Cheryl Gordon: Yoga is supposed to heal you, so why did it hurt me? In this episode, my guest and I reveal the hidden risks of yoga for women over 50, and the essential steps to keep your practice safe, strong, and sustainable for decades to come.
Today, I'm so excited to have a great gab with Gillian Soder of Body Labs Yoga in Edmonton, Canada. Gillian is the creator and primary facilitator for Body Labs classes, workshops, and courses. She's been studying yoga and the human body for over 20 years, spanning a university degree, employment in forensic medicine, and currently as a movement educator.
Her and I today will break down where I, and so many yoga enthusiasts, are at risk for injury. We’ll explain why, and give you the best practices for enjoying decades of yoga safely.
So welcome to episode number 27 of the Midlife Reset Podcast.I'm Cheryl Gordon. I'm a yoga therapist who's very busy these days, doing my best to educate midlife women on feeling stronger, losing weight, and sleeping better using the tools of yoga and mindfulness.
Now, I started teaching yoga with great enthusiasm. I had always loved attending classes, and felt that yoga was just about the best thing that had ever happened to me.
When I got to start leading those classes myself, sharing the teachings, well, you know, I just jumped in, like, 150%. I taught six days a week.Enthusiastically demonstrating poses on one side, but then walking around the room to help my students adjust into their poses. And they would be doing the second side, but I skipped that side, you know, because I was busy teaching. I didn't do any of the preparatory breathing or relaxation stuff that I had my students do. I was guiding others.
And yoga was magic, right? I was totally above worrying about keeping myself safe.And then there was that first injury. Ouch.My psoas, which is a hip flexor muscle, just got fed up with those deep, sexy lunges, and all the lack of counterposing. It got inflamed, angry, painful — I couldn't even walk.Other injuries have followed, each one teaching an essential lesson.
So please welcome my guest today, Gillian Soder. Gillian, I can't wait to mine all your knowledge, so our listeners won't make those same mistakes that I was talking about. So welcome!
Gillian Soder: Thank you for having me! I'm super excited! Let's get into it.
Cheryl Gordon: I want to ask, Gillian, because I was so intrigued: what was your work in forensic medicine? That sounds so intriguing.
Gillian Soder: So, yeah… my degree is actually in forensic anthropology. Bones are my jam — that's why I’ve got all my buddies around me. And so I took my forensic anthropology here at the University of Alberta, and started working at the medical examiner's office, actually before I graduated. So I worked in a forensic setting doing autopsies.Not medical autopsies, but forensic autopsies — those are autopsies on individuals whose death was unexpected, either due to some sort of medical reason, or due to some sort of violent death, be it in a trauma accident, homicide, or something like that.And so we did that for a number of years. I also worked for the transplant program at the University of Alberta Hospital, as a coordinator, speaking with families at time of death about donation of their loved one's tissues.Over the span of 20 years, I actually went back to the medical examiner's office during 2020 as well. So, over the span of about 20 years, I have been in and out of anatomy labs with my hands literally on the tissues of the human body, and it's been such an honor to be able to learn in that way continuously.
Cheryl Gordon: Wow, that's a lot of deep experience, Gillian. So when you talk about the body and how to align ourselves in yoga poses, we're going to play very close attention. So… how did you go from forensic anthropology to yoga?
Gillian Soder: Yeah, it seems like a big leap — and it was. I have two children, and when I had my second child, our work schedules… I was working shift work at the transplant program at the time, and it just didn’t make sense for me to return back to work full-time.So, as a stay-at-home mom, I decided I was going to take my yoga teacher training as kind of my little side gig. Get me out of the house, keep me a little sane, right? Keep me busy.I took my yoga teacher training almost 15 years ago now, and that was a big learning curve — bigger than I thought it was going to be. Because here’s the thing: I had been learning from bodies that were stationary. No feeling, right? They had no opinion on what was happening. I had always worked with deceased bodies. Always.And it was a big shift for me to work with moving, breathing, feeling humans. So, I'm still learning in that transition, 15 years later. But again, it's this beautiful arc of the human experience — between this life that we get to live in these bodies, and understanding how they interact.
Cheryl Gordon: Fascinating. So, can we talk a little bit more about the difference between a dead body and a live body? Beyond the obvious. Now, here’s kind of the reason I’m asking the question, Gillian, and I think it’s going to lead us into the reason that I sustained the injuries that I did in yoga, and it’s got something to do with connective tissue.
Gillian Soder: Yeah, absolutely. So, our connective tissue — everyone’s connective tissue, everyone’s body — is very independent. Everyone has their own kind of build and structure. My buddy over here, just over my left shoulder, he’s named Stan, because he stands around. He goes with me to all of my trainings. He’s kind of the template. But we always have to remember: he’s a template, and that’s it.There is huge variation in the human population. When I was learning at the University of Alberta, we worked with a skeletal collection that wasn’t representative of the bodies we typically see here in Canada. Those skeletons were much smaller than the bodies I see in my classes. Later, when I did some of my training in Eastern Europe, those skeletal bodies were much larger than the ones I had studied here.So, when we’re talking about movement and templates — the kinds of images that Yoga Journal has put out over the years, those beautiful pictures of people practicing — those are just templates. It’s not necessarily how it’s going to look for you, or me, or the next person.It really comes down to how the position feels in your body. Your skeleton is going to interact with those positions in a very different way than someone else’s. That’s why we want to focus on the experience of the soft tissue — the connective tissue around and within the joints — in order to stay within what we might call “safe spaces.”
Cheryl Gordon: Absolutely. And this is something I’ve been trying to communicate, but I just love having someone with your expertise and experience reinforcing the message I’ve been trying so hard to share with midlife women. Because it becomes even more important as we get older. It’s very important when we’re young, but even more so as we age.I remember following some of the work of Tom Myers — you’ve probably heard of him — the “Anatomy Trains.” He and a number of my teachers have mentioned that for many centuries, people were studying autopsies, looking at dead bodies, and basically dismissing fascia and connective tissue. Because the body wasn’t moving, fascia seemed unimportant.It’s only in more recent times, with imaging technology, that we can actually see a moving body from the inside and say, “Oh wow, what’s all that doing?” That must be one of the big differences between working with the dead and the living, right?
Gillian Soder: Absolutely. When I was learning anatomy in the gross anatomy labs at university, fascia was literally the stuff we cut away to get to the “interesting” parts.
Cheryl Gordon: The good stuff, like the nerves and muscles.
Gillian Soder: Exactly. We removed it just to see the rest. And that was only in the early 2000s when I was doing my degree — not that long ago. In the 20 to 25 years since, we’ve realized the nervous system is actually more connected to fascia than to anything else.Don’t quote me on the exact numbers, but I believe it’s almost 100 times more connected to your fascia than to your skin. Which is fascinating.
And that’s something I love about the human body. You’d think after thousands of years of living in these bodies we’d know everything, but we’re still learning. We used to believe the parts weren’t connected — but in reality, they are totally connected.
Cheryl Gordon: Yes, and that brings us back to connective tissue. It’s this continuous weave throughout all of our tissues — through each tiny little muscle spindle, around our organs, even within our bones. It’s all connected.
Gillian Soder: Absolutely.
Cheryl Gordon: So if fascia is so deep, and even more sensitive than our skin, then in a way we’re actually feeling from the inside, right?
Gillian Soder: Yes, absolutely. And especially for yoga teachers, many of whom haven’t studied anatomy since high school, it’s important to remember: the images in textbooks or online are only created because tissue was cut away.
Your body, until a scalpel touches it, is complete and whole. It’s one system. That’s one of the issues I have with Tom Myers’ work. He’s a brilliant anatomist and has great ideas, but we have to remember his “fascial lines” only exist because a scalpel created them.Those fascial lines are interwoven — the anterior line isn’t truly separate from the lateral line or any other line. It’s all connected. And that’s why we need to be careful to remember that textbook images always come through the lens of whoever dissected or illustrated them.
Cheryl Gordon: Right, yes. Great point. I never really thought about that before. It’s just so amazing, the capability of the human body, and I think yoga is a place where we can really celebrate that capability.
Now, you were mentioning yoga teachers and teacher training. What do you think are some of the main mistakes yoga teachers might be making when they’re sharing movement practice?
Gillian Soder: It’s not so much that they’re making mistakes, but I think they’re missing opportunities. One of the biggest missed opportunities right now is the… at least in the kind of circles that I run in, which are a lot more mobility-focused, and about maintaining long-term ability of the tissues, a vital old age, please.
Maintaining what we have already, right? So, I think one of the things that we are missing a little bit of is more challenge within our practices.
There's a lot of emphasis right now on embodied work and feeling things internally, and what tends to happen with that sort of practice is more of a restorative, quieter practice. And yes, 100%, our nervous systems need that.But they also need the other end of the spectrum. Because there is something so empowering in that moment when a student realizes that they did a really challenging posture, or practice, or what have you.
That they were able to bring themselves to that quote-unquote edge. And not… I'm not talking about, like, the edge of feeling intensity in your tissues or anything like that. We've kind of heard that dialogue over the years — “step to the edge,” right? And that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about finding something a little bit deeper in yourself, where you can go, wow.I just achieved that.
And that is where your nervous system really starts to shift and starts to find a little bit more resiliency. Instead of just going, okay, yeah, I'm okay with this practice, I'm okay with where I'm feeling, and all of that. There's a balance to that by challenging as well, and I think sometimes we're missing out on that challenge for our students.
Cheryl Gordon: Great reminder, because I'm a big believer in the calming practices, and the slower, and the more embodied yoga, but I hear what you're saying completely. So, if I were to ask Gillian specifics about what I could incorporate, in my own practice, or when I'm teaching, I'm thinking poses like plank pose, or maybe the warrior poses, or maybe, like, the balance poses. So, these are the poses that present a big challenge to people.They build strength and cohesion in movement patterns.
Gillian Soder: Yeah, but we can also get a little bit more nuanced within those postures. So, if we are in, let's say, a balancing posture — a one-leg balancing posture.Can we… so, if this is the femoral head, the top of the thigh, okay, and this is part of my pelvis — how can I move that pelvis around a little bit within that balancing posture to get a little bit more stability and strength and awareness within the joint itself?
I live in northern Alberta. We have ice here. It just is part of our lives, right? We are literally skating across the parking lots in the middle of winter. And so this is something that actually is really functional for the population around here, where during the winter, your hips, those smaller muscles within the hips, need to be able to respond for that moment that you step out of your car and put weight on one leg, and need to get up without falling on your butt.Right?
So, when you can explain the reasoning behind it, that's really functional for your students. I think that's when some of these practices can land a little bit more thoroughly for them. Right? So I can say to my students, you know, just being aware helps us to land a potential fall in a more safe way. By doing these practices within a controlled environment in our yoga practice, right?
And so I think that that sort of thing can be really — almost life-changing for our students, potentially, right?
Cheryl Gordon: Yeah, and as we get older, and our bones maybe aren't as strong as they used to be, I have so many people in my classes that say, oh, I have no balance, I'm not good at balance. And I'm thinking, yeah, but you add another 20 years on, girlfriend, that's gonna be a life-threatening condition.So, you're suggesting, Gillian, that us yoga teachers should pay more attention, challenging our students in those kinds of ways.
Gillian Soder: Absolutely, absolutely. And right, like, you brought up plank position. Well, plank position, we can do rhomboid push-ups in plank position, which helps to maintain the integrity of the entire shoulder complex. Front, back, side, all of it. It's not just about the rhomboids in that position, right?So I think, yeah, I think that supporting our students for that future of their body right now is really… to me, it's the definition of my job.
Cheryl Gordon: And I really would love to see more emphasis in yoga classes for midlife women, especially for everybody, but especially for us girls, on these kinds of ideas, rather than, you know, a cow face pose.You know, reaching for your fingers behind your back, or the different poses where you're told to grab your big toe and pull. I wish we would just stop saying those kind of things and make those a measurement of the practice, because I think the connective tissue gets a little traumatized sometimes.
Gillian Soder: Absolutely! We overstretch instead of finding a balance between stretching and engaging. Here's the thing about every single muscle in your body. Every single muscle from your bicep to your pelvic floor.Your muscles, in order to be a healthy muscle, they need to be able to both engage effectively and relax effectively. If they can't do both of those, then there is a disbalance within that tissue.And so, what tends to happen in our bodies is we have an over-engagement in the tissue, because it's holding on for dear life — not because the muscle is not strong enough, but because the area around the joints are not stabilized enough. There's not a balance of all of the muscles around the joints.And so, finding that balance for our students, taking care of all the sides of the joints, is really important.
Cheryl Gordon: Yeah, and getting back to my first injury that I was discussing in the intro, the deep, sexy lunge pose, you know, with the knee on the ground and the big back bend thrown into it, I had unstable pelvic joints. My hips weren't… and everyone wants to stretch their hips. They think their hips are tight, or their hip flexors are tight.And what I wasn't doing was the corresponding reassurance for all those small muscles and all that connective tissue and all those important ligaments in that joint that, oh no, we've got this, we're gonna be nice and stable. I was just throwing it into a great big, huge gravitational pull.And it fought back.
Gillian Soder: Yeah, and that's a really common story in our profession, right? I include myself in that population. I got to the same point with sciatic pain, where I was not able to teach for 3 months because of my sciatic pain, because I had overstretched the nerve itself, right?
Cheryl Gordon: Right.
Gillian Soder: And the hips tend to be the culprit in our injuries amongst yoga teachers in particular, right? Because we do that… a demonstration of the posture on one side and not the other, and we always have a preferred side that we teach from, right? So we do the right side first always, or something like that, right?
Cheryl Gordon: You know what?
Gillian Soder: Human nature, and so it's okay. But you mentioned tight muscles. The thing about tight muscles is that they're usually tight — feel tight — because they're holding on for dear life. It's not because they are actually tight themselves. It's because they're trying to stabilize the joint.And same for me. My joints, my hip joints were unstable. I actually learned that I have hip dysplasia, which is a skeletal deformity. And that kind of predisposed me to injury within my hips.Now, I don't have the flexion, or the flexibility, rather, that I had when I first started practicing or teaching. But I actually have stability and strength in my hips now. Right? So it's… you may have to release some of that idea of how deep of a flexibility practice that you want.
Gillian Soder: In order to create the strength and stable practice that you actually need. ends of the joints to start to rub together. And it’s obviously very painful. But having—again going back to that idea of supporting the joint, creating strength and stability for the joint itself—is really instrumental in supporting the body through the process of osteoarthritis. Unfortunately, you can’t reverse osteoarthritis, but you can support it and slow its progression.
Cheryl Gordon: And maybe alleviate, with all the other tools of yoga, some of the experience of the pain. You get a little bit more confidence, and you’re willing to move a little bit more. Then you get a little bit stronger, and some of the pressure comes off the joint. It’s a cumulative process.
Gillian Soder: It just… it builds on itself, absolutely.
Cheryl Gordon: Taking that first step. And I do have a free program, Gillian, that I’ve developed. It’s based on an old yoga tradition called Pavanmuktasana, but I call it the Joint Freeing Series. I recommend it for people who have osteoarthritis, because they can move the joint, get that synovial fluid going without weight bearing. Each joint is moved by itself, so there’s not a lot of complexity for the nervous system to deal with. I’ll put a link to that free program in the notes.And I’m sure you have some great resources, too, that you offer.
Gillian Soder: Yeah, I usually focus more on teacher training stuff, but I do have a few programs available on my website for people who want to get a little bit more nerdy and understand the why behind things. That’s really where I get excited—the whys behind things.
