#45 "Understanding Teen Behaviour and Mindfulness" with Rachel Posner

 In this enlightening episode of Teen Minds Redefined, host Cheryl Pankhurst sits down with Rachel Posner, a seasoned yoga instructor and counselor, to explore the challenges parents face when navigating their teenagers' emotions and behaviors. Together, they discuss the importance of mindfulness, the physiological responses to stress, and how parents can foster a supportive environment for their teens. Rachel shares valuable insights on modeling healthy coping mechanisms, the significance of curiosity in communication, and how to help teens manage the pressures they face in today’s fast-paced world

Cheryl-Host: Have you ever had 1 of those days where nothing seems to go right? You're juggling a million things and by the time you get home you are just done. Well today my guest Rachel Posner and I are talking about those days and how you can turn them around. We're diving into mindfulness, yoga, and the small daily practices that can make a huge difference in how you handle stress, stay calm, and model resilience for your team. But here's the thing, This episode isn't about adding more to your to-do list. It's about finding practical, doable ways to create

00:36 - 01:09
Cheryl-Host: a sense of peace, even when life feels chaotic. Rachel is gonna share her personal experience and expertise in mindfulness and nervous system regulations, offering insights that you can start applying today. We're gonna talk about the power of curiosity, both in how we approach our teens and how we navigate our own emotions. If you've ever found yourself at a loss for words or wondering how to connect with your teen on a deeper level, this conversation is for you. By the end of the episode, you're gonna have a fresh perspective on how to stay centered, even on the

01:09 - 01:59
Cheryl-Host: most challenging days and how to become the parent your teen needs you to be. Stick around. This is 1 episode you don't want to miss. Teen Minds Redefined, you're listening to the podcast with Cheryl Pankhurst. Welcome to another episode of Teen Minds Redefined, and today we are diving deep into the art and science of parenting teenagers. We're joined by Rachel Posner, a seasoned yoga therapist and mindfulness coach who specializes in helping people manage stress, build resilience, and truly thrive. Rachel brings a unique blend of neuroscience, psychology, and mindfulness to her work, offering tools that are not

01:59 - 02:15
Cheryl-Host: only transformative, but deeply practical. And she is here to share her insights on how parents can regulate their own nervous system, co-regulate with their teens, and cultivate a home environment filled with calm, connection, and self-compassion. Welcome, Rachel.

02:15 - 02:18
Rachel-Guest: Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.

02:18 - 02:39
Cheryl-Host: It is good to have you, especially I love this whole topic. I feel like there's just not enough of it going on. And I the more I get into this in the podcast, I think is so important. So let's start off with your story. How you got to where you are, what's your mission? Why are you talking to me today? What's the message?

02:40 - 03:21
Rachel-Guest: Well, my path has been circuitous, but it's always been in the wellness realm. So if I go all the way back to the beginning of my career, I started out with a master's in counseling, which I took into the school counseling. At the same time, I was into yoga, I started teaching yoga, I started getting certifications in yoga therapy. And then I just kept kind of adding to the toolbox. So I started that initial, those initial studies, almost 30, no, I'm not that old, 25 years ago. And I think over the last few years, I've gotten

03:21 - 03:53
Rachel-Guest: a lot more interested in nervous system regulation, in part because there's been so much research now around what actually happens in your nervous system when you meditate, what happens in your brain. So at first I had a lot of sort of here's the Western train of thought and here's the Eastern train of thought, but now those 2 trains of thoughts really, really overlap. And what has been most exciting about my work is to find out that neither cancels out the other. They both really support 1 another. So I get really interested in the place where mindfulness

03:54 - 04:17
Rachel-Guest: kind of intersects with neuroscience and psychology and I love to help people come up with individualized practices that meet their particular needs and practices that we can understand help and we can understand why they help, right? Because now we have brain imaging and we have lots of ways to tell what's actually happening in the brain when we work with these mindfulness practices.

04:17 - 04:50
Cheryl-Host: That's beautiful. And you know, before we even start, it's just such sometimes there's this, you know, understanding that it's, oh, meditation, woohoo, they're manifesting all of, I don't understand it. I can't sit still. There are different ways to practice mindfulness. So can you tell us, first of all, what feels like the most, Is it convenient? Is it something like if somebody were to say if a parent were to say, okay, just give me something fast Give

04:50 - 05:26
Rachel-Guest: me something that's gonna work right now. What what would they pick? What would you offer? So usually the fastest go-to is breathing because there's lots of different ways to breathe. And when we're stressed, we generally tend to breathe in a way that increases our stress. And counterintuitive, but that is how it works, right? When I'm stressed out, I will probably take a more shallow breath. I probably won't use my diaphragm to breathe. I probably won't take a long exhale. So those 3 things that I just named will actually help to turn on your fight or flight

05:26 - 05:57
Rachel-Guest: response, which is your sympathetic nervous system. But What I want to do when I'm stressed out is turn on my parasympathetic nervous system, which is our rest and digest response. And 1 of the ways we can do that is by taking a diaphragmatic breath, which if you haven't heard that term, if you wrap your hands around your low rib, both the front and the back, and you take an inhale, you should feel a little bit of kind of pressure into your hands. That's a diaphragmatic breath. When we can expand kind of to the bottom of the

05:57 - 06:32
Rachel-Guest: rib cage, we are using the diaphragm And when we use the diaphragm, it helps turn on that parasympathetic response. Also when we take a very long, slow exhale also helps turn on the parasympathetic response. And what you'll feel, you know, science terms aside, what you should feel is a little bit more calm when you take a longer, slower breath and a more efficient breath. And so that's usually the best go to because you can do that when you're in the middle of an argument with your teenager if you have the presence of mind to do it,

06:32 - 06:57
Rachel-Guest: right? So mindfulness practice, all mindfulness is, is paying attention to the present moment without judgment. And that's a tall order, right? To notice what's happening and not be telling a critical story about what's happening. But if I can just pause and be present in the conversation, even if it's a difficult 1, and have this background awareness of that slow breath,

06:57 - 06:57
Cheryl-Host: then I'm going to

06:57 - 07:00
Rachel-Guest: do a much better job in that conversation for sure.

07:00 - 07:08
Cheryl-Host: Yeah. Yeah. So what do you mean by co regulating with your team? What does that even mean?

07:10 - 07:45
Rachel-Guest: So our nervous system is our our autonomic nervous system is made up of what I just mentioned your sympathetic nervous system and your parasympathetic nervous system. And those are antagonistic, meaning we're always on kind of a teeter totter. So when we're feeling a lot more stressed, we're probably more active in that sympathetic or fight flight response. When we're feeling a lot less stressed or a lot calmer, we're probably accessing more of that parasympathetic or rest and digest response. My nervous system is co-regulating with the nervous system of everyone around me. So that what that means is

07:45 - 08:20
Rachel-Guest: on an unconscious level, my body knows how your body's doing. If you are really stressed right now, I will feel that. And we take in that information in lots of ways, but not really through words. We take that information in terms of gestures, voice tone, the speed that you're speaking at. There's lots of ways that our bodies are kind of figuring out the stress level of the room. And so when we're around somebody who is in that stress response, it's harder for us to stay calm. We start to respond to that stress response. Again, all of

08:20 - 08:53
Rachel-Guest: this is beneath the thinking brain. We can't really figure this out. This is just a thing that is happening in the background. But because those responses are, Again, co-regulating means that yes, if you're stressed, I might get a little more stressed. If you're calm, I'm gonna get more calm. So this is the thing that I wish that I knew when I have little babies. Like it has been wonderful to have this kind of in my tool belt having teenagers. I have 2 teenage girls. I wish I knew it when they were like 6 months old and

08:53 - 09:14
Rachel-Guest: I was stressed about maybe not being able to calm them when you can't quite figure out why a baby's crying. I'm not saying this to put any sort of blame on us as parents, but if we can stay calm, we will help our children and everyone around us to stay calm because nervous systems are always checking in the room, checking in with kind of a temperature in the room.

09:15 - 09:47
Cheryl-Host: Yeah, yeah. And I feel like we, as parents, there's, and I have grown as adults now, but they were teenagers once. And I was in the high school system for 25 years. And I feel like there's that feeling like I have to stay in the moment. I have to handle this right now, I have to deal with this right now. And it's like, you know, this ping pong effect, nothing's getting solved. And like you said, this nervous system is just bouncing back and forth. What can we say to a parent where They feel okay to just

09:47 - 09:59
Cheryl-Host: say, wait a minute, I'm going to back off. Like how, you know, what's the message there without saying you're not losing control of of whatever this conversation is?

10:00 - 10:30
Rachel-Guest: I mean, it's the best possible thing to model to say to your teenagers, I want you to know I'm starting to get stressed out. And I have a feeling that I'm not going to handle the situation as well as we would both like me to. So I'm going to take a minute. Can we meet in the kitchen in 10 minutes? Can we both take a little bit of time to kind of calm down, take a step back a little bit? Because when you're in fight or flight, physiologically what happens is everything narrows, right? Your body is

10:30 - 11:05
Rachel-Guest: preparing you for a threat, even if it's not a physical threat, right? We go into fight or flight for all kinds of reasons that are not actually physical threats or dangers, but that's how we're responding physiologically. So we can't handle a situation super well if we're in fight or flight. Because our vision narrows, our heart rate increases, all kinds of things happen that lead us to be over reactive and to not see very clearly. So to be able to model for my teenagers, I'm getting super stressed right now. You can see it. We're both aware of

11:05 - 11:18
Rachel-Guest: it. I don't need to pretend I'm okay right now, I'm not. And let's meet in 10 minutes. And that's such an amazing thing to be able to model for them that they don't have to solve every problem in the moment, but they can take some time for themselves.

11:19 - 11:56
Cheryl-Host: Yeah, asking for space, I find is just such a gift. And then yes, if we're practicing it, we don't even have to tell them. We don't have to write it down. This is what you do. You see us, They see how it works for us. And it just kind of, I think just gets infused. I feel like that's the ripple effect as much as nervous energy gets exuded from us, good energy also gets exuded from us. So works both ways. Yeah, I love that. I know you spent some time in the high school as a counselor,

11:57 - 12:26
Cheryl-Host: which means you spent time with teenagers. And you spent time with parents. I would like to know what you think the gap is there when parents come in and they're talking about their kids future or marks or report cards and kids are feeling some pressure. Is there like a gap? Is there something there that even the schools can say this is what we need to do here? Do you have advice for that?

12:27 - 13:06
Rachel-Guest: I mean I think in general the gaps usually come when there's fear, right? Parents are coming in because they're scared for their children and they're also defensive because have they played a role in the situation that their child might be in, for example. So the gaps are that I think that there just isn't enough space made for listening, for taking a few breaths, for helping people, and whether it's the counselor, the student, or the parent, for helping the people involved to be able to feel a little safer. So if we can create more safety, then our

13:06 - 13:45
Rachel-Guest: nervous systems settle and we can handle a little more vulnerability. But everything that happens in the nervous system is coming from the standpoint of, do I feel safe? Do I feel connected? If the answer is no, I am more likely to move into that fight or flight response. So I think there are simple things that schools can help teachers and counselors kind of foster in terms of just cultivating a room that feels safe before the conversations happen, before we actually dive in. Which can be very simple, like some really open ended questions. How are people feeling?

13:45 - 14:06
Rachel-Guest: I mean, some counselors might be comfortable doing a couple of mindfulness practices, 2 or 3 minutes of breathing together with some prompts and some teaching to get people feeling a little more comfortable. And so there's lots and lots of techniques that I teach around cultivating safety and connection. If we can get to that place, then the conversation changes a lot.

14:08 - 14:27
Cheryl-Host: If you could, if you could tell a parent how they can help their kid develop a mindfulness or a stress management practice that feels manageable. Where would you start with that?

14:28 - 15:04
Rachel-Guest: I think it really, really depends on the kids. So I've been teaching yoga forever. My girls have no interest in doing yoga. And I'm not going to try to make them do that. Right. So, I mean, mindfulness in the broader sense of the term is helping kids to be present, right. Which means if what you're doing is having a family conversation or doing a sport or whatever it is, watching a movie, you're just doing that. So wherever we can help kids put down phones, wherever we can help them put down an extra screen, all of those

15:04 - 15:43
Rachel-Guest: things. I know that it's really hard. So what happens is the more and the more stimuli you have, the more stimuli you need, right? Your brain becomes accustomed to stimuli. So if it is really hard for a kid to just do 1 thing, it's likely because their brain has become accustomed to so much stimuli that doing 1 thing is really uncomfortable. It creates a feeling of nervousness and of anxiety, which is the opposite of what we wanna do in a mindfulness practice. So just dialing it down, right? If your child feels extremely anxious without their phone,

15:44 - 16:14
Rachel-Guest: maybe ask them if they can put it in their pocket, maybe ask them if they can turn it down. Like, what are the ways that we can eliminate some of the additional stimuli so that we can help our kids be present for a thing that they're doing? And I include I mean, when I say our kids, I also mean me. Like, this is the culture that we live in. There's just so much stimuli. And mindfulness and the benefits of mindfulness come from paying attention to 1 thing, just doing 1 thing and doing it without judgment. There's

16:14 - 16:38
Rachel-Guest: not a background kind of story playing on how I stink at this thing or how I'm doing it wrong. There is just absorbing myself in the thing I'm doing the conversation. I'm having the game I'm playing and And there's lots of ways we can help our kids do that without asking them to sit down to meditate. That's just very simple. Like, how about we take that away and let's just be here for a little bit.

16:40 - 17:19
Cheryl-Host: Is there, I feel like kids and adult people period don't recognize, like don't have that awareness in their body when they feel like something is starting to trigger. And it's funny, I had this, sometimes when I have a very difficult conversation, I'm always afraid I'm going to overreact. So I just put it away. I don't say anything. And I see how I feel in the morning. And I'm just thinking that on a walk today, I'm thinking, that might not be a great idea. Am I just like packing away this trauma and just kind of leaving it

17:19 - 17:51
Cheryl-Host: there as opposed to like, is there something else you can do in the meantime? You know, like sometimes your kid has done something really horrendous And right, you're emotional and they're like, what do you mean you slept at his house? And what do you mean you have like, whatever. And you don't want to leave it because it's a serious issue. But you also don't want to come at it with all this emotion. Like how do you regulate that where there's such a validity in the conversation?

17:54 - 18:33
Rachel-Guest: I think a big part of that is really being willing to tell the truth about your experience. So I think oftentimes as parents, we're trying to say the right thing to solve the problem. And we forget that we don't really have to solve the problem. You know, our job is to support to facilitate, But we can't really solve a problem for another human being. And so I think part of it is being willing to say something like, I feel really emotional right now. I'm worried. I'm scared for you. I'm scared about the repercussions. I actually don't

18:33 - 19:11
Rachel-Guest: quite know what to say. Like there are things that I want to express to you about how I'm feeling and around particularly my concerns for what's happening. But I'm in a little bit of a loss. So maybe we need to revisit this in 5 minutes. Maybe I need to gather myself or maybe I really just need to hear what, not what were you thinking? We all know that tone. What was playing out for you? Because I really want to understand why you made those decisions. I want to understand the bigger picture. I think so often as

19:11 - 19:38
Rachel-Guest: parents, because we love our kids so much, we right away want to go to that problem solving and then we miss this whole thing of why we don't really understand why kids do what they do if we rush to solving the problem before just asking them and then also kind of letting them know how we're feeling too. Like we don't have to feel perfect. We can be dysregulated and scared and all kinds of things.

19:39 - 19:52
Cheryl-Host: How often do you hear them say, why would you do something like that and then not actually wait for the answer or not even want the answer? Right. It's that trigger response. Why? What were you thinking? Yeah, exactly.

19:52 - 20:17
Rachel-Guest: So I think the big word to bring in is curiosity. Instead of trying to solve, I mean, solving a problem, oftentimes skips curiosity, We need to gather information before we can take it to the next step. So if we're feeling like I don't really know what to say and I'm kind of overwhelmed, then I think that that's a good cue that we need to get more curious both around how we're feeling and also how our kids are feeling.

20:19 - 20:51
Cheryl-Host: That's really good. I like I love that. That sounds like so manageable and and like I said, we don't have to have all the answers and I'm very guilty when my kids were younger thinking I was like the human Google. I had to have all the answers, even though I was making shit up. I had to have all the answers. And now it's like, I say, I don't know all the time, but it doesn't matter. They're old and doesn't matter. But when they were younger and even into early teens, I had an answer. I felt like

20:51 - 20:57
Cheryl-Host: that's my job. I can't say I don't know. I know everything. Yeah clearly I didn't.

20:57 - 21:22
Rachel-Guest: Yeah and when we do that I mean again like so much of what we're doing is modeling We want our kids to to be and of course, we all sort of want our kids to be a bit better than us But if we're modeling curiosity if we're if we're modeling I don't actually have to know the answer then they can get more comfortable also not always knowing the answer.

21:22 - 22:01
Cheryl-Host: Mm-hmm I'd love to go back to and I this comes from an example about a week or so ago. I have been Meditating I've been doing yoga for 25 years. I do hot yoga 5 days a week and I do a morning routine, meditation and journaling and all of that. And it's so funny because people, I think they think they do these things a few times and they don't notice a difference. So they just give up. And I'm here to say, last Friday, I had probably 20 things in a row go wrong. Nothing life shattering, but

22:02 - 22:47
Cheryl-Host: it was a very frustrating day. In like, on paper. And I got home after 8 hours of everything, just 1 after another after that, thinking nothing bothered me. Like I had this protective bubble around me and nothing bothered me. And I'm thinking this shit works. It does because I don't. And so when you think, You know, I was thinking today, you know, I might not notice a huge shift when I do it, but I started thinking, imagine how I would have reacted if I didn't do it all the time. Like I always say, yoga and red

22:47 - 23:19
Cheryl-Host: wine save lives in my world. Well, I joke about it, but you know what? I actually think that it's very true and it's not, you know, what do you say to parents who are like, I don't have an hour to do this every morning. And what kind of practice can they even just start with and I find I miss if I don't get up an hour before everybody and do my thing. I really miss it like it my day's done and And yet I can't say to you, oh, you know, I hear messages and I have

23:19 - 23:39
Cheryl-Host: all this creativity and blah, blah, blah. I don't know. I don't know what it is. I just know that I need it. So what do you say to parents who are like, I don't have time for this crap and I don't think it works. And like, what can they shift a little bit just to say, just try this for this amount of time and see what happens. What would they notice?

23:41 - 24:16
Rachel-Guest: Well, they would definitely mean there's a reason we call mindfulness practices practices, right? You have to practice them and you have to practice them really regularly for them to work. And some of the ways that they work is because these practices strengthen the state of your parasympathetic nervous system, which is your rest and digest response, they make you calmer and more able to handle challenges. So you could have, let's say you wake up and your stress level is a 5, you've had a really tough morning, you get to work you're already at a 5, versus you

24:16 - 24:51
Rachel-Guest: get to work and you're at a 2. Whatever the next challenge is, you'll see it as a challenge or a stressor, right? Based on whether you were at that 2 or that 5. So what mindfulness practices do is they help you get back to the 2 faster and they help you maintain the 2 faster so that when something big comes in you have a little spike to a 5 but you don't have a spike to a 10 and So what we want is to have really strong parasympathetic systems. And when a stressor comes in, that is

24:51 - 25:26
Rachel-Guest: big. We want our sympathetic nervous system to turn on so that we can stay safe. Right. That's how the whole thing is built. It's built to help you survive, not to thrive. Your your nervous system doesn't care if you thrive. It just wants to keep you alive in terms of how it acts on its own. We actually need to put some effort into building the strength of that rest and digest system so that we can see stressors as challenges versus places that take us into overwhelm. And the only way to do that is to practice, to

25:26 - 26:04
Rachel-Guest: practice something that helps strengthen that system. So I think it's really important to, you know, ask the people, my friends, my clients that I'm working with, what is doable, because no effort is wasted. Anything you do along this realm will help. Now, okay, 5 days of 5 days for an hour every morning, that's probably going to help more than 2 minutes every morning, but that doesn't mean that 2 minutes isn't going to help. So I think it's really important to start with really what feels doable. And for most parents, an hour a day doesn't feel doable.

26:05 - 26:38
Rachel-Guest: Now it's hard to know whether that's because it really isn't doable or we just can't perceive the doableness yet. That's a whole other question but I'm not here to judge or doubt. I'm just here to help people figure out what's actually doable. And the place I usually start is, can you take a diaphragmatic breath and a long slow exhale? And can you take less than 10 of those a minute? So you could do it with a stopwatch. That's kind of a fun place to start You could expand that to 2 breaths in a minute. That's a

26:38 - 27:09
Rachel-Guest: super super tall order So I'm not saying there's a goal but making sure that you're breathing slowly enough That you're not exceeding 10 breaths a minute is a nice starting place. And do that for 2 to 3 minutes, every day at some point. Whether it's first thing in the morning, I think it's most helpful to create a new habit to add it to something you're already doing. So maybe you do it while you drink your coffee. If you already sit down and give yourself 2 or 3 minutes for coffee, breathe while you're doing it. I know

27:09 - 27:41
Rachel-Guest: a lot of parents will say there's no way I could sit down for coffee. I don't have time. That's fine. But there's something I'm guessing that they could do for 2 to 3 minutes and add like a really good breath to it. And then if you're starting to feel stressed throughout the day, just throw another 2 or 3 minutes in at the top of the hour. So building on really kind of rewiring so often when I work with people, pretty much all day long, they're taking a shallow breath. And that has a huge impact on your

27:41 - 27:54
Rachel-Guest: nervous system. So if you practice breathing well, a couple of times a day, a few times a day, you know, whatever you can manage, or do a better job of breathing throughout the day when you're not paying as much attention.

27:55 - 28:30
Cheryl-Host: Yeah, when I started this, I actually put an alarm on my phone every hour and just stopped and just took a breath and that's even doing my morning routine but you know working in high school is a little bit stressful sometimes and I find that you know I think people think I'm very laid back nothing fazes me but this is what it is not lay any more laid back than anybody else it is just that you know you can see the difference to people in a car. And you know, somebody's driving a little slow in front

28:30 - 29:04
Cheryl-Host: and 1 person is just enjoying the ride and listening to an audible and the other person's not having a good day. Right. And that's where you start to see, I think where you start to see the difference. It's not that you're laid back and someone else is hyper, it's that you practice that And it makes a difference. Like I can't even express how much of a difference it actually makes. It's so important to get this stuff down because the benefits are just so far outweigh the time that you don't have to do it. Yeah, I think.

29:05 - 29:18
Cheryl-Host: Yeah. How does how do you integrate? I'm just going to stick go to yoga for a minute because how do you integrate that whole mind, body and brain approach in your work? Like how does that all come together?

29:19 - 29:53
Rachel-Guest: A big piece is seeing them as 1. So oftentimes people feel like I'm either in my mind or I'm in my body. And I'm in my mind a lot more than I'm in my body. And what I want to practice is how to hold both. So can I be in this conversation right now having to use my thinking brain and also be noticing that my sit bones are on my chair and noticing if 1 leg has fallen asleep and noticing what it feels like in the palms of my hands? So having an experience of being both

29:53 - 30:31
Rachel-Guest: in my thinking brain and in my body is what I think when you described that the 2 people in the car. And I think that's what you're describing. 1 person who is having a conversation in their head about what's happening and why the slowness is going to have an effect on the meeting that they're getting to, you know, they're telling a story. And that story is creating a lot of anxiety. And the other person is having a present moment experience. They're listening, maybe listening to audible, they're looking around, there's a visual experience, Maybe they're feeling the

30:31 - 31:04
Rachel-Guest: actual sensation of 1 foot on the gas and 1 foot on the brake. They're having a physical experience so I think if we can shift to having more of a physical experience and That will have a huge impact on our nervous system and our stress level And I think that's what's amazing about yoga, that it's a very physical experience. But we're also paying attention to a lot of things. And that involves our head, that involves our thinking mind. I'm noticing where my arms in space, I'm asking myself, it's sort of like the brain asking me to

31:04 - 31:12
Rachel-Guest: Notice how it feels when I lift my toes in a standing pose So there's a lot of interoception a lot of paying attention to sensations

31:13 - 31:13
Cheryl-Host: But

31:13 - 31:19
Rachel-Guest: there's also making sense of those sensations and using our head So it's a practice that really brings both of those together.

31:20 - 31:25
Cheryl-Host: Yeah. And I hear so many people say, I'm not flexible. I can't do yoga. Can you please speak to that?

31:25 - 32:03
Rachel-Guest: I would love to speak to that. So I mean, yoga has just gotten such a bad rap, again, because that is the perception. And that's the perception because we see a bunch of pretty pictures on yoga journal or on whatever the messaging is that we're seeing around yoga and but flexibility I mean for me yoga is much more about creating strength in the body and adaptability versus flexibility, right? I want my body, I want the my muscular system to be able to hold me up. So if I am just kind of flopped over in a pose

32:03 - 32:36
Rachel-Guest: using no strength, I might be Working with flexibility, but I've got like no strength to support the flexibility Yeah so my perspective on yoga is Looking at where strength and flexibility meet And some of us come to yoga having more strength and others come having more flexibility. Either way, we're trying to meet the 2. So how flexible you are really has no impact whatsoever on yoga, except you just have to be willing to not look like the pretty picture. I don't look like the pretty picture in yoga.

32:38 - 33:15
Cheryl-Host: Me neither and it's funny because I I Feel like I don't you know people might not get into yoga because they're worried about what they look like. And I can tell you, after 25 years of doing yoga, 5 days a week, nobody cares. Yeah, nobody looks at you. No, you're the only 1. Exactly. You're literally the only 1. I wouldn't even be able to tell you what somebody was wearing or who was next to me. I just get into my own head and it's my literally my own practice. It's me against me in the best possible

33:16 - 33:34
Cheryl-Host: way. Yeah. And every day is different for me. It's not like training for a marathon where I have to go faster and faster every time I train. Every day is different. And I'll tell you the Shavasana pose where I'm on my back. That is the hardest pose for me to do. Right.

33:34 - 33:37
Rachel-Guest: I can. Why is it hard? This is a really good point. Why do you

33:37 - 34:15
Cheryl-Host: think it's hard? Because I find it hard. I try to stay in my body. I'm feeling the mat. I feel the sweat. It's 104. But the more still I am, my my brain starts to go, Oh, I didn't take a chicken for dinner. Oh, right. And I have to I'm much better at reigning it in. But it is you know, when people say yoga is hard, you know, the poses are hard. Being still with myself is a is a goal like it is a strive and a goal and I still find that my partner can stay

34:15 - 34:25
Cheryl-Host: in in Shavasana 15 minutes before the class, do the class and lay for another 15 minutes. I just know, no, yeah, but I'm working on it.

34:25 - 35:00
Rachel-Guest: A lot of people will say that yoga is much easier for them than meditation for that exact reason. So sometimes when people are coming to me to kind of help them design some practices for themselves I might suggest yoga over meditation or any kind of moving meditation so meditation doesn't have to be in stillness we can there's lots of moving meditations And really anything that you do and move through and you work to stay present and non-judgmental is a moving meditation. So whether you're walking, you're a runner, you're doing Tai Chi, you're swimming, whatever your movement

35:00 - 35:08
Rachel-Guest: is, if you can try to hold your attention on the sensations in your body, then you are in a mindfulness meditation practice.

35:08 - 35:09
Cheryl-Host: Yeah.

35:09 - 35:46
Rachel-Guest: So yoga is easier because there's so many things to pay attention to, right? And if you're working with a teacher, there's probably lots of alignment props, There are lots of ways to direct your attention that hold you in the present moment. As soon as we come to meditation or Shavasana, we're not really being asked to do anything. So, you know, a lot of the way we meditate can be based on how much information seeking our minds need that day, right? We can have an open awareness meditation where we're just noticing what thoughts come in. And sometimes

35:46 - 36:19
Rachel-Guest: that can be crazy making because all of the thoughts are bringing us to the past in the future. Which is why we work with oftentimes work with object meditation where we say let's notice sensations in the body or let's count the breath, lots and lots of tricks that basically give your mind something to do so that you can stay in the present and but a lot of what I do is to help people kind of get to know their own mind and Look at how much information they need to bring into their mindfulness practice so that

36:19 - 36:27
Rachel-Guest: there is a challenge, but it is not an overwhelming 1 that leads them to just get right off the map and say this isn't for me.

36:27 - 37:00
Cheryl-Host: Yeah, yeah, it's funny, I got my yoga 200 hour to teach, And I taught 1 class and I was like, Nope, I want to be the student. I want to be the student. Oh, my goodness. And it's you know, and when I talk about meditating every day, and there's some days I cannot just sit in the quiet. Some days it's earbuds and a guided meditation. Some days it's just music. So don't, you know, when I say I can sit down for an hour and meditate, no, no, not in the traditional sense. But there's, like you said,

37:00 - 37:29
Cheryl-Host: There's of course walking meditation, but there's apps you can use. There's all kinds of, if you just need that input, that just even the music so that you're not thinking about anything, you're just focusing on music, then great. And then you'll find, I find every once in a while I just like drop in and I'm out and think oh my god it's like a half an hour. And then there's other days even after all this time I could sit down and go I still forgot to take chicken out

37:29 - 38:02
Rachel-Guest: for dinner. But what I would say is even if you spend the whole time thinking about the chicken, right? What we do in meditation is we notice that we're thinking about the chicken and then we say, oh, you're thinking about the chicken. How about coming back to counting the breath? Or how about coming back to noticing the sensation in your foot? That returning is where a lot of the brain benefit comes from. So 1 of the things we're doing in meditation besides working with that parasympathetic system is strengthening our attention networks, which is really important, allows

38:02 - 38:32
Rachel-Guest: us to be present in our relationships and throughout our day. Every single time I say, Rachel, you're thinking about the chicken, come back to counting the breath. I am building my attention networks. So there are certain ways in which beginning meditators receive more benefits than advanced meditators in certain ways, right, because they actually have to bring themselves back more often. And there's a lot of brain building that happens in that moment.

38:33 - 39:06
Cheryl-Host: That's interesting. And I did I read somewhere that if you commit to doing something, whether it's exercising or meditation or yoga, and you don't really feel like it, and you don't really feel like it, but you do it anyway, you start to change the wiring in your brain because your brain knows you have changed something as opposed to your brain saying, oh, you suck. You didn't do it again. Yeah. I know that's harsh, but, But I think even if it's you've never done it before, if you 2 minutes or 1 minute or 30 seconds, now your

39:06 - 39:20
Cheryl-Host: brain's going, Oh, I can, I can actually do this for 30 seconds? I can change the way I think. Yeah. And you think that's like, there's the neuroscience. Right. That's, that's

39:20 - 39:56
Rachel-Guest: amazing. And that savoring that noticing is Another piece of the process So if you're breathing just for example, if you took 2 minutes to breathe and at the end you just acknowledged it I'm acknowledging that I gave myself those 2 minutes. I feel a sense of accomplishment for that. And maybe I'm acknowledging that I feel better only if that's the truth, right? But actually acknowledging anything positive that came out of that experience. That's a moment of savoring. And that does exactly what you're describing, it makes it more likely you'll do it again, because you're building this

39:56 - 40:10
Rachel-Guest: kind of deeper awareness that this is a thing that is helpful for you. So if you take even 10 seconds to focus on how it's helpful and savor that you will start to build neural pathways that say let's do this again.

40:11 - 40:28
Cheryl-Host: Yeah, I love that. Okay, let's just Talk about the word equanimity. I love that word. I love it. What is it and how does it feel? And what does it really mean?

40:29 - 41:09
Rachel-Guest: Well, it's funny, because I have heard so many different people use slightly different definitions for equanimity. When I feel into that word equanimity, it tells me that I can have all kinds of emotions and experiences and still feel some sense of settling that I can feel myself in my body and Fairly grounded even as there are things happening around me that are difficult so I think of those photos that you'll sometimes see after a tornado where the whole house has been sort of torn up and then there's a vase that hasn't been knocked over. Right. And

41:09 - 41:44
Rachel-Guest: it's that's what that's kind of the metaphor, the image that I think of when I think of equanimity. Some place to me is still finding some stillness, some sense of calm and ability, even though I'm also having lots of emotions. It doesn't mean that I don't feel the whole range of emotions. And I think sometimes with equanimity, you actually feel more emotions, right? Because our tendency is when something uncomfortable comes in, we want to get out, like we don't want to feel that. But I think equanimity is the willingness to feel all the emotions and still

41:44 - 41:47
Rachel-Guest: feel like we're not going to be destroyed by them.

41:47 - 42:29
Cheryl-Host: Yeah, yeah, I think that's really good. And I have 1 more question. How do we, and I'm not gonna say I'm not gender biased, but I'm saying as a mom, I'm such an empath and I think a lot of moms are empaths. How do we get, how do we, how am I going to say this? If I'm in this energy with my kid and I'm just feeling all the feelings. Instead of compassion, I'm like, feeling all this empathy. Is there a way to get out of that to recognize it and get out of it? Like, what

42:29 - 42:32
Cheryl-Host: would you say? Because I would feel that all day long.

42:33 - 43:08
Rachel-Guest: So I think you named it, you're describing empathy over compassion. And when we are feeling empathy, we're feeling the feelings of our kids. We're feeling our own distress. We're feeling their distress. That's what empathy is. It's really feeling the distress of someone else. And when we feel the distress of someone else, we also become dysregulated. So if we take it back to co-regulation, and there's a moment of empathy that brings in understanding, And that's helpful for connection and understanding if we stay in empathy if we stay with I'm gonna feel your pain and your suffering Then

43:08 - 43:35
Rachel-Guest: we will get dysregulated and probably our kiddo will get dysregulated Yeah, and so we're helping no 1 And why I make such a fine point about this is because a parent's goal is to help their kids. And generally we get this kind of messaging, I think in our culture, that if we feel someone else's pain, we're helping them, but we're not, we're grounding them in their pain and we're coming along for the ride

43:35 - 43:38
Cheryl-Host: Yes That's a mic drop. Sorry. That's

43:41 - 44:14
Rachel-Guest: It's a tall order to shift from empathy to compassion I think as a parent especially Yeah, and but I know this is gonna sound very simple and it's it is simple But it's not simplistic to see if we can pull ourselves away from what they're feeling Enough to have this background feeling of I just deeply don't want you to suffer, right? I want you to feel a sense of peace. I want you to feel connected. I want you to feel loved. You don't have to say those things out loud. But to kind of have that in

44:14 - 44:49
Rachel-Guest: the background of your own system, because that shifts you into the compassion that works in your brain, which are 2 different networks, empathy networks are located in the space around the limbic system, where we're more likely to move into that fight or flight response. And compassion networks are located in the prefrontal cortex, which helps us to move into our parasympathetic response. So if we can turn on the part of our brain that is saying, I love you, and I don't want you to suffer, Then we are less likely to get dysregulated. We're more likely to help

44:49 - 45:24
Rachel-Guest: them get more regulated. And we just get a little more perspective to then be in a helping supportive role versus to be stuck in the thick of their suffering. And there are Lots of meditation practices. So if this is really hard for you, which it is for most of us, if it's really difficult, you could bring in compassion meditations, compassion practices into your meditations. There are tons on all the apps. But it's essentially just repeating, kind of like you would repeat a wish or prayer or a mantra. My deepest hope is for you to feel loved

45:25 - 45:48
Rachel-Guest: or to feel safe like whatever it is you really want for yourself or for your kid repeat that as you're meditating Let that be the object of your attention instead of counting your breath. Just over and over repeat that wish. It will have a calming effect and it'll help you to strengthen those compassion networks so that when you're in the thick of it, you'll have more access to them.

45:49 - 46:16
Cheryl-Host: I love that because it's going through my brain is they're coming home with their first heartbreak or their first bullying or their first, where they're just on their knees devastated. And that's where this I think is so helpful to hear because there's nothing worse right or or a co-parent or whatever I think that's great advice put it on a posty note I think it's such good advice oh my goodness

46:16 - 46:28
Rachel-Guest: So if you're looking at apps like Insight Timer and Spades, if you look up either it will be called loving kindness or compassion or meta. That's usually what those compassion practices are called.

46:28 - 46:29
Cheryl-Host: They

46:29 - 46:30
Rachel-Guest: all mean the same thing.

46:30 - 46:43
Cheryl-Host: And I use the insight timer all the time. So I'm going to actually put a link to that in the show notes as well. Rachel, anything else, anything I didn't ask that you want to talk about, anything that I missed? This has been so good.

46:45 - 47:18
Rachel-Guest: 1 thing that I would add is to remember, you know, and well, I love I have always really loved the teenage stage and that doesn't mean that I don't recognize that teenagers can be difficult and But I want to say that I think it helps with our understanding when we understand that 1 of the reasons teenagers are difficult is because they don't have fully formed brains. So their limbic system, that place of emotion, that place that we might consider overreaction is fully formed, but their prefrontal cortex is not.

47:18 - 47:18
Cheryl-Host: So

47:18 - 47:52
Rachel-Guest: they are naturally going to feel things more intensely than adults do, right? So often I've worked with parents who say, they just make such a big deal out of this little thing. But it's a big deal because the way that their brains are formed and tells them it's a big deal. They don't 1. They also don't have the experience of understanding that things are going to be OK that we do as we get older. But also just neurologically, they are more likely to get dysregulated faster. So I just think that that's helpful. It doesn't mean that

47:52 - 48:01
Rachel-Guest: it makes it less difficult or annoying or whatever it is you're experiencing as a parent. But to bring in that understanding, I think is really helpful.

48:02 - 48:37
Cheryl-Host: I love that. I'm so glad you threw that in because that is like so meaningful. And you know, I've always kind of, and I love teenagers too. I'd rather hang out with them most than most adults, but I do find Like, I always go with they do well when they can. Just like adults, just like teachers, like we just nobody sets out to be an ass. Nobody sets out wakes up in the morning says I just want to piss everybody off today. Nobody. I'm sorry you cannot convince me that kids manipulate on purpose or want to

48:37 - 48:44
Cheryl-Host: push your buttons. I don't honestly believe that for 1 second. So you said that I love that.

48:44 - 49:11
Rachel-Guest: Yeah I think everybody just wants to feel safe and connected. And all the acting out the teenagers do is largely because they're not feeling safe or connected and they don't know how to get that need met. We do the same thing as adults. So Whenever we're looking at why are they acting like that, it's likely that underneath those actions is a call to feel safe and connected and they're trying to figure out how to get it.

49:12 - 49:20
Cheryl-Host: That's amazing. Thank you for saying that. You're welcome. Rachel, where do we find you? How do we work with you? All the good things about Rachel.

49:22 - 49:54
Rachel-Guest: You can mostly find me on RachelPosner.com. I am sort of on social media, but I wouldn't bother to send you there if I'm honest, because I don't put a lot of energy into it. But I have, and you'll probably have it in the notes, but I have some ways to connect with me, whether that's to get onto my newsletter, or I have a offer for a free week in my yoga and meditation membership. And I teach lots of online classes. Again, I have a yoga and meditation membership that's super fun and I work with people 1

49:54 - 50:10
Rachel-Guest: on 1. And through my website, you can email me. So I also am the 1 who answers my emails and I'm happy to, if questions came up around this conversation, I'm happy to answer them. So I'm like a real person that you can just email as well.

50:10 - 50:21
Cheryl-Host: I will put everything in the show notes. Rachel, thank you so much for all your wise words and compassion and thank you for the work you're doing in this world. I really appreciate it.

50:21 - 50:23
Rachel-Guest: You're welcome. Thanks so much for having me on.

50:23 - 50:47
Cheryl-Host: Thanks for listening Teen Minds Redefined and we'll see you next time. Teen Minds Redefined with Cheryl Pankhurst. New episodes out every Wednesday. Thanks for stopping by. You