Beginner’s Mind: Yoga, Stress, and Self-Discovery with Veronique Ory
In this episode of The Living Conversation, Adam Dietz and Anthony Wright speak with yoga teacher Veronique Ory about yoga as a practice of body, mind, and spirit.
Veronique shares how yoga goes far beyond physical poses, opening into meditation, beginner’s mind, self-inquiry, flexibility, stress, emotional release, and the practice of meeting life with more grace and compassion. The conversation explores how discomfort can become a doorway, how the body stores experience, and how yoga can help us create space between reaction and response.
Topics include:
Yoga and meditation
Beginner’s mind
Stress and emotional regulation
Flexibility of body and awareness
Letting go and surrender
Spiritual practice in daily life
How to metabolize anger, fear, and overwhelm
Guest: Veronique Ory
Hosts: Adam Dietz and Anthony Wright
Veronique Ory, yoga, beginner’s mind, yoga practice, meditation, stress relief, flexibility, mindfulness, emotional healing, self-discovery, spiritual practice, body and mind, letting go, yoga philosophy, The Living Conversation
#Yoga #BeginnerMind #Meditation #Mindfulness #StressRelief #YogaPhilosophy #SelfDiscovery #SpiritualPractice #TheLivingConversation
Transcript
I'm Anthony Wright and I am your co host today on the Living Conversation with Adam Dietz.
Speaker A:Welcome.
Speaker A:And we are here with our guest, Veronik Ori.
Speaker A:And welcome, Veronique.
Speaker B:Thank you so much.
Speaker B:Happy to be here.
Speaker A:And you are a yoga teacher that lives in Florida, but you do retreats.
Speaker A:I'm curious about how did you come to yoga and what is yoga?
Speaker A:I mean, everybody knows about like downward dog and you know, full lotus position, but it's so much more than that.
Speaker B:It sure is, yeah, it's, it's wild.
Speaker B:When I was initially telling the story of how I came into the yoga practice, I would go to the most present incarnation of finding a yoga class in New York City, which was an asana class, which is very much what we are accustomed to seeing in the west of you go to a place and there's mats laid out on the floor and you're assuming shapes with your body.
Speaker B:Whether it's something more restorative or more energetic, there's a certain physical attention to that.
Speaker B:And then as I've been reflecting back on when it first actually landed, I remembered that I was a nanny for a family when I lived in Los angeles in my 20s and the Father led meditation retreats.
Speaker B:And I remembered, oh, right, that was actually my entry point was a silent retreat at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California.
Speaker B:And it was so fantastic.
Speaker B:I felt it to be so liberating.
Speaker B:Walking meditation, seated meditation, silent meals.
Speaker B:I felt even my 20 year old brain was just so liberated by, oh, all I need to focus on is my, my breath and this moment or, you know, this thing that I'm eating.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And then it wasn't actually until many, many years that I put that together.
Speaker B:And so it was, it was really illuminating because the physical practice actually was always very intimidating to me.
Speaker B:I had actually tried to go to classes when I first was living in Los Angeles and I remember I had an experience Maybe in my mid-20s where a friend brought me to a class and I thought I did okay.
Speaker B:And then the teacher came up to me afterwards and he said, oh, actually the beginner class is at a different time.
Speaker B:And I was so embarrassed.
Speaker B:And then I was like telling that story for many years of oh yeah, I didn't feel welcome.
Speaker B:Then of course, in the years that follow, why should I be offended that he was asking me to go to a beginner class when in fact I was a beginner?
Speaker B:Why are we not embracing being a beginner when actually in the expert's mind, the possibilities are few?
Speaker B:The Meditation of the moment is to seek to be a beginner in all things, right?
Speaker B:So picking up the guitar at any age or seeking things that we want to learn and not doing it perfectly and just being in that curiosity space, it's very freeing.
Speaker B:There's so much in the ether these days of perfectionism and this pride that we hold on doing things right.
Speaker B:But it's all contingent on what we believe other people's expectations are of where we are based on our age and where we lived and all of these different titles that we grasp onto in a way that contextualizes our expertise in any given given space.
Speaker B:And so as I've moved through the yoga practice, through meditation, through the physical practice, there's so much in the philosophical practice, in these different mind meals of who am I?
Speaker B:What are we doing here, right?
Speaker B:All of these large questions that maybe don't even need an answer but in the inquiry of it, of what can we open up in, in the space that's beyond what we can understand with the senses and that's just really awe inspiring where we can let go of, okay, I'm experiencing this in this physical body.
Speaker B:However, what I think is true, let me question that and maybe start to parse out truth versus opinion.
Speaker B:Do I believe this based on my previous information that I've been given or is that malleable?
Speaker B:Is that something that can shape shift over time?
Speaker B:And I think the physical practice of yoga is a really phenomenal portal into the self and that was the original construct is let this be a portal towards meditation, towards these different limbs of the yoga practice so that we can practice non attachment, that we can practice our different levels of concentration, that we can look at these different moral beliefs and, and see, okay, where is the, the thought, the word, the action, correlation in nonviolence and truthfulness, all of these different aspects and we get to play with those edges.
Speaker B:I think there's been this over sense of comfort in modern life.
Speaker B:A lot of us have the ability to set our thermostat to a certain specific temperature or whatever the comfort level is that you're in depending on where in the world you're tuning in from.
Speaker B:And, and what is so I think revolutionary about the yoga practice is that we are finding ways to apply stress to the body, the mind, the spirit on purpose.
Speaker B:And how do we breathe when we are stressed.
Speaker B:And so it's this reverse of, of perhaps what we think, oh, I don't want conflict, I want, I don't want there to be discord, I want there to be Peace.
Speaker B:And yet we can't have peace without the suffering.
Speaker B:We can't have the comfort without the discomfort.
Speaker B:We need those opposites in order to orient to where we are.
Speaker B:And so part of what I've been playing with is actually seeking for edges.
Speaker B:Almost like, you know, you're swimming laps as a swimmer, you want that edge to push off of.
Speaker B:And that's where we can start to really cultivate these different layers of growth in our personal evolution.
Speaker B:The hope is that we get more and more awake to how we can navigate through all of the things that we have been moving through.
Speaker B:It's been definitely a tumultuous time, individually and collectively.
Speaker B:And having ways to move through that with as much grace and compassion as possible to come back to that unity.
Speaker B:That's really some brushstrokes about the yoga practice.
Speaker A:And it really is about developing flexibility with the body.
Speaker A:But do you find that the flexibility in the body and the flexibility of awareness kind of go, as it were, hand in hand?
Speaker B:Yeah, it's wild.
Speaker B:So a lot of the time when someone learns that I teach yoga, the number one objection is, oh, I can't do yoga because I'm not flexible.
Speaker B:And really that's the reason to practice.
Speaker B:We're actually all born very malleable, flexible beings.
Speaker B:Like if you've ever seen a baby, I've never seen a baby that's like with tight hamstrings, you know what I mean?
Speaker B:We learn these things as we age.
Speaker B:And there's actually a lot of research to show that the things that we do physically before puberty sort of indicate the amount of malleability that we have in our body in adulthood.
Speaker B:Which isn't to say that it can't change.
Speaker B:I've definitely had clients where when I started practicing with them, they weren't able to, when they're laying down on their back to put their arms on the ground because there's so much built up in the shoulders, for example, or, you know, in, in the yoga practice, easy seat, which isn't easy for many of us to sit on the floor cross legged, that can be very painful for most people.
Speaker B:So finding ways where you can put cushions under the body, under the legs, different ways to orient having your back against a wall or, you know, a piece of furniture or something, because whatever it is that we're attuning to, we lean more into that.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:So, you know, take if you were going to pick up the piano, if, if you play it once, you'll progress a certain amount.
Speaker B:If you're playing it Every day you'll progress another amount, right?
Speaker B:Same thing with whatever we do physically.
Speaker B:That isn't to say in general, whatever the movement is, doing it daily.
Speaker B:We want to attune to a certain align, connecting to the breath and the intention.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And there is definitely, Anthony, that play of the flexibility of the mind and the body.
Speaker B:So we very much mirror ourselves in these different regards of, oh, if I'm feeling resistance in this forward fold, for example, where in my life am I having resistance and flexibility of maybe releasing something?
Speaker B:So the forward fold is an energetic bowing down or a surrender of some regard.
Speaker B:So you might think, okay, energetically, is there a place in my life where I'm resisting letting go, Where I'm thinking that I need to control and micromanage something and then what ends up happening?
Speaker B:And I see this a lot with clients.
Speaker B:We'll actually be in a conversation for a fair bit of the session before we even move into the physical practice.
Speaker B:Because all of the monkey mind chatter that is going on is definitely a big part of the physical tightness.
Speaker B:There's that old adage, the issues get stored in the tissues.
Speaker B:So if you have a lot of tightness in your hamstrings, oftentimes we think, okay, I have to just yank my foot and really push myself into this flexibility.
Speaker B:But intelligently, we actually want to strengthen the opposing muscles.
Speaker B:So in this particular case, it would be strengthening your quadriceps, the front of the thighs.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And so there's so much to be mined here.
Speaker B:So if you were in a seated position, try to lift your leg off of the ground, keeping a really nice, strong, erect spine, and then come into the forward fold.
Speaker B:So you, like, cramp up your quads like crazy, and then you pacify the hamstrings.
Speaker B:And that has a really great interplay with the emotional piece.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:So if.
Speaker B:If I'm resisting letting go something, I can't just say, oh, I'm just gonna let it go, right?
Speaker B:When people tell you calm down, isn't that like the best thing?
Speaker B:Oh, okay, let me just.
Speaker B:Let me just go ahead and calm down.
Speaker B:Usually what is most helpful is actually to exhaust ourselves.
Speaker B:So maybe it's an exercise of playing the worst case scenario, or maybe it's taking yourself for a run, or maybe you take yourself to.
Speaker B:You know, I love this exercise, which people always think, this is so funny because I appear that I'm always joyful.
Speaker B:I also have anger.
Speaker B:You know, I experience the whole array of emotions is, I'll get in my car, I'll turn the music up as loud as possible and I'll scream until my whole body shakes.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:I can feel a lot calmer once I, like, really like express that.
Speaker B:And so it's creating context where we can actually fully express the end range of strength or flexibility, like the end range of whatever the emotions that we're trying to metabolize so that when we can come back, we realize, oh, okay, flexibility isn't necessarily, oh, I can put my head to my knee in a seated forward fold, although that's part of it.
Speaker B:But what tends to happen is when we can be more flexible in the emotional and the spiritual realm, then we realize the body acquiesces as a result or maybe in tandem to the other sort of gripping.
Speaker B:So it's, it's a really great mind quandary to be exploring in the, in the daily rhythms.
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker A:We have to take a short break.
Speaker A:I'm Anthony Wright and I am your co host on the Living Conversation with Adam Dietz.
Speaker C:Thanks for joining.
Speaker A:And we're talking with our guest, Veronic Ore. And how can people contact you, Veronica?
Speaker B:Yes, I'd love to contact with everyone.
Speaker B:I'm@yogawithveranique.com and you can learn about my offerings there.
Speaker B:You can connect with me on Instagram, Aronique Ori and would love to be in a conversation.
Speaker A:Great.
Speaker A:We're going to take a short break and be right back, so stay tuned.
Speaker A:I'm Anthony Wright and I am your co host today on the Living Conversation with Adam Dietz.
Speaker C:Welcome.
Speaker A:And we're talking with the yoga teacher named Veronik Ore. And Veronik, before the break, you were talking about expressing oneself in a broad context and that one of the ways to relieve stress is to do a counterbalance.
Speaker A:Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Speaker A:And then, Adam, I'd be interested in what your thoughts are.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think what's so wild, I don't know if you had similar upbringings, but there's this notion of not having a tantrum.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:You're at the grocery store, you want the cookies so badly, and your caregiver is like, calm down, don't make a scene.
Speaker B:You know, and we carry these different things with us, of having to be contained.
Speaker B:And when you think about the human body, that's mostly water and a contained kind of water.
Speaker B:It's the quality of ice.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:It's tight, it's constricted, it takes up little space and, and the quality that feels peaceful to me, that feels expansive, that feels calm.
Speaker B:That's the quality of steam, right?
Speaker B:So it's that opposite of it's.
Speaker B:It's so hot that it turns water, where you almost really can't see it with the human eye.
Speaker B:And so I think about that in different contexts of the ways that we might be an ice energy, or we might be in steam steam, or we're that calm body of water, or we're like in the middle of the ocean of tumultuous uproar.
Speaker B:And when we can think about that in terms of the way in which we're experiencing the world.
Speaker B:So the person cuts you off.
Speaker B:How are you expressing your water energy?
Speaker B:How would you like to express it?
Speaker B:And sometimes we almost have to play those extremes to be able to feel it on a very granular level of, okay, do I want to roll my window down, scream at this person, make a big scene?
Speaker B:Do I want to in the middle of the grocery store, they don't have the thing that I came for, throw myself on the ground and have a big tantrum sometimes, right?
Speaker B:And oftentimes it's like, oh, no, I have to bottle this up.
Speaker B:And we do that in context with strangers.
Speaker B:But probably most hazardous is we do that with our loved ones.
Speaker B:We do this in romantic relationships.
Speaker B:We do this with our parents, with our kids, with whoever it is that we actually love with our hearts and our souls.
Speaker B:And because we're never arriving in that beginner's mind, we're always showing up with the baggage of, you know, depending on your belief system, all that you've experienced in this life, never mind the generations before you, never mind past lives and all of the intergenerational trauma.
Speaker B:And we're all showing up with these, like, you know, massive suitcases or maybe these, like, very aerodynamic roller bags and it.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And so we're actually never seeing anything very clearly unless.
Speaker B:And this is really important in terms of.
Speaker B:Of the approach of.
Speaker B:Of really embracing this beginner's mind.
Speaker B:I love how this theme just keeps kind of like weaving in, is, what if I didn't know what you were going to say?
Speaker B:What if I didn't know what my limitations were?
Speaker B:What if I didn't know that I could do this or I couldn't do that or where I would live next week?
Speaker B:What if all of these things are actually very temporary and moment to moment, hand to heart, connection to the breath to spirit, there's that space of steam, like energy, where I think of that as like you have your own superhero cloak where the things are happening, but the reactivity is minimal.
Speaker B:Not to say that you're not affected by anything.
Speaker B:Certainly we all have our edges.
Speaker B:And depending on, you know, if we've eaten recently or we've moved our bodies, we've connected to nature, if we're in the northern hemisphere in the dead of winter.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:There are different things that we are kind of pushed to our edge and.
Speaker B:And yet are we allowing for sacred space to tend to the practices that actually resource us so that when we arrive to whatever it is that we are sharing love and compassion and grace in that space?
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker A:Adam,.
Speaker C:So many things are coming up.
Speaker C:It's very interesting what you're saying, and it really aligns with different philosophies, Socratic philosophy that, you know, nothing, Zen mind, beginner's mind, or some things that we go over in our podcast here and there.
Speaker C:And it also reminds me of when we're first introducing critical thinking to 101 students.
Speaker C:And, you know, part of it, one third of the class for me was a textbook.
Speaker C:And the textbook saying, the reason why you choose critical thinking is so you can consciously make a good argument in your mind where you're choosing these beliefs, where you're choosing to respond in a certain way.
Speaker C:So as you're speaking right now, one of the biggest things that's coming up for me is that, yes, we're complex.
Speaker C:We could have this element of spiritual bypass almost where we have.
Speaker A:We.
Speaker C:We want to have a Zen mind, beginner's mind.
Speaker C:We want to show up with compassion, but we're complex.
Speaker C:We had a previous episode just, you know, a few weeks back where.
Speaker C:Where anger was coming up, you know, and it was like this.
Speaker C:There's certain situations that are going on in society that.
Speaker C:That actually kind of call for a righteous anger.
Speaker C:And the idea was, okay, we can't just bypass that.
Speaker C:We have to channel that constructively because it was with a therapist.
Speaker C:So we really needed to have some therapy around that.
Speaker C:So, to me, my question is, do you think the key is to be able to create space in your own mind, to be able to choose when something arises, whether you use it or not?
Speaker C:Is that a way of looking at it?
Speaker B:Mm, yeah.
Speaker B:You know, it's.
Speaker B:So I used to have a French bulldog, Boston terrier mix, and, you know, this kind of, like, smushy face dog.
Speaker B:And I would, you know, say in jest that he's appropriately worried.
Speaker B:You know, like, if you're not angry and worried right now, you're probably not paying attention.
Speaker B:There's a lot to be pissed off about.
Speaker B:However, are we holding that and is it causing a Cancer inside of our minds, in our bodies and our spirit.
Speaker B:I had a dear friend that was just torn up about the state of the world was, you know, marriage was not doing well, work wasn't doing well.
Speaker B:He put on a bunch of weight.
Speaker B:There was like, a lot of, I can't be joyful when this is happening on the other side of the world.
Speaker B:And I was trying to help him move through that, but he couldn't hear me.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Like, when you're seeing red and you're so just up in arms at the state of the world, it's hard to reach that person.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker A:And one of the things that's being cultivated these days.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:And so I think what's so important is what is the appropriate level for each person to be in the know?
Speaker B:Is this helpful to you, to your family, to your community?
Speaker B:Are you able to respond in a way that is shedding light?
Speaker B:Not to spiritually bypass, as you're saying, Adam, but actually, how are you able to cultivate peace?
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So, you know, there's that saying, you can't beat darkness with a baseball bat.
Speaker B:You have to turn the light on.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker B:It's so tempting to get into the shadow with people, even when someone agrees with you, right.
Speaker B:It's very charging.
Speaker B:And so what I recommend for anyone who's sensitive to this is to titrate what you're taking in in a dosage that you're able to metabolize, right?
Speaker B:Like, as if you, like, had, like, a drip of media that you could dose, you know, in small increments.
Speaker B:Because for most of us, it's too much.
Speaker B:It's just too much.
Speaker B:If you're about to book a plane ticket and be on the ground floor and be a force of peace somehow,.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker B:And you need this information in order to act in.
Speaker B:In a way that's helpful.
Speaker B:But if you're taking in.
Speaker B:And you're in a state that is hazardous, which we can only discern that for ourselves, Right.
Speaker B:Is this affecting your ability to experience joy?
Speaker B:Is this affecting your experience, to experience pleasure?
Speaker B:Because people are suffering and people will suffer.
Speaker B:Historically, my prayer is that we can end suffering.
Speaker B:My prayer is that we could have peace and harmony for all living beings.
Speaker B:And also, if we're in a state where we're witnessing suffering happening, it could be in our local community.
Speaker B:You know, like a good friend could call and say that, you know, their.
Speaker B:Their father just passed away and they just lost their job, or, you know, whatever has happened, we can express love and healing for the person, for the people, whatever, whoever and whatever the circumstance is.
Speaker B:And also, it's not ours to hold as if it's like our cross to bear.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:You can't be there for others if you can't be there for yourself.
Speaker C:Right?
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker A:We have to take a short break.
Speaker A:I'm Anthony Wright and I am your co host today on A Living Conversation with Adam Dietz.
Speaker C:Thanks for joining the conversation.
Speaker A:We're here with our guest, Veronica Ore. And how can people contact you, Veronica?
Speaker B:Yes, you can contact me via my website.
Speaker B:I'm@yogawithvaranique.com also on Instagram, Veronik Ory.
Speaker B:Please reach out.
Speaker B:We'd love to be in the conversation.
Speaker A:And your last name is O R Y?
Speaker B:It is.
Speaker A:Okay, we're going to take a short break and be right back.
Speaker A:So stay tuned.
