61: Erica Mather on Yoga and Empowered Self-Care for the Body

Website
Instagram
Book 

2012: Time for Change
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Empire – Podcast
Ana Forrest – Yoga
Thalidomide
Holotropic Breathwork
Heart Rate Variability Breathwork
Ethnomusicology
Nina Simone – Music & Protest
Edward Said – Professor
Music – Save Your Love for Me
Modern Wisdom – Chris Williamson
Louise Perry – Book
Somatic Psychotherapy
Gabor Maté
Compassionate Inquiry
The Wisdom of Trauma
Abhyanga

Giancarlo: [00:00:00] Hello. Hi, welcome to this new episode of the Mango TV podcast. Today, I’m very excited to have Erika Mather. Erika Mather is an author and a yoga therapist who helps people feel better in and about their bodies. Her book, Your Body, Your Best Friend, and the confidence crushing pursuit of unrealistic beauty standards and embrace your true power, has captured the attention of yoga and mental health professionals as a guidebook for overcoming Body image dissatisfaction.

Her adore [00:01:00] your body transformational programs provide concierge coaching and the yoga clinic of New York helps students, teachers, and health professionals to learn about empowerment, self care for the body mother, a forest yoga lineage holder, and has been profiled in the New York weekly yoga journal and Wisconsin public radio.

Find our Instagram at Erica. Mother and www erika mother.com. Hello. Hi, welcome. 

Erica: Good morning. Thank you for having me, Giancarlo. 

Giancarlo: So Erica has been recommended by Robert, who has been on a podcast a couple of times, and, yeah, I just wanted to create a little bit of a context of, of, of this Mango TV podcast.

The idea behind the podcast is to continue the exploration that started actually 15 years ago with a documentary called 2012 time for change. Based on this on the work of Daniel Pinchbeck, who’s actually a New York philosopher. And he took 2012 as a meme, as an [00:02:00] excuse for for change.

Basically, his idea is that global transformation comes from personal transformation. And so Yeah, that started 15 years exploration on what does he mean personal transformation transforming into what? 

Erica: Such a good question. 

Giancarlo: And and recently Tim Tim Ferris recommended a book by this Jesuit priest, Indian Jesuit priest called Anthony DiMello.

Have you heard about him? 

Erica: Is that a modern figure? He died in 

Giancarlo: the 80s. He was born in 1930s. He’s a psychotherapist and he’s so funny. Tim recommended this book called Awake. And his theory is that most of the people are asleep. And then, and they, they, they marry asleep, they have children asleep and they die asleep.

And of course it’s a bit of a provocation, but so I was thinking to what extent this idea of personal transformation is connected with this idea of awakening. Anyhow, this is just a little [00:03:00] bit like the, the, the background of, of this podcast. And I’d love to, you know, know a little bit about. How you decided to look into this important topic of the body image, the mind, body, spirit.

Give him a little bit of biographical info. 

Erica: I will give you biographical info, but before I do, can I reflect on what you just said? Of 

Speaker 5: course, of course. 

Erica: I was thinking on the train down here and just watching people. I was like, you know, personal transformation isn’t for everyone. And one of my teachers says, Self examination is not for weak people.

And so there has to be something, like, in you already a little bit that you, some part of you, some part of your soul wants to wake up. You know, and it’s just, it’s not for everybody. Some people will wake up a little bit while they’re here. Some people will wake up a lot while they’re here. But for the most part, yeah, if you talk to people, your question is so good.

Personal transformation transformed to what? Where are we going? [00:04:00] What are we becoming, you know? And, and those are big questions. So, I think My desire is for everybody to wake up, and I feel frustrated sometimes. I’m like, you know, like, it’s not my job to persuade you that you need to wake up, you know?

And and so it, it, like, breaks my heart a little bit to be like, Oh, we’re so trapped, even more than ever before in this, like, material realm. In any event, that’s my reflection from the train, you know, 

Giancarlo: but this is going to be, I think the, the, the blueprint, you know, as we go on in the conversation that sometimes I will, I want to go back to this idea of transformation, you know, it’s not for everybody, but maybe it’s not for everybody in this lifetime.

So if we believe on a soul journey, maybe the awakening is so good later on. 

Erica: Yeah. And I was thinking about that too. I was just watching people. I was like, But do they even believe in reincarnation? Do they think about what happens after death? Would it, [00:05:00] how many people think about what happens after death now these days?

I don’t know. But in any event, I grew up in the Midwest, which is Wisconsin, which is. The middle of the United States. Yeah. 

Giancarlo: My wife is from Nebraska. 

Erica: Oh, okay. You’re married to a Midwesterner. How lovely. Lincoln, Nebraska? 

Giancarlo: Omaha. 

Erica: Omaha, Nebraska. Oh my gosh. Well, I would love to hear how you met a Midwesterner.

Anyway, so you know a little bit about This type, this type of person. We met in 

Speaker 5: Ibiza. 

Erica: Oh, okay, okay, alright, well, that makes more sense. You didn’t meet her in Omaha. But I’m from the Midwest and I think that, I think that I was born into a philosophical family. My father read, My father was half Puerto Rican, half English.

He’s was sort of a, you know, a Victorian English education that involved a lot of rhetoric and philosophy. And I think of him [00:06:00] when he’s been dead for 25 years, but I think of him kind of as a philosopher. I feel like his favorite book was Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I don’t know if you’ve ever read that, but it’s a, it’s basically a book about.

Philosophy. And, and I think that probably being born into a family kind of like that maybe already sets the stage, you know, like, for 

Giancarlo: introspection, for 

Erica: introspection, you know, I was a little side note. I was listening to a podcast. You asked me what podcasts I like. I was recently started listening to a podcast called Empire, which is about the colonialization of India.

And, and it’s a very, the two podcast hosts are historians, and one is a person of Indian descent born in Essex, and another is a person who is British who was born in India, right? So this colonization, so interesting. And they were talking about how she was reflecting how in the Caste system that [00:07:00] you are born into a Caste and it’s very important that you, that you adhere to the, the tenets of, of like diet so that you could move through the Caste system in subsequent lives.

And I thought about that. That’s so interesting. And it made me think like, well, what is it to just be born into a family of a certain philosophical stature. We don’t have a framework like that in our culture. But, in any event, I suffered a lot as a kid. And, I think because of the kind of body I was born into, I think everybody suffers a bit because of the kind of body they’re born into.

Sometimes your soul matches with your body perfectly. Sometimes it doesn’t. And when your soul doesn’t match with your body, I think it generates a lot of suffering and sometimes people want to change their body as a result. Some people want to change their identity as a result. Some people modify by just dressing differently.

I cross dressed as a [00:08:00] kid I think, you know, I was a tomboy and in college I wore suits and ties because I was a little, like, uncomfortable with myself. And A lot of women of my generation, and I think still of this generation that’s growing up, I think that they try to solve these problems by starving themselves.

And if the body will just become less, if it will disappear, then maybe it will be more manageable. The whole thing will be more manageable. 

Giancarlo: Even today? Because I remember in the 80s there was this look of the ero and chic look, right? But now I see advertisement of much more how was it? Diversity. 

Erica: We would call it diversity of representation.

Or representation. I think that It’s become a lot more stratified. I want to say bifurcated, but not even bifurcated. It’s like it’s broken off into [00:09:00] lots and lots of little bits. And you think because you see that in the media that there’s more diversity of representation that, that the general population is healthier, but I don’t think that’s the case.

And I think that a lot of the fault for that can be laid at the feet of social media where where. Bullying and cruel comments about appearance hap don’t happen through a note passed at class, but they happen in online immediately, and you see it, and you hear it immediately. The feedback is very quick.

Whereas when I was growing up, or when you were growing up, the feedback on how you looked was slower, you know? You had more of an opportunity to digest it, and there were more voices that were actually real voices, people in your life, saying like, Hey, kid. Don’t listen to what everybody says or hey, you, you’re your own person, you know, but now there’s hundreds of thousands of [00:10:00] people weighing in on how you look online.

And 

Giancarlo: also they are protected by this digital barrier because when in person people are nicer. 

Erica: Yes, 

Giancarlo: sort 

Erica: of, maybe less these days, but in any event, I think that yes, I think actually the, the menu of how you try to erase yourself as a young person has, has changed. diversified. Now there’s cutting, which seems to be a lot more like prevalent.

There’s starving, there is anxiety, depression, there’s anxiety, there’s depression. So there’s a lot more. But in any event, I, I got sick and it was the sickness that really actually woke me up. So we’re talking about awakening. It’s like, what is the event that wakes you up? 

Giancarlo: The cathartic event. Yeah. 

Erica: What is it that, that makes you go, Oh.

This isn’t what it seems to be. Like, this world is not what [00:11:00] it seems to be, and maybe I should think about things differently. And it really was getting sick. My father died when I was 23, and then I developed adult onset migraine headaches when I was 26. And I went to see an alternative healer, and he basically gave me a death sentence.

He said you are really, really, really sick. He actually used you know, foul language, which I don’t know if we, we can have foul language on this podcast. We 

Giancarlo: can totally have foul. Okay. But that was for the, the symptoms were just migraine. 

Erica: They were just migraines, but you know, my, my yoga teacher on a forest even says that sometimes these physical sicknesses are sicknesses of the soul.

Giancarlo: Yeah. Psychological psychosomatic. 

Erica: Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes they are exactly sicknesses of the body, but where does the body and the soul and the mind, where, how do you pull those pieces apart? I don’t know. So, he said, you’re really fucked up, and if you don’t start taking care of yourself, you’ll be dead by the time you’re 40.

And I [00:12:00] was 26 at the time, and I was like, hmm, okay. And my dad had died at 56, so, you know, a short life was not an implausible scenario. And that started this whole path of yoga, and befriending my body in a new way that was based on it just being and feeling, not looking or doing. And then starting to think more deeply about what is this sickness and what is the, what is this life and what is this body.

Why am I so unhappy? Which I think, you know, a lot of people realize. That was 

Giancarlo: like in your twenties. 

Erica: Twenty six. Twenty three to twenty six. Your 

Giancarlo: father died of the same condition? 

Erica: No, no, my father my father, I think that my grandmother took Thimelidide, which was an anti nausea medication. I didn’t [00:13:00] cite the medication correctly, but there was an anti nausea medication for pregnancy.

And it was later linked with birth defects. And I don’t know that it was necessarily linked with cancer, but both my aunt and my father had cancer in their thirties. But 

Giancarlo: your migraine was not an hereditary or a genetic condition. It was most likely psychosomatic. 

Erica: My brother has migraines. So, you know, I don’t know.

Combination. It could be. I mean, that’s basically what I think. It’s a little bit, I think it’s a little mystical and a little medical. That’s sort of the way I think about sicknesses. It’s a little medical, a little mystical. You know, and keep trying to solve. The challenge of the illness from both sides, a little medical, a little mystical.

Let’s push on both of these. Yeah. So it started then and 

Giancarlo: that started the yoga path. That started what is this forest lineage, which I’m not familiar. 

Erica: Yeah. [00:14:00] So my teacher’s name is Anna Forest and she has been teaching yoga for I think 45 years. I think she turned 67 last year. She can be 68 this year. And she started teaching in Santa Monica, LA area in the 80s, I think, or maybe the 70s.

And her lineage is a strong breath based practice, breath based practice. And people might say, well, yoga is always about the breath. It’s not really. I mean, Kundalini 

Giancarlo: is mostly about the breath. 

Erica: Yes. Yes, yes, but, but any practice that is a little more in the asana realm, a little more postural for it to be breath focused is a little bit more unusual.

So it’s breath based, it’s, it’s strong and focuses on building strength because as I said at the beginning, self examination is not for weak people. And how do you [00:15:00] become strong? You become strong. In part through strengthening your body and strengthening your body strengthens your spirit as well.

It’s a very adaptive practice. It’s suitable for people who can’t walk. It’s suitable for people who are very fit and athletic. In my yoga therapy practice, I work with people all the way along that spectrum. Because what it means to get strong means that you get strong where you are. And any, any little like, progression along the strength path, pathway, is you getting stronger.

And that’s really all it takes. It doesn’t mean that you have to be a bodybuilder, or you have to be running a marathon. It means that you get stronger. Where you are 

Giancarlo: And the breath work is a little bit like the allo tropic breath work. Like over oxygenating the brain. Like kundalini No, no, no, 

Erica: no. It’s not like that.

We use UJA UJA breath breathing as, as the foundation. Yeah. Super 

Giancarlo: powerful. Yeah. 

Erica: Mm-hmm . And use it all the way through the whole practice. And then there’s also woven in. I would say some more [00:16:00] advanced internal work with the breath, moving the breath around the body, you moving the breath into particular places in the body, using the breath to explore the depths of your psychology.

Yeah. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. Yeah. Now, you know, it’s ANS, the autonomous nervous system theory now is so prevalent everywhere. And I keep on seeing all around this new type of breath where they call it. Heart rate variability. Mm-hmm . It’s like six seconds out, six seconds or eight, six seconds in and, and it basically slow down your heart.

Heart rate. 

Speaker 4: Mm-hmm . And 

Giancarlo: then it just calm me on your autonomous nervous system and seems very obvious, but, you know, it really works. You know, I catch myself now several times during the day when I feel that I’m agitated and, and I see my heart rate going below, above a hundred 

Erica: mm. 

Giancarlo: Just two, three minutes of that and immediately goes down.

Mm. It’s incredible. 

Erica: That’s great. Yeah. 

Giancarlo: You know, like some of these, so that’s what happened to you, I think maybe, Oh yeah. [00:17:00] What do you mean? Like when, when you had, you had your migraine, you had your disease, like, you know, uncomfortable with your body. And then you discover this, this forest, you start doing this breathing.

That’s called your nervous system. 

Erica: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. It’s as simple 

Giancarlo: as that. People don’t 

Erica: It is pretty simple. Yeah. It is pretty simple, but you have to go looking for it. And you have to want it, and then you have to continue. 

Giancarlo: And to believe it, yeah. You 

Erica: have to continue, because a lot of times people stop, and then they’re like, you know, they feel better, and then they stop, and then they don’t feel better, and then they forget that they have the tool, and then they 

Speaker 6: That’s so true.

It’s so true. 

Erica: Yeah. I know this cycle well. Yeah. 

Speaker 6: Yeah. 

Erica: I mean, I do that cycle a little bit myself. I’ll be like, Oh, I have all these tools. Why am I not using them? I actually am a professional in this realm. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I totally get it. I totally hear you. Yeah. I think that as you, as you get older and more experienced, you keep on cycling.

It’s just a little bit smaller cycle. 

Erica: Yeah. A smaller cycle. Yeah. I was actually explaining that to my boyfriend. There, there [00:18:00] is a It’s a, a theory of evolution, of like, of spiritual evolution called spiral dynamics. I don’t know if you’ve heard about it, but it’s sort of, yeah, it’s basically the idea that your, your, you can spiral upward in your life.

We’re very familiar with the downward spiral, right? Yeah. But the, the upward spiral is just you transcending and like you said, the spiral gets smaller or it gets faster, but you’re always sort of revisiting the same. The same issues over and over again, but you get a little elevation, you get a little, you get a little perspective.

Maybe it doesn’t hurt as much than the next time you go around the cycle. Still hurts, but maybe not as much. Yeah. 

Giancarlo: So we are still in Wisconsin, you’re doing your yoga practice. What’s the next important event? 

Erica: Well, I moved to New York city. I moved out here to go to graduate school. And I, I, I, when I started doing my yoga practice in Madison, I was a professional musician at the time.

[00:19:00] So I was playing the piano professionally. I taught piano. I taught composition. I played in a lot of different bands. I rehearsed, I rehearsed the jazz bands at my own high school. And eventually I was like, I gotta get out of here. You know, I can see my life ahead of me. I’m going, I’m going to be like the crazy piano teacher, you know?

That doesn’t sound 

Speaker 5: too bad. It doesn’t sound 

Erica: too bad, but when you’re 26 or 29, you’re like, maybe I don’t want to like be the Now I might circle back at, you know, almost 50 and be like Being the crazy piano teacher doesn’t sound so bad. That’s actually a really nice life, you know. But, you know, I was young.

I needed to, I needed to do things. I needed to prove myself. So I moved out to New York to go to graduate school. I was in a PhD program at Columbia in Ethnomusicology. Yes. Yes. I forgot. Yeah. 

Giancarlo: I’m a big fan. Have you heard about [00:20:00] Alexandre Tannou? 

Erica: Yeah, I know him. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. 

Erica: We were in, we were in our pro, we were in our program adjacent.

Yeah. Adjacent. Yeah. I haven’t, I haven’t received an email from him in so long. He’s becoming 

Giancarlo: so popular and he’s traveling around the world. Oh, that’s probably why. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He’s he’s, you know, as you know, he’s integrating, you know, plant medicine. And, and, and, and breath work and and sound, sorry, not breath.

Work and sound with this, with this ancient, you know, ball from Tibet. Mm-hmm . And but so for the audience, maybe explain a little bit ethnomusicology. What, what, what, what is it? 

Erica: Yeah. Ethnomusicology came out of anthropology. It was, it’s adjacent to anthropology. Anthropology is sort of just studying people, not sort of, it’s studying people.

Yeah. Right. But the thing of ethnomusicology is it takes music. as the subject matter, as the lens with which you look at people and study people. So there’s two, well, at least when I was doing my work, I haven’t stayed [00:21:00] current in the field at all, but when I was doing my work, there were two basic branches of ethnomusicology.

One was more like folklorism, and it was focused around, like, collecting music. of indigenous peoples or it was very strongly associated with colonialism as well right so people would travel and and study the people of a country and collect the music on on recordings and then there was another sort of stream of ethnomusicology that was more about politics.

Like, how do people how do people experience their life and their identity and their politics through their music? Because music can be a form of protest. Music can be a form of saying, What you think about the world and commenting on it. Some great examples of that are like Nina Simone was a wonderful jazz pianist who, who was one of the first jazz musicians to participate in [00:22:00] the, in the civil rights movement.

Playing protest music, basically other examples of that. Well, a lot of the jazz musicians, actually, it was music of protest in a way, sometimes it was very subversive and maybe not obvious that it was music of protest. But so remind me, what’s the 

Giancarlo: etymology, what does, what does ethno means? 

Erica: Ethno means ethnic.

Giancarlo: Ah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So 

Erica: I think ethnic, but we don’t use that word anymore. So, an ethnographic study, for instance, is a study of a person or a people with regards to their culture. Yeah, 

Giancarlo: like ethnobotany is the study of different species of plants. Correct. 

Erica: Yeah, yeah. So it’s about, it is about the study of people, but it has, it did have sort of a colonialist perspective, which I think is why this other branch of ethnomusicology arose, because folks felt it was problematic, which it was, and then it was complicating that and, and subverting that to [00:23:00] to bring into ideas, bring into focus idea of what it is to other people and what it is to essentialize.

People, interestingly, Edward Said was a professor at Columbia who really started ideas that are prominent now more in social justice. Where, hey, if stoning people is part of your culture, well, okay, that’s your culture. You know, maybe we should leave those people alone. Hey, clitorectomies are part of your culture, well, who are we to tell you that that’s wrong?

And, you know, we can I could spend hours and hours talking about that sort of perspective on culture and the dissemination of democracy around the world but I don’t think that’s what we’re here to do. But, but, 

Giancarlo: but, but so, so you, you, you, you, you wrote your thesis. I 

Erica: did. I, I didn’t, I, I actually, I actually veered left out of the program after [00:24:00] writing my master’s thesis.

I did not complete the PhD because I had an epiphany Giancarlo and the epiphany was that I really like teaching 

Speaker 4: and 

Erica: and and Columbia is really a research institution. They really They really prioritize the production of academic thought. And I realized I, I really like teaching and I really think of teaching as a very venerable occupation.

Some people think teachers are kind of like second class citizens. Actually in my world as, as a, as a performing musician, there was There was sort of a, kind of a dig, which is if you can’t play, you teach, you know, and so I didn’t like that. And, and I, and I realized that I really missed my, my piano, my piano students.

I really miss the day to day interaction with other people, teaching them something that I really loved. I actually wrote my, my master’s thesis on [00:25:00] gender in jazz, specifically masculinity in jazz and the performance of masculinity in jazz. I sort of thought that if everybody understood the history of jazz in our culture, American culture, that it would resolve all of our racial problems.

And yeah, tell me, tell me more why. Well, the story of jazz in the United States is a story of collaboration. between races. It is a story of 

Giancarlo: connection with the audience live, right? 

Erica: More, more between the performers. You know, what, what, what we think of as jazz is or, you know, there’s different, there’s different kinds of jazz.

There’s jazz that sort of emerged in, in New Orleans. There’s jazz that emerged in New York. There’s jazz that emerged in Europe. Not so much. That was imported, right? There’s jazz that emerged in [00:26:00] Chicago. Those are the real locations of the genesis of jazz. If you, if you research it. But a lot of it was about the mixing.

The mixing of immigrants. And the mixing of slaves with immigrants. And slave music with immigrants. And so there’s a very long history of of collaboration between people who were taught to hate one another. 

Giancarlo: Mm, nice. Yeah, yeah, I understand the idealism around it. 

Erica: Yeah, and then the, the, a lot of the early days Jazz that the, the twenties and the thirties, which is sort of like a golden era of jazz pre bebop era.

Did you want to learn about jazz on this podcast? 

Giancarlo: I mean, I’m interested also because jazz is associated with with the heroin, 

Erica: there, there is that association, [00:27:00] but I also think that it’s a way to malign the artists, right? Because, oh, he was a drug addict. You know, Charlie Parker, he was a hero addict.

And also, I think, I think the authority, 

Giancarlo: the authority wanted to associate hard drugs with immigration to, to, to And black people. And black people. And 

Erica: black people. That’s why To make it 

Giancarlo: dangerous and to make it illegal. 

Erica: I, I, I don’t And is it, is it true that Charlie Parker was a drug addict? Yes, it is true.

But now we’re, now we’re, now we really need to like dig into how was, how was, how was Heroin introduced into our country and what is the the malignment of black people in Association with drugs when plenty of white people used heroin, you know, 

Giancarlo: no, they were they weaponized it There’s an entire book on that 

Erica: yes, and that’s why I mean when you bring it up because I don’t like I like I I want to I’m gonna I’m Gonna I’m gonna tell a different [00:28:00] story.

I want to tell a different story about about the value of jazz and the value of This cultural artifacts and what it meant, you know, and what it meant a lot of it was resistance music, you know But there was also a very strong collaboration between Jewish people and black people because Jewish people Were were also not able to have respectable, you know careers, right?

So a lot of times Jewish people were forced into industries that were not Sanctioned like music, right? So so All of the wonderful songs from the 20s and the 30s were written by Jewish songwriters. And I’m very passionate about this, can you see it? You’re dredging up something that really is meaningful to me.

So it’s like, it’s such a story of collaboration and now here we are at a moment where like, Black people and Jewish people are at one another’s throats again and it’s like, it’s heartbreaking, you know? [00:29:00] And to me it’s just like, this is a, this is a, this is a setup. This is a setup. You know, it’s always been a set up.

Speaker 6: It’s 

Erica: always been a set up. And if you could just see, this was a set up. It’s encapsulated in the history of jazz. This is a set up. The, the, the, the minorities who are unprotected, black people are not protected, Jewish people are not protected, and then the music that they made together. And then the resistance of it, like Bebop was all about resistance.

Bebop was like, you think I’m dumb? Watch me play fast. 

Speaker 6: I see. 

Giancarlo: Beautiful. So, so we are now you are leaving your PhD, you’re missing your music student. You have this passion about, you know, coming from, I think that what, you know, resistance music is one of the aspects of ethnomusicology. 

Erica: It can be. Yeah.

Yeah. 

Giancarlo: And so, and so what happened? So 

Speaker 5: what happened?

Where did you [00:30:00] go back teaching? Did you, you stayed in New York? 

Erica: Oh yeah, I dug in my heels, man. 

No, so I, I wrote this, I wrote this master’s thesis on masculinity and jazz, which was very, very radical at the time. And, and I, and. But so 

Giancarlo: forgive me, Erica, because I understand everything you said about, you know, the interest group weaponizing minority for control and, but what is the masculinity has to do with anything?

Erica: I know, right? I know. Well, you know, I was a female, still am a female, last time I checked, female jazz musician, and it was a very misogynistic. It was very 

Speaker 5: misogynistic. 

Erica: Very misogynistic. But it was also about, you know, in looking back on it, I think if, if you are, if, If there aren’t a lot of spaces for you as a man to express your prowess, and music was a place where you could do it, do you really want the ladies coming in and cutting you off at the knees?

No, you don’t, right? And so I, as, but [00:31:00] I love jazz, you know? I, I listen to podcasts in the middle of the night. I’m listening to these people chat. But you know what I used to do, John Carlo, is I used to listen to Ella Fitzgerald. I would turn on CDs and put it on repeat and just listen to Ella Fitzgerald sing to me all night.

And I listened to John Coltrane play My Favorite Things all night. And and so it was so meaningful to me and the music was so heartfelt and express nuances of human existence that I think are really Rarified. Rarified. So in any event I wanted to write about the thing that I knew. I had to, we had to articulate master’s theses very fast.

I moved to New York, and then we, within like the first three months, it had to be like, what’s your project? I never wanted to write about jazz. I wanted to actually write about Brazilian music because I love Brazilian music. Do you love Brazilian music? Let’s not open up a chapter. Okay, okay. But, you know, in any event, sorry, you’re like, I’m trying to focus you, [00:32:00] trying to focus you.

But so this, this is relevant to the, the, the piece about the body, right? Because how we experience, 

Giancarlo: because the Brazilian music is very embodied, 

Erica: Brazilian music is very embodied, but so is jazz. Jazz is very embodied, right? Yeah, we don’t have you dance to jazz used to Yeah, absolutely the 20s the roaring 20s the big bands.

It was all all of the dances went with the big bands 

Giancarlo: Yeah, 

Erica: all maybe 

Giancarlo: you gave us. Maybe you gave us some some some musician to put on the show notes. 

Erica: I would love to do that I would love to do that. But You know people formulate their identities around So many things and music and this jazz music was a place to form an identity So what did it mean for me to be a female?

piano player in jazz. There was a very strong history of thinking that women weren’t good enough to play jazz, that they weren’t smart enough, that they weren’t sophisticated enough. So there was a lot of misogyny built into it that had to do with you [00:33:00] know, holding women down. And so I wanted to, I wanted to examine that a little bit more and I wanted to explore it because the idea of gender in jazz, so many men I would go to interview about masculinity in jazz and they’re like, what are you talking about?

If you want to talk about this, you should go talk to some women. And so the idea that, that masculinity was just invisible. interesting. And I think it’s actually a very important topic because it has to do with how you feel about your body and how you feel about yourself. We don’t talk enough these days, in constructive terms, I think, about what it means to be a man, and what is masculinity anyway, you know?

Those sorts of topics get driven underground and then they turn into something weird like, you know, like pick up artists, or, you know, or People who are against their will sell a bit. What is that in cells? Yeah. Yeah. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. I mean it [00:34:00] depends It depends on your I think it’s almost like a political view, right?

You know, I remember I listened to a podcast I’m not sure if this is interesting or relevant, but I find it fascinating Do you know who Destiny is? Stefan Stephen Cobell. It’s, it’s a YouTuber. It’s an, it’s an opinion. It’s a, it’s becoming an opinion leader. He’s one of these YouTuber that like comment on a current affair for like several hours a day.

Super smart guy. And he was married with this lady, Swedish lady. They had an open relationship. He was bisexual and they were very open about it and were very happy. And. I mean, very happy. You never know, but they seem very happy. Anyhow, she went on a podcast with this lady. Now I forgot the name, but there’s a little bit older lady, very conservative, and she couldn’t understand how beautiful Swedish lady like her would accept.

to have an open relationship, how the husband would allow for her to be shared with different [00:35:00] men. And for hours in this podcast, she was like, you know, pounding her on how, you know, it’s important to have one man just for you because He would defend you. And you know, this older lady would say things like, but a night, if you hear a noise, who goes down, you want the men.

And she was like, really, maybe I go down, you know, there is, I think the older generation comes from the 50s mentality of the patriarchal, the, the man, the strong man, the cowboy mentality. And what is like the new generation a little bit more gender fluid. So yeah, that’s my contribution on masculinity.

Erica: Yeah, well, I mean, in part, it’s more gender fluid because maybe traditional masculinity felt stifling for some folks. 

Giancarlo: And also women now are like, you know, they’re very happy to go to work and Are they? 

Erica: I mean, I was thinking earlier, I was like, behind every boss lady is a man paying bills, you know?[00:36:00] 

I think that’s a lot going on a lot, you know? 

Giancarlo: Say that again, behind 

Erica: every boss lady there’s a man paying the bills.

That’s not fair. That’s not entirely the truth, but I think that there are a lot of misrepresentations of the economic agreements between men and women these days. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s another session by itself, right? It is another session. And I just 

Erica: pissed off all the people. 

Giancarlo: You know, you know, you know, you know, Modern Wisdom, you know, this podcast, 

Erica: I’ve heard of it. 

Giancarlo: What’s his, I forgot his name now, Chris. He, he, he does a lot of, of, of, of relationship psychology. And, you know, there’s a, there’s a bunch of writer, they call it new feminist writer from England, like Louise Perry. There’s a lot of feminists from England that said that the sexual revolution really didn’t, didn’t bring any really was bad for both for man and woman.

Erica: What do you think of that? 

Giancarlo: You know, Louise [00:37:00] Perry, which is a little bit of a provocation, she says, you know, when men had to wait to sleep with the lady to, and ask for, you know, for her hand to the dad, he had to sort his life, right? You need to have a job, you need to be centered, you need to be, you need to be safe.

So he could go to the father and say, I would like to marry your daughter. And the father would then judge, are you stable enough? And that system, in a way created some stability. Now that, you know, you don’t need to get, you know, you don’t need to get married to have sex. You know, she says that the sexuality has been commodified so much.

And so, you know, with the dating app, so it is becoming super accessible, super easy to get, but not fulfilling for both for men and for women. So, you know, I. You know, that’s another, that’s another episode, but you know, I’m really following some, you know, this recent movement that, you know, some [00:38:00] people call tantra, neo tantra, sexual empowerment.

You know, I, I feel that the best umbrella term is embodied spirituality and, and, and, and there is a, you know, there’s a retreat there is, there is, you know, a temple party. There is. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s a new way to look at sexuality, not only as an energy that can allow you to ascend and to transcend and to transform, but almost some, something which is done almost in service.

So you can have. You know, what would be casual sex, which is you could have sexual interaction with people without a stable relationship, but everything is crystal clear. You have a set of rules you declare where what’s your relationship status, what your desire, what’s your boundaries, what’s the aftercare you need.

It’s everything is discussed. And, and, you know, there is, because most of the time sexuality is consumed in an altered state intoxicated in a bar [00:39:00] and it’s a lot of like, you know, expectation and mismatch of, of, of desire and intention. And so I feel that the disembodied spirituality movement can create the protocol for a new era of more gratifying, empowering sexuality.

But then again, that’s another topic, that’s another episode. 

Erica: Yeah, I think there are a lot of ways to find spirituality in your sexuality. And I think that sometimes the people who want monogamy feel that sexuality is It’s very sacred and that’s why they want to focus on it with one person. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. But sometimes they just stop having it after 10, 20, 30 years.

Erica: Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes they do. 

Giancarlo: Like I ask my friends, you know, I’ve been married 18 years. Most of my friends have been married longer. And when I ask, you know, how you guys deal with monogamy, they would say like everybody with food. Like they, they stop having sex. But Erica, forgive me. I just would like to [00:40:00] now connect the dots because you mentioned the ethnomusicology, the resistance music, the yoga, the breathing, the self image.

And now we’re going to get to the book. But so I want, yeah, I want to know how. You know, I haven’t read the book unfortunately, but, so tell me how did we go from dropping out from PhD to wanting to want to go back teaching, to wanting to write, write a book? 

Erica: That is such a great question and I would be happy to tell you

So when, yeah, and sorry I took you on a very long tangent. Nobody, it was interesting. It 

Speaker 5: was super interesting. I love, I love, I love it. . 

Erica: So 

Speaker 5: we have time. We have time. 

Erica: So I. I realize this academia isn’t for me. Or at least this iteration of academia isn’t for me. And so my migraines were really bad, really, really bad.

They 

Giancarlo: went back. They came back. 

Erica: They’ve never gone away. But did you 

Giancarlo: feel that they were more acute when [00:41:00] you were unfulfilled? 

Erica: Well, yes. I mean, yeah, for sure. I mean, migraines are migraines Let me just side note here. Migraines are the second leading cause of disability worldwide. They they drain billions and billions and billions of dollars out of our economy.

Through lost potential, through time off work, through investment in medical care. This is serious, like, very serious, and astonishingly, nobody really understands what they are. And, and the medications for them are okay, you know? Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t work. I’m very lucky that The medications do work.

I resisted taking medications for years for actually six years. I just, 

Giancarlo: because they’re very invasive, 

Erica: like the SSRI, it is an SSRI. I don’t take them. I [00:42:00] don’t take them. Prophylactically I take them as needed. But I was just resistant. I don’t like putting. substances in my body that don’t have like long term clinical data that was manufactured in a lab.

That’s just the way I feel about it, so. 

Giancarlo: Or that very reductionist, right? You know, like the SSRI, and that’s another quick parenthesis. You know, I, I, I, I’ve been studying a lot psychedelic and MDMA mm-hmm . And so I, I read so many research comparing MDMA to SSRI and the s sri, you know, basically the scientists, they saw that depression comes from, you know, a a lack of serotonin in your brain.

Mm-hmm . So they thought, why don’t we just like in beat the synapsis so that we flood the blood with the brain, with, with, with the serotonin. But obviously it doesn’t, seems to be. Sustainable, long lasting solution is like the NGO, like when you, they change one molecule of a, of a, of a plant, because then, [00:43:00] then, of course, there’s all the side effects.

I mean, just intuitively you go, you inhibit the synapses, you artificially keep the serotonin You know, in this soup of serotonin, and then you put on weight, you lose libido, you, you, you lose a little bit of your personality. Whereas the MDMA, it floods your blood with, with, with serotonin. You do borrow from the future, but then it’s, it’s one off.

It’s not like every day. Anyhow, but I interrupted you. So for, for, for migraine, there’s a type of, of, there’s a type of SSRI? 

Erica: Yeah, there, there are, there are many migraine medications. The one that I take is an SSRI. I don’t know if all, and for people who don’t know it, SSRI stands for serotonin. Reuptake inhibitor.

Yeah. So and I, I don’t know what all the migraine medications are, but I started taking it at last because I was just suffering a lot and a friend of mine Pointed out to me that I was losing about three [00:44:00] months of my life annually to being sick. And so, you know, at that point I was like Oh, and I could see how it was disabling me.

Speaker 4: Yeah. 

Erica: It was disabling me. So I wanted that time back. I wanted that time back. I wanted my life back. But my migraines got pretty bad while I was in at at Columbia. And so I took a leave of absence, a medical leave of absence, to kind of sort out whether I wanted to proceed or not. And during that time, I did my yoga teacher training because I needed some form of employment.

And, and. And I really didn’t, well actually I didn’t go into it thinking I want to teach yoga. I went into it thinking I need to recalibrate. I need to like take a minute and heal a bit. And so that was really where I was at. But then later I was like, I don’t really have a better idea. So I guess I’ll go teach yoga.

And that kicked off my yoga teaching career. It was all In the same 

Giancarlo: lineage than the forest? [00:45:00] Correct. 

Erica: Yeah, correct. And so, you know, I’ve always had an adaptive healing approach to this. It’s never been about, like, looking pretty or doing advanced pose. It’s always been about feeling better. But, teaching yoga is not a very sustainable career.

I think sort of the dirty secret is like, the dirty secret is that it seems like people are making a living, but most of them aren’t, and most of them have either Family money or someone else paying because renting 

Giancarlo: a place in New York City is super expensive 

Erica: Well, you just don’t make that it’s not even about the studio or renting a place It’s just about being able to make enough money to even pay your bills And so you don’t get paid a lot of money to teach yoga So but I hustled and hustled and and and I I finally was able to like pay my own bills But I saw that it wasn’t sustainable And if, and so, how do you make this career sustainable?

And my solution to it was to [00:46:00] solve a marketing problem. Because the thing with yoga is you don’t actually know what yoga does. Yoga’s like some cure all, you just go when you feel bad and maybe you’ll feel better. But I wanted to reverse engineer that into it and say like, Hey, I could help you with your body image issues.

With yoga and the question is how and you can you can Come to yoga and find out how I do it or you can read my book because I put everything in the book Everything that I learned really at yoga while doing yoga that helped me feel better about myself who I am What are the consequences of being me?

What are the consequences of being? Being a soul and a spirit and an intellect like what I am in the body that it’s packaged in, right? Because everybody’s navigating these things. Everybody’s navigating them. Nobody is immune to this. You always are sort of dealing with the consequences of how does [00:47:00] the being in the body line up with the body.

Giancarlo: Especially aging. 

Erica: I mean, also aging, but I mean Adolescents are aging and they’re having a hard time. You know what I mean? It’s like, and then, and then you’re 30 and you’re having a hard time. And you know, kids are getting Botox in their twenties because they’re worried about wrinkles. What is happening?

You know? So I wanted to solve a marketing problem that I hoped would be more sustainable because 

Giancarlo: for yoga 

Erica: for myself. Yeah. 

Giancarlo: But the marketing was around yoga or around way. to make peace with your body. 

Erica: Way to make peace with your body. Way to make peace with your body. And this book and my practices are tools.

I see. For making peace with your body. So they go together. They do. I see. They do. 

Giancarlo: And you still practice today? 

Erica: Every day. Absolutely. 

Giancarlo: And you teach? You have your clients that? 

Erica: Yes. Yeah, I provide. Like I said in my bio, concierge services. That’s such a good 

Speaker 5: idea. 

Erica: [00:48:00] Yeah, 

Speaker 5: thank you. So sometimes, so maybe one month you cover chapter four, one month you cover chapter six.

Erica: I mean, the book is incredibly dense. 

Speaker 5: Yeah. 

Erica: It’s, it’s, I mean, you hear sort of who I am. It’s, it’s researched, it’s intellectual, it’s spiritual, it’s personal. So each chapter, may I tell you a little bit about what’s in the book? 

Giancarlo: Okay, so 

Erica: each chapter is really divided into four seconds. segments and the first segment is a little bit of memoir so you sort of orient yourself to the topic of the chapter through my experience and you see I’m not making this up like I understand this and then the second piece is about explaining explaining societal pressures like how does society contribute to this and then the third piece is explaining how does just being human contribute to this.

Because, you know, we are a species. We have predilections. We have foibles. We have ways that we are by nature of being human. And some of those contribute to our suffering, as you know. And then [00:49:00] the final piece is a practice that I feel is substantial enough to be codified in the book that if you did it, it would help you with this.

Giancarlo: Beautiful. But so tell me a little bit more about where those pressure coming from, mostly from the consumeristic society of creating an idea that it’s hard to match so that you consume. Tell me more about the three parts. 

Erica: You know, I think now that we’re talking about it, that it’s a little reductionist to say that.

It just comes from society. I actually think that it comes from transformation. I think that we are put here to have an experience and the experience is of. Suffering. And this, it is the suffering that will make you transform. You don’t transform when you’re happy. You’re like, this is good. Onward. And so, I think that it [00:50:00] is about how we come in to the world that arouses this conflict within us.

That awakens the conflict within us. For me, I was just a sensitive kid. I was born in a kind of philosophical family. You know? And maybe if I, maybe if I had more, like, less unusual looks, like, maybe I would have felt better. But I think that it comes from, the seed of it comes from us. And then, society waters that seed.

And then the, the, the plant of dissatisfaction. And then you start looking around, and you’re like, Well, how could I solve this problem? Society tells me I should look like X, Y, or Z. So maybe I should do that, but the problem is, [00:51:00] you’re, you’re always by yourself inside yourself, right? So you can look outside for solutions, but at the end of the day, you, you’re, you’re by yourself inside yourself.

And if the outside, outside solutions don’t solve the inside problem, you’re, you’re exactly where you started. Is any of this making sense? I feel like I’m speaking very like like vaguely, like it’s a little esoteric. 

Giancarlo: No, no, I, I’m, I’m, I’m listening. I’m listening. 

Erica: I know. Continue. Please continue. Okay.

So, you know, then you, you, you have this. We, or maybe I, but I’m, I’m, I’m extrapolating, you know, from myself to other people because other people have validated through the, through the things that they do that they’re not the only people who suffer like this, right? So maybe along the way you find that you try to lose weight.

You try to be thinner, and, and you’re still not happy, right? Maybe you are, [00:52:00] maybe you aren’t, but what happens if you go and you, you’re thin, suddenly you’re thinner, and you’re still feel, like, a little sick inside? Then what? Sometimes people double down, they think they didn’t do it good enough. 

Giancarlo: Or not enough, yeah?

Erica: Yeah, didn’t do it right, clearly, cause I should feel better, cause society tells me if I’m thin I’ll be happy, right? As women, at least. What does society tell men? If you’re ripped, you’ll be happy. Yeah. If you’re buff, you’ll be happy. If you’re a certain height, you’ll be happy. You know, if you have enough hair, you’ll be happy.

Yeah. So what do you do when it, when it doesn’t work? 

Giancarlo: I mean, but don’t you think that there is the two, I think there is two cases, right? There is like in everything, there is a healthy desire to improve. On one side, and then on the other side, there is [00:53:00] a almost almost an addiction, almost a desire to fill a void.

Which will never be filled by 

Erica: 30 years of monogamy, 30 years of monogamy. You just start eating. 

Giancarlo: Exactly. I mean, I I’m, I’m fascinated by this topic because it’s so important. It’s so prevalent. And I just realized that I never really thought too much about it. You know, I feel that, you know, since the beginning of time, there’s been.

desirability and, and, and, and preference, right? Yeah. I mean, you’re, you’re, 

Erica: you’re pointing to two things, I think one is, where is the line between taking care of your body and, and, and being healthy as, as a, as a valuable. Undertaking, right? And, and, and, and, let me say and one more time. And that overlapping with, who are you interested in?

Who are you, who are you, who do you want to be [00:54:00] desired by? Who do you want to feel desirable to, right? And these are really nuanced topics that I think are underexplored. Yeah. But everybody knows they’re in play. Everybody knows if you’re a thin blonde, you’re gonna be able to get a certain kind of man.

Right? That’s the promise. But it’s about hunting for men. It’s not about being a girl boss. It’s about hunting for men, interestingly. And every man knows, if you’re a certain height, or you supplement that with a lot of money, right, you’ll be able to get a certain kind of woman. Every man knows that. Am I wrong?

Yeah, 

Speaker 6: yeah. 

Erica: Oh, nobody wants to talk about it. It’s indelicate. Yeah, it’s a little crass. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. Also, also because tall men makes better athletes, makes the most successful at work. I mean, there’s all these statistics like the CEO. It’s 

Erica: real. This stuff is real. I’m not telling, I’m not, my book isn’t about that.

It’s not [00:55:00] real. It’s about you understanding more clearly. What reality you’re working with. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. 

Erica: So And 

Giancarlo: empower you. 

Erica: Yes. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. 

Erica: And empower you, like, to deal with the consequences of who and what you are. Yeah. And then, navigate strategically, being awake. Since we’re talking about awake, like, this is a, this is a form of awakening.

Yeah. What, what does life Award me because I look a certain way. What does life take away from me because I look a certain way? It took me a long time to realize that sometimes people are mean to me because I’m pretty. 

Speaker 4: Hmm. 

Erica: They think because you’re pretty, you got everything handed to you. That is a It’s a form 

Giancarlo: of jealousy.

Erica: It is a form of jealousy. Is, is that incorrect? No, that’s not entirely incorrect. Did I, did I, do I benefit from being pretty? Absolutely. Can I give you like a, a ledger on all the ways [00:56:00] that I’ve benefited? Not really. Because I was unaware of it. Right? Are people who are unattractive painfully aware of what they don’t get because they’re unattractive?

Yes, they are. They could hand you the ledger. You got the promotion because you’re pretty. You got the boyfriend because you’re pretty, you know? 

Giancarlo: But don’t you think that attractiveness? It’s something you can develop, you can develop, right? I mean, I remember there 

Erica: was I do think attractiveness is something you can develop.

Giancarlo: I remember Alain de Botton was making this difference between the Kantian beauty from Emanuel Kant and the, and the Platonian beauty. So the Platonian is more like the traditional Greek beauty of the symmetry of the form, whereas the Kantian more the personal subjective, like the space between your teeth, for example, that maybe some people find extremely beautiful and other people don’t like it.

So where am I going with this? I feel that, you know, I know a lot of people that might not be traditionally beautiful, but they’re very [00:57:00] charismatic. 

Erica: Yeah, but they’ve developed their character to overcome what they think is perhaps a deficit, right? And fat people will tell you this all the time, that they have to develop other aspects of their character in order to overcome the biases that are, they are presented with because they are societally outcast.

Giancarlo: So your argument would be to people that, that overweight and that, that, that they feel they have to develop new skills. Your point is that. You know, come to yoga with me, read my book, . And you gotta understand that you should not care about No, no, no. Tell me, tell me. 

Erica: Gimme, this is so nuanced because it’s not either or, it’s not, don’t care, but it’s also not, it’s also not care.

Big being 

Giancarlo: slave. 

Erica: Yeah, it’s, it’s like you have to find the recipe that works for you. You know, like, like there is a part of, of fat activism, which is about really embracing being fat. Right. [00:58:00] And you have thoughts about that. I can see that on your face. And a lot of people have thoughts about that, but it’s interesting.

Those people are on their own journey. They are, they are on their own journey. And do they have a right to feel good about themselves? Do they have a right to have people not judge them for how they look and assume that they know what they eat and how they take care or don’t take care of their bodies?

Yes, I think that they do have a right to not be judged, you know, 

Giancarlo: but so what would you recommend for concrete example? If imagine I’m like 20, 30 kilos overweight and I come to you and I was like, listen, it’s 

Erica: a little bit medical. It’s a little bit mystical. 

Giancarlo: Is it a man? Okay. So, so, I mean, you must have had that all the time in your practice, right?

People that want to lose weight. 

Erica: Always. 

Giancarlo: Always. And so you’re, so how do you go about it? How do you advise them? It’s a delicate dance between do the sacrifice to lose weight. We know how, I mean, science knows how. No, it doesn’t. No? 

Erica: No, it doesn’t. If science knew how, people would be thin. 

Giancarlo: [00:59:00] It’s just hard. But we know how.

Erica: We do? 

Giancarlo: No? I don’t know. Yeah, we don’t, actually. The ketosis, the low carbs. 

Erica: Oh, I, I, okay, well, I mean, men and women’s bodies are very different, you know, and a lot of the medicine and a lot of the studies is on men’s bodies. Women’s bodies are very understudied. You know, so, so all these men will come and tell you all you need to do is do the ketosis and the women go and try it and it doesn’t work, you know, and then it’s like, oh, here’s another, like, thing I’ve failed at and, you know, my body is malfunctioning or I’m malfunctioning, you know, great, now you have just another Way to feel bad about yourself.

Awesome. So, I mean, if someone came to me and was like, I want to lose weight, which mostly people don’t come to me to say that, they eventually maybe get around to it. Shyly, right? 

Giancarlo: What’s the main not condition, but what’s the main reason why [01:00:00] people reach out to you? 

Erica: To feel better with their bodies. To learn to feel better in their bodies.

In a, in a, in a more nuanced way, in a more expansive way. Basically what I say, Giancarlo, is like, at the end of the day, you have to decide for yourself what you want to do with your body, and how you want to handle it. But also, what your body wants from you. And that is something that is not in the equation very often, is what does your body want from you, right?

Maybe your body wants you to stop starving it. Maybe your body wants to rest a bit more. Maybe your body doesn’t like the food you’re, you’re feeding it. 

Speaker 5: So interesting, Em. 

Erica: Right? But mostly people say, yeah, I listen to my body, do you? How have you learned how to listen to your body? Are you sure you’re listening to your body?

Are you listening to some voice that was implanted in your brain that you think is listening to your body? I think mostly people don’t know how to listen to their bodies at all. It is a practice. It is a relationship. 

Giancarlo: Because they [01:01:00] numb it. They numb that voice. They numb the 

Erica: body. They numb the voice. 

Giancarlo: With alcohol.

With drama. With everything. All of 

Erica: it. Sometimes with sex. Often, 

Giancarlo: often with sex, often with 

Erica: sex. So, you know, I, you have to find out for yourself. I often say also make, just make sure whatever you’re doing to your body, that you’re doing it out of love and you’re not doing it out of hate. That the motivation isn’t, I hate myself.

Right. A lot of people go to the gym hating themselves. You know, a lot of people go on this diet or that diet hating themselves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the body knows. The body knows this is laden with hatred. It is violent. 

Giancarlo: Yeah, you know, like a lot of people, some of these You know, I’m, I’m interested in they call it somatic psychotherapy, you know, the lineage of Gabor Mate, and you know, there’s this famous book, The Body Keeps the Score.

You know, everybody’s talking that everybody in this environment, in this group, group of somatic [01:02:00] psychotherapists, you know, they talk about the intelligence of the body. You know, they say that you know, childhood trauma is not just a psychological effect. It’s a physiological impact on your nervous system.

on, on the Vegas nerve, on the combination of, of, of a neurological tear with, with the, with the new nervous system tear and that it’s physically get programmed. So, so I hear you that, you know, your work around body acceptance and listen to the body and making peace for the body, it’s, it’s a huge topic for the mental health of this planet for the next.

It’s a 

Erica: huge topic for the spiritual survival, the transformation of this planet. Because, because the body is a, the body is a piece of God. Right? And mostly we ignore it. You’re a part, you’re a part of nature. 

Speaker 6: So true. 

Erica: Right? You’re a part of nature. And, and we mostly have not embodied, come to know our bodies see what [01:03:00] life wants from you through your body.

Mostly people think about it. 

Speaker 4: Yeah. 

Erica: You know? And it’s a whole different thing to feel about it. But I think, you know, that so many of the maladies of our age could be solved if people came into relationship with their body and therefore with whatever the thing it is that you want to call God. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. So, so true, especially, especially your genitals.

I mean, there is, you know, this like, you know, tantra culture, you know, there is, there’s a very clear. Focus in you making friends with your genitals because apparently, no, apparently I’ve seen it. There is so much shame on the way you look naked on the way your genitals look. But so, okay. So tell me a little bit.

Some. You know, like you say, you say rightly. So, so many people go to the gym and they hate their body [01:04:00] and then they look at the sample in the, in the mirror and they hate their body. And, and that’s probably is creating unhealthy. It’s probably 

Erica: it’s flooding your body with cortisol and stress hormones.

Like, 

Giancarlo: yeah, it, it reduce your autoimmune system. It’s, it’s just, 

Erica: you might as well just like. Stay home and yeah, shoot up some heroin. But so, 

Giancarlo: but okay, but so I know, let me use this last 10 minutes with some practical recommendation. Oh yes, 

Erica: I love practical recommendations. I do. 

Giancarlo: Okay. Let’s land 

Erica: this. Land this plane.

Giancarlo: How, how, let’s land this. How do we, how do we, what, what advice, what recommendation, what trick do you have for people to make peace with their body? Because I see that, especially, you know. Even us, even my wife and I, sometimes we catch ourselves naked in the bathroom looking at the 

Speaker 5: mirror and we look at each other.

We’re both, you know, approaching 60s and we’re like, and 

Giancarlo: we’re like, Oh my God, [01:05:00] this aging is a psychedelic experience. And we laugh and it’s okay. And we love each other and it’s all good. And we are on a very loving and trusty environment and community. which we haven’t discussed of the role of community.

But but so, so I see how people, you know, this, the relationship with your body is a major source of suffering for sure. So give us some insight. 

Erica: First, you need to learn the language of the body. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. 

Erica: The body does not speak English. No. 

Giancarlo: No. Okay. So when you have a backache or a, tell me more. 

Erica: Well, the language of the body is movement, breath, touch, food.

Giancarlo: Movement, breath, touch. Food. Food. 

Erica: Movement, breath, touch, food. These are the languages of the body. But so 

Giancarlo: touch, self touch. 

Erica: Okay. So touch falls into categories, right? There’s touch that I give. There’s touch that I receive. Right? [01:06:00] And so, touch, and then there’s touching myself, right? So, so, these fall into different categories.

I think beginners need to learn to touch themselves kindly. I see people touch themselves like they’re prodding a gross pile of poo, you know? But like, but like, like how? Okay, so self massage. You know, so there in the yogic tradition, there’s something called abhyanga. It’s just, you just, you just massage your body with oils, lotions, give yourself a little facial in the morning, masturbate, you know, wash your body really well in the shower rub your own feet.

Yeah, this is very tantra. Give yourself a, a, a manicure, you know take, take time brushing your teeth, like, really carefully like, make that a ritual, do some oil pulling, you know, [01:07:00] all of these things. Very tantra. Yeah, it’s very, like, you are getting to know your body from the outside in. That was me touching the microphone for those of you who can’t see it.

Yeah, so it’s, it’s very making this, getting to know your body from the outside in on your own. Right? That’s step one. And step two is, do you want to touch anybody else? Maybe the answer is, no, I don’t want to touch anybody else. Okay, but that is a realm of touch. Maybe your body loves touching other people’s bodies.

You’re like, I want to put my hands on her biceps and squeeze, right, you know, or maybe it’s not about other people, maybe it’s about textures, like you love just running your fingers through the fur of your cat or your dog, or you love rolling around in your bed. And you want to make sure those sheets are really clean and they smell good and that they’re a thread count that you’ll love.

Pay attention to the fabrics that you [01:08:00] put on your body. Like, do you actually like the way your clothes feels on your own body? What is something you love? Do you love, do you love sunbathing? I think sometimes people love sunbathing because it’s about the touch of the sun on the skin. And you haven’t really thought about that very deeply.

Or maybe you like the fact How sand is a little gritty and it’s, ooh, kind of this, this dichotomy at the beach, there’s sun, there’s wind, there’s water, there’s sand. It’s like, Ooh, la la. That is a tactical like playground. You see what I mean? Yes. So touch comes into play. Like it doesn’t necessarily mean touch yourself, but it can also be like the experience of having a body in space.

Be 

Giancarlo: aware, be aware. Yeah. 

Erica: Then I’ve had a massage therapist who like, All my massage therapists, they just, like, really got a kick out of touching other people’s bodies, you know? It was pleasurable for them, you know? Then there’s the, do you want to receive? You know, do you want to [01:09:00] receive? Do you want other people touching you?

Maybe the answer is no. Mm, only that person, not that person. I’m very picky about who I let touch me, you know? I’m very picky about it, so. And that, in part, that’s because I, I know, I know the being in this body and I know this body. This body looks like it’s sturdy, it’s not. It’s actually very fragile, you know?

So, I have to navigate that with people. Like, don’t squeeze me so hard, you know? I will break. Careful now. So there’s touch, right? Movement. Movement. How does your body like to move through space? You have to find this out. You must, because your body’s healing functions come into play when you move. Now the opposite of movement is not moving.

Rest. Right? So these two things go together. You have to keep your thumb on this all the time because as you age, your body doesn’t like the same movement. It needs different movement. Maybe it needs to sleep more. [01:10:00] Maybe it needs to sleep less. You have to really pay a lot of attention. 

Giancarlo: Dance. Dance. Decide what you like, how you like to move, breathe.

You have 

Erica: to move. It has to be pleasurable. Yeah. Right, and this is one of the great like scams of of the diet industry is that Movement was stolen from women repackaged as exercise and then sold back to them as something mandatory that they must do Slick right? You know what going for a walk is free You just the thing is it has to be pleasurable 

Speaker 4: Yeah, 

Erica: and a lot of people don’t even know what that means.

Yeah, because they’re so Dissociated they’re so self objectified. They don’t even know do I like this? Do I not like this? Is this pleasurable and then there’s a whole thing that that Have I earned this feeling of pleasure? Am I deserving of this feeling of pleasure? Can I allow myself to experience pleasure?[01:11:00] 

That’s a whole can of worms. As you know from the tantra training, it’s like how people relate to pleasure and 

Giancarlo: Do I deserve it? Is it good? Is it bad? Yeah. Is it sinful? But so just to stay on the movement, so between sport and walking and dancing, how many hours per week? 

Erica: Oh, you want a prescription? I don’t, I can’t prescribe.

Yeah, it 

Giancarlo: depends. It really, you 

Erica: know, it depends on you. Like, like this is very like concierge medicine in a way. Like, you know, what should you be doing? One hour 

Giancarlo: of movement per day minimum. 

Erica: I think you should do something every day. Yeah. It doesn’t an hour. Don’t worry about the hours. Just like every day.

Think I’m going to do something. That feels good. Yeah. Moving my body. 

Speaker 4: Yeah. 

Erica: If you do it for five minutes, great. Some people can only do five minutes. Not everybody is well or healthy. This would see that an hour is a little ableist, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That assumes, and that, that wasn’t judgment. It was just calling, calling out our own orientations towards this.

And I work with people who are sick. 

Speaker 4: Yeah. 

Erica: And when you’re [01:12:00] sick, your, your body hurts. It’s painful, right? So just even building pathways where you feel five minutes of being pain free could be the pleasure. We’re, we’re already, we’re going to the pleasure end of the spectrum. For people who are in pain, just being out of pain for a moment be, might be a revelation.

Yeah. Does that help? 

Giancarlo: Totally. Okay. Totally. So we cover touch, we cover movement. 

Erica: Food. Food. Food. I mean, food is its own can of worms, but I feel like for you to find out what your body needs in terms of food is going to be helped by you having this relationship through movement and touch. Because bot, food feels a particular way in you.

Right, it feels a particular way in your stomach, it feels a particular way two hours later, it feels a particular way over time, and you actually have to be paying very close attention to be aware of how food affects your body, not just in the moment that it’s in your mouth, but once it passes your mouth and [01:13:00] is in your stomach, how does it feel?

Are you having indigestion? A lot of people just blow through all these terrible feelings in their stomach, and just onward, right? So, this is very nuanced, how you make decisions about food, what time you eat. You know, that has to do with the intermittent fasting, what time you eat, how often, how much, you know, and people want to give prescriptions.

I’m like, I don’t want to give any prescription because I also deal with people who have disordered relationships with food, a. k. a. an eating disorder. And the minute you start getting, giving prescriptions, it can get very squirrely, 

Giancarlo: you know, 

Erica: so. 

Giancarlo: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The emotional eating for me, for example, you know, I slowly, slowly, you know.

So I stopped the hard drugs, then I stopped the alcohol, then I stopped the cannabis. And now I catch myself sometimes, especially when I’m with my mother, eating carbs or overeating as a, as an emotional soothing. So 

Erica: [01:14:00] Cause your mother bothers you or because she wants to feed you because that’s love? No, because she 

Giancarlo: triggers me.

Erica: Oh, yeah. Okay. So she When 

Giancarlo: you’re triggered, when you’re nervous, now for me to go to, used to be the joint, now it’s the fridge. Mm hmm. So, you know, people Needs to be aware that a lot of eating is unconscious. 

Erica: A lot of eating is unconscious. That’s very, very true. And it’s a very easy form of self medication.

Yeah, but I also wanna, I also wanna, I wanna give you a hug and say it’s not your fault, , you know, we are always self-medicating. I think human beings are designed to self-medicate and so you just, yeah, absolutely. Like you said, you peeled away. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You peel them away. And once you, once you get a handle on your emotional eating, what’s, what, what are you gonna notice then?

Giancarlo: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. GABA calls it compassionate inquiry. Yes. Compassionate self inquiry. Great. Yeah. So movement 

Erica: touch. The last piece is breath. Do we have time? 

Giancarlo: Five minutes. 

Erica: Ah. 

Giancarlo: Jutting out of here. I don’t want to let you go. I know. Yeah. Tell me, tell me about breath and then, and then. 

Erica: Breath is the, actually the [01:15:00] first language of the body.

Giancarlo: Yeah. 

Erica: Well, that’s not true. When you’re in utero, there’s, there’s this squeezing thing, right? You get squeezed a little bit, so you feel your mother’s body in utero. So there’s touch. But then when you’re born, when you come into this world the first thing you do is you breathe. That’s it. You know, you’re cold.

You’re cold and it’s bright and you take a breath in so actually the primary language of the body and of life as you know is breathing and That’s all I’m gonna say about it, I think 

Giancarlo: yeah amazing Erica. Thank you so so much We’re gonna put on the show notes the title of your book the link of where to buy it Your Instagram your website.

We’re gonna put everything in the show notes 

Erica: And some favorite piece of jazz, right? Some 

Giancarlo: favorite piece of jazz. And then whatever comes to mind between now and the next few days, you can send me stuff to publish. Thank you so much. I can’t wait to read your book. It [01:16:00] was a very interesting conversation.

I’m just very grateful. And maybe we’ll do a, you know, season, a part two. Next time I come to New York, 

Erica: I would love that. And then we could dig into the book a little bit and talk about, yeah. And by then 

Speaker 5: I would have read it. 

Erica: I love that. I can’t wait. Okay. Back soon. 

Speaker 5: Deal. Thank you for having me. Thank you very much.

Thanks a lot.

Speaker: Coca Zunaray Zunaray inti. Coca Zunaray Zunaray inti. Coca Zunaray Zunaray inti. Coca Zunaray Zunaray inti. Coca Zunaray Zunaray inti. You