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Its Where I Am focuses on the various mental health struggles that people all around the world face every day. Each episode covers a different facet of mental health with a new special guest. It's Where I Am airs on 91.5 Jazz & More every second Saturday of the month.
Unknown Speaker 0:00
This is a kunv Studios original program. You
Unknown Speaker 0:03
are listening to special programming brought to you by its where I am.com the content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education. You
Zandra Polard 0:45
Good morning, Las Vegas. It's landra Pollard. It's where I am. Thank you for tuning in to the number one jazz station in the nation, 91.5 jazz and more today. Our special guest is Danielle McCafferty. Might have heard that name last week because she was on last week as well. Her show did so well, you know, we had to rerun it. And so she's in studio again today, and we're going to talk about some things to help us de stress. Yes, stress is a powerful thing. It can affect you physically. So we have, excuse me, we have to keep our stress in check. So Danielle, thank you for coming in.
Unknown Speaker 1:42
Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Yes.
Zandra Polard 1:45
So we were talking about you as a yoga instructor, right? You have studied in India and Ireland, of all places, yes, and some other places. I don't know where. Where else have you studied? Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 2:01
So a lot of my studies have taken out taken place in Southeast Asia, so Bali, Thailand, India, things like that. But then I've kind of gone off to Europe to study more somatic and neurology based therapies. So most of my East Asian experience is in bodywork, so yoga, the asana breath work, Thai massage. Yenyo, I
Zandra Polard 2:27
didn't know it included Thai massage. Well, sometimes
Unknown Speaker 2:29
it does. I went out to Bali and I studied Thai massage and acro yoga, okay, for about a year and a half, and it was one of the most liberating experiences I think I've ever had.
Zandra Polard 2:43
Okay? Danielle, okay, I have to say we took a picture together, and I'm like, towering over you. So when you say Thai massage, I'm thinking, are you using your feet? Are you stepping on people? Girl, Oh, yeah. Oh my goodness.
Unknown Speaker 2:55
I am a whopping four foot nine, so I have to use every inch. Yes, it's a it's a very different type of massage modality where you'll use differential body weight, opposed to just hand pressure. Yeah, so it's a lot of counterintuitive movement within the body. So I'm counteracting your body weight, you're counteracting mine, which leads to a lot of different leverage in the muscles and joints that are really great. So, yeah, well, I
Zandra Polard 3:23
didn't mean to sidetrack. Now, go ahead and talk about your Asian. No, you talked about the East Asian experience, and then you also were talking about European Yeah, techniques. Now, what is that?
Unknown Speaker 3:33
So a lot of new studies are coming out of Europe. The biggest one, I think, that is the most publicized right now is by a man named Dr Bessel van der Kolk, and the book is called The Body Keeps the Score, okay. And he talks about how trauma is the root of all these different psychological and physiological and physical effects that we suffer through or experience as we grow older. So Europe is really starting to view yoga, quote, quote, trigger word, as a modality that's a little bit deeper than just fitness, where it can connect the neurological aspects of trauma and what we have gone through and the way that our nervous system reacts with that, and then combine it with movement, breath work and just conscious thought, okay, and that can create new neurological pathways within the mind. So
Zandra Polard 4:35
do you typically start with breath work? You start with a big inhale, and exhale. Yes,
Unknown Speaker 4:47
I know I'm allowed to say this on the radio, but I usually start my sessions with a curse word.
Zandra Polard 4:53
No way, yes.
Unknown Speaker 4:55
My entire goal is to kind of take the the Miss. Criticism out of yoga and really make it more accessible for people. From coming from my background within law enforcement, the woo, woo world was very out of touch. For me, very out of touch. So even just sitting and taking big breath, I was like, oh yeah, this is a load of it, you know. So I try to incorporate it slowly. So I try to incorporate it with humor. Most of my classes start very fun and just kind of questioning your own reality, and then you get a little bit deeper. So it's like, meet yourself where you're at. You're not trying to become, quote, a guru overnight, right? You just want to come to a yoga class or take a breath work class and see if it's even for you, right? So just taking that first step and just kind of meeting it with humor and levity, I always think, is like the best way to approach it. Okay, yeah,
Zandra Polard 5:58
so tell us about some of the things you're working on now. Do you have any groups that you that you know listeners can attend or, yeah, okay, so
Unknown Speaker 6:05
right now, I'm actually creating a breathwork Academy where people can come and I will teach you how to be a breath work instructor these different types of ecstatic breath. Okay, and ecstatic breath is a little bit different than what you think is.
Zandra Polard 6:22
Is it a lot? Yes. Is that working? What is that doing?
Unknown Speaker 6:29
So it's a lot of ecstatic breath, and this is focuses on, like, cellular regeneration, and it actually, like, clears out your lungs. So there's a lot of studies coming out where the biological effects of ecstatic breath work are being used in hospitals for people with lung transplants and things like that. Yeah,
Zandra Polard 6:52
it's is a speech pathologist used for that? Okay?
Unknown Speaker 6:56
Um, so a speech pathologist. Pathologist usually is trained with an ecstatic breath. But it's usually a different kind of modality. They use it. They call it like diaphragmic expansion or something like that. But it's typically the same types of modalities that have been going on for 1000s of years.
Zandra Polard 7:15
Well, you know, I was paying a lot of money for a speech pathologist because I had, well, I do have paralysis in my vocal cords. So when I was going, they had me saying the long E, until I could no longer. There was no more breath. E, well, look, it cost me a lot of money to do that. I'm like, I can say eat at home, right?
Unknown Speaker 7:45
But it's the pathologist knowledge that you have to say they eat.
Zandra Polard 7:50
Give me the knowledge, and I'll do it at home Exactly, exactly, which is the same with what you do. People learn how to take care of themselves.
Unknown Speaker 7:58
That is, my entire goal is to give you the tools so that you can kind of just run with it and take things that work for you and leave things that don't. I mean, yoga is the the definition of yoga is the union of the mind and the body. Okay, that's it. So that could be running, that could be football, that could be journaling, that could be anything that speaks to you. It doesn't have to be the traditional foot put your foot behind your head. Right kind of yoga Raven, exactly. So just making these things accessible to people so that they don't think they're so out of touch that they can actually come into them and like, oh, well, I can use this breath in an accessible way, or you can use yoga in an accessible way more towards your goals. So, yeah, in a modern you don't have to sit in a hut and for 10 hours to be reach enlightenment. It's more so might pass
Zandra Polard 9:02
out before you get to the light exactly.
Unknown Speaker 9:05
It's finding these tools and using them within your life in a modern, accessible way. Okay, yeah,
Zandra Polard 9:11
so you're doing that. You're helping other people become instructors in this modality. Yeah, yeah. And then what are you doing? For those who are students?
Unknown Speaker 9:23
So I, I host regular breathwork events in the valley, and it's usually once a month or twice a month, and we all come together as a community, and we do this ecstatic breathwork class. Okay? And I just hosted one last Thursday, actually, and we had 38 people come, oh, wow, that's
Zandra Polard 9:44
a good turnout. It's
Unknown Speaker 9:44
an amazing turnout. It's really, really powerful. Um, I always say that I'm very introverted, but in these sessions, you know, we're crying and we're screaming, and that sounds super out of touch, even for me. Yeah, but it's something within the environment. So, like, when you come as a student and you're in this community, it really just unlocks something that I don't think people can unlock by themselves. It's the power of other people, the power of community, the power of other people, kind of experiencing the same thing with you, yeah? So it's I host those like, once or twice a month, but I mostly work in behavioral health centers around the valley, and I work with adolescents and adults that suffer with substance misuse or substance misuse or different behavioral health issues. Are
Zandra Polard 10:38
you working with people who are taking pills,
Unknown Speaker 10:41
yes, and coming out of crisis and just coming out of this space of rehabilitation. So it's really important to tap into this fight or flight within them so that they can recognize it. Because,
Zandra Polard 10:53
you know, there's a really big issue out there with, you know, people taking pills, adolescents, adults. You know, we're pill popping world, absolutely
Unknown Speaker 11:02
and, yeah, I think it's kind of to placate what is happening in the world, right? Because it's very hard to digest everything that's kind of bubbling up politically and socioeconomically and things like that. So they do it to placate themselves and placate the traumas that they've experienced. Yes, they don't realize that there's other ways to kind of tap into these alpha waves of the brain, opposed to substances or other destructive types of patterns. You can breathe, you can you can do some yoga, you can go on a walk. And I know every therapist from the beginning of time has like pounded that into the sand. But there's science behind it, and now it's just coming out more and more, that maybe taking an extra breath can actually change your brain. Yeah, yeah.
Zandra Polard 11:53
It will keep you from doing something you should not do. Yeah, I can testify to that. Take a big breath and let me take a breath so I don't go off on you today.
Unknown Speaker 12:06
Yeah, you said, you said you had two sons, yes, but
Zandra Polard 12:08
I met my husband.
Unknown Speaker 12:13
The boys are angels, I'm sure.
Zandra Polard 12:17
Oh boy. So I'm so glad that you're here, because, again, I got a lot of comments about you being on the last show. People loved it. Lot of great feedback. So I want to thank all my listeners for giving me that feedback. I certainly, certainly appreciate it. So some of the other clients that you work with, what else is there? I mean, you know, I know you talked about the pills. People, misusing pills. People, I'm sure, misusing alcohol. What other type of addictions do people have that you're working with? So
Unknown Speaker 12:56
we work with a large range of people, sexual addictions, people that suffer from eating disorders, people that have suffered through catastrophic loss, so just coming out of crisis. And then people that are more so out of that fight or flight response, but are looking for a little bit deeper of an expansion towards healing. So they are kind of out of that crisis mode. But they know something is there. They know something they can find just a little bit more, just something a little deeper to move towards path healing. Yeah,
Zandra Polard 13:32
so as maybe someone who's not having the addiction anymore, but maybe they can go get back there, absolutely right? So it's like, I need to feel this, whatever's going on, so that I don't go back to what I was doing.
Unknown Speaker 13:51
Yeah, I always tell people, I say, life isn't just one mountain, right? Like we're always going to be faced with obstacles and different things that are in our way, but over the years, and as we continue to grow, we develop our tool belt of things that work so and along the way, we just accumulate more and more and more. So someone that suffers with addiction, from my own perspective, I don't think that ever goes away.
Zandra Polard 14:24
The eating I think, like smoking cigarettes. It's just
Unknown Speaker 14:28
my grandma quit smoking on my 10th birthday. What that was my birthday wish, and still to this day, she tells me, she says, Every day I crave a cigarette, and every day I tell myself, no, Rita, I can't have one,
Zandra Polard 14:41
yeah, because it never really goes away.
Unknown Speaker 14:44
So it's constantly I always tell people meeting yourself where you're at and learning to you're not trying to shove down the person that you are. You're trying to live with the person that you are and establish a. Healthy habits that are healthy to you now.
Zandra Polard 15:03
Do you work with couples as well? Okay? Because I had a big argument with my husband a few days ago, and I was telling him, there is no way that we can talk about this without having a therapist, because you're not going to hear me and I'm going to waste my breath. It's like
Unknown Speaker 15:27
there needs to be a filter in the middle, because each person doesn't hear what the other person is saying. I just
Zandra Polard 15:33
want you to be quiet so I can say what I have to say, and I'm sure he's doing the same thing. But even
Unknown Speaker 15:38
when you're quiet, the other partner kind of has your headphones on. They only want to hear what they want to hear Exactly, yep. So I kind of, I act as a median, and I'm like, Well, I always say, can your inner critic and your inner child meet and can they talk? That's what I say to couples, right? So the inner critic that is saying all these things that are negative. Can they meet with the child in yourself, the one that's experiencing this pain, and then that's when you really come to the conclusion of what's going on. You remove the ego, you remove the pain, and you just come to the process of what is actually happening. And so when couples come to that realization of, oh, my ego's in the way, or, Oh, my child is in the way. Where can we meet in the middle? It's usually a lot more productive a conversation on each side. But how do you get there without somebody to moderate it? Right?
Zandra Polard 16:32
And then also, you know, I've said this before, that you have to work on yourself first before you can deal with adding the other person absolutely, yeah, but we don't have time for that. Like we have to fix this right away. So we need, like, an emergency couples therapy session so he can realize that he was wrong. I'm totally joking, totally joking. But yeah, we want to look at ourselves first, deal with our stuff, first, see how we can maybe possibly look at it differently, and then work through it from there. Is that right? Absolutely.
Unknown Speaker 17:16
A lot of the times, the things that come up that cause issues in relationships are just reflections of ourselves, okay, the people that are in our lives are the greatest reflections of our greatest insecurities, our fears and our love and our joy.
Zandra Polard 17:30
My eyes are wide. Oh, no, okay, okay,
Unknown Speaker 17:34
they're the ones that show you what you need to work on. Who's the one that can make you most mad in your whole life? Robert, so he's showing you where you can grow, where you can grow together, because you wouldn't be able to experience that level and depth of emotion if you didn't love him that much, right? If you didn't value him his opinion that much, he would not be able to make you that angry.
Unknown Speaker 18:01
Oh,
Unknown Speaker 18:04
okay, so it's a double edged sword. You can't you can't hate without love, and you can't love without hate. So this passion is stemmed from emotion, and that's what shows you, what we need to move forward.
Zandra Polard 18:15
So when he gets so angry with me, I have to think like, Wow, he really loves me.
Unknown Speaker 18:25
Or, like, what is he working on that he needs to oh,
Zandra Polard 18:29
that part, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, that's interesting. I never thought of it that way. Okay? So
Unknown Speaker 18:35
like growing up when you who can make you most angry your mother or your father, right?
Zandra Polard 18:41
No, my sister, your sister, the ones
Unknown Speaker 18:44
that you're closest to are always the one that bring out, quote, unquote, the worst in you, but it's just the things that you need to move forward. They're the ones that show you where your emotions are, and that's why community and family and loved ones are so important, because you need that depth in order to learn about yourself. Now I have a
Zandra Polard 19:05
question. I don't know why this is coming up right now, but I was just thinking, like, do you deal with, um, like, death?
Unknown Speaker 19:16
Yeah, we deal with lots, unfortunately, of grief and death, that's mostly where people find their bottom. In my experience, is the death of a loved one because it rocks their reality, yes, their foundation, yeah. And it kind of takes away their identity, in a sense, especially if it's a foundational part of their life, a mother, father, caregiver, brother, sister, a spouse. It takes away part of themselves, um, and rebuilding that is. Very difficult, because, like I said, the ones that you're closest to build yourself. So when that gets taken away, it takes away a fundamental part, and learning to rebuild it is not only difficult, but it's hard to put into words. When you lose somebody of that depth, it's like recreating yourself all over again, okay? And I've seen that in a large majority of grief, not just the loss of a loved one, but say, sexual assault or a violent encounter, domestic violence, it removes a part of them, and they have to find what that is,
Zandra Polard 20:45
or even infidelity, yes,
Unknown Speaker 20:46
yeah, yeah, absolutely. A divorce, infidelity, losing a house, bankruptcy, financial issues, trauma doesn't have a barometer, right? Everybody experiences it individually and specifically so, but it tampers a part of yourself that you can't connect to again, so you have to kind of excavate all these things that have buried you to find your truest self again.
Zandra Polard 21:16
And you know, I would see, I would think this work is so important, because a lot of times, as far as my family, I know that we bury a lot of stuff, we sweep it under the rug. We're showing strength by working through it and not dealing with it. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 21:39
and I always tell people, does anything ever? Stay under the rug? No, the cat is always gonna get out of the bag at some point. So it just takes one person in the lineage to face it, and that is where the change comes this generational type of trauma. It takes one person to stand up and be, I don't want to say brave, because a lot of times it's not a choice, but steadfast in their healing Absolutely, because it's definitely once you kind of exacerbate generations of trauma. And no one has experienced it, someone's going to down the line. Yes,
Zandra Polard 22:24
oh, wow. Yeah, that's that's powerful, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 22:27
So if you don't do it, you're passing it down right, like passing the buck. And there's tons and tons of research about generational trauma. I mean, I myself am Irish, so just generational trauma coming back from four generations, alcoholism, poverty, domestic violence, and you can see that through the lineage of Irish people. But I mean, if you look at any lineage of people, right, and the trauma they've endured and the weight, I mean, there's not that much
Zandra Polard 23:01
we're all messed up. There's
Unknown Speaker 23:02
like, so many just two generations away. There's so much trauma that's being waiting to be experienced. So
Zandra Polard 23:08
So learning this work is super important to get
Unknown Speaker 23:11
it out of your body and so that you can, like, I say, excavate back to your truest self. Do
Zandra Polard 23:17
they do any of this type of stuff for, like, parenting classes.
Unknown Speaker 23:21
I wish they did. They should. I think that everything is changing. I think that the landscape of, I don't want to say mental health, health, is changing so that it's wholly encompassing of the body and the mind and the community. So the landscape is changing, so eventually it will lend itself into parents and schools and things like that. I'm
Zandra Polard 23:47
sorry. I'm laughing because I know everyone can hear you hitting the table, and I'm like, lipping, don't hit the table. Don't hit the table. And she's still hitting the table. I
Unknown Speaker 24:01
don't know I talk with my hands.
Zandra Polard 24:06
So anyway, I digress back on subject. Now, what do you think about, do you deal with like, what is it called? Like? When I was saying death, I didn't really, really mean death in losing a loved one. I meant, do you deal with death in terms of supernatural? The supernatural? Do you deal with any of that?
Unknown Speaker 24:39
Um, I have never really experienced anything like that.
Zandra Polard 24:44
Like, what about dreams? Like, do you think that people come and visit you in your dreams?
Unknown Speaker 24:48
Yeah, I've never really experienced anything like that. I know a bunch of people that have, um, and I wish that I had that. Sort of brain. I have so many people that have such a visual mind when they experience breath work and it releases DMT, so they have all these very visual types of experiences. And I've just never had an experience like that. I know many, many that have, but I myself have never,
Zandra Polard 25:17
you know, we should invite someone on the show. Yeah? About something like that. Yeah, absolutely,
yeah. Because I'm thinking, you know, you might tap into something you know through your breath work because, you know, I, I'm going to tell you this. First of all, I saw the movie Ghost first, before I fell asleep, so it might have had something to do with it. But then, when I went to sleep, there was an aunt who passed away, who came to me in my dreams, and I said, Oh, I gotta visit. You know, that's what I was thinking, like, Okay, well, my aunt came to visit me in my dreams. So I was just kind of connecting the two, if I were in this, you know, state of breathing and meditation.
Unknown Speaker 25:59
And a lot of people say that as they tap into these kinds of tools within themselves, they are a lot more connected to different realms, different dimensions, different things like that. And there's so many different types of meditation that you can tap into for like interdimensional travel or sleep travel, things like that. Yeah, it's really it gets really deep, and there's so much more knowledge coming out behind it, in the physics of the supernatural behind it. I just have always rooted myself into science, but I definitely would love to hear so
Zandra Polard 26:43
Danielle McCafferty is not dealing with the supernatural. She's dealing with breath work to deal with trauma. So don't get it mixed up
Unknown Speaker 26:52
here. Some yoga, some breath work. Yeah, we'll contact somebody, contact the supernatural. Just wondering,
Zandra Polard 26:59
you know, just wondering, you know, just kind of popped in my brain because I was thinking about being in that meditative state Absolutely.
Unknown Speaker 27:05
And there's different alpha waves that you can access that people say that they can are more apt to mind reading and different kinds of things like that, all those cool like trigger words within, like the psychology and physiology. So, yeah, there's a lot of people, especially in Vegas, there's a lot more individuals coming out that are more connected to the aftermath. So absolutely
Zandra Polard 27:39
so if people want to get more information about the work that you do, because you keep saying we so it's not just you. You have a team, yes, and it is root, yes. Is it root or root? Root?
Unknown Speaker 27:52
So it's R o o t, okay. And the website is R o o t, the number two yoga.com Okay. And I have a team of about 10 practitioners that I've trained on de escalation and behavioral health and trauma and movement, and just the physiological processes of movement and how that works. We work a lot on mobility. We work on injury recovery. So yeah, we have a large team, and we're really excited to move into a lot of different places around the valley. And yeah, the next step is we're working with a couple different charter schools within the valley and seeing how we can improve our little kiddos. Yeah, because
Zandra Polard 28:39
they need it,
Unknown Speaker 28:40
especially after covid, I feel like they had a really rough time reintegrating into schools, and I myself am not a parent more. Parents can probably attest to that, but I think that they had a really rough time reintegrating
Zandra Polard 28:55
Well, I thank you for coming back in studio, and you are always welcome. Maybe you'll hear from our next week. We'll see. But for now, this is Zandra Pollard, and we want to thank Danielle McCafferty for coming into studio. I am here every week. 7:30am on 91.5 jazz and more. This is It's where I am, thank you and bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai