that I would parent or approach it, but that’s because I’m a mom, right?

    So I let him kind of do it his way and see my son understand something. And then they had this beautiful moment of resolution. And I’ll never forget, because it was in our bedroom, kind of in our closet area. And my husband was so sweet with him. He was like, buddy, I love you so much. If I raise my voice, it’s because of this. And they had this bonding moment. And I’m just standing off to the side watching this whole thing unfold. And I’m seeing this side of my husband that I like,

    Otherwise never would have got to see because I would have just controlled and stepped in and stopped the whole process. Right. And then he would have been annoyed and, I would have tried to control everyone. So he would have not got to be the dad, do his dad thing. My son probably would have, you know, like I got to witness them have this intimacy with each other. And it was just so beautiful. It was like one of those moments where I was like, wow, if I had chosen control, I never would have gotten to see this and I never would have got to see the side of my husband.

    And I never would be able to appreciate, you know, the way that he just became so soft so quickly. And I would have actually robbed him of that opportunity, which was part of the whole thing he was doing. He was being hard, but then he went really soft. But because I trusted and relinquished control, this beautiful moment happened between them. And I actually felt closer to both of them as a result. So a new unexpected benefit arose, which normally I never would have got to see.

    had I chosen control. But in order to do that, I needed to have very high reserves and self-care, which is why self-care really comes. It’s a fundamental skill. We define it in a couple of different ways throughout the course. But do you have a story like that or something similar? Yeah. I mean, I have almost an identical example to that. So I will say that I can double down on what you said. But I also have another example. So one of the things for me in wanting to cultivate the opposite is I am

    Like you said, I am your typical customer client of that A type, people pleaser, like give me gold stars. I want a gold star for everything. Bring them my way. What can I Certain them by being perfect. Give them to us now. Yes. Yeah. And so it’s something that I’m constantly working on. How do I really just go inward instead of external for that validation?

    So in being this A type person, I find that I have this need to, if I feel like there’s a problem or something going on at work that’s like in my purview, I have to handle it immediately. Like it can’t wait a minute. Like if I happen to check my email first thing in the morning and I see that there’s some sort of problem, I drop everything and would get right to like addressing the issue. Like I couldn’t almost, couldn’t function.

    without knowing that I had taken care of that thing. And so obviously that can be something that really takes me out of the present moment. Like that happens first thing in the morning. I can’t start my yoga practice. I can’t have my warm beverage until I address that. If we’re sitting at dinner with the kids having family dinner, I’m ripped out of present moment of being there with my family enjoying that time. And now I have to focus on this work thing. And so it really made me

    I’m not present a lot, right? It took me out of really being in the moment of now. And so I really made a conscious decision to say, I’m taking email off my phone. I’m not going to check emails in the morning until after I’m done with my whole morning routine. I’m also, once I am done for the day, I’m done for the day. Anything that could happen,

    after I’m done working for the day can wait until tomorrow morning. There’s nothing that is that urgent that it can’t wait. And it was really hard for me at first. At first, it was actually worse because when I did get, I was like anticipating what might be going wrong. And then as soon as I was getting on there, I was already in this like high alert, but I’ve been doing this for about a year now. And now it’s gotten to the point where I just have more space. And even when I get on my email in the morning,

    I don’t feel like I’m going right into what are the issues, what are the problems I have to solve. I’m able to pace myself and give myself a little bit of breathing room to really determine how I want to handle this thing. Like, is it really that big of a deal? Is it something that is something that needs to be addressed right away? And like, I want to address it with a clear head and not in this, you know, hijacked nervous system that just feels like, my God, there’s a problem and like,

    maybe I’m gonna get in trouble and maybe I’m to blame and like, how do I make sure like I handle it? And so it’s made a huge difference in just that regulation of my nervous system and really being able to enjoy these moments with my family and these moments of my morning routine where I’m by myself without feeling so drawn to like having to fix everything. So I mean, there is some relinquishing control and like not trying to fix everything, but also

    I really had to like tighten or work that muscle of cultivating the opposite as well to just say like, no, I’m choosing something different here. Like my normal trigger is to get really anxious and fire something off and I’m just not going to do that anymore. And it’s been hugely beneficial to me and shocker. No one at work has gotten mad at me. No problem. I’ve not been solved.

    No one’s thinking I’m not as good of a performer as I was before I made this decision. Like everything’s okay, which also tells me like 99 % of that stress was all internalized. That was just in my own head. It sounds like boundary setting as well, which we have a whole section on in the course, you know, just this idea of boundaries and how you set boundaries. We even have like a thing where you practice saying no, and there’s like a whole partner mirror exercise thing like because

    Yes, I’m so proud of you. That sounds powerful. And I’ve gone through something similar of someone who just had no boundaries with my business or the way I interacted with media or content. And it’s it’s transformative when you can set those up, exercising that muscle of cultivating the opposite. And it reminded me of, we don’t want to give too much away, but there’s this great exercise in the course too, where you kind of create an alter ego.

    And as you were kind of describing, it’s like, how would I be the type of person who, and then you kind of create an alter ego, you know, is like the opposite of what you’re doing. Like probably some, some guy who has super strong boundaries, who like completely clocks out at five and never stresses about anything and feels zero guilt when they just only clock in and get it 9 a.m. So the workbook that you get with the course, it has all this journaling work and very specific prompts that go with each video. So

    These aren’t just concepts, like you’re actually practicing and working through it. And then of course we have live calls that run that you can come to and practice a lot of these. I love that example. I think it’s so common and it’s funny, right? Cause now you’re like living in this other reality and it’s like, wow, like all of that stress was completely self-inflicted. it all- didn’t crumble when I stopped like handling everything in the moment. Like the world’s still spinning actually. The world is still spinning.

    I think you should tell everyone a little bit now just about how you’re bringing this into your coaching practice, who you’re coaching, how that’s going for you. For those of you listening, if you don’t know, I do now have a life coaching program that’s called embodied yoga life coaching. We fuse.

    six different life coaching frameworks all rooted in yogic philosophy. So the skills, everything we’re talking about is one of those frameworks that you learn to embody yourself and then coach others in. And then there’s five more frameworks, believe it or not, a lot to do with energy and polarity and tantra. So you could even be a relationship coach. It’s really cool. And then you’re blending that with somatic movement, with basically someone telling you what they’re struggling with. then beyond just talking to them, you say, okay, let’s talk, but now we’re going to get on the mat and you’re going to, you you kind of give them a

    very customized yoga private that’s helping them process their emotions and the blocks that are kind of keeping them in these unhelpful patterns. So you’re fusing movement and coaching. So Corinne graduated from this. She already has clients. You were telling me before we hit record that you’re finding you’re getting a lot of referrals from not just the yoga studios, but from functional medicine doctors. So

    Just tell us a little bit about your journey having graduated and then who you’re working with specifically. And then of course we want to let everyone know where they can find you because you are 100 % a coach that I would recommend, especially for those of you that want to work on the skills because Corinne sometimes says things that like help me understand the skills better. It’s awesome. And you’ve really challenged me. You’ve asked great questions in the program. You were like, what do you do when your level two self-cares don’t work anymore?

    like when you plateau with them because they just like, they felt frivolous, but now you’re so used to doing them. They’re not frivolous anymore. And then I like actually like built out part of the course that like responded to that. So I’m just so grateful for you. But yes, tell us about, you know, doing coaching. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for that, Brett. Like I really appreciate that. And I love how you and I can riff like that. Like, hey, like I have this question and like you will be like, that’s actually a really good point. Like let’s talk through this. And so I really appreciate that.

    But coaching has been the biggest gift that I have ever given myself is going through that program. Like all of your programs have been incredible. I would honestly say everyone should do them. But I think where I’ve always wanted to go is taking this profound healing that I’ve experienced in my life and being able to help other people get there. And one thing that I think is really important about

    embodied yoga life coaching and somatics is that one of the misconceptions I had is that I felt like I really didn’t have trauma, right? Like I didn’t go through anything that was like this like huge event. Yes, my parents got divorced, but like 50 % of people go through a divorce and like, yes, there are these things that happen to me, but like no big deal. Like I’m fine. I would have told you five years ago, I had a pretty good childhood. Nothing really impacted me from my childhood.

    And what I realized and what I’ve realized with so many of my clients is that they have minimized their trauma. And the reality is that little you doesn’t have a trauma scale to say, well, so-and-so’s trauma was a lot worse. So this can’t possibly impact me. And so the reason I really believe that people need this additional coaching and healing from a somatic and embodied perspective is because

    we’re carrying all of these things with us. And a lot of us, if we haven’t had these big traumas that have been these like milestones in our lives, have minimized these things and just said like, well, we should have been okay with that. Like that time I was made fun of when I was in elementary school, like that’s not a big deal. And the reality is, is like those things are stored in our body. Like if we don’t actually process and move through them,

    they’re there and they’re impacting the way we behave today, right? So maybe that thing that happened to me when I was a kid is the reason why today I’m people pleasing, right? So I just want to give that groundwork because a lot of people don’t know, like, how do you know if you need somatic or embodiment or coaching on something like this? And I would go out on limbs and say, everybody needs it. Everybody has stuff that’s been unresolved that they need to work through.

    And the beautiful thing about doing it in this type of practice is you’re not necessarily having to relive that experience in order to move that energy out of your body. And that’s the beautiful thing that embodied yoga and somatics bring to the table. And so I say all that to say, to get to your question, I’ve really been working side by side with my clients.

    And a lot of people who end up going to functional doctors are people who’ve tried everything. They don’t feel good. They know something’s wrong. But their regular primary care doctor is just like, it’s just aging. It’s just this. It’s something that’s just paramedicine. It’s Right. It’s minimized into like, you should feel OK. If you don’t, that’s on you. And so people who go down that path eventually

    end up sometimes with a functional medicine doctor. And in functional medicine, a lot of times they will pull the labs and see what’s going on. But the reason that these things are happening is that it’s the downstream effect of the upstream issue that’s this unresolved trauma. And so lots of functional medicine doctors want their clients to do some sort of

    embodiment, somatic healing to help them heal that because if they don’t heal the upstream issues, the downstream effects are these health issues that will continue to persist. Autoimmune conditions, there’s a huge surge in those because there’s a lot of unresolved trauma.

    and obviously I’m not a medical doctor, like I’m not saying this is medical advice, but what I am saying is that there is a lot of scientific evidence that shows when you heal your nervous system, a lot of these things that have been plaguing you do improve and it gives your, your body the space to be able to, to heal those things. And so that’s what I’m really committed to, to really helping people is find that, that healing to just get to a place where.

    they’re able to build these new neural pathways, build a little muscle in the skills. And the skills is almost always the baseline thing I start every single one of my coaching clients with. So if you want a little cheat code, take YSM, get those skills, then you’ll be able to move through the other healing work even faster because you’ll have mastered what we spend. I mean, sometimes I spend six sessions just on

    the skills, sometimes even more. Sometimes it’s a year’s worth of stuff that will need to be just focused on these. And so I do think it’s a really great way if you are wanting a healing journey and that is something that’s calling to you, you know, do something like that that gives you a head start and then your coach will really be able to help move you through that. I’m also, you know, happy to work with people one-on-one who want additional support as they start to master the skills.

    Yeah, time does not heal all wounds. It covers them in fascia. So I love how you talked about, you know, that thing from the playground or the thing that you’ve minimized that you don’t think is trauma, right? You might intellectualize it away, but the body keeps score. The body remembers. Like everyone I think is on the same page about that, but then they’re not actually willing to like do the somatic and body of it work to like unwind all that. And in the program, we talk so much about how the body is brave and the body wants to.

    to release what it’s been holding. It’s just the intellect is holding us back and afraid to feel it because the intellect’s like, if I feel that it’s going to be too scary. And so we just brace against it. And it’s the bracing against feeling that’s actually causing so many of these chronic conditions. So I’m so happy you’re coaching amidst everything else you’re doing. We’re going to put in the show notes, everyone, if you want to book with Corinne or do a discovery session with her.

    how you can do that. So absolutely go look at the show notes because I’m not one-on-one coaching at this moment in time, but she and a couple key other people, I would definitely say you should see them. Like I’ve watched them, I’ve seen their practicums, I’ve seen them work with other people. I know the depth of knowledge they have in not just the skills and everything that the course offers, but also like from their own life experience, how they’re living and showing up. So.

    I’m so grateful that we got to chat with you today. And let’s close on a lighthearted note, circling back to where we started. The matcha, which is better? The peak matcha, the sun goddess, or what was the other one that you told me about that was the beauty matcha latte from the other company? Listeners need to know, and then they need to know which one’s better. OK, so Chroma Wellness has the beauty matcha. So I.

    lean more towards Peek’s Sun Goddess Matcha. And the reason is I like them both, but the Beauty Matcha that Chroma Wellness has also has like some of those like warming spices in them. And so it’s a very particular flavor profile. It’s not just matcha. It also has a little bit of collagen in there, I believe. So it’s like more of an adaptogenic, like it has a lot of stuff in there.

    Whereas the Sun Goddess matcha is like really just like very pure matcha. And so sometimes I do want that more like latte feeling beverage, but sometimes I just like a just like plain matcha with some almond milk. And so Sun Goddess is the one that I typically lean towards, but I will say Chroma, they are expensive. Chroma Wellness is pricey. So I will say that.

    but they have some amazing products. have like bone broth powder that makes like the best like warm beverage. Like in the winter drinking their, it’s called 24-carat chicken bone broth and you just mix it in with water and it is like just like this nourishing chickeny broth and it’s amazing, expensive, but probably worth it. And it has a ton of protein in it. as women are at the solution to everything is more proteins.

    anything you can do to get more protein on four. I love it. And I’m also going to check out the saffron latte from the full list. I will do my best, folks. We’re going to type these up for you in the show notes as well. Just to keep it lighthearted. I it’s always fun. We’re all friends here. And I always love hearing your product picks because I feel like you have very good taste. I know I’m always texting Brett like, hey, I typed this thing. I actually checked her the other day. And I was like, I feel like every other text I’m sending you is a wrap.

    Well, this is what’s so funny though is because we so know each other’s level two self-cares, because you know I’m obsessed with silk, because I just realized that silk, just love silk. I’m like, why have I not been focused on this? I just love that texture. And so yeah, so because we know so much about each other’s level two self-cares, we’re able to offer very good recommendations. So yeah, the other day you were like, you need to buy these silk shirts on sale. But yeah, you know.

    If you’re listening, like you need friends like this too, you need to be developing your level two self care list. We would love to do it with you. you know, join, join yoga for self mastery, hire a coach or at least like discover, do a discovery session, like put it on your vision board for this year. And if you’re here till the very end, thank you so much for listening. We’re so grateful and we hope you got something out of this episode. Namaste.