Episode 126 of Changing the Face of Yoga: Working in the Medical System   with Lisa Holland.

Major Points:                     1) A lot of therapy is treating them, doing things passively to them or setting things up. A lot of coaching is holding up a mirror. And asking them to see the truth in the matter and then creating a safe environment for them to do that to self-reflect and to get their own answers.

                                                2) What is helpful for me in terms of a business standpoint is now I have more to share at different places to move them through an experience, the whole picture experience.

                                               

                                                This is Changing the Face of Yoga. And this is episode 126 and my guest today is Lisa Holland. This is part of the theme of support for Yoga Teachers and Yoga therapists. Lisa is very experienced having worked within the medical field as a physical therapist and she has some ideas about working in that field. It's just how you position yourself in this area. So welcome. Lisa. I'm really excited about this particular interview because I think it's quite unique. Could you just give us a short bio that will introduce you to the listener?

                                                Sure. Thank you Stephanie so much for having this theme. I think it's important that we start thinking about wanting to have a sustainable business. If you want to help people, you got to make sure you stay in business. I'm a doctor of physical therapy. I've been practicing physical therapy. I don't do as much clinically now because I really moved into some mentorship and some of these business conversations for my peers that are in medicine and Rehab Medicine and also for Yoga physios. Yogis that are kind of the bridge builders. I tend to work with people who kind of walk both lines, walk that fine line with one foot on each side because that's where I came from.

                                                I've been a physio Yogi. I really had my first class really dipping my feet into it about 2000-2001. And then I created my company Belly Guru LLC in 2005. And I did that as a model. It was one of the first medpreneur type of health entrepreneur, boutiquy, clinical/ wellness center, well positioned, direct to market. I did not take any insurances. I did not step into that. I was leaving that for very important reasons. Number one, they weren't accepting of yoga back then. That was 2005. And I really had seen that as a very helpful therapeutic modality and it aligned with what I had done in orthopedics and sports medicine prior to my move to women's health, which was, in that realm, you were really working on mind body things. You knew that they needed to keep their head in the game and you saw the detriments of that in their physio, no matter how physically able they were put together, fixed up, patched up, if their head was out of the game, if they were feeling injured mentally, you saw that performance.

                                                 And then I went over into main stream, rehabilitation medicine and that was like, oh, forget about it. It was every body part for themselves and every person's discipline for themselves. And it did not overlap. So my main migration of over into yoga as my main modality for restoration started out physical in as much as I think every physical therapist that you know goes into that much more than let's say the psychologists that go into that, they go a lot more mind approach.

                                                But my approach was always very holistic, was always mind and body and it really gave me a vehicle. And so I evolved into that. I naturally became a mentor for other people doing that. They were asking me questions, so I decided, hey, if they're going to ask me some questions and I'm not going to be seeing people and I'm talking on all these Facebook pages and giving advice, I need to start getting supported for that. Because I actually really liked it and I knew a lot of stuff and I could save them years. I mean, pretty much right now I've a five day accelerator that took me 16 years to learn. You could do it in five days.

                                                 So I'm trying my best to broaden the physical therapist minds. But they have a lot of legalities and things and then there's a lot of fear in that mentality. I think the yoga teachers and yoga therapists could really learn from their mistakes. And one of the big things I see right now in having been one of these bridge builders in the international association of Yoga therapists trying to bring a conversation for that line of health providers that don't necessarily want to hang up their clinical to become, a yoga therapist or a full time yoga therapist or a yoga teacher. They actually want to combine it.

                                                But what I saw is that we're kind of walking down the line here in yoga therapy, number one, calling ourselves yoga therapists when we can actually can really fit into the market, positioning ourselves in a little different way. And so I've been out there having that conversation. I am actually even more than a health coach as what I was trying to bring in when I went into health coaching, I really saw that was actually still a very clinical conversation and more of what I do is what I was taught in Yoga. Very traditional Raja, Hatha - the holy science of yoga is I help people change their lives.

                                                I'm a life coach. I do that in various ways, it leans towards more rehabilitation versus personal development depending on the person. But when you're dealing with chronic pain and you're dealing with women's health, which are two areas where I tend to work in nowadays or since I moved into women's health in general, those two conversations, long-term, hormonal imbalance, stress induced things. That realm that yoga is in right now to be a very big help in their community is actually needing to make sure they have behavioral change and not just doing these modalities. It actually is about behavioral change.

                                                So I'm having that conversation and I assume that's what, some of the conversation we had from in the last podcast that you so nicely had me on. so that's really where I'm at. My mind-body brand academy is helping people such as yourself and anyone else to literally have a personal brand that they can transport as they evolve into their professional way they want to evolve. And then like I said, I'm actually starting to certify people in these abilities to read other people with some psycho-social assessments. We all start talking about the bio-psycho-social and how yoga is so great on the bio-psycho-social. But you cannot come into mainstream and start talking chakras. You're not going to be able to talk to a physician. You can't go into health care and yoga therapy wants to so much be in healthcare, they have some schools that are putting them in white coats and in hospitals.

                                                But the problem is that you can't go into that. Our psychosocial and yoga-Ayurvedic method and whatnot is such that it is something that they don't have in the Western model. They don't necessarily have that conversation. So we need to enter in their conversation. And that's behavioral change and that's life coaching and health coaching to some extent, well being and all of that conversation. But it's not necessarily we're all, health coaching right now is about learning. You have to become a ninja about the gut microbiome. We're not going to have a bunch of, Yogis doing that. You can.

                                                But I think really what's natural within the practice itself is that aspect of on helping people see themselves of today as they truly are. Not focus so much like therapy does in the past and focusing on the problem and how you got hurt and what's going to change from yesterday and going back to that trauma over and over and over to work it out. We need to focus on the today and let them see the person of tomorrow. Because a lot of times we know when they come to the mat they don't see that yet. It's too big of a gap. And that bridge building right there honestly is a lot more that I do of life coaching. Then just health and wellness. So a lot of yoga off the mat and I think we can position ourselves there.

                                                Let's just talk real basics. You've kind of evolved since the last time we talked, because you were talking about health coaching, but now you kind of evolved into more life coaching. So what would you say are the major differences between being in a clinical position, whether it's physiotherapy or it's yoga therapy or whatever therapeutic versus a life coach?

                                                Okay. Well I think probably what you heard is I feel I am a health coach. I just feel like they're not really two different things. It's just my definition of health and wellbeing involves your life and you really can't split it up just like you can't split up the mind and the body. You are only going to get a piece.

                                                And you can't get behavioral change unless you change what's going on with someone's perception of themselves in their life. Because you can't get them eating organic and Vegan, if at home that's going to be a really big problem no matter how much they believe you. So the real differences I see between health and life coaching is again the clinical concentration while health coaching will bring in behavioral change. You are through the process because of their desire to work in a very allopathic model. You will see somewhat of a diagnostic meeting, some sort of a procedure for certain diagnostics, lots of testing, a lot of focus on the gut microbiome and digestion and assimilation there. They do talk about stress but a lot of stuff will end up working in diet and so it looks a lot like, Ayurveda consultants. I think we have that already, right? We have Aryuveda consultants, we have Ayurvedic physicians, we have Aryuvedic practitioners.

                                                Those aren't necessarily always yoga therapists or therapists in general are life coaches. Taking somebody and telling them what you do for a certain pathology is very different than actually walking them through change. And so the life coaching side and the conversation is how do I actually deal with change? That's not necessarily what do I do to my body or my diet or my sleeping? How do I actually deal with change?

                                                I would assume though that any clinical intervention assumes that you're going to change. You're going to do some more stuff or you're going to do less stuff or you're going to do different stuff, but you're going to change. So is it just that the clinical is very focused on a specific thing whereas the coaching is more holistic?

                                                Clinical work or therapy work is focused on fixing something - a healing per se. Coaching is focusing on process. And the real difference is that in a therapy, both of them will be healing. Okay. Both of them will be change and yes, I agree. It's assumed, but that doesn't mean you can do it because we all know with the science right now, we sometimes have literal changes in our biochemistry and our brain chemistry that have been caused by repetitive traumas or we have injuries and processes that are not working anymore. In that microbiome where we really literally need to change the biochemistry again.

                                                So as much as we might want to, sometimes we need to be coached through that. In a coaching relationship, it's who's in charge versus a therapy relationship. Therapy is about me being the expert and me taking all of that evidence based medicine and me knowing a protocol and me figuring out what you need and then pulling down that protocol and sort of adapting it to you. And that is me in charge of the game really. Even if I say client-centered, it's not like I'm sitting there and I'm like, okay, so we can do and some people do and they try to expand it. They try to have more of a client centered approach and they say, well there's this test and this test, which one do you want to do?

                                                In a coaching relationship, you really are not one in charge. You're there to be a witness and a guide to their process. You say you are the healer. I am not the healer. You are the healer. I just know stuff to maybe make that process a little easier to digest and I might be able to give you some resources, but I'm not even necessarily being the educator. A lot of therapy is educating people. A lot of therapy is treating them, doing things passively to them or setting things up. A lot of coaching is holding up a mirror. And asking them to see the truth in the matter and then creating a safe environment for them to do that to self-reflect and to get their own answers. That's the biggest change between therapy and coaching.

                                                What are the benefits of therapy and then what are the benefits of coaching to the client?

                                                Great question. Thank you, Stephanie. the benefits of therapy are that the best thing would be if you had skills in both and could sort of walk between it because there's always this Pandora's box if you're being really creative, right, and being very effective. And there are times when it becomes a need for a therapeutic alliance and there are times when it needs to maybe be moved over to a more autonomous coaching alliance. The benefits of therapy are that there are things like I can't do for myself. There are things I don't know. I can be a little bit more passive. I could give over a little bit of needing to take the lead when I'm very stressed on something to someone I trust, like and know. The coaching is actually much harder. Coaching is something which is why there's not a lot of people that can sell it well because you need to have a person at a level of readiness for change that they may not be at. Whereas therapy, I can literally have you there passively knocked out and I could probably range your leg or I could have you literally on your death bed and help you in some way, feel less pain or strain or stress and it take you through my process and that might be very helpful for you. But if I'm working towards being autonomous, I'm truly sitting there saying, why can't this person have compliance? Why don't they have self efficacy? It's very hard in a therapeutic alliance to say, here, I'm the expert, I know this, do this. And then sit there and say, why isn't this person independently making their own decisions to heal their own life? It's a different mindset. Whereas the benefit of coaching is that that's the relationship right off the bat. The person's coming in understanding this is going to be more of their work than my work.

                                                So let's take it the other way. What are the benefits of both coaching and the therapy for the therapist? Why would they change from being a therapist to coach?

                                                They would change when they see the limitations of therapy. Therapy can only take the person so far, or at least that's my belief in terms of really truly taking self-ownership of their life and feeling transformed through the process. I do not believe that therapy alone transforms people. I think a conjunct care plan that involves some sort of coaching before the person leaves is really where the transformation is going to occur. I believe a band-aid is given in therapy. I believe a crisis is overcome in therapy and I believe that if the person has enough self-efficacy already to take that ball and run with it, they will end up coaching themselves through a transformation through that process. Such as, let's say somebody is healed from cancer, things like that. That's usually a life changing event that forces them to see their life in a different way, to see a different perspective on things that they were doing every day. Not everybody's sitting in that life threatening situation or feels they are in that life threatening situations. So I think that the people who want to give people transformational experiences will feel that they hit a glass ceiling if they only stay with therapy skills.

                                                So let's look at it from the business point of view We are all in business some form or another if we're therapists or yoga teachers. I think you said something about earlier that really the therapeutic mode is quite crowded and that making your mark in that can be difficult. Is making this transformation to coaching or adding coaching to your skillset; is that helping you in a business way also?

                                                Well, yes, of course. Because everybody is selling something. Even if you're giving a free class, you're selling, you want people to come. That's the first thing. You have to understand that spirituality and altruistic and everything like that - you're still selling something if you want people to partake in something that you want to share.

                                                What is helpful for me in terms of a business standpoint is now I have more to share at different places to move them through an experience, the whole picture experience. The whole transformation. What we are offering people or what at least what I am. I don't sell yoga sessions. I don't sell physical therapy sessions. I don't sell dry needling or massages or any of these yoga classes. What I sell people is outcomes and I honestly feel I have more to sell. I have a better product, I have a higher value thing in the market when I can offer the person who wants a transformation, a transformational experience. If someone just wants a therapeutic experience, in my case, I can give them that too. I can match. I can deliver what they're expecting.

                                                 I can have a conversation. One of the real things about coaching skills is that basically what they are is communication skills. You are getting very ninja styled level ability in communication. And so of course, 99% of business is relationships and you're going to have a much better relationship with people that you can communicate with. And it's not just that you're telling them what you do, it's that you're talking to them with who they are so you understand who they are.

                                                 I mean, my certification is teaching, my work that I do on psychometrics is teaching, literal objectives on people's behavioral styles and their main core motivators, their highest motivators. What's behind, what's under the iceberg of complaints that you see that's either holding them back from healing themselves or once they've healed their booboos keeps them actually doing the whole full work to not end up in that position again. That's very valuable in a society that is literally killing themselves.

                                                That's a strong statement.

                                                They are. That's the truth. Things that are killing us now are not opportunistic infections and all these complaints about vaccinations and all of this. That's not what killing human beings. If you look at the top three killers, it's what we're putting in our mouth. It's coming out of our mouth and our thinking patterns. It's stress. That is self-imposed by our perceptions. That needs a transformation of self-perception, not just, eat this and exercise this many minutes and move this way. But Yoga, and I'm not a yoga therapist, but I'm sure, because I've talked to a lot of them. I mean they're talking about the koshas and, and going deep within, beyond the physical, into the mental, emotional, spiritual, et cetera.

                                                Why is that not transformational?

                                                That is transformational, but not everybody wants to be on a yoga mat. And I'm just saying that from a business standpoint. Not everybody's going to buy yoga, but that doesn't mean that if you're a yoga therapist, you need to not see them. You just have to have it in a different package of what you're going to do and work with them and coaching's an outlet for that.

                                                I see.

                                                For example, I make money on the Internet. I could be working with somebody over in Germany and I'm in Charlotte, North Carolina, in America. I can't do that in a traditional maybe therapy way. Although there is telemedicine, but again, I'm not always selling: you have to feel broken to work with me. I actually have a majority of my conversation is I'm going to work with you so that you don't break.

                                                Something that I would like to get into because I have talked to a lot of yoga therapists and there seems to be a trend that they want to be in the medical realm shall we say. They want to work with doctors. They want to work in clinics, they want to work in hospitals. Not everyone by any means of course, but they are trying to make a statement that they are an excellent partner to these other more traditional medical services. I've got the impression that maybe you weren't thinking that's a great idea or that you have some opinion on it.

                                                Well we have to understand I'm of the mindset again as a business woman that's been doing this for 15 years or so. I wasn't able to build the business I wanted in terms of my vision being under the thumb of a corporation, which is what most hospitals are right now. There's certain rules and there's certain procedures and I think a lot of that catalyst of wanting to do that as number one, everybody wants to be respected and it's very prestigious and respectful, putting on that white coat and working with doctors and nurses and therapists and things like that.

                                                My concern is that they're looking at it as the silver lining of self-validation. What they don't realize is that right now hospital centers make money off of getting staff who can do certain things for less money. And they're also into, and as much as we want to help and we can. I 100% agree that we are great as yoga therapists with that yoga therapy hat on. It's a great complement to physical therapy.

                                                 That's why I started to combine it. It's a great complement for someone who's having major digestive problems. They really need to Vagal downtrain and you have this way. Somebody sitting in a bed disabled to work on breath and self-perception and that be very transformational for them. We have research taking them out of depression and this and that without all the consequences of pharmacology induced support. So that's not what I'm saying.

                                                What I'm saying is I'm not so sure we're in a position because of the difficulty historically I've seen in caregivers. In any profession that has a predominance of women in any altruistic type of really heart-led, mission-driven type of people, they tend to be taken advantage of. And there are people taking advantage of them right now who are billing under their codes, basically bringing them into their centers so that they can get more money, but they don't have to pay a physical therapist. So they'll pay a yoga therapist. It's not that they necessarily believe it, just that they honestly don't respect either of them enough to think that there's a difference.

                                                So the theory is there and it's very good, but we have to be very careful that we're asking for what our value truly is and not just replacing the fact. Physical therapists right now, if you're on acute care, you're not even a billable service. You're getting people out of the hospital and moved out into the next thing. But you're kind of like in this whole overall payment system, at least here in America, where as far as physicians and everybody's in far as corporate is concerned, acute care physical therapists, they're just rolled into the whole thing. They're not seeing you as your own valuable service.

                                                So you know when things may need to get cut, they're going to look at what's going to bring them the revenue and I don't know if we're there yet in the brand of our profession. To go into it showing and really saying this is my value I'm bringing. Instead of going in and being like, oh, I'm so excited I'm doing you such a favor. It's just a mind shift thing that I think we have to be very careful of. My thing is why don't you go build your own business and if they really value you and you market well then they should be by ethics sending people to you and you can get paid way more because you have no ceiling in your own business. That's my thought.

                                                Good. Because I think looking at it from someone who's worked through this system in a slightly different position is good rather than just kind of taking on wholeheartedly: oh, this is going to be really good for me and I will be validated if I get to work with doctors and in hospitals and stuff.

                                                We have to practice what we preach, right. We have to make sure that if we're going in there and we're not going in there in that sort of wounded healer model and needing that. We go in there because we are changing health care and we have to be in a position of power to do that. And then the first thing would be in our own salaries and our own value ladder. And I'm hearing people want a licensure and this and that. And I'm just saying that that's just, political hands being held because there's so much I can't do because I'm licensed and I have to play this game of walking this line that I have. Lliterally I would be able to do so much more online and whatnot if I gave up my doctor of physical therapy.

                                                There's two sides to that. I had a discussion with somebody else about the other side of that, which is if you aren't licensed, then you can be destroyed. You can always run your own business obviously as long as you're within those kinds of guidelines. But it does become more difficult if you want to be within the medical group.

                                                Yes. But you have to understand what that's about .Because they can't make as much money off of you unless you are a licensed provider. They could still respect you. It's just that their liability goes up.

                                                If you're not licensed,

                                                If you're not licensed. It's not because they don't necessarily believe in you. Because honestly, there were very few physicians that will truly be understanding of your education. They just don't. It's not every physician. I'm going to say that I've been in that world and it does not matter that I'm a doctor of physical therapy.

                                                The American Medical Association is constantly fighting the American Physical Therapy association about direct access because when it comes down to it ,we can take money away from them. If you don't need to see a physician and you just walk into a physical therapy office, nine time out of 10 when you have a pain, it's not about cancer. We actually have the skills to make sure that if it looks like cancer, we send them to you, but it's who's getting the money. We do need standards. We do need some sort of regulation because everybody and their mothers are taking a weekend course on yoga for back pain and deciding they're a yoga therapist and you're not. We have to be careful of why we're getting a license. Sure. And what that will entail.

                                                Thank you, Lisa. I was pretty sure this was going to be a really great discussion and it has been because I think you're just saying, hey, stop and think about where you want to go and what you want to do. Because you may have been sold a bill of goods. It's not great because it sounds good. It sounds like you'll be respected in that you'll work with clients, which is what everybody wants to do there. These are helping professions. I love the way you think about it because you have all this experience behind you and I think it's important at this point where there seems to be this rush towards being part of the medical system that maybe we need to think about it.

                                                There's a reason that there's so many medpreneurs now, that there's so many masterminds, that there's so many cash based PT practices and Rehab centers and functional medicine doctors. I mean, we literally have a whole new profession of functional medicine, a new philosophy, and most of those people are not taking insurance and most of those people have left the allopathic confines. Not totally. I mean there's still practicing medicine appropriately, but they've tried to make a path where they could give the care that they believe needs to be given in the way that it can be given.

                                                And we just need to look at that. That's all I'm saying is you just need to see the whole picture. I think yoga therapists should really seriously consider being more along the lines of the functional medicine conversation then the allopathic medicine conversation and they should alliance themselves with functional medicine doctors because those guys get it.

                                                I'm a functional, physical therapist or focused physical therapists. That's all those health coaches. They're all functional medicine. None of them are sitting in there. Those are the registered dieticians that are still sitting there talking about proteins, fats and carbohydrates and giving you a formula like that, that's not going to heal you. The functional medicine people are the health coaches and functional medicine docs and functional medicine therapists and all of that. That's where I think people who are serious about being significant and maybe having some power in how they make their money as well as how they're impacting the world need to go where medicine's going and it's going towards functional medicine.

                                                Give me a quick definition of functional medicine.

                                                Functional medicine is the medical doctors who saw what the naturopaths were doing, the Ayurvedics and the lifestyle medicine. It's the approach of lifestyle medicine. What's nice about functional medicine is it's not a profession specific, so you don't have to be an MD. There's, there's dcs and pts and rns and whatever. It's a philosophy. It's a blanket philosophy which is focused on lifestyle medicine and all the contributing factors into why your body is out of function. It doesn't necessarily wait until you're in a diagnostic disease.

                                                 So if they take blood work, let's say your vitality is down, they're going to look at a much broader screen of your thyroid and your metabolism and all of this stuff, then maybe traditional allopathic medicine person would because they're just looking at your numbers to see when you've crossed the line and you're officially able to be diagnosed with disease. Functional Medicine's going to say, why aren't you feeling well, let's look at the whole picture and let's do a broader scope and see if your T4 is converting to your T3 properly and where this might be an issue. It ends up being a lot of inner inflammation with chronic disease.

                                                Like I said, what is killing us now is chronic stuff that we have a lot of power over by how we eat, how we drink, can we sleep and but the one area doesn't do so well is actually coaching you through that process of change. And so they brought in the health coaches to do some of that work

                                                This has been a great podcast, Lisa. I want to give your contact details . Lisa's website is www.bellyguru.com. You can email Lisa@ bellyguru.com. I don't know why I can't say that. Is that also your Instagram and facebook?

                                                Actually, if you're interested more on the professional side, probably the best way to get me is my personal website, which is www.drlisahollandpt.com And that also is my handle over on Instagram. and you can find me over on Facebook with that as well.

                                                I will note that in the show notes. Okay. So thank you, Lisa. I always like talking to you. You always have such strong opinions.

                                                Well, I'm an evolutionary woman. What can I say? I'm an Alpha.

                                                Thanks so much. And as usual, you've produced a great podcast.

                                                Thank you so much, Stephanie, for having me on and for having this conversation for everyone.

Contact details:

www.drlisahollandpt.com/

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