Jaime Hartman (00:06):
Welcome to the AIP Summit Podcast, your go-to resource for taking control of your autoimmune health, presented by AIP Certified Coaches. Hi, I'm Jaime Hartman.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (00:17):
And I'm Marie-Noelle Marquis. And we are here to equip you with the tools, knowledge and support you need to effectively use the autoimmune protocol.
Jaime Hartman (00:25):
And today we are talking with our colleague and a certified yoga therapist, Lesley Ann Wernsdorfer, about her personal journey of healing and how she helps folks feel better and move with more comfort and ease.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (00:42):
Lesley Ann, thank you so much for joining us today.
Lesley Ann Wernsdorfer (00:45):
I'm happy to be here. Thank you all for having me.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (00:47):
So Jaime mentioned in her introduction a moment ago that you are a yoga therapist. Can you tell our listeners more about what that is and how a yoga therapist can help people with autoimmune disease?
Lesley Ann Wernsdorfer (00:59):
I would be happy to. Yoga therapy is not just private yoga lessons. There is some element of that in yoga therapy, but really what we do is apply the principles and practices of yoga to a specific problem. We'll use the word problem that someone is having and we'll let the person decide what that means. So it could be a physical symptom, it could be some thoughts that you're having. It could be a limitation that you feel in your life. And autoimmune disease is a perfect example in the way that it manifests in so many different ways in people. But we have commonality in some of the things that we can use to treat autoimmunity in general and then specific things that we can use for specific diseases. Another differentiation is that yoga therapy is based in Ayurveda, and Ayurveda uses a system of opposites. One of the basic things to balance, to find balance in the body.
(01:58):
And then there's also the idea of the five layer model that we also use, and that's in Sanskrit, the word is kosha. So we work with the five layers of the body, the outer layer, the physical thing that we all see of each other is the outermost. And I personally work mostly in that layer. I mostly work with movement, but then there are what we call subtle layers under that. And when I say under, I mean we are working towards sort of the essence of the person, which is the innermost body of the five. But there's also the breath body, there's the thought and emotion body, and then there's also a wisdom or an intuitive or intuition body or layer if you prefer that word. And they're not separate entities that live in you.
(02:51):
They're just layers of you. They're parts of you. And if you want to use a more modern day example, the model of the i ego and super ego, it's a metaphor. We know that those three things are not separate things in one person. And it's the same with the five layer model. Those things all exist in us, but they aren't really set separate, but they can be worked with separately. That might be the best way to phrase it. The best news is that we can work with any of the layers through any of the other layers. So for me, working with folks, say the fallout of the emotional fallout of autoimmune diagnosis or even autoimmune symptoms, I can work with movement to help with the emotional fallout. So I don't have to have another degree. I don't have to be a psychotherapist. I'm not doing psychotherapy.
(03:46):
Let me be very clear about that. We're working with the physical manifestations of thoughts and emotions, but we can also use our own historical information that's in our own bodies from birth, but we also have ancestral information that we can pull in. It's really a beautiful way to work. It's really, really a nice way to work with the whole person. And in autoimmunity that's especially important because we are affected in all layers of our being. All of our tissues, physical tissues are affected. I mean, even if you have a skin disorder that can affect your organs, that can affect the way your brain works. It definitely autoimmunity affects how our nervous system functions and the immune system obviously. So we get to work with all of that in this thing that I call yoga therapy or that yoga therapists call yoga therapy.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (04:40):
That's fascinating. Thank you for sharing. Is there a way, let me ask you, someone comes in and has the example you just gave, right? Has psoriasis expression on their skin, but is dealing with a lot of the burden that caused to them psychologically. How do you prioritize? Do it work outside in, inside out? Is it really unique to each person? How does that work?
Lesley Ann Wernsdorfer (05:04):
It's definitely unique to each person and that that's has how it has to be. And for me, almost always, not always, but almost always, I will start with what I call a body scan. And that's a time that we come in the session early in the session, well we'll chat for a few minutes and then we'll come into this sort of meditative state. But it's a physical meditation. We are feeling parts of the body. So you feel to the pinky toe, you feel all the way to the pinky toe. But then also bigger things like the whole head. But we might work with the eyes or the parts of the eyes or the ears and the parts of the ears. So when we do that body scan, the client and I, we'll talk about the things that bubble up the physical sensations, but also thoughts that seem to come up at about the same time.
(06:01):
And we can't always say that the little ping that I feel in my knee is because I've just thought of some thing that irritated me earlier in the day. We can't know it, but they're there at the same time, so why not work with them? That's how I feel about it. It's always still going to be different for every student, every client, but breath work and that body scan seems to be the basis that works best, especially for, as you mentioned, and as I've mentioned, skin disorders and psoriasis in particular. The movement part of it is also for skin really for all of it, all autoimmunity. But for skin in particular because of the collagen factor, learning to move in a way that doesn't aggravate is really, really important. And so we break movement down even to those small parts. Let's say an arm lift becomes simply, it might start with the thought of connecting the arm bone in the shoulder socket, feeling that first, feeling that joint. And then maybe you get to move the arm. It depends. It depends on what's happening with the person.
Jaime Hartman (07:19):
It sounds to me like what you're describing just there suggests that yoga therapy can be for virtually anybody. Is that true?
Lesley Ann Wernsdorfer (07:26):
Theoretically? Of course, yeah. There will be people who don't respond. That element of needing to access the nervous system in particular, the parasympathetic nervous system. Some folks run a mile away from that pretty fast. They're just not, they're not interested in going into that space would be the best way that I can phrase it. And that's an internal space and that can be pretty frightening for some people. And so for those folks, if they end up coming to me, we would probably only work through movement. So I still get to say, yes, it works for anyone, but I would completely understand that there are people that would say, no, none of that is for me, even the movement part of it.
Jaime Hartman (08:23):
And do you work with people in person or virtually or both?
Lesley Ann Wernsdorfer (08:28):
Both. Now since I've moved, I am seeing more people in person, but still finding space that part of it is a complication right now in a new city, but definitely still working online with people and it really works very well. I can see a lot on the screen. Someone's movements in some ways are even clearer on the big screen. I have a big screen above me here and I can see stuff that I wouldn't see in person, that's for sure. And I'm not sure really how that works, I guess because I see, well, I'm farther away. I mean literally I'm farther away. But also I can see something about with someone on the screen, I get a bigger perspective that I wouldn't have if I were standing in front of them. It's not to say it doesn't work in person, but my eye catches different things.
Jaime Hartman (09:29):
Looks like you've got a microscope almost. So like both Mar Noel and myself and many other AIP Certified Coaches, we know that you have a personal connection to autoimmune disease. Lesley Ann, when and how did your autoimmunity experience begin?
Lesley Ann Wernsdorfer (09:50):
My first conscious awareness was in 1978 and I got a little patch of psoriasis, didn't know that's what it was called. Dandruff, I think is what we called it. Just a little quarter sized round thing right in the center of my hairline above the forehead. And then it went away, and then it came back maybe a year later or something. And eventually I figured out it's coming in the fall and going away sometime in the late winter, early spring. What's that about? And then eventually I got a diagnosis many, many years later and it was explained to me that the diminishing light and then the increasing light, and then of course in the summertime, the actual UV light from the sun made it clear up and it went that way for many, many years. That's it. That's all I had. And then I got more on my scalp and then I had to start using shampoo and all of that.
(10:53):
And I found one that worked. It was a pine tar and I really liked it. I even liked the sort of medicinal smell of it. And then it began to spread more. And there's some question that I'm addressing right now that that spread may have been more related to eczema than psoriasis, but the flare of psoriasis comes from the eczema. And then I did for a completely different reason, I did a paleo elimination diet. I was trying to get my periods regular and my skin cleared up and that was a whole new perspective. And then it began to go crazy. My skin just really flared sometime in the early two thousands and big life changes were coming and it just kept worse. And then summer came and it got better. And so then I went through that cycle where it was more than the scalp, but it would still go away in the spring and the summer.
(12:04):
And then it stopped going away in the spring and the summer, and I tried some different things. Dermatologist suggested I do the UV treatment and that worked in a booth and that worked for a little while, but that gets expensive and it's time consuming. I finally ended up saying to him, I'd rather just pay for a trip down to the ocean, down to Florida or the Caribbean or something and get my skin clear and then just come back from the rest of the winter. He said, that's not a bad idea. So I ended up not doing it, but I realized that maybe the vacation aspect of those times when my skin cleared was also a big part of it. So that's when I really started to look at the nervous system aspect.
(12:52):
And then finally, eventually I made myself my way to AIP actually through my yoga therapy teacher from yoga therapy training. It was my teacher then who told me about AIP. Her husband had been on it. And I was very grateful for the suggestion. And there's so much about the lifestyle portion of the AIP protocol. It's what I do. I mean, it's just what I do. The self-care, the paying attention, exploration, the spirit of exploration and experimentation and being willing to try a food and then say, doesn't work, or hallelujah, it does work. Just this whole spirit of trial and error. I did that on my own for a really long time. And to know that I was sort of doing the right thing anyway without having an evidence-based program was hopeful to me. And it also has made it easier for me to accept flares, to stop thinking of them as failures.
(14:01):
They are not. They absolutely are not. It's just more awareness. I mean, I can think of sometimes it's a mistake. Sometimes I overdo a food that I've reintroduced and I'll have a little flare or I let, I'll phrase it this way, I let my emotions get the better of me and I have a flare. So all of these things have really, I just get more aware and then I know what to do next time. I mean, even if I let my emotions get away from me again, the coming back from that is always, each time it's easier. Yeah,
Jaime Hartman (14:43):
Yeah. That's such a good point that the idea of a flare is information to us that we can use going forward. My story behind that was that I didn't think I had anything to do with them. They just happened to me. They came out of the blue and I had to come to accept that there were factors that I could learn from it. And yet you can go, a person can go to the other extreme and blame themselves for it every time. And it's never ever that simple. So a lot of what you're talking about here I see is meeting in the middle for people.
Lesley Ann Wernsdorfer (15:21):
Yeah. I don't know if you remember that. I sent you a note not so very long ago, asking if you knew of anybody doing research on autoimmune thinking. Because I found myself having, I'm going to use this word, thoughts of self-loathing that may be overstating it because it was little tiny things, just little things that I do in life. And I'm like, I'm so bugged by myself by these things that I do. And I started to look at my skin and I was like, oh, oh, those thoughts are affecting my skin. And so I work with them every day. Every day I come to my mat and I work with those thoughts, but I do it through my body
(16:14):
And I ought to have some psychotherapy be the first to admit. And I have been diligently trying to find somebody, again, new city, trying to find practitioners that can be difficult. But again, not to sound like I'm doing a sales pitch, but AIP has helped a lot with that because I just keep coming back to the practices and the yoga therapy as I apply them in the AIP program. And so all of that stuff, it just all comes together in the program. And again, coming back to awareness, the awareness that you get and the ways that you can help yourself to feel better, literally to feel better. They're endless. Really. They are endless. You can always find some little way to feel better.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (17:08):
Dr. Keisha Iers has a book called Solving the Autoimmune Puzzle, in which she talks about what you just mentioned, the autoimmune mindset. There's also a very interesting component of our symptoms that self-loathing, that little voice that potentially is dictating or telling ourselves how to behave too. So that's a great point you bring up. I'm curious, do you feel like the dietary part of the AIP protocol has made, I guess, kept you from having as many flareups? Or do you feel it's more of a lifestyle component, a combination? How's your journey towards all branches of AIP?
Lesley Ann Wernsdorfer (17:50):
Yeah, it's kind of the same, the food layer. So let me bring it back to the physical layer that I talked about, the obvious outer layer of us. It is named for food. It's the Aya Kosha. It's the layer that eats. So food is huge. It's just huge. But it's not all of it for sure. I know folks who go on vacation and they can eat whenever they want. And you can tell me all kinds of stuff about the wheat in Scotland is better than the wheat in America maybe. But those folks were on vacation and they didn't have symptoms from eating bread. And it just is. It's all the same. It's not. I mean, we are doing it here. We're breaking it down into these layers, but it's still the whole being. And what are you thinking when you're eating? Sorry, what are you thinking?
(18:58):
I don't mean it that way, but what are you thinking when you're eating? When you're eating? Are you thinking this food is nourishing? Are you thinking I really love the people that I'm sitting here with, or are you thinking, I really need to get back to my desk? It's lunchtime, but I have so much work to do. Yeah, that food's not going to get digested in the same way or at all as food when you're sitting in a loving and comfortable environment with friends or family and yeah, we all have to eat on the run. Sure, do it, but don't do it. Most of the time. Build your resilience from a regularity of feeding your soul with those soul feeding activities. And if you are doing it on a regular basis, then those times when you can't because you're in a hurry because someone got sick and you have to go do an extra thing, whatever it might be, will have more resilience if your baseline is to live. I'm going to use a word that sounds judgmental better, more consciously. How's that? Yeah, with more awareness. There we go. That's going to be the word. That's going to be the word for today's talk.
Jaime Hartman (20:25):
I really appreciate the reminder and use of the word resiliency because that is truly, we talk about our signature coaching advice. That's something I try to emphasize a lot in my work when with my clients, is that you're never going to be doing anything a hundred percent of the time. And so when you can't give a hundred percent of your effort in an area that you know is important, being more resilient is going to allow you to get through that time period and bounce back more quickly. If it does impact you at all, maybe it even won't. And so it's so important to use all of those pieces, even the ones we might not think are necessary to us so that we can build that resiliency.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (21:11):
So touching on what Jaime just said about signature coaching advice, Lizanne, our next question is exactly that. What is your signature coaching advice or the points that you tend to advocate for the most with your clients as an AIP Certified Coach?
Lesley Ann Wernsdorfer (21:26):
So number one piece of advice is the name of my business, be Body Full yoga therapy. So this is a phrase I made up and it's a word I made up body full. And it's just the physical equivalent of being mindful. We are doing better, I think in our culture of understanding thoughts and emotions, understanding that they're real and that they affect us and that they can be worked with to make our lives better. But we really don't seem to do that with the physical body. I mean, your body is, it's where you live, first of all, and it's talking to you all the time in the same way, really. Like a house talks to you, it creaks and you think, oh, maybe that floor needs to be nailed under the boarding or whatever your thoughts might be about your house. But same thing with your body.
(22:23):
And I don't mean just creaky joints, of course we do hear them and we do feel them, but there are other sensations and smaller we could call them. And even for me, they come across as noises in my own body, like pings and just funny little sounds. And I don't know that I'm actually hearing them. That's just how I experience them more than a sensation. I'll hear something everybody's different. I know people who can tell, they can read health by skin tone and overall skin tone and how skin tone changes. I mean, it's really interesting how people read their own bodies and others as well.
(23:15):
So to be body full, first of all, you have to take the time to pay attention. I mean, you have to take the time. So set the time aside and pay attention. Pay attention to how you feel when you walk, just a few steps. Pay attention, especially how you feel when you're walking upstairs. How do you feel when you get in bed? How do you feel when you wake up? How do you feel when you drive your car? How do you feel when you're sitting and eating all of that? And then eventually you'll start to break it down into smaller bits and you'll begin to notice that I just keep using this phrase that you feel better. And that's a pun that I use. There's another little bit another, it's a pun that I use. So feel better as in to feel well, but also touch yourself and feel yourself.
(24:09):
Feel how when you move your hand back and forth, I'm flopping my wrist, my hand, holding my wrist and flopping my hand. For those of you who are not watching, what's that feel like and what's it feel like if you go slower? What's it feel like in other parts of your body when you do that? Are you gripping? Are you clenching your jaw because you're feeling pain here or fear? Are your eyes fixated on anything? Are my ears prickle? I often find my right ear a little higher than my left. So like a dog, a dog's ears will perk up. So I sometimes wonder, what's that telling me? Why is my ear perking up? So like that.
(24:58):
I also try to make it fun. The body's a fun place to be. I mean, there's so much cool stuff that goes on in there, stuff we can't see, but we know is happening. You can't see your heart, but you can feel it beating. You can't see the air that's coming in and becoming breath, but you know your breathing and you know that because your rib cage expands. But one of my favorite things is just to feel the breath coming in and out across the upper lip. And you can feel the rush of air. But you can also, if you really tune in, you can feel that the air coming in is a little cooler. And then after it's been through your lungs, it comes out a little warmer and it's returned from breath to air. And that's our connection to every other thing on the planet, each other. But even to plants that breathe the opposite from us, we are breathing their waste and then we give them our waste. And so it is, the breath is the fundamental movement of life, and it is something that we share with every other, living being including bacteria. Yeah, it's really pretty amazing.
(26:11):
That's my advice. Be body full, pay attention.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (26:15):
It's great advice. I love that. What you just said, the connection, it just reminds me that you think of self-care as an activity, but self-care is also just connecting with yourself and being present in your body. That connection is just this powerful connection with nature, connection with others, right? All these failures, but it's connection to yourself
Lesley Ann Wernsdorfer (26:38):
And always available to you. So the fifth layer is that bliss body, that peace body that exists in all of us. And it's always there. It's not only there when you're on vacation or when you're in a loving relationship. It's there for you to tap into all the time, even in the midst of chaos. And that's your connection. And that's your connection both internally to your deepest self. But everybody has that deepest self. So it's also your connection to everyone else. It's really a beautiful way to be in the world, to be an individual, an individual organism that's part of a larger organism
Jaime Hartman (27:24):
That's so reassuring to think of that bliss body and remembering that it's in us wherever we go, whatever's going on around us, it's still there. It's not something we have to seek outward for. We have to go inward for it. And so then that means it's always with us.
Lesley Ann Wernsdorfer (27:39):
Yeah, always. Even in the worst of your flares, that bit of peace, that bit of bliss is always available to you.
Jaime Hartman (27:51):
So Powerful. We like to conclude these conversations with our fellow coaches with some actionable tips that would help our listeners elevate their wellness journey to new heights, as we say. What is something that our listeners can put into practice that would allow for that?
Lesley Ann Wernsdorfer (28:12):
Feel your feet, feel your seat, feel your heart beating and feel your breath coming and going. That's one thing. Then that breath, pay attention to it. How is it moving you? Literally, how does the breath move your rib cage so the breath can move in six directions outward to the sides, to your left and right forward through your front chest, or maybe for some people into the belly, but then we kind of forget that we've got ribs in the back. So bring a hand back there if you can, and then just breathe back backwards and feel your ribs expand that way. It's hard work, harder work, I should say, than it is to breathe sideways or forward. But then there's also an upward movement of breathing. So just above the collarbone, there are actually a couple of ribs where there are ribs, there is lung tissue where there's lung tissue.
(29:25):
You can breathe deeper. So you can breathe upward also towards your head. Now don't do that by lifting the shoulders. So don't try to hold the shoulders still. Just try to inflate under the top shoulders. Yeah, nice. I can see you guys so I can see that you're doing it. And then also down into the pelvic floor. So wherever your sit bones are, whatever seat you're on right now, feel those little bony points, which are actually kind of like little rockers, but feel those bony points on the seat and on the inhale, feel them get a little heavier so that you kind of sink.
(30:15):
And then on the exhale, you come back up off them just a weep bit. So that's six directions of breath. Do that three times. Don't strain to make it happen. Just feel the direction of the breath. And then my third piece of advice is give yourself five minutes to do a little hand massage and a little foot massage right before bed, right before within an hour in your normal bedtime routine, whatever that. So first of all, have a bedtime routine and then add maybe five minutes to it just to give yourself a little bit of loving touch. If you want to have someone else do it, that'd be great. If you've got a partner who'd be willing to do your feet or hands, that would be a wonderful thing. Just for a little bit of connection. You might be asked to return the favor, and that's fine too. But if you find it more helpful, more beneficial just to do it on your own than do it on your own, no problem. And that's enough. That's enough. Those are three really actionable ways to find, well, I'm going to phrase it this way, to tap into your bliss body to stay connected to your connection.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (31:38):
Lesley Ann, thank you so much again for joining us today and for sharing your wisdom. As we wrap up, please remind the listeners how they can connect with you and learn more about what you offer
Lesley Ann Wernsdorfer (31:50):
First. It's been my pleasure. This has really been a lot of fun to sit and talk with you too about this stuff and also to get to talk about what I do. And so if folks want to get in touch with me, they can do that. Probably most easiest through my website, which is be body fold.com. And I'll spell that B-E-B-O-D-I-F-U-L.com. And I'd be just thrilled if people would subscribe to my newsletter and then get in touch with me. There's a little contact form. It can just be to say hello. You don't have to tell me your whole story, but if you just want to be connected to me, that's fine. I would really appreciate it. And also through the AIP certified.com, you can always find me on the directory there,
Jaime Hartman (32:37):
And we'll be sure to put to all of that in the show notes for those people who want to find 'em there.
Lesley Ann Wernsdorfer (32:43):
Thank you.
Jaime Hartman (32:45):
We hope that our conversation with Lesley Ann has again made it clear that AIP is not just a diet, but is a protocol with multiple branches. And there are multiple ways to approach it. And through this podcast, AIP Certified Coaches bring you resources so that you don't have to do AIP alone.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (33:02):
We'll be back with another podcast episode in two weeks. So make sure you subscribe to the AIP Summit Podcast in your favorite podcast player if you have not already.
Jaime Hartman (33:11):
And if you'd like to leave us a rating and a review, it will help others find this podcast where we are committed to helping you use the power of the Autoimmune protocol to elevate your wellness journey to new heights. The AIP Summit Podcast is a Gutsy By Nature production. Content presented is for informational purposes only, and is not intended to be a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.
