Rooting Down, Rising Up Rose Gittell & Sasha Trope

Sasha and Rose discuss the life-changing experience that brought them together -- a yoga teacher training at the Durgas Tiger School in Quito, Ecuador.



In Quito, they learned how trauma manifests physiologically, and experienced for the first time a place where it was completely safe to express emotion. Their teachers ranged from a Gestalt psychologist who engaged them in empty-chair role play, to a shaman woman who told them magical allegorical stories about the inner hero’s journey, to a play therapist who taught them to create clay masks as external representations of their "secret selves" and act it out with movement and sound. These hours often ended in sobs, something cracked open inside, an unglamourous yet blessed release. Before this experience, they didn’t know it was possible to feel so much, to feel so alive, to feel so connected, to see the beauty of the world with a clarity so sharp.



The conversation then transitions to Rose's recent research on Stephen Porges' Polyvagal Theory and how it connects to and supports yogic philosophy and practice.



IN THIS EPISODE:



Intro song: Politics at Dinner - Dylan Montayne

Braiding Sweetgrass by Barbara Wall Kimmerer 

Durgas Tiger School in Quito, Ecuador 

Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagowski 

Dr. Stephen Porges' Website 

Sasha and Rose share their first period stories, discuss generational change in women's approach to menstruation and the concept of femininity itself, and later delve into Rose's human design rabbit hole.