James Tennant | Ep #42 | Can seasonal changes affect you?

or professional medical advice hey guys i’m tasha hey listeners this is gooni and we’re here to discuss lifestyle medicine today we’d like to kind of speak about the use of breath work and how we can use breath work in different types of seasons and how that actually can impact the mind-body connection and our overall well-being and for that we have james tennant a licensed and qualified ayurvedic practitioner and yoga practitioner and also the director and co-founder of tejas yoga which is a chicago based in the united states yoga studio welcome james to dodge of the podcast hi thanks thanks for inviting me it’s great to be here welcome james so i don’t know if if you guys can relate but for me seasons are just very i have a relationship with them i mean it’s hard i have a hate love relationship with winter for example where i like the fact that you know we’re slowing down but i hate the fact that it’s cold and i can’t go out and i feel crippled by weather i mean i think you’re in a boat with a lot of people and different seasons affect different people in different ways so ayurveda is always going to look at what the person’s constitution is right so if somebody that are more of a fiery nature they might really love the winter time right for them they feel like they get reprieve right but summertime they’re flying off the handle every five seconds they’re profusely sweating they’re just like in the season get over with it’s it’s pretty revealing about somebody’s personality um and behavioral characteristics depending on which season for me i like summer but then i feel i need a little bit more of a cooler temperature but not too cold and so autumn is like a great in between and it’s like i love the leaves changing colors to me autumn is like the worst because the beginning of the end of the year it’s it feels like everything’s falling it’s the closure of a year where i start you know feeling anxious interestingly like so i read this statistic and many different articles actually that talked about this where it’s called sad which is seasonal affective disorder according to the year winter research clinic seasonal affective disorder is a syndrome where people experience worse moods seasonally and most estimates suggest that like two it’s two to four more times uh more common in women than men which is also another interesting fact to to note is this something like you see as a you know yoga practitioner as a person who understands ayurveda yeah you know we’re talking about pretty specific symptoms that that do show up seasonally for people i think when people are um dealing with depression and anxiety year long and you know these are um you know these aren’t just moods necessarily and so you know rvdate has a scope that it can work with um you know to help with with those with those symptoms but um things that people are being affected by seasonally they feel a little bit more tired their sleep gets a little bit more disturbed you know they tend to feel a little bit more listless less motivated to go out and be social so these are really like common things that happen as the season changes where we’re getting less sunlight days are shorter but oftentimes those kind of moods will lift once the days start to get longer so i just want to make that distinction because i think it’s really important because i think anxiety and depression can be a result of a longer-term seasonal effect disorder but i would want to recommend a breathing technique for somebody that’s suffering from depression more long term than seasonality but i do think you know i i see this quite often and um you know our ayurveda is is always looking at things with these basic principles um one or a microcosm of the macrocosm so everything that’s out in nature is within us and then we’re always looking at things through the elements and the qualities that are associated with those elements either air fire water earth and so we’re looking at the qualities of the season and knowing that all qualities have their opposite so when you’re looking at the qualities of the season um you know winter in miami is going to be very different than winter in chicago that’s for sure yeah that’s for sure so we’re really looking at and observing you know what are the qualities of the season that we’re living in so most of the time we’re talking about a four season environment right when we’re talking about winter we think cold damp low cloudy we think those things and everybody you know in the winter months they’re always dealing with shorter days right and usually oftentimes less sunlight so that’s something that we can all share and so it’s it’s definitely something that comes up for quite a few people and ayurveda is looking at these two basic principles to help remedy the situation so when we’re looking at qualities of the season we want to understand that like increases like and the opposite balances those are two principles that matter how complex and vast this amazing system of ayurveda is i’ve always been taught to go back to those basic principles and over the 18 years i see myself doing that over and over again is what are the qualities that are affecting me or what are the qualities of my signs and symptoms and then if i want to remedy that through diet and lifestyle and lifestyle would include practices breathing techniques even meditation techniques to remedy that and so um that’s the perspective that i’m looking at um through the through the lens of our evade of the world yeah so i guess that what you’re saying is of course there’s a season that’s the environment that will affect us but then there’s our own constitution like our own body and how it works and as you and we kind of mentioned some people are a bit more fiery and some people are more steady or grounded and that the environment will affect them if we were to generalize say spring what would you say is spring’s main qualities or key elements if you were to define spring in a four season environment um spring is usually associated with more of a drastic change particularly in you know chicago or the midwestern here in a lot of areas there’s a lot of changeability right and i’ll use chicago as an example because it’s a perfect example where one day we’ll have 60 degree weather and the next day we’ll have 35 degree weather so that changeability is associated with the mobile quality and that can make people feel very ungrounded it can make feel really kind of light and feeling very unstable so that oftentimes is associated with spring and then as we’re looking through as we’re getting to the end of winter time usually in the winter time we’re naturally building up more tissue in the body right we might increase our fat tissue we might increase more phlegm mucus in the body it’s just something that we naturally go to in order to protect our organs and things like that but what happens in the spring is just like the ice melts so does all of those built up tissue and mucus it wants to leave our body right so we’re kind of experiencing the same thing that nature is but from an internal perspective so this brings up a lot of you know those damp qualities right the heavy quality but it’s actually trying to leave the body so it has a heaviness to it it has a dampness to it it has a changeability to it so for someone who is particularly they say maybe they’re more heavyset and maybe uh when they’re experiencing these these symptoms then um for the opposite like someone who’s a bit more lighter and they’re lankier people would they experience a positive shift into the season because they are like that kind of resemble that environment as well or would they also have some sort of opposition or experience with the change spring is a very interesting season for people because both things could be happening right so somebody has more of those heavier qualities to them innately right and they’re starting to experience this kind of what we might refer to as internal melting where we’re starting to release their signs and symptoms are going to be different than somebody that has more of these like qualities in them or you know if they’re more sinewy or have those heavier qualities where they’re going to really be affected by those that change ability right so they might feel a little bit more anxious they might feel a little bit more rattle they might feel a little bit more grounded right where the person that might be a little bit more heavier set or have these higher qualities to them um these more earth qualities right as opposed to more of the air and ether qualities these people that have those earth and water qualities to them will start to feel what you might be referring to and and is is that this release of the sexes so they might have more colds right they might have more congestion in the us congestion and sciences right so the signs and symptoms are going to be different even though they’re being affected by the same season based on you know what they’re already predominantly um kind of like their biochemical makeup is predominantly right okay so i i’m i’m living in malaysia right now so with the four seasons right we kind of have i guess two ish seasons with the same experiences occur well with two seasons typically you have like a dry and a wet season so that’s what you’re you know what you’re looking at where as you know you’re going from the wet season which has these heavier and more damp dull cloudy qualities to them as you’re leaving that wet season and going into the dry season your body will have a very similar experience to where other people might have in spring in a four season environment right because now there’s been this build up for months have experienced all of these heavy damp cold cloudy qualities so we’re being affected by that and we go back to that basic principle of like increases like so i already have those qualities in me predominantly those earth and water qualities and i’m being affected by the environment which has the same qualities as i’m shifting into these you know dry light qualities in the dry season my body is going to naturally want to release that buildup it will start to create a shift now there are things during those months though however and this is where we start getting into the second principle the opposite balances during that wet season or during the winter months we have tools that we can use breathing techniques practices lifestyle choices diet choices that we can help to balance the qualities that we’re being affected by that are predominant in this season right could you tell us a bit more how you could connect the breath work to the different seasons um since we’re talking about spring maybe you can kind of start with that sure you know this is where you know ayurveda asks us to take a little bit more responsibility for our health um you know i don’t want to generalize but westerners we become a little bit more dependent on what external sources say and and not necessarily assessing ourselves so evade really wants us to observe you know what these more primordial signs and symptoms are so if i’m feeling a little bit more congested then in terms of breath work i would want on a more regular basis to do a breathing technique that has those opposite qualities of feeling heavy or congested so there’s breathing techniques like skull shining breath or bellows breath that are more rapid paced breathing so it’s more fast it’s more forceful breathing it has more of an uplifting energetic effect to it good breeding techniques that help to clear the sinuses improve the respiratory muscles clear the nasal passages and help to create internal heat so we’re balancing the cold quality and the dam quality now if i was feeling very anxious this is another person that might be experiencing these light qualities these excessive changeability qualities and so if i’m feeling a little ungrounded um and uprooted by this the changeability of the season then i’m gonna want to have a breathing technique that’s more grounding right more balancing like alternate nostril breathing you can also do a practice called um brahmary it’s a sanskrit word that translates to like a black bee buzzing sound and it’s a humming breath and i found that for the springtime this particular breathing technique can be very effective in spring i think it balances both the qualities that people might be feeling that are a little more congested and feeling heavy and at the same time can really balance people that are feeling a little ungrounded so it’s calming but it’s energizing at the same time and what i mean by that is that it helps to calm the nervous system but helps us to create an increased internal alertness right that really works for spring is it better to do it at a certain time of the day um how do you navigate that well that starts getting into what’s referred to as like a whole ayurvedic clock so there’s times of day that might be better to practice certain practices based on the person’s constitution and what the symptoms are but i will say this just do it it doesn’t matter what time of day that’s right yeah it’s better sitting on the edge of your bed it doesn’t matter if you’re sitting in the chair in an office just do it i think people get too stuck and like i have to be sitting on a meditation cushion and i have to be surrounded by birds and by beautiful music it’s like stop just do the practice i have to say that i’m lucky enough to have that environment and so i can actually want that and actually have it yeah that would be that’s like that might be ideal right but we don’t live in an ideal world most of the time yeah right we’ve got kids screaming in the bathroom because they you know they need their ass watch we’ve got dogs we’ve got all these things going on right so whenever you find the time do the practice that that’s going to be balancing for you the right timing is whenever you see the opportunity just do it i think that’s great advice and so we kind of covered spring what would you recommend during summer shoot it off to you i’ll ask you a couple questions do you think summer has more to do with the hot quality or the cool quality i sweat a lot so it’s very there’s a lot of heat the hot quality the most right i mean right usually across the board even um climates that don’t get that hot it’s hotter for them right right yes you know but you’re in place like antarctica or the north pole or something um you might not have to deal with the hot quality too much but um so first and foremost right i mean that’s a very specific and direct quality that we can balance an effect and so there’s two cooling breaths specifically and the breaths that are actually it’s very rare um in yoga in arabic that you’re actually breathing into the mouth um mostly because you know there’s a whole several filtration processes that you know the breath goes through when you breathe through the nose as opposed to mouth where there are zero so there’s that but it’s very slow breath through the mouth there’s two different techniques that are considered to be cooling breaths so um but we also want to keep in mind too that heat has an innate tendency to rise and breathing techniques that are going to be more calming for the mind because the hot quality also affects our behavior right we can get a little more hot headed right we say these things they’re vernacular all the time right we’re just putting it in different contexts right people lose their temper more um you know in the summer months oftentimes a little bit more impatient um so the hot quality is is is playing a role in all that so cooling and calming are two qualities that you want to find in the breathing what do you mean by when the heat uh has a tendency to like easily rise what does that mean well if i have a lighter and i turn the lighter on and then i flip the lighter upside down where does the flame go still up yeah right so he will always rise that’s just nature that’s right that’s okay okay gotcha we’re a microcosm of the macrocosm so it’s heats the same thing within us as it is in nature okay so that you can use i guess the the intention is like to cool keep yourself as cool and grounded so that you don’t get affected too much by the heat right and that we keep the heat in its main site which in everybody is considered to be the small intestine or the navel area right we need the heat there right to digest absorb assimilate help with elimination but um we want to keep it in its main site right we don’t want to feel a lot of heat rising you know to the head um and so this is where the calming and cooling breaths come in and in autumn because things are slowing down and getting colder yeah so in an autumn in a four season environment um it is another very changeable season you know for for us and i think that um you know those other qualities you know and that we’re starting to experience like the dry quality right we start leaves dry up the light quality there’s tends to be a little bit more like this light crispness to the air um sometimes in environments start to get very windy right so there’s changeability in the wind so there’s also the mobile quality that’s associated with the fall and it starts to get cooler right it’s you know it’s get that crisp that crispness and you can feel it right i mean anybody that’s living in a fortunate environment you know the day when you pull out that blanket for the first time and put it on yeah okay it’s here yeah and so those are the the qualities where you know the cool quality starts to even there is a transition however where like in spring when we start to shed those excess earth and water elements right in the fall there is this period of time where we’re also shedding more of those fire elements and so we might go through this phase of releasing excess heat in the body so we don’t want to start doing warming practices just yet we want to allow that process of any excess heat to be released so we’re not really doing cooling breathing techniques we’re not really doing warming breathing techniques and this is where i find more neutral breathing practices like alternate nostril breathing something that balances something that is very steady and grounding what’s a physical manifestation of heat being released from your body well depending on the person it could show up as rashes um it could show his acne right you know oily skin oily hair um loose stools and then behaviorally um again it could show up as as being more impatient uh feeling a little bit more on edge feeling a little bit more irritable and and then in winter when the days are shorter the lightest you have maybe four hours of proper light and then drama queen but like you have very limited amount of uh of light and then it’s it’s very cold and you you just want to stay indoors because um yeah stepping out is such an effort so i guess the breath work would be trying to generate heat would that be correct it’s it’s true yeah this is where you know where we want to balance the cold quality with the hot quality and so we we want to create more heat so there’s breathing techniques that help to do that like is bellows breath in particular that again is really short sharp inhale and exhale forcing the breath more out through the nostrils and pumping the abdomen right so we’re really engaging the abdominal wall so a lot of the attention is going to get drawn to the main site of the fire element which is in the navel and just more dynamic movement right a more dynamic breathing technique or more dynamic movement um you know for the abdominal area is also you know pretty effective but yeah more heating breaths and more breaths that are balancing the heavy quality oftentimes we feel that heavy in the damp rain the cloudy quality so we also want breathing techniques that feel more uplifting so again this might be a more kind of rapid type of breath like skull shining breath where they’re very short sharp breaths there’s more of this upward lifting energy to it being feeling low in terms of mood uh could be a breathing technique that that could be useful yeah i would say that if they feel if the qualities of the depression are more um have those heavy motivated listless qualities to them um you know then something more uplifting and more of a rapid breathing would be effective um they make more distinctions of types of depression some depressions are more rooted in anxiety right fear and uh loneliness and you know a breathing technique that’s going to really increase that lightness quality um wouldn’t be for them it might actually aggravate it so it’s it’s um it’s it’s challenging right there’s these this framework that’s so beautiful and there’s some general guidelines that we can we can fire in ayurveda it’s tough because my teachers taught me to always ask for whom when you’re giving a remedy when you’re recommending you know these things uh we we’re always asking for whom so um arvid is a system that has amazing tools for preventative care there’s a lot of general things that we can do seasonally to help find more balance and increase health particularly in the lifestyle um but but at the end if we want to get really specific you know who if we want to have the the most potency from the practices we dive a little bit deeper and look at the qualities of the signs and symptoms that we’re experiencing these breathing techniques can can fit into your life and there it doesn’t have to be bird singing and you have to spend a half hour like we’re talking three minutes we’re talking five minutes you know like you know i’ve worked with people and with one particular client that i worked with we decided they were gonna do their breathing technique in the car before they went to their house it was the only place that they felt they had five minutes where somebody wasn’t asking them to do something right the breath has three components the inhale the exhale and then there’s this retention there’s a pause between the indionics and i encourage people that i work with that feel very stressed that feel like the demands of life are get to them often um to find those moments in between the inhale and the exhale of life and and pause and take a conscious pause and if you can even add in a couple of minutes to do a breathing technique that’s a great time to do it that the cycle of the breath right as you nicely described it most of the time we we’re not really conscious about that cycle we breathe and surface um hence why having that break and beat like the car or in the toilet focusing on that cycle and and noticing that cycle is um is what we should be starting to do more and that’s basically what you’re promoting anytime we start paying attention to our own breath it lengthens naturally for the most part right there’s unconscious of the breath it lengthens but as a teacher practitioner you know we get to observe other people’s breath and and it’s like three or four seconds long what’s a good indicator that you are reading in a proper way things that i told my students in particular when they’re practicing right we’re doing physical exercises and removing and so you know throughout the practice i’m encouraging them to observe their breath because it’s a mirror as to what what your nervous system is experiencing right i realize that it’s a two-way street right so if i’m shallow breathing think about when somebody’s scared or anxious right the breath rate starts to increase or sometimes we’ll even hold the breath and we’ll stop breathing so that is going to then affect what kind of hormones are released in the body right these fight or flight hormones um we live in this like a lot of us in this low grade stress mode and our breath is is reflective of that and so if we can lengthen the breath become more conscious of the breath you know it’s something that happens automatically so it’s not like i’m going throughout my whole day you know hunting my breaths much more you know that would be like weird um but if you know we’re more conscious of the type of breathing that we’re doing throughout the day we might catch ourselves with short breathing and and then you know just lengthen it you know it’s again it happens automatically when you become more conscious of the breath and then it starts to feel then it becomes training right like muscle memory you know we start to basically increase our capacity for fuller more comfortable breaths so then we start taking fuller breaths in more comfortably naturally uh and that’s you know my business partner and i you know which we always joke it’s like you know when we’re teaching people physical postures we feel more like we’re teaching them how to breathe more than getting warrior one it really does affect then what the nervous system is is experiencing and and then how the rest of the body on you know a glandular system is is going to be affected so you know i’m not going to say six second breath is the perfect length for your inhale or exhale because there’s probably different schools of thought out there that that might say different but by becoming more aware of the breath and allowing the breath to lengthen naturally is key right because for me to take a full breath in naturally when i’m conscious of it it’s like it could be up to 10 seconds long right right tell somebody else to take a 10 second breath that’s going to make them anxious as hell right yeah yeah i’ve been to those yoga classes and i’m like i i only reached four is something wrong with me right and then you start going in something wrong with me then you start intellectualizing right and it’s really when i’m working with people it’s it’s getting them into a feeling of their breath to find their most comfortable but fullest breath yeah it’s basically what you said is being conscious of your breath and and there’s actually studies out there that shows how long and conscious your breathing is the more impact there is between the mind and body connection so it has really an impact on your nervous system and the psychological status as well so we have now science that confirms some of those ancient uh wisdoms uh theories so yeah yeah estimating that they’ve known they’ve done this for thousands and thousands of years you know now they’re like plugging into your brain and looking at your your brain waves you know and yeah right they didn’t have all that you know thousands of years ago but they they they knew you know and like you said now we have a lot of studies well not a lot but more studies showing up going slowly yeah yeah i mean we are one of the practitioners we interviewed she’s a yoga therapist and also an ayurvedic practitioner and acupuncturist tisi um she the way she described it was very nice where she said basically in the past the art of observation was you know the way that you understood illness and sickness um just to identify it right and so being a practitioner in these sort of fields is like just becoming a really good observer because they didn’t have the medical tools back in the day right um so i think okay so you just have to be better at observing your own self and then you be more knowledgeable what’s happening inside of you right yeah and that’s when we’re gonna catch these you know what these primordial signs and symptoms that we oftentimes blow off right gas bloating indigestion you know my stomach feels full a few hours after i eat you know these are these are things that if we don’t ignore these signs and symptoms that’s when they’re the most manageable that’s right it’s when we ignore them and they’re reoccurring and we keep ignoring them now we’re starting to get in these different stages of disease and they start to become more complicated so that observation you know being a good observer is i think yeah the first step into improved health and so by being conscious in your breathing that then allows you to identify those those signals because again what we’re trying to do and i think the body is so well made to preventively tell you hey like there’s something going on pay attention and if you’re not being conscious and breathing consciously then you kind of overlook those things and this is why you come to a chronic stage and this is why you need an allopathic doctor i’m i just wanted to ask you like out of you know we surely focus on breath work um and kind of the impact you know in the different seasons but of course there’s other lifestyle factors that are important but we didn’t cover just like food and nutrition and sleep which we touched on a bit but between all these elements how much do you think breath work or how much does it weigh in the overall i guess pie of it if they can’t manage all the other areas of their life as well incorporating more conscious breathing or specific breathing techniques um is for me a pretty big priority i feel like the breath is a bridge for not only affecting my nervous system quality of my mind which then you know if we go a little bit further is also um associated with consciousness right so how i’m actually not just moving through the life but consciously about how i’m moving through life unconsciously right um and it’s affecting vital life force you know in in yoga and ayurveda we consider this vital life force to be called prana um sometimes we call it g or ki but you know there’s just you know most western traditions they believe that there’s this vital life force and breath isn’t the same as prana but it’s a vehicle and you know our breathing is affecting that vital life force and if we’re not breathing properly if we’re not allowing ourselves to to focus or incorporate breathing techniques that are going to be more balancing for us you know all of those systems right are going to be affected the qualities of my mind my nervous system um my glandular system all the tissues in my body right all the way from just me oxygenating my blood right with with breathing properly and what that oxygenated blood does to my brain and what it does to my tissue so you know and to the bottom is if we stop breathing we die that’s right yeah that’s how important breath is we dismiss it since we’re living in a very fast-paced life and we think yeah i’m breathing but it’s not really proper breathing if you’re not conscious about it right i really like the analogy of using breath as the bridge to these other elements which is sleep or nutrition so i really like that thing thanks for that to to close off like other are there any solutions or tips you can offer our listeners of what they can start with today so that they can actually start working on bridging that that gap you know one of the things that i emphasize a lot with students and clients is routine um this is something that if we have an aversion to a routine it puts a sour taste in our mouth right the monday and you know oh i do the same thing every day and you can give yourself a little bit of leeway you know in terms of what your what your day looks like but the reality of it is our days for most of us are already all over the place right i mean the unexpected comes up all the time and we’re multitasking or trying to multitask and you know you know if we add a little bit of routine in the morning and a little bit of routine in the evening i’ve found that it’s very effective in order to get our nervous system and our biorhythms on board and really gets us set up for the day and allows us to get prepared to wind down you know so just doing a few things in the same order every day right first thing in the morning right before you do anything else you know one of the things that i think is helpful is conscious breathing um and gratitude you know they take a couple of minutes just acknowledging something that you’re grateful for or that you appreciate even if it’s a memory it might not even be something in the moment just some a memory takes a moment you know to acknowledge and to to wake up your heart and then use these other things to wake up your senses and even if it’s just sitting up on the edge of your bed placing the soles of your feet on the floor and doing a couple minutes of conscious breathing even inhale even exhale keep it that simple but the consistency of it is what’s going to give you the gifts right it doesn’t complex it should be consistent and then the evening same thing before you lie down for bed soles of the feet on the floor lit up tall conscious breathing it’s it’s discipline right and that’s this code that or the name of a book actually discipline equals freedom uh and i i truly believe that so um yeah and sometimes we have to ask for help if we have other people in a household um yeah you know shy you know we’re so unshy about all these other things right in our life the family and our spouse and you know we will tell them exactly what we want in these other realms but when it comes to self-care when it comes to be like when i first wake up this is what i want my morning to look like we don’t do that we don’t ask for these things we don’t say this is what you know i would i need and um and so and excuses come up or we get sidetracked and so i think asking for help you know for other people in the household can be really important or get the kids involved you know like do this with me lead by you know that’s a it’s a it’s a good way to getting them involved in healthier habits too i mean they’ll probably be like you’re weird being a child of the household that included meditation we didn’t find it awkward because you know it’s part of everyone’s routine and you know that when mom is meditating you need to be uh silent and quiet and mind your own business for at least 10 minutes and uh and i think that’s a very healthy habit well let’s make it the norm you know yes 100 yes yeah thank you for that james um and as always to to do our closing in our rapid fire questions so for the first question what is your first sign that you are out of balance for me i start to feel anxious if i’m feeling like i’m talking fast or if i feel like i’m a little ungrounded or i’m forgetful these are just signs and symptoms that i that i notice um in me that um i know i need to slow down i i and immediately check in with myself and so as a follow-up in those moments what are your coping mechanisms and methods for for you to get back in balance um pausing taking a moment um taking a break from what i’m working on taking a break from answering phone calls looking at my phone i i take a break and now conscious breathing kind of automatically kind of comes in where i’m just focused on my breath but and again this is just a moment yeah it’s not a half hour long just take a minute to pause yeah um what is one book that impacted you or your approach to well-being and health i would say perfect health by deepak chopra you know when i first started learning ayurveda it was very confusing to me it’s like i wanted to to apply these concepts but i didn’t really know how and i i felt like that was one of the first books that helped me to organize some of my thoughts it did a well laid out laid out book especially for westerners who might be hearing a lot of these terms for the first time well james it was such a pleasure to speak to you and to have you on our show and thank you for taking the time and hopefully we impart some wisdom with our conversation with you it was a pleasure and it was really uh lovely being here and yeah i enjoyed it so thanks for asking me if you enjoyed this episode go ahead and select that follow a subscribe button for now stay safe and we’ll see you next week good