The Intersection of Brain-Body Psychology & Yoga with Mona Delahooke
Yogaland Podcast
Andrea Ferretti
4.8 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 6 April 2022
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
I want to offer some context for today's episode. My guest is the phenomenal pediatric psychologist and author of the new book, Brain-Body Parenting: How to Stop Managing Behavior and Start Raising Joyful, Resilient Kids, Mona Delahooke.
Mona is not a yoga teacher; in fact, her life's work focuses on looking beyond children's behaviors to understand the root cause -- which, in most cases, begins by looking at the nervous system.
So, although her work focuses on children and how we parent and teach our children, there is so much beneath the surface that applies to all adults. None of us were parented the way that Mona and her colleagues suggest -- because the neuroscience simply wasn't there when we were kids. Our parents didn't have Polyvagal theory in their back pockets (we talk about this in the episode), they didn't know that the most effective way to manage our behavior was to co-regulate with us, to make sure our "platform" was sturdy, and to practice self-compassion.
Now that we know these things, we have the opportunity to practice them in our own lives; to hold space for them in our yoga classes; to view our friends and family's negative behaviors through the lens of the nervous system instead of instantly judging them.
This is THE stuff for me right now -- the intersection of neuroscience, psychology, and applied yoga philosophy or mindfulness. This is where we have the power to change our own lives and the lives of those we come into contact with.
To break it down, in this episode here are a few of the things we cover:
- Mona's three-part framework for how to measure the state of the autonomic nervous system, and how to utilize it in working with children
- New research about interoception and how interoceptive awareness can help children develop emotional literacy
- Co-regulation and how it’s different from coddling or spoiling a child (plus how yoga teachers use it in their classes, even if they don’t know it!)
- Why she feels that flexibility is the cornerstone of resilience for children and adults alike
Show notes: http://www.jasonyoga.com/podcast/episode261
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everyone, I'm Andrea Ferretti and this is episode 261 of Yoga Land. |
| 0:09.1 | Today, my guest is Dr. Mona De La Hook. Mona is a licensed clinical psychologist with more |
| 0:15.6 | than 30 years of experience caring for children and their families. She's a senior faculty member |
| 0:21.7 | of the Profectum Foundation and a member of the American Psychological Association. |
| 0:27.5 | She's the author of two books beyond behaviors using brain science and compassion to understand |
| 0:32.8 | and solve children's behavioral challenges and her newest book, Brain Body Parenting, |
| 0:39.3 | using brain science and compassion to resolve behavioral challenges is the one that we will mostly |
| 0:44.8 | focus on today. So this is a different kind of episode. In that, this is a yoga podcast, |
| 0:51.7 | we don't usually have parenting experts on the show, but I have been familiar with Mona's work |
| 0:58.2 | for years and it has had a profound impact on my own parenting and when this book came out, |
| 1:05.4 | I felt like just so many moments of the book aligned with the things that we do in our yoga practice |
| 1:14.9 | that I wanted to share it with you all. So whether or not you have children, I think this |
| 1:20.0 | episode will be really helpful to you to provide a framework for how the practice that we're doing, |
| 1:28.4 | all the practices that we're doing in yoga are really serving us and helping us self-regulate |
| 1:35.1 | so that we can manage our own behavior. So even if you're not trying to cope with the behavior |
| 1:40.8 | of a small human, you are always coping with your own behavior and with the behavior of those |
| 1:46.9 | around you, your co-workers, your friends, your family, your spouse. So I think that this book |
| 1:52.3 | applies to all of us. Mona describes her approach as warmly engaged, compassionate, and based on |
| 2:02.0 | neuroscience. These are all things that yoga teachers try to do as well. So I just know that you |
| 2:08.7 | will enjoy this episode. We talk about her view of the nervous system and the body brain connection |
| 2:15.3 | as a platform and how we can keep that platform sturdy. I asked her to explain the three pathways. |
| 2:23.2 | So this is based on polyvagal theory, which I know many of you are familiar with, but she just |
... |
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