Mental Health is at the forefront of importance, now more than ever before. We just never know what someone is going through behind the mask we all wear (figuratively and literally). How are we integrating a consciousness-based approach in supporting mental well-being within ourselves and for our community?

Podcast Transcription

Namaste everyone and welcome to the Dry Bokta Yoga Podcast where we share information on all things yoga, Ayurveda, and well-being lifestyle. I am excited to share these resources, insights, interviews and so much more as we grow together on this wonderful journey of well-being. I am your host, Christina Andrini, founder of Dry Bokta Yoga Foundation and JBYU School of Yoga and Ayurveda. I'd like to invite you to subscribe to our blog on Tumblr as well as to follow us on Instagram and YouTube and Facebook and all the fun social media channels where we share some of the tips and insights and resources from our podcast and vice versa on here. Now let's go ahead and begin with today's episode.

Good day, happy Monday, and happy day everybody. So I'll give it just a moment as those of you are tuning in and joining us today. I'm Christina, Jibakhti Yoga. Welcome, welcome Nicole, welcome everyone. Thank you so much for joining today's topic. As always every Monday, every single Monday we're here live to talk about all things wellness and yoga related. But we talk about hard conversations. We have conversations that a lot of our community really has some aversion to speaking about. And we want to bring this up because we're all going through this. We've been currently working through suicide, suicide awareness, and trauma. We've gone over yoga is not a performance that you can go back to our IGTV lives here on Instagram and watch. As well as on YouTube. So we have them there. And it's just really important that we understand why we do yoga and yoga isn't about being flexible physically. It is in a way obviously because we're stretching and we're doing the work. But the flexibility is with ourselves and it's with accepting ourselves on a variety of levels that at times we in our own right put up a lot of judgment and we put up our own walls. So I want to introduce that over the next four weeks, we will be partnering with some really, really incredible survivors and leaders in the industry of mental health and wellness. We will be gifted and blessed to receive four weeks with Maria Colleen, who is a dear friend of mine and went through teacher training with me also. And she in herself is not just an artist and a creative, but she's a survivor of sexual abuse and trauma, and depression. And she has been coping with this transformation for quite a long time. And as she is waking up in her body again and coming back into herself, she has so many wonderful nuggets of information to help so many others with what they may be going through in this respect. She also will be sharing her story and where she has come from and how she's still coping with depression and trauma. She's been in isolation for herself four years prior and during and now through COVID. So isolation for her is a very, very, very powerful thing to talk about because she knows the isolation that you have within yourself, even when you're amongst many others. So she will be joining us for four weeks every Monday, starting next week, diving into some really hard conversations. And I have some key points I'd love to share with you all and talk about. And the other guest that we will be having is Nami based out of New Orleans. And of course, it is a national association of mental health. And so we are going to be blessed to have Lashanda from Nami speak with us in a coming episode. So stay tuned for that. And when we will be announcing that here on our social media and our mailing list. For that as well on our website, JBYFNOLA .ORG. I'd like to open with a quote and this quote is from Dr. Bob Roth, who is our lovely transcendental meditation leader and teacher.