Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
A podcast about practices to promote healthy lives featuring experts, businesses, and clients: we gather to share our stories about success, failure, exploration, and so much more. Our subscription episodes feature some personal and vulnerable, real-life stories that are sensitive to some of the general public.
Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
Healing The Past Through Yoga with Rachel Krentzman
What if the cure you’re seeking is less about fixing a body part and more about meeting your whole self with honesty and skill? That’s the thread we follow with Rachel Krentzman—yoga therapist, physical therapist, and certified Hakomi psychotherapist—whose life journey moves from an Orthodox childhood in Montreal to San Diego’s studios and finally to Israel, where reconnection and reconciliation take center stage. Her story is raw, hopeful, and practical, showing how breath, movement, and mindful awareness can reshape both pain and identity.
We unpack what yoga really is: not a trend, but a toolkit for attention and nervous system regulation. Rachel explains why treating chronic pain demands more than a diagnosis code—why two people with the same MRI can experience opposite realities—and how yoga therapy integrates posture, breathwork, and somatic insight to reduce threat and restore confidence. Her clinical lens is both grounded and compassionate: treat the person, not the condition; find the cause, not just the symptom; build safety before strength.
Rachel also opens her memoir, As Is: A Memoir on Healing the Past Through Yoga, revealing how “small” childhood moments quietly formed big beliefs about voice and worth. Through years of journaling, she mapped those stories, separated identity from biography, and learned to live with integrity—without abandoning roots or family. We talk scoliosis strategies, authentic change after trauma, and the relief that comes from realizing you are not your story. Along the way, you’ll hear actionable steps for breath, mindful movement, and reframing pain through a whole-person lens.
Ready to rethink healing from the inside out? Listen now, then subscribe, share with someone who needs hope, and leave a review to help more listeners find the show.
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Well, hello, and welcome to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grombein, and today we have a very special guest. Her name is Rachel Krensman, and she's a practicing yoga and physical therapist, a certified Hakomi psychotherapist. She's born in Montreal to an Orthodox Jewish family and experienced trauma of her rabbi father's arrest. And she shed her strict upbringing and found herself. And rather than go deeper and deeper into that, we're gonna talk about it. She wrote a book, and it's actually she wrote more than one book, a few books. We'll probably talk about her most recent book. Um, as is a memoir on healing the past through yoga. And Rachel, without getting too deep into it, I trip over myself too much talking about people. Let's just talk to you directly. Welcome to the show. How are you doing today?
SPEAKER_01:I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. And um, you know, we we're in two different sides of the world. You're you're you're uh talking to us from Israel, and um you've got this amazing experience that you're gonna be sharing with us, and uh, I'm kind of curious how um you go from this Jewish uh Orthodox upbringing in Canada and you find yourself over in Israel. And so, but we'll get to that. Um, I'd just love to have you share your story with us. How are you uh just tell us a little bit about uh about your your situation?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I have a long journey, and this is primarily what I wrote about in my latest book. And the journey began uh where I grew up in Montreal, Canada, and it moves on to where I moved to later on in life. At age 27, I moved to San Diego, California, and I lived there for 15 years, and that is where I found yoga, actually, in San Diego. There's a lot of yoga in San Diego, there's a lot of yoga in California, yeah, and um a lot of good yoga too, and a lot of good teachers. Actually, my teacher that I ended up studying with for two years was based out of Washington State. So I traveled from San Diego up to Bellevue, Washington to study with him because he's an exceptional human being, and I'll talk about him a bit.
SPEAKER_00:All right.
SPEAKER_01:And went into studying deeply yoga after I did my physical therapy degree. And suddenly my life changed. And this is what I write about how the practice of yoga really helped me grow, helped me evolve, helped me overcome a lot of stress and deal with um past family trauma and current trauma that I was experiencing and helped me understand and become more away, aware of the things that I was doing and how I was living my life. So I believe that yoga is a valuable tool for that.
SPEAKER_00:You know, it's why I I I would like for you maybe to share a little bit about yoga. I we have a wide range of listeners, and you know, some of us have done some yoga and know a lot of people who do yoga, and some people just hear the word and you think it's you know, either some sort of eastern religious practice or some workout tradition or something where you know weirdos get dressed up in costumes and put hot rocks on themselves or whatever, or have goats walking on your back. I mean, there's so many things that are connected to yoga, but I think that as you're telling your story and connecting the the psychotherapy and the physical side of things, I think it's it's important maybe share a little bit about what yoga is to you.
SPEAKER_01:Such a good question. So important to dispel all the myths about yoga. First of all, um goats have nothing to do with yoga, it's a fad. Uh so let's just take that one off the table. But also, um, yoga has changed a lot, you know, in its origin as it came to the West. And so what's happened is that it entered the fitness industry because there are a lot of physical benefits that yoga has. But in fact, yoga is not a fitness trend. Um, it's not it, it if you do yoga poses, you can become more flexible, maybe more strong, more mobile. There's a lot of physical benefits to practicing yoga asana. Asana means poses or postures, but that is only one small piece of what yoga really is. And it's also important to say that yoga is not a religion, it's a practice, it's a practice that includes some postures, some breathing, some meditation, a lot of mindfulness and awareness, and a lot of philosophy. And even there's, you know, there is a component of health and a way of eating and lifestyle. So when we look at yoga as a whole, as a whole picture, and what it's really was intended to be is a way of working with the mind and stopping your mind from having all these crazy thoughts and becoming more peaceful regardless of what's going on around you. That is what yoga is about. Oh, it's a good idea. Okay. And I don't think it comes across, you know, on media that way. No. And so it's it's a bit of a shame because there's so much, so much to yoga, and anyone who jumps in really deeply will discover this, you know, if you really, really dive in and and go beyond the gyms and maybe even some. If you go to some studios, you take a few philosophy classes, you go deeper into a practice, you find a good teacher, you're gonna get you're gonna get the philosophy, you're gonna get the background. If you stick to the fitness part, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But it it's just such a deeper, um, really well of wisdom. And that's what I got into. Although I did start with the physical too, because I hurt my back and I needed help. And I went to yoga to work on back pain, and that's my specialty, kind of working with patients who have back pain. And I ended up with a herniated disc and some back pain. So I also was interested in the physical, but what ended up happening was where the changes were more mental. They I was calmer, my relationships deepened, I started to see other people's points of view in a new way, and I didn't understand how doing these poses, you know, just stretching or moving around led to that. Um, and that's for a longer discussion, but but in essence, yoga is for everyone, any size, any ability, you do not have to be flexible. You only have to be able to breathe to do yoga. And what I teach and what I do now is yoga therapy, which is another um element in the yoga, in the yoga world, where we take all of these, uh, the wisdom that's offered through yoga, all the different tools and techniques, and we adapt it to help people who are struggling with injuries, illness, disease, even end-of-life situations, um, both physically and mentally. So that's my passion, that's my focus, um, because I'm a physical therapist and it speaks to me the healing power of yoga.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. So it seems that if you come at it from uh a physical wellness point of view, you're gonna end up getting some mental benefits. And if you come at it from a mental benefit point of view, you're gonna get some physical unintended or maybe intended benefits.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, you may get some uh contentment and feeling good in your body at the same time, which is not bad. Not a bad thing.
SPEAKER_00:I love it. So, as so many of our guests, you come from a place of trauma. And without going too deep into that, because I know we can burn up a lot of time talking about that, but why don't you just maybe share a little bit about that journey from where you were to where you are?
SPEAKER_01:Sure. So I I only made it halfway through the journey, but what happened in in Canada was that I was I grew up very religious, um, very orthodox, went to an all-girls school and was living the life that I was taught to live. And then one day my father was arrested and went to prison. And this was a shock to us, to the family, and to the community. And it really shook the ground that I stood on as kind of that moment where everything changes, and I started to question my beliefs, my values. Why are we doing this? You know, how can, you know, how could this have happened? And it just started me questioning, and I didn't change right away, but a lot of things started to change, and there were a lot of questions. And then when I moved to San Diego and I was in a new environment, um, things I just started to realize that this was not the life that I really wanted to live for myself. It didn't feel right for me. I felt that I was doing things because I was told I had to and not because I wanted to, and started to explore other things, started to break out of the traditional role. I got divorced, I was married at the time. So there were a lot of big changes, and I do think it was all sort of a response to the trauma of what happened in my family, but even more so than that, the complex kind of intergenerational trauma that I grew up with, coming from a family of Holocaust survivors and post-war mentality, and there's a lot going on there.
SPEAKER_00:Wow.
SPEAKER_01:So so I so I started to do many things. I started to get into hiking and nature and making new friends and surfing and just exploring all kinds of things and facets in life, and the yoga part really stuck for me. It just felt very um grounding and helpful at a time when I was alone in a city where I knew nobody and I had gotten divorced and moved there not knowing a soul, and it was very scary.
SPEAKER_00:Wow.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And little woman in a big city, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. It worked out very well. I mean, I met a lot of wonderful people. Um, but it is hard. It is hard when you make such a big change because I lost a lot. I lost a lot of my old friends, uh, family didn't talk to me for a while. Um, there were a lot of consequences to my decision, but I sort of made up my mind that I would be authentic at any cost. And that's something I wasn't willing to compromise. So if someone didn't agree with my choices, that was fine. But um, you know, I wasn't gonna allow that to control me anymore because up until that point, I did everything for other people and not for myself.
SPEAKER_00:It's a powerful position to find yourself in, though. When you come to that, you say, okay, I'm gonna be me and I don't worry about anybody else. That's that's a place where you can kind of go anywhere you want.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, I there are people you always have to worry about, like your family and kids and things like that. But I just really wanted to live in integrity. I just felt that that was more important than living to please other people and that if people really cared and loved me and trusted me, they would respect my choices. I wasn't doing anything harmful to anybody. I was just trying to figure out how to live my life and how to accomplish what I'm here for. You know, we all are just looking to find a way to be in this world and find our purpose and do good. And this set me on a journey. And I started to study, I started to learn more about yoga, more about how to combine yoga and physical therapy, and really working on people with pain using the yoga. And that became my journey. And in that journey, I ended up moving to Israel later on. And it's surprising because I actually am not religious anymore, and I'm in a country that's Jewish, which is interesting, a Jewish state. Whereas when I was in Canada, I was practicing.
SPEAKER_00:Wow.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but I came here for a number of reasons, um, which I write about in the book, but a lot of it was to connect to family and maybe, maybe secretly to find some peace with my background, you know, to find some peace with my culture, to see is there a way for me to reconcile um who I am, who you know, where I was born, and who I really am. You know, they don't have to be so opposed, I guess.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it's interesting because the Jewish people, there's a there's there's a dichotomy to it because you're a people that have a history, and you're also a religion that's tied to that people and that history, but the two aren't synonymous. And you can be a Jewish person or uh, I guess it'd be an Israeli, but that's just based on the religion you are. When you talk about your culture, you can be a Jewish person without being a practicing religious person. And I guess technically you could be a Jewish practice the Jewish religion without being Israeli or or or have that culture. So I think it's important, just like yoga's got these sort of elements to it that that people can understand that. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about um, I mean, obviously, there's a lot of misunderstanding throughout all of history about the Jewish people and their practices and everything else. So I think it's pretty impactful that you're finding your way to the culture without necessarily being stuck in the religious practices.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I'm finding a way to do that that works for me and that works for my family, my siblings. Some of them are religious still, some are not. We're all we're all very different, and we're learning how to to be a family and to be connected and to respect one another.
SPEAKER_00:Nice.
SPEAKER_01:And I think we're doing a pretty good job. That's pretty respect, that's pretty impressive.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, absolutely, especially today. And and especially even where you're at, you know. I mean, all the conflict that's going on and the chaos and the violence and all of those things, it polarizes people even more. I mean, here I am in the States where everybody's so polarized about everything. But where you're at, I think it's might even be worse. I mean, you have just such strong opinions about things, or, you know, that that region, anyways. So it seems like you live a world of dichotomies. You have yoga, you have this uh, you know, life choice of living in Israel, and then you've become a physical therapist and a psychotherapist all at the same time. So why don't you tell us a little bit about your journey to both of those places?
SPEAKER_01:Well, at the beginning, I started in physical therapy from a very young age, and I worked with many different things. And I always loved being a physical therapist. I love working with people, I love helping people with their body. And then what yoga did when I got into yoga was help me understand the body even better and movement and the and the connectedness of all things. Whereas in the medical system, when I went to college, you know, we learned how the body, we learned different body parts. And when you treat a body part, we kind of focus on that part as opposed to focusing on the person with the pain. And I think from yoga, what I really learned was number one, that we don't treat the condition, we treat the person who's struggling with the condition. And number two, that everything is connected, that you know, problems in the in the neck can be from the feet.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:And, you know, so the whole body is connected, and there are many like layers to the body. It's not just the physical, the bones, the muscles, the joints. We also need to look at the breath, we need to look at the nervous system, we need to look at lifestyle, we need to look at what's going on in their world emotionally. And so after working for about 20 years with patients with back pain and chronic pain, I saw a lot of things. And what I saw was that emotions play a huge part in pain. And not some people can have an MRI with um, you know, that says that they have a terrible disc perniation or that they have a very bad scoliosis, but in fact, they don't have a lot of symptoms, and then another person can have an MRI that's totally normal and they can have a lot of symptoms, and so there's really very little relationship often between tissue damage or problems that you see on an X-ray or an MRI and actual pain or dysfunction. So, what I really wanted to do was to study more about how emotions affect the physical body. And so I went and studied for another seven years psychotherapy, and it's a somatic form of psychotherapy, which very much is based in mindfulness. So it's not really such such a dichotomy because I I think it's I think of it more as an evolution that I moved from physical therapy than to yoga, which is more mindful movement, I would say, or more intelligent movement and not just physical. We're looking at the whole body and the whole person, including energy, including breath. And then moving into the minds and the emotions is just really more of an evolution for me because I just felt that I couldn't really treat pain without understanding how to work with emotions.
SPEAKER_00:So it's like um I mean, I've uh the word holistic comes to mind, and um it seems to be like the antithesis of allopathic medicine, you know, and where it seems to be Western medicine, in quotes, um, you know, tends to treat symptoms and specific uh targets, whereas what you're looking at is the whole being, the whole picture, all the systems together.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. This is exactly what I, you know, I started on on more of the physical level, like for example, back pain, instead of looking at, okay, you have a sciatica, you have a pinch nerve, you have a herniated disc, you have a stenosis, scoliosis, any condition that you can have, instead of looking at it like that, I looked at why what's this, what's the cause? You know, why did this person end up with this disc problem or sciatica? What are they doing? What are the the limitations? Where are they too strong? Where are they too too inflexible? Where are they too mobile? Where are they weak? So, what caused the problem? Pressure in the low back to increase. Because rarely is the problem the spine. It's not that they have a bad spine, it's that that that's where all the pressure goes to. So we have to look at deeper into what the cause is for that problem. And when you discover that, then you can work on the cause so that the problem doesn't come back. And this is the same thing as, you know, the holistic approach where you're looking at the person who's suffering with the problem, and you're looking at, you know, what's the cause? Is the cause their depression? Is the cause their stress? Is the cause, you know, the way they sit all day at a computer? Is the cause the way that they stand with their feet turned out? You know, it can be physical, it can be mental, it can be emotional, it can be spiritual. You know, have they lost their purpose in life? So, yes, that's what uh the the lens of yoga and the psychotherapy approach really helped help help me bridge that gap.
SPEAKER_00:Now, along the way, and in your um very rich journey here, you started writing.
SPEAKER_01:I did.
SPEAKER_00:And um you've written a number of books, including uh Scoliosis, Yoga Therapy, and the Art of Letting Go. Um, and those two seem to be pretty wide ranging as far as your focus. Um why don't you tell us a little bit about your previous books and then we'll get to your current book?
SPEAKER_01:Sure. I actually always like to write. I would say that I probably was writing before I even became a physical therapist. I always wrote in journals, I always liked to write plays, short stories. I almost dabbled with some creative writing courses in college. So it was always a love of mine, and that's the way I always expressed myself. So I always think of it as an art form for me. That works for me. And I used to write in journals for many, many years. So writing was always a passion, as was, you know, healing and teaching. And at some point in my career, after really going through the back pain, after studying multiple years with many teachers all over the world, really seeking out the experts, I felt that I had a book to write, that I had something to share. And so I wrote Yoga for a Happy Back, which is a guide to using yoga for spinal health. And this is great for yoga teachers, practitioners, people who work with other people who have back pain. And it's really a compilation of some of the best techniques and most of the techniques that I use when I work with my clients. So I published that in 2016, and then I published my second book on scoliosis, and it's called Scoliosis Yoga Therapy and The Art of Letting Go. I have a scoliosis, a small one, and um I learned how to work with it so that I would minimize pain and improve my function. And I saw that it worked naturally, and I feel that with scoliosis, a lot of people don't get a lot of times the medical system doesn't encourage them to do any specific movement. They kind of tell them, let's just wait and see. And if it gets bad, we'll operate. And they often don't send them to do movement. And with movement, and especially with yoga, I found that I was able to eliminate pain, decrease the progression of the scoliosis, didn't need any treatments, didn't need any medications, didn't need a brace. And I do think that it's worth a try for a lot of people who have scoliosis. So my book is really aimed at anyone. The scoliosis book is for anyone, even people who don't do yoga. A lot of people pick it up when their child is maybe diagnosed at about, you know, as a teenager. They usually get diagnosed. A lot of parents buy it and they just start reading about it and they say, hey, maybe this can help. Because there's no harm in doing yoga, but but surgery is is is a trauma to the body. So we want to try to avoid it. So that's my second book. And that that's what so I wrote two professional books. And then when I was finished with that, I decided, okay, I think I'm ready to write my memoir now.
SPEAKER_00:Well, back on scoliosis, I I my experience with that is as a kid, you know, I knew a girl who had scoliosis, and she had this giant brace on her back, and she was always walking around like a robot, had this thing up on her neck. And it was the only that was really the the connection I have to that. But really, scoliosis just means your spine's a little bent out of whack. And it seems that the motions that you're talking about with yoga could help to uh redirect that bend without all that machinery.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's the hope that we could that that especially young people, if they can, they could avoid that brace because that brace in itself is really devastating a lot of teenagers social. It's very awkward, it's uncomfortable, but also more than that, it's embarrassing. You know, they don't want to wear it.
SPEAKER_00:Does it even work? Is that that would be my question?
SPEAKER_01:I mean, um you have to look at the research to say.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, but what they say is you know, it it definitely stops it from getting worse. Does it improve it? Not sure. And and then the question is what would have happened without the brace?
SPEAKER_00:Exactly.
SPEAKER_01:What about the emotional uh trauma? So I'm not saying that that we shouldn't use braces because braces are one of the tools that we use, but if we could avoid it, if we could avoid that, or we could avoid, or there was another option, or maybe there's a a less intrusive brace that's not so you know pronounced. Well, I think they've they've improved for sure in design. Yeah, I would hope so in the last 20 years, for sure.
SPEAKER_00:You talk about journaling, and and I think journaling is one of the most important tools that people can use to find their health. And I I talk about journaling a lot, and it could be uh focused on anything, and whether it's a you know personal problem, a mental problem, a physical problem, a spiritual problem, whatever it is, you know, journaling just kind of logs your uh your journey as the name might imply. But it seems like the perfect uh transition to get to a memoir is uh taking this this tool that you're you've been using and and compilate it to a story that people can understand. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that?
SPEAKER_01:Well, what I did was I did take all of my journals, I saved them all and started to read through them to start to bring back some of the memories. Because I've been writing since you know early 20s, and I'm 54 now. So I've been writing a long time.
SPEAKER_00:And it's a lot of journals.
SPEAKER_01:Well, that it's on and off. The truth is I find that I usually write when things are not good. Yeah. Things are difficult. When things have been good, I usually tend to not write as well.
SPEAKER_00:I agree. I've got a hundred bits and pieces journals throughout my life that, you know, they start and then poop, they just stop. It's like, oh, I must have got over it.
SPEAKER_01:So it's always there for you, I guess, as a source of comfort. But what I did was I made the decision that I wanted to start writing my story and I didn't know if I would publish it. Um, it didn't have to be published, but that I was gonna start to write it. It just felt very strong in me that I've it's a story that I wanted to tell, not just to tell people my life story. I'm not I'm not famous, and I you know, I'm wondering why would people be interested.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Not yet. Hopefully after this this podcast.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I've I've I've taken a look through your book. It's pretty compelling.
SPEAKER_01:I'd I'd thank you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Definitely impressed.
SPEAKER_01:Um, but it was more about sharing the struggle um that I find when I talk to people, speaks to a lot of people, no matter what religion, no matter what race, no matter what sex they are, and no matter where they live. You know, it's this it's the story of thinking your life is gonna go a certain way, and then having something happen where everything falls apart and everything changes. Some disappointment, whether it's a family issue like I had, a trauma, uh a personal trauma, war, um, it can be a divorce, it can be a health condition, anything in life that sort of shakes your foundation. And what do you do with that? What do you do when everything you believed in suddenly just falls out from under your feet? And I think that's a universal story. And it wasn't easy, and I'm not saying that you know going through something like that will ever be easy. But I just wrote about my experience and how what I found in yoga and in mindfulness and self-awareness that helps support me in my journey. And it's a pretty interesting story because I move around from country to country and meet all kinds of people and have different experiences in the book that shape my life. And I am very honest, I believe I'm very honest in the book and share it's not, I don't sugarcoat. I really talk about the struggles and things that went on in my family that caused behaviors, certain addictions, different things that I went through. Um, but the end is that there's always hope and that growth and healing is possible, and that we just have to really commit to ourselves and commit to to working on ourselves. And there's not only one way, there are many ways. So I just told my way.
SPEAKER_00:Right, right, absolutely. Well, in your in your story, you write that deep binding beliefs are held in the littlest stories of our lives. Um, maybe you can share with us a little example from your journey where something little revealed something big.
SPEAKER_01:So there are a few stories there which are, you know, things that happened in childhood that don't seem that big a big a deal. If I were to tell you just out of nowhere, this one little story, you know, and one story, for example, my mother made me wear a dress to my graduation where I was valedictorian that I didn't want to wear. And it doesn't sound like that big a deal. Okay, so it's just a dress. I didn't love it. She really loved it. But there was so much in that story, um, and so many messages that I got from my communication with her, from that experience, from not being heard, from not being seen, from not having a choice, from being embarrassed, that shaped my belief system. And I didn't even know it until I started writing because it's not a big story. It's not, you know, the story of my father and being arrested is a big story. That's one big trauma. But then in writing the book, all these little small stories happened, you know, punishments I got as a child when I was like, you know, sent to my room and locked in my closet for a while. And things that I didn't think were a big deal and nothing I would tell anyone about. But suddenly I started to realize that the little things that don't seem so important can be the most important thing because they can change the way we think about ourselves and the world around us. It can shape our beliefs, and these beliefs shape our shape our behaviors and shape the outcome. And so I do believe that it isn't always the big things. The big things wake us up because you know, we have no no choice but to react and respond. But all of a sudden, what happens are all the little stories start coming out and all the other things that led up to that one big thing.
SPEAKER_00:I suspect as a child, you know, if you look back at your childhood, the things you remember, you probably don't remember most of your childhood, right? I mean, you know, there's so many actual little things, but these little things that you do remember, I think those are the things your your mind or your brain or your spirit says, hey, hold on to that. There's something going on here. And I I think that is really important because you know, it's our perspective of we've got this whole life to compare these things to. So obviously, to watching your father get arrested, that's a little thing. But the fact that you logged it away that said, hey, I don't know why, but I remember this or I dreamt about it, or for whatever reason, I, you know, I've got uh dozens of those little things that you're like, well, there's something there. I don't know what it is necessarily, but certainly worth exploring. Well, Rachel, um how is your book doing so far?
SPEAKER_01:So far, I'm really pleased. I've I've just come back from a book tour. I was in California, I was uh in Canada, and um I was in Thailand doing a retreat. I'm going to be in Greece. So I have been traveling and teaching and talking a lot about how our beliefs affect our bodies and promoting my book, and it's been very well received. I was very, very scared to publish, very scared of the reaction of people because uh as I write in the book, things were always kept under you know, undercover at our house and our family, and everything was a big secret. So suddenly being so exposed is very vulnerable. But the response I've been getting is very positive, and a lot of people have come to me and and shared with me how much it touched them, how much it gave them hope. And then I realized, and I'm realizing every day that that's that's why I did it. That's why it makes it worthwhile. It took me 10 years to write the book.
SPEAKER_00:10 years.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Well, if you had a a central thought that you could leave our audience with, um what would you think that would be?
SPEAKER_01:Can I can I leave two short thoughts?
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:One thought I would say is that no matter where you go, there you are. I didn't make that up. That's uh John Kabat Zinn's book, Wherever You Go, There You Are. But it's true that you know what I did was run from place to place and from person to person, hoping to find the answers. And in doing that, I realized that you can't really run away from yourself. Right. That would be one important message in the book. And the second message that I would like to leave readers with is that we aren't exact we aren't our stories. We have to separate who we are from the things that happened to us and the things that we went through. They're two different things. And the more space we can create between the story and you know, the heart of who we really are, the more we can heal because we're not our stories and we're not all those things that we think we are often. And if we if we can disidentify from the story, I think we can really um eliminate the shame, which is not helpful in anyone's uh in anyone's healing process.
SPEAKER_00:Agreed. Well, and just like what you're talking about, your story is almost like uh an element um of you, just like a symptom or uh uh an issue that you might have with your leg or your foot. And in fact, you know, your your whole life is made of so many different stories. Like people ask me for a bio, I'm like, what do you want to talk about? Because I've got elements of my life that are so far removed from each other that if I focused on one, the stories I would tell would not make you think I was this other person, you know. And I'm sure you've got a lot of that. So I think it is important to remember that you know, your stories are just little mile markers, things we've done, places we've been, and and um who we are is so much greater than all that.
SPEAKER_01:I couldn't agree more, exactly.
SPEAKER_00:Wonderful. Well, and finally, I guess um the the million-dollar question how does somebody find you and your book?
SPEAKER_01:Two very easy ways. Well, you can go to Amazon, number one, and just type in my name and you'll and all my books will come up. The book is called As Is, a memoir on healing the past through yoga, or you can put in Rachel Krenzman. Also, you can visit me on my website, which is happybackyoga.com, and that will point you to my courses, retreats, as well as my book. And I have a website, rachelcrensman.com as well.
SPEAKER_00:Wonderful, wonderful. Well, listen, if you ever find yourself back in Southern California, I'd like to invite you to our botanical garden. We've got a little nonprofit called Gardens of Hope, and we do therapeutic horticulture, and I'd love to Ooh, that's a definite possibility because I do come every year.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:We have a number of yoga instructors that come out and we do sound baths and all sorts of cool things. So um, anyways, I'd like to invite that. And also, I feel like we we touched the surface of a lot of important topics, and I'd certainly like to welcome you back anytime you feel up for it um to continue the conversation.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you very much. I would love that.
SPEAKER_00:Beautiful. Well, this has been another episode of the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine. I want to thank all of the listeners that made this show possible, and we will see you next time.
