The Midlife Feast
The Midlife Feast
#144- Why Yoga is So Much More Than Movement in Menopause with Niamh Daly
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Can yoga help us navigate the emotional and physical changes of menopause? Niamh Daly joins me to explore how yoga, when adapted to our changing bodies, can support nervous system regulation, pelvic floor health, and emotional well-being during midlife.
We cover the importance of personalized movement, challenging the idea of yoga as a cure-all while highlighting its deeper benefits beyond the mat. Instead of focusing on self-improvement, we explore how yoga can be a path to joy, balance, and fulfillment in midlife.
Tune in for a fresh perspective on movement, menopause, and embracing wellness with authenticity.
Connect with Niamh
The Website: www.instinctyoga.com
Instagram:@yinstinctyoga
ð Grab the Book: Yoga for Menopause & Beyond
Links Mentioned:
EP 65: The Impact of Movement on Your Bone Health in Menopause with Niamh Daly
Click here to hang out with me on YouTube!
Looking for more about midlife, menopause nutrition, and intuitive eating? Click here to grab one of my free guides and learn what I've got "on the menu" including my 1:1 and group programs. https://www.menopausenutritionist.ca/links
Hi and welcome to the Midlife Feast, the podcast for women who are hungry for more in this season of life. I'm your host, Dr Jenn Salib-Huber. I'm an intuitive eating dietitian and naturopathic doctor, and I help women manage menopause without dieting and food rules. Come to my table, listen and learn from me trusted guest experts in women's health and interviews with women just like you. Each episode brings to the table juicy conversations designed to help you feast on midlife. And if you're looking for more information about menopause, nutrition and intuitive eating, check out the Midlife Feast Community, my monthly membership that combines my no-nonsense approach that you all love to nutrition with community, so that you can learn from me and others who can relate to the cheers and challenges of midlife.
Jenn Salib Huber:Does yoga count as exercise and I say count, you know pretty liberally, but what I'm asking is have you ever considered that yoga is more than exercise, or that the reason to include a yoga practice which is more than just postures in your life and perimenopause or menopause might benefit more than just your physical body?
Jenn Salib Huber:These are some of the questions that I talked to with Neve Daly, who is also known as the Instinct Yoga on Instagram. She's a friend of mine and this is her third appearance on the podcast and we actually talk more about menopause and yoga in this episode than, I think, any of the other episodes, which we'll also link to in the show notes. But as you'll listen, as Niamh shares her story about how she got into yoga and why it became such a central part of how she learned to cope with the changes that came with perimenopause and menopause, and why she became so passionate about not only teaching students but also teaching teachers, you will learn that yoga is about so much more than just a posture, so I hope you enjoy this episode. Hi, niamh, welcome back to the Midlife Feast.
Niahm Daly:Pleasure to be here. I can't think of anyone I'd rather talk to.
Jenn Salib Huber:We've already been talking for 30 minutes, so we're well warmed up, which is great. I love talking to you. You were actually the first official guest on the podcast way back when, episode number two, and we were talking about the pleasure deficit in midlife. And we were talking about the pleasure deficit in midlife and then you were back again last year or the year before to talk about bone health and yoga and I thought it would be really fun to talk more about yoga, obviously, but I'd love to hear more about your story. How did you become this yoga yogi menopause enthusiast Like how did yoga come into your life? Well, you know, I was thinking about this.
Niahm Daly:I often think about this. It was actually through my other career that is not really prioritized at the moment which is as an actor. So back when I was 23, I went to a drama school in the UK and the woman who ran it, as it happens, was an Irish woman, also called Niamh, and she was an Alexander Technique teacher and a movement coach and professional in the theatre world. And the Alexander Technique, for anyone who doesn't know, is a physical practice of finding ways to reduce tension in the body so that we can come at the world from a more neutral state, so the habitual holdings in the body are released. And it is often done through a hands-on technique where the person being treated or being cared for is lying on the floor with their knees bent and the practitioner holds the head, holds the shoulders, holds the pelvis, etc. And through suggestions the person starts to let go of old tensions. And it was primarily developed to help people.
Niahm Daly:Musicians play more freely so that they weren't playing with physiological tensions, and this woman was using it for actors to try and help us be more neutral, more of a vehicle for a character, and it was spectacularly powerful on an emotional level and I remember lying on the floor of this random room in the middle of Manchester in the UK, which is where I traveled to to train, and suddenly having this huge emotional release of tears, which at the time I attributed to being a long-held tension because my parents had died in my teens and that I was just letting go of some of the grief of it.
Niahm Daly:And I remember later in that same day and I was just letting go of the some of the grief of it and I remember later in that same day and I was so expertly held by this woman that you know I felt very safe to let that happen. But later in the day we were doing another workshop in the drama school and it was much more about, it was other stuff completely and I couldn't stop giggling for the entire thing and I was laughing and laughing. It was completely inappropriate and you know it had been school. I'd been told to go to the principal's office because I wasn't respecting the work and I remember going up to her after the giggling episode that same day and saying I'm so sorry, I just could not stop.
Niahm Daly:And I remember her saying it's OK, you had a release this morning and you were having another release this afternoon and I'm tearing up actually even telling you that because it's just that that level of understanding from her of the of what I needed to express, but also of the emotional nature of the human body, was a wake up call to a tender 23 year old who was still kind of, I'm great, I'm fab, I can do, you know, everything's fine with me. And in that training we also did a little bit of five rhythms dancing, which is a dance meditation where there are certain structures to it, but essentially it is allowing your body to move as it wishes to, as it is inspired to by the music, but also as it is supported in certain rhythms, to induce certain states, I guess. And so that was a wildly freeing practice and it totally got me where I love, which is I used to love clubbing. I always was a wild dancer and suddenly I could have something that I was delighted in socially, that could become an emotional support. So that would have been the beginning of my awareness that the body and emotions are not separate. And you know, a lot of people already know that. But I was 23 and I didn't, and we did lots of acrobatics and stuff in that drama school and I was really into the sort of physical prowess that my body could achieve. I did also damage my lower back doing some of those acrobatic things, and that comes in later to the story.
Niahm Daly:And then it was on a mountaintop on the first day of the year 2000 at dawn that my sister Ãine who actually is one of the models for the photographs in my book, she had recently found yoga and she led my entire family who climbed this mountain for dawn on the year 2000 through what's called a sun salutation, which is a sequence of moves in yoga, and I was like, oh, what's this? This is wonderful, and immediately started going to the teacher she was going to, who was an extremely skilled and experienced teacher. I fell on my feet because we know that yoga teachers can have a there could be a huge diversity of skill and experience and focus and she was also interested in how yoga could really help with the expression of emotional tension. So she was a rich, rich yoga teacher. So she was the person who helped me to become a more considerate yoga teacher than if I had just gone to another yoga class and then to move then, kind of bridging a gap between beginning to be a yoga teacher and then, when the menopause part started, over the course of the year's teaching, I was starting to be aware that as I reached for physical prowess in asana, in the yoga postures, I would also and I would try and pretend it wasn't happening re-trigger that back injury.
Niahm Daly:And I would know, oh my God, it was the forward bend. I overdid the forward bend or I did that twist too much of a drag my arms behind my back and pulled myself into that twist and bound my arms behind my back. But I would pretend it wasn't yoga because yoga was so fabulous and couldn't possibly injure me. But as perimenopause approached or became evident in my body, I started recognizing that it wasn't responding as happily to yoga as it had in the past and that there were things that just were being shaken up. That meant that I guess I felt the courage to really look at my practice and to really look at yoga.
Niahm Daly:And I got kind of angry with yoga around that time because there was so much of this kind of yoga can do no wrong. These postures will fix everything from thyroid dysfunction to aging. You know lots of claims and yet still plenty of injuries that weren't being spoken of. And then, added to that the vulnerabilities of perimenopause that I began to research, I started to, yeah, kind of feel like something had to be addressed, and so that's what led me to my passion to try and unpick yoga take away the things that might exacerbate the difficulty that a woman is going through during perimenopause and add the things that might support her during perimenopause and add things that might support her in the three kind of main health concerns, postmenopause, concerns, post menopause.
Niahm Daly:So I guess it went from, in a nutshell, a 23-year-old going wow about the body and the heart to a 45-year-old going hang on just a minute here and also wow, there's lots that we can do.
Jenn Salib Huber:So I think that's yeah, that's a good nutshell for you. I love all the parts of that story, especially hiking on, like New Year's Day with your family to the top of a mountain. That's amazing. I love that. And I mean we met during the pandemic online, you know when everybody was kind of showing up online more than they ever had because it's how we were connecting in this crazy world that we were living in, and I was always, and still am, drawn to both your down to earth approach, but also that you don't view yoga as just exercise, which is kind of how a lot of people do. It's like a type of exercise, right? I mean, obviously that's not the origins of yoga and anybody who knows a little bit about it knows that it's obviously more than just that. But in this day and age, in this world, it's like often listed as a type of exercise. Why is it more than that, especially in menopause?
Niahm Daly:What a juicy question. And so I would say the primary thing about yoga that may be less available in other movement modalities. And of course, there is exercise within yoga, which is the physical postures, and it's often in India you'll hear it being called yoga exercise, which is the physical practices. So that is a big part and it is massive, massive, massive in the West, of course, because we're all sort of body obsessed. But what yoga has that I think a lot of other exercise modalities maybe lack is an ability to help people to regulate the nervous system, hopefully through practices that they can do in easy ways. They can do them sitting on the toilet, they can do them in their car while the kettle is boiling, whereas something like strength training, which does have a certain degree of positive impact for the nervous system, you have to have some equipment, you have to warm up, you have to, you know all of this kind of stuff. You might have to go to the gym or whatever.
Niahm Daly:So yoga is, as are some other Eastern traditions, really well placed to support the upregulation of the nervous system, the hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenal axis. That is known to be quite common in the perimenopausal years and for men and women in later life too, that stress response can be upregulated. So the wonderful thing is that yoga in general can do this a mixture of meditation, physical practices, pranayama, breath work. But we also know that those three things on their own can help with the nervous system. So if you are just an exercise-y yogi, then that can help, just like going to the gym can help with stress. But meditation can help on its own and breath practices can help on their own. They all have robust individual research to show that it can help to regulate the nervous system. So if you were to make going to the gym as effective as yoga, you would have to add some meditation and some breath practice in to it. In a way it wouldn't matter what you were doing physically. So any yoga teachers will be who are who are more into the energetic aspect of yoga postures will get angry at me saying that. But my belief is that if we meditate and do breath work, what we're doing physically is not as important as long as we're not injuring the body. But that's me having maybe a lack of subtle awareness of my energy body, that I don't feel a sense of anything other than joy doing yoga postures, that I don't feel in the gym, but I don't feel that it has a kind of magical application just through the physical shapes. So nervous system, but then also well, it's hard.
Niahm Daly:Jen could talk about how I adjust yoga to make it more impactful for menopause, but there are already some other things in yoga that are relevant to peri and post-menopause, like there's certain breathing practices that help the pelvic floor. There are breathing practices that help lung function, which can reduce in menopause. There are, um, physiological, weird things we do, called bandhas, which can also help the pelvic floor. Um, there is a hugely beneficial aspect of balance, which is incredibly important for post-menopause. And then there is a really strong potential to develop your proprioception, which is your awareness of where bits of you are in space, which is also really important post-menopause.
Niahm Daly:And then arguably, depending on the way you do yoga, it can really help you feel aware of the nuances of sensation of your body, which can help with pleasure, which can help with awareness of what do I need to do to fix you know, do I need to go to the doctor here or is this just a little weird tickle of my hormones? So it gives gives, I think, often a better awareness of the body. But it can be done in a very disembodied way as well, but that kind of body awareness it gives can make it safer when you do go to the gym, if you are a person who goes to the gym. So I think it's an overall, it is a great way, if you choose, to let it stay connected to your body in a pleasurable way that also supports your nervous system. Trying to find sound bites Jen Bit of a sound bite.
Jenn Salib Huber:Well, I mean, what I hear from you is well, I mean to kind of back it up a little bit for anybody who's listening, especially who has been entrenched in the diet, wellness, fitspo culture, just like there's a hierarchy of bodies in that culture. There's a hierarchy of movements, right culture. There's a hierarchy of movements, right. And you would have things that get your heart rate up and make you sweat and build muscles at the top of that and things that are considered more gentle and easy at the bottom of that. And so, for a lot of people who have been in that world, especially pursuing a size, shape, number on the scale, whatever it is yoga is often something that they never really dipped their toes into because they always felt like it wasn't the best use of their time and I'm speaking from experience. That was me. That was me. It's like, oh yeah, yoga is nice when I have time, but it's not exercise or it doesn't really count, or it's like something you do, I don't know when you want to wear leggings. Mindfulness and breathing and stillness, which is very hard for someone like me. It was hard for me to value it right. It was hard for me to think, oh my gosh, this 30-minute yoga practice changes everything about my day because I am regulating my nervous system. I've released tension in my hip or my leg or my neck. I've connected to that tension that I didn't know was there. So now I'm going about my day more mindful of it and more aware of it, and it really, like what you spoke to about emotional regulation, is so important in menopause, Because that stress response, as we know, sometimes gets a little like the filter, gets a little bit thin right, and so, as our brain is getting used to these ups and downs of estrogen and eventually much lower levels of estrogen, the part of our brain, the amygdala, that is sensing and perceiving fear, real or imagined sometimes overreacts or reacts differently than before.
Jenn Salib Huber:And so what I felt and what I hear from people all the time is I just can't cope the way that I used to.
Jenn Salib Huber:I'm feeling like on edge, I'm feeling so stressed out and anxious, and so when you can have a practice that has a foundation of breathwork, I think that is how you reconnect to that very primitive part of our body that just wants to be safe, just wants to know I'm okay, right.
Jenn Salib Huber:And so that is how I really came into love yoga, also in perimenopause, because it was the first thing that really helped me connect to that feeling of being okay, whereas now I still love to sweat.
Jenn Salib Huber:I love to sweat, then I love to throw weights and kettlebells around, but now I've learned to match my mood to my movement, and that's kind of one of the things that I teach too. So if I'm feeling like I don't know, if I'm feeling like I have some anticipatory anxiety like that, waiting for something, yeah then doing a sweaty workout is actually what feels really good. But if I have that as we were joking about that existential anxiety, that like disconnection from all the things, then yoga is the only thing I want to do, and it can also involve movement and muscles and all those things, but what it really does is it ties everything together, which is what I love, which is what I love about it, and I love how you talk about it, because, even if you didn't say those words, I think I've learned most of those things from you at some point along the way, because I just love your groundedness about yoga.
Niahm Daly:Yeah, being grounded is really important to me, because if we are not grounded about it and we're not realistic about it, then we are giving false notions about what it can do. And there is some historical not not that distant historical kind of needs that for some reason the yoga world has adopted, that we have to attribute a benefit to every single posture, that we can't just actually allow it to be a lovely thing that people feel good doing, or we've forced it or we're not allowing it to evolve, whereas it's been evolving since time immemorial. You know, initially there were no postures spoken about except how you sit to meditate, and then maybe in the 16th century or 17th century there was maybe the adoption of some more physical practices and then 100 years ago there was use of gymnastics. Swedish gymnastics were adopted and brought into yoga and you know it's been evolving forever. So why can't we allow it to continue to evolve? You know it's been evolving forever, so why can't we allow it to continue to evolve?
Niahm Daly:So that's for me, one of the grounded pieces is that as yoga teachers, we are in service. There is a strong sense in the yoga world that a yoga teacher is in service and if we are going to truly serve the people who are in our classes, then we have to serve them as they change, and we can't continue to serve them as they change if we don't allow what we're offering them to change. And so I guess part of what you're calling my grounded nature is that I allow yoga to not be everything and not fix everything, but I also am willing to learn. It's like we were talking about writing books earlier and how, if you write a book that has research elements in it, there's this fear that some other new study will come out that will completely turn what the research was saying when I wrote the book, for example, turn that on its head. But that's part of what I think is to live connected to the truth of your being, which is the center of yoga, which is really truly meeting yourself, is to live with the possibilities that things change and that we can change with them, with them. So the humbling there is a humbling nature of yoga that is not always adopted by yogis and sometimes there is a very strong egoic nature in yoga and yoga teachers, especially if they are adept at very extraordinary body shapes. So I think to remain grounded, we need that humility and acceptance that we don't know everything and we're just explorers on a life journey and we never will know everything, and we do our best, so you know.
Niahm Daly:For example, you were talking about the limbic system or the amygdala, which is part of the limbic system, which is that primitive brain that primarily needs to know that it's safe. Having concerned for that when you were in your 20s in a yoga class, and for me as a yoga teacher having 20 or 30 something women in my yoga classes I didn't need to be that concerned about amygdalas and limbic systems. But when it comes to perimenopause, I needed to skill up. I needed to understand trauma, sensitive teaching. I needed to understand the nervous system much more robustly.
Niahm Daly:I needed to understand that the limbic system is affected by perimenopause and postmenopause and to help someone feel that essential thing that you talked about, which is to feel safe. And so I looked into what are all the possible ways that we can help someone feel neurologically safe, because that is the brain's primary need and simple, simple things like, instead of insisting that your students close their eyes when they come into the room or in their relaxation pose at the end, allowing them and even guiding them to deliberately look around the room to have a nosy to see exactly where they are Where's the door, where's the ceiling, where's the light switch? What does it look like? You know, all that kind of stuff can make us feel really grounded and safe, safe. So those kinds of little nuances are that are basically about presuming nothing and staying open to all possibilities. I guess, um, and that's what, if we are willing to let it be, yoga can do, do, it can stay open to possibilities, but unfortunately there is quite a lot of harsh holding.
Jenn Salib Huber:I talk about in intuitive eating, when people are trying to understand their relationship with food, or they're trying to understand why do I end up in the kitchen with my up to my elbow and the chocolate chips at eight o'clock every night? And I, you know, we talk about being able to observe without judgment, to be able to put that food anthropologist hat on, and, you know, instead of observing with judgment, which leads to feelings and shame, to just be able to say why, why, why is this happening? What are the things that led up to this moment? Because it didn't just appear out of nowhere, but it's. It's such an amazing skill that you can just apply to everything, to just have this neutral I don't know what to call it, but just this ability to observe yourself as a human, flawed, perfectly imperfect, who's going to make mistakes, who's not going to know everything but can still show up just as authentically as someone else, because we're all human and we're all flawed. And what you said about changing, too, a changing body is a human body.
Jenn Salib Huber:It's, you know, it's my mantra and I think, yeah, I love that you brought that up too. I want to talk about menopause research, because you've written this book, this amazing book that is called tell us.
Niahm Daly:Yoga for Menopause and Beyond, Guiding Teachers and Students Through Change.
Jenn Salib Huber:And it's a beautiful book. It has pictures and everything like that, but it's very research based, it's evidence based. So if you had to condense it on the spot, you don't have to condense it, but you know what are? What's the most? Where's the research when it comes to yoga and menopause? Because there's been quite a bit right.
Niahm Daly:Well, in the big picture there's been hardly any, but yes, there's been quite a bit. And I would just like to point out before I answer your question that there's a section on nutrition here that was looked over and corrected and mindfully, um, uh, edited, I suppose, or or I don't know what the word is by a wonderful menopause nutritionist called Jennifer Salib-Huber. Um, it sounds very cliquey now for for listeners me and Jen. No, I really appreciated your eye on the nutrition section, which is also, you know, kind of lists, a lot of the research based stuff, and particularly you helped me with my language and you helped me with the piece about soy, for example, and phytoestrogens, which was really helpful. And I have worked also with a wonderful nutritional therapist over the years, petra Fulham, who contributes to my yoga teacher training, and I guess her learning or her education of me around what she calls gentle nutrition would have been something that led me, when I found you, to completely aligning or understanding and appreciating your work, whereas before working with her I might have thought, no, we just need to be told exactly what to do. You know intuition, schmintuition. But yeah, I just wanted to acknowledge your part in making that section of the book what it is. So how might I condense the book? Oh, the research you wanted to know about, yeah.
Niahm Daly:So the important thing to remember is that where yoga comes up trumps in terms of research whether it's around menopause or around any other adjustments or changes that yoga can make in the human system is that it is always the best results are when it's combined meditation, breathwork and movement. As I said earlier, there are some individual breath practices which show some individual benefits and there are some bits of research around meditation on its own which shows some benefits, but when it comes to the idea of one or two or five yoga postures to fix menopause, that simply is not backed up by anything at all. Any more than doing six pilates movements rather than another six pilates movements is going to fix your menopause better. Um, some of them may be supportive of certain things, but it's usually just physiological, it's not going to be hormonal. And there are some pretty wild claims about yoga being able to revive ovaries. Really, yes, I'm sorry, revive ovaries and make them yes, I'm sorry, uh, yeah, make that make improve estrogen in the blood because of moving the body in certain ways that it stimulates the ovaries to wake up again.
Niahm Daly:Essentially very strange um and and quite well known protocol um I I won't go further into that. So I do tend to make sure that I read the entirety of studies, not just the abstracts. And if I can't get a hand, my hand on studies, then I can't trust them because either they've been hidden or they're not in circulation because they haven't been considered sufficiently robust enough. They haven't been considered sufficiently robust enough, they haven't been cited enough to still be in circulation. So a headline from a study is not something that pops into my book.
Niahm Daly:So there are a small number of studies that talking about how menopause just as or sorry, how yoga, just as it is, can support menopause, and they would have done all the usual things that any protocol will do for menopause It'll check hot flash frequency and intensity, it'll check sleep, it'll check quality of life, and all these done on questionnaires and indexes that are well held up as good research tools. Well held up as good research tools, and what we see in the most watertight and reasonable studies are that yoga is more or less equivalent to exercise in terms of improving quality of life, hot flushes and sleep. However, these studies have not been done into a yoga that has been curated for menopause. The most exciting study I found was one done in, I think, 2020, which included something called the information support method, which included educating the people in the study about menopause, helping them understand that this was not a disaster, that they weren't going to die from menopause and that there were tools they could implement to feel better, and then giving the tools. So that's the information support method, and it also curated the types of practice that it gave to the women in the study, and the results of that were more significant than the ones that were just yoga in general. So that's what yoga for menopause protocol is, and actually I hadn't found that study before I developed this. I'm very proud to say I started developing it in 2015 and only actually came across that study in 2023. So that, but the logic of it is sound.
Niahm Daly:I'm sure, jennifer, that anyone who understands lifestyle interventions for well-being you, they almost always include information support method, curated practices, whether it was, whether it be yoga for cancer or pilates for whatever concern.
Niahm Daly:So there are, but there are other fun things about yoga that they've discovered which are relevant to perimenopause, like that yoga can get this increase the length of your telomeres.
Niahm Daly:Now you know what a telomere is, but a lot of people won't. A telomere is a little bit at the bottom of your strand of DNA and the longer it is, it's usually longer the younger you are and it gets shorter as you age and they see an increased length of flippant telomeres, which may help to support the aging process. They also see, in yoga, reduced oxidative stress, which is also a very, very relevant to aging and to diseases, and they see also reduced cortisol, which is very important for perimenopausal and postmenopausal well-being. We see increased heart rate variability, which is the ability of the heart to increase rate and reduce rate, which supports the stress response but also can improve cardiovascular health. So there is definitely a wealth of kind of nerdy studies which, brought together, are kind of exciting. But I have to say that those are not necessarily only done in a peri and post-menopausal group. So we can say it may be relevant, but we can't say look at what it does.
Jenn Salib Huber:So yeah, I mean that's true for so many areas of menopause research, because we're just scratching the surface of actually studying menopause-specific interventions and outcomes. So a lot of what we think we know comes from studies that have been done on people that aren't in perimenopause or menopause, but that's changing somewhat, hopefully.
Niahm Daly:Yeah, Now that it's trendy, Jennifer, it's like.
Jenn Salib Huber:I know.
Niahm Daly:Yeah.
Jenn Salib Huber:So let's talk a little bit. So we've talked about, like, the body and we've alluded to heart and bone and stuff.
Niahm Daly:What about yoga and the brain? It's, I'm so excited about it. Um. So my, my three, three big passions are menopause, bones and brain, because we now know that alzheimer's is the number one health concern of an aging population. So as we grow older, the fear of developing that has now um overcome. What's the word?
Niahm Daly:I'm trying, I can't remember the word yes, overtaken the fear of some other diseases, like heart disease, and that's not necessarily because it is more likely to be what how die, but I think people are scared of it more than some other diseases. So that became a huge passion of mine while I was researching and developing this work, and so I studied in neuroanatomy and movement. It was a training that helped use neuro tools that refer to specific anatomical regions of the brain and how certain things we can do, like particular eye movements or particular types of cognitive or brain stimulating challenges, how they can help with neuronal growth and neuronal vibrancy, and then how to bring those into a yoga class, because yoga can be very samey and that's one thing the brain doesn't like now. Samey can feel nice and comforting to the nervous system. We know what's happening but actually, interestingly, something that challenges you physiologically but I mean challenges you in terms of coordination physiologically can actually help the nervous system regulate, because the brain needs to know that you are keeping it ready for a wide range of circumstances. So if you challenge the brain, it knows that it's having to step up and grow neurons. When you don't challenge the brain, it doesn't feel as safe. So, interestingly, the brain, it doesn't feel as safe. So, interestingly, just like muscles and bones need surprises, they need stress in order to build, the brain also needs surprises and stress and we can see that immediately in some of these challenges that the you offer a physiological challenge and you can immediately see improved mobility, for example, because mobility is only granted by the nervous system. If your nervous system is in that stress mode, we're stiffer, and if it's in parasympathetic, that rest mode, we are much more limber. So doing these flexibility tests and then doing the brain challenge and then doing the flexibility test after and seeing the improvement is so exciting because you know that you are feeding your brain and your brain is going. Thank you, thank you, thank you. So that's, I mean, that's not yoga itself, that's adding particular stressors.
Niahm Daly:There are definitely bits of research into yoga for brain health and we see, for example, that meditation can help grow brain gray matter volume in certain areas of the brain but not necessarily others. Grey matter in the cognitive parts of the brain and an increased size actually of that animal brain, the limbic system areas and bigger. We see the sort of counter through yoga that we get better rational, self-regulating areas. They get bigger and the kind of knee jerk areas get smaller areas, they get bigger and the kind of knee-jerk areas get smaller and it can really help with compassion, apparently, in terms of that evolutionary status where we choose compassion over cruelty, that the areas of the brain associated with compassion can get bigger as well.
Niahm Daly:There is not a lot of study into yoga and its ability to reduce Alzheimer's dementia, except for a thing called Kirtan Kriya, which is a yoga meditation which involves finger movements and chanting. Decline in people at risk of Alzheimer's, particularly people who are in the early stages, and the wonderful thing is that that's been researched so much and so robustly that it's even recommended by Alzheimer's societies around the world as a self-use tool.
Niahm Daly:Yeah, amazing. So that's great. We also know that yoga can increase vascular mobility and that's really important for prevention of Alzheimer's dementia. The mobility of your veins and arteries is what vascular mobility means. But so what I have done as well is then you know, as I say, say, done that neuroanatomy and and movement training, and then I bring what of that feels like it can make sense into a yoga framework, because I can't put every single research tool into yoga because either it's just not yoga or it's too too much. But particularly, for example, there are a lot of uh, there's a lot of. I mean, we just know it's not even lots of research, we just know that eyes, the movement of our eyes, is really significant to different portions of our brain, and eye exercises can help to improve the health of different parts of the brain.
Niahm Daly:Eye exercises have been long a part of yoga but they've been kind of put to the sides, they've been forgotten.
Niahm Daly:So a lot of western classes won't have eye exercises.
Niahm Daly:So I bring eye exercises back in, but they're not just yoga eye exercises, they're ones from neurological rehab and then things like finding ways to help teachers add cognitive load, so trying to stop people being sort of autopiloty in their yoga class and make them have to kind of step up and learn new things in their yoga class. And make them have to kind of step up and learn new things. And I've really excited I've brought this together into a new training. Alongside this, um, a teacher in in the states called diana may, and we're running a training in terms of uh, or, that is, about supporting pain, mobility and future brain health through neurological practices that can be brought into a yoga class or any other movement professionals class. Actually, we're welcoming all movement professionals to it. So, yeah, it's again. It's just like menopause that yoga as it already stands has some benefits, but we can amp it up if we allow for the possibility that yoga can continue to evolve and that we don't have to just do it like it's always been done.
Jenn Salib Huber:Well, I'm sure that this is going to inspire more people to welcome a yoga practice or some type of yoga into their life. What's one thing if you can, if you, if you on the spot, what is one thing that you wish more people or wish everyone knew about yoga?
Niahm Daly:okay, I'm gonna just say what first pops into my mind that if you find a yoga teacher who is willing to listen and then go and learn, if she doesn't know how to already support what you've spoken of, then you can be well supported. So find a teacher who is humble enough to offer what she knows and to learn what she doesn't know. I love that.
Jenn Salib Huber:So where can everyone find your amazing book and more about you and what you do? Because you've written more than a book. You also have a course, right.
Niahm Daly:I have three yoga teacher trainings yoga for menopause, yoga for bone health and neurosoma yoga. My book is is I'm holding it up for the camera for those of you who are watching. I love the colors, I so love the colors, so beautiful. And this picture I know you've asked me a short question, but this picture of me and actually the nutritional therapist I spoke about we did that just as a photo shoot for our workshops back 10 years ago and it just speaks to me of menopause two people in a yoga pose by stormy sea holding hands. Yeah, um, it's available wherever anybody gets their books. It's available. Uh, it's published by human kinetics. It's available on blackwell's. It's available on the big, huge thing that everybody knows about, amazon, um, and it's uh, yeah, my courses are. You can read about them on my um website, which is the instinct, yoga instinct with a y at the front, that's where I am on social media as well and we'll put all the links in the show notes too.
Jenn Salib Huber:Thanks. So last question are you ready to answer this again? What is the missing ingredient in midlife neve?
Niahm Daly:I'm sorry, but it is still pleasure and joy. It is still allowing that what we do can open up. Like I read I think I read myself writing about this that I wish that people who train or support people in midlife and later life like Pilates teachers, personal trainers, yoga teachers would, instead of just saying you must do this for your health, would say can you notice the pleasure? Can you do that and look for a bit more pleasure? Or how about noticing how joyful that makes you feel? Or does that feel lovely? We are so in this wellness world blinkered to. I must fix myself. I must fix myself and stop myself aging, dying, whatever it is. What about training trainers to help people connect to joy?
Jenn Salib Huber:here here. I think that's a great place to end. Thank you so much for this conversation. I feel like you know we can talk about so many things, but I'm glad that we got to hear a little bit of your story and about where this passion for yoga came from and that it's continuing. Thank you so much for sharing your time. Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of the Midlife Feast For more non-diet health, hormone and general midlife support. Click the link in the show notes to learn how you can work and learn from me. And if you enjoyed this episode and found it helpful, please consider leaving a review or subscribing, because it helps other women just like you find us and feel supported in midlife.
